Safety Reporting

Product Safety

Each division of the Kuraray Group aims to ensure product safety in its day-to-day new product development and change management of revisions (e.g. assessment of the safety and function of products where changes in raw materials and changes in production equipment and conditions are made). They do this by conducting assessments using various risk assessment methods and making improvements and realizing product safety and quality guarantee for the delivery to customers.

A committee centering on the CSR Division is organized in accordance with “Rule for Assessment Committee on Crucial Matter” to study products that require a company-wide study of safety and to verify product safety before developing and marketing. The products to be studied include those that are ingested in the body and that use nanomaterials. In fiscal 2018, regarding issues in the development or commercialization of products specified by these Rules, the Committee consisting of internal experts continued having discussions about the security and safety of customers, employees and consumers who handle the products, and an impact on the environment, and products were commercialized on the basis that appropriate measures would be taken.

The Kuraray Group supplies customers, employees and consumers with these products that have passed an appropriate safety measure taken by the Committee where risk assessment and safety is discussed for individual division-specific issues.

Chemical Substances Management

The Kuraray Group has introduced an IT system to manage chemical substances. We have linked chemical substance information on registered raw materials and products to external databases that contain information on laws and regulations and on safety information of chemical substances. In this way, we have developed a system to facilitate the acquisition of information on laws and regulations pertaining to use and on hazards and the preparation of safety data sheets (SDS), thereby supplying the necessary information to the customers. Managers and their staff corporate divisions and the group companies in Japan assigned to manage chemical substances were periodically given opportunities to share information ,to ensure strict compliance with the laws and regulations worldwide.

In fiscal 2018, activities to comply with laws and regulations on chemical substance management in Europe and America (including a revision of TSCA in the U.S.A. and registration to REACH in Europe) were important challenges to tackle, and we made efforts to appropriately comply with these laws and regulations under a collaborative system for managing chemical substances launched in 2017 with our global group companies. Going forward, we will continue to strive to supply higher quality product information to our customers.