U.S. law requires companies to provide training for employees who have responsibility for the preparation, physical handling, or documentation of hazardous materials shipments. Yet not long ago, a high-level manager with an international company rationalized his company's failure to offer training this way: "We're not required to train our employees because we only ship aerosol products using highway and ocean carriers, and we never ship anything hazardous by air."

That sort of ignorance—whether willful or not—and the failure by many companies to comply with safety regulations governing the transportation of dangerous goods can have disastrous consequences. Consider these recent incidents:

• In August 2000, the entire village of Fort Edward in northern New York state was evacuated. Residents were housed in local schools for three days while emergency-response crews worked to fix a leaking dome cover on a rail tank car that was releasing a cloud of anhydrous ammonia. A malfunctioning pressure-relief valve that had been inadequately repaired was blamed for the release. A local hospital reported treating 60 people for symptoms associated with inhalation of the toxic gas.
• In July of this year in Port Klang, Malaysia, an explosion occurred in an under-deck hold of theMV Wan Hai, which was discharging containerized cargo. The blast not only ripped open the container in which it occurred but also blew off the ship's hatch covers and scattered freight containers all over the port area. Two stevedores working on the ship were critically injured. The explosion has been attributed to an undeclared shipment of polymeric material that emitted flammable vapors.
• Also in July, a train derailed and caught fire in a tunnel under Baltimore. The hazardous cargoes involved in the accident included several types of acids, propylene glycol, tripropylene, ethyl hexyl phthalate, and toluene methyl ethyl ketone. The toxic cloud caused by burning chemicals drifted upward into the city's center. As firefighters struggled to reach the blaze, the temperature inside the tunnel reportedly approached 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. The fire was officially declared under control five days later after wreaking havoc with the city's water mains and with fiberoptic communications cables that ran through the tunnel.

These kinds of accidents aren't supposed to happen! We have laws that require the use of safe packaging, specify the use of hazard communication to warn of the dangers, and mandate training and safe handling. But the number of serious incidents that have been in the news in recent years indicates that it's high time we asked ourselves, "How are we doing?" when it comes to hazmat regulatory compliance.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) reports that more than 800,000 hazardous materials shipments are introduced into commerce daily in the United States alone and that the daily average of shipments in transit approaches 1.3 million. Approximately 3.9 billion tons of regulated materials move by surface transportation annually; figures for dangerous goods transported by water and air are more difficult to determine because of fragmented data sources.

In light of DOT's increased enforcement activity and the training it requires for shippers and carriers, it would be reasonable to expect that the number of incidents in this country would have decreased in recent years. But statistics from DOT's Hazardous Materials Information System (HMIS) show that they have in fact increased.

Over the last 10 years, 4,152 serious incidents were reported. (See Figure 1.) In 2000, a total of 435 serious incidents occurred, which was slightly higher than the annual average. (DOT defines a serious incident as one that results in serious injury or death, closure of a major transportation system for one hour or more, a public evacuation of more than six persons, spills of radioactive material or infectious substances, or vehicle accidents or train derailments that cause a release of hazardous materials.)

Last year, there were 13 reported fatalities related to hazardous materials transportation. The annual average over 10 years is 11.4 (excluding 120 deaths in 1996 resulting from a passenger aircraft hazmat-related accident). Over that same period, 2,426 people received injuries as a result of serious hazardous materials releases, and property damage resulting from such incidents totaled nearly $334 million.

The annual totals for all types of hazardous materials incidents—both serious and non-serious—meanwhile, have almost doubled over the last 10 years, increasing from 9,110 in 1991 to 17,347 in 2000, for a grand total of 140,304. (See Figure 2.) During that period, 4,749 injuries were reported as a result of all incidents, and damages totaled about $417.5 million.

