IATA Updates Cargo and Ground Operations Manuals

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has released the updated 2026 editions of key industry manuals for cargo and ground operations, which incorporate close to 100 major changes and revisions to align with evolving global standards.

 

The main changes to the 2026 manuals include:

 

 

Battery-related updates dominate the DGR and BSR for 2026.

 

The number of lithium batteries transported as cargo by air have surged 25% year-on-year. At the same time, the industry has seen several incidents involving overheating power banks on aircraft, contributing to the need for revised regulations around the shipment of lithium batteries.

 

The past year has also seen the emergence of new hybrid battery chemistries—particularly those used in hybrid vehicles—requiring updated shipping requirements. 

 

The key changes to the 2026 DGR include:

 

The key changes to the 2026 BSR include:

 

 

IATA’s LAR has been significantly updated to further improve animal welfare. IATA data shows that more than 200,000 non-domestic animal shipments were made in 2024, highlighting a need to maintain high standards of care. There have been major changes to container requirements and guidance on training for attendants handling animals during transit.

 

The key changes include:

 

 

The 2026 IGOM focuses on improvements to operational efficiency and safety across passenger, baggage, and aircraft handling operations, with a particular focus on passengers that require special support.

 

The key changes include:

 

 

Several new digital enhancements to the manuals make it easier for cargo professionals to quickly access information. These include:

 

“Global standards have made flying safe and reliable. For eight decades, IATA’s member airlines have worked with the industry value chain, including regulators, on standard setting and best practices critical to daily operations. This year’s IATA manuals updates reflect advancements in technology, digitalization, regulation, and customer needs that are critical for safer, more efficient, and increasingly sustainable operations,” said Frederic Leger, IATA’s Senior Vice President of Products and Services.

 

EPA has eliminated an “extensive backlog” of chemical risk notifications, the agency said in a news article published on Oct. 10. According to EPA, agency staff reviewed approximately 3,000 notifications and “distributed over 900 of them across the agency.” The notifications were submitted to EPA by chemical manufacturers, importers, processers, and distributors, who are required by section 8(e) of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to report chemical risk information to EPA. The submissions have to do with substances such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, pesticides, chemicals with pre-manufacture notices or significant new use rules, and high production volume chemicals, and are collected in an internal database. EPA staff review the submissions for “data relevancy and internal routing,” and the agency says that a team of about 65 people across EPA now receive notifications regarding these submissions.

 

EPA has made some changes intended to prevent future backlogs. For example, the agency has implemented an automated notification system that sends weekly emails to staff about incoming TSCA section 8(e) submissions that may be relevant to their work and has updated the process to categorize incoming submissions “for faster and more effective distribution to EPA staff.” The agency has also established a workgroup to identify inefficiencies in the TSCA section 8(e) program and to develop process improvements.

 

 

Proposed budget cuts at the United Nations would compromise the work of the committee that oversees the standardized international system for communicating chemical hazards, according to the Dangerous Goods Advisory Council. DGAC, an international educational organization that promotes the safe transportation of hazardous materials, posted an item to its website last week indicating that it has urged the United States’ UN representation to support funding for the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Committee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods and on the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS).

 

In a letter to Jason Conroy, an official with the U.S. Mission to the UN, DGAC explains that the proposed budget cuts would eliminate several positions from the UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), which supports the Committee of Experts. A UN document (PDF) with details on the proposal indicates that ECE would lose 28 staff next year. According to the DGAC letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Synergist, one of the positions proposed for elimination is the chief of the Dangerous Goods Section, which facilitates work on GHS as well as several international agreements governing transportation of hazardous materials.

 

The proposed cuts are additional to budget reductions already implemented this year, according to the letter.

 

“These cuts may result in a reduction of the number of meetings authorized [and] a reduction in the resources allocated to translation and interpretation,” DGAC’s letter states. “We respectfully assert that the work of this Committee provides an invaluable safety and economic benefit to the United States and that these additional budget cuts threaten its efficiency and work product.”

 

The cuts are part of $500 million in proposed reductions that would affect funding across the UN.

 

GHS is updated every two years. The most recent version, revision 11, was released in September.

 

 

In a recently published report, NIOSH has proposed actions to prevent musculoskeletal disorders and control other hazards affecting workers in harvesting operations at a pork processing plant. Management requested that the agency’s Health Hazard Evaluation (HHE) Program assess the plant’s ergonomics—that is, fitting the job to the worker—as well as injuries and illnesses affecting workers’ muscles, tendons, and nerves. NIOSH staff conducted a virtual walkthrough of the plant in May 2021 and visited the facility in July 2021 and August 2022. During these visits, the evaluators observed conditions for the 201 full-time employees working in the harvesting section, who were tasked with preparing the animals for processing in other areas of the plant. At the time of NIOSH’s 2022 visit, the employer planned to run an average of 1,106 hogs per hour on the plant’s harvesting side, resulting in an average of 11,000 hogs processed per day.

