Section 8: Handling Hazardous Substances

In one line

Section 8 is the provision Bhopal produced: it regulates how a dangerous substance is kept, not what escapes from it.

In the wording a student can write in an examination: section 8 of the Environment (Protection) Act 1986 provides that no person shall handle or cause to be handled any hazardous substance except in accordance with such procedure and after complying with such safeguards as may be prescribed.

Why the section exists

Because the Water Act and the Air Act regulate a discharge and an emission. They have nothing to say about a drum standing in a yard, a tank of methyl isocyanate, a consignment on a lorry or a store of pesticide, until something escapes.

The escape at Bhopal was not a discharge into a stream or an emission from a chimney. It was a failure of storage, of maintenance, of siting, of warning and of emergency planning, and none of those was regulated by any Indian statute in December 1984.

Section 8 is the answer, and it is deliberately drafted to require conduct rather than to prohibit a result.

Reading the section

No person. Not confined to an industry or an occupier. Any person.

Shall handle or cause to be handled. Handling is defined in section 2(d) and covers manufacture, processing, treatment, package, storage, transportation, use, collection, destruction, conversion, offering for sale, transfer or the like. Causing to be handled reaches a person who arranges for another to do it, which catches a principal who engages a contractor.

Any hazardous substance. Defined in section 2(e): a substance or preparation which by reason of its chemical or physico-chemical properties or handling is liable to cause harm to human beings, other living creatures, plants, micro-organism, property or the environment.

Except in accordance with such procedure and after complying with such safeguards as may be prescribed. Two requirements, and both are prescribed by rules. Procedure is how the thing is done; safeguards are what must be in place before it is done.

What has been prescribed

The section is empty without rules, and four sets of rules fill it.

The Manufacture, Storage and Import of Hazardous Chemical Rules 1989. The principal set. They impose on the occupier a general responsibility during an industrial activity, a duty to notify a major accident within forty-eight hours, approval and notification of the site, a safety report and a safety audit report, an on-site emergency plan, an obligation on the authority to prepare an off-site emergency plan, a duty to inform persons liable to be affected, and controls on import.

The Chemical Accidents (Emergency Planning, Preparedness and Response) Rules 1996. The crisis machinery: a Central Crisis Group, a Crisis Alert System, a State Crisis Group, and District and Local Crisis Groups.