Outside the box

摘要

The Dangerous Goods Advisory Council (DGAC) may be based in Washington, DC,and have a largely North American membership,but that does not mean that it ignores the rest of the world. And while its 2012 annual conference, which was held at the Hutton Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee,gave delegates a thorough run-down on current and upcoming regulatory developments in the US and Canada (HCB December 2012, page 8), a lengthy list of expert speakers had been lined up to explain what is going on elsewhere. Economic growth throughout Latin America, as well as its geographical proximity to North America, make the region increasingly important to US-based industries. But it is wrong to think of it as a homogeneous entity from the point of view of regulating the transport of dangerous goods.Diego Gotelli,director of the Chemistry Information Centre for Emergencies (CIQUIME) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, outlined the problems, particularly for road transport.