HUL too got away?

You think it is only Union Carbide which has polluted one of India’s grounds forever? Maybe no one has caused as much damage as Union Carbide, no doubts about it but did you know that Hindustan Unilever too stands accused?

Have you seen the new video which has gone viral – Sofia Ashraf’s rap video “Kodaikanal Won’t”? This has been making waves on the social media and is a part of a media campaign by NGO Jhatkaa.org to bring Hindustan Unilever to account for mercury poisoning in Kodaikanal.

Yes, HUL has contaminated a part of Kodaikanal irreversibly. Till 2001, HUL had a mercury thermometer factory in Kodaikanal and it had to be shut down due to environmental violations. The factory was working at full capacity from 1983 till 2001 during which time it discharged more than 1.3 tonnes of mercury into an ecologically sensitive watershed forest. Some spots in the factory have 5000 to 10,000 times more mercury than naturally occurring background levels. Even today, the site continues to leak mercury into surrounding forests and Kodaikanal’s lakes.  

Naturally, residents want this to be cleaned up and HUL has agreed to clean-up to a standard that will leave more than a third of the contamination in the remediated soil. In New York, a former mercury refining site is being cleaned to 5.7 mg/kg for future industrial use but HUL is agreeing to standards from 10 to 20 mg/kg.

Just one question – could HUL have ever got away with this if such a thing had happened in USA or Europe?