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The 1980's
 Thousands Die in Bhopal

Thousands Die in Bhopal
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 6 to 8
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   6.31

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    killing, contend, disastrous, failure, maintenance, respiratory, refused, testing, maintain, mercury, economy, toxic, medical, cancer, fell, attack
     content words:    Union Carbide, Dow Chemical Company

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Thousands Die in Bhopal
By Jane Runyon 		  
1     Bhopal is a city in India. The farmers near Bhopal are very poor. They have a hard time making a living off the land in the area. There are droughts to contend with. When the rains do come, they cause floods that wash the crops away.
 
2     Union Carbide decided that Bhopal would be a good place to build a factory. This company produced insecticides. These insecticides are poisons which kill insects that attack plants. Company officials reasoned that if Indian farmers were having trouble growing crops, their insecticides would help to produce larger crops. What they didn't consider was that the droughts and floods left the farmers so poor that there was no money to buy the insecticides.
 
3     Union Carbide built their factory in the 1970's. It was a failure from the very beginning. Union Carbide closed down their operations in the early 1980's. That might have been the end to a long forgotten story but for one thing. When the company pulled out, they left over 60 tons of a deadly gas, MIC, in tanks at the facility. They felt that this would be no problem. There were six different safety systems in place to keep the gas from escaping and causing any problems.

Paragraphs 4 to 9:
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