Cindy Douglass, the Assistant Administrator and Chief Safety officer of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), addressed concerns about the organization during her keynote address to the Dangerous Goods Advisory Council (DGAC) annual conference, held this year in San Antonio, Texas.

PHMSA has been embroiled in controversy recently, after being criticized in a report from the DOT Inspector General for being "too cozy with industry". Douglass responded that "PHMSA is proud of its safety mission", but still plans on building partnerships with industry, rather than take a directly adversarial approach. She spoke of how the organization is addressing concerns in the report, such as the transport of lithium batteries, and the dangers associated with "wet lines" in cargo tanks. She encouraged both regulators and industry to foster an overall "safety culture", and concluded by saying "We must ask ourselves every day ‘What can I do to reduce the risk of transportation of hazardous materials?’".

Other speakers at the conference included Bob Chipkevich of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), who reviewed recent incidents and the work that is being done to prevent them in future; Govindarajan Bashyam, on dangerous goods management in India; Terry Guo and Russ Bowen, who spoke on transportation regulations in China, and a number of representatives from the DOT, such as Duane Pfund, Director of PHMSA’s Office of International Standards, who gave an overview of PHMSA’s work on coordinating the Hazardous Materials Regulations with international regulations. Barbara Foster from ICC The Compliance Center gave an overview of recent Canadian developments, such as security preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, BC.

Courtesy of B. Foster, ICC