Managing Product Safety Through Product Stewardship  

Total Petrochemicals produces styrene, polystyrene, polypropylene, polyethylene and base chemicals – products that are used to manufacture a variety of plastic products. Every product that carries our name carries our reputation for excellence and a responsibility to the protection of the environment as well as health and safety during a product’s life cycle.

We have a comprehensive Product Stewardship program that helps ensure that those who handle and use our products can do so safely and in an environmentally responsible manner. Our program addresses product regulations and risk management issues in new product design, market development, raw material selection, product manufacturing, distribution and sales, product applications, recovery or reuse, and disposal.

Our commitment to Product Stewardship also recognizes that our employees, contractors, customers and distributors, their customers, our suppliers, carriers, regulatory authorities and other interested parties all share in the responsibility of the safe handling of chemical materials. We are committed to responding to any product safety and risk management questions that may be raised by our many stakeholders. Where there are complex public issues that require cooperation and joint action by industry, communities, governments and special interest groups, Total Petrochemicals’ participation in multiple chemical industry trade associations enables us to respond to those concerns and questions.

In addition, through our participation in these trade associations, we conduct strategic testing and science-based risk reviews of our products and the chemicals used to make them. For example:

• In 1998, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched the High Production Volume (HPV) Chemical Challenge Program in response to public concern over the lack of available hazard screening data for certain HPV chemicals (defined as chemicals manufactured or imported into the United States in quantities exceeding one million pounds per year). As a member of several American Chemistry Council CHEMSTAR Panels, specifically the Olefins, Toluene and Xylene, and Ethylbenzene Panels, Total Petrochemicals volunteers with other producers to review and release new testing results under the HPV Program. Each of these long-term projects will help to further characterize the human health and environmental effects of the covered products made by Total Petrochemicals and other chemical manufacturers. For further information, please visit the EPA’s HPV web site.
• Total Petrochemicals sponsors research on ethylbenzene, benzene, toluene, and mixed xylenes as part of the EPA’s Voluntary Children’s Chemical Evaluation Program (VCCEP) pilot. This research seeks to increase the understanding of these chemicals as they relate to children’s health. The testing is underway and the results will be presented to an independent panel of scientists as they are completed. For additional information, please visit the Child Health Source web site.
• The company supports the ACC’s Long Range Research Initiative, which sponsors independent, third-party research at the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology Centers for Health Research and at other prominent research centers and universities.
• Total Petrochemicals participates in several committees in the Styrene Information and Research Center (SIRC). Since 1987, SIRC has undertaken a comprehensive research program to enhance understanding of the potential of styrene to affect human health, as well as the fate and effects of styrene in the environment. SIRC's approach has been to sponsor new research in areas where deficiencies and limitations in the existing data have not provided definitive conclusions. SIRC also commissions independent reviews of the health effects studies on styrene where data already exist. Research studies and literature reviews are sponsored with the intention that the final reports will be published in peer-reviewed journals.
• As a member of the American Plastics Council and the Polystyrene Packaging Council, we support lifecycle assessments of our polystyrene products through various activities.

In addition to industry-sponsored research efforts, Total Petrochemicals also conducts product risk reviews. For a summary of our Product Risk Characterization and Management Process, please contact Total Petrochemicals.

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