What is the Proper Content for an ANSI Z535.4 Product Safety Sign or Label?
The content of your product's safety signs and labels is incredibly important. The
mistake of having incomplete content can lead to accidents that result in personal
injuries, deaths, property damage, and litigation that typically results from such
occurrences. That's why determining the proper content for your product safety labels
is a serious matter and one that deserves your utmost attention. Fortunately, you
know your product and we know the standards necessary to help you get your warnings
where they need to be. Clarion has been in leadership positions on the ANSI and
ISO safety label standards-writing committees for the past two decades and we have
unparalleled amount of experience in applying these standards for manufacturers
in a large variety of industries. As you will see, successfully defining the content
your safety labels is a collaborative effort that involves critical choices, and
well-informed decisions need to be made to get things right.
Often manufacturers come to Clarion to revise product safety labels that were designed
using the old, outdated OSHA-style safety sign formats. These labels typically have
large type, short generic messages, and lack symbols (Figure 1). You should know
that in 2002 these old safety sign formats were completely removed from the ANSI
standards for both facility safety signs and product safety signs. This was done
for several good reasons, one of which is that they do not accommodate the level
of content now expected for a product safety label or facility safety sign. Though
the discussion here is about product safety label content, click
here
to find out more about how your own manufacturing facility can easily come into
compliance with the latest best practices with regards to the safety signs posted
on its walls and doors.
Fig. 1 Old OSHA-style safety labels made obsolete by ANSI Z535.4 in 2002
When it comes to product safety label content, at the root of the matter is this:
your labels should typically convey the following four content elements:
- The nature of the hazard (i.e. the type of hazard; for example, shock, cut, burn,
etc.).
- The consequence of interaction with the hazard.
- How to avoid the hazard.
- The seriousness level of the hazard.
Figure 2 shows how two typical Clarion safety labels do the job of conveying
these four content elements.
Fig. 2 How Clarion labels communicate the ANSI content requirements
Our advice to include all four content elements is bolstered by the last fifty years
of U.S. product liability case law. Over the years this content has essentially
become the prevailing U.S. legal definition for what constitutes an "adequate"
warning. The ANSI Z535 committee recognized this in the 1980s and 1990s and followed
the courts' lead by incorporating these content items into both the ANSI Z535.4
Product Safety Sign and Label Standard and the ANSI Z535.2 Environmental and Facility
Safety Sign Standard. As shown in the illustrations above, and according to these
ANSI standards, the first three items of content listed above are conveyed by the
word message and/or the symbol. The signal word panel communicates the last item
of content; hazard seriousness.
Although the ANSI standards allow you to omit one or more of the three content elements
conveyed by the word message or symbol (hazard nature, consequence, and avoidance),
you should have a pretty good reason before doing so. Yes, you could argue that
the injured person could have "inferred" the missing content from your
safety label's context of use or from some other source. But you could also lose
this argument. The question is, is it worth the risk? When working with our customers,
our advice is to consider including all items of content in their safety labels,
if it's possible to do so. Whether you do or don't do this, keep your risk assessment
documents that show what you considered in terms of the content of your product's
safety labels – these documents will become important if a liability lawsuit arises
involving your product.
The key to developing the content for your safety labels involves three things:
- Knowing your product's potential hazards and the information needed to avoid the
hazards (ascertained from your product's risk assessment).
- Knowing how to use a standards-based approach to formatting the message with words,
symbols, colors and formats that will suit your particular market audience.
- Knowing how other companies and industries have approached communicating similar
hazard information.
As our customer, we recognize that the first of the above items is in your court
– you know your product and its potential hazards better than anyone. As for the
second item, we have the ability to discuss the information you provide us and work
with you to give you an understanding of your standards-based options for formatting
this information into a safety sign or label. And finally, as regards the third
point, we've worked with over 10,000 manufacturers in 180+ industries and we can
assist you to also understand how other companies have addressed communicating similar
hazard information. It's in this way that working with Clarion in the development
of your product's safety labels is a collaborative exercise that is both efficient
and effective, saving you both time and money in development costs, and, most importantly,
getting this critical task done right.
The job of defining the proper content of your product's safety labels is one that
is never finished. You must periodically re-evaluated your labels in light of changes
to the standards, as new symbols become codified, and as new product safety and
accident information comes to light. Choosing Clarion as your safety label manufacturer
benefits your company as we are always fully informed as to where the safety signage
standards are changing and which safety symbols are currently in the ISO registration
process. We look forward to being of assistance to your company.