workplace safety

ACC is committed to helping our members enhance the safety and protection of our employees, neighbors and communities. Our members invest more than $2 billion each year on enhancing the security at their facilities and have achieved a worker safety record that is more than four times safer than the average of the U.S. manufacturing sector.
Media Contact: Scott Jensen
Phone: 703-741-5834

The men and women of chemistry help make the innovative products that keep us safe at work, from protective goggles to security computer chips and fire extinguishers. The business of chemistry spends more than $2 billion per year improving worker health and safety for its own employees and, as a result of these efforts, the chemistry industry has reduced process safety incidents by 51% over the past decade.

ACC helps member companies go above and beyond safety regulations through the Responsible Care® initiative. Responsible Care is the chemistry industry’s global voluntary initiative under which companies work to continuously improve their health, safety and environmental performance and to communicate with stakeholders about their performance, processes and products.

Responsible Care Companies are required to implement a comprehensive management system to improve their environmental, health, safety and security performance. The Responsible Care Management System framework is built on a plan-do-check-act model that raises the bar for industry-wide performance while allowing flexibility to meet the specific needs of individual companies and facilities.

A key component of Responsible Care is mandatory certification by independent, accredited auditing firms. To remain a member of the ACC, every Responsible Care company must receive certification that it conforms to the management system requirements and to demonstrate progress toward improved performance. The more than 200 companies taking part in the Responsible Care initiative have undergone audits at their headquarters and facility to ensure they meet the rigorous requirements of Responsible Care in their environment, health, safety, and security programs.  Certification must be renewed every three years.

Additionally, companies are required, as part of their commitment to the principles of Responsible Care, to establish emergency response plans that include communication with local emergency response teams and other members of the community to help prevent and respond to incidents involving chemicals. Companies are required to establish stakeholder dialogue systems to facilitate public knowledge of their products, including relevant safety and management information. As part of this process, companies provide opportunities for feedback and weigh community input.

Continuous improvement never stops and ACC members believe that periodic target-setting is the best way to fulfill our commitment to improve safety performance in the future. To build upon our current achievements, ACC has set the following targets:

ACC believes that a sound business plan requires not only making great products, but also taking responsibility for the impact of business on the world in which we live.

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