Since the first edition of the book, it has been determined thatmany terrorist events are associated with hazardous materials andtherefore, the Hazwoper regulation applies to emergency responders, fire and law enforcement personnel, who respond to these incidents.The new edition addresses this new reality by covering such topicsas Incident Command Systems in a much more thorough way. It alsocovers other topic more thoroughly because of the fear of largeterrorist incidences such as communication networks, using two wayradios, smart phones, tablets etc.

Also the since the first edition the United States has adoptedthe GHS, which includes criteria for the classification of health, physical and environmental hazards, as well as specifying whatinformation should be included on labels of hazardous chemicals aswell as safety data sheets. OSHA revised the federal HazardCommunication Standard in 2012 to align with the United Nations'GHS. This system while similar to Hazard Communication standard hasmany differences, which affect the Hazwoper portion of the HazardCommunication Standard, which worker must be made aware. They needto understand the newly required system of labels, pictograms, hazard statements, and hazard codes; as well as to understand thetransition from Material Safety Data Sheets to the requiredformatted Safety Data Sheets. The 2nd edition clearlypoints out the similarities and differences in chemical informationprovided to the worker because of the implementation of GHS.Understanding these changes can be critical to worker protectionsince some of changes are counterintuitive, such as the hazardclassification of a chemical once in category 1 was slight in theNFPA system is now severe in the GHS system.