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Since 1995, process safety incidents¹ among Responsible Care companies² have declined by 46 percent. During this period, continuous improvement efforts have led to the development and implementation of numerous process safety systems that have contributed to this result. About half of ACC members had no process safety incidents in 2007.
Responsible Care companies are working to make this industry even safer for our employees and communities. Under the Responsible Care initiative, companies are required to investigate significant process safety incidents, mitigate adverse impacts, determine the root causes and complete corrective and preventive actions.
Through professional organizations and industry associations, companies also share important findings from incident investigations, so others can learn from them.
Responsible Care companies publicly report numbers of process safety incidents on an annual basis. This reporting surpasses government requirements.
In 2008, the American Chemistry Council adopted a revised lagging process safety metric designed by the Center for Chemical Process Safety. This change was made to further our industry’s goal for improving benchmarking and transparency of industry performance. The ACC will begin tracking this new metric in 2009 and will publish the information in 2010.

Process Safety Incidents¹ for Responsible Care Companies²

	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007
Total Process Safety Incidents	531	554	518	512	455	486	468	413	347	300	289	271	287

Process Safety Incidents¹ for Responsible Care Companies²:
Total Incidents, Incidents resulting in On-site Injury, and Incidents resulting in Off-site Injury

	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007
Total Incidents	531	554	518	512	455	486	468	413	347	300	289	271	287
Incidents resulting in On-site Injury	75	71	80	68	66	58	73	58	56	29	39	40	58
Incidents resulting in Off-site Injury	2	2	1	1	2	0	0	0	1	1	0	0	0

About These Data
Changes in the industry and regulatory environment also have affected the number of incidents reported. Such changes can be found in: the number of chemical processing sites/production facilities operated by members of the American Chemistry Council, number of ACC members and chemicals and reportable quantities on the CERCLA list. The net impact of these, and other, changes is impossible to quantify.

Notes
¹Process Safety Incident: An incident that occurs within a Responsible Care company in which a chemical process was involved resulting in a significant fire, explosion, chemical release or injury. A process safety incident is considered reportable if it results in (a) a fire or explosion causing more than $25,000 in property damage, (b) a release of a chemical greater than the CERCLA Reportable Quantity (RQ) for extremely hazardous substances or a release of 5,000 pounds of a flammable or combustible material or (c) a serious injury arising from a fire, explosion, chemical release or a release of energy or material from a process. CERCLA RQ’s are set by law at one pound until EPA establishes a specific quantity based on risks posed by the specific substance.

²Responsible Care Companies: Refers to members of the American Chemistry Council (ACC), which, as part of their obligations under Responsible Care, submit annual performance data that is made publicly available on this website.

³Process Safety Incident Resulting in On-Site Injury – An incident relating to the chemical production process that results in an injury to a person on a company’s premises.

⁴Process Safety Incident Resulting in Off-Site Injury - An incident relating to the chemical production process that results in an injury to a person outside the company’s premises.