November 16, 2006
Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd.

Sumitomo Chemical Honored as 2006 Tech Museum Awards Laureate
Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. has been named a Tech Museum Awards*１ Laureatein the category of health for the development of its OLYSET® *2 mosquito net, which has
demonstrated its effectiveness in the prevention of malaria. The Tech Award waspresented at the Tech Awards Gala in San Jose, California on November 15.
The Tech Museum Awards program was established with the aim of recognizing
innovative uses of technology that bring sustained benefit and contribute to solving themost pressing problems facing humanity. Every year, The Tech Awards are presented in
the categories of Health, Education, Environment, Economic Development, andEquality. Five awards are presented in each category in recognition of theaccomplishments of a total of 25 Laureates, and one Laureate from each category is
selected as a Prize Laureate. This year, the program received 951 entries representing
98 countries in all categories, and Sumitomo Chemical was selected as the Prize
Laureate in the category of Health.
Sumitomo Chemical received this year’s health award for its OLYSET® mosquito net,
which effectively helps prevent malaria by protecting people from being bitten by themosquitoes that carry the disease. Sumitomo Chemical uses its proprietary technology
to impregnate the fibers of the net with insecticide, which is gradually released to thefiber’s surface, allowing the nets to retain insecticidal efficacy for over 5 years. Also,
because the net fibers are made from durable polyethylene, the nets exhibit a variety ofspecial characteristics, including toughness and a wide mesh that allows improved
ventilation and makes them particularly suitable for use in tropical regions.
Every year, some 300 million people are infected with malaria and approximately one
million die from the disease, with the majority of cases occurring in the Sub-Saharanregion of Africa. Most malaria fatalities occur among children age 5 or younger. Hoping
to contribute to the solution to this problem if only in some small way, Sumitomo
Chemical combined its insecticide technology with its synthetic resin technology todevelop its OLYSET® mosquito net.
Sumitomo Chemical is greatly honored by the presentation of this year’s Tech Awardin recognition of its technological achievements. The company will continue to address
the urgent social issue of malaria prevention by working actively to make its OLYSET®
mosquito nets more widely available.

*1

The Tech Museum Awards

The Tech Museum Awards is an awards program run by The Tech Museum of Innovationin San Jose, California. It was established in 2000 and the first awards were presented in2001. Partners and sponsors of the program include Applied Materials, Inc., the American
Council of the United Nations University, the UNDP, the World Bank and many others.
The concept of the 5 categories of Health, Education, Environment, EconomicDevelopment, and Equality was based on the Millennium Project’s 15 Global Challenges,
which address issues of peace and safety on a global scale.
For more information, please visit the Tech Museum Awards’ homepage at:
http://techawards.thetech.org/index.php*2

For more information about OLYSET®, please visit Sumitomo Chemical’s “GlobalVecter Control “ homepage at :http://www.sumivector.com/