The health and safety of our employees, customers, contractors, neighbors and visitors is extremely important to us. Because of that, National Silicates is constantly looking for ways to improve in the areas of health and safety.

National Silicates does many things well, but unfortunately our safety record in the past was not one to be entirely proud of. In late 1996, we made a commitment to improve our safety performance and reduce the number of recordable injuries. Our goal, corporate wide was to raise everyone's safety awareness and to change each employee's attitude in regards to safety. Safety had to become the # 1 priority. Each and every employee was trained in the STOP for Safety Program over a two year period, a near miss program was developed and a change in attitude has occurred. Our record continually improves and it is the goal of National Silicates to have a clean safety record both on and off the job.

Here is a sampling of some of the elements in our Health and Safety Management System:

• Safety Training by Observation Program or STOP: a behavior based program looking at both safe and unsafe acts
• Accident and Incident Reporting: encouraging the reporting, investigating and analysis of all injuries, near misses, process safety incidents, transportation incidents
• Contractor Safety Program: ensures that our contractors are aware of the hazards found in our facilities and follow our rules
• Employee and Customer Training
• Review of Risks