Our commitment to protecting the environment and our communities starts with operational safety. Eastman has extensive, documented processes and procedures to prevent incidents from occurring and, if they do occur, to reduce their impact.
We engage in risk management every day — from design and construction to start-up and operation to maintenance and training. We measure performance, conduct audits, investigate accidents and improve conditions and behaviors. It’s an ongoing process that requires highly skilled people and continuous monitoring and testing of equipment and management systems. Assessing risks and finding ways to reduce them is our first responsibility to our employees and our communities.
We maintain our process safety programs based on the principle that our facilities are safe if they are designed according to sound engineering practices and built, operated and maintained properly. Our comprehensive process safety program includes these layers of protection:
-
Management of change: A documented process used at each chemical handling site that is used to evaluate potential hazards associated with process-related changes
-
Root cause analysis: A structured approach to incident investigation that allows us to extract lessons from incidents and prevent future incidents
-
Chemical safety testing: A laboratory analysis of chemicals before their use to identify potentially hazardous properties
-
Engineering standards: Use of currently recognized and accepted good engineering practices in the design and construction of facilities and equipment, following both global and local standards
-
Management leadership and commitment: At every chemical handling site, a committee is responsible for process safety whose mission is to help ensure the systematic evaluation and control of hazards associated with reactive, flammable and toxic materials
-
Leading indicators: Data collected to ensure safety management systems are consistently updated so that they are effective. Eastman actively participates in industry peer organizations such as, but not limited to, the
American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AICHE), the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), the
American Chemistry Council (ACC), the
Engineering Equipment and Materials Users Association (EEMUA), the European Process Safety Centre (EPSC) and the
National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). This connection maintains a high level of expertise in the organization to meet the company's process safety goals.
An active member of the American Chemistry Council (ACC) for 25 years, Eastman contributed to the ACC’s review of Responsible Care®, including the addition of new process safety codes. The codes, which are an extension of what Eastman already does, are designed to enable companies to better identify, prioritize and mitigate hazards or vulnerabilities in their processes and better share information about such risks to promote and enable safe practices in all of their operations.
|