Safety and Health

In the pursuit of “zero injury”

Anglo American’s target regarding safety is to achieve Zero Injury by means of an effective management of this issue in all involved operations. This is translated into the belief that the company’s labor force is its main asset and that all employees and contractors should return home in healthy conditions at the end of every work shift.

The following principles guide this target:

• All injuries and occupational diseases are avoidable;
• Experiences from previous incidents that occurred in the company and in other industrial segments should be studied in order to avoid recurrence;
• Safety standards and rules should be consistently complied with in order to ensure safe operation.

In 2009, an outstanding event recorded in the company was the inclusion of the issue Safety in the group of Values, added to Concern and Respect, Integrity, Liability, Cooperation and Innovation.

Although safety is always present in the company’s concerns, the inclusion of this issue in the group of values is related to Anglo American’s ambition to rank it as so important as the pursuit of excellence in business.

Among the six main values implemented by Anglo American in 2009, the safety issue became outstanding. This new vision reinforces the attitude the company had already adopted in considering every injury or incident avoidable by the continuous risk assessment and compliance with standards and procedures.

For the company, safety can neither be thought of separately nor be seen only as an internal affair: it should be fully inserted in the employees’ routine and extend to all stakeholders, that is, family members, partners, communities, suppliers and visitors.

It means Anglo American’s safety actions reach a universe as big as five times its number of direct and indirect employees.