PHMSA Releases 2008 Enforcement Notice for Hazmat Fines and Penalties; Don't Be Caught With Undeclared Hazmat or Without Hazmat Training!

Receiving fines and penalties for improperly declaring hazardous materials (or failure to declare hazmat at all) can unnecessarily drive up the cost of doing business. It can even put you out of business!

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), a division of the U.S. DOT, has published its Enforcement Notice for 2008 regarding fines and penalties incurred on businesses for failing to comply with hazmat regulations.

During the 2008 calendar year, PHMSA has closed 130 cases of Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR) violations and served $1,135,256.81 in fines for hazmat compliance failure.

To read the full report on PHMSA's website, click on the link below:

PHMSA 2008 Enforcement Notice

---

Avoid Having Your Business Listed on the 2009 PHMSA Enforcement Notice

The Bureau of Dangerous Goods, Ltd. provides hazmat training and hazmat software to help your business maintain regulatory compliance within the United States and internationally around the world.

We have also recently introduced Hazmat University, our online platform for delivering online hazmat training globally as an efficient means of maintaining regulatory compliance for initial and recurrent training requirements.

Hazmat University features instant enrollment, self-paced learning, reduced tuition costs compared to traditional instructor-led, classroom training programs, and free technical support!

---

Bureau News and Updates

The Bureau of Dangerous Goods, Ltd. is now on Facebook! Become a fan of our Facebook page and receive up to the minute hazmat alerts, news, special promotions, and sneak peeks at the latest innovations being developed!

Check out the Bureau of Dangerous Goods on Facebook!

Hazmat Safety Awareness Tip: The Overlooked Marking Requirement for Shipping Hazardous Materials

Are you missing something important?

Packaging is the foremost element of all shippers' responsibilities in the safe transportation of hazmat and dangerous goods. This is particularly true when it comes to shipping hazmat by air. Packages that travel by air are subjected to a variety of conditions that are usually more severe than other modes of transport. Some of these conditions include drastic temperature changes, intense vibration and extreme drops in atmospheric pressure. Reductions in pressure tend to cause leakage of liquids or even bursting of the packagings during flight!

So what does this have to do with marking requirements? Well, remembering that the intent of safe hazmat shipping is to ensure that a hazardous material is not released during transport, a shipper must not use packaging for air shipments unless that packaging meets the applicable testing requirements and is closed in a way that ensures resistance to pressure changes throughout the transportation cycle.

Most shippers of hazmat purchase UN standard packagings (e.g. packagings which conform to both the UN Model Regulations and the HMR) for this purpose. These performance-oriented packagings require the application of UN Specification Markings. Normally applied by the packaging manufacturer, these marks are still ultimately the responsibility of the shipper.

Trained hazardous materials shippers are aware of the significance of the UN specification mark, but often overlook the following component:

If your business uses single packagings (e.g. drums, jerricans, etc.) to ship liquid hazmat or dangerous goods by air, a single packaging must have a marked test pressure of not less than...

- 250 kPa for liquids in Packing Group I,
- 80 kPa for liquids in Packing Group III of Class 3 or Division 6.1, and
- 100 kPa for other liquids, or
- a pressure related to the vapor pressure of the liquid to be conveyed, whichever is greater (see reference 49 CFR 173.27(c) and IATA DGR 5.0.2.14 and DGR 6.3.5).

To learn more about a shipper's legal responsibilities for shipping hazmat, UN packaging, hazmat marking requirements and more, the Bureau of Dangerous Goods offers several hazmat training courses for both novices and veterans.

We are also proud to introduce Hazmat University, a completely online hazmat training program designed to bring the same quality of Bureau of Dangerous Goods training that has been provided in classrooms for over 25 years to shippers, freight forwarders and carriers via the Internet.