Message from Geoffrey Peckham about Effective Safety Communication

This video speaks for itself. Very well done and communicates the importance of developing safety communication using best practice standards.

Can I use symbol-only safety labels in North America?

The answer to this is technically, yes. Meaning it would comply with the latest revision of ANSI Z535.4. However, it's essential to consider what the court system deems as adequate. You can refer to earlier posts to learn more, but to reitterate, a label should convey 4 things:

1. Nature of the hazard
2. Consequence of interaction
3. How to avoid the hazard
4. Severity level

One symbol alone cannot communicate all four. Multiple symbols used in conjuction can communicate 3 of the 4 elements, however the element that symbols alone cannot convey is the severity level or probability of injury. Will I die if I come into contact with this hazard? Or will it just result in a minor cut? Impossible to decipher from just a symbol.

Another thing to consider, and a very important one: does everyone comprehend a symbol or set of symbols the same way? Absolutely not! You can do all the comprehension testing in the world, but it just takes one person to get hurt and a lawyer to say that symbol meant this to my client, not that.

You always have to come back to what is the goal of utilizing safety labels...protecting people. You want to do your absolute best in communicating safety. I realize there may be cost considerations (however, it's just a label people). You may even have size restrictions (a more valid reason), however you MUST keep the installers, operaters, servicers and disposers in mind. Here in North America, I would recommend utilizing text along with accompanying symbols to communicate hazards. Translations would also be recommended, but we can get into that another day!

Do I need to retrofit in-field equipment with updated product safety labels?

Tough question to answer. I would recommend speaking to product liability specialists and/or attorneys on this matter. I have personally seen companies sued for inadequate warnings on equipment that was manufactured dating back to the 1960's. My understanding is that there is no standard or requirement out there to follow on this topic.

I do have an opinion on the matter of course. If you feel that the labels on equipment that are out in the field do NOT meet the elements deemed as "adequate", it is my feeling that you should do everything possible to help protect the users of your product. Retrofit with new labels. In doing so, this can also potentially limit the liability risk. There's obviously several factors to consider when undertaking a project like this. First, do you know where your product landed? If you're selling consumer products, it's virtually impossible to know where all the products you sold ended up. But, if you're manufacturing 1,000 machines a year direct to the customer, you probably have a good idea of which companies to contact. Something as a simple notification that new safety labels have been made available to those companies could be a good strategy. You could even make them available through service representatives. Whatever is reasonable.

Unfortunately, this is such a grey area that there isn't one defined solution. If you'd like to contact product liability attorneys or specialists, feel free to e-mail me. I will refer good ones.

How do I know what warnings to put on my product and what should they say?

The first step to answering this question is to identify the hazards. There are plenty of great resources to help you with a risk assessment. The important thing here is to start early in the product development stage. If you can identify them during the design phase, it eliminates backtracking. If you have designed the warning out of the equipment, than it doesn't need to be warned against. If you can, guard the hazards as much as possible. There is debate whether to include a safety label on the guard to warn against the hazards beneath it. There is also debate as to if you should place a warning beneath the guard to warn against the hazard should the guard be removed. My advice would be to do both. Better safe than sorry. There is, however, no requirement that I am aware of to do either. The rest of the hazards that cannot be designed out or be guarded against need to have a safety label. Just be careful not to "over-warn". This may take meaning away from what really should be warned against. I've heard the term "crying wolf". Too many labels may raise false alarm.

The second step would be to understand who the intended audience is. Who is going to be using your product, how much do they know (i.e. trained electricians vs. general public), and will they understand the word message? Considering the nature of our society, how it is still becoming more and more diverse, you cannot assume everyone speaks English or that they are literate for that matter. So you need to consider translations and/or utilizing symbols in your safety label. Also, you should think about being explicit but in concise manner. Too much information may be disregarded. There is only so much time one has to get out of harms ways.

Remember, design hazards out as much as possible, guard those of which can be guarded (possible warn in addition), and definitely warn against the rest. The goal is to protect people and in doing so properly, you can reduce potential liability exposure.

Case Study: Material Handling Equipment

To break up the monotony of standards jargon, I thought it best to provide a recent example of a client looking for advice on their product safety labeling strategy. Recently, it was advised by their insurance carrier, who was looking to provide products liability insurance to their company, to have Clarion Safety Systems review their current labeling for compliance. Something Clarion offers free to virtually everyone. This company was a manufacturer of conveyors, glass breakers, bag breakers, along with other material handling and sorting systems for the solid waste and recycling industries. They were using what I've termed in the past as the old "OSHA-style" formatting. There are several things wrong with that style of formatting. Some of the major ones are that they generally include very short messages that do not convey all the necessary elements a label should convey (hazard identification, consequence of interaction, how to avoid the hazard, and level of severity). Normally, you'll see something like "Danger: Keep Out". Keep out from what? What if I didn't, what would happen? Would I get zapped by electricity? Will the cops come and arrest me? You get my point...ANSI Z535.4 formatting allows for more explicit information, in a concise manner. The other problem with "OSHA-style" formatting is that it doesn't have a panel for the use of symbols. Symbols are, in my opinion, a necessity to have when conveying safety information. For one, they communicate across language barriers. This day and age there are all sorts of different ethnicities present even in US factories and manufacturing environments. Not all speak English. Symbols help in these instances. The other great thing about symbols is that they serve to quickly remind. If someone were to come in contact with a hazard, they need to respond immediately to avoid it. Not many people will stand there and read the entire label. Symbols help to speed the avoidance process up and get the person out of harms way...faster. There are other things wrong with "OSHA-style" formats, but we'll stop here for now.

Once we corrected the formatting issue, the client asked my opinion regarding translations. A huge topic right now when developing safety labels is when should I translate, or better yet, do I have to translate at all. The only thing ANSI Z535.4 has to say about translations is that they are an optional consideration and that if you choose to do so, they should be "checked regarding their appropriateness for the intended audience" (it should be noted that this standard is just a guideline, there's still a lot of grey areas. essentially it is up to the manufacturer to decide from the best options presented). ANSI also provides 29 translated signal words for you to use which is helpful. So back to the question, should I? do I? am I required to translate? What I can tell you is that the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC says warnings should preferably use readily understood symbols and/or have one of the languages of the country in which the machinery is to be used accompanied, upon request, by the languages understood by the operators. So if  you're shipping into the EU, you probably should translate appropriately. This is a topic that will be debated for quite some time. Hopefully I can provide better clarification in future posts.

So what did the client decide? They standardized all their labeling in the US to a bi-lingual safety label format using English and Spanish/Mexican text. When shipping internationally, they will use a bi-linigual format as well, depending on what country. A sound strategy and much, much better than their previous one.

P.S. Did you know that you can use ISO-formatted symbols and be compliant with ANSI? These folks incorporated ISO symbols which made them fully compliant with both ANSI Z535.4 and ISO 3864-2. There is one format that meets both. More on that later...

Is ANSI Z535.4 a legal requirement?

Unfortunately, there isn't an easy "Yes" answer for this question. The ANSI Z535.4 standard is a voluntary standard, which means technically they are NOT a legal requirement. However, you could argue that they are mandatory. From a legal perspective, every product manufacturer has a legal "duty to warn" against the hazards that are associated with their product. You should be providing warnings to the installers, users, services, and disposers of your product - essentially anyone who could come in contact with it. Part of this legal requirement is to "meet or exceed" the current best practices. History tells us that the ANSI Z535 standards are viewed as the standards benchmark in "inadequate warnings" cases. State and federal courts have said that these standards represent the state of the art. So, while voluntary, they're really essential. Hopefully your legal council is advising the same.

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.