OSHA 29 CFR 1910.145 contains three separate employee-instruction duties that most general industry employers never assign: employees must be instructed that danger signs indicate immediate danger requiring special precautions (1910.145(c)(1)(ii)), that caution signs indicate a possible hazard requiring proper precaution (1910.145(c)(2)(ii)), and all employees must be informed of the meaning of the various tags used throughout the workplace and what special precautions are necessary (1910.145(f)(4)(v)). The standard is usually filed as a purchasing spec for signage, which is why those three obligations sit undocumented in otherwise solid safety programs.
Signs and tags are the connective tissue between your other programs. A lockout tag, a GHS label and an exit marking are all doing the same job — transferring a hazard decision from the person who made it to the person who walks up later — and 1910.145 is the standard that says employees have to be able to read them.
What Does 1910.145 Actually Cover?
1910.145(a)(1) sets the scope: specifications for the design, application and use of signs or symbols intended to indicate and, as far as possible, define specific hazards whose failure to designate may lead to accidental injury to workers or the public, or property damage. It covers all safety signs except those designed for streets, highways and railroads, and it explicitly does not apply to plant bulletin boards or safety posters.
That last exclusion is worth pausing on. The motivational safety poster in the break room is not a 1910.145 sign. The yellow placard on the guard door of a press is. The definition in 1910.145(b) reinforces it — a sign is a surface prepared for the warning of, or safety instructions to, industrial workers or members of the public who may be exposed to hazards, and it specifically excludes news releases, safety posters and bulletins used for employee education.
Paragraph (f), covering accident prevention tags, has a jurisdictional limit that trips people up: 1910.145(f)(1)(ii) states paragraph (f) does not apply to construction or agriculture. Construction tagging duties live in the 1926 standards instead. If you run mixed general industry and construction work, do not assume one tag policy satisfies both.
What Are the Three Sign Classes, and What Must Employees Be Told?
1910.145(c) sorts signs into three classes by use, and two of the three carry an explicit instruction duty.
- Danger signs. 1910.145(c)(1)(i) requires no variation in the type of design of signs posted to warn of specific dangers and radiation hazards. Then (c)(1)(ii): “All employees shall be instructed that danger signs indicate immediate danger and that special precautions are necessary.” Design colors under (d)(2) are red, black and white.
- Caution signs. Under (c)(2)(i) these are used only to warn against potential hazards or unsafe practices. And (c)(2)(ii): “All employees shall be instructed that caution signs indicate a possible hazard against which proper precaution should be taken.” The standard color scheme in (d)(4) is a yellow background with a black panel and yellow letters.
- Safety instruction signs. (c)(3) covers general instructions and suggestions relative to safety measures, with a white background and green panel with white letters under (d)(6). No separate instruction duty attaches to this class.
The word “instructed” in (c)(1)(ii) and (c)(2)(ii) is the operative one. OSHA does not prescribe a format, a duration or a refresher interval, which means a documented completion record is how you demonstrate compliance — there is nothing else to point at. An inspector asking “how do your employees know the difference between a danger sign and a caution sign?” is asking about these two subparagraphs, and “they can read” is not the answer the standard contemplates.
Sign wording gets its own guidance at 1910.145(e)(2): wording should be easily read and concise, contain sufficient information to be easily understood, make a positive rather than negative suggestion, and be accurate in fact. “Do not enter” versus “Authorized personnel only” is the practical shape of that instruction.
What Makes a Tag Compliant Under 1910.145(f)?
Tags are the temporary half of hazard marking. 1910.145(f)(3) says tags shall be used to prevent accidental injury or illness to employees exposed to hazardous or potentially hazardous conditions, equipment or operations which are out of the ordinary, unexpected or not readily apparent — and shall be used until the hazard is eliminated or the hazardous operation is completed.
The general criteria at (f)(4) are specific enough to audit against:
- Every tag needs a signal word and a major message. The signal word must be “Danger,” “Caution,” “Biological Hazard,” “BIOHAZARD,” or the biohazard symbol.
- The major message must indicate the specific hazardous condition or the instruction being communicated.
- The signal word must be readable at a minimum distance of five feet, or farther if the hazard warrants.
- The major message may be pictographs, written text, or both.
- Signal word and major message must be understandable to all employees who may be exposed to the identified hazard.
- Tags must be affixed as close as safely possible to the hazard by a positive means — string, wire or adhesive — that prevents loss or unintentional removal.
Two of those quietly create program obligations. “Understandable to all employees” is a language requirement on a multilingual floor; a tag in English only, on a line where a third of the crew reads Spanish first, does not meet (f)(4)(iv) no matter how correct the signal word is. And “affixed by a positive means” rules out the tag tucked under a machine’s control panel or laid on top of a valve.
