The Legacy of the Bhopal Chemical Leak

Next Generation
Zubin, 3, was born healthy but developed serious physical and neurological deficiencies in her early childhood, believed to be connected to consuming the water around the plant. Studies conducted by Greenpeace and other groups have found numerous contaminants in high quantities in the local soil and groundwater, though not all of them are directly related to the 1984 disaster. Some of the toxic substances are left over from the inefficient way in which the plant disposed of the by-products of its production.

• TIME's Bhopal cover story from December 1984