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Shipping Hazardous Materials is Serious Business

Last month, noxious fumes emanating from checked baggage prompted evacuation of Terminal One at Salt Lake International Airport. A few weeks earlier, a railroad tank car leaking acid and emitting noxious fumes in South Salt Lake shut down nearby roads and highways and required evacuation of nearby residences and businesses. These events pose an alarming scenario for any community and ring a loud wake-up call to all businesses of the critical need to comply with regulations for shipping and transporting hazardous materials.

Not just large chemical companies, railroads and other transporters fall afoul of the Hazardous Materials Regulations established and administered by the Office of Hazardous Materials Safety of the United States Department of Transportation (DOT). http://hazmat.dot.gov. Any business that ships or transports hazardous materials is regulated.

Hazardous materials are substances that may pose a threat to public safety or the environment during transportation because of their physical, chemical, or nuclear properties. Shippers are the first line of defense and must ensure that hazardous materials are properly classified, described, packaged, marked, labeled, and placed in the proper condition for shipment. The following examples demonstrate the importance of paying attention to details and how proper training of employees is critical to compliance:

• A beauty supply company ships a truck load of boxes each containing four-one gallon bottles of acetone or isopropanol from its facility in California to a customer in Boston. On arrival, regulators discover the boxes are not marked in strict compliance with the Hazardous Materials Regulations. Among other deficiencies, boxes of isopropanol are incorrectly marked "ALCOHOL.", and DOT assesses the company a civil penalty of over $15,000.
• A paint supply company, with a proper hazardous material compliance program in place for shipping its products, received a small order from a High School for four one-gallon cans of a semi-gloss clear wood finish. The paint is a flammable hazardous material. The order is properly packed in two inner fiberboard boxes with proper labeling and all required information regarding the product and its hazards. However, an untrained employee then over packs the shipment in a larger fiberboard box that gives no indication it contains a hazardous material and lacks the proper shipping name, identification number, hazard class warning label, and required orientation arrows. DOT assesses the company a $4,000 civil penalty.
  

Improper shipments of hazardous materials by air are more common than any of us would like to know, and when discovered, are dealt with harshly by the Federal Aviation Administration ("FAA"). Recall the tragic crash of the Value Jet airliner in Florida in 1996 which was later discovered to have been caused by a fire that erupted from improperly shipped oxygen canisters.

The FAA is especially concerned with "hidden" shipments of hazardous materials that outwardly bear no indication of their hazardous contents. Such incidents are not uncommon and often involve relatively small quantities of hazardous products that are shipped hurriedly without following the established shipping protocols. Consider the following circumstances and consequences:

• Before leaving on a business trip, a salesman for a company that manufactures a popular vinyl repair product (that happens to be flammable), thoughtfully grabs two 16-ounce cans of the vinyl repair product to demonstrate to customers. He packs them in his checked luggage! The cans are discovered at the airport and his company is later assessed a $20,000 civil penalty by the FAA for improper shipment of hazardous materials.
• A salesman for a manufacturer of household cleaning products is away on a business trip. He calls a clerical employee at the manufacturing plant and requests a few one-gallon containers of cleaning products be shipped to him overnight so he can show them to customers. The products are caustic and qualify as hazardous materials. While the company has in place a detailed hazardous materials compliance program, the clerical employee has not been properly trained. He boxes and ships the containers by Fed Ex without complying with applicable hazardous material packaging, labeling and other requirements. When the packages arrive at the Fed Ex sort facility in Memphis, one is leaking. Fed Ex notifies the FAA and the company is assessed a substantial civil penalty.
• Another classic case involves a building supply company that improperly ships a few 1-gallon cans of Formica glue by UPS air express. One of the company's customers made an urgent request for a small quantity of the glue to tide it over while it awaited a large trucked shipment that had been delayed. The company's assistant manager and a shipping clerk packed the cans in a cardboard box with wadded-up newspapers and paper bags and sent the box overnight via UPS without labeling the box and complying with the other requirements for shipping hazardous materials. Workers at the UPS sort facility discover the box leaking and emitting noxious fumes and notify the FAA which assesses a substantial civil penalty against the company.
  

Shipping hazardous materials is serious business. Every business must carefully evaluate the materials it ships and strictly comply with hazardous materials regulations. Failure to do so can endanger lives and livelihoods.