On Monday July 11, 2011Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Jordan Barab led the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Web Chat on the most recent Regulatory Agenda. The purpose of the web chat was to discuss the rules that OSHA is currently working on. The very first commenter asked about the release date of the revised Hazard Communication standard. It seems many are waiting for this final change! The answer: “Yes, we have updated the timeframe to publish a final rule in September 2011.”
In the previously released regulatory agenda in January 2011, OSHA proposed that in August of this year, they would publish the final rule to align the current Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) with the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals. The most recent DOL Spring semi-annual regulatory agenda released in June revisits the scheduling of the release of the HCS revision to an unspecified date in September of this year. The official webpage for the new date in OSHA’s unified agenda is:
The US organization COSTHA (Council on Safe Transportation of Hazardous Articles) is petitioning the Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Administration (PHMSA) regarding changes to a Department of Transport (DOT) special permit widely used by industry. These changes may add requirements to US shippers of small packages containing ethanol.
The permit in question, DOT-SP 9275, exempts the transportation in of small packages of liquids and solids containing ethanol from the provisions the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR) of 49 CFR. In effect, if certain packaging safety considerations are met, the package may be transported by ground with no labels or other hazard communication, such as shipping papers.
In the latest consideration of this special permit, PHMSA has proposed that the packages should, at a minimum, be marked with the name of the company responsible for the shipment, and the words “Contains Ethyl Alcohol, exempted quantity”. In their letter of petition dated June 14, 2011, COSTHA has submitted to the DOT that these markings will increase the cost of preparing packages, and that there is no justification from studies of such shipments to indicate that safety will be improved by including these markings. Shippers using this special permit include many companies in the cosmetics, food and pharmaceutical industries.
Note that this special permit only applies to shippers within the United States, so should not have a significant effect on Canadian shippers of small packages containing ethanol.
Text of the show-cause letter from PHMSA may be found at:
Packaging includes all products used to contain, protect, handle, deliver or present goods. It includes returnable and non-returnable items such as boxes, pallets, labels, containers, tubes, bags, sacks, timber, glass, metals, plastics and ceramics. It can also include tape, wrapping, binding and tying materials.
All of these items must be designed to protect not only the product inside, but also to protect consumers from potential harm. You should check that your packaging is designed with safety in mind.
There is no option of doing nothing! The impact of unsafe equipment is far reaching and accidents have a devastating effect on personnel, budgets, public relations, products, brands and a company’s future. Ensuring that the equipment is kept safe is not only prudent but also makes good business sense. In many cases it has been shown that a direct investment in safety results is a direct improvement in efficiency and bottom line.
So what do you do? Well a lot of the work has already been done for you in the form of standards. These standards are designed to lay down important health and safety requirements that you must meet. Though, you must take further action if you or your company want to transport dangerous goods. All transport regulations require that dangerous goods are shipped in UN standardized means of containment.
The means of containment must be designed, constructed, filled, closed, secured and maintained so that under normal conditions of transport, including handling, there will be no accidental release of the dangerous goods that could endanger public safety and it must be standardized. A UN Standardized means of containment has marks illustrated on the packaging to indicate it is a compliant to ship dangerous goods.
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by ICC The Compliance Center on July 22, 2011 at 11:26 am · in Uncategorized
In the event of a disaster or other circumstances that bring about the need for contingency operations, the normal organization will shift into that of the contingency organization. The focus will shift from the structure and function of “business as usual” to the structure and function of an Emergency Management Control Center (EMCC) working towards the resumption of time-sensitive business operations. The Disaster Response Plan (DRP), otherwise referred to as a Contingency Plan (CP), is the document that defines the resources, actions, tasks and data required to manage the business recovery process in the event of a disaster causing the business interruption. The CP is designed to assist in restoring the business process within the stated disaster recovery goals. In this plan, the contingency organization will operate through phases of response, resumption, recovery, and restoration. Each phase involves exercising procedures defined in Emergency Response Plans (ERP) of the CP and the teams executing those plans.
Each team’s eventual goal is the resumption/recovery and the return to stable and normal business operations and technology environments. A high degree of interaction among all teams will be required to execute the corporate CP. Primary and alternate team leaders, guide each team that becomes a sub-unit of the contingency organization. Each team leader will report status and progress updates to the Contingency Plan Coordinator (CPC).
The Contingency Plan Coordinator (CPC) is typically a functional and resource manager within the business organization. Close coordination must be maintained with the CPC and business management and each of the teams throughout the resumption and recovery operations. The CPC develops the strategy to communicate on all levels of the organization and obtain cooperation with other functional and resource managers associated with the system or the business. The CPC’s primary duties are:
To protect employees and information assets until normal business operations are resumed.
To ensure that a viable capability exists to respond to an incident.
To manage all response, resumption, recovery, and restoration activities.
To support and communicate with employees, system administrators, security officers, and managers.
