Since 1940 the chemical industry has grown at a remarkable rate, although this has slowed significantly in recent years. The lion’s share of this growth has been in the organic chemicals sector due to the development and growth of the petrochemicals area since 1950s. The explosives growth in petrochemicals in the 1960s and 1970s was largely due to the enormous increase in demand for synthetic polymers such as polyethylene, polypropylene, nylon, polyesters and epoxy resins.