Safety signs and symbols are important safety communicating tools, they help to indicate various hazards that present in plant site or workplace. At the same time, they warn workers to always keep watching out for those hazards by giving required information and safety instructions.
Safety signs and symbols do not only inform the presence of hazards but also help create workers’ safety awareness. It is very important in reducing accidents in the workplace more obviously in manufacturing, heavy industry and on construction sites but also important in office-based environments as well.
To get the most out of health and safety signs and symbols, you should choose the right ones for each work location on your premises. Each work area needs different workplace health and safety signs and symbols. This is because each work area has different types of hazards. A risk assessment of each activity or the designated area will help identify hazards. Appropriate actions for ensuring safety can then be drawn up and selecting the appropriate safety signs can then be selected. Where possible safety signs showed needs to be changed (at least their location) to keep the safety message fresh and to avoid “sign blindness”. You can always contact Green Safety Limited for a professional risk assessment and standard solution.
Safety Signs and Symbols Standards
Safety signs and symbols consist of messages, words and pictorial symbol with a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. All the shapes and colors are standardized. Each shape has different meaning and each color reflects specific meaning.
Using standardized health and safety signs and symbols will make them understandable and overcome language barriers and the new ISO 7010 standard is the first step towards global harmonization of safety symbols.
Safety Signs – Shapes
The shapes of workplace health and safety signs are triangles, circles and squares or rectangles.
i. Triangles: indicates caution (potential hazards) or warning (definite hazards), for example, toxic gas and electric shock.
ii. Circles: mandatory or recommended actions and are normally used to depict an action you must do, for example wearing eye goggles and safety hard hats.
iii. Squares or rectangles show information, i.e. general information and emergency information (first aid, fire fighting).
iv. A Circle with a 45° diagonal slash across the middle from the upper left to the lower right: points out forbidden or prohibited actions.
Safety Signs – Colours
The colors used in workplace safety signs and symbols are red, yellow, blue and green.
i. Red signs: designates areas for emergency devices like fire fighting equipment, or to emphasize unsafe or forbidden actions.
ii. Yellow: notifies workers to take caution and be alerted of hazards, reducing necessary risks.
iii. Blue: shows a particular action or behavior, for example, instruction to wear personal protective equipment.
iv. Green: designates the location of emergency measures or equipment like first aid kits, evacuation routes, fire exits, escape ladders or fire assembly points.