The chemical
industry is a business of processing, using chemical reactions to
turn raw materials, such as coal, oil, and salt, into a variety of
products. During the 19th and 20th cent. technological advances in
the chemical industry dramatically altered the world's economy.
Chemical processes have created pesticides and fertilizers for
farmers, pharmaceuticals for the health care industry, synthetic
dyes and fibres for the textile industry, soaps and beauty aids for
the cosmetics industry, synthetic sweeteners and flavours for the
food industry, plastics for the packaging industry, chemicals and
celluloid for the motion picture industry, and artificial rubber
for the auto industry.
Chemical industries
can be traced back to Middle Eastern artisans, who refined alkali
and limestone for the production of glass as early as 7,000 B.C.,
to the Phoenicians who produced soap in the 6th cent. B.C., and to
the Chinese who developed black powder, a primitive explosive
around the 10th cent. A.D. In the Middle Ages, alchemists produced
small amounts of chemicals and by 1635 the Pilgrims in
Massachusetts were producing saltpetre for gunpowder and chemicals
for tanning. But, large-scale chemical industries first developed
in 19th cent. In 1823, British entrepreneur James Muspratt started
mass producing soda ash (needed for soap and glass) using a process
developed by Nicolas Leblanc in 1790. Advances in organic chemistry
in the last half of the 19th cent. allowed companies to produce
synthetic dyes from coal tar for the textile industry as early as
the 1850s.
In the 1890s, German
companies began mass producing sulphuric acid and, at about the
same time, chemical companies began using the electrolytic method,
which required large amounts of electricity and salt, to create
caustic soda and chlorine. Man-made fibres changed the textile
industry when rayon (made from wood fibres) was introduced in 1914;
the introduction of synthetic fertilizers by the American Cyanamid
Company in 1909 led to a green revolution in agriculture that
dramatically improved crop yields. Advances in the manufacture of
plastics led to the invention of celluloid in 1869 and the creation
of such products as nylon by Du Pont in 1928. Research in organic
chemistry in the 1910s allowed companies in the 1920s and 30s to
begin producing chemicals for oil. Today, petrochemicals made from
oil are the industry's largest sector. Synthetic rubber came into
existence during World War II, when the war cut off supplies of
rubber from Asia.
Since the 1950s
growing concern about toxic waste produced by chemical industries
has led to increased government regulation and the establishment of
the Environmental Protection Agency (1972). The leakage of toxic
chemicals at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India (1984), was
the worst industrial disaster in history and heightened public
concern about lax environmental regulations for chemical companies
in developing countries. Beginning in the 1980s, U.S. corporations
faced expanding competition from foreign producers, including some
Third World oil producers who have set up their own oil refining
and petrochemical industries. In 1997 the U.S. chemical industry
produced about $389 billion worth of products and employed
1,032,000 workers. It exported about $71 billion worth of
chemicals.