Do you know whether you are a hazardous material (hazmat) employer? If you guess at the answer and are wrong the government has multiple methods of making you understand your responsibilities.

The main regulations regarding handling and transporting hazmat are contained in Title 49 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) parts 171 through 180 with additional rules in Title 14 CFR. The reason air carriers and repair stations are doubly blessed is simple: the 1996 ValuJet accident. Remember how the unfortunate series of mistakes and mishandling of “company hazardous material” resulted in the destruction of lives, brought a Secretary of Transportation to an accident site, and made Mary A. Schiavo a household name?

That watershed event created duplicative requirements for handling and transporting hazardous materials in aviation. Indeed, Title 49 CFR was and still is the main focus for understanding whether or not a material is hazardous, whether a company is a hazmat employer and the responsibility for identifying and training (and retraining) hazmat employees. Additional rules in Title 14 CFR require air carriers to implement their own FAA-approved hazmat programs, train their employees accordingly, and tell repair stations whether or not the airline carries hazmat. Some repair stations may even have to educate their team in the air carrier’s hazmat program if they perform certain hazmat functions on behalf of the airline. Repair stations also have to notify their employees and contractors of the air carrier’s status. Those rules “remind” both the air carrier and the repair station of responsibilities for handling and transporting hazmat.

The bottom line is without understanding the definitions of hazmat, hazmat employer, and hazmat employee, a repair station can find itself in trouble with the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration. The facts in enforcement cases are pretty easy to establish—a hazardous material is identified and it was either handled or transported improperly. Since the rules require specific paperwork, the noncompliance is established and the fines are steep for each incident if those documents do not exist. Once the handling and transport violations are established under Title 49, the investigators will determine whether there were additional violations under Title 14.

It behooves every repair station to verify its status under the hazmat regulations—it will save the company from double trouble.