IATA Tackling Lithium Battery Risk for Air Freight Cargo

IATA Cargo is working with regulators, postal authorities, airlines and forwarders to combat the threat posed by unauthorised or wilfully mis-declared airfreight shipments of lithium batteries.

Dave Brennan, assistant director of cargo safety and standards at airline industry grouping IATA, said that 400m lithium batteries are manufactured each week.

Lithium batteries are now heavily regulated as airfreight shipments because of the risk from “thermal runaway” when a single overheated unit can propagate heat transfer to the next cell in the box and so cause a fire to spread throughout an entire bulk load of batteries.