Life
Dow Caves on Olympic Branding
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Dow Chemicals has agreed to waive its sponsorship branding rights to Britain’s Olympic stadium after vociferous criticism of its links to the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India. As a leading sponsor of the 2012 Games, the company had the rights to place its brand on a fabric wrap at the Olympic stadium, drawing the ire of environmentalists and politicians in India and abroad.
MP Barry Gardiner, who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on India, said: “This decision at last indicates Dow is showing some shame and that can only be positive.”
Dow owns Union Carbide, the company that owned and ran a pesticide plant in Bhopal, where a gas leak in 1984 killed thousands of people in the world’s worst industrial disaster.