Responsible Care® Product Safety Code

We enjoy healthier and longer lives, thanks, in part, to remarkable innovations in chemistry. From life-saving medical devices to airbags, from child safety seats to clean drinking water, chemistry is at the heart of making our lives better and safer.
As valuable as the products of chemistry are, they also must be used responsibly. The chemical industry is committed to the safe, responsible, sustainable management of chemicals through their life cycles and for their intended uses.
That’s why ACC and its members developed the Responsible Care Product Safety Code to drive continuous improvement in chemical product safety as part of the industry’s signature environmental, health, safety and security management system.

Responsible Care Product Safety Code

Core Elements of the Product Safety Code
The Product Safety Code includes a set of 11 Management Practices, through which chemical manufacturers can evaluate, demonstrate and continuously improve their product safety performance, while also making information about chemical products available to the public.
Specifically, the Product Safety Code Management Practices verify that chemical companies do the following:

• Undertake scientific analyses of their products, and take steps to assure they can be used safely.
  
• Enhance cooperation and communications along the chemical value chain, so that chemical producers and the manufacturers, distributors and retailers who use, handle or sell chemicals, work together to improve awareness about the safety and risks of certain chemicals, and how to manage chemicals safety along the value chain.
  
• Consider impacts on public health, the environment and overall sustainability as they improve their products or develop new ones.
  
• Determine whether the chemicals they make pose risks, based on any new research, how the chemical is used, and whether children and other sensitive groups come into contact with them.
  
• Provide the public with access to product safety and stewardship information.
  
• Ensure that company senior executives, including the CMD, commit to a culture of product safety and accountability.