Railway shipment of hazardous cargo, Safety, and homeland security - Essay Example

The law provided various guidelines on packaging and operational rules safeguarding the shipment of such commodities using the railway line (Downey, 2014). After the 1975 Act, various laws and bills have been adopted to control the conveyance accorded to hazardous products within the country. Through these improvements, there has been reduced number of accidents and spillage of dangerous materials and gases into the atmosphere. These transportations of the materials through railway line are gradually improving and in the future, there will be limited or no cases of accidents or destruction of property through this form of transport.

The United States Railway system is used for moving various types of hazardous cargo across the country. The system is responsible for transporting toxic gas cargos across the state. Twenty percent of all of the gases transported in the country are done through the railway system. According to Spraggins (2015), this percentage is equivalent to 1.7 million carloads of toxic gases moved by rail. The perfect example of gas transported by rail is chlorine, which is essential for both the public health and major private laboratories.

In addition, chlorine is necessary for purifying water. Due to its importance and its hazardous nature, twenty-two percent of chlorine is transported through railways (Spraggins 2015). It translates to 35000 carloads of chlorine annually. In addition, the railway system is utilised for freight of crude oil across the country. Approximately millions of gallons of highly flammable oil are hauled by rail to various destinations in the country. Reports and statistics by the American Association of roads in 2009 indicated that there were 9500 railcars that moved across the country in 2008 carrying crude oil (Mark, Seely, & Barrett, 2006).

The high number crude of oil moved was because of its use