Toray Group pursues its own safety activities using occupational health and safety management systems (such as OHSAS 18001 and ISO 45001). In addition, officers and other employees audit all group companies and plants every year and evaluate and seek improvements in the status of their management of safety and health, accident prevention and environment from a standardized perspective. In addition, best practices are shared at sites throughout the Group to enhance the entire Group’s performance.
Employees are key stakeholders of Toray Group. Needless to say, ensuring their safety is the prerequisite to their capacity to make the most of their potential. Officers and employees work together to implement persistent safety initiatives with the goal of zero accidents, out of respect for humanity and the sanctity of life.
To raise the awareness, every year, Toray Group creates a group-wide safety slogan. In 2021, the aim was for each and every employee of Toray Group to give top priority to safety, pursue the goal of zero accidents, raise safety awareness before work, and commit to the basics of avoiding the dangers in work about to be performed.
Due to the potentially serious impact of an accident not only within the company but on surrounding communities, the Group acts with strong determination to prevent accidents such as fires and explosions, making accident prevention a top priority. Toray Group sets up safety and health committees and works to ensure the safety and health of its employees through united efforts of labor and management, based on occupational safety and health laws in the countries in which it operations. These efforts help to ensure a pleasant working environment.

Examples of Workplace Initiatives in Fiscal 2021

General Safety Summit Held at Toray Mishima Plant

Company-wide Safety Summit Held at Toyo Logistics Service

Toyo Logistics Service, a Toray Group company holds a traditional safety ceremony and a Company-wide Safety Summit every year.
In 2021, the summit took place via video conferencing. Safety promotion committee members from each site reported on the safety activities they had carried out over the past year. There were presentations on the status of various safety activities in the areas of transport, warehousing, and office work, which also provided ideas to other safety promotion committees for their own future safety activities. Going forward, Toyo Logistics Service will maintain these activities while making a united effort to achieve the company-wide slogan, Our Goal—Zero Accidents.

• Traditional Shinto ceremony to pray for safety
• Company representatives in front of Omi Shrine (Shiga Prefecture) after the ceremony

Toray Industries has collected data on all occupational accidents since 1980, and for Toray Group since 1990. Both the number of occupational accidents and frequency of occupational accidents resulting in lost work time have declined, compared with when the data was first collected. The frequency rate for occupational accidents resulting in lost work time for Toray Group overall in 2021 was 0.38. Although this is a positive result compared with that of Japan’s manufacturing industry (1.31), it fell far short of the target of 0.05 or lower. One reason for this is that group companies had many accidents resulting in lost work time. Accordingly, the Group is working to strengthen safety management at those group companies with support and guidance from Toray’s main plant in Japan.
Toray Group will continue to identify the root cause of each accident to prevent reoccurrence, and avoid similar accidents based on the lessons learned in these accidents. Additionally, the Group will raise employee awareness of the need to practice safety first at all times.
Toray Group believes that safety activities depend upon a repetition of simple things. It is important to commit to the basics of safety and for everyone, without exception, to practice the basics at all times. The first step is to work on the comprehensive implementation of the 5S’s—seiri (sort), seiton (set in order), seiso (shine), seiketsu (standardize) and shitsuke (sustain). Through these activities, all employees learn to adopt seiketsu and shitsuke. Seiketsu fosters employees' motivation to keep the workplace standardized and clean, and shitsuke raises employees’ awareness to adhere to the rules. They also take the time to reconsider movement pathways to make work safer. Managers repeatedly go around worksites, praising good behavior in an effort to raise workplace morale.
Next, the Group works to eliminate accidents in routine activities. Managers strive to maintain a sense of alertness in the workplace by continually reminding people to act with safety first, considering what the consequences (accidents) could be under any and all circumstances. In addition, if an occupational accidents does occur, an accident report is sent out to the entire Toray Group. In an effort to eliminate similar accidents, the unit heads and unit chiefs of each workplace take a leading role in discussing the report with workplace team members, imagining the cause of the accident as a specific danger in their own workplace, in order to raise everyone’s safety awareness and ensure commitment to the basics.
In terms of fire and explosion accidents, there were three such accidents within Toray Group in 2021 – two at companies in Japan, and one overseas. The accidents involved electrical fire and ignition of impregnated insulation material. As part of measures to help prevent electrical fires, the Group conducted a comprehensive inspection of electrical outlets and lithium-ion batteries. It also distributed a Checklist for Preventing Electrical Fires and Toray Group Electrical Fire Case Studies to increase awareness. Each company, site and plant continues to identify electrical fire risks and implement mitigation measures while conducting daily inspections. As for measures to prevent fires in impregnated insulating material, the Group distributed a Checklist to Prevent Spontaneous Combustion Due to Heat Accumulation in Insulating Materials. Accordingly, Toray has implemented appropriate accident prevention measures and management based on accident prevention training and similar fire prevention activities.
In an effort to eliminate similar fire-related accidents, the Group has a system to enable Group companies to rapidly share critical information on fire-related accidents. The Group uses knowledge gained from previous accidents to adopt effective fire prevention strategies and implement unified accident prevention management standards.

