Federal Agency Pushes Back on Lithium Battery Industry Proposal

Easing restrictions on shipping lithium batteries must include more safety considerations to earn support from U.S. hazardous materials regulators.

Battery industry associations want the United Nations to update its guidelines for shipping damaged or defective lithium batteries. Under their proposal, batteries that don’t pose a hazard during transportation, such as those that have already exploded and released their energy, would no longer be regulated as hazardous materials.

But the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said at a meeting June 12 that it wouldn’t support the industry proposal before a U.N. committee without adding a provision to ...