The American Chemistry Council and our members would like to express our deepest sympathies to the families impacted by the tragic event that occurred in West, Texas. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the employees of the West Fertilizer Co., the surrounding community and the emergency responders.
And while this incident did not involve a chemical plant or an ACC member, we believe it underscores the importance of being vigilant and continuously looking for ways to enhance safety.
The safety of employees and surrounding communities is at the core of how our members operate their facilities. This commitment to safety is demonstrated through ACC’s Responsible Care program, which requires members to develop sound process safety and emergency response plans which are crucial to minimizing the chance of an incident occurring.
Under the program ACC members also work with emergency responders and communities to coordinate response plans, maintain dialogue about relevant risks and their impact on human health, safety, security and the environment and to continually improve industry performance. As part of this commitment, ACC recently adopted a new Process Safety Code which is intended to enhance operational safety throughout member company operations.”
Beyond Responsible Care, ACC’s 24/7 emergency response service, CHEMTREC®, provides assistance to requests from companies and emergency responders to help coordinate and communicate critical information that may be needed in mitigating a hazardous material related incident.
ACC members continue to build on our safety efforts through partnerships with government organizations, including OSHA and the Chemical Safety Board. In this partnership, we continually look for ways to enhance safety by improving the effectiveness of regulations as well as look for better ways to share best practices and lessons learned.
We will monitor the incident as well as the subsequent investigation and look for findings or recommendations that can help enhance the safety performance of our operations and programs.
