Ammunition transportation safety

The Transportation Safety Act defines several classes of hazardous materials. Classes include explosives, radioactive material, flammable liquids or solids, combustible liquids or solids, oxidizing or corrosive materials, compressed gases, poisons, etiologic agents (hazardous biological materials), irritating materials, and other regulated materials (ORM). The act excludes firearms and ammunition. Other chapters in this book discuss hazards associated with some of these materials. 

Class A Explosive Under the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) safety regulations, as per 49 CFR 173.53, there are nine types of Class A explosives including solid or liquid explosives, and ammunition, which can be detonated under conditions specified by DOT. These regulations provide specific descriptions of tests for the different types of Class A explosives. 

Refs l)"Safety and Storage Manual for Explosives and Ammunition , 00 Form 5994,Seen XI(1928) 2)TM 9 1904(1944),p 78-9 Black Powder Packing, Storage, Handling, Safety Precautions, Maintenance, Inspection Surveillance, Shipping and Transportation ... 

Today, DDESB is concerned with the same explosives safety aspects of munitions manufacture, storage, transportation, and disposal as was recommended by Congress in 1928. An additional functional area added in 1968 by the Secretary of Defense is the establishment of chemical safety standards and a chemical safety program for chemical agents and components of chemical ammunition. 

AASTP-4, Explosives Safety Risk Analysis - Part II. Allied Ammunition Storage and Transport Publication (AASTP), 2006. 

That is why we consider the safety of a new pistol and its ammunition to be the most important characteristics (Jankovych Majtanik 2008). We require the pistol and its ammunition to resist a wide range of effects of external environment without getting dangerous or useless for real user. The safety precautions must be kept during common manipulation, transportation, storing and also during operation (shooting) when pistol and its ammimition must fulfil all required functions. Furthermore, the ammunition must stay safe not only in the period of use, but also in the period of retirement when it is either irreversibly adjusted or physically liquidated (disposal). 

A starting point for safety management of pistol and ammunition is the risk analysis. Pistols and their ammunition risks are characterized and categorized according to the severity of the worst repercussion to shooters, material assets and the environment that are effects of their failures which might arise not only during the operation, but also at e.g. manipulation, transportation, storing, maintenance and disposal. 

Failures of category I having the most serious consequences for persons, assets and environment must be extremely improbable. The probability of failure occurrence Qi must be lower than 1.10 in all climatic (weather), mechanical and electrical environments, in all defined regimes of use (storing, transport, manipulation and shooting) as well as in the defined way of disposal (liquidation). This definition of the requirement for safety risk tolerates ammunition failure resulting in user s death not more than once in 100 milliard of shots. 

For transport, the third large-scale activity with ammunition and explosives, the concepts and the regulations have not yet been worked out, mainly for reasons of financial support and capacity. Transport was given second priority because there are many civilian regulations that apparently must and can be followed without severe problems. A preliminary step will soon be taken to investigate whether transport is safe regarding the quantitative safety concept. 

This is why NATO AC/258 (Group of Experts on the Safety Aspects of Transportation and Storage of Military Ammunition and Eixplosives) decided to take advantage of this new knowledge and reinvestigate some of the explosion effect models for future inclusion in their safety manual [12] as well as in a proposed NATO risk analysis manual. 

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