Since the Cold War, most Americans have been familiar with the trefoil, the international symbol for radiation. The radioactive trefoil prominently appears on “Fallout Shelter” signs and can be seen to this day on schools, libraries, and other public buildings throughout the country. While the symbol is easily recognized by most people in developed nations, there is nothing inherent in the radioactive trefoil that would explicitly communicate the dangers of radiation to someone who had never seen the symbol before.
This lack of recognition can pose a real safety threat to workers in countries like Indonesia and China, especially those who work in the ”scrap metal” industry. There have been numerous cases in which workers were injured or killed as a result of processing metal “scraps” that contained high levels of radiation. In some of these cases, the metal objects were clearly stamped with the radioactive trefoil, but the workers did not know what the symbol meant and so they handled the dangerous objects anyway.
Two regulatory bodies, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the International Organization For standardization (ISO), recently recognized this serious problem and developed a new supplemental symbol that is being used to warn people about the most dangerous radiation sources. This new label is meant to more effectively communicate the dangers of radiation, with the traditional trefoil at the top with radiating waves protruding outwards. At the bottom of the label is a skull and crossbones as well as a running man. You won’t see the new symbol on buildings, doors, or shipping containers. Instead, it will primarily be used on industrial sources of radiation like food irradiators and cancer treatment machines– equipment that sometimes ends up in junk yards when proper disposal procedures aren’t followed. Also, the new symbol won’t replace the old symbol, rather, it will be used in addition to the traditional trefoil.
According to the IAEA, ”the new symbol is aimed at alerting anyone, anywhere to the potential dangers of… ionizing radiation” and is the result of more than 5 years of research (IAEA, New Symbol Launched to Warn Public About Radiation Dangers, http://tinyurl.com/2jw8du). The symbol was carefully designed by a team of researchers, radiation experts, and graphic artists and was tested by the Gallup Institute. This testing revealed that the new symbol’s message of “Danger–Stay away” was recognized by people of all ages, educational backgrounds, and nationalities.
The new symbol has already gained wide-spread acceptance among manufacturers of radioactive equipment, and the process of retrofitting older equipment with the new label is already underway. Hopes are that this new symbol will actually save lives. According to Carolyn MacKenzie of the IAEA, “We can’t teach the world about radiation, but we can warn people about dangerous sources for the price of a sticker.” (IAEA, New Symbol Launched to Warn Public About Radiation Dangers, http://tinyurl.com/2jw8du)
