PHMSA filed sixteen hazardous materials final rules in a single 8.45 batch, and put a savings number on three of them
Sixteen. That is how many hazardous materials final rules the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration put on public inspection at 8.45 on Monday morning, in one block, all publishing on 4 August.
They run in sequence. The dockets are HM-268A through HM-268P, PHMSA-2025-0089 through PHMSA-2025-0104, and the regulatory identification numbers are 2137-AG03 through 2137-AG18 with nothing missing in between. The proposals behind them appeared together in the Federal Register issue of 1 July 2025. A year later they land together as well.
Every one carries the same designation: a deregulatory action under Executive Order 14192, with total costs to the regulated community that PHMSA finds will be less than zero.
What the package quantifies
Three of the sixteen carry a dollar figure.
The largest is HM-268C, which raises the lithium battery limits inside the materials of trade exception and is estimated at annualized savings of $14.4 million in 2024 dollars. The aggregate ceiling on a motor vehicle has been 200 kg, or 440 pounds, for everything carried under that exception. The new allowance is up to 30 kg per battery, 500 kg gross on the vehicle, and no limit on batteries installed in equipment, with conditions attached on short circuits, shifting damage and accidental activation. PHMSA names the trades it has in mind: construction, landscaping, mowing, tree service, food service and entertainment.
Second is HM-268J, at $5.7 million a year. It raises the gross receipts threshold below which a farmer is excepted from hazmat security plan requirements, and from in-depth security training, to $825,000 in 2025 dollars. The figure it replaces was set in October 1993. It is now indexed.
Third is HM-268A, at $254,565 a year. It rewrites the definition of an aerosol at 49 CFR 171.8 so that a container expelling only gas counts as one, which the current text does not allow and international standards do.
That is the whole of the quantified case, and it sums to roughly $20.35m a year.
What it does not
The other thirteen rules assert savings and do not size them. HM-268B, on reduced size markings for limited quantity shipments, says why in as many words: the savings are not quantified because PHMSA lacks comprehensive data for limited quantity shipments across all surface modes of transportation.
Two further figures appear and belong in different columns. HM-268H, which ends payment by paper check for registration fees, estimates a saving to the government of $7,691, built from 156 hours a year of internal labour at $49.31 an hour. And in HM-268D, on electronic emergency response information, the Council on the Safe Transportation of Hazardous Articles told the docket that two of its members put the cost of obtaining paper copies at roughly $33,000 to $70,000 every Emergency Response Guidebook cycle. That is a commenter's number, not the agency's.
The rest is housekeeping of a kind that rarely gets counted. HM-268K strips out references to Association of American Railroads Bureau of Explosives publications that PHMSA describes as decades out of date, along with the rail reporting that went with them. HM-268L through HM-268P fold five long-standing special permits into the regulations outright, which removes the renewal cycle for anyone operating under them. HM-268E stops the agency maintaining its own list of CERCLA hazardous substances and points at the Environmental Protection Agency's instead.
Fourteen of the sixteen take effect 30 days after publication. HM-268M takes 15 days. HM-268E takes 120.
