On December 3, 1984, poison gas leaked from a Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India, killing thousands. Carbide says 3,800 died. Municipal workers who loaded bodies onto trucks for burial in mass graves or to be burned on mass pyres, estimate they handled at least 15,000 bodies. Survivors, basing their estimates on the number of shrouds sold in the city, conservatively claim about 8,000 died in the first week.

Two women are now on hunger-strike "to highlight the truth behind Dow Chemical and Union Carbide's liabilities in Bhopal," where people are still perishing at the rate of one a day from injuries sustained over 18 years ago, according to a report by the AlterNet news services. Since the disaster, the city has experienced epidemics of cancers, menstrual disorders and what one doctor described as "monstrous births," according to the report.