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The safety and health of our employees play a key role in BASF’s success. We have made significant achievements as a result of our high standards. Over the years, we have been able to considerably reduce the number of accidents, benefiting both our employees and the company.

We have set ourselves ambitious goals and we aim to continue improving our performance in the areas of occupational safety and health protection, thanks to comprehensive precautionary measures and the active participation of our employees.

High priority on occupational safety

We promote 100% safety at work through risk assessments, safety regulations, seminars and training courses. Accidents and near-misses are analyzed in order to eliminate potential weak points. Furthermore, in 2008 we started a global safety initiative that aims to go beyond the traditional technical and organizational measures. This initiative aims to strengthen every individual’s safety awareness relating to themselves and others, and thus to achieve behavioral changes. So far, more than 14,000 employees at 36 sites throughout the world have attended events relating to this initiative. The initiative supports our occupational safety goal: By 2020, we want to reduce our lost-time injury rate per million working hours by 80% worldwide compared with 2002. In 2009, a total of 1.7 such accidents occurred at BASF sites (2008: 1.8). This represents a reduction of 46% compared with 2002. Unfortunately, in 2009, we experienced fatal accidents for the first time since 2005. At the Ludwigshafen site, one employee died in a traffic accident and a second was killed in a conveying system for transport pallets. In Indonesia, a third employee died as a result of an accident with a fork lift truck. For companies contracted to work at BASF sites, the number of occupational accidents decreased to 2.6 per million working hours (2008: 3.4). In order to achieve further improvements, these companies are included in our safety initiative.

Innovative health protection

Our global Occupational Medicine and Health Protection Program integrates health topics into the organization, defines professional standards and bundles expert knowledge regarding medical issues relating to work and the environment. BASF also makes this knowledge available to its neighbors and customers. For example, we have developed and published medical guidelines for the treatment of acute exposure to chemical substances.

We have set a goal of reducing cases of occupational diseases in the BASF Group by 80% in comparison with 2004; in this baseline year, 0.4 new cases of occupational diseases were reported per million working hours. This figure includes preventable diseases such as noise-induced hearing damage. In 2009, there were 0.4 new cases of occupational diseases per million working hours at BASF. This is the same level as in the baseline year and reflects increased awareness for individual occupational illnesses within the regions. In order to achieve our health goal, we also carry out preventive measures. Preventive medical examinations and plant inspections help us determine occupational health measures. Regular audits help us to improve our performance worldwide. We also foster health-conscious behavior: More than 22,000 employees took part in our global health campaign to encourage greater daily physical activity in 2009.

BASF has had a company-specific pandemic preparedness plan in place for many years. It consists of medical, hygienic and organizational measures.
For more on preventive health care, see Demographic change