To accomplish rapid and efficient resumption of time-sensitive business operations, technology, and functional support areas.
To ensure regulatory requirements are satisfied.
To exercise resumption and recovery expenditure decisions.
To streamline the reporting of resumption and recovery progress between the teams and management of each system.
In order for the CPC to perform these responsibilities effectively and critical to the successful implementation of the CP, is the assumption on senior management, CEO or CFO, to commit necessary financial support throughout the response, resumption, recovery, and restoration phases. With these senior management looking at all projects with an eye towards the bottom line, the CPC has the additional task to identify exposures and recovery options then present them in business, not technical, terms. Quantifying the effects of a disaster in hard dollar figures with an emphasis on estimates of lost revenues and productivity will make a more lasting impression on senior management than a hazy and subjective analysis.
The Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is the preferred tool to help corporations determine the money and resources to devote to contingency planning and select the best and most cost effective disaster recovery strategy. The BIA serves the following purposes: 1) identify the potential risks, 2) estimate the effects of a disaster on the organization, and 3) determine the requirements for a recovery strategy. The BIA should be performed by auditors in conjunction with the CPC, since by having auditors involved, senior management will become involved and pay more attention to the conclusions. If management intuitively senses that a major disaster would have a severe impact on the company, then funding for contingency planning and disaster recovery strategies, including the cost of the BIA, will be obtainable.
With the BIA a relative ranking can be made as to the order (due to interdependencies) in which essential mission critical systems/applications/services must be recovered and brought back online following a disaster. The BIA should specify how fast those systems and functions need to be brought back online so that business will not be severely interrupted. The BIA should also identify the possibilities of different types of disasters – the situations, for which the provisions of a CP are designed. These are the emergency incidents where there is a potential for severe consequences involving risk to human life, health, the environment, or to property. A company should prepare for the worst – the total loss of the building housing the data center or vital business function. Though when developing strategies for ERPs, it is helpful to consider the entire range of probable and possible threats that present a risk to the business. From that range of threats, likely scenarios can be developed and appropriate strategies applied. While each of the identified threats could result in a disaster by itself, in a major disaster several of the threats might be present concurrently or occur sequentially, depending on the circumstances.
As a result, it is advisable to develop several levels of strategies that can be applied as needed. For example, a localized fire in the stock room may render some of that space unusable. An appropriate strategy for that event may be temporary relocation of personnel to another office within the location or in other suitable local office space in another building or hotel. An event that required temporary evacuation of the building, such as a truck accident or a chemical spill that may require several days to resolve, may necessitate switchover capabilities and possible regional mirrored redundancy capabilities that would be transparent to the users. An event of greater magnitude, such as an explosion, may render the building unusable for an extended duration of time and might necessitate a strategy based on mirrored redundancy as well as a secondary strategy involving a commercial hot site. Time sensitivity and mission criticality in conjunction with budgetary limitations, level of threat and degree of risk will be major factors in the development of recommended ERP strategies.
The best way to achieve this goal is to design an ERP that could be used to address a major disaster, but is divided into sections that can be used to address temporary and extended business interruptions. To date, there are no recognized rating systems for ranking disasters in the same way the Hazardous Materials Identification System (HMIS®), developed by the National Paint & Coatings Association (NPCA) to help employers comply with OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard (HCS), 29 CFR 1910.1200, or the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) NFPA 704 system designed to provide rapid, clear information to emergency responders on materials under conditions of fire, chemical spill, or other emergency situations. Though Arthur T. Bradley, PhD, in his “Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family”, presents a disaster ranking system based on three important metrics: Area affected, Duration, and Severity. In his Disaster Ranking System, Dr. Bradley categorizes each metric from 1 to 4, where 1 is best case, and 4 represents the worst case.
As it is presented in “Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family”, www.disasterpreparer.com, the Disaster Ranking System categorizes disasters in the following way:
Category 1: Area Affected: Local
Duration: <5 days
Severity: Limited disruption to services/utilities
Category 2: Area Affected: Regional
Duration: 5 – 14 days
Severity: Limited disruption to services/utilities, limited food/water/fuel
Category 3: Area Affected: National
Duration: 15 – 60 days
Severity: No services/utilities, no food/water/fuel, limited disruption to government/financial institutions
Category 4: Area Affected: Global
Duration: >60 days
Severity: No services/utilities, no food/water/fuel, collapse of government/financial institutions
Described in his handbook as an arbitrary rating system, Dr. Bradley has in fact provided the ground base of an adaptable method to satisfy specific needs and situations that the CPC may be confronted with; whether the CPC is the family member protecting the family, or the employee of a small business, multinational corporation or government agency. For the family, Severity is the degree quality of living space or availability of commodities are affected as predetermined in the risk assessment. For the business, Severity is defined in the BIA.
Every year in Canada, there are thousands of emergency room visits which are a direct result of children, under the age of 10, being injured by consumer products found in and around the home. In an effort to improve the safety of the products that Canadians purchase, Canada’s Health Minister announced on June 20, 2011, that a new Canada Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA) is now “the law of the land”.
