Description

Safety signs

Safety signs are a type of sign designed to warn of hazards, indicate mandatory actions or required use of Personal protective equipment, prohibit actions or objects, identify the location of firefighting or safety equipment, or marking of exit routes.

In addition to being encountered in industrial facilities; safety signs are also found in public places and communities, at electrical pylons and Electrical substations, cliffs, beaches, bodies of water, on motorized equipment, such as lawn mowers, and areas closed for construction or demolition.

One of the earliest attempts to standardize safety signage in the United States was the 1914 Universal Safety Standards.^[1] The signs were fairly simple in nature, consisting of an illuminated board with “DANGER” in white letters on a red field.^[1] An arrow was added to draw attention to the danger if it was less obvious. Signs indicating exits, first aid kits consisted of a green board, with white letters. The goal with signs was to inform briefly.^[1] The next major standards to follow were ASA^[a] Z35.1 in 1941, which later revised in 1967 and 1968. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration devised their requirements from ASA Z35.1-1968 in the development of their rules, OSHA §1910.145 for the usage of safety signage^[2]

In the 1980s, American National Standards Institute formed a committee to update the Z53^[b] and Z35 standards. In 1991, ANSI Z535 was introduced, which was intended to modernize signage through increased use of symbols, the introduction of a new header, ‘Warning’ and requiring that wording not just state the hazard, but also the possible harm the hazard could inflict and how to avoid the hazard.^[3] Until 2013, OSHA regulations^[4] technically required usage of signage prescribed in OSHA §1910.145, based on the standard ASA Z35.1-1968. Regulation changes and clarification of the law now allow usage of signs co

Prior to widespread globalization and adoption of standards from the ISO, most countries developed their own standards for safety signage. Text only signs were common prior to introduction of European Council Directive 77/576/EEC on 25 July 1977, which required member states to have policies in place to ensure that “safety signs at all places of work conform to the principles laid down in Annex I”, which required color coding and symbols. In 1992, the European Council Directive 92/58/EEC replaced EEC 77/576/EEC. The new directive included improved information on how to utilize safety signage effectively. Beyond safety signs, EEC Directive 92/58/EEC standardize markings for fire equipment, acoustic signals, verbal and hand signals for vehicle movements.^[6] In 2013, the European Union adopted ISO 7010 to replace the symbols provided previously, adopting them as European Norm (EN) ISO 7010, standardizing symbols among the EU countries. Prior to this, while symbols were provided, symbols were permitted to vary in appearance “provided that they convey the same meaning and that no difference or adaptation obscures the meaning”.