Health and safety signs are in every Australian workplace. Many people walk past dozens of them each day and take in only the few they already recognise. The rest fade into the background of their work environment, even though any one of them can be what keeps someone out of an ambulance.
Workplace Health and Safety Signs
Health and safety signs in Australia are governed by the Australian Standard AS 1319-1994. This sets out how signage is used to regulate and control safety-related behaviour, warn of hazards, and give emergency information including fire protection details. Colour, shape, and symbol are fixed for each function, so a sign can be read as a symbol or message from a distance, in poor light, or by someone who reads little English.
Types of health and safety signs are set by function, so the same seven layouts can appear in a hospital kitchen, a panel beater’s workshop, or an open-cut mine. Each layout combines a background colour with a legend colour and a symbolic shape, and none can borrow the colours of another.
Prohibition Signs
Prohibition health and safety signs use a red circle with a diagonal line through it, drawn over a black symbol on a white background. The red circle and diagonal line show that an action is not permitted anywhere the sign applies. Where words are used in place of a symbol, the message appears in black letters on a white rectangle beneath the circle, and the circle itself is left empty.
No Smoking, No Entry, No Naked Flames, No Mobile Phones, and No Unauthorised Access are all prohibition signs. This class is regulatory, so ignoring one can be an offence at law or a breach of your site’s safety procedures, depending on the control that has been imposed there.
Mandatory Signs
Mandatory health and safety signs are used where an instruction must be followed, and each one is drawn as a white symbol inside a blue circle. The blue circle appears on a white background with any wording printed in black beneath it.
A hard hat symbol at a site gate means head protection is worn from that point onward. Eye protection, hearing protection, safety footwear, high-visibility clothing, and respiratory protection each have their own blue circle. Personal protective equipment requirements with no matching symbol are printed as black words on a white rectangle standing taller than it is wide.
Warning Signs
Warning health and safety signs are used where a hazard can cause harm, and each one is drawn as a black symbol inside a black triangle on a yellow background. The yellow background is what makes this class visible from the far side of a workshop. Where no symbol exists for the hazard, a black exclamation mark is used inside the triangle and the hazard is spelled out in words beneath it.
Forklifts operating, slippery floors, uneven ground, hot surfaces, and the presence of overhead cranes are among the potential hazards flagged this way. Outdoor workplaces use warning signs for UV radiation, and indoor workplaces use them where extreme temperatures or humidity are a risk of injury on their own. Worded warning signs follow the same colours, with black lettering on a yellow panel.
Danger Signs
Danger health and safety signs are used where a hazard is likely to be life-threatening. The word DANGER is printed in white letters on a red oval, set on a black panel above or to the left of a white rectangle. The hazard itself appears as a black message inside that rectangle, and symbols are left off this class of sign entirely.
The message “high voltage” on a danger sign means high-voltage electricity in the area can cause a fatal electrical shock. On some equipment an arc can cross the air before anything is touched. Confined space openings, live switchboards, unguarded excavations, and areas under demolition are given danger signs.
Emergency Information Signs
Emergency information health and safety signs are used to show where help is found, with a white symbol or message on a green background inside a white border. First aid kits, first aid rooms, emergency eyewash and shower stations, defibrillators, assembly points, and escape routes are all signed in green.
The white cross on a green background is the first aid symbol used across Australia. Under the model Code of Practice for first aid in the workplace, that cross is displayed on the outside of every kit. Where a sign points to a facility further away, an arrow is added on the same side as the direction it indicates.
Fire Signs
Fire health and safety signs are used to show where fire equipment is kept, with white symbols and wording on a red background inside a white border. Fire extinguishers, hose reels, fire blankets, hydrants, alarm call points, and fire indicator panels each have their own red sign.
Fire safety signage is limited to the location of fire alarms and firefighting equipment. Instructions about what to do in the event of a fire go on a separate board. Extinguishers also have a small identification sign above them naming the extinguisher type and the fire classes it suits.
Dangerous Goods and Hazchem
Health and safety signs for dangerous goods are set by the WHS Regulations. Anyone who stores, handles, or uses hazardous chemicals must put up signs telling workers and visitors what the dangers are.
The outer warning placard is fixed at each entrance an emergency service may use to get into your workplace. It shows the word HAZCHEM in red letters on a white or silver background, measures 120 mm high by 600 mm wide, and uses lettering 100 mm high. Bulk storage placards go on tanks, and class labels showing the dangerous goods class go at package stores.
The HAZCHEM code on an emergency information panel is written for firefighters, giving the firefighting media to use, whether a spill is contained or diluted, and the protective equipment crews need before they go in. Containers themselves are labelled under the Globally Harmonised System, which uses nine pictograms in a red diamond outline on white, one for each type of hazard. Australian regulations also require a current safety data sheet and a register entry for every hazardous chemical on site, available to anyone who asks for them.
Where to Put Workplace Safety Signs in the Workplace
Australian safety laws set a duty on a business to maintain a safe working environment for employees and others. They do not publish a list of health and safety signs every workplace must display. The hazards present at your site decide what goes up, and a risk assessment of your work environment turns potential hazards into a signage plan.
The main entrance takes the signs that apply to the whole site. On a construction project the principal contractor’s board goes here, showing their name, a telephone contact number including an after-hours number, and the location of the site office, positioned so it can be read from outside the workplace. Mandatory PPE signs go at the same threshold, ahead of the point where the gear is needed.
Individual hazards are signed where someone could walk into them. Signs go at each entrance to a confined space, at every main entrance to an area where asbestos has been identified, and on the doors of chemical stores. Warning signs for moving equipment go where the equipment operates, and emergency information signs go where they can be seen from inside the work area.
A sign is only readable when it is in someone’s line of sight, at eye level, and clear of stacked stock, an open door, or a parked ute. Signs fade, peel, and fall out of date as a site changes. Add a check of every sign to your regular safety audit, and take down signs for work that has finished.
Learn the WHS Signs and Symbols Through White Card Training
Every health and safety sign is a statement of consequence as well as instruction. Signs are one control among several on a worksite, and you can learn the rest before stepping onto one. White card training gives you the ability to walk into an unfamiliar workplace and work out for yourself what can hurt you there, what you are required to wear, and what to do when something goes wrong. You are the one who pays for a sign you did not read, and enrolling in white card training means you walk onto your first job already reading them.
FAQs
Do Safety Signs Have to Be Written in English?
No. AS 1319-1994 includes recommendations for signs that give their message in more than one language. Symbolic signs are used where no wording is wanted at all.
What Does a Danger Tag Mean?
It means someone is working on that equipment and it should not be touched. Only the worker whose name is written on the tag can remove it, even after their shift ends. A yellow and black out of service tag means the equipment is faulty and not to be used.
Can a Business Be Penalised for Missing Safety Signs?
Yes. A WHS inspector can issue an improvement notice requiring the problem to be fixed by a set date, and a prohibition notice can stop work in an area where the risk is serious.
