Health and Safety

PPG is committed to operating safe and healthful workplaces.

A key PPG value is to ensure our employees and contractors return home safely each day by:

• Engaging with them to improve our operating practices around the world;
• Investing in a safe work environment; and
• Running our business with sound operating practices.

Our environment, health and safety (EHS) policy and standards define our expectations, and we implement programs and initiatives to reduce health and safety risks in our operations. To ensure progress against our goal of zero injuries, we strive to achieve an improvement of at least 5% per year in our injury and illness rate.

We had zero fatalities in 2019. Our injury and illness rate of 0.30 was 15.4% above prior year due to increased slip, trip, fall and ergonomic incidents as well as an increase in injuries in our field services group.

In 2019, we expanded our data collection systems to track contactor injury and illness data. In 2019, the PPG injury and illness rate for contractors was 0.04.

Health and Safety Management

We implement our EHS policy at all locations using our EHS management system, which we developed in accordance with Coatings Care, Responsible Care and ISO standards. Globally, the system covers all people, including contractors, who work at PPG-owned and operated facilities, as well as PPG employees working in third-party facilities.

Our 12 EHS elements form the cornerstone of the management system and contain underlying principles and defined expectations.

Our EHS management system requires all of our locations to complete risk assessments, including job safety analyses, process hazard analyses and chemical risk assessments. These assessments must be conducted by competent personnel, including experts outside of PPG when appropriate. We evaluate compliance with these requirements through assigned self-assessment checklists as well as oversight audits conducted as part of our Corporate Compliance Assurance Program.

In 2019, we evaluated our EHS management system’s alignment with the ISO 45001 occupational health and safety management standard. A third-party registrar certified our Stowmarket, United Kingdom, and Saultain, France, locations to the standard during the year.  We are evaluating an ISO14001/45001 integrated global certificate, which would cover more than 50 sites on our global ISO14001 certificate.

As part of our EHS management system, each of our locations has an active EHS leadership team. This team provides direction and guidance for implementing the elements of the EHS management system, as well as other PPG and legal requirements. Our EHS management system also requires that employees at all levels of the organization actively participate in the implementation of the EHS management system and be engaged in the EHS process. We use site-based scorecards and site assessments and audits to ensure full implementation of the EHS management system.

We continued developing standardized procedures for life-critical operations in 2019. Our EHS data system includes a suite of modules to streamline the collection, tracking and dissemination of this critical information. 

We track injuries and illnesses against our internal standard and U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements. In 2019, we also began tracking against the ASTM E2920-19 record keeping standard, which allows us to easily benchmark our performance against other companies. While our rate is fairly low compared to the majority of our benchmarked companies, we do have opportunity for improvement.

Our global EHS alert system allows us to quickly convey learnings from incidents and near misses to all locations and, when appropriate, take specific actions to mitigate similar potential risks in their operations. We also use the system to share learnings from other companies that relate to our business. We issued 33 global EHS alerts in 2019.

Initiatives

Historically, motor vehicle accidents are one of our highest-severity injury risks. We offer safe driver training and education programs to ensure our operations in every country have the tools and resources to manage this safety risk. All company vehicles have excellent crash ratings, and we invest in advanced safety features like collision-avoidance systems and backup cameras.

Following a 2018 pilot, we implemented a dashcam requirement for our Architectural Coatings business in the U.S. and Canada in 2019. The pilot confirmed that dashcams can improve driver behavior and reduce the risk of vehicular incidents, and we anticipate expanding the requirement to other businesses and regions.

Strains and sprains are another leading type of injury among our employees. Our focus on ergonomics includes ergonomics training, monthly knowledge sharing and our annual PPG ERGO CUP^® competition, which recognizes initiatives that minimize or eliminate ergonomic risks within our operations. Top entries go on to compete in the Ergo Cup competition presented by the Institute of Industrial and System Engineers. Our coating services plant in Huber Heights, Ohio, received the 15^th PPG Ergo Cup award in 2019 for the creation of a pneumatic lift-assist device.

Slips, trips and falls are another major source of injuries. To address the increase in 2019, we developed a focused prevention strategy that requires each location to create a slip, trip and fall prevention focus team with a designated champion who is identified on the site’s standardized EHS scorecard. Each focus team is expected to identify and track site-specific actions targeting a favorable impact.

As part of this prevention strategy, we also launched the global Heads Up campaign. The goal is to eliminate distracted walking, especially walking while using a mobile device.

