During the early morning hours of December 3, 1984, a Union Carbide plant in a village just South of Bhopal, India released approximately forty tons of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) into the air. Used in the manufacture of pesticides, MIC is a lethal chemical. The gas quickly and silently diffused over the ground and, in the end, killed, by some estimates, upwards to 5,000 people and injured 50,000 more. The only other place in the world that Union Carbide manufactured MIC is at its Institute plant in the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia.