At Air Products, safety is our top priority. It is a moral obligation, a condition of employment, and is fundamental to our goal of being the safest and most profitable industrial gas company.
Safety is part of our culture. We all care about safety and are driving towards our goal of zero accidents. Year-on-year, we strive to incrementally improve safety at all our sites to benefit our colleagues and the communities in which we operate. Our new 2020 goal to lead the industrial gas industry in safety as measured by recordable and lost-time incident (LTI) rates will help us continue to drive our performance.
Our progress and performance in safety is built on years of experience and global policies and systems that require accountability and leadership. Our approach to environmental protection and sustainability has been built upon our strong safety foundation.
2017 Sustainability Report
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Zero
employee fatalities
16%
improvement in employee recordable injury rate*
0.34
contractor lost-time incident rate*
|
0.2
employee lost-time incident rate*
21%
decrease in contractor lost-time incidents
9%
decrease in preventable vehicle accidents
|
0.49
employee recordable rate
17%
decrease in employee lost-time incidents
7%
reduction in Process Safety incidents
|
*per 200,000 hours worked
Global EH&S Policy
Every employee is required to understand and adhere to our global EH&S policy as both a responsibiity and a condition of employment. The highest level of accountability for environmental, health, safety and sustainability rests with our Board of Directors.
Environmental, Health and Safety Policy
We will be an industry leader in environmental, health, and safety performance and are committed to the following basic
principles in managing our businesses worldwide:
- Compliance with all applicable environmental, health, and safety laws and regulations
- Continual improvement in health, safety, and security performance with the goal of zero injuries
- Continual reduction of the environmental impact of our operations
- Design and operation of our plants and facilities in a manner that protects the environment and the health, safety, and security of our employees, contractors, and the public
- Development and production of products that can be manufactured, distributed, used, and recycled or disposed of in a safe, secure, and sustainable manner
- Existing and new EH&S risks are understood and managed through our Risk Management Processes
- Transparent discussion of our environmental, health, and safety practices and performance
In 2015, our worker safety performance improved in all categories except the contractor recordable rate. Safety performance included:
- Zero employee fatalities
- 15.5% decrease in employee recordable injuries
- 16.7% decrease in employee LTIs
The decrease in our injury rates can be attributed to our systematic approach to safety, including our Basic Safety Process (BSP) that promotes one primary goal – incident prevention through continuous management of our safety effort. BSP has been designed to integrate our safety efforts into all levels of our organization and actively engage employees.
BSP Elements
- Demonstrate safety leadership through highly visible activities
- Clearly defined and measured safety responsibilities that promote accountability
- Planned activities designed to help us achieve, and then maintain safe work conditions and safe work behaviors
- Requirements for contractors to participate in BSP activities
- Emergency preparedness activities that help us practice and test responses
- Performance measures that focus on key process indicators so we know that we are applying the right amount of effort at the right place, before incidents occur