A&M-Texarkana to offer a hazardous materials instructor course in June

A free hazardous materials instructor course will be held June 13-16 at Texas A&M University-Texarkana, 7101 University Ave.

Hosted by the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service Infrastructure Training and Safety Institute and A&M-Texarkana, the 28-hour, train-the-trainer course is funded by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Participants will learn how to recognize, identify and ship hazardous materials.

“The course is designed for a variety of industries, including manufacturing, medical, warehousing, transportation, small business and K-12 and higher education,” Shelley Caraway, executive director of Extended Education and Community Development at A&M-Texarkana stated in a press release. “TEEX trains the trainer. Then the trainer trains the organization’s employees how to do the same.”

U.S. Department of Transportation regulations require initial and recurrent training of all employees who perform work functions covered by federal Hazardous Materials Regulations. Any employee whose work directly affects hazardous materials transportation safety is required to have training.

The purpose of this course is to increase a HazMat employee’s safety awareness by training trainers and preparing those trainers to be an essential element in reducing hazardous materials incidents, particularly by minimizing the number of undeclared hazardous material shipments.

The course was developed by TEEX to focus on understanding Hazardous Materials Regulations, recognizing and identifying hazardous material and using provided tools for teaching this information to others.

For more information and to register for the course, go to www.teex.org/itsi or contact Jeff Bowman at jeff.bowman@teex.tamu.edu.