TOXIC TRESPASS - December 2nd, 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the 1984 Union Carbide gas tragedy that killed up to 10,000 of the citizens of Bhopal within 72 hours and over 25,000 more in the years since. The event is widely acknowledged as the world's worst-ever industrial disaster. The original site of the heavily-polluted pesticide plant was abandoned after the tragedy and never cleared up. It remains, as referred to by Greenpeace, as one of the world's most 'toxic hotspots'. Thousands families have, for decades, been using water contaminated with toxic chemicals as their primary drinking supply which has led to serious genetic illnesses, widespread cancers, and an epidemic of congenital birth defects in their children.
The series title, 'Toxic Trespass' refers to scholar-activist Sandra Steingraber's concept in which "chemicals that are suspected or known to be linked to cancer or reproductive problems; neurological poisons that are entering our bodies because we're breathing or we're drinking or we're eating food and we haven't consented to their presence being there."
In 2015, I photographed thirty Bhopal disaster-affected children who, at the time, were attending therapy and socialization groups at the Chingari Children's Rehabilitation Center located near the site of the former pesticide plant.
As of November 2024, of the thirty children that I photographed back in 2015, fifteen of them have since passed. The series was commissioned by The Bhopal Medical Appeal as an awareness campaign designed to raise funds for The Chingari Clinic that looks after some 350 registered children - most of whom are severely disabled having been born to parents contaminated by a carcinogenic and mutagenic water supply.
https://www.bhopal.org/
