We'd like to use analytics cookies to understand which symbols people look up, so we know what to research next. They are not used for advertising and we set none of them unless you say yes. What we store.
A black human silhouette with a starburst on the chest, in a red-bordered diamond — the GHS symbol for serious, longer-term health hazards.
Also known as: Health hazard pictogram, GHS08
One of nine official GHS pictograms, warning of serious longer-term health hazards such as carcinogenicity, respiratory sensitisation, reproductive toxicity, or organ damage from repeated exposure.
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
Warns of serious, often longer-term health hazards, including carcinogenicity, germ-cell mutagenicity, reproductive toxicity, respiratory sensitisation, or specific target-organ toxicity from repeated exposure.
Contexts: Medicine
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 carcinogenicity, germ cell mutagenicity, reproductive toxicity, respiratory sensitisation, specific target organ toxicity, and aspiration hazard. 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 the newest kind of warning in the set: there was no single predecessor symbol for it under the European orange-square scheme, where these hazards were carried by the toxic or harmful marks together with a risk phrase. A reader comparing an old label with a new one will find this pictogram has no old counterpart to match against.
European Union · Contexts: Packaging
A black silhouette of a person's head and shoulders with a jagged, star-shaped burst over the chest, inside a diamond outlined in red.
This one is about cumulative harm; the skull is about a single dose.