Hey kids, today I'll be teaching you how to read these things. The symbol is technically known as NFPA 704, but nobody really calls it that. Most people refer to it as a fire diamond, or a safety square, or if you're British, a figmenty pigmenty crossa tossa, whatever floats your boat. Anyway, when you see the symbol, usually on a door or a container or something, It means there's a hazardous material present. And the numbers and symbols on the diamond give information on exactly how dangerous that material is.
So first off, notice the four colors, right? Each one represents a different type of hazard. Red is for flammability, because fire and burning things are usually red. Yellow is for chemical reactivity, I guess because chemical reactions involve swapping electrons, and electricity is yellow, sure.
Blue is for health hazards, because fuck you. And then white is just extra space for other stuff. So the three colored diamonds, or if you want to be politically correct, the African American diamonds, each have a number from 0 to 4. And each of these is like a threat level for that category.
If the number is 0, it basically means you'd have to be some kind of professional to manage to fuck things up in that fashion. Sand, for example, has a 0 in its flammability. The only time sand burns is when it's wedged in the cracks of your speedo for too long. However, please note that the health section does not apply to ingestion.
For example, motor oil has a blue rating of 0, but that in no way makes it safe to drink. If the number is 1, that means there's a threat present, but you'd still have to be like an advanced level dumbass in order to really find it. Cellulose, the primary chemical found in paper, has a flammability of 1, so don't, you know, hold it over a fire for a while, and you'll be fine. 2 is where things start being kind of a big deal.
Capsaicin, the chemical that makes peppers spicy, has a health risk of 2. You finish chopping your jalapenos, and then you go touching your jalapenos. It's not gonna kill you or nothing, but it's gonna mess your day up for sure. If you see a three, that's when you know you gotta watch out.
Gasoline, it's got a flammability of three, and we all know gasoline. You see gasoline walking by, you better take the cigarette out of your mouth, get the static off your clothes, fix your hair, make yourself presentable, don't make eye contact, that's the only way to keep yourself safe. And then four is the highest number on the scale. If you see a 4, the best thing to do is just start walking backwards. Because if you're close enough to read that 4, chances are you're not where you need to be.
Nitroglycerin has a reactivity of 4. If you soak a tissue in nitroglycerin and give it to your friend to sneeze in, that sneeze will result in his entire goddamn face getting blown off. So yeah, 4s are nothing to sneeze at. Literally.
Now let's move on to the bottom bit. Unlike me, this diamond isn't just a big white waste of space. This is the spot for any extra warnings you need to know about. Most of them are pretty self-explanatory, like radiation, or biohazard, or gaze, so I'll just go through a few that aren't as easy to interpret.
Take a look at this one. Unless you hear faint mooing while you're reading it, chances are it doesn't mean what you think. OX is short for oxidizer, which is basically something that produces oxygen when exposed to heat.
This doesn't sound so bad until you realize that heat plus oxygen rarely ends well for most fuels in the vicinity. If you see this one, it means white people aren't allowed to touch the material. Heh. Just kidding.
White people are allowed to do whatever they want. It actually means don't mix with water, or else it could explode or multiply or something. Ese means simple asphyxiant, referring to gases like helium. It basically means that while this gas isn't poisonous, it's also, you know, not air.
So if you breathe it for too long, you will still die. Alright kids, so now that you know all the ins and outs of these things, let me give you a little quiz. On the left, we got a bunch of things. And on the right we have a bunch of fire diamonds.
Pause the video now and see if you can match them up correctly. All done? Here are the answers.
So now you know all about NFPA 704. Till next time, I'm Sam Minella and thank you for watching.