Reference

Federal OSHA has no general-industry pipe-marking standard, and the 1956 edition it does incorporate is 67 years behind the one vendors sell today. This guide locates the duty section by section, then gives the two tables a specifier actually needs: the full ASME A13.1-2023 colour scheme and the marker size schedule by pipe diameter.

OSHA-format and ANSI Z535 signs are both legally acceptable, for entirely different reasons. This guide compares the two sign faces element by element, explains what an ANSI compliant vendor badge does not tell a buyer, and gives five questions for choosing a system, with migration staging and purchase specification language.

The signal word on a safety sign encodes how certain the harm is, not how bad it would be. This guide defines all four ANSI Z535 signal words with their exact panel colors, shows where OSHA's three sign classes leave a gap at WARNING, and gives a clear two-question test for assigning the right header to any hazard you find.

OSHA sets safety sign rules in two separate places, and the ANSI editions it incorporates run two to three revisions behind what vendors sell as current. This guide decodes the three sign classes at 1910.145(c), the specified colors, accident prevention tags, and the construction table at 1926.200, plus exit and aisle marking duties.

A fire blanket cannot satisfy an OSHA extinguisher requirement - 29 CFR 1910.157 governs portable fire extinguishers and does not mention blankets at all, and a blanket carries no class or capacity rating. This guide covers the rating gap, the two jobs a blanket genuinely does better, and where it is the wrong tool entirely.

A charged fire extinguisher is a pressure vessel and does not belong in a bin. There is no single federal disposal rule - household waste is excluded from RCRA Subtitle C and handed to state and local authorities instead. This guide covers rechargeable vs disposable, safe depressurising, and the extra duty a workplace owes.

There is no federal chemical-segregation matrix, which is why so much guidance on this topic is subtly wrong. This guide covers the one explicit rule in 1910.106(d)(7)(iv), the cabinet quantities at (d)(3)(i), the pairs that cause most facility incidents, and an eight-step segregation walk that produces findings rather than reassurance.

OSHA 1910.1200(e) requires a written hazard communication program at each workplace - not just a binder of safety data sheets. This guide covers the three mandatory contents, the chemical list rule that trips most programs, and the training obligation in paragraph (h). Includes a seven-step method for building the chemical list.

Every safety data sheet in the US carries the same 16 sections in the same order under OSHA 29 CFR 1910.1200 - so an SDS is a map, not a document you read front to back. This guide shows which sections carry regulatory weight and which four OSHA does not enforce. Covers Section 2 hazards, Section 8 PPE, first aid and a worked example.

A workplace first aid kit is stocked for frequent survivable injuries; a bleeding control kit exists for one rare event that kills in minutes. This reference compares the two layers, sets out what ANSI/ISEA Z308.1-2021 requires versus only recommends, and explains the arterial tourniquet specification most buyers get wrong.

Fall restraint keeps a worker from reaching the hazard; fall arrest catches a fall already in progress. This reference sets out the hierarchy, a side-by-side comparison, the anchorage rule OSHA actually enforces for restraint, how work positioning differs from both, and where restraint quietly stops being restraint on a real jobsite.

ANSI/ASSP Z359.14-2021 replaced the Class A and Class B self-retracting lifeline labels with Class 1 and Class 2 on August 1, 2023, and changed what the class measures: anchorage position, not stopping distance. Covers both classes side by side, why Class A does not convert to Class 1, and how edge rating differs from class.