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What are Excepted Quantities?
The Excepted Quantities (EQ) process under the carriage of dangerous goods regulations; ICAO (Air), IMDG (Sea) and ADR (Road) allows shippers to transport small quantities of a substance internationally and allows them to move without the full weight of the regulations. Some of the benefits of moving goods as Excepted Quantities include
- UN-approved packages are not required;
- Dangerous goods hazard symbols are not required;
- A shippers declaration or dangerous goods note is note required * IMDG does require this.
Understanding Excepted Quantities is important for shippers moving goods on e-commerce platforms. Recently there has been an abundance of hand sanitising gel that is being transported all over the world. Unknown to many shippers that most hand sanitisers contain ethanol or alcohol. Depending on the quantity of the substance this product is classed as a hazard for shipping even in small quantities.
This is where the benefit of Excepted Quantities regulations comes into play.
How to Identify if your Product is Dangerous?
Check the Safety Data Sheet of your product. If the SDS indicates under section 14 that the article is hazardous for shipping you are required to do more investigation.
Read more on Why Safety Data Sheets are important.
Every substance that is Hazardous is given a Proper Shipping Name and a United Nations UN#.
Check the regulations for the mode of transport that you wish to use and you will be provided with an EQ Code.
Training is required for a shipper to transport dangerous goods in Excepted Quantities. This can be offered as online learning or classroom-based.
The content covered in an Excepted Quantity training:
- The hazard classes that can be shipped under the Excepted Quantity process
- Any limitations or restrictions for your mode of transport.
- How to correctly identify the quantities that may be transported
- Packaging the use of inners, intermediate packaging and outer packaging
- The Testing Requirements for Excepted Quantity packaging
- The Marking of packages to communicate the hazard, see Figure 1 below
- The use of Overpacks when transporting Excepted Quantities
- Documentary Requirements on transport documents
- Truck or Container Placarding
All packages containing EQs shall be durably and legibly marked with the marks shown below:
This article is aimed to highlight the benefits to those who consign very small amounts of dangerous substances or trial samples of a dangerous substance that would be accepted on all modes of transport. Once a substance is packaged, marked and documented as an Excepted Quantity, it is, for all intents and purposes, not subject to as many of the regulatory requirements based on a risk approach of the very restrictive quantity requirements per inner and outer packaging.
