Continued from April 26th, 2011

Robert Heinrich of Novartis Pharmaceuticals & COSTHA President opened the Forum. He was followed by Magdy El-Sibaie, Associate Administrator, PHMSA (audio link). Magdy spoke on the special permits, approvals, wet-lines and stated that there had been 6 new incidents in the last two weeks – 4 during loading/unloading. Gasoline provides the greatest dangerous goods hazard in terms of quantity shipped followed by diesel and chlorine.

Steve Laughlin did a presentation on Containers: is your company’s liability inside them? Steve started with examples of packaging and what containers do they go in? He used alcohol as an example: beer, wine, vodka, etc. Although flammable liquids are permitted in plastic containers in the regulations, the question he raised was – how do you ground/bond a plastic container? He recommends that acids be stored below eye level. To illustrate the hazards of acid in the eye, he will take an egg white and apply one drop of acid to it. The effect is the same as dropping acid in your eye. He has found that people quickly move from wearing only safety glasses to wearing full face shields. Did you know that more people identify pirates with the skull and crossbones symbols than with toxicity?

Marie-France Daigenais, Director-General, Transport Canada (TC) and Joanne St. Onge, Director Regulatory Affairs spoke on Canada’s issues. TC is looking to take a risk based approach to the dangerous goods regulations. TC has 1,000 ERAPs registered with them and the Director-General has authorized 8 cases of in-place vent and burn. The priorities of TC are to have the regulations meet the requirements of the Act and not have another CLR or Amendment 6 update. The amendments will be easier to deal with. Some of the amendments being considered are:

• Aligning with the 16^th Edition of the UN Recommendations
• Lithium batteries
• Repealing column 10, marine pollutants
• TIH – align with US 49 CFR
• De minimus
• Excepted quantity

At the UN, the 17^th Edition of the UN Recommendations has been approved. The current Manual of Tests & Criteria is in its 5^th edition. Some parts of the 6^th edition have been approved in 2010. For the 2011/2012 biennium, Jeff Hart of the UK will chair the UNSCOE on the Safe Transportation of Dangerous Goods.

Some highlights of the 2009/2010 biennium are:

• De minimus is a subcategory of EQ where the inner package ≤ 1 mL/g and the package ≤ 100 mL/g with no intermediate, but the package will require testing
• Lithium – large format batteries: there are new changes to the Manual of T&C, section 38.3
• Used health care products
• Chemicals under pressure: more robust packaging than aerosols
• Mercury: 6.1 added as a subsidiary; ICAO may not require the subsidiary label, the re-classification is the result of a 1991 German toxicology study.
• Flexible bulk containers: BK3 to be authorized by competent authority for PG III solids.

For 2013/2014 biennium:

• Recurrent training: calendar date introduced; what is required if training has expired?
• SP A70: bench testing of engines
• Mercury in equipment: no requirement to be described; only use of 1 PSN, and sub-risk is optional.
• Chemical oxygen generators: Australia has had an incident similar to ValueJet, need to clear up the language of the regulations.
• EHS: ICAO aligned too quickly with UN; have agreed to postpone
• Gross mass only for LQ
• Absorbent: must be sufficient for capacity on entire inner packagings
• Language: undeclared means no declaration, misdeclared means wrong class or other wrong information.
• Li batteries: passenger and crew baggage – batteries must be tested
• Helicopters: new language in Tis

CDR Michael Roldan of the United States Coast Guard spoke on shipping containers, new marks, nickel metal hydride batteries, SP961, lithium batteries needing to meet the UN Manual of Tests & Criteria, section 38.3, and future items:

• Japan’s proposal for NiMH batteries
• De minimus
• Overweight containers: this is a major issue with several IMO committees meeting to address the issue
• For US in-bound shipments, how are weights being verified; outbound should be through a scale on the crane

Peter Mackay, publisher of Hazardous Cargo Bulletin provided the wrap-up comments. One of the biggest issues is the harmonization of dangerous goods regulations. The UN Recommendations are published every two years, followed by ICAO and the IMDG. Some countries are dragging in updating their regulations, i.e. Canada. Transport Canada appears to want to harmonize more with the US than internationally. If this is the case, then just give up and let PHMSA do it for Canada. Peter directed comments to the new people at Transport Canada who do not appear to have any experience in the dangerous goods area; Linda Hume is retiring (there goes a wealth of experience and knowledge); and there is no money for the department. The US appears to be constantly changing their regulations, but it is good to see that they are finally harmonizing with the international community.

