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A black image of a dead fish and tree in a red-bordered diamond, the GHS symbol for aquatic/environmental hazard.
Also known as: Environment pictogram, GHS09
One of nine official GHS pictograms, warning that a substance or mixture is hazardous to the aquatic environment. Its use is optional in some jurisdictions (for example not required under the US OSHA Hazard Communication Standard) even though it is part of the official UN GHS pictogram set.
Warns that a substance or mixture is hazardous to the aquatic environment, whether through acute or chronic toxicity to aquatic life.
Regulatory adoption of this specific pictogram varies by jurisdiction — for example it is not a mandatory label element under the US OSHA Hazard Communication Standard, even though it is part of the official UN GHS set.
Appears on the outer packaging of a supplied chemical and again in section 2 of its safety data sheet, so a reader who has the sheet can check the label against it. On a product sold in the European Union or Great Britain it is not decoration: the supplier is required to show the pictogram the classification calls for.
European Union and Great Britain · Contexts: Packaging, Laboratory
Covers acute and long-term (chronic) hazards to the aquatic environment. One pictogram can stand for several distinct hazard classes, which is why the pictogram alone never tells you the whole story — the hazard statements printed beside it do.
Contexts: Packaging, Laboratory
Is a *supply* label. A drum or tank in transit carries a differently shaped and coloured label for the same hazard under the transport rules, and the two schemes coexist — a package can lawfully carry both at once.
Contexts: Packaging
The European scheme it replaced used an orange square with a black symbol and a letter code. Orange-square labelling stopped being lawful for the supply of mixtures in the European Union on 1 June 2015, so a container still showing one is either old stock or outside the scheme. For environmental hazard the predecessor was coded N, for dangerous for the environment.
European Union · European Union, until 1 June 2015 · Contexts: Packaging
Related forms that are not treated as separate canonical symbols — see our variant rules.
Orange square environmental hazard symbol (pre-2015 European supply label)
The same drawing of a dead fish beside a withered plant, set on an orange-yellow square with the letter code N, used on European supply labels until 1 June 2015.
A black silhouette of a dead fish floating above a dying tree, inside a diamond outlined in red.