AK Steel Facility Receives Safety Recognition

AK Steel, West Chester, Ohio, says that its Zanesville Works facility, Zanesville, Ohio, has received three awards for outstanding safety performance from the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation division of Safety and Hygiene. The awards were presented at the annual meeting of the Zanesville-Muskingum County Chamber of Commerce, in conjunction with the Zanesville-Muskingum Industrial Safety Council.

The safety awards presented to Zanesville Works include: The Group Safety Award for having the lowest incident rate in the industrial group for 2008; the 100 percent Award for operating the entire year of 2008 without a lost-time injury; and a Special Award for working 2,825,818 hours without a lost-time injury, from April 21, 2003 through Dec. 31, 2008.

“Congratulations to our Zanesville employees for their tremendous safety performance,” say James L. Wainscott, chairman, president and CEO of AK Steel. “Especially noteworthy is their significant achievement of working over five years without a single lost-time injury.”

During 2008, AK Steel led the steel industry in safety by a wide margin, according to the press release. AK Steel’s corporate wide total recordable injury rate of only 0.28 last year was about 8 times better than the industry average of 2.33, according to data compiled by the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), Washington, D.C.