Next year’s forum will be held in Savannah, GA, April 22 – 25, 2012.

This year’s Forum was held in Scottsdale, Arizona at the Hilton Scottsdale Hotel.

Sunday started with a course – Safe and Compliant Transportation of Batteries presented by Tom Ferguson (COSTHA) and Brendan Sullivan (IATA).

Japan does not allow the first year of an IMDG Code amendment to be optional, it is mandatory. For the 35^th Amendment, the following do not apply during 2011:

• Limited quantity mark
• UN3171 Battery powered equipment
• UN3476 Fuel cell cartridges (packed with or in equipment)

For lithium, there are cells: cylindrical, prismatic and polymer; for batteries: laptop, camcorder, hybrid vehicles (to name a few). When looking at lithium, we need to look at cells vs. batteries. For lithium ion, we use ELC – equivalent lithium content or watt hour (Wh) rating. These can include lithium cobalt, lithium ion phosphate, etc. For lithium metal, the content of the lithium is used. Lithium cells/batteries are subject to the UN Manual of Test and Criteria, section 38.3. This section outlines the tests required, such as:

• Altitude
• Vibration
• Shock
• Short circuit, and
• Overcharging

If the cells/batteries do not pass the tests, then they would require competent authority approval.

For shipping lithium batteries by air, each packing instruction has 3 sections – general, section 1 fully regulated and section 2 excepted. For shipments under section 2, the requirements are similar to SP188 of the UN Recommendations. These are excepted shipments not non-restricted; in other words, the batteries are still dangerous goods. The lithium battery label of 120 x 110 mm can be reduced in size to 74 x 105 mm for smaller packages.

Section 1 is for fully regulated batteries. In the IATA Dangerous Goods Panel, for 2013, there will be a move away from gross weight. For 2011, there are 3 new special provisions – A181, A182 and A183.

Shipping lithium batteries under the IMDG Code results in the use of packing instruction P903. Nickel metal hydride (NmH) batteries are regulated under the IMDG Code. In the 35^th Amendment, SP963 and SP117 apply. In column 8a of the Code, it reads “See SP963”. For quantities > 100 kg, a shipping document MUST state “Stow away from Heat”, and column 16 applies for segregation – stow away from heat. No marks, labels or placards are required.

The battery roundtable discussed recycling, focus on the auto industry, manufacturers will start collecting alkaline batteries later this year, need for the Wh marking and which regulations to use. Geoff Leach (UK CAA) stated that when he was last in Beijing, he was handed a map on where to buy knock-off products. This indicates that there needs to be training to overcome the cultural issue, so that only OEM tested materials are shipped. There is also a need to educate the passenger who TSA is looking at doing in the waiting line and/or during the aircraft safety briefing.

Geoff continued with harmonization in which he stated that confusion results where regulations differ resulting in frustration. The air acceptance requirements need to change to have some sort of undeclared dangerous goods protocol and develop standardized risk analysis. Some problems with shipping by air are batteries:

• Used batteries – not recalls but spent, holds no charge, etc.
• Relabeling – OEM ships regulated, properly marked/labelled batteries to Company A who rebrands the battery but it does not have the required label markings.
• Rebuilt/refurbished – some types of batteries can be rebuilt, but it still has the original label; the rebuilt battery should be retested but this does not happen

For shipping dangerous goods by air, the bottom line is safe travel.

(To be continued: Tuesday April 26, 2011)

In the report, PHMSA examined a 5-year period of hazmat incident reporting. The report looks at proximate causes and root cause for failures. Human error is cited as the number one contributing factor across all modes of transport and still needing further examination. Class 3, Class 2 and Class 8 represented hazard classes contributing to the highest amount of casualty incidents. The report data indicates that the greater number of casualties is attributed to a small core number of hazmat commodities in transport.

To view the full report: Click here