If you were asked to name the safest U.S. manufacturing industries, would petrochemical manufacturing and fuel refining be your top two choices? If so, you’d be right.

Data maintained by OSHA and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics covering all the major U.S. manufacturing sectors ranks petrochemical manufacturing number one and refining tied for number two out of nearly 500 industries. This record is a testament to AFPM members and the culture of safety, collaboration and striving for zero incidents they’ve instilled over decades. The most important thing to every AFPM member is the safety of employees, community neighbors and the environment.

Manufacturing sector incident rates for non-fatal injuries and illnesses.

The OSHA and BLS data track injury and illness rates across U.S. professional and manufacturing sectors.  

Injury and illness rates in the refining and petrochemical manufacturing industries are lower than in mining, food manufacturing, ship building and sugar and confectionery product manufacturing, just to name a few. When sectors beyond manufacturing are included, the refining industry rate is below those in business services, agriculture and air transportation, among many others.

In addition to leading in this safety category, the refining and petrochemical industries have seen tremendous improvements in process safety as well, with rates of Tier 1 process safety events falling 55% and 42%, respectively, since 2011, being cut in half over the last decade.

While AFPM members are proud of our safety record and improvement, the standard we aim for is zero incidents, and we’re working toward that together.

In our industries, safety is not proprietary. AFPM members go above and beyond following all federal, state and local regulations, investing huge amounts of time and resources in safety. As an Association, AFPM supports them through our best-in-class Advancing Process Safety and Occupational Safety programs where we facilitate data collection, learning from incidents, information sharing, regional working groups, collaborative data assessments to identify potential areas of improvement, and trainings to put key learnings into action. It’s our aim to stop incidents and injuries from ever occurring.