[2] Great Lakes Chemical Company was founded in Michigan in 1936 to extract bromine from underground salt water brine deposits.

At about this time, the company assumed its current name (Great Lakes Chemical Corporation) and built the world's largest bromine plant in southern Arkansas.

[citation needed] Great Lakes grew through the following decades, acquiring several smaller companies in its market and establishing its world headquarters in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Great Lakes is the largest U.S. methyl bromide supplier in the U.S. producing more than 40 million pounds annually at their El Dorado, Arkansas plants.

The World Meteorological Organization has determined that the continuing exhaust from automobiles using leaded gasoline is one of the three potentially major sources of atmospheric methyl bromide.