Re: Caution vs. Danger vs. Warning

[Keith <WELCH@CEBAF.GOV>]

Pat, I feel your pain.  I think it is a very common problem getting people to
actually read warning signs - especially at a research facility where everybody
is really too "smart" or busy to bother with it.  But it has been my experience
that when we try to put ourselves in their shoes and second guess how a busy
scientist will interpret a given sign, we may be shooting ourselves in the
foot.  Your sign is a case in point.  Let me look into my crystal ball and
guess how it came about. (This is probably WAY off)
  In the good old days, you put up signs with the rad
symbol and words which stated what the hazard was.  Our busy scientist-friends
got used to seeing the trifoil in their lab where they worked with unsealed rad
materials.  Got to the point where they started spreading their activity out a
little bit - the lab next door, the next building, and pretty soon all they did
(If you were lucky) was look for the good old propeller, and figured,"sure,
it's ok to play with my little planchet with a MCi of tritium im here." And it
looks to you like the only way to prevent this misinterpretation of the signs
was not to use the trifoil on the signs unless it was ok for unsealed sources
to be handled.

 Eureka, we have created a new definition of what the trifoil means. 

 Now, what about those people who rely on the presence of this symbol to
tell them things like whether or not they can enter a given area, whether or
not dosimetry is required, whether or not they can bring visitors, pregnant
people, their mother-in-law, fruit fly collection, etc, etc, into the area. 
What if they are busy too, and don't read the words that you put up there on
that sign that has no trifoil.

What a dilemma!  Which way do we go here?  The common sense thing to do,I guess
is look at which of the evils that we are presented with is causing the biggest
problem, or potential problem, and try to attack it - which sounds like what
you have done.  But I would bet that eventually, you will be trying to put out
the fire on the other side of the fence.

My personal preference for dealing with the problem would be to somehow
get your scientists to "get religion" with their end of the problem - I tend to
retreat to "by the book" with these problems - but then again, maybe I'm not a
team player. 

I know, it's much easier said than done!

In case it's not obvious, this message is disclaimed - I may even deny that I
wrote it.