BASF Greenville site's 1999 safety performance is its best ever

GREENVILLE, OH, February 08, 2000 -- BASF Corporation's manufacturing operations in Greenville, Ohio, achieved their best annual performance in safety since the company acquired the site in 1985. The Greenville site's Total Recordable Incidents Rate (TRIR), the standard industrial safety performance measurement, was 0.46 in 1999. This is a significant improvement from the site's strong TRIR ratings of 1.39 in 1998 and 1.79 in 1997.

TRIR is a benchmark for injury prevention performance in an industrial setting established by the U.S. Department of Labor and administered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). TRIR correlates recordable injuries, average worker hours of a standard manufacturing facility in a year and the actual worker hours of the site under evaluation for a particular year. A recordable injury is a work-related injury that:

· Required, or should have required, treatment by a professional healthcare service;

· Resulted in loss of consciousness;

· Required a restriction of work; or

· Necessitated the employee being transferred to perform other tasks.

BASF benchmarks its overall and site specific TRIR against the average industry performance tracked by the Chemical Manufacturers Association, which was 1.64 in 1999. BASF Corporation's overall TRIR for 1999 was 1.11, tracking a continuously improving trend.

"Everybody at our Greenville site, regardless of title, responsibilities and daily activities, is committed to safety," says Wally Adams, Greenville Site Manager for BASF Corporation. "The Greenville site's impressive 0.46 TRIR translates to our having only one recordable injury last year in a major manufacturing facility. But our attitude is that the amount of recordable and unrecordable injuries we deem acceptable is zero. We believe that all injuries can be prevented."

BASF is among the top five producers of chemicals and related products in the United States, Canada and Mexico, with sales of $7.2 billion in 1998. BASF in North America has its regional headquarters in Mount Olive, N.J., and is a member of the BASF Group (Ludwigshafen, Germany). "We don't make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better.^®" summarizes the diverse product mix BASF offers, such as chemicals, polymers, automotive coatings, colorants, pharmaceuticals, nylon fibers and agricultural products. BASF in North America employs more than 15,000 people and has an Internet site at http://www.basf.com.

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