An analysis has been carried out to obtain the effects of higher order chemical reaction on flow and mass transfer characteristics, of micropolar fluids past a nonlinear permeable stretching sheet immersed in a porous medium with variable concentration of the reactant. The local similarity solutions for the flow, microrotation and mass transfer are obtained numerically and are illustrated graphically for various material parameters. Comparisons carried out with results from previously published work present excellent agreement. The results show that rate of mass transfer from the sheet to the surrounding fluid decreases significantly with the increase of nonlinear stretching parameter and increases with the increase of concentration parameter. The mass transfer of the reactive species strongly depends on the reaction rate parameter as well as order of the chemical reaction. It is stronger for the first-order reaction than that for the higher order reaction. The rate of surface mass transfer decreases with the increase of the Darcy parameter. The results also show that the effect of these parameters on the micropolar fluids are less compared to the Newtonian fluids.