Chemical Management

Careful management and control of chemicals is a critical part of our EHS management system. We have worked to move the chemical control process to the very beginning of the supply chain, before chemicals even come into the company. New products must go through a review and approval process conducted by chemical review teams at our facilities. The products are reviewed for toxicity, risks, cost, effectiveness and other factors. 

The teams also review new products and compares them to existing products to see which provides the greatest overall benefit to the company. Through this process, APS has been able to reduce the number of chemical products across our system by about 50 percent over the past 10 years, and to also reduce the potential risk of the chemical products we use by substituting products with a lower potential for health or environmental impacts.

In 2005, we conducted a pilot program of a new system to further improve the chemical procurement process. This system improves the ability of our procurement employees to quickly evaluate the environmental, health and safety risks of new products, and compare them to existing inventory. If the new products have a satisfactory risk profile, the procurement staff may proceed to submit the product to  the chemical review team for their review. This system improves the efficiency of the procurement process. Based on the success of the pilot, we plan on implementing this system across the company in 2006.

MSDS  

All chemical products used at APS are included on an electronic Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) system which is available to any employee across the company. APS facilities may use only products which are approved for use and which have an electronic MSDS on this system. The electronic MSDS system provides other benefits to our EHS efforts since it allows us to quickly identify the specific chemical ingredients contained in the products at our facilities, and highlights the EHS risk profile of specific products for end users. The MSDS system also allows users to print labels for secondary containers, and improves our ability to identify materials with risks such as fire hazard, in order to ensure such materials are properly stored and handled.