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QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS MULTIMODAL • THE UN EXPERTS REMAIN CONSTRAINED PHYSICALLY BY THE PANDEMIC RESPONSE BUT HAVE MANAGED TO MAKE HEADWAY ON THE UN MODEL REGULATIONS THE UN SUB-COMMITTEE of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods (TDG) held its 59th session this past 29 November to 8 December 2021, with Duane Pfund (US) in the chair and Claude Pfauvadel (France) as vice-chair. It was attended, either in person or online, by representatives of 23 countries, the EU, the Intergovernmental Organisation for International Carriage by Rail (OTIF), the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and 25 non-governmental
the UN liquidity crisis, renovation work at the Palais des Nations that limited the number of meeting rooms available for hybrid meetings and the allocation of interpretation services all meant that the volume of work was less than might have been hoped. Nevertheless, the Experts did manage to cover a lot of ground, including some new items, and made progress towards the adoption of the text that will form the 23rd revised edition of the UN Model Regulations, due to be agreed by the parent Committee of Experts at its meeting this coming December.
organisations. In addition, observers from Latvia, Luxembourg and Turkey also took part. This second meeting of the Sub-committee for the current biennium would in more normal times be the busiest of the four sessions; however, ongoing Covid-19 response measures, financial constraints triggered by
START WITH A BANG As usual, the agenda began with matters relating to explosives, although there was a noticeable reduction in the number of papers to be considered. The chair of the Working Group on Explosives noted that, during work to revise Test Series H in the Manual of Tests
HCB MONTHLY | MARCH 2022
and Criteria (MTC), it emerged that the density of silicone oil in 28.3.6 and 28.4.2.3.1(a) was given without units. It was recommended that the unit g/cm2 was used, which was agreed and adopted as a correction to the seventh revised edition of MTC. The Working Group had also spotted some errors in two equations in A10.2.3.8; again, these were corrected. The chair of the Working Group on Explosives also reported that two different units for density – kg/cm2 and g/cm2 – are used throughout MTC (and A3.3 has no units at all) and recommended that these should be brought into line. A formal proposal on this topic will be presented at a subsequent meeting. The European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic) appealed for a new entry for 5-Trifluoromethyltetrazole, sodium salt (TFMT-Na), a recently developed insecticide precursor. In its dry form it is explosive and so is only handled and transported as a homogeneous solution in acetone. The competent authorities in Germany, on the request of industry, have issued a temporary approval for its transport as UN 3379 Desensitised explosive, liquid, nos. However, Cefic felt that, in light of the anticipated increase in the volume of the substance that will be shipped internationally, a separate entry would be valuable.
