Packaging national regulations cannot be easily found by a foreign corporation. General regulations provided by International Agreements, such as ADR, facilitate transportation and make it safer, because their rules arise from general experience.
There are exhaustive and detailed rules and instructions for the correct packaging and sample transport. Ignorance of them may not only cause personal risks, but also result in fines and sanctions. Main regulations come from WHO, the UN World Health Organization, which has developed a Guidance on regulations for the Transport of Infectious Substances to sponsor similar rules. This initiative aims to make international transport easier, since the use of similar packaging systems for infectious substances in different countries or continents can be useful.
According to the WHO Guidelines, the ADR Class 6.2 covers Infectious Substances, which are reasonably expected to contain pathogens and are divided in Category A (especially dangerous substances, assigned to UN 2900 or UN 2814), Category B (assigned to UN 3373) and Exempt Sample (especially low risk). The ADR contains the Packing Instructions P620 and P650 which regulate the way of packing infectious substances if they belong to Category A (P620) or B (P650).
For air transport, 620 and 650 IATA contain a very similar regulation, so the WHO Guidelines standardize the packaging way.
Moreover, infectious substances transport in the USA is regulated by 49 CFR, which is very similar to ADR. In the EU, besides the ADR, there are a few Directives which complete the whole regulation about biosecurity. As a matter of fact, if you obey ADR packing instructions, you will be allowed to transport anything across Europe.
