The Legacy of the Bhopal Chemical Leak

Blinding Tragedy
At around midnight on Dec. 3, 1984, a Union Carbide plant manufacturing the pesticide Sevin suffered a terrible malfunction, accidentally releasing poisonous gas into the air over Bhopal, India. Thousands of people died that night and in the days, weeks and months that followed. Since then, very little of the toxic residue around the plant has been cleaned up, while the local population suffers from a high rate of birth defects, cancer and other maladies that activists say are tied to the pollution. Salman, 13, above, who lives in a slum near the plant, was born blind; he also suffers from a severe psychological disability.

• TIME's Bhopal cover story from December 1984