UN Manual of Tests and Criteria in Maritime Cargo Classification
The UN Manual of Tests and Criteria as the test substrate for IMSBC MHB classification: part III paragraphs 33.2.4.3.1, 33.4.6 and 33.5, section 37, and the Rev.7 edition designation.
The UN Manual of Tests and Criteria is the United Nations document that supplies the test methods behind the classification criteria in both the IMDG Code and the IMSBC Code. Where an IMSBC schedule assigns an MHB notation, the criterion it was assigned against is almost always a numbered paragraph of part III of this Manual.
The full article will cover the tests the IMSBC Code leans on directly: paragraph 33.2.4.3.1, the preliminary screening for combustible solids, with its 2 minute burn time over a 200 mm sample and its 20 minute spread criterion for powdered metals; paragraph 33.4.6, the self-heating test giving a rise over 10 degrees C on a 100 mm cube at 140 degrees C and at 100 degrees C; paragraph 33.5 for gas evolution on contact with water, calculated over 48 hours at one-hour intervals; paragraph 33.5.4.3.5 for the ambient self-heating criterion; and section 37 for the metal corrosion rate limb of the corrosive solids criterion.
It will also address the edition question, which is load-bearing and rarely cited. IMSBC amendment 07-23 defines the Manual as the seventh revised edition, ST/SG/AC.10/11/Rev.7 with Amendment 1, and a laboratory result issued against an earlier edition is not a result against the Code as it now stands. The same applies to the GHS, which amendment 07-23 takes as ST/SG/AC.10/30/Rev.9.