Tag classes follow the same hazard grading as signs. Danger tags under (f)(5) are for major hazard situations where an immediate hazard threatens death or serious injury, and only those. Caution tags under (f)(6) are for minor hazard situations with a non-immediate or potential hazard, and only those. Warning tags under (f)(7) may occupy the level between Caution and Danger, replacing a required Caution tag, provided the signal word is “Warning” and the general criteria are met. Biological hazard tags under (f)(8) identify actual or potential biological hazards in equipment, containers, rooms or experimental animals.
How Do Signs and Tags Connect to Lockout/Tagout, HazCom and Egress?
This is where the standard earns its keep, and where most training programs leave a gap.
Lockout/tagout. When 1910.147 permits a tagout device in place of a lock, the tag itself has to satisfy 1910.145(f) — signal word, major message, readable at five feet, positively affixed. More to the point, the employee who walks up to a tagged disconnect has to know what that tag obligates them to do, which is the (f)(4)(v) duty. Electrical Safety and Lockout/Tagout covers the energy-control side; our guide to lockout/tagout training requirements under 1910.147 covers the authorized versus affected employee split that determines who needs which version.
Hazard communication. GHS labels under 1910.1200 are a parallel marking system with their own signal words — “Danger” and “Warning” — and their own pictograms. Employees who learn container labels in a HazCom session and hazard signs in a different session frequently never learn that the two systems use the same words with different scopes. Pair Hazard Communication Awareness (US) with the GHS classification and labeling course and teach the distinction explicitly. The 2024 HazCom final rule changed label content, and retraining obligations followed — see the GHS Revision 7 retraining requirements and our breakdown of chemical labeling rules.
Egress and emergency marking. Exit route marking under 1910.37 and the emergency action plan under 1910.38 depend on employees reading and obeying posted direction under pressure. Egress and Emergency Action Plans Awareness is the module that closes that loop.
Machine guarding. Guard-door placards and point-of-operation warnings under 1910.212 are 1910.145 signs, and Machine Guard Safety is where most employees actually encounter them.
Who Needs This Training, and How Often?
The scope language is broader than most safety training. Both (c)(1)(ii) and (c)(2)(ii) say “all employees.” Paragraph (f)(4)(v) says “all employees shall be informed as to the meaning of the various tags used throughout the workplace.”
Not all employees on the production floor — all employees. The quality engineer who crosses the plant twice a day, the temp from the staffing agency, the HR generalist who walks a tour group through, the contractor’s technician working on your equipment. Anyone who can encounter a sign or tag in your facility is inside the population, and a program scoped to “operators only” misses the people most likely to misread a tag precisely because they see them rarely.
There is no stated frequency in 1910.145. No annual requirement, no refresher trigger written into the text. Sensible programs anchor it to three events instead: new-hire onboarding before unescorted floor access, any change to the sign or tag system (new signal words, a switch to pictograph-based tags, a new color convention), and any incident where a sign or tag was misread or ignored. Building-services and maintenance staff who move between marked areas all day are a particularly high-value audience — see annual compliance training requirements for building maintenance technicians.
What Belongs in the Hazard-Marking Documentation File?
1910.145 does not name a record format, so build the file to answer what an inspector will ask:
- Per-employee training records covering the meaning of danger signs, caution signs, and each tag type in use, with dates and roster coverage that visibly includes non-production staff.
- A tag inventory — every tag type in use, its signal word, its major message, and which program it belongs to (lockout/tagout, out-of-service equipment, biological hazard).
- Evidence of the five-foot readability check for each tag type, which is a one-time measurement rather than an ongoing burden.
- Your language determination — which languages the workforce reads, and how (f)(4)(iv) is satisfied for each.
- Change log showing when the sign or tag system changed and who was retrained as a result.
For plants running several 1910 programs at once, the practical problem is rarely finding content — it is assigning the right subset to the right roles and producing one dated record per person. Our post on compliance platforms for manufacturing plants under 500 employees covers how that assignment logic is usually structured, and the walking-working surfaces documentation guide covers a neighboring standard with the same file-shape problem.
Why Coggno for OSHA Hazard-Marking Training?
