On December 3, 1984, 45 tons of methyl isocyanate gas leaked
from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. Four safety
mechanisms failed to stop the escaping gas, due to inadequate
maintenance. The accident killed 3,000 and at least 40,000 were
seriously injured (Robins 1990:106; Shrivastava 1996:121, 125).
The tragedy at Bhopal made citizens and NGOs acutely aware of
their ignorance about what local industries were producing. In
the United States, workers and communities had called for the
right to know about chemicals in their workplaces and
neighborhoods since the 1970s. Political momentum peaked in
1986, when the U.S. Congress passed the Emergency Planning and
Community Right to Know Act. The legislation required the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency to establish a publicly
accessible electronic database that would allow users to track
the quantities of pollutants released by major businesses to
air, land, and water. The database also tracked pollutants and
wastes that companies transferred for various