Friday, July 24, 2009

Dangerous Goods Declaration Forms Online at ShipHazmat.NET - Summer of Safety Awareness Sale ends on September 4, 2009

The Bureau of Dangerous Goods recently began promoting its Summer of Safety Awareness Sale at ShipHazmat.NET, an online application for generating dangerous goods declaration forms in complete regulatory compliance with the IATA DGR and shipping dangerous goods by air transport.

Until September 4, 2009, all new and existing per-click users of ShipHazmat.NET are enjoying a 54% savings for each proper shipping name (or UN number) entry added to a completed shipper's declaration form.

Just pay $6.95 per proper shipping name and enjoy the benefits of full compliance without the hassle of spelling errors, individual interpretation of the regulations and menacing fines and penalties from rejected and improperly prepared shipments of dangerous goods.

Additionally, the Bureau of Dangerous Goods will be releasing a series of informative blog entries and reference guides promoting the safe transportation of dangerous goods and hazmat, along with helpful hints to proper dangerous goods declaration form data entry.

We are also proud to introduce our most recent project Hazmat University, a website completely dedicated to online hazmat training. Shippers, freight forwarders and carriers looking for initial and recurrent hazmat training courses in IATA, DOT 49CFR, IMDG vessel and infectious substances can enroll and begin learning at their own pace from any computer connected to the Internet anywhere around the world.

As an added bonus, the U.S. Department of Transportation's Hazmat Security Awareness Course is available for free online through Hazmat University! Simply register a new account and this course will automatically be added to your list of available courses.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Developing a Hazardous Materials Training Program Guide from U.S. DOT, PHMSA and DGAC

To read this document in its entirety, please click on the following link:
A Guide to Developing A Hazardous Materials Training Program

The transportation of hazardous materials (hazmat) plays an integral role in our national and world economies, providing key products and resources that we use every day. We consume oil and natural gas to heat our homes and businesses, and produce raw materials for plastics, fibers, paints and other essential products. We use chemicals to clean our water, fuel cars, construct buildings, fertilize crops, create medicines, manufacture clothing and create many other essential commodities.

All of these products and services rely on the safe transportation of hazmat to be shipped around the country. To promote the safe transportation of hazmat, the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) and Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) have established training requirements in the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR) to address some of the inherent risks to the public, environment and property that need to be managed.

To learn more about these training requirements, the U.S. DOT and PHSMA have released a guidance document for developing a hazmat training program to help hazmat employees learn about the established requirements governing the commercial transportation of hazmat by highway, rail, vessel and air.

To read this document in its entirety, please click on the following link:
A Guide to Developing A Hazardous Materials Training Program

The Bureau of Dangerous Goods, Ltd. promotes the safe transportation of hazmat with its instructor-led classroom training and customized training solutions. We have also recently introduced Hazmat University, an online hazmat training website featuring multimodal training for shipping hazardous materials by shippers, freight forwarders and carriers.

Friday, July 17, 2009

IMDG training for dangerous goods in Shanghai, China for August 2009

The Tianjin, China office for the Bureau of Dangerous Goods, Ltd. is offering a 3-day IMDG training course from August 5 to August 7, 2009 in Shanghai, China to help promote and improve safety awareness for transporting dangerous goods.

This course is specifically designed to familiarize shippers, freight forwarders and carriers with the safe operation, handling and transportation of dangerous goods by vessel; including regulations, documentation and packaging to meet the requirements of increasingly restricted regulatory requirements from North America and Europe.

Upon successful completion of the course, students with a passing exam grade will receive of Certificate of Training Completion, which meets international requirements of dangerous goods training and transportation. This includes U.S. government requirements for general awareness and familiarization, limited function specific training, safety and security awareness training for transporting hazardous materials from, to and within the United States.

Who Should Participate?
Managers and directors of operational staff, managers of freight forwarding businesses who deal with dangerous goods transportation by vessel, and anyone involved in the manufacturing and safety of dangerous goods as it relates to importing and exporting.

For more information, please download our course description and registration form in PDF format, or call us at 1-609-860-0300 in the United States, or 021-52841507 in China.

Spaces are still available!

The Bureau of Dangerous Goods, Ltd. is a global provider of hazmat and dangerous goods training solutions, and innovative leader in dangerous goods compliance software.

We are also pleased to introduce Hazmat University, our online hazmat training website for providing IATA, DOT 49 CFR and IMO online training solutions.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Hazmat Safety Awareness Tip: The Overlooked Marking Requirement for Shipping Hazmat

Are you missing something important?

Packaging is the foremost element of all shippers' responsibilities in the safe transportation of hazmat and dangerous goods. This is particularly true when it comes to shipping hazmat by air. Packages that travel by air are subjected to a variety of conditions that are usually more severe than other modes of transport. Some of these conditions include drastic temperature changes, intense vibration and extreme drops in atmospheric pressure. Reductions in pressure tend to cause leakage of liquids or even bursting of the packagings during flight!

So what does this have to do with marking requirements? Well, remembering that the intent of safe hazmat shipping is to ensure that a hazardous material is not released during transport, a shipper must not use packaging for air shipments unless that packaging meets the applicable testing requirements and is closed in a way that ensures resistance to pressure changes throughout the transportation cycle.

Most shippers of hazmat purchase UN standard packagings (e.g. packagings which conform to both the UN Model Regulations and the HMR) for this purpose. These performance-oriented packagings require the application of UN Specification Markings. Normally applied by the packaging manufacturer, these marks are still ultimately the responsibility of the shipper.

Trained hazardous materials shippers are aware of the significance of the UN specification mark, but often overlook the following component:

If your business uses single packagings (e.g. drums, jerricans, etc.) to ship liquid hazmat or dangerous goods by air, a single packaging must have a marked test pressure of not less than...
  • 250 kPa for liquids in Packing Group I,
  • 80 kPa for liquids in Packing Group III of Class 3 or Division 6.1, and
  • 100 kPa for other liquids, or
  • a pressure related to the vapor pressure of the liquid to be conveyed, whichever is greater (see reference 49 CFR 173.27(c) and IATA DGR 5.0.2.14 and DGR 6.3.5).

To learn more about a shipper's legal responsibilities for shipping hazmat, UN packaging, hazmat marking requirements and more, the Bureau of Dangerous Goods offers several hazmat training courses for both novices and veterans.

We are also proud to introduce Hazmat University, a completely online hazmat training program designed to bring the same quality of Bureau of Dangerous Goods training that has been provided in classrooms for over 25 years to shippers, freight forwarders and carriers via the Internet.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Hazmat training upcoming enrollment in August for DOT 49 CFR, IATA, IMO IMDG Code and more.

The Bureau of Dangerous Goods has upcoming hazmat training courses currently available for enrollment in the following locations:

Courses include:

We also provide customizable on-site hazmat training for small business and enterprise-level seminars. Our on-site courses are available around the world and we will work with you to meet your organization's hazmat training requirements. With over 25 years of working experience, our qualified instructors can help maximize safety and efficiency in the workplace with regards to transporting and handling hazmat.

HazmatUniversity.com is also coming soon! We've taken our high quality hazmat training courses from the Bureau of Dangerous Goods and packaged them (no pun intended) into online curriculums for a fraction of the cost you would pay for ANY hazmat training in a classroom! No instructor fees, travel expenses, room and board costs, loss of personnel or training facility maintenance fees. Simply point, click and learn!

To learn more, go to HazmatUniversity.com for all of the details.