 

Many harvesting workers had hand activity levels and force above guidelines set by ACGIH, the HHE report states. Of the job tasks evaluated by NIOSH, 16 percent had hand activity levels and force at or above ACGIH’s Threshold Limit Value (TLV), above which a worker’s level of hand movement is considered unacceptable. In addition, 45 percent of workers had hand activity levels and force measured above ACGIH’s action limit.

 

NIOSH also found that between May 2018 and December 2021, the facility’s OSHA logs reported an increasing rate of upper body musculoskeletal disorders. By the end of this period, the facility rate was higher than the overall rate of injuries reported for the U.S. animal slaughtering and processing industry, excluding poultry. Whether this finding means there are more injuries at this facility than at similar facilities, or that its medical program has been improved and become better at detecting injuries and illnesses than the industry standard, “this high and increasing rate of injuries and illnesses shows the need for additional controls,” the report states. NIOSH staff estimated that 39 percent of harvesting-side employees had experienced work-related symptoms of musculoskeletal disorders affecting their necks, backs, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hands, and fingers in the 12 months before their visit.

 

The report issued recommendations to reduce workers’ risk of musculoskeletal disorders, starting with an evaluation of job tasks to find ways of reducing repetition, force, and awkward postures. NIOSH also encouraged the employer to reduce workers’ need to reach or perform repetitive movements, regularly rotate workers through highly repetitive work tasks, limit the length of time workers spend doing repetitive work, and make other interventions based on ergonomic design principles. Additional recommendations were aimed at improving monitoring for musculoskeletal illnesses and injuries at this facility to determine whether interventions need to be introduced or changed.

 

The report also includes recommendations for reducing exposures to peracetic acid, a chemical used as a disinfectant at the facility. Although detectable levels of peracetic acid were measured near the spray cabinet where it was applied, “the results do not show the need for further personal exposure monitoring for peracetic acid, acetic acid, or hydrogen peroxide,” the report states. A few more recommendations address other health and safety issues identified during the evaluation, such as the need to remind workers of the importance of using hearing protection.

 

 

An overpressure in a vessel caused the release of approximately 275 pounds of anhydrous ammonia at a food processing facility in Sterling, Virginia, on July 31, 2024, according to a final report released in late September by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB). The Cuisine Solutions Sterling plant produces cooked, packaged food products, which necessitates an industrial-scale refrigeration process. Ammonia is used as the refrigerant in this process to chill water used in food preparation and to maintain refrigeration and freezer temperatures for food storage. CSB’s report states that “a refrigeration process upset likely began in one of the heat exchange processes, ultimately leading to overpressure in a vessel” and the discharge of ammonia from an emergency pressure relief valve. Scenarios modeled by CSB indicate that ammonia concentrations at ground level following the release were likely immediately dangerous to life or health (IDLH), or 300 ppm or greater. Exposure to ammonia below the IDLH value may cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, coughing, wheezing, and irritation of the nose, mouth, and throat.

 

Many workers inhaled ammonia vapor as they evacuated the facility, and emergency responders found more than 10 people unconscious when they arrived at the plant. CSB’s report states that 33 workers were transported to hospitals for treatment and four were admitted, including one who was placed in intensive care. The company estimated the property damage and production losses to be $3 million.

 

Factors that CSB says contributed to the severity of the incident include insufficient emergency preparedness, ineffective drills for ammonia releases, and a lack of effective emergency shutdown. For example, the plant lacked an automated emergency refrigeration system shutdown, which the agency says could have minimized liquid or aerosol in the ammonia release. In this case, CSB notes that the ammonia cloud “contained a significant liquid component, which caused much of it to rapidly drop to ground level.” The emergency pressure relief valve also opened near the employee parking lot and the building rather than a safe location, the agency found.

 

“During the release, the facility’s ammonia detection system did not trigger any alarms, no evacuation signal was sounded, and no one at the facility initiated an emergency shutdown of the equipment that was causing the ammonia release,” a CSB news release explains. “The lack of an organized emergency response allowed the situation to escalate and caused more workers to be exposed before reaching safety.”

 

The report outlines several recommendations for both Cuisine Solutions and the International Institute of All-Natural Refrigeration (IIAR), which has issued ammonia refrigeration standards referred to as “Recognized and Generally Accepted Good Engineering Practice” or RAGAGEP by agencies like OSHA and EPA. CSB urges Cuisine Solutions to improve its emergency action plan and to implement and maintain engineering controls to prevent or mitigate the consequences of similar chemical incidents in the future. The agency calls on IIAR to update its industry guidance for “preventing or mitigating liquid or two-phase atmospheric discharges from emergency pressure relief systems” and to update its Standard for Design of Safe Closed-Circuit Ammonia Refrigeration Systems, ANSI/IIAR 2, “to include a requirement to assess whether emergency pressure relief devices discharge to a safe location, such as with a dispersion analysis.”