Hazardous materials transportation issues

Transporters. Hazardous-waste transportation is a growing business. In the United States, the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act (HMTA) requires strict compliance with federal laws and applies not only to transporters of hazardous materials but also to generators who engage the services of such transportation companies. Transporters must be issued an identification number and are required to use the RCRA manifest system. The Department of Transportation is involved in ensuring compliance with the HMTA. 

According to 1910.1200(f)(5), each container of hazardous chemicals leaving the workplace must be labeled, tagged, or marked in accordance with the labeling requirements in this standard in a way that does not conflict with the requirements of the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act and regulations issued under that Act by the Department of Transportation (DOT). 

Hazardous materials transportation became a major issue again in late 2000 following three major derailments in Louisiana, Nebraska, and Maryland. In 2005, NTSB found that half of the more than 60,000 aging tank cars did not meet current standards and were susceptible to rupture during accidents. FRA, however, refrained from taking any action that would have required the railroad... 

Emergency Response Guidebook A manual for first responders during the initial phase of a hazardous materials/dangerous goods incident developed under the supervision of the Office Hazardous Materials Issues and Training, Research Special Programs Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation. 

The U.S. National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 required careful analysis of the consequences of any federally funded project. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976 established guidelines for handling, transport, and hauling of hazardous materials, such as required in cleanup of soil contaminants. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) of 1980 established, for the hrst time, strict mles on legal liability for soil contamination. CERCLA stimulated identihcation and cleanup of thousands of contaminated land sites, and consequently raised awareness of property buyers and sellers to make soil contamination a focal issue of land use and management practices (US-EPA 2007c). 

A useful source of data on the safety record of the transportation of expls is the Office of Hazardous Materials News, Office of the Secretary, Department of Transportation, Washington, DC. A European collection of data on industry connected accidents is said to have been collected by Dr Karl Trautzl (Ref 44). The Department of Defense Explosives Safety Board has issued two series of publications (Ref 26). The first are the proceedings of the Annual Explosives Safety Seminars. The second publication series are the abstracts of expl accidents. These reports are submitted voluntarily by both government and industry and are complete with descriptions of causes, damage and casualties. Incidents related to the Fireworks industry are reported annually in the Fire Journal (Ref 64)... 

There are 76 individual steps in the pump delivery procedure (Figures 8 and 9) which requires the operations of as many as 40 valves. The importance of driver qualification is therefore obvious. In addition to normal operations, the driver must be able to perform under emergency conditions. Furthermore, drivers must be familiar with and observe all federal, state, and local regulations relative to the transportation of hazardous materials. They must also know the criteria outlined in the DOT exemptions issued for the transportation of liquid hydrogen. 

Major environmental trends that we see for land, air, water, and transportation of environmentally hazardous materials are shown in Box 9. These trends require that we get ahead of these issues and lead the chemical industry in the reduction of toxic metal (e.g., Sb, Sn, As) compounds, greenhouse gases, mercury emissions, and sulfur from gasoline and diesel, and find ways to control and sequester C02. Reduction of arsenic, as well as nitrates and ammonia, in drinking water is necessary. It is also imperative in these days of terrorism that we reduce transportation and storage of hazardous materials and continue our drive to develop inherently safer processes. 

This chapter focuses on qualitative and semi-quantitative techniques that can be used to analyze the safe transport of hazardous materials. These simple and efficient risk assessment approaches represent the level of complexity needed to sufficiently understand and make decisions for the majority of hazardous material issues. A fully quantitative approach (Chapter 5) may be needed if the level of detail developed with qualitative or semi-quantitative approaches is inadequate to confidently make final risk management decisions. The choice of a more quantitative approach also may be needed if the cost of the identified risk mitigation options is high, warranting a more detailed understanding of the... 

Step 1—Selection of Scenarios/Issues for Evaluation This step should be in alignment with the scope of the QRA and includes defining the modes of transport, hazardous material movements, package designs, and routes or route segments that will be evaluated or compared. 

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