The private labs that already certify consumer fireworks may now approve display shells and stage pyrotechnics too, and the trade gets a straight choice between paying for speed and waiting for free
Buried in the reasoning of a fireworks rule filed on Thursday morning is a sentence describing what the regulated industry is actually being sold.
PHMSA says it is giving fireworks manufacturers the flexibility to choose between paying a certification agency for expedited review and certification, or relying on the agency's own approval process, which is free but sometimes longer. That is the change, stated by the agency in its own terms. Everything else in the document is the machinery for delivering it.
What an FCA may now certify
A Fireworks Certification Agency is a private body authorised by the Department of Transportation to approve fireworks for transport, and until now its authority stopped at consumer product.
The final rule extends it. An FCA may currently obtain authority to approve fireworks constructed to APA 87-1A, the consumer fireworks standard. Thirty days after publication, an FCA may also seek PHMSA approval to certify articles built to APA 87-1B, the display fireworks standard, and APA 87-1C, the standard for entertainment industry and technical pyrotechnics. The agency has amended four parts of the hazardous materials regulations to carry the change, including the definition of an FC number and Special Provision 200 in the Hazardous Materials Table.
Thirteen parties commented. All of them supported the expansion.
One commenter changed the text
The interesting part is what one of those commenters extracted along the way.
Phantom Fireworks Companies supported the rule on a condition: that PHMSA withdraw existing approvals for professional-use articles classified as UN0336, fireworks 1.4G, eliminate the classification, and enforce against product it described as overloaded illegal explosives sold as consumer fireworks. PHMSA did not agree to any of that. It clarified in the preamble that it does not currently authorise certification agencies to issue approvals in that class at all, and then went further than a clarification: based on the comment, it added a new paragraph to section 173.65 saying explicitly that an FCA may not do so.
So a comment that failed on its own terms still moved a line of regulatory text. The wider question is not closed either. The rule's footnote records a petition from the American Pyrotechnics Association, filed in April 2025, asking PHMSA to incorporate the 2024 version of APA 87-1C, a version that removes the classification entirely.
Two corrections in passing
The document also fixes its own proposal.
The notice of proposed rulemaking had amended the Hazardous Materials Table entry for UN0430, articles pyrotechnic, when it meant UN0101, fuse non-detonating. The final rule corrects the entry, and separately corrects the proposed change to section 107.402, which had placed UN0101 under APA 87-1C when it belongs to APA 87-1B. PHMSA states that none of the revisions will have any adverse impact on safety.
