Children awaiting cremation. A crowd watches as a man pastes identification labels onto dead children's foreheads. So many thousands had died so suddenly that these sorts of drastic measures were necessary to identify and document as many bodies...

Man carries the body of his wife past the deserted Union Carbide factory, the source of the toxic gas that killed her the night before.

The morning after. Survivors of the disaster stand in front of the Union Carbide factory one day after the lethal gas leak. Their eyes and lungs have been badly damaged by exposure to the gas.

Mass cremations were held alongside the communal graves. "The bodies were strewn all over and the stench of death was overpowering," recalls 76-year old Amar Chand Ajmera, a social worker. "I remember, we cremated more than 2,000 bodies in a day."

Burial of young Leela. Had her body not been recognised and claimed, she would have joined thousands of others on the mass cremation pyres.

Burial of an unknown child. This unknown child has become the icon of the world's worst industrial disaster, caused by the US multinational chemical company, Union Carbide.

Lone survivor. This elderly woman was badly injured when exposed to the poisonous gas, but survived. Everyone else in her family died.

Blocking outflow pipe from lead & zinc.

Sea otter at rehabilitation centre in Valdez after Exxon Valdez oil spill.