CtTaxed.com

Regulations: Cost Of Doing Business, Or Shipping Batteries 101

You may have missed it but the Federal Department of Transportation just released it’s updated regulation on the transportation of Lithium batteries, known as button batteries. These are the batteries used in wrist watches, calculators, laptops and just about any portable device that uses a LCD display.

This type of battery when on fire is very difficult to put out. Hence the special treatment it gets.

Now imagine you are a small business that makes a product with a button battery, read this regulation and determine if you can sell the product, ship the product, what packaging is required, what special labeling is required.

Oh, by the way, California has special restrictions on a chemical in the button battery, as extra credit find out what that special chemical it is and what you have to do to legally ship your product with a drugstore button battery in it.

My point is not to argue if this regulation is needed or not, but rather to illustrate a point of the Cost of Doing Business in this regulatory environment and to remind all the junior planners out there that next time they have a great idea to save the world, try running a business first, the source of all the income needed to fund your grand plans.

I can’t reproduce this document on this blog, it keeps crashing my website.

I dare you to read it, I DOUBLE DOG DARE you.

Enjoy, I did. (Actually I gave up, with 28 years of experience in Aerospace I gave up. I had to ask for help. And guess what? TWO experts in a Fortune 500 company disagree. Oh the shame!)

My favorite part of the regulation is the entire page explaining why this regulation is not unduly burdensome and does not constitute an unfunded mandate.

DOT Regulation on Lithium Batteries.

No comments yet

Leave a Reply