NEMA Offers New Guidelines for Producing Product Safety Information
| |
| Electronics & Telecom Docs |
IHS sells a full selection of standards documents & collections from the industry's top organizations.
To learn more, and for a free quote, please complete the form below. |
| Last October, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) added a new publication to its ANSI Z535 series of safety communications standards and guidelines. The new document, ANSI Z535.6, American National Standard for Product Safety Information in Product Manuals, Instructions and Other Collateral Materials, focuses on providing users with a hazard communication system developed specifically for product safety information presented in collateral materials.
Like the other standards in the series, Z535.6 uses many of the same common graphical elements, but applies them to materials used to provide product safety information. The goal of the standard is to provide a uniform and consistent visual layout for safety information in collateral materials for a wide variety of products.
According to Ron Runkles, NEMA program manager and temporary acting secretary for the Z535 Committee, the decision to add a new document to the series came after an increasing number of requests were made by individuals, companies and organizations that wanted to more effectively communicate product safety information.
"I worked with the committee for nearly eight years. During that time, there were more and more requests for something more than just the product label, something to help with the development of instruction books and manuals that went out with products. It was just a growing need," he says.
NEMA also recently published an updated version of another standard in the series, Z535.1, American National Standard for Safety Color, and the accompanying Safety Color Chart. ANSI Z535.1 provides color notations based on the Munsell and CIE color systems.
But users wanted to reference another popular color system—the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM. Yet many committee members were somewhat hesitant to provide the PANTONE matches because they weren't always in the center of the color tolerance ranges. "When you print out a color, the temperature, humidity, material you print on—all these affect the final print color. Sometimes when you use a PANTONE number, it could actually fall outside the range of color tolerances and not be a true safety red," Runkles explains.
User demand, however, won out, and the 2006 Safety Color Chart includes the closest PANTONE number for each of the safety colors defined in the standard. Users of the standard can purchase the Safety Color Chart separately from the standard; it provides a single offset-printed sample of each of the safety colors, along with information about each color's ink formulation and the closest PANTONE color.
NEMA expects to publish new versions of the other standards in the Z535 series later this year. The information covered in these standards includes specifications about environmental and facility safety signs, safety symbols, product safety signs and labels, and accident prevention tags.
|