The theme for this year’s Health and Safety Day, which is co-ordinated with the steel industry’s Steel Safety Day, is ’Sharing and learning from serious occurrences’. These are defined as health and safety contraventions which either did, or importantly could have resulted in severe, or even fatal injuries. Blue and white collar employees will take part not only in discussions, presentations and practical activities to help them identify and prevent unsafe situations, but also a range of health related lifestyle activities.

While many ArcelorMittal sites have been without a fatality or lost time injury for several years, the company has not yet reached its goal of zero injuries and fatalities. However, over the past 11 years the company has made considerable progress in improving safety performance, reducing its lost-time injury frequency rates (LTIFR) from 3.1 in 2007, to 0.82 in 2016. This compares favourably with a World Steel Association average of 1.2. The company is determined to further reduce health and safety occurrences in pursuit of this goal.

Lakshmi Mittal, Chairman and CEO, will speak to ArcelorMittal employees and contractors around the world today about this year’s theme, pointing out that zero accidents and fatalities are possible, evidenced by the excellent records of many ArcelorMittal plants.

Commenting, he said:

“Since the foundation of ArcelorMittal more than 10 years ago, health and safety has been our number one priority. Our annual health and safety day again focusses us on that. Our aim is to eradicate all accidents, and so we must continue to identify and respond to serious occurrences and ensure the learning from them is shared across the organisation. This is crucial if we are to succeed.”