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| DOW ADDRESSES BHOPAL OUTRAGE, EXPLAINS POSITION by Anthony Lamanche - Dow Chemical Tue, Dec 3 2002, 1:07pm press@dow-chemical.com Company responds to activist concerns with concrete action points In response to growing public outrage over its handling of the Bhopal disaster's legacy, Dow Chemical has issued a statement explaining why it is unable to more actively address the problem. "We are being portrayed as a heartless giant which doesn't care
about the 20,000 lives lost due to Bhopal over the years," said Dow
President and CEO Michael D. Parker. "But this "Unfortunately, we have responsibilities to our shareholders and our industry colleagues that make action on Bhopal impossible. And being clear about this has been a very big step." On December 3, 1984, Union Carbide--now part of Dow--accidentally killed 5,000 residents of Bhopal, India, when its pesticide plant sprung a leak. It abandoned the plant without cleaning it up, and since then, an estimated 15,000 more people have died from complications, most resulting from chemicals released into the groundwater. Although legal investigations have consistently pinpointed Union Carbide as culprit, both Union Carbide and Dow have had to publicly deny these findings. After the accident, Union Carbide compensated victims' families between US$300 and US$500 per victim. "We understand the anger and hurt," said Dow Spokesperson Bob
Questra. "But Dow does not and cannot acknowledge responsibility. If
we did, not only would we be required to expend many billions of
dollars on cleanup and compensation--much worse, the public could
then point to Dow as a precedent in other big cases. 'They took
Shareholders reacted to the Dow statement with enthusiasm. "I'm
happy that Dow is being clear about its aims," said Panaline
Boneril, who owns 10,000 shares, "because Bhopal is a recurrent
problem that's clogging our value chain and ultimately keeping the
share price from expressing its full potential. Although a real
solution is not immediately possible because of Dow's commitments to
the larger industry issues, there is new hope in management's
exceptional new clarity on the matter." "It's a slow process," said
Questra. "We must learn bit by bit to meet this challenge head-on.
For now, this means Dow Chemical is a chemical products and services company devoted to bringing its customers a wide range of chemicals. It furnishes solutions for the agriculture, electronics, manufacturing, and oil and gas industries, including well-known products like Styrofoam, DDT, and Agent Orange, as well as lesser-known brands like Inspire, Retain, Eliminator, Quash, and Woodstalk. For more on the Bhopal catastrophe, please visit Dow at http://www.dow-chemical.com/ Contact:press@dow-chemical.com related link: www.dow-chemical.com/ COMMENTS how capitalists express sorrow for 20,000
dead..... it affects their profits->
This may not be from DOW Chemical. A copy of the email header from the release contains a different sender address. Look: X-Auth-No:
This may not be from DOW Chemical. A copy of the email header from the release contains a different sender address. Look: X-Auth-No:
Who's a bright boy, then? Check out "sarcasm" in the dictionary and you might get the point. The purpose of this article is to show what Dow _would_ be saying if they told the truth. Fat chance, but someone had the good idea of making it up. Not bad, eh?
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