Example of work made safer by improving movement pathways through a change in layout

1. 1 Data for Japan includes non-regular employees (part-time employees, contract employees, casual part-timers, and dispatched workers). Data from outside of Japan does not include temporary staff.
2. 2 Occupational accident frequency rate: The number of fatalities and injuries at worksites per one million cumulative working hours.

Fiscal 2021 Example of External Recognition of Toray's Safety Performance

Gunsan Plant of Toray Advanced Materials (South Korea) Attains Highest Level in Process Safety Management Implementation Evaluation

1. Identifying danger (hazards) and evaluating risk

Toray Group has a system whereby employees report any potential risks in the workplace to managers and the managers provide feedback on countermeasures and improvements. Before starting work, hazard prediction information, near miss reports, and safety proposals are shared with employees to confirm and mitigate risks.
Company inspectors also carry out audits to review the system for preventing occupational accidents and the status of the implementation of countermeasures. If there are any problems, the inspectors give instructions for improvements.

2. Accident investigation

In the event of an occupational accident, the emergency response review meeting and the countermeasure meeting are convened to clarify the chain of events leading up to the accident, identify the cause, and decide on and execute countermeasures. In addition, information about the accident is shared throughout the Group and measures taken to prevent a reoccurrence.

3. Prioritized risk reduction activities

In 2020, 28% of Toray Group occupational accidents were caused by violations of basic safety rules. In the first half of 2021, employees all across Toray Group conducted activities to reduce these accidents by ensuring rule compliance. As a result, the ratio of rule-violation accidents in 2021 decreased to 11%. Additionally, in the first half of 2021, many accidents occurred due to insufficient operation management. Therefore, in the second half of 2021, the Group implemented thorough safety confirmation measures to be taken before starting operations, which resulted in a certain level of accident reduction.
In this way, the Group is analyzing accident occurrences from various perspectives and promoting the necessary improvements. It also implements plan-do-check-action (PDCA) cycles to reduce risks.

As part of their safety and accident prevention training, Toray Group companies and plants provide workshops and hands-on simulations to sensitize employees to dangers and hazards. Safety simulators enable workers to experience the dangers of electrocution, residual pressure, and getting caught in rollers. Virtual reality (VR) technology is also used to realistically simulate accidents at worksites. In the area of accident prevention, the Group conducts simulation training to teach employees about the risk of fires and explosions, and provides training on the fundamentals of accident prevention.
Additionally, the Group publishes on familiar topics regarding safety and accident prevention in its in-house magazine, People, in an effort to spread understanding of the fundamentals of accident prevention.

• Simulation training at Mishima Plant (Toray Industries, Inc.)
• Simulation training at Nagoya Plant (Toray Industries, Inc.)

• Demonstrating the danger of fires and explosions at Gifu Plant (Toray Industries, Inc.)

Examples of Workplace Initiatives in fiscal 2021

Safety and Quality Training Held at Toray Films Europe S.A.S. (France)

Toray Films Europe S.A.S. has been holding one-day safety and quality training for production employees for many years. In 2021, the training was held five times in November and December, and all 166 applicable employees participated in one of the sessions.
The training was delivered in a workshop format in collaboration with an external training company that develops educational games. Using playing cards, the participants engaged in discussion on workplace safety and how to deal with unforeseen circumstances. After a quick safety quiz, the participants split into groups. As a team building exercise, they created posters with safety slogans based on safety themes assigned to them. The resulting posters were finished off from a design perspective and put up in the workplace.

Confined Space Workshop Held at Toray Composite Materials America, Inc.

All companies and plants in Toray Group are making efforts to improve their accident-prevention capabilities by carrying out fire-fighting drills specifically intended for fires and explosions. These drills include practice using water hoses, rescuing the injured, responding to a chemical leak, and giving emergency notification to authorities and local residents.
Since 2012, Group companies and plants have been conducting annual drills on setting up a company-wide emergency headquarters in response to a large-scale earthquake. The drills also involve checking on employees and monitoring facilities damage and supply chains. In 2021, the drills were conducted online, presuming telecommuting and suspension of transportation services. In addition to conducting drills for the initial response to a large-scale earthquake, Group plants in seaside locations conduct drills of the evacuations that would be needed if a tsunami were triggered by a large-scale earthquake.

