Dow Caves on Olympic Branding

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.