Union Carbide produces chemicals and polymers that undergo one or more further conversions by customers before reaching consumers.

Markets served include paints and coatings, packaging, wire and cable, household products, personal care, pharmaceuticals, automotive, textiles, agriculture, and oil and gas.

[4] Founded in 1917 as the Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation, from a merger with National Carbon Company, the company's researchers developed an economical way to make ethylene from natural gas liquids, such as ethane and propane, giving birth to the modern petrochemical industry.

The company divested consumer products businesses Eveready and Energizer batteries, Glad bags and wraps, Simoniz car wax and Prestone antifreeze.

The company divested other businesses before being acquired by Dow including electronic chemicals, polyurethane intermediates, industrial gases (Linde) and carbon products.

The business, including Eveready and Energizer alkaline batteries, was sold to Ralston Purina in 1986, following a hostile takeover attempt.

In order to pay off its debt, Carbide sold many of its most familiar brands such as Glad Trashbags and Eveready Batteries.

[13][14] In the early 1960s, Union Carbide Corporation began mining a newly identified outcrop of chrysotile asbestos fibers near King City and New Idria, California.

This development plan posed that hazardous industries such as the MIC plant be located in a different part of the city that was further away, and downwind, from more densely populated areas.

It left an estimated 40,000 individuals permanently disabled, maimed, or suffering from serious illness, making it the world's worst industrial disaster.

Following the incident, organizations representing the victims in Bhopal filed a U.S. $10 billion injury claim against Union Carbide.

Warren Anderson, CEO at the time of the disaster, refused to answer to homicide charges and remained a fugitive from India's courts.

The year after the Bhopal disaster, a faulty valve at the UC plant in Institute, West Virginia caused a large cloud of gas that injured six employees and caused almost 200 nearby residents to seek medical treatment for respiratory and skin irritation.

[20]: 9 Union Carbide reclaimed land on neighboring properties by depositing spent lime and ash into the adjacent marshes in Homebush Bay.

[22] In 2004, the New South Wales Minister for Planning granted consent for additional remediation of the former Union Carbide site to proceed, including parts of Homebush Bay.

[27] The company relocated its headquarters to Danbury, Connecticut in 1983, to a newly-built complex known as the Union Carbide Corporate Center.