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.

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.