Safety 365, which is our safety awareness and communications initiative, continued to empower our people to be safe and speak up if they see something that could be made safer. The program centers around a monthly safety theme that is supplemented with weekly tips. In 2019, we refreshed our guidance to supervisors on how to communicate the tips in their daily operations.

We continued to implement human and organizational performance (HOP) at our locations during 2019, including our first sites in Asia and Europe. At year’s end, 18 sites were using the HOP to teach employees how to predict, prevent and manage errors that could result in injury. To help reach our goal of HOP in use at all sites by 2025, we trained seven internal consultants to help drive implementation.

To increase leadership engagement and dialogue about our health and safety efforts, our leaders are asked to ensure 20 measures are in place when visiting a site. These include traditional items like clearly marked emergency exits, proper use of personal protective equipment and appropriate machine guarding. Other checklist items are safety awareness communications and use of the standardized EHS management system site scorecard.

In 2019, we rolled out an updated site scorecard that includes both leading and lagging EHS indicators. Each site also must use a risk prioritization tool annually to rank 80 EHS aspects and incorporate the top five into the year’s scorecard.

Our global EHS Advisory Council brings together talented young EHS professionals for development and engagement opportunities with their peers from around the world. In 2019, council members executed a detailed action plan to drive the completion of two projects – creating a standard EHS/product stewardship approach for acquisitions and integrations and streamlining and improving the reliability of our raw materials safety data sheets. Our Global EHS Lead Team requested the two projects to establish sustainable processes.

Industrial Hygiene

We protect the health of our employees and supervised workers through our comprehensive industrial hygiene program, which has been in place for more than 50 years. The program centers on the anticipation, recognition, evaluation and control of long-term (chronic) and acute occupational health risks.

We employ credentialed toxicologists and industrial hygienists to oversee all aspects of our global program, and we continually improve it as knowledge of potential hazards and risk-control processes evolve.

We use formal processes to identify potential occupational health hazards by reviewing and analyzing information provided by suppliers of raw materials used in our manufacturing processes, as well as publicly available scientific literature. We also regularly review changes to published exposure limits from suppliers, governmental bodies and organizations, such as the American Conference of Governmental Hygienists, to determine the basis for assessing exposure to chemical substances. We use exposure-limit changes and risk assessments of process tasks to define annual exposure monitoring plans for each manufacturing location. 

Our manufacturing facilities are required to assess exposures to a defined list of substances and tasks where potential health risks are presented. We evaluate the results of these assessments to identify the need for improvements in manufacturing processes, facilities, training, personal protective equipment and medical surveillance.

We also work to eliminate substances of concern from our products and processes. Additional information can be found in the Product Stewardship section.

Our internal laboratory for analyzing air exposure samples is accredited by the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA). We also use contract laboratories accredited by AIHA or applicable national governmental bodies. We maintain our exposure measurement results in a centralized data management system used by our operations teams globally. This system tracks our compliance with the annual sampling plan, results relative to applicable exposure limits and implementation of any corrective actions necessary to reduce exposures.

Process Safety

Elements of process safety management are incorporated into our global EHS Management System. This approach provides a consistent set of requirements to all facilities globally in addition to any applicable regulatory requirements. The result is continuous improvement in safety, environmental performance and operational effectiveness. Our approach also benefits newly acquired facilities by allowing them to more quickly reach performance expectations.

In 2019, we had 0.20 tier one and 0.11 tier two process safety incidents per one million hours worked. We contained all of these incidents onsite without damage to the environment, and no permanent injuries were sustained. Per our process, we thoroughly investigated each incident to determine root cause and ensure corrective actions were applied systemically and sustainably.  

More than 75% of the 2019 incidents were primarily caused by procedural factors, which we  resolved by revising work methods, standardizing procedures and training all involved employees. Nearly a quarter of the incidents resulted from equipment design or condition, which required redesigning processes, modifying maintenance methods or working with suppliers to improve equipment. 

We further analyzed the incidents to identify common causes across businesses, such as whether they occurred while moving materials by truck, transferring materials by pipe or performing maintenance tasks. We used this data to develop improved methods and training to enhance and track performance. Our use of HOP is also improving the interface between people and equipment to eliminate errors and other obstacles to effective performance

Customer Health and Safety

Our commitment to health and safety extends to our customers.

Our products are not only manufactured safely in our facilities, but also transported, used and disposed of safely by our customers. Safe use and disposal instructions and safety data sheets are available for all products. Our product stewardship and technical experts are also available to provide one-on-one consultation on safe product use and disposal.