Safety signs: new version of the standard EN ISO 7010:2020 published

1. Pictograms for a risk reduction

When conducting the risk assessment of machinery, equipment and electronical devices, manufacturers can select safety signs in order to warn users against residual risks. Such pictograms are applied especially when risks emerging from technical measures cannot be entirely eliminated or at least sufficiently reduced.

When affixing pictograms to products, they should be easily recognizable by users and correspond to the symbols provided by standards such as EN ISO 7010.

Our technical contribution “Safety of machinery – designers’ duty!” provides information when user instructions are acceptable means for a risk reduction.

2. New symbols

Important new contents that were added in the revised standard are for instance additional safe condition signs:

• “Emergency exit for people unable to walk or with walking impairment “,
• Fire equipment signs (e.g. “Fire protection door “), or prohibition signs (e.g. “Not to be serviced by users “).

The new edition of EN ISO 7010 offers a considerably increased number of safe condition and warning signs in comparison to the previous standard. This is illustrated exemplarily in figure 1.

Source: ÖNORM EN ISO 7010:2015-11-01; ÖNORM EN ISO 7010:2020-11-01

3. Advantages for Safexpert Users

Safexpert users (with the packages “compact” and “professional”) have been benefitting for years from the incorporated pictogram library. Already when conducting the risk assessment, the library supports users in selecting suitable pictograms from different data sources (ASR A1.3, 92/58/EEG, KennV and EN ISO 7010).

Once the construction of machinery, equipment or electronical devices is completed, useful reports and the Safexpert task system can help users to revise whether all pictograms defined during the risk assessment have been affixed to the final product.

The updated version of the pictogram library is already listed with the document number PIC EN ISO 7010:2020 on the Safexpert Live Server and hence available for users. Figure 2 illustrates the Safexpert pictogram library with the newly amended pictogram “Not to be serviced by users “.

According to the European Committee of Standardization (CEN) all national editions of EN ISO 7010:2012 (with amendments) need to be withdrawn not later than November 30th 2020. At that date the previous pictogram library will lose its status “current”.

4. Amendments of the standard

On April 1st 2021 the national edition of amendment A1:2020 was published. This amendmendt modifies the basic document EN ISO 7010:2020 and and is to be used in conjunction with said standard. The modifications are 6 newly added graphical symbols, amogst other the safety sign “Warning; Step down”. In addition to that, in 2022 the modifications A2 and A3 have been published. Those documents modify the standard with five and four new pictograms. Those modifications have already been implemented into the Safexpert pictogram library. The latest modifications to the basic standard are the A4, A5 and A6 amendments, which were published in March 2023.

Posted on: 2023/03/23 (last amendment)