HazMat Safety Consulting to host webinar on e-commerce hazmat liability

HazMat Safety Consulting will host a free Oct. 6 LinkedIn Live session on who may be legally responsible when online sellers ship hazardous materials and lithium batteries. The webinar comes as regulators and carriers increase scrutiny of undeclared hazmat in e-commerce shipments.

Why it matters: - Online sellers may carry hazmat shipping liability even when a sale happens on a marketplace. - The issue affects common consumer products such as lithium batteries, aerosols, perfumes and nail polish. - Carriers and regulators are tightening enforcement as e-commerce expands the number of individual shippers.

What happened: - HazMat Safety Consulting, an Americase International company, will host a free LinkedIn Live webinar on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026, at 11 a.m. CDT. - The session is titled “Sold, Shipped, and Out of Compliance: The Dangerous Goods Crisis Hidden Inside E-Commerce.” - The webinar will focus on why individual online sellers, not the marketplaces where they sell, may be legally responsible for hazardous materials they ship. - The session will be 60 minutes long. - The event will be held on LinkedIn Live. - Registration and more information are available on Americase International’s webinar registration page.

The details: - Under the federal Hazardous Materials Regulations, an “offeror” is a person responsible for certain pre-transportation functions for a hazardous material or a person who tenders the material to a carrier. - In e-commerce, that role may fall to the individual seller who prepares and ships an order. - The marketplaces that host the sale may not be the party responsible for the shipment. - A July 30, 2024 U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission decision found a major online marketplace legally responsible, as a distributor, for recalling hazardous products sold by third-party sellers and fulfilled through its warehouses. - The company is challenging that decision in federal court. - Hazmat shipping rules do not use a comparable standard for marketplace responsibility. - The U.S. Department of Transportation says about 1,500 transportation incidents happen each year when undeclared hazardous materials are shipped. - As of July 12, 2026, the U.S. Postal Service charges a $50 fee on commercial packages found to contain hazardous materials that were not properly declared and labeled. - On Sept. 21, 2026, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration proposed adding “thermal runaway” as an outcome on the federal hazardous materials incident report form. - The webinar will examine how non-compliant shipments can move from a seller’s listing to aircraft, sort facilities and delivery trucks. - The session will also cover what marketplaces, compliance teams and third-party logistics providers can do to strengthen dangerous goods compliance. - Speakers are Ryan Paquet, president of HazMat Safety Consulting, and Mike Pagel, senior consultant at HazMat Safety Consulting. - Paquet previously served as director of the Approvals and Permits Division at PHMSA. - Pagel previously worked with PHMSA’s Hazardous Materials Information Center. - Attendees will learn why the “person who offers” standard can place significant compliance responsibility on individual sellers. - Attendees will also learn how non-compliant shipments move through the logistics network, what enforcement challenges PHMSA and the Federal Aviation Administration face, and what proactive compliance can look like for marketplaces, retailers and 3PLs. - The session will explain what counts as “fully regulated hazmat” and how small sellers can tell if they are personally responsible. - The webinar is free, and a recording will be provided to all registrants.

Between the lines: - The webinar reflects growing pressure on e-commerce platforms and logistics providers to clarify where hazmat responsibility starts and ends. - The core regulatory gap is that shipping law was built around manufacturers and freight forwarders, not garage sellers and checkout pages. - That mismatch leaves individual sellers exposed if they do not understand hazmat classification, packaging and documentation rules. - Ryan Paquet said he helped administer the rule that defines who is responsible for a hazmat shipment and that the rule was built for a world of manufacturers and freight forwarders.

What's next: - HazMat Safety Consulting expects the session to help platforms, retailers, 3PLs and small sellers strengthen dangerous goods compliance as e-commerce evolves. - Registrants will receive the webinar recording after the event. - The event is aimed at e-commerce platform managers, marketplace compliance teams, 3PL and fulfillment directors, retail operations executives and small business owners who ship regulated products.

The bottom line: - Online sales do not remove hazmat responsibility, and the person packing the order may still be the one on the hook.