I thought I was covered by following OSHA regulations on safety signs??

I've attended many trade shows in the material handling, packaging, semiconductor, and processing equipment industries. Although the percentages vary from show to show, what I continue to notice is that many manufacturer's still use the "OSHA-style" formatting for their product safety signs and labels. The only explanation I can come up with is that those manufacturer's are just simply not aware of the current requirements. In 1998, the ANSI Z535.4 standard notified manufacturers that the "OSHA-style" labels would be obsolete beginning the next published revision (2002). So, for almost 10 years now, these kinds of labels are no longer compliant with the ANSI Z535.4 standard. Companies are at HUGE risk for following this outdated formatting which I'll explain in a future post. What I did want to address here is the question "Will I still be in compliance with OSHA if I use ANSI Z535.4 formatted safety labels?". The answer is yes. The OSHA regulations for safety signs were written back in the 1970's and were based on the ANSI Z53 and Z35 standards. Those two standards were combined in the 1980's to form ANSI Z535. Complying with the latest version of the documents of which the original regulations were based WILL meet OSHA compliance. The legal term for this is "de minimis situation". OSHA does not update its regulations whenever a standard changes, and because of this, they do not want stop companies from using the latest in safety technology.