The Story Of The Biohazard Symbol

By Author: MedBag Team
Total Articles: 8
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The biohazard symbol is a prevalent one that you see everywhere-–on bags, products, containers, literature and more. It was developed in the latter half of the 20th Century. The story of the symbol is revealed below.

Charles Baldwin, an ex-environmental-health engineer, was one of the people closely involved in developing the biohazard symbol. He told his story to the media, and it is quite an interesting one.

The story starts in 1966, when Baldwin was working with the Dow Chemical company. His responsibility at the time was to develop containment systems for the Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health. During this time, he had to visit various laboratories and research centers. But he noticed one big problem: every lab had its own warning symbols against bio-hazardous material. There was no standard symbol for everyone to understand and follow.

Baldwin and his team then realized the urgent need to have some standardization of the biohazard symbol. His team took up the job of developing a unique biohazard symbol with the help of the Dow marketing team and the package-design department. They ...
... were working on two key principles, as outlined by Charles Baldwin. First, the symbol had to be unique and striking so that it could be registered and remembered.

It also had to be new, too, so that people would not confuse it with something else. The symbol also had to recognizable at quick glance. They planned to introduce it and work to educate people on what it meant.

Charles Baldwin relived the entire process and told his story nearly three decades after the symbol was introduced. He remembered that his team, while working on the symbol, started to look at symbols across the country. There were also survey groups set up by the marketing department to test different labels for Dow products. The test contained some unique and original symbols, while the rest were older, more recognizable symbols. These included company and organizational logos, and other symbols from history.

The survey team asked the participants to look at the various symbols and explain what they meant. If they did not know the meaning of the symbol, they were asked to guess its meaning. The present biohazard symbol was also there, and got the fewest guesses.

After gathering the results of the initial survey, they went back to the participants and showed them the same 24 symbols along with 36 more common symbols. The idea was to test whether the biohazard symbol had been memorable. It had. People remembered the biohazard symbol the best.

The symbol was introduced in orange, as it is considered to be the most visible color under various conditions. They had made the symbol with three sides so that even if the bag or box containing bio-hazardous material was moved around or got turned upside down while being transported, people could recognize it quickly and easily. Another advantage was that the symbol was easily stenciled and reproduced.

The symbol, once finalized, was presented to the scientific community with a paper in a scientific journal. Soon the symbol got authorization from trusted authorities like the Centers for Disease Control, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Institutes of Health. Since then, the symbol is being used use on a wide variety of things, like a bio hazard bag.

The writer is associated with MedBag Inc. a leading online source of specialty plastic bags for use in the Healthcare industry. They produce specialized plastic bags, including biohazard bags.