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Coding Horror
programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood

February 08, 2006

Hazmat Placards and Icons

It's good to know that others share my weird fascination with signs. Ian Albert has a page dedicated to hazmat placards:

Hazmat placards

Ian created high quality, hand-traced PDFs for each placard. Now that's dedication. But he also offers this amusing warning:

Don't use these decoratively in a public place. When emergency workers see a hazmat placard they react accordingly. That is, after all, the purpose of hazmat placards. You could get in some real trouble if your house is burning down and they have to call in the bomb squad because you've got an "explosives" sign hanging somewhere.

I still think the software industry can learn a lot from studying pre-digital iconography.

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Comments

I have the same issue. Well, stickers in general that is. But with these signs I'm going to have to be careful - I like to put them on my laptop, and it's getting a bit sticky to put a RadioActive sticker on the back of hte Dell and not expect some bonehead in TSA confiscate the computer...

Rick Strahl on February 14, 2006 04:23 AM

There's a company near me that does signage like this. They have a trio of caution signs hung on the front of the building. One says, "Crowd Control" another says "Danger Control" the last says "Idiot Control"

mcgurk on February 22, 2006 11:56 AM

Download a free PDF hazmat placard reference, here:

http://hazmat.dot.gov/pubs/erg/guidebook.htm

Jeff Atwood on June 19, 2008 04:07 AM







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