Bayer drops plan for toxic MIC production in W.Va.

Bayer CropScience said Friday it was abandoning plans to resume production in West Virginia of a toxic chemical that killed thousands of people in Bhopal, India, in 1984.

Bayer issued a release the same morning as the latest court hearing in a lawsuit by residents seeking to stop the company from restarting the unit that produces methyl isocyanate, or MIC

The company said in a news release that it will decommission the MIC unit and associated production units.

The plant in Institute is the only one in the nation that still stores MIC in large volumes. The chemical is used to make Temik, an insecticide.

Bayer said it could no longer expect to produce Temik in time for this year's growing season because of delays in restarting the MIC unit, which had been closed for renovations.

Residents had filed a lawsuit to halt the unit's restart. Bayer had argued that it already had significantly reduced the risks of an accident, slashing its MIC stockpile by 80 percent and eliminating all aboveground storage.