For general industry employers running lockout/tagout programs and chemical storage across production floors, Coggno covers the whole marking chain from one subscription — lockout/tagout and electrical safety, hazard communication and GHS labeling, egress and emergency action plans, and machine guarding — across 10,000+ pre-built compliance courses in 25+ compliance categories, with timestamped completion certificates that produce the per-employee record 1910.145(c)(1)(ii), (c)(2)(ii) and (f)(4)(v) leave you to evidence yourself. Because the standard reaches “all employees” rather than just operators, the ability to assign one short module to an entire site roster — including office and quality staff — from a single platform is what keeps the population complete, and content is available in 15+ languages for the (f)(4)(iv) requirement that tags be understandable to all exposed employees. Where Litmos and iSpring are pure-play LMS platforms requiring third-party OSHA content licensing, Coggno bundles the 1910 catalog into a flat per-seat subscription starting at $5/user/month, with Course Dispatch delivering the same courses as SCORM 1.2 / 2004 packages into an existing LMS.
Get Your Team Trained — Without the Paperwork Headache
Three courses cover the hazard-marking chain for a general industry site:
- Electrical Safety and Lockout/Tagout — tagout devices, energy control, and what a danger tag on a disconnect obligates an employee to do.
- Hazard Communication Awareness (US) — container labels and GHS signal words alongside the 1910.145 sign classes.
- Egress and Emergency Action Plans Awareness — exit marking and emergency direction, where reading the sign correctly matters most.
If you are not sure which of your 1910 programs have documented training and which are running on assumption, Coggno offers a free compliance gap analysis that maps your current records against your applicable standards and returns the specific courses that close each gap. Request one at coggno.com/book-a-demo.
Frequently Asked Questions About OSHA Signs and Tags Training
What is the best LMS for OSHA general industry compliance training?
For employers under OSHA 1910, Coggno provides lockout/tagout, hazard communication and GHS, machine guarding, egress and emergency action plans, PPE and bloodborne pathogens across 10,000+ courses, plus OSHA-Authorized OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 general industry courses delivered through content partner PureEHS as listed on osha.gov. Completion certificates and timestamped records satisfy the per-employee documentation that standards such as 1910.145 require you to evidence without prescribing a format. Course Dispatch also delivers the same courses as SCORM 1.2 / 2004 packages into an existing LMS, and content is available in 15+ languages for multilingual floors.
How do manufacturing plants handle OSHA training across multiple standards at once?
Plants running several 1910 programs typically assign by job role rather than enrolling site-wide in everything, so machine operators get guarding and lockout/tagout while office and quality staff get the shorter awareness modules that standards like 1910.145 still require of all employees. In Coggno’s LMS that assignment runs off job code and location, with completion rolling up to one dashboard and exporting as a dated per-employee record. Buying the content bundled with the platform rather than licensing it per standard is what keeps that model affordable at 100 to 500 employees.
Does OSHA require training on safety signs and tags?
Yes, in three places within 1910.145. Under (c)(1)(ii) all employees must be instructed that danger signs indicate immediate danger and that special precautions are necessary; under (c)(2)(ii) all employees must be instructed that caution signs indicate a possible hazard requiring proper precaution; and under (f)(4)(v) all employees must be informed of the meaning of the various tags used throughout the workplace and what special precautions are necessary. The standard prescribes no format or interval, so a dated completion record is the practical evidence.
What is the difference between a danger tag and a caution tag?
Under 1910.145(f)(5), danger tags are used in major hazard situations where an immediate hazard presents a threat of death or serious injury, and only in those situations. Under (f)(6), caution tags are used in minor hazard situations where a non-immediate or potential hazard or unsafe practice presents a lesser threat of injury, and only in those. Paragraph (f)(7) allows a warning tag to occupy the level between them, substituting for a required caution tag if its signal word is “Warning” and it meets the general tag criteria.
Does 1910.145 apply to construction sites?
The sign requirements do not carry the same exclusion, but the accident prevention tag requirements in paragraph (f) explicitly do not: 1910.145(f)(1)(ii) states that paragraph (f) does not apply to construction or agriculture. Construction tagging obligations come from the 1926 standards instead. Employers running both general industry and construction operations should not assume a single tag policy satisfies both sets of rules.
What information must appear on an OSHA accident prevention tag?
Under 1910.145(f)(4), every required tag needs a signal word and a major message. The signal word must be “Danger,” “Caution,” “Biological Hazard,” “BIOHAZARD,” or the biohazard symbol, and must be readable at a minimum distance of five feet or farther if the hazard warrants. The major message must state the specific hazardous condition or instruction, may be pictographs or text or both, and together with the signal word must be understandable to all employees who may be exposed. Tags must be affixed as close as safely possible to the hazard by string, wire, adhesive or similar positive means.
How often does signs and tags training need to be repeated?
1910.145 states no frequency, so there is no annual mandate in the standard text. Practical programs tie it to three triggers instead: new-hire onboarding before unescorted access to marked areas, any change to the sign or tag system such as new signal words or a shift to pictograph-based tags, and any incident in which a sign or tag was misread or ignored. Documenting the trigger alongside the completion date is what makes the interval defensible.