Product Stewardship

Product Stewardship

At Dow, each employee has a responsibility to make health, safety and environmental protection an integral part of all daily work. For this reason, we have implemented throughout our entire global operations a Product Stewardship Program based on the American Chemistry Council's Responsible Care® initiative. Dow Product Stewardship guidelines cover all stages of a product's life cycle and are closely monitored to ensure continuous improvement.

Dow’s Product Stewardship standard:

• Ensures that adequate EH&S information is available to assess the safety of each product for its intended uses.
• Establishes product stewardship programs and business risk review requirements based on risk-based prioritization tier.
• Ensures product stewardship is engaged in product/process design and improvement processes and assessments of external manufacturing.
• Ensures that product stewardship expectations are established for suppliers and distributors.
• Ensures that customers are provided appropriate product stewardship information and assessment and product stewardship programs aligned with risk-based prioritization tier is implemented.

Product stewardship is a team effort, requiring the knowledge and expertise of a variety of disciplines. Within Dow, many people work together to protect human health and the environment through the appropriate use of Dow's products.

Each Dow business employs a Global Product Sustainability Leader (PSL) whose responsibilities include developing, maintaining and leveraging resources to ensure implementation of a global product stewardship plan for the business.

PSLs are aided in accomplishing these responsibilities by Product Stewardship Specialists, who implement all the relevant aspects of the global product stewardship plan and assure regulatory compliance in a specific geographic region.

In addition, Dow employs over 100 scientists, many with doctoral degrees, with expertise and/or board certification in the fields of mammalian toxicology, eco-toxicology, environmental science, industrial hygiene, human medicine and epidemiology. These scientists advise Dow’s businesses on relevant environment, health and safety aspects with regard to Dow’s products.

To stay abreast of product safety regulatory requirements around the globe, Dow employs over 50 regulatory experts who interpret and apply applicable regulatory requirements to Dow’s products.