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However, much of the focus over the final months will be spent making sure that everything has been tested thoroughly. Already three-quarters of the sports venues have been tested. While conceding that many aspects of a smooth functioning of the games were outside the control of the organizing committee, Coe said relations with all involved players, including Transport for London, are smooth. "We've got teams now working all their waking hours testing all these systems and it is very serious," Coe said. "I know as an athlete when I've been shortchanged at a championship because people clearly haven't tested systems. They've allowed me to waste a lot of time during the course of a day when I should be thinking of other things." Coe declined to comment directly on Wednesday's resignation of a volunteer on the Olympics' sustainability commission over Dow Chemical Co.'s sponsorship of the games. Campaigner Meredith Alexander said she was quitting the watchdog body to protest Dow's links to the deadly 1984 gas leak at a Union Carbide plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal, which killed an estimated 15,000 people. Activists have protested Dow's sponsorship of a decorative wrap that will encircle the Olympic Stadium. While recognizing the "pain still felt around the disaster at Bhopal," Coe said Dow was not the owner or the operator of the plant at the time. Dow bought Union Carbide in 2000. Critics argue that the purchase makes the U.S.-based company responsible for groundwater contamination and other issues that linger in India. Bhopal victims' rights groups also have demanded the scrapping of the sponsorship deal, saying it would give undue publicity to a company they accused of refusing to clean up after itself.
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