Dow Chemical Company

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**Dow Chemical Co.**
Image:DowChemicalLogo.png
Type	Public
Founded	1897
Location	Midland, Michigan
Key people	Andrew N. Liveris, CEO & President
Industry	Manufacturing
Products	Chemicals
Revenue	$40.2 Billion (2004)
Employees	43,000
Website	www.dow.com

The Dow Chemical Company NYSE: DOW is a multinational corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, USA. In terms of market capitalization, it is the largest chemical company in the world, followed closely by DuPont.

1 Products
2 History
3 Public Health Challenges
4 Operation Locations
5 External links
- 5.1 Corporate Information
- 5.2 Advocacy
6 Further reading

Products

Dow is the world's largest producer of plastics including polystyrene, polyurethanes, polyethylene terephthalate, polypropylene, and synthetic rubbers. It is also a major producer of the chemicals calcium chloride, and ethylene oxide, as well as various acrylates, surfactants, and cellulose resins. It produces many agricultural chemicals, perhaps being most famous for its pesticide Lorsban. On the consumer level, its most well-known products include Saran wrap, Ziploc bags (which now have been sold to SC Johnson), Styrofoam and Silly Putty.

History

The Dow Chemical Company was founded in 1897 by Herbert Henry Dow in order to extract chlorides and bromides from brine deposits under Midland, Michigan. Its initial products included bromine and bleach. Even in its early history, the company set a tradition of rapidly diversifying its product line. Within twenty years, Dow had become a major producer of agricultural chemicals, elemental chlorine, phenol and other dyestuffs, and magnesium metal.

In the 1930s, Dow began production of plastic resins, which would grow to become one of the corporation's major businesses. Its first plastic products were ethylcellulose, made in 1935, and polystyrene, made in 1937.

In 1930, Dow built its first plant to produce magnesium extracted from seawater rather than underground brine. Growth of this business made Dow a strategically important business during World War II, as magnesium became important in fabricating lightweight parts for airplanes. Also during the war, Dow and Corning began their joint venture Dow Corning to produce silicones for military and later civilian use. In 1942 Dow began its foreign expansion with the formation of Dow Chemical of Canada in Sarnia, Ontario to produce styrene for use in styrene-butadiene synthetic rubber.

In the postwar era, Dow began expanding outside North America, founding its first overseas subsidiary in Japan in 1952, with several other nations following rapidly thereafter. Based largely on its growing plastics business, it opened a consumer products division beginning with Saran wrap in 1953. Based on its growing chemicals and plastics businesses, Dow's sales exceeded $1 billion in 1964, $2 billion in 1971, and $10 billion in 1980.

In September 2004, Dow obtained the naming rights of the Saginaw County Event Center in nearby Saginaw, Michigan, and the facility's new name is now The Dow Event Center. The deal is worth $10 Million, and is said to last until 2014. The center houses the OHL ice hockey team, Saginaw Spirit.

Today, Dow is the world's largest producer of plastics, and with its 2001 acquisition of Union Carbide has become a major player in the petrochemical industry as well.

Public Health Challenges

As one of the largest producers of chemicals in the world for the past century, Dow has been involved in a number of controversial incidents and produced many inherently toxic products. Some of these incidents recently made national headlines as a Student Campaign for the Bhopal Disaster focused their efforts on boycotts of Dow's educational funding and products.

Agent Orange

During the Vietnam War, Dow profited from the United States' military effort by producing the incendiary napalm and the herbicide Agent Orange. Negative health effects from exposure to these chemicals resulted in lawsuits for many years thereafter. While US soldiers sickened by Agent Orange received some compensation for thier illnesses from the US Government, Vietnamese victims are still awaiting recognition of the effects of the chemical there. It should also be noted that some of Dow's earliest chemical products were also useful for synthesis of explosives, i.e. ethylcellulose.

Breast Implants

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, consumer groups alleged that Dow Corning's (Dow Corning is a joint venture between Dow Chemical and Corning Glass Works) silicone breast implants caused numerous health problems including breast cancer, autoimmune diseases including lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, and various neurological problems. This led to numerous lawsuits beginning in 1984 and culminating in a 1998 class action settlement in which tens of thousands of plaintiffs accepted a $3.2 billion award. In 1999, however, an independent review of all previous research on the issue concluded that the implants, even when ruptured, caused no major health problems beyond local hardening or scarring of the breasts. The issue remains contentious, mostly because the aforementioned review could not address the scope of claims of injury due to ruptured implants, for example, the health impact on an unborn child.

The Bhopal Disaster

The Bhopal Disaster resulted in the highest number of deaths of any industrial disaster in recent history, Amnesty International reports that over 22,000 people have died to date from the disaster and ongoing water contamination from the plant site. An accidental chemical release of forty metric tons of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) occurred on December 3rd, 1984 from a Union Carbide India, Limited (UCIL) facility in Bhopal, India. Company documents from the plant's construction characterized the technology used in the plant as risky, and the plant was operating outside of guidelines to save money at the time of the disaster.

The Bhopal plant was a joint venture between the Union Carbide Corporation US and Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL). Extensive investigations and legal hearings took place during which time a settlement of over $470 million was reached without consulting the disaster survivors. The settlement worked out to about $500 per survivor, barely enough to cover medical costs for 5 years, for survivors who are permenantly disabled. Ten years after the original incident, Union Carbide sold its 50.9% share of UCIL (along with all remaining liabilities) to MacLeod Russell Limited of Calcutta and voluntarily donated all proceeds of the sale to the establishment of a hospital in Bhopal.

Seven years later in 2001, Union Carbide was acquired by Dow Chemical. As of 2005, a summons for Dow Chemical to appear in court to explain why it has failed to present its full subsidiary has been put on hold by a notoriously corrupt judge. Negative publicity from the incident continues to be a substantial issue for Dow.

Dioxins in Mid-Michigan

Starting in the early 2000s, residents living on the Tittabawassee River near the company's headquarters in Midland and nearby Saginaw counties in Michigan filed a class-action lawsuit against the company for dioxin contamination (levels of dioxins were found above those allowed by the Department of Environmental Quality) in the soil on the riverbed and along its shores. As of July 2005, the case is still awaiting class certification.