Anyone who deals with hazardous substances in their day-to-day work must refer to the TRGS 510 regulations. The amendment to the "Technical Rules for Hazardous Substances (TRGS) 510" became valid throughout Germany in February 2021 following its publication in the Joint Ministerial Gazette (GMBI). The new technical rules for "Storage of hazardous substances in portable containers" are now available on the homepage of the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) at www.baua.de.
In the new TRGS 510, the required information is no longer scattered throughout the document, but can be found where it is expected.
"While laws often become stricter or more complicated when they are updated, the new TRGS 510 makes them more user-friendly and easier to understand," explains Andreas Schneider, Product Manager at Cemo. If an employee previously wanted to store flammable liquids outdoors and only looked in the "old" TRGS 510 in the "Storage of flammable liquids" chapter of the main section, they would not have found what they were looking for. He should have known explicitly that at the very end of the document, in Appendix 5, there are also specifications for the necessary safety distances from buildings with regard to outdoor storage. In the new TRGS 510, these requirements for flammable liquids are now bundled into one chapter so that even less knowledgeable employees can use the regulations without making mistakes.
The amendment to TRGS 510 makes it necessary in any case to deal with the innovations in this set of regulations and to update the company's internal training documents accordingly. The update should also be taken as an opportunity for those responsible to take another comprehensive look at the storage and management of hazardous substances in their own company and to set themselves up in a legally compliant manner with new technical storage solutions.
