The short answer first, because it is the question everybody arrives with. There are nine hazard pictograms in the system people call COSHH symbols. Some sources say eight, and they are not wrong — they are excluding the environmental hazard symbol, which warns about damage to aquatic life rather than harm to people, and so sits outside COSHH's scope. Nine pictograms exist; eight of them concern health and safety at work. That single distinction explains most of the contradictory answers you will find online.
This guide covers all nine COSHH symbols and their meanings — the UK hazard symbols you will see on any workplace chemical — the law they actually come from, what changed when the old orange symbols disappeared, and — the part almost nobody writing about COSHH symbols can tell you — what each symbol means for how the substance has to be stored, and what that storage costs.
They are not really COSHH symbols
Everyone calls them COSHH symbols, and we will too, because that is what people search for and what gets written on risk assessments. But the symbols are not defined by COSHH at all.
COSHH is the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002. It places duties on the employer: assess the risk, prevent or control exposure, maintain the controls, and inform and train the people affected. It does not specify a single label, symbol or cupboard.
The symbols — variously called COSHH symbols, hazard symbols, GHS symbols, CLP pictograms or simply hazard pictograms — come from CLP — the Classification, Labelling and Packaging Regulation, which is the European implementation of the global GHS system. CLP places duties on whoever supplies the chemical: classify it correctly, and label the container so the next person knows what they are holding. The nine pictograms are numbered GHS01 to GHS09.
One post-Brexit detail worth getting right, because it appears on paperwork and confuses people: Great Britain now operates GB CLP, the retained version of the EU regulation, while EU CLP continues to apply in Northern Ireland. The pictograms themselves are identical under both, so nothing on the label changes — but if you are checking supplier compliance across the UK, the two regimes are legally distinct.
So the practical chain is: CLP tells you what the substance is. The safety data sheet tells you what it does. COSHH makes it your job to do something about it. The symbol is the first link, not the whole thing.
The 9 COSHH symbols and their meanings
These are the nine chemical hazard symbols in full. Each one is listed under the name people actually search for — the corrosive symbol, the flammable symbol, the toxic symbol — alongside its formal GHS code.
Every current pictogram is a red-bordered white diamond with a black symbol inside. If you are looking at an orange square, the container is out of date — see the section below.
1. Explosive symbol (GHS01)
The symbol: an exploding bomb. What it means: unstable explosives, self-reactive substances and organic peroxides — materials that can detonate or react violently on their own. Storage: specialist, and outside the scope of a standard COSHH cupboard. Keep away from heat, shock, friction and ignition sources, and take advice specific to the substance. We do not sell explosives storage.
2. Flammable symbol (GHS02)
The symbol: a flame. What it means: flammable gases, aerosols, liquids and solids — solvents, thinners, fuels, adhesives, many aerosol cleaners. This is the most common pictogram in an ordinary workshop.
A precision point most guides miss: the fire and explosion risk from a flammable substance is primarily a DSEAR matter — the Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations 2002 — not a COSHH one. COSHH deals with harm to health from exposure; DSEAR deals with the substance catching fire. Many flammable solvents carry both risks and therefore both sets of duties.
Storage: a flammable storage cabinet, kept closed so vapour is contained. Our GPC highly flammable cabinets run £1,268.10 to £1,928.82 across four heights; the Bott Verso hazardous substance cupboard starts at £269.00 for small volumes. Our guide to flammable cabinets versus COSHH cabinets explains why they are usually the same cabinet under two names.
3. Oxidising symbol (GHS03)
The symbol: a flame sitting on top of a circle. What it means: oxidisers, which supply oxygen and will intensify a fire or start one without an obvious ignition source. Storage: the critical rule is segregation — never store an oxidiser in the same cabinet as a flammable. That is not a preference; it is the one combination that turns a small incident into a serious one. If you hold both, you need two cabinets, and the COSHH cabinet sizes guide works through how to split them.
4. Gas under pressure symbol (GHS04)
The symbol: a gas cylinder. What it means: compressed, liquefied, refrigerated liquefied and dissolved gases. The hazard is the contents and the pressure — a damaged cylinder can rupture or take off.
Storage: not a cabinet. Cylinders go upright, restrained, in a ventilated gas cylinder cage, normally outdoors. Putting a cylinder in a sealed COSHH cupboard is actively dangerous, because a leak accumulates instead of dispersing. See gas cylinder storage regulations and gas cylinder types explained.
5. Corrosive symbol (GHS05)
The symbol: liquid dripping from two test tubes onto a hand and a surface. What it means: substances that destroy skin and eye tissue, or corrode metal — strong acids, strong alkalis, some drain and descaling products.
Storage: an acid storage cabinet, £1,319.76 to £1,980.18. Note that "corrosive to metal" is part of this classification, which is exactly why a corrosive should not live loose in a steel cupboard shared with anything else. Acids and alkalis are also incompatible with each other and should not share a shelf.
6. Toxic symbol — acute toxicity (GHS06)
The symbol: a skull and crossbones. What it means: substances that are toxic or fatal in small quantities by swallowing, skin contact or inhalation. This is the most serious of the health pictograms and the one where COSHH duties bite hardest.
Storage: locked, always, and with access controlled to named people. Our CoSHH security cupboards run £1,369.98 to £2,575.86. Keep an accurate record of what is held and how much.
7. Harmful and irritant symbol (GHS07)
The symbol: an exclamation mark. What it means: the broad, lower-severity health category — skin and eye irritation, allergic skin reaction, acute toxicity at lower categories, drowsiness or dizziness, and harm to the ozone layer. It appears on an enormous range of ordinary workplace products, from cleaning chemicals to some paints.
