Source : Fedris (Federal Agency for Occupational Risks)
Safety is a top priority for the chemicals and life sciences sector because of the nature of its operations. The industry invests heavily in safety training for its workforce and its subcontractors. This ongoing attention to the issue pays off, with the number of workplace accidents in the sector steadily decreasing over the last decade.
The Federal Agency for Occupational Risks estimates the frequency rate* of accidents in the chemicals and life sciences industry, including plastics and rubber processing, at 9.0 per million hours worked in 2019 – nearly half the rate recorded for the manufacturing industry as a whole.
Safety procedures and practices also apply to the sector’s contractors (including rigorous selection processes, evaluation before and after projects, frequent controls, etc). However, there are currently no specific statistics covering workplace accidents among contractors in the chemical industry.
* The ‘Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate’ is the number of injuries which result in lost time occurring in a workplace per 1 million man-hours worked. Lost-time injuries include all on-the-job injuries that require a person to stay away from work for more than 24 hours, or which result in death or permanent disability.
