Sustainability / Social Report / Customer Satisfaction and Safety Assurance Chemical and Product Safety
Basic Approach
In line with the Daicel Group Basic Policies for Responsible Care, we strive to ensure the safety of our products and promote continuous improvement in product stewardship* across the entire supply chain. At the same time, we practice chemicals management with consideration for risks that arise throughout the product life cycle, from development, manufacturing, distribution, and use to disposal, and recycling. We are committed to disclosing the information required for properly handling chemical substances both inside and outside the Group.
*Product stewardship is an initiative for minimizing the impact of chemical substances on human health, safety, and the environment throughout the entire value chain related to the life cycle of a chemical product, encompassing its development, manufacture, distribution, use, disposal, and recycling.
Promotion System
Under the Responsible Care (“RC”) Promotion System, spearheaded by the RC Council, the Daicel Group ensures environmental, health, and safety throughout all stages from chemical development and manufacturing to distribution, use, final consumption, and disposal, and publicly discloses the results in order to engage in dialogue and communication with society. We practice proper chemical substance management by implementing the Total Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) Assessment System as a means for evaluating risks associated with chemical substances regarding health, safety, and the environment. Chemical substances subject to risk assessment include existing products that have undergone production process or production equipment changes, as well as new products.
Chemical Substance Management
Initiatives to Maintain Compliance with International Chemical Substance Regulations
The Daicel Group not only complies with domestic regulations pertaining to the management of chemical substances but also maintains compliance with the chemical regulations enforced in each country in Europe, the U.S., Asia-Pacific, and other regions by utilizing search databases for domestic and international laws to obtain the latest information on revisions to laws and regulatory trends in each country.
In FY2025/3, we steadily progressed with registration to comply with the regulations of the United Kingdom's UK-REACH, South Korea's K-REACH, Türkiye's KKDIK, and the respective regulations of China and Taiwan, all of which are equivalent to the Europe's REACH Regulation.
*REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals) is a regulation that mandates that producers and importers must register their chemical products with the European Union, conduct safety assessments, control permits for their use, and restrict their use.
Consolidated Management of Chemical Information
The Daicel Group centrally manages information on the hazardous/dangerous properties of raw materials, intermediates, and products, as well as chemical substance and regulatory information, using a chemical substance information management system.
The Daicel Group creates SDS* and labels to ensure that all of its products are handled safely and securely based on this information, provides timely information to customers, and conducts risk assessments of the chemical substances in its products.
*A Safety Data Sheet is a document providing information on the properties and safety of a chemical substance, and instructions about its handling.
Provision and Communication of Chemical Information
The Daicel Group provides the following information on chemical substances to ensure that customers can use its products with a sense of safety and security.
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| Information disclosed and communicated via the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) and labels |
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| Information disclosed via GPS/JIPS*2 activities |
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| Information disclosed via chemSHERPA*3 |
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- *1GHS stands for Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals, which provides a globally standardized set of rules regarding chemical categories and the presentation of SDS information for hazardous properties of chemical substances, as well as precautions for their handling.
- *2GPS/JIPS stands for Global Product Strategy/Japan Initiative of Product Stewardship. It concerns the chemical industry voluntary actions promoted by Japan Chemical Industry Association (JCIA) and is based on the chemical management strategy of the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA). Through these actions, the industry conducts risk assessments of chemical products, creates safety summaries to easily explain results to people outside the industry, and makes these summaries publicly available on JCIA’s “Portal Site for Chemical Substance Risk Assessment Support.”
- *3chemSHERPA is a scheme that aims to ensure the appropriate management of the content of chemical products while communicating information regarding their ingredients throughout supply chains based on a unified list.
A partial revision of the enforcement ordinance of the Industrial Safety and Health Act (ISHA) was promulgated in May 2022, and substances subject to required labeling, indication using SDS, etc. and notification are added every year since FY2024/3, with approximately 900 substances added by April 2025. Furthermore, approximately 700 additional substances are scheduled to be added in FY2026/3.
The Daicel Group’s SDS has already been updated to include these substances.
In-House Training and Education
To ensure appropriate management of chemical substances, the Daicel Group regularly provides all workers who handle chemical substances with educational programs about the hazardous properties of chemical substances and appropriate methods for handling them, and the domestic and overseas laws and regulations governing them.
Particularly with respect to domestic and overseas laws and regulations, we have assigned chemical product management supervisors and workers in each business division and Group company who gather four times a year to exchange information, which is undertaken in two parts. In the first part, participants share information and discuss topics such as chemical product regulations in Japan and overseas along with the latest information and trends related to industry groups, and in the second part, topics such as regulatory trends and internal management systems that are focused on conveying information about chemicals are discussed. In FY2025/3, the meetings were attended by a total of 340 division heads and relevant staff.
In addition, we provide risk assessment education for all workers who handle chemical substances. This risk assessment is an extremely important element for chemical substance management, and it is essential that evaluators have a solid background to properly understand the assessment results and conduct risk management. The Daicel Group provides opportunities for practical training courses to cultivate professionals who can assess the risks of chemical substances, promoting the acquisition of extensive knowledge and continuous technical skills necessary for risk assessment.
In FY2025/3, we held a training session for chemical substance managers on creating SDS and labels in accordance with the revised "Act on the Assessment of Releases of Specified Chemical Substances in the Environment and the Promotion of Management Improvement" and the “Industrial Safety and Health Act," which was attended by approximately 70 people, including those who were not chemical substance managers. We will continue to hold regular training sessions on chemical substance management to further enhance understanding in this area.
Voluntary Efforts Concerning Chemical Substances
When developing new plans* under the Total EHS Assessment System, the Daicel Group conducts advance assessments of all chemical substances handled through its business with regard to the risks and toxicity they may pose in order to prevent people, equipment, and the environment from being affected by its chemical substances.
■ Prohibited substances
Chemical substances whose manufacture and use are prohibited or severely restricted by law due to their hazardous or harmful properties. The Daicel Group has implemented a ban on the manufacture and use of these substances.
■ Substances prohibited in principle
Chemical substances whose manufacture and use are strictly regulated (requiring permission, notification, implementation of safety measures, etc.). In principle, the Daicel Group prohibits the manufacture and use of these substances and considers replacing them with alternative substances at the research and development stage. If it is unavoidable to manufacture or such a substance, we conduct a preliminary review at Corporate Total EHS Assessment Committee based on information such as their hazards, harmfulness, production volume, usage volume, purpose, exposure situation, and risk measures for people's health and the environment, and make a judgment on whether or not the use would be permissible. As mentioned above, we systematically manage substances of concern for their hazards and harmfulness based on the Total EHS Assessment System.
In addition, we conduct risk assessments for all chemical substances handled in all operations, including the manufacture, development, and testing of not only existing products but also new and developmental products.
*This includes expanded applications for existing products as well as changes to product standards, manufacturing methods, and raw materials.
Our Philosophy on Animal Experimentation in Toxicity Testing
Laws and regulations require that hazard assessments be conducted as part of product development and appropriate product management control. As a general rule, the Daicel Group conducts toxicity testing without the use of animals.
When animal experimentation cannot be avoided, we outsource to testing organizations that are in compliance with the 3Rs* (a set of international principles for conducting animal experiments properly in accordance with animal welfare principles) and that have policies and certifications regarding the careful treatment of animals.
*A set of internationally established principles that seeks to ensure animal experimentation is conducted properly and that includes guidelines for the feeding and care of animals used in experiments. The 3Rs refer to the principles of (1) alleviating animal suffering (Refinement), (2) reducing the number of animals used (Reduction), and (3) using alternative means of experimentation that do not involve the use of animals (Replacement).