Cancer Alley: Dow Chemical

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Dow Chemical is one of the three largest chemical companies in the world.* Founded in 1897, it is headquartered in Midland, Michigan. It became infamous for its production of Agent Orange and napalm and in the 1970s, two key ingredients in the weapons used in the U.S. war in Vietnam. Agent Orange is a chemical defoliant designed to kill plants and trees while napalm is an explosive that sticks to its targets. Dow joined other companies in paying out $180 million in compensation to U.S. military veterans who suffered health problems from Agent Orange but fought successfully to defeat a 2005 lawsuit by Vietnamese victims who suffered lasting illnesses and birth defects. 

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Three organophosphates produced by Dow – chlorpyrifos, diazinon and malathion – which are widely used as pesticides, have been linked to brain damage in children as well as poisonings among farmworkers, for which it has been sued by the state of California.

(See the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Enforcement and Compliance History Online for Dow Chemical's plants in Plaquemine: here, here and here. Note that auto-display of data from this link may be disabled for some browsers. If so, copy the URL manually into a new browser window to see it.)

Over the years, Dow has been subject to thousands of lawsuits for its sale of silicone breast implants that have been associated with illnesses like lupus. In 1998, the Dow Corning division agreed to pay out $3.2 billion to some 170,000 women and declared bankruptcy. Dow also now owns Union Carbide corporation which was responsible for one of the world’s biggest industrial disasters in Bhopal, India, in 1984, for which it agreed to pay out compensation of $470 million in 1989, but the families of victims in India have continued to fight for a better deal.

* in 2022

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To learn more about Dow, see the CorpWatch Gulliver profile here. A complete list of CorpWatch's Cancer Alley profiles may be accessed here.