By Jim Powell
Over the years in my capacity as a trainer on hazardous materials/dangerous goods transportation, I have heard many widely held misconceptions about the applicability of the regulations. Although mandatory training has been the law for many years, these myths have not faded away – some actually gained credibility. They may sound reasonable, yet they are all untrue.
Let's discuss seven of the most common myths and cut through the hype and get to the facts about what’s required to safely and economically ship dangerous goods by air and other modes. (Note: the terms dangerous goods and hazardous material are essentially the same when they refer to transportation regulations. Dangerous goods is the term used internationally, while hazardous material is the term used by the U.S. transport regulations.)
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Since the ValuJet flight disaster it seems that the number of hazardous materials training schools has increased tenfold. The death of 110 passengers and flight crew in that fiery crash caused by an unidentified hazmat shipment, resulted in an unprecedented increase in enforcement activities by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and its parent, the US Department of Transportation (DOT). |
With the increased enforcement came an increased awareness of the importance of training, which led to an increase in the number of training providers.
Yet contrary to popular belief, there still are no government standards for hazmat training schools or instructors. Many shippers find this hard to believe as they are bombarded by flyers and advertisements touting “DOT Approved Hazmat Training”, or “become Hazmat Certified for Air Ocean or Highway in our one day class”.
If a trainer tells you they are "DOT (or FAA) Approved" to train shippers or forwarders, that's simply not true. You can call the local FAA security office or call the DOT Help Line at 1-800-HMR-4922. Ask if they approve shipper or forwarder training programs. They don't.
The only training they approve in advance is of Part 121 and 135 Air Carrier training. At the web site of the Transportation Development Group, there is a popular article, “Guess Who Requires the Most Training: A Hairdresser or a Hazmat Instructor” ( www.dgtraining.com/hairdresser.htm ). You guessed it – the average training required in many states to be a licensed hairdresser / cosmetologist is well over 1,000 hours. In Oklahoma it’s 1500 hours. Yet zero hours of instructor-training are required to teach people to put deadly chemicals onboard passenger airplanes – or any other vehicle or vessel for that matter.
There really is only one international standard for hazmat training and it is industry based rather than a government standard. Some classroom based training courses are “IATA Endorsed”. IATA, the airline trade group, reviews and approves classroom based training programs. They do not yet approve computer based “acceptance-level” training for shippers, forwarders and carriers moving dangerous goods by air.
Generally IATA courses must be a minimum of three days for Initial training and one day for recurrent training at an “acceptance” level (i.e. other than general awareness). Outside of the U.S., IATA initial courses are frequently run for five days and recertification courses for three days.
There is no comparable industry based standard in the ocean or highway shipping modes.
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Sorry, but the DOT allows shippers, forwarders, carriers and offerors to use the ICAO (IATA) regulations or the IMDG regulations to replace certain parts of 49 CFR but there are still some DOT regulations in there that apply. |
In the IATA/ICAO regulations, most of these are referred to in “state variations” in section 2.9 (where state means country), but many training programs do little more than point them out and some requirements like placarding and hazmat registration are not even mentioned.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no hazmat certification test that is recognized by the U.S. government. It is up to each employer to determine what type of training and testing suits them best. In some cases the test may not even have to be a written exam.
And there is no "passing" score for any exam.
This could cause a problem because even a seemingly “good” grade could be a failing score under certain circumstances. Here's a specific example. You give a warehouse worker who sometimes drives a truck a twenty question test. Let's say she gets get 18 out of 20 questions correct. She scored 90%. That sounds good, doesn't it?
Well, what if the two questions the employee missed were on placarding? This is a vital function for shippers and truck drivers. If your employees went through a training program and when done, they did not understand the requirements that apply to their job function, then they simply weren't trained. Period. You cannot use them in a hazmat employee function until this deficit is corrected.
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This gets a lot of people in trouble! The confusion here results from an exception in the US DOT hazmat rules (not IATA or IMDG) that does not require hazmat dangerous goods declarations for ORM-D shipment by ground transport. |
Materials shipped as consumer commodities, however, are still considered hazardous materials and require full hazmat training in general awareness, safety, hazmat security and function specific training.
I have seen many material safety data sheets (MSDSs) that are just plain wrong. Under “DOT shipping information” , the MSDS will say “not regulated” yet elsewhere on the MSDS sheet it shows “Consumer Commodity”.
Shippers need to be very careful with “consumer commodities”. We have several clients who receive goods that come in by ocean where there are shipped as limited quantity and do not require hazard labeling or marking. These go into the warehouse and months later are shipped out by air, where they require full hazard labeling and marking (and often UN tested packaging) yet none of this is evident to the shipping manager because it was unmarked and unlabeled when it came in. This is a source of many violations that we have seen.
