UN 3548: New Rules for Articles Containing Miscellaneous Dangerous Goods (e.g. articles with hydraulic fluid)

For those of you who’ve taken our hazmat shipping class, you know that when there is a conflict between the United States rules and the ICAO/IATA rules, if the United States forbids the shipment then you must follow the United States’ prohibition. A recent conflict between US rules and ICAO technical instructions just got resolved by a Final Rule published yesterday.

This new rule permits the transport by air of articles like aircraft landing gear parts that contain hydraulic fluid.

This issue has arisen for UN 3548 (Articles Containing Miscellaneous Dangerous Goods, N.O.S.) and also UN 3538 (Articles Containing Non-Flammable Non-Toxic Gas, N.O.S.). The shipping provisions for UN 3538 and UN3548 forbid shipment by both passenger aircraft and by cargo aircraft. This prohibition can be found in both the U.S. regulations and the ICAO (IATA) Technical Instructions. But there is a special provision in the ICAO Technical Instructions that permits shipping the goods by air if the only hazardous material in the article is either (1) an environmentally hazards substance, (2) a division 2.2. gas with no subsidiary hazards, (3) a “section II” lithium battery and an environmentally hazards substance, or (4) a “section II” lithium battery and a division 2.2. gas with no subsidiary hazards.

In each such case, the special provision number must be declared in the shipper’s declaration for dangerous goods and there is a packing instruction that must be followed:

• Packing Instruction 222 for Articles Containing Non-Flammable Non-Toxic Gas, N.O.S. (per Special provision A225)
• Packing Instruction 975 for Articles Containing Miscellaneous Dangerous Goods, N.O.S. (per Special provision A224)

These two special provisions permitted shipment by air (outside the U.S.) where the shipment appeared to be forbidden. Each special provisions was intended to apply to the transport of large articles containing a non-flammable, non-toxic gas or environmentally hazardous substances only under the specified conditions.

A conflict arose because the United States did not have these same special provisions, so shipment by air of UN 3538 or UN 3548 was simply forbidden in the United States. That issue was remedied with the publication (yesterday) of a final rule adding special provisions A224 and A225 to the United States regulations (and applying each of them to the applicable hazmat proper shipping name and UN number). So now these two UN numbers can be shipped by air (under the limited permissions of the two special provisions).