The FRA announced that Amtrak delivered its PTC operating plan to the agency last week; one of the last big pieces of the PTC planning puzzle. Here Amtrak’s Empire Builder flies west over the river and through the woods in Deerfield, Illinois during Thanksgiving week last year. Image © 11/2015 by Nikki Burgess; all rights reserved.
It’s the week of the US Thanksgiving holiday, and the Labelmaster staff and family would like to wish our customers and our much appreciated blog readership a safe and happy holiday this Thursday! Despite the coming holidays last week turned out to be a big one in the regulatory world, with several announcements of note, so let’s dive right in:
U.S. EPA
In environmentally safe product news, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy keynoted the Safer Choice Label Summit. The summit brought together senior executives of product and chemical manufacturers, distributors and retailers as well as nonprofit leaders committed to building the Safer Choice program. Safer Choice is EPA’s label for safer cleaning and other products. Manufacturers who make products that carry the label have met the Agency’s stringent standards for human health and environmental safety. Consumers can now quickly identify products that are safer for their families, communities and the environment—is that an option for your company? Find out more right here.
Australian DG News
From our regulatory friends “down under” comes word that Australia has approved all changes to UN19, including the lithium battery changes, as part of the Australian Dangerous Goods Code ed 7.5. This Code will be effective from 1 March 2017, superseding ed 7.4. If you ship to the Antipodes, it’s good-to-know news. Find out more here.
China DG News
In addition to the Australian revision, there was more Interesting news from the west side of the Pacific last week. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) announced and published a new DG regulation. It closely mirrors the EU’s ADR 2015. In that vein recall that the ADR is a downloadable/viewable PDF on the UNECE website, should you understandably not be carrying the two volumes around! Here’s the link to ADR 2015, if you haven’t used it in a bit
The (translated) Chinese announcement is here.
U.S. DOE
The US Department of Energy released a determination that industrial air compressors are “covered equipment’ and are thus eligible for regulation under US DOE energy conservation guidelines. This probably means eventual and potentially quite significant changes to how these commonly used industrial equipment units will be built and regulated. If your business uses air compressors, you may want to have a look
FRA
Amtrak, the nation’s premier passenger carrying railroad, became the latest and nearly the last major American railroad to deliver its Positive Train Control (PTC) plan to the FRA, the agency announced. Concern for passenger safety as well as worries about safe petroleum movements following the 2013 Lac Megantic disaster in Quebec, Canada, primarily drove this new safety program, which will now be effective in 2018. See the plan announcement here
OSHA
In part of the week’s biggest regulatory news, the nation’s safety agency published a very important and long awaited rule. This is OSHA’s first action in fall standards in twenty-six years, and it’s going to impose very significant new requirements on general industry. There is a large amount of new enforceable standards in this rule. Are you affected? If you:
- Use fixed ladders (outdoor or indoor; it doesn’t matter)
- Have working surfaces raised over 4 ft from the floor/ground
- Have powered industrial trucks with lifting platforms
- Have roof accesses or roof sited equipment (like HVAC)
- Use mezzanines/partial floors
- Have process operations that result in wet or potentially slippery floors
Then there may be items in this rule that will affect your HS&E status and operations. First out the gate is a new enforceable mandatory training requirement, deadlined for next June. Given what happened with companies lagging the HCS/GHS training deadline a few years ago, timely compliance may be an issue for many—unless you stay on top of your planning. See this big new rule (the PDF is over 500 pages!) here
EU REACh update
Europe’s chemical safety agency, the ECHA, announced its next (and sixth) REACh project is to address classification and labeling of mixtures, with the addition of a check on the information published in the material’s Safety Data Sheet (SDS). Field inspectors have already started on the new project. REACh and its complexities continue to be a challenge for companies doing business in the EU. Find out more about the new project here
FMCSA
Truck operators—check your cargo tanks! The FMCSA issued a new safety advisory to provide notice to owners and operators of DOT407 and DOT412 specification cargo tank motor vehicles (CTMVs) manufactured by Keith Huber Incorporated. These CTMVs do not comply with the Federal Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR) and do NOT meet DOT specification requirements in Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations. See the details here
CPSC
Winter’s cold weather and resulting sealed-up homes and workplaces too often brings news of tragedy involving Carbon Monoxide (CO) poisoning incidents. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has determined preliminarily that there may be an unreasonable risk of injury and death associated with portable generators in this regard. To address this risk, the Commission proposes a rule that limits CO emissions from operating portable generators. Specifically, the proposed rule would require that portable generators powered by handheld spark-ignition (SI) engines and Class I SI engines not exceed a weighted CO emission rate of 75 grams per hour (g/hr); generators powered by one-cylinder, Class II SI engines must not exceed a weighted CO emission rate of 150 g/h; and generators powered by Class II SI engines with two cylinders must not exceed a weighted emission rate of 300 g/h. If you’d like to comment on this proposal, which may impact a very common item of equipment used by many businesses as well as the general public, here’s your portal
Labelmaster is a full service provider of products and services for the Hazardous Materials and Dangerous Goods professional, shippers, transport operators, and EH&S providers. See our full line of solutions at www.labelmaster.com.
