ACA will be participating in a new study funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and conducted by the Transportation Research Board (TRB): Risk Evaluation of Small Quantities of Class 3 and Class 9 Hazmat. Functioning under the National Research Council (NRC), the principal operating agency of the National Academies, TRB tapped ACA to join the study project panel to provide overall counsel and technical guidance. The importance of this research is to determine more effective risk measures in the transportation of certain hazardous materials. The results of the study will likely direct DOT's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration's (PHMSA) incident reporting system and its requirements, which greatly impact the paint and coatings industry.
This project is particularly important to the paint industry because paint ranks as the top (#1) commodity for the number of reported incidents. Paint has a very high number of reported incidents because it is shipped and re-shipped in extremely high volumes. PHMSA collects incident data, and also publishes it. Other organizations use this data, as well. Several years ago, the National Motor Freight Traffic Association (NMFTA) used the incident report summaries to argue that the freight classification of paint should be revamped, and while ACA was able to delay this action for almost four years, this higher freight classification was ultimately adopted. Currently, regulated paint now ships at a much higher and more expensive classification than it did prior to the NMFTA action.
In 2010, ACA petitioned PHMSA to exempt small quantities of paint from incident reporting requirements under the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR). At the same time, the American Trucking Association filed a similar petition. PHMSA consolidated these petitions and agreed to conduct a rulemaking. While this rulemaking has yet to be initiated, in the most recent reauthorization of the federal hazardous materials transportation law (MAP-21), Congress required PHMSA to conduct a comprehensive assessment of its incident reporting program due July 2013. In order to facilitate its report and the upcoming rulemaking in response to the ACA/ATA petitions, PHMSA has provided funds and asked TRB to study the transport risks of small quantities of Class 3 and Class 9 materials in order to support the work on this rulemaking. The work on the study will commence in June 2013 and will be completed in one year.
Read on and contact ACA for more information.
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