The trap: because it is so common, this is the symbol people learn to ignore. It still triggers a COSHH assessment. Storage: a standard lockable COSHH cabinet is normally sufficient, and for small volumes the Bott Verso cupboard at £269.00 is the practical answer.
8. Serious health hazard symbol (GHS08)
The symbol: a starburst on a human torso. What it means: the serious, usually long-term health effects — carcinogens, mutagens, substances toxic to reproduction, respiratory sensitisers, aspiration hazard and specific target organ toxicity.
Why it matters more than it looks: the harm from a GHS08 substance is typically invisible on the day and appears years later, which makes it the pictogram most likely to be under-controlled. Health surveillance obligations under COSHH often attach here. Storage: locked and segregated, as GHS06.
9. Environmental hazard symbol (GHS09)
The symbol: a dead fish and a leafless tree. What it means: acute or chronic toxicity to aquatic life. This is the ninth pictogram and the one that is not a COSHH matter — it concerns pollution, not human health, and your duty runs to environmental legislation and your site's drainage rather than to a COSHH assessment.
Storage: containment rather than a cupboard. A leak that reaches a surface-water drain is the failure mode. That means a spill pallet or bund under drums and IBC containment pallets under bulk containers — our guide to what UK law requires on bunding covers the sizing rules.
What each symbol means for your storage — the short version
| Symbol | Hazard | What it needs | From |
|---|---|---|---|
| GHS01 | Explosive | Specialist storage — take substance-specific advice | Not stocked |
| GHS02 | Flammable | Closed flammable cabinet, away from ignition | £269.00 |
| GHS03 | Oxidising | Separate cabinet — never with flammables | £269.00 |
| GHS04 | Gas under pressure | Ventilated cylinder cage, upright and restrained | Cage, not cabinet |
| GHS05 | Corrosive | Acid cabinet, acids and alkalis apart | £1,319.76 |
| GHS06 | Acute toxicity | Locked security cupboard, controlled access | £1,369.98 |
| GHS07 | Harmful / irritant | Standard lockable COSHH cabinet | £269.00 |
| GHS08 | Serious health hazard | Locked and segregated; check health surveillance | £1,369.98 |
| GHS09 | Environmental | Bunding and spill containment, not a cupboard | Bund, not cabinet |
Two ranges sit outside the pictogram scheme but come up constantly. Pesticides and agrochemicals need a vented cabinet rather than a sealed one, because vapour must not accumulate — see pesticide and agrochemical cabinets at £1,319.76 to £1,980.18. And lithium-ion batteries carry no CLP pictogram at all, which is why so many sites have no storage plan for them; our guide to what UK guidance expects for lithium battery storage covers that gap, and the battery storage cabinets are here.
The old orange symbols — and when they actually went
If you have a container with an orange-and-black square symbol on it, you are looking at the pre-CLP system created by the CHIP Regulations. Those symbols were withdrawn in stages and CHIP was revoked on 1 June 2015, when CLP took full effect for supply in the UK. Anything still carrying an orange square has been sitting on a shelf for more than a decade.
The changes that catch people out when they compare old and new labels:
- The old St Andrew's cross (the black X, "harmful" or "irritant") has gone. Its meaning is now carried by the exclamation mark, GHS07.
- The serious health hazard starburst, GHS08, is new — there was no old orange equivalent, which means long-term health hazards were far less visible on a label before 2015.
- The wording changed with the symbols: risk and safety phrases (R and S) became hazard and precautionary statements (H and P).
The practical action: an orange-square container is a decant into an unlabelled bottle waiting to happen, and its safety data sheet is at least ten years old. Find the current sheet, re-label or dispose of it, and check nothing has been decanted from it.
The symbol is the headline; the H and P statements are the instruction
A pictogram tells you the type of hazard. It does not tell you the severity, the route of exposure or what to do. That comes from the text beside it:
- Signal word — "Danger" for the more severe category, "Warning" for the less severe. The same pictogram appears with both.
- H statements (hazard) — for example H314, "causes severe skin burns and eye damage".
- P statements (precautionary) — the actions: prevention, response, storage and disposal.
Two containers can carry an identical corrosive diamond and require completely different controls. If your COSHH assessment was written from the pictograms alone, it is not finished. Section 7 of the safety data sheet covers handling and storage, and section 10 covers incompatibilities — which is where you find out what must not share a cabinet.
What COSHH does not cover
A common exam question and a genuine source of confusion. Several of the most dangerous substances at work are excluded from COSHH because they have their own, stricter regulations:
- Asbestos — Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012.
- Lead — Control of Lead at Work Regulations 2002.
- Radioactive substances and ionising radiation — Ionising Radiations Regulations 2017.
- Substances hazardous solely because they are flammable, explosive, or at high pressure or temperature — DSEAR 2002.
Which is why the honest answer to "what are the main substances covered by COSHH" is that COSHH is defined by harm to health, not by a list. Chemicals, fumes, dusts, vapours, mists, nanotechnology, gases, asphyxiating gases and biological agents are all in scope if they can damage health at work.
COSHH signs, COSHH labels and why they are not the same thing
Worth separating, because the two are often conflated. COSHH labels — properly, CLP supply labels — go on the container and are the supplier's responsibility. COSHH signs on a door, a cabinet or a store are yours, and fall under the Health and Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996.
We are a storage equipment supplier, not a signage supplier, so if you need warning signs, labels or a COSHH symbols poster for the wall, a dedicated safety sign company is the right place. What we can tell you is what the cabinets themselves come with: the GPC hazardous range carries BS5378 labelling, the Bott Verso hazardous cupboard is finished to RAL 1023 with BS EN ISO 7010 marking, and the CoSHH security cupboards are supplied with regulation labels enclosed for the customer