SAFETY IN THE PLANT
Occupational safety a central theme for new initiatives
Occupational safety is a key focus for chemical companies today. Here we outline some of the initiatives being pursued. Sean Ottewell reports.
À l’heure actuelle, la sécurité du travail constitue un thème central pour les industries chimiques. Nous exposons ici les grandes lignes de quelques initiatives en cours. Selon Sean Ottewell.
Arbeitsschutz steht heutzutage im Fokus von Chemieunternehmen. Hier werden einige der verfolgten Initiativen umrissen. Sean Ottewell berichtet.
A
t BASF, global safety concepts are designed serve to protect employees, contractors and its neighbours:
“Safe plants and qualified employees are the prerequisite for trouble-free production. A high degree of safety awareness together with clear rules and guidelines form the basis for the trust that the public places in our company.” By 2020, the company wants to reduce
the lost-time injury rate per million working hours by 80 per cent worldwide compared with 2002. In 2011, the latest figures available,
a total of 1.9 work related accidents per million working hours occurred at BASF sites worldwide. This represents a reduction of 42 per cent compared with 2002. For contractors, the number of occupational accidents decreased to 2.4 per million working hours in 2011. In terms of programmes and measures
now implemented by BASF, the company says occupational safety plays a fundamental role in daily routines: “It includes regular safety briefings in our production facilities as well as the ongoing activities of safety experts. We have promoted and monitored the safety awareness of employees for a long time
through safety regulations, seminars, training activities and audits.” All accidents, near-accidents and other
incidents are documented and evaluated in databases for all sites worldwide. This allows us the company to identify potential weak points and learn from mistakes (Fig. 1). BASF also includes incidents involving contractor staff.
In addition, systematic risk assessments of
working procedures and individual activities help to sensitise employees at an early stage to potential hazards and to minimise risks. This also includes the early development and assessment of new technologies to ensure that they are handled correctly. In 2006, for example, the company
published guidelines for the safe handling of nanomaterials, which were revised and renewed in 2010 by an international and interdisciplinary team of BASF experts. In 2011, these were adopted as a globally binding standard to regulate the safe manufacture and use of nanomaterials in the workplace as well as the identification and assessment of exposure. This has been important to BASF because
nanotechnology helps in all growth sectors to develop novel materials and systems that help it to contribute to sustainable development. A variety of other safety programmes are
also underway. For example, the global safety initiative launched five years ago is headed up by managers whose job is to provide constant motivation for staff and to continue developing safer working conditions. Another initiative launched in 2010 was
based at the company’s Ludwigshafen hq in Germany and used the motto ‘lead on!’ The leadership team at Ludwigshafen drew up framework conditions for visibly and firmly establishing the prioritisation of safety in the company. As a result, 1500 production, technical, office and lab workers took the opportunity of familiarising themselves with practical briefing subjects and training modules. Since then the company has started up
Fig. 1. All accidents, near-accidents and other incidents are documented and evaluated in databases for all BASF sites worldwide.
15 ECE
its safety champions training centre, also at Ludwigshafen. This offers interactive and practice-based modules designed by occupational safety experts that can be combined to develop personalised qualification concepts. So far over 10,000
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