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Jessica Nelms

BASF employee John Jackovetty speaks with a group during the Environmental, Health, Safety and Security Event Friday at the plant in Seneca.

SENECA — Industrial and community leaders, including Sen. Thomas Alexander and Rep. Bill Whitmire, attended a celebration at BASF’s Seneca site on Friday, where an audience was told of the company’s commitment to safety.

Frank Lamson-Scribner, the site’s manager, told attendees at the “Environmental, Health, Safety and Security Event” that in 2005, it was noticed that the company’s safety numbers had leveled off, rather than continuously improved.

Safety is a tremendous concern for BASF employees, who deal with chemicals on a daily basis while processing precious metals like platinum, palladium and rhodium to help make everything from catalytic converters to the weed killer, Roundup.

“In 2006, someone said that just too many people were getting hurt at BASF each year,” Lamson-Scribner said. “There had been no improvement. A group got together and determined we needed to make a change. That’s when we started this journey.”

Through a commitment to educating workers in BASF plants across North America, the company has now seen marked improvement.

Englehard, a 93-acre property, was first opened in 1986, and was officially acquired by BASF in 2006.

“We no longer wanted to be in the middle of the pack in safety,” Lamson-Scribner said. “We wanted to be the best.”

Since BASF saw 9 recordable injuries requiring more than simple first aid in 2006, the last three years have seen such injuries drop to five, and then to three in 2008 and 2009.

“You can see we’ve made progress, but you can also see our journey isn’t over,” he said.

BASF employees are now celebrating the five-year anniversary of the company’s “journey” toward safety, and community leaders were given a brief presentation showing how educational, procedural and technological measures have since made the company’s employees safer.