Corporate Level responsibilities

There is a wide range of conversion levels. The term maximum conversion type has no precise definition but is often used to describe a level of conversion, where there is no net fuel oil manufactured. A fuel products refinery with specialities may manufacture lubricating oils, asphalts, greases, solvents, waxes and chemical feed stocks in addition to the primary fuel products. The number and diversity of products will naturally vary from one refinery to another. Refineries produce chemical feed stocks for sale to the chemical affiliates and do not have responsibility for the manufacture of chemical products directly. Both operations may be carried out at the same physical location but the corporate product responsibilities are usually separate. 

The personnel responsible for the collection and analysis of incident data vary in different organizations. One common practice is to assign the responsibility to an investigation team which includes the first line supervisor, a safety specialist and a plant worker or staff representative. Depending on the severity of an incident, other management or corporate level investigation teams may become involved. 

Process Safety Specialists—those at the corporate and facility levels responsible for the process safety system including tailoring the system to specific facilities and using metrics to monitor and maintain or improve process safety performance. 

The CERES has emerged as a world leader in standardised corporate environmental reporting and promotion of environmental management within companies. From the beginning, a distinctive strategy was the use of shareholder resolutions to initiate discussions on environmental responsibility at the highest corporate levels. 

DOI and BSEE have developed additional safely requirements in the form of Notices to Lessees and Operators or NTLs, which, for example, require corporate-level affirmation of operator compliance (NTf io) and operator demonstration that it is prepared to deal with a blowout and worst-case discharge (NTL-06). A DOI official has also promised that BSEE s regulatory reach will he extended to include application of SEMS to contractors without detracting from the principle of holding operators fully responsible for contractor performance. Thus, step hy step, DOI and BSEE are trying to address the root causes of the Macondo accident, remedy deficiencies in the prior MMS approach, and thereby improve key aspects of industrial safety performance. 

As a result, they have stumbled forward. As companies have outsourced the supply chain, they have had to build inter-enterprise processes to ensure that they are able to achieve better levels of quality, customer service, and corporate social responsibility through their network as they did when all functions reported through their organization. As a result, the focus of the supply chain has become outside-in. 

Hewlett-Packard (HP). A leader in corporate social responsibility is Hewlett-Packard. HP was fonnded in 1939 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Fiscal year 2011 revennes were 127 billion. The company operates in 187 conntries and has championed CSR strategies as an important corporate initiative since 2005. HP reached its carbon rednction goals one year early—cutting it by 25 percent compared with 2005 levels—and is now looking formore cuts. In 2010, the company recycled 1.95 billion pounds (884,000 tons) of electronic prodncts and snpplies. In total, more than 2.36 billion ponnds (1.07 million tons) of electronic products and supplies have been recovered and either reused (electronic products) or recycled (electronic products and supplies) by HP since 1987. The company has focused on reuse, recycling 410 million pounds (186,000 tons) in 2010. 

Comments have been made elsewhere in this book about transitions taking place in the practice of safety, one of which is combining the responsibility for occupational safety and health and environmental controls into one entity. That has occurred at a corporate level, at some locations of larger companies, and more frequently in the not-huge-and-smaller organizations where but one or two safety professionals may be employed. That poses the following question Practicably what is the purpose of an audit and what should a risk-based audit system encompass This chapter discusses ... 

Many of these polluters supply to multinational apparel retailers and brands, according to the groups investigations. Although several companies have strong corporate social responsibility policies, they re rarely enforced at the local level. 

I was responsible at the corporate level for a project safety manager at a remote construction site in the Midwest. This project safety manager was injured one day on the job. He slipped on some plastic and fell, breaking a bone in his ankle. The subsequent trip to the emergency room resulted in numerous screws installed to keep the bone together, along with a cast. When I first received details of the incident over the phone, I assumed that this accident would be a lost time accident. After all, it seemed from the description that the injured person would probably be in the hospital for several days. 

The audit includes a review of the process safety information, inspection of the physical facilities, and interviews with all levels of plant personnel. Using the procedures and checklist, the team systematically analyzes compliance with the PSM Rule and any other relevant corporate policies. The training program is reviewed for adequacy of content, frequency and effectiveness of training. Interviews determine employee knowledge and awareness ofthe safety procedures, duties, rules, and emergency response assignments. The team identifies deficiencies in the application of safety and health policies, procedures, and work authorization practices to determine live actions. 

The author feels it his responsibility at this point to apprise the reader of the fact that there is little "hard" data on corporate responses to TSCA, especially at the management level. Hence, this paper has taken the role of an overview and qualitative look at corporate responses to TSCA rather than a quantitative document based on estimated numbers of personnel added and other costs of complying with TSCA. Such "hard" data approaches on various specific aspects of TSCA such as pre-manufacturing notification and inventory have been attempted with some successes and some failures. At this overview level,... 

Neurological Effects. Little information was available to determine the neurotoxicity or the mechanism of neurotoxicity of HDI after inhalation, oral, or dermal exposure. Headache was reported in only one human exposure case (Malo et al. 1983). Neurotoxic effects (convulsions) may occur in laboratory animals if concentrations reaeh high levels in the air (Haskell Laboratory 1961) however, sinee HDI is metabolized quickly in a biological matrix (Berode et al. 1991), little intaet HDI is expected to reach the nervous tissue to elicit a toxic response, except possibly at very high eoneentrations. No neurological effects have reported in laboratory animals, or in hiunans exposed chronieally to low concentrations of HDI (Mobay Corporation 1989). HDI, in addition to other isocyanates, have been shown to inhibit acetylcholinesterase in human erythrocytes (Dewair et al. 1983), human serum acetylcholinesterase (Brown et al. 1982), as well as equine serum, bovine erythrocyte, and eel acetylcholinesterase (Brown et al. 1982). 

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