The purpose of the new Act is to protect the health and safety of Canadians, particularly children, by addressing or preventing dangers posed by consumer products. The Canada Consumer Product Safety Act places new obligations on industry, not with consumers, to ensure that they are not marketing potentially dangerous consumer products. The Act applies to you if you manufacture, import, sell (includes leasing or distributing product, even if no money is exchanged), advertise, test or package and label a consumer product in Canada.
The Canada Consumer Product Safety Act replaces 40-year old legislation with modern laws to protect Canadians from unsafe products, and give Government more powers in dealing with those unsafe products. The Government now has the authority to remove dangerous products from store shelves by issuing mandatory recalls, something that was difficult to do under the old system of legislation, the Hazardous Products Act. The CPSA introduces new record-keeping requirements, new mandatory incident reporting requirements, a new fine/penalty structure for violations, allows the Government to require testing to verify compliance and allows Government to require corrective actions.
What are some of the highlights of the new CPSA requirements?
A. Document Retention : The purpose of the new document retention requirements is to allow tracability of any consumer product being sold in Canada, which will in turn assist in reporting and recalls. Retailers now must maintain records of where a product was obtained (purchased) from and the period of time (dates) during which those products were resold to the general public. Manufacturers/Importers must maintain records of where a product was obtained (purchased) from or who the product was sold to, or both. Any required documentation under the CPSA must be retained for a period of six years.
B. Incident Reporting : Manufacturers/Importers must now report ‘incidents’ to the Government within a mandatory time period following the occurance of an ‘incident’. What is the ‘key’ to reporting, is what is considered to be a ‘reportable incident’. Inherent hazards need to be kept in mind when determining if an ‘incident’ is reportable. For example, kitchen knives are inherently sharp. An accidental cut obtained while using a kitchen knife is not a reportable incident. However, if a plastic toy had sharp seams due to a defect in the manufacturing process it could result in a cut to a child’s finger. Any “incidents” of cuts to children following play with that toy would be considered a reportable incident..
C. Penalties : Voluntary compliance with the CPSA is always the preferred response to any issues that arise in relation to a consumer product that requires action. Under the new CPSA Health Canada inspectors may visit places of business or even specific locations where documents are retained and request actions be taken within a specific time period. If that inspector then comes back at the end of the allotted time and no corrective actions were completed, that is when a notice of violation is issued (which may include an appropriate fine). Requested corrective actions taken by Health Canada inspector may include orders for products to be quarantined or seized, and to subsequently be kept on or off site. Actions such as these are at the Manufacturer’s/Importers expense. In very severe cases of non-compliance, Health Canada can resort to seeking criminal charges in the courts.
What are some of the frequently asked questions about the requirements of the new Act?
i. What about incidents that occur with products that are not intended to be used by children? An incident with a product that is not intended to be used by a child will likely not result regulatory action. For example a coffee table is not generally intended to be chewed on by a child. Incidents of children chewing on a table would not generally warrant regulatory action. However, if that particular table is repeatedly involved in incidents with children chewing on it, regulatory action may involve a review or testing of the coatings used on the table, not a review of the table itself. Similarily, a Christmas ornament, although not intended to be chewed on by children, may cause regulatory action if the ornament is shaped like a piece of candy or a toy, which is highly attractive to children.
ii. What kinds of ‘labeling’ issues might cause regulatory action? The new CPSA does not institute new labeling requirements in addition to other labeling requirements already in place in Canada (e.g. required labeling from the Consumer Chemicals and Containers Regulations 2001 or CCCR 2001). Regulatory action due to labeling concerns would be initiated for issues such as insufficient instructions for assembling a product, or false labeling claims such as identifying a product as ‘lead-free’ when the product does contain reportable levels of lead.
iii. When are ‘testing’ orders issued? Health Canada’s requirement to test in the new CPSA only applies when the Government feels that there is or might be an issue. An example would be for a person or company that is selling special glazed pottery. The Government may have a concern that the glaze used on the pottery could have lead in it and would require the person or company producing the pottery to have the glaze tested for lead content.
iv. What is ‘unforeseeable’ vs. ‘forseeable’ in assessing an incident? The very first time a manufacturer/importer receives a report about an incident, the incident itself may not flag an incident report because the ‘incident’ may be considered ‘unforeseeable’. If a manufacturer/importer were to start seeing a pattern of a specific incidence, the incident will then become ‘foreseeable’ and the incident will be reportable.
Lastly, it is important to remember that its not only industry that has a role in the new Canada CPSA, but also consumers. Consumers are reminded that they too have a role to play in consumer product safety. Products should always be used safely and according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
For more information: Please consult the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act website: www.health.gc.ca/ccpsa Follow Health Canada on Twitter for updates: www.twitter.com/healthcanada
