Bhiwadi · Alwar · hazardous goods
A chemical consignment carries two quite different exposures. One is the value of the goods, which a cargo policy covers. The other is what the goods do to everyone else if they escape, which it does not. Businesses handling hazardous substances above the prescribed quantities are separately required to hold public liability cover, and the two are regularly confused.
Read this against your own policy schedule. The clause set named there decides which rows below you are insured for.
| Exposure | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Leakage and spillage | The characteristic chemical loss. Ordinary leakage is excluded under every clause set, and leakage following an accident is only covered where the accident itself is an insured peril. |
| Contamination of the consignment | Product rendered off-specification is a total loss even where the drums are intact. Proving specification at despatch matters. |
| Contamination of other cargo and property | A liability exposure rather than a cargo one. On a consolidated load this can exceed the value of your own goods by a wide margin. |
| Fire and explosion | Covered under ITC-B as a named peril, and the reason the rest of the load and the third-party exposure need thinking about together. |
| Third-party injury after an escape | The Public Liability Insurance Act exposure. No-fault, statutory, and outside the cargo policy entirely. |
In order. The first two are the ones people get wrong, and they are the ones that cannot be fixed afterwards.
Written notice to the transporter must go within 180 days of the booking date under section 16 of the Carriage by Road Act, 2007. Not from the date of loss, and a claim bill does not count as notice. The wording is ready to copy at our claim letters page.
Useful when the loss is being described by a driver, a munshi or a godown supervisor rather than by you.
| Hindi | What it means for the policy |
|---|---|
| रसायन | chemicals |
| रिसाव | leakage, excluded when it is ordinary |
| ड्रम / कैरबॉय | drum, carboy |
| आग / विस्फोट | fire, explosion, both covered perils |
| सार्वजनिक दायित्व | public liability, the separate statutory cover |
Chemical exports carry dangerous-goods declaration obligations on top of the insurance position, and the marine leg runs on Institute Cargo Clauses. Where the cargo is classified as dangerous goods, check that the policy does not carry an exclusion that removes precisely the cargo you are shipping.
The clause sets themselves are set out in full on our marine cargo clauses page, including the seven named perils under ITC-B taken from an insurer's filed wording.
Yes, for owners handling hazardous substances above the quantities prescribed under the Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991. The Act was a response to the Bhopal gas tragedy and provides immediate relief to victims on a no-fault basis, so the claimant does not have to prove negligence. It is a separate policy from the cargo cover.
Ordinary leakage is excluded under every clause set. Spillage following an insured accident is covered where the accident itself is a covered peril, so a spill after a collision is treated differently from a drum that simply seeped. The cargo policy covers the value of what was lost, not the consequences of the escape.
That is a liability exposure, not a cargo one, and the transit policy does not respond to it. On consolidated loads the exposure can far exceed the value of your own goods, which is the usual reason a chemical business needs liability cover alongside the cargo policy.
The cargo policy pays you for your goods. The liability policy pays other people for what your goods did to them. A business that carries only the first is insured for the smaller of its two exposures.
The despatch specification and batch records, the packing and labelling certificate, the dangerous-goods documentation carried by the driver, and a record of who and what was affected. Contamination claims are proved by showing the product was in specification when it left your premises.
Not automatically, but some wordings carry exclusions or conditions that apply to specified classes. Where the cargo is classified as dangerous goods, check the exclusions against your actual UN classification before shipment rather than after a loss.