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DOW CHEMICAL, UNION CARBIDE AND BHOPAL
On August 4, 1999, Dow Chemical Company announced that it would acquire Union Carbide Corporation, creating the world's second largest chemical company. DuPont and Company remains the world's largest producer of chemicals.
Dow Chemical gained notoriety in the 1960s as one of the makers of the herbicide known as Agent Orange, used as a defoliant during the war in Vietnam. Union Carbide owned the pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, that was the site of the world's worst industrial accident in 1984. Thousands of people died, and an estimated 140,000 survivors still suffer from a range of diseases linked to exposure to the gas that leaked from the site.
News of the merger evoked sharp protest from survivors of the December 1984 disaster in Bhopal. Three survivors' organizations have sent a memorandum to the chief...