Shipping Restrictions on Fixer/Hardener?

Does anyone know what it is in fixer hardening solution that prevents B&H from shipping it to you?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/con...297&is=REG&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

Actually, it's not just hardener. Some non-hardening, rapid fixers also cannot be shipped:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/con...585&is=REG&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

Anyone know why? Driving into Manhattan to pick up a bottle of hardener isn't the way I'd planned to spend the day... <sigh>

hardener

Seadrive-see if you can get them to ship you Ethol E-Z Fix Hardener-or maybe someone else has it. You could check with Calumet.
Peter

I believe these are USPS shipping restrictions on certain chemicals via air. UPS has no qualms about shipping almost anything. I think at some point in the past B&H got tagged or nervous about this and decided just to not deal with the hassle. Plenty other companies ship fixer. I think I got mine from Freestyle.

Last I knew, B&H used FedEx to ship. FedEx is/was rather fussy about shipping hazardous materials and most/all liquid chemstry is hazmat.

UPS will ship, but you pay a hazmat charge on it and that sometimes makes it not worth the effort.

B&H is just following the law and you can't blame them.

Shop around, lots of dealers will just put the stuff in a box, not label it hazmat and ship it anyway. They, or you, will have to deal with the problem of spillage if it comes up.

Dear Fred,

Please excuse this if it is a foolish question, but why not simply order one of the products that they can ship? There are both hardening and non hardening fixers available as well as at least one (Heico) separate hardener available for shiping.

Neal Wydra

B&H offers a variety of shipping options. The one I always use is UPS ground, and in all honesty, I haven't paid a lot of attention to the other options. (I'm in Rhode Island, and UPS ground from B&H usually arrives in a day or two, so I don't care to pay three times as much for overnight shipping that'll likely arrive at my door the same time as ground would.)

My understanding is that B&H is just being very conservative about this; many types of products go in their "will not ship" category until they can check out their contents in detail to be 100% sure that they aren't restricted. Moving items out of this category doesn't seem to be a big priority for them. They also don't want the hassle/risk of setting up a system to ship hazmat items via some methods but not others.

Other retailers are happy to ship most of these items. Adorama and Freestyle, for instance, both ship most of the things B&H won't ship, although they do restrict it to ground shipment (UPS with Adorama, FedEx with Freestyle). I've never noticed a specific hazmat charge when buying such items from either place, although it might have been bundled into the "shipping" line on the invoice without further elaboration. AFAIK, they aren't breaking any laws; it's just that B&H is keeping very far from breaking any laws.

Neal said:

Dear Fred,

Please excuse this if it is a foolish question, but why not simply order one of the products that they can ship? There are both hardening and non hardening fixers available as well as at least one (Heico) separate hardener available for shiping.

Neal Wydra

Click to expand...

I just ordered some Kodafix from Freestyle (I had other things on my shopping list there anyhoo), and I'll get a 4-liter box of Sprint non-hardening fixer from B&H.

I was just curious as to why they didn't offer any shipping options on some of this stuff. Sheesh, it's not nuclear waste, is it?

And don't call me Shirley, I mean, Fred...

Thanks, everyone!

This seems to be a new thing. Liquid hardener, in concentrated form, contains fairly concentrated but weak acid (usually acetic). It has not generally been considered hazardous, but maybe someone got nervous about lawsuits in case some spilled. In solutions like Kodafix, although the acid is not that much less concentrated, they probably believe it to be diluted to the point of being benign - or maybe they just haven't discovered it yet. Most liquid chemistry is not particularly hazardous, but our litigious society makes life difficult.

I recall seeing a thread about this somewhere else a while ago. The following is from memory and is nth-hand information, so take it with a grain of salt. That out of the way....

As I understand it, a lot of the shipping restrictions that cause B&H to not ship certain items relate to concerns over air transport, and they can be traced back to one or more airplane crashes a few years ago that had as (at least partial) causes problems with volatile cargo. This caused the FAA (or whoever is responsible for such things) to impose strict limits on what may be shipped by air. Of course, 99.99% of the time, shipping acidic fixer by air would cause no problems; but if it were to leak, and if the package next to it were to leak, and if the two happened to combine in the wrong way, it could conceivably cause a crash. Even combinations that would just be a nuisance or that would damage other cargo on a ground shipment could cause a crash on an airplane.

Where B&H differs from most other mail-order photo retailers is that they don't want to be bothered with flagging items that can't be shipped by air but that can be shipped by ground. If it can't be shipped by air, they won't ship it at all.

Again, this is all from memory and may be riddled with errors.

B&H wont ship stop bath either. Adorama has no problem shipping any chemical. I dont know what the issue is but I do business with both companies, both ship to my location via UPS. Adorama also has better prices on some items, so build your working "wish list" on both and order appropriately!

I see you were well ahead of me.<g>

Neal Wydra

Shipping restrictions are not about what the product does ie. fixer, hardener, stop bath, ect. but what the chemical components are, what percentage of the volume they represent, the quality and size of the packaging and the "corrosivity test" as defined the CFR 49. Then you have to become U.P.S. certified to ship hazarous materials through U.P.S. That is why there is some confusion as to why some products can be shiped or not.