These reported incidents often result in fines for the parties that were at fault. DOT's Research and Special Programs Administration (RSPA), which is charged with inspecting facilities from which hazardous materials are shipped and ensuring that packaging manufacturing, testing, and certification facilities comply with the minimum standards, carried out almost 300 penalty actions and assessed more than $1.5 million in fines last year. In addition, the various modal administrations within DOT, including the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), assessed an even greater number of penalties that were specific to their unique jurisdictions. In the first eight months of this year alone, for example, the FAA initiated penalty actions that totaled $2.7 billion in proposed fines.

But these agencies all say that limited resources allow them to inspect only a very small percentage of hazmat shipments and facilities in the United States. If companies that fail to comply haven't been penalized, it may be because these government agencies don't have enough resources to keep up with the volume of violations.

Overall, the hazardous materials community exhibits a high level of responsibility for safety in the manufacture, packaging, and transportation of products—and most shipments reach their destinations safely. For the small percentage that do not, DOT has identified human error as the principal cause of incidents, based on statistics generated through its hazmat incident reporting program.

Is that due to simple ignorance or deliberate failure to comply? It's difficult to say, but there are some likely reasons for the increasing number of incidents we are seeing today.

Some, but not all, of the increase in number of hazmat incidents may be attributed to improved reporting procedures and a greater emphasis by government agencies on enforcement, including multi-agency initiatives involving DOT and U.S. Customs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

In many cases, the shipper clearly has failed to live up to its responsibilities. For example, international and domestic regulations hold the shipper that offers a product for transportation responsible for testing that product to determine if it meets the definition of dangerous goods and for classifying it. Yet the chemical thiourea dioxide was shipped as a non-hazardous substance for several years until a series of incidents occurred, including one in which a freight container blew up in the hold of a ship at sea and caused major damage to the vessel. Subsequent laboratory testing indicated that thiourea dioxide was actually a Class 4.2 spontaneously combustible material. Shouldn't the manufacturers have been aware of the hazards of their product?

Staffing issues industrywide may also have contributed to the increase in incidents. Although financial stability and corporate success can often be linked to risk management and attention to the principles of product stewardship, in today's environment of corporate downsizing, many senior people in hazardous materials safety have been put out to pasture through attrition, buyouts, or layoffs. Sometimes their positions are filled by junior or entry-level technicians who lack the knowledge their predecessors gained from years of hands-on experience. In other cases, their positions may remain vacant for budgetary reasons.

Recently, there also has been evidence of neglect by packaging suppliers. DOT has contracted with the U.S. Army's Logistics Support Activity, Package, Storage, and Containerization Center (LOGSA) in Tobyhanna, Pa., to test hazmat packaging that has been marked and certified as meeting United Nations performance packaging standards. The results are alarming: Of the 177 U.N.-certified packaging designs that have been tested to date, fewer than 20 percent have passed the required tests. Yet all of these packagings were certified for transporting hazardous materials within marked limits. DOT has initiated 63 enforcement cases against persons who certified packagings that did not meet the marked standards. Forty of those cases have already been closed, with penalties that have resulted in more than $220,000 in fines.

The United States is certainly not alone in its failure to meet safety standards at all times. In truth, spills and releases that cause damage to life, property, and the environment occur every day in all modes of transportation worldwide. The reasons vary. In some countries, dangerous goods shipments are treated no differently from other commodities. Other countries simply lack the resources for compliance.

Developed countries, then, have an opportunity to become the world leaders in safety compliance. They can do this by setting an example in their home countries and helping customers and suppliers in developing nations implement safety management systems that provide an equivalent level of control.

How can this be accomplished? Responsible corporate managers can ensure that regulatory compliance is adequately funded and staffed with trained, qualified, and empowered professionals. Governments can prioritize resources to foster uniformly safe commerce in international as well as domestic trade. And for those who do not wish to shoulder the responsibility for compliance or who cut their safety-related expenditures for any reason, effective enforcement programs with significant penalties can provide the deterrent. It behooves us all every once in a while to pause for a moment and ask ourselves, "How are we doing?"