AMD is committed to providing a safe and healthy workplace for employees, contractors, and visitors, and a safe environment for neighboring communities. The overall goal of AMD’s Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) group is to ensure a better tomorrow through responsible technology practices.

Our team ensures that health and safety is an integral part of our facilities. As a result, we have long been committed to the implementation of safe work practices and striving to ensure that our control processes are the best they can be. In fact, that hard work has translated into efforts that have contributed to a 33 percent decrease in AMD’s injury and illness case rate since 2002.

Numerous Controls Ensure Safety for All

The highly trained and experienced EHS professionals at AMD work to identify potential health and safety hazards as members of the company’s new facility conceptual design and construction teams. Their primary focus is to strive to ensure potential health and safety hazards are identified and addressed through the life of our facilities all over the world. By using chemical and equipment review processes before bringing these materials on site, AMD takes precautions to ensure the safety of our employees.

For example, before buying new manufacturing equipment, EHS professionals conduct a detailed evaluation of all safety features – and potential hazards. EHS works with both the manufacturer and AMD equipment engineers to address any deficiencies. We also have procedures in place to facilitate the safe installation and use of equipment.

Another way AMD works to ensure safety is in the evaluation of chemicals used in its manufacturing processes. For example, before a new chemical is ordered, EHS professionals must review and approve it. Based on the review and before the chemical arrives onsite, we ensure the necessary controls are in place so that the chemical is stored and used safely and does not pose a health risk to employees or to the community. Such control measures are standard within AMD and include the use of segregation, closed-process, double-containment, and exhaust ventilation systems.

We also closely monitor the effectiveness of control measures, and we use continuous gas detection monitors for specific chemicals used in wafer fabrication areas to ensure early detection and response to gas leaks, should they occur. These detection systems ensure that employees are warned and have time to evacuate an area if a control system fails. We have also designed a comprehensive health surveillance program to make sure that employee work groups with the possibility of exposure to chemical or physical hazards are not adversely affected by their work environment.

From Local Communities to the World

Besides our local and national efforts, AMD has developed a set of worldwide EHS standards that apply to all our sites and operations and that are reviewed annually. The Electrical Safety, Equipment Safety, Arsenic Safety, Chemical Control , and Injury and Illness Prevention standards are just a few examples that address worker safety issues. AMD’s Standards Assessment Program, which applies to AMD sites around the world, reviews the status of all site programs to ensure they meet the elements of the standards. As a result, we’re constantly identifying opportunities for improvement while also ensuring the highest level of safety – locally and worldwide.

Comprehensive Employee Training: It's the Standard

Proper training is everything. That’s why AMD’s Training Standard ensures that employees at sites worldwide are well trained to maintain a safe and healthy workplace and to prevent industrial accidents, injuries and illnesses. Each site offers comprehensive health and safety training. Topics range from chemical safety, electrical safety and hazard communication to office and industrial ergonomics, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, first aid and emergency response. All AMD sites have comparable training programs to meet their specific needs.

It’s the EHS efforts already detailed that help us continually reduce AMD’s occupational injury and illness case rate. The figure below shows the trend in AMD’s case rate over the last five years – a 33 percent decrease rate since 2002.

Why? AMD has an unwavering commitment to its employees worldwide. Our diligent efforts include:

• Ergonomics education and awareness, particularly at U.S. sites where ergonomics-related injuries remain the single highest incidents of injury.
• Prompt and systematic analysis of incidents and implementation of immediate corrective action to prevent recurrence.
• Periodic reviews, either monthly or quarterly, of injury and illness rates and cases at all manufacturing sites.
• Regular internal audits and safety walkthroughs of manufacturing facilities to identify areas for improvement
  

Besides working tirelessly to strengthen our internal health and safety practices, we also share information with other semiconductor manufacturers. It helps us stay aware of best practices and continuously improve our programs. For example, we actively participate in the Semiconductor Industry Association’s (SIA) Fire and Building Safety and Occupational Health committees, as well as at the national and local level with groups like the American Industrial Hygiene Association and the Semiconductor Environmental, Safety and Health Association.

We have also been involved in major industry worker health studies, such as a SIA-funded study at the University of California at Davis to evaluate reproductive health concerns in the semiconductor industry. Based on the study’s findings and recommendations, which were published in 1992, we voluntarily eliminated the use of certain ethylene-based glycol ethers because of the suggestion that the use of such chemicals may involve reproductive risk.

In late 2004, the SIA decided to proceed with a full retrospective epidemiology study focusing on cancer risks to those working in the semiconductor industry. On August 2nd 2005, the SIA announced the selection of Vanderbilt University to conduct the study. AMD will be an active participant in the process.

The bottom line is that AMD is committed to ensuring sound environmental health and safety practices – within the semiconductor industry and within the neighborhoods that we work – for our employees and for the citizens of each and every community where we’re proud to do business.