TheNational Fire Protection Association(NFPA), in section 704 of the National Fire Code, specifies a system for identifying thehazards associated with materials. Information contained on this and linked pages comesdirectly from the 1990 edition of NFPA 704. Although the system was developed primarilywith the needs of fire protection agencies in mind, it is of value to anyone who needsto handle potentially hazardous material.
The NFPA 704 Standard System for the Identification of the Hazards of Materials forEmergency Response, was developed as a manual by the Sectional Committee onClassification, Labeling and Properties of Flammable Liquids of the NFPA Committeeon Flammable Liquids starting in 1952. Its first adoption as a guide occurred in 1961,with regular revisions being adopted through 1987. In 1990 it became an NFPA standard,and extensive quantitative health hazard rating criteria were introduced. The purposeof the standard, as originally conceived, is to safeguard the lives of those individualswho respond to emergencies occuring in an industrial plant or storage location, or otherlocation where relatively large quantities of chemicals are used, and where the hazardsof materials are not readily apparent.
The hazard identification signal is a color-coded array of four numbers or lettersarranged in a diamond shape. An example is shown to the right. You will see hazarddiamonds like this on trucks, storage tanks, bottles of chemicals, and in variousother places around campus and around town.
The blue, red, and yellow fields (health, flammability, and reactivity) all use anumbering scale ranging from 0 to 4. A value of zero means that the material posesessentially no hazard; a rating of four indicates extreme danger. The fourth value(associated with white) tends to be more variable, both in meaning and in what lettersor numbers are written there.
This page is for general reference and educational purposes only and should NOTbe used to determine regulatory compliance or relied upon as a sole source of informationwhere matters of life and health are concerned. This site and the author do not warrantor guarantee the accuracy or the sufficiency of the information provided and do notassume any responsibility for its use.
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