What are Safety Signs?

In simple terms, safety signs are signs that include a range of messages with the intent of keeping people from physical harm. Other signs are preventive in nature, instructing people for or against taking certain actions. A third type of safety signs are those categorized as informational and simply alert people to certain information, such as the whereabouts of a fire extinguisher. These signs are found in a range of different locations: factories, offices, educational institutions, and just about in any place where large amounts of people congregate. There is perceivable some degree of overlap between sign functionality, but for the most part they belong in distinctly different categories. The following post will summarize the main types of safety signs that are commonly found in the public domain and their differing purposes.

Cautionary

Cautionary signs, as briefly discussed in the opening paragraph, are intended in keeping people from physical harm. Such signs include, but are not limited to, high voltage, the presence of hazardous or flammable materials, areas requiring safety shoes or helmets and walking and traffic hazards.

Cautionary signs also include signs depicting less dramatically dangerous situations, such as warning against not getting your fingers stuck in a door, which can nevertheless end in personal injury. Signs in this category can be found in construction zones, electric power plants, munitions factories as well as office buildings, restaurants and department stores.

Preventative

Preventative signs a) alert people to prohibited areas or safety areas and/or b) prevent them from causing damage to themselves or the surrounding environment. Preventative signs can also be either prohibitive or instructional. A preventative sign can be one which alerts people to areas with restricted entry and confined spaces that might require a person to possess professional training or certain equipment before entering.

Other examples of this type of sign are an exit sign for emergency doorways or utility signs preventing workers from digging above a buried water line. This category also includes suggestive signs which encourage a particular action, such as rinsing a sink after using it. Preventative signs are commonly found in laboratories, restaurants, apartment buildings and public streets.

Informational

Informational signs express information that is not necessarily intended on alerting people to potentially dangerous situations or preventing damage. Rather, this category of signs simply alerts people, for example, to the location of certain necessary areas or services,

such as the location of a first aid station or bathroom. Informational signs are perhaps the broadest category and can be found in libraries, banks, stores, restaurants, halls, educational and governmental institutions, motor vehicle divisions, hospitals, and factories.

Specifications

At Safety IDESCO, all of our signs comply to the safety standards set forth by OSHA, or Occupational Safety and Health Administration, an agency belonging to the United States Department of Labor. Our signs also comply with the specifications of the ANSI, the American National Standards Institute. Our signs are encapsulated under high temperatures and pressure inside of 50 mils (1 mil is roughly equivalent to one one-thousandth of an inch, or .0254 millimeter) of rigid PVC, are chemical and weather resistant and stand up to physical abuse and tampering, rendering them resistant to forced removal.

A sheet of paper is roughly 4 mil thick. Many of our signs are also enhanced with OSHA and/or ANSI symbols and can be delivered with either brass eyelets or adhesive mounted. Some of our signs can be semi-custom made and others are available in Braille, such as disability accessible signs. Some of our signs also come in Spanish.