|  Many
of the materials used in manufacturing and many of the retail products
people buy include hazardous materials. There are over 800,000 shipments
of hazardous materials (hazmat) each day in the United States. These
range from flammable materials and explosives to poisons and corrosives.
Release of these materials during transportation could result in
serious injury or death, or harm to the environment.
- By 2005, reduce hazardous material transportation
incidents by 10 percent from the level of such incidents in 2000.
| Number of
serious hazardous materials incidents in transportation.
Target: 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
N/A N/A N/A 523 515 509
Actual: 540(r) 565(r) 515(r) 189# |
(r) Revised; # Preliminary estimate based on partial year data.
DOT resources attributable to this performance
goal are depicted below:
DOT develops regulations and standards for hazmat
packaging and shipping, and five Operating Administrations (FAA,
FRA, RSPA, and FMCSA) enforce those standards for every mode of
transportation.
• DOT will continue to emphasize human factors
involved in hazmat spills. RSPA will continue to work with the industry
and State and local partners to prioritize risk factors, permitting
better focus of resources on highest risk areas.
• RSPA will continue its inspections of shippers,
packaging manufacturers and cylinder retesters, measuring success
of these efforts by non-compliance rates after facilities are reinspected.
RSPA’s post-reinspection non-compliance rate target is 15%
or less.
• RSPA will address human errors by continuing
its intensive effort to reach the hazmat community through training,
technical assistance and customer service to ensure it understands
how to comply with Federal safety requirements. RSPA will prioritize
compliance initiatives on a risk and human factors basis, based
in part on shippers’ incident histories. RSPA will work with
international organizations to promote consistency between national
and international hazardous materials requirements to improve the
safe and efficient transportation of hazardous materials (total
of $52 million).
• FAA will continue its focus on improving compliance
among manufacturers, distributors, retailers and reshippers before
their cargo reaches airports ($18.3 million).
• FMCSA will continue its hazmat Compliance
Reviews and, when necessary, take enforcement action against motor
carriers that pose a greater hazardous materials risk, focusing
on incidents/crashes, vehicle and driver violation occurrences,
and company safety management breakdowns. In addition, FMCSA will
conduct security sensitivity visits, and HAZMAT package and vehicle
inspections ($18.3 million).
• About 80% of rail serious hazmat incidents
are due to derailments, and FRA’s integrated rail safety program
aims at reducing both train accidents and hazmat releases -- to
the extent that train accidents are prevented, hazmat releases are
also prevented ($33.8 million).
In developing regulations for the transportation of
hazardous materials, DOT works with the Department of Homeland Security,
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); Department of Labor's Occupational
Safety and Health Administration; Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS); the Treasury Department's Customs Service and Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC); and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
DOT is also a member of the National Response Team
(NRT). The NRT is responsible for coordinating Federal planning,
preparedness, and response actions related to oil discharges and
hazardous substance releases.
In coordination with the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA), the NRC, the EPA, the Departments of Labor, Energy,
and HHS, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences,
DOT periodically develops and updates a curriculum consisting of
a list of courses necessary to train public sector emergency response
and preparedness teams in dealing with hazardous materials incidents. |
