A draft version of the 3rd Edition of Transport Canada’s TP14850- Small Containers for Transportation of Dangerous Goods, Classes 3, 4, 5, 6.1, 8 & 9” is available for public review and comments will be considered when received by October 13.
Transport Canada began planning the review in Q3 2015 and announced the formation of a Technical Committee in a public notice in early 2016.
The Committee was formed in April; consisting of participants representing interests from production, marketing, distribution, sales, use and/or regulation of dangerous goods packaging. The Committee met initially by phone and, following the review of a preliminary draft, followed up with a meeting in Ottawa in May to provide input for the aforementioned first draft.
The intent of the 3rd Edition is to incorporate updates from the 19th (2015) Edition of the UN Recommendations and possibly prepare for inclusion of aspects of the 20th Edition expected in 2017.
Some features of the first draft, in addition to the harmonization with the 2015 model UN Recommendations, include:
- clarification of the requirements for packaging distributors to provide instructions on assembling and closing packages;
- removal of some redundant provisions that are already in the regulations;
- clarification of special cases and expanding some Substance Specific Provisions (SSP) removing the need for certain Equivalency Certificates (e.g. UN3268);
- locating SSP within the packing instruction (PI) applicable to the UN number, similar to the UN Recommendations & the IMDG Code practise;
- requiring Transport Canada “acceptance” of alternative leakproofness testing procedures;
- consideration of using plastic containers beyond the 5-year limit when the use is under the control of a fleet operator registered with Transport Canada;
- mandating a periodic (5 year) retest by manufacturers of prototypes from production of approved containers
Following the comments received on the first draft of the 3rd Edition of TP14850, the Committee will meet again in Q4-16 to review the comments and provide input for a 2nd draft. The 2nd draft is expected to be released for additional public comment in the Spring of 2017. The objective is to release the final 3rd Edition in October 2017.
