Dangerous goods

What are dangerous goods?

Updated: 14 February 2025

Dangerous goods are substances that present an immediate hazard to people, property or the environment due to properties including flammability, explosiveness, acute toxicity and dangerous reactivity.

Suppliers of Dangerous Goods are obliged to:

assign a Class, Subsidiary Risk and Packing Group to the goods, which will be represented by a Hazard Class Diamond; and
pack the goods in a special way that complies with the packaging requirements

Class Label visual reference

Illustrations of Class Labels are included in the following chart:

Dangerous goods classes

The above chart also includes pictograms associated with the national adoption of the Global Harmonisation Scheme (GHS). Refer the chemical management guideline.

Hazard recognition using Hazard Class Diamonds

In Victoria, Dangerous Goods are grouped into classes based on their dangerous properties. Each class is labelled with a coloured, diamond-shaped Class Label to ensure that people can quickly recognise the dangers it presents.
All Dangerous Goods must be labelled with their appropriate diamond-shaped Class Label.
To use or store Dangerous Goods in a workplace, you must meet the following requirements:
- This includes determining safety requirements via risk assessment, with reference to the safety data sheet.
- A number of generic risk assessments for Dangerous Goods are available under Forms at the top right side of this page.
- A further set of requirements specific to Dangerous Goods, as described below.
Packaging
In the event that you need to transport Dangerous Goods, you will need to pack the goods according to their Packaging Group classification.
Dangerous goods manifest
A Dangerous Goods Manifest must be kept listing all Dangerous Goods stored in the workplace. You can fulfill this requirement by keeping a chemical inventory as described under Chemical Inventories (under GoldFFX on this page).
At the University of Melbourne, a Dangerous Goods Manifest is kept in the fire panel of certain designated buildings, to ensure its availability to emergency services. The Building Emergency Controller for each designated building is responsible for keeping the manifest up to date. The Director, OHS and Injury Management, determines which buildings are designated to have this requirement.
Please refer to the Chemical management guideline for more information.
Storage
Specific requirements for the storage and handling of dangerous goods are outlined in the chemical management guidelines. Information associated with dangerous goods storage are outlined in the following guidelines:
- Procurement and maintenance of dangerous goods storage cabinets
- Health & Safety: Dangerous good segregation and storage requirements (chart)
- Refer to the Chemical management guideline for more detailed advice.
Placarding of Buildings and Entrances
- HAZCHEM outer warning placards are required on all entrances to buildings where Dangerous Goods are stored in quantities that exceed the Placarding Quantity. Dangerous Goods Class Labels are also required on or near storage locations whose contents exceed the Placarding Quantity.
- The Placarding Quantity is set out in Schedule 2 of the Dangerous Goods (Storage and Handling) Regulations 2022. This Schedule is available in the Chemical management guidelines.
- To determine whether your building exceeds the Placarding Quantity, you will need to determine the quantity of Dangerous Goods in the building.

High consequence dangerous goods

Ammonium nitrate

Ammonium nitrate is classified as High Consequence Dangerous Good in Victoria due to security risks associated with its sale, supply, storage and use. Under the High Consequence Dangerous Goods (HCDG) Regulations 2016 (Vic), most organisations must apply for a licence if they store, use or handle any quantity of ammonium nitrate.

Key information:

Tertiary education institutions are exempt from licensing requirements for small quantities if:

i. The HCDG is for the purpose of educational instructions, research or testing

ii. The total quantity held across the whole institution is no more than 3kg.

The University does not hold a HCDG license and therefore total holdings of ammonium nitrate for the whole University must remain under 3kg.

Request ammonium nitrate:

The University’s management plan for the use of ammonium nitrate details how the conditions of the education institution are implemented at the University of Melbourne.

To ensure compliance with the education institution exemption, staff and students using ammonium nitrate for educational instructions, research or testing must follow the Ammonium Nitrate Management Plan.

Note that only staff can obtain ammonium nitrate by submitting their request via a ServiceNow ticket. Students who do not have access to ServiceNow must ask their supervisor to submit the request through ServiceNow for them.

More detailed information can viewed internally at KB0028782.