Lessons for Product Manufacturers from the Trade Quip Pty Ltd Case

This past spring, Trade Quip Pty Ltd, a manufacturer of hydraulic trolley jacks located in Australia, was fined $100,000 by the Federal Court of Australia for omissions and errors in their product safety label that put consumers at risk of physical harm. According to an announcement by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the Court declared that more than 2,000 jacks sold between August 2009 and September 2010 had a warning label that was in a font size that was too small and, for some jacks, contained an incorrect warning message. This was found to be in violation of trolley jack labeling standards that require specific safety information to be affixed to jacks, including a clear warning that individuals should not get under a vehicle that is only supported by a trolley jack and to use vehicle support stands. By not including this information on the company’s labels, users of the jacks were unnecessarily put at serious risk of injury or death.

What This Case Means for Manufacturers
While this court case and subsequent judgment took place in Australia, the message it sends goes far beyond the country’s shores:  it’s important for every product manufacturer to know that the safety labels they place on their products need to be well thought-out and in compliance with applicable standards. The bottom line is that your safety labels require your utmost attention, both to protect your product users from harm and to protect your company from potentially devastating lawsuits.

Understanding the Standards – And How to Apply Them
There are three levels of standards that product manufacturers must take into consideration:

• A-level standards are the overarching general standards that provide guidance for all product manufacturers on a subject. In the United States, for product safety labeling, this is ANSI Z535.4 Standard for Product Safety Signs and Labels. Internationally,...
  
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As the weather warms up and we move closer to summer, pools across the country are coming into prime swimming season this month. At the same time, according to the National Drowning Prevention Alliance (NDPA), the month of May also signals the start of a season of drowning tragedies across the U.S.

Clarion Safety Systems is proud to support the month of May as “National Drowning Prevention Month”, and its goal to promote water safety.

What can you do to encourage water safety and prevent accidental drowning deaths? The NDPA has several resources available to help. Visit the NDPA website to educate yourself on water safety facts, or to find out how to get involved in the National Drowning Prevention Month campaign. For pool and spa owners interested in taking steps to create a safer pool environment for guests, learn how you can better protect people and reduce risk through pool safety signs that work together as a system to get noticed and deliver impact.

Attention technical writers, engineers, managers, product safety and liability prevention specialists, and all those responsible for creating and reviewing instructions and warnings! We have news you can use on an upcoming educational program offered by the University of Wisconsin’s engineering department. The 3-day course, “Using Warnings and Instructions to Increase Safety and Reduce Liability,” is designed to provide practical information to assist companies in making their products safer to use and avoid liability.

And, we’re proud to say that Clarion president Geoffrey Peckham will be one of only a handful of experts featured in the program. Geoffrey will share his safety communication experience and standards expertise to present on the following topics:

• The ANSI Z535 Standards for Product Safety Signs and Labels
• International Standards
• U.S./International Standard Harmonization
• Durability Considerations

The course will be held June 12-14, 2012 in Madison Wisconsin, and is currently open for enrollment. Interested in learning more? Visit the University of Wisconsin’s website.

2011 proved to be one of the deadlines tornado years in U.S. history, with over 550 fatalities across the country. According to the National Weather Service (NWS), one event alone, the May 2011 Joplin tornado, claimed 158 of those lives, making it the deadliest single tornado since modern recording keeping began in 1950. As a result, the NWS conducted a service assessment to evaluate its weather warnings and responses from the public. One of the key findings of the assessment showed that credible, extraordinary risk signals prompt people to take protective actions.

To address this, the NWS is now introducing a new type of tornado warning system to test a different way to warn the public about life-threatening weather events so they can, in turn, make better decisions. Kicking off the first week in April, a handful of NWS offices in Kansas and Missouri have begun testing new warnings that feature “impact-based” descriptions, intended to better convey the impact that the storm may have on the community. Under the new system, warnings will use stark wording like: “Mass devastation is highly likely, making the area unrecognizable to survivors”. The hope is that these new warnings will better communicate the urgency of the situation and the risk involved to motivate the proper response needed to stay safe.

What do these weather warnings have to do with the safety labels you use on your products and the safety signs and markings you use in your facilities? Quite a bit, actually. In both cases, the ultimate goal is effectively communicating risk in a way that will impact people’s behavior, cueing them to take action to avoid harm. And, in both cases, the challenge is the same: how to motivate people to comply when these warnings need to be given....

At Clarion, we are here to help answer your questions about safety communications at any time. We also have a comprehensive Resource Center available on our website, placing valuable insight at your fingertips (just browse our Learning Center for the latest facts on safety labels and safety signs, get answers to all of your questions in our FAQs, or view cases studies of Clarion safety products in action around the world).

Another of these important tools in the Clarion Resource Center is our Video Library, where we share snapshots of safety topics through brief, informative videos.  Now playing: we recently added two new videos to the library, showing you fundamentals of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards.

Why are the ANSI and ISO standards important to you in developing safety markings that effectively reduce your liability risk and keep your customers, workers and facilities safe? Safety messages need to stand out among all of the signs and advertisements that we see on a daily basis. To accomplish this, ANSI and ISO have established a uniform system of hazard recognition that governs the symbols, format, color, and the amount and level of content that goes on safety markings.  Clarion has been actively involved in advancing these ANSI and ISO standards in the U.S and around the globe for more than two decades – and we rigorously apply them in each of our products. The goal is for the people that you are protecting to have an automatic understanding when they see a safety sign, label or tag.

Ready to learn more? View each of the videos, below – and make sure to head over to our Video Library to see the full collection of Clarion videos.

ANSI Standards in Safety Signs and Labels