• Safety confirmation team during an evacuation drill (Toray KP Films Inc.)
• Firefighting training (Toray Medical Co., Ltd.)

Examples of Workplace Initiatives in fiscal 2021

Firefighting Training at Toray Corporate Business Research, Inc.

Disaster Response Drill Conducted at Toray WBD Membrane Technology (JS) Co., Ltd. (China)

Toray WBD Membrane Technology (JS) Co., Ltd. carried out a disaster response drill with the aim of enhancing the disaster prevention awareness and self-protection capabilities of all employees, while ensuring human safety and property preservation. In addition to evacuation guidance methods, employees received training on the handling fire extinguishers and fire hydrants, and everyone tried their hand at deploying a fire extinguisher. This drill was a very important opportunity for the participants to practice an evacuation in the event of a fire or earthquake.

• Disaster response drill participants
• Fire extinguisher training

In 2021, as one of the regularly held activities for the Fire Prevention Project Part II, Toray Group in Japan conducted its FP⁴ key person certification training for the strengthening of fire prevention. As a result, 236 people were newly certified. These key persons will play a pivotal role on the frontlines by promoting disaster prevention inspections along with measures to prevent fires, explosions, and other accidents. Toray Group’s internal accident prevention experts provided support and guidance in identifying the root cause and taking countermeasures to prevent reoccurrence of those fire accidents and near misses for which the experts decided onsite audits and investigations were necessary.
The Group’s earthquake measures seek to mitigate damage, while placing utmost priority on saving the lives of employees and preventing impacts on local communities. The Toray Group Business Continuity Plan (BCP) for a Large-Scale Earthquake outlines the emergency response to an earthquake and subsequent activities to maintain and restore business operations, as well as the Group’s duties and normal readiness. In particular, for critical products, the Group develops BCPs that encompass supply chains and continually works to reduce risks.

1. 4 FP : Fire Prevention

Toray Industries is working to ensure safe distribution in its operations. In an effort to manage safety when transporting hazardous substances, the Company concludes security agreements with certain customers, raw material manufacturers, and shipping companies to designate their specific safety responsibilities and roles with regards to safety.

In consideration of the health risks to the Company’s employees and contract employees, Toray Group is implementing the following initiatives for the handling of chemical substances.

1. Study the actual handling of chemical substances
   Toray Group collects annual data on the volume of chemical substances handled by offices and plants of Group companies and volume in their possession. Furthermore, the Group clearly indicates the danger of mutagenicity for each chemical substance as stipulated in the Industrial Safety and Health Act, and discloses the risks.
2. Implement chemical substance risk assessments
   Toray Group implements risk assessments using working environment measurements for the chemical substances that it handles, as well as using ECETIOC’s Targeted Risk Assessment (TRA) tool and control banding. The risk assessment results are used to protect the health of employees by implementing comprehensive measures to prevent worker exposure to organic solvents and dust where it is required.
3. Conduct follow-up through internal audits
   Toray Group conducts an annual safety, health, accident prevention, and environmental audit, to objectively evaluate the methods for handling chemical substances and working conditions. The audit is used to identify any oversights or unattended issues and implement necessary improvements.
4. Other
   Toray Group endeavors to maintain and improve working conditions by conducting working environment measurements and on-site monitoring of actual work in accordance with the risk level of handled substances. It also conducts medical checkups to continually follow-up on the health status of employees. To prevent health issues among workers, the Group conducts training on the dangerousness of handled chemicals, and prepares and keeps records of the on-site monitoring of actual work.

Toray Group has manufactured and imported building materials containing asbestos in the past. In addition, certain buildings and facilities were constructed using such materials and thermal insulation containing asbestos. Starting in 2005, when asbestos-related health hazards became a social concern in Japan, Toray took action to address the issue of its own asbestos-containing facilities. The health program offers medical examinations to current and former employees who handled even small amounts of asbestos and wish to undergo an examination. Toray Group is working in good faith with individuals diagnosed with asbestos-related health issues by assisting with their applications for workers' compensation and providing an ongoing program of medical examinations. The Group has not been contacted about health issues by residents living near affected plants.
The cumulative health impacts on former and current Toray Group employees as of March 31, 2022 are as follows.

Certified occupational accidents arising from handling asbestos (Toray Group): 111 (102)
Certified health victims based on Japan's Act on Asbestos Health Damage Relief (Toray Group): 8 (8)
Medical examination recipients involving asbestos (Toray Group): 4,041

Note: Figures in parentheses refer to fatalities.