A MODERN CHEMICAL FACTORY
Industrial chemistry was exploding world wide in the
late 19th Century.
Mathieson at Saltville, an English company,
was among the first.
They stopped producing salt for the market,
but instead chemically combined it with limestone to
make a variety of products.
In 1954 the company merged with Olin
Corporation, which then became known as Olin
Mathieson.
The Muck Dam Break of 1924
Among the products that were made in Saltville over the
eighty years of Mathieson’s existence were baking soda,
caustic soda, dry ice, chlorine gas, and hydrazine.
Plaster continued to be mined by wholly owned
subsidiaries at Plasterco, and at North Holston.
The Federal Government forced this operation to cease in
1972 because of environmental contamination with waste
products of these same chemical reactions.
A review of the basic chemistry that constituted
the core of these products is essential.
