SAC report

Review and update of existing documents progress regularly and a significant number of documents and other publications have been published or revised by SAC or by the WGs and AHGs under the supervision of SAC.

Other than standard documents and quarterly awareness packages, currently SAC identified the need to produce a second awareness package focused on Safety II following the first one published in 2020. Ideally, publications of Safety II examples can become a periodic reminder of the importance of focusing on what is going right despite all the daily activities having an impact on Safety.

Another new document is being prepared directly: SAC recognized that there are some common practices among customers that can impact safety of their workers and integrity of the equipment owned by technical gases companies. SAC intends to promote an awareness campaign on these risks through the publication of a specific Safety Information which, starting from some of these typical cases, highlights the risks associated with incorrect use of equipment and the safety advantage guaranteed by the correct use of installed systems and devices.

With regard to the activities of the Working Groups, there are no criticalities or specific points of attention, with the exception of the issues concerning the Reach Regulation.

In consideration of the continuous evolutions in product safety and the impact of these evolutions on the technical gas sector, SAC has decided to transform the AHG-I.11 (created within IGC but under the sponsorship of the SAC) in a permanent working group and to extend the scope of work also to articles (i.e. to objects purchased and sold/rented which contain SVHC substances).

This will allow all companies in the technical gases sector to continuously monitor the specific legislation in the future and provide a framework for comparison and for a common approach to these evolutions.