At the heart of scientific outlook on development is the concept of putting people first. Putting people first starts with respect for life and healthcare.

We believe that employee health issues are tied immediately up with the morale of our employees. Physical and mental health is a prerequisite to the competency of our employees and also to our corporate competitiveness.

Sinopec has always been pursuing integrated HSE management practices and include the concept of putting people first more in every aspect of our management activities for perfect mix of occupational health, safety and environmental protection.

Sinopec renamed its safety and environmental committee as HSE committee, with a view to placing greater emphasis on occupational health.

Through painstaking efforts made in 2009, Sinopec greatly improved its occupational health performance by reducing annual incidence of occupational disease to below 0.01% without any acute poisoning accidents involving three or more employees throughout the year.

Build up the occupational health system

Sinopec pays much attention to occupational health management and continuously improves its occupational health management system and technical system.

We formulated and implement several actionable occupational health policies according to the national laws and regulations and standards, including “occupational health policy”, “highly toxic substance control policy”, “hydrogen sulfide control policy”, “employee hearing protection policy”, “radiation protection policy” and “high temperature work policy”.

In 2009, Sinopec revised its Occupational Health Regulation (2004) to include more stringent, targeted, actionable and operational requirements concerning workplace monitoring, occupational health supervision, occupational health file and occupational health hazard bulletin. Meanwhile, many other company policies were also revised, including medical insurance policy, occupational health management performance appraisal policy, Sinopec personal protective equipment availability policy (provisional) and workplace snail fever prevention policy.

Greater managerial and supervisory efforts for strict compliance with occupational health policy

Sinopec strictly follows the Occupational Disease Control Law of PR. China and endeavors to raise employee awareness of occupational health laws and regulations and how to prevent occupational diseases.

In practice, much attention is given to compliance with occupational health policy in construction, expansion and reconstruction projects as well as technology introduction projects to ensure 100% compliance and reporting of any occupational hazards and to prevent occupational hazards at the root.

We attach great importance to occupational health supervision and inspection. In 2009, during a company-wide safety and environmental inspection, occupational health officers were assigned to each inspection team and 20 Sinopec companies were examined according to the newly-revised Occupational Health Performance Appraisal Policy. Results showed that all companies under examination paid greater attention to occupational health and further improved their occupational health performance and that the newly-revised Occupational Health Regulation (2009) played an important role in guiding these companies towards a higher level of occupational health performance.

Greater environmental control at workplace to eliminate occupational hazards at the root

Occupational hazards exist mainly in work environment. Safe work environment means improved occupational health.

As such, Sinopec focuses its occupational health efforts on work environment monitoring and control. In 2009, greater efforts were made across the company to identify and monitor occupational hazards at workplace, bringing 90-plus toxic substances and 18 kinds of dust under ongoing monitoring. Both the coverage of workplace occupational hazard monitoring and the measured level of such main occupational hazards as dust, toxic substances and noise were found to have met the local and national standards.

We worked harder to identify and eliminate occupational hazards at workplace to ensure that our workplace meets the occupational health standard and requirements and that employees are physically healthy.

We emphasize availability and accessibility of personal protective equipment. According to the availability criteria, all Sinopec companies provide personal protections to effectively protect operating personnel from dust and toxic substances, with more than two air filters made available for each production plant involving handling of toxic substances, portable toxic gas detectors for workplace where highly toxic substances exist and highly acid and alkali proof protective clothes for those workers dealing with acid and alkali.