Chemistry is essential to the products and services that help make our lives safer, healthier and better. Through the Responsible Care initiative, Air Liquide Large Industries has made a commitment to improve our environmental, health, safety and security performance. Accordingly, we believe and subscribe to the following principles:

• Lead our companies in ethical ways that increasingly benefit society, the economy and the environment.
• Design and develop products that can be manufactured, transported, used and disposed of or recycled safely.
• Work with customers, carriers, suppliers, distributors and contractors to foster the safe and secure use, transport and disposal of chemicals and provide hazard and risk information that can be accessed and applied in their operations and products.
• Design and operate our facilities in a safe, secure and environmentally sound manner.
• Instill a culture throughout all levels of our organizations to continually identify, reduce and manage process safety risks.
• Promote pollution prevention, minimization of waste and conservation of energy and other critical resources at every stage of the life cycle of our products.
• Cooperate with governments at all levels and organizations in the development of effective and efficient safety, health, environmental and security laws, regulations and standards.
• Support education and research on the health, safety, environmental effects and security of our products and processes.
• Communicate product, service and process risks to our stakeholders and listen to and consider their perspectives.
• Make continual progress towards our goal of no accidents, injuries or harm to human health and the environment from our products and operations and openly report our health, safety, environmental and security performance.
• Seek continual improvement in our integrated Responsible Care Management System® to address environmental, health, safety and security performance.
• Promote Responsible Care by encouraging and assisting others to adhere to these guiding principles.

Membership in Responsible Care carries with it the responsibility to implement a Responsible Care management system, and to have an independent third-party certification of the system to ensure appropriate continuous improvement. Air Liquide Large Industries U.S. has successfully met this certification challenge. To find out more about Responsible Care and its impact, please visit the American Chemistry Council’s Web site.

When it comes to health and safety excellence, the focus in Large Industries is on LIVES. 

What is LIVES?

• Large Industries Vital Employee Safety System
• Systematic approach to workplace health and safety at Large Industries

What are the basic tenants of LIVES?

• Good safety performance and good business performance go hand-in-hand.
• Safety must be given equal priority with production, quality, cost control, etc.
• All work can be done safely.
• All accidents and injuries can be prevented.
• Safety is a job that is never finished.
• Safety is everyone’s responsibility.
• LIVES measures performance and compliance and not just injuries.
• No job is so important that an employee’s personal safety or the safety of those around them or the environment should be jeopardized for the job to be accomplished!
• We will develop systematic program to:
  • Ensure our reliability;
  • Investigate all interruptions to our system;
  • Drive our performance to the point that we are available 100 percent of the time we expect to be running our plants; and,
  • Ensure we operate our plants in a way that protects our employees and the environment.

What are the key elements of LIVES?
There are four key elements:

1. Management Leadership—Management acknowledges and accepts its responsibility to maintaining a safe and healthful work environment. It will establish programs, procedures, and systems that will enable to achieve its goal of world class performance.
2. Follow-Through—No program will be successful unless there is follow through in the completion of targeted action items. Large Industries is committed to identifying and acting on concerns identified during process hazard reviews, management of changes, housekeeping reviews, audits, and incident investigations.
3. Employee Involvement —In order to achieve success in health and safety, employees must be committed to LIVES. This commitment is shown through participation in pre-job planning, Job Safety Analyses, routine safety audits, What-If, and safety focus teams. It is also shown through the reporting and acting on potential at risk situations, completing job safety observations, and in their routine housekeeping efforts.
4. Communication—Finally, but certainly not least communication is an essential part of LIVES. One of the key cornerstones of the process is monthly “Sequential Safety Meetings” that cascade down the organization and input/feedback that comes back up through the system. These meetings are documented and minutes are shared with affected employees. There is an emphasis on informing employees about incidents in the business entity via “Flash Reports” and about safety concerns via “Safety Alerts.” There is also an emphasis on letting employees know the results of any sampling done in the workplace whether for noise or air contaminants. These documents are sent broadly throughout the company email system and are also posted for review on the company intranet.