At the heart of Responsible Care are six Codes of Management Practices, performance objectives created by scientists with broad public input, intended to encourage commitment, innovation, and continuous improvement in the areas of employee safety and health, process safety, community awareness and emergency response, pollution prevention, distribution, and product stewardship. Chemical industry employees are extremely proud of the accomplishments they have made within recent years. Our industry is historically among the safest of all major manufacturing and commercial activities. According to the National Safety Council, people working within the chemical industry are three times safer than the average employee in a U.S. private-sector occupation. In fact, chemical facility employees are several times less likely to be injured at work than they are during their daily activities away from the plant.
Environmental protection is also a key commitment of today's chemical industry.
The chemical industry took the lead in creating monitoring stations to measure air quality within plant communities, and steady improvements are being noted in many chemical manufacturing locales. Independent studies have shown that chemical industry workers in Texas typically have a lower risk of cancer than age-matched groups in the population as a whole. The Texas chemical industry is a cornerstone of the state's economy. Texas exports more chemical products than any other type of product. The state's chemical industry maintains substantial research and development activities around Texas.