Chemical Substance Management at Factories

Our initiatives to manage chemical substances at factories started with the Chemical Substances Management Rank Guidelines (for Factories) published in 1999, which aimed to minimize adverse effect on residents and ecosystems in neighbors of our factories and to improve health and safety of employees working at the factories. At present, all our sites across the globe are managing chemical substances in line with the Chemical Substances Management Rank Guidelines Version 3.1.

We select the substances to manage based on the laws and regulations on chemical substances,^*1 labor health and safety laws, and the results of hazard assessments.^*2

For each of the targeted substances, we identify the environmental impact, amount of use and release by Panasonic, and cancer-causing risk. Based on the findings, we classify them into the three ranks.

• *1 Act on the Evaluation of Chemical Substances and Regulation of Their Manufacture, etc. and Act on Confirmation, etc. of Release Amounts of Specific Chemical Substances in the Environment and Promotion of Improvements to the Management Thereof (Japan)
• *2 Assessments made to classify substances into ranks based on carcinogenicity assessments undertaken by various international organizations, the United States, and Japan

Information to suppliers:About the Green Procurement