Mar 31, 2008

PAnel to decide which Dow products may cause or aggravate asthma

Stockholders will elect directors and vote on proposals calling for the establishment of an independent panel that would report on which Dow products may cause or aggravate asthma and for the directors to issue a report on the pace and effectiveness of an environmental-remediation process being undertaken near and downstream from its headquarters.

More than a century after Dow started dumping dioxins into the Tittabawassee River as it flowed past its mid-Michigan plant, the company and government regulators are still debating how to cleanse a swath of waters and wetlands that now reaches 50 miles to Lake Huron.

Dow acknowledges tainting the Tittabawassee and the adjoining Saginaw River, their floodplains, portions of the city of Midland and Lake Huron's Saginaw Bay with dioxins - chemical byproducts believed to cause cancer and damage reproductive and immune systems. Read more by David Dempsey