This is not true. Packing companies do not have any more or any less authority than anyone else to sign shippers’ declarations or pack hazmat shipments.
Anyone can do it, without any approvals, as long as they have the proper training and do it correctly!
One BIG mistake that many shippers make, and this is often encouraged by unknowing forwarders, is that of a shipper who is not trained in hazmat thinking they are skirting the hazmat training requirements by hiring a packing company. This is VERY important. If you are untrained and you put freight on a truck to ship to a packing company so that they can do the dangerous goods certification, you are violating the law.
In most situations, hazmat will have to be packed on your dock by the packing company. You are not allowed to “offer” a hazmat shipment for highway transport unless you are trained and the shipment is properly prepared for transport. If you really take a close look at it, the packing company is going to have to drive your forklift too and load their truck, because no employee of your company may perform ANY hazmat employee function unless they have been trained.
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Nope. You have to register with the DOT if you transport or "offer" more than 1000 pounds of hazmat for transport. This includes the acceptance function by carriers and others involved in the transportation chain as well. |
Let's say you are a forwarder and you want to avoid placarding a truck so you load 999 pounds on each of two trucks and send them to the airport. You are correct in that you don't need to placard the truck (and your driver does not need a commercial driver's license), however if you have an air waybill that shows more than 1000 pounds then you most likely will have to register with the DOT.
Even if you are not transporting or shipping hazmat yourself, you can still be subject to this requirement just be reviewing shipping papers to determine compliance with the HMR. Case in point – an airline ground handler who receives freight on behalf of an airline; the handler company may be required to register with DOT even though it does not transport or ship the freight itself..
This myth started years ago when IATA passed a resolution requiring endorsed Cargo Agents to have at least two people in each office that were IATA dangerous goods certified. This guideline was superseded over a decade ago when the U.S. DOT passed the hazmat training law (sometimes referred to as "HM-126F"). HM-126F--which is really 49 CFR Part 172, Subpart H--requires that all hazmat employees be fully trained appropriate to their job functions.
The above examples of misconceptions about dangerous goods / hazardous materials clearly indicate the dangers of ignorance and misinformation. However, ignorance is not acceptable. Your actions and inactions affect the safety of everyone involved in transportation and emergency response.
We offer this specific advice to shippers and carriers of dangerous goods.
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1. Get trained your employees trained for each transportation mode you use. As a guideline, full acceptance training for each mode of transport is going to be a minimum of two days per mode, though when combined you can get a good multi-modal class done in five days. General awareness and security training, which is appropriate for warehouse personnel, should take between one and four hours. In-house – customized training that focuses specifically on your products can take anywhere from four hours to four days – maybe more. This is one way to reduce the training time required. |
2. Use a checklist in your shipping or acceptance operations. You can contact the author for copies of checklists.
3. Insist that your carrier use a checklist! Why? If something of yours is rejected, you want to know specifically why it was rejected. If the carrier returns a filled out and signed checklist to you with your rejection. It demonstrates that the carrier is knowledgably and wants to help you, the customer, do your job better.
4. If you are a carrier or forwarder, it’s important that you do not sign for freight until you’ve inspected it. If a trucker drops off hazmat to your airline, and two hours later you inspect it and find out that it’s not in a UN approved package as required by the regs, you are stuck! You cannot load that back on a truck and return it to the shipper. If you did, you’d be violating the law for willfully offering an improperly prepared hazmat shipment for transportation in commerce.
5. Designate specific hazmat “specialists” on each shift. Train everyone who meets the definition of a hazmat employee, but allow (and encourage) a few key people to be specialists and funnel difficult shipments through them so they can hone their skills and become a resource for your company. Have those people establish a relationship with their training company who can provide backup “tech support” to them.
For more information on dangerous goods compliance and training you can visit the US DOT’s web site at http://hazmat.dot.gov or the author of this article.
| About the Author | |
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Jim Powell is President of Transportation Development Group, alogistics consulting firm that specializes in many aspects of logistics; management, including hazardous materials compliance. A former industry executive with DHL, AEI, Danzas and Skyway, he has over 27 years of experience in the airline, trucking and forwarding business. Since founding TDG in 1992, TDG has trained over ten thousand people in international shipping regulations. TDG provides training in public seminars, customized in-house classes and via computer based training. TDG also provides penalty mitigation support for companies facing hazmat fines from the DOT. Jim can be reached at 1-800-949-4834, via the web at www.dgtraining.com or by email to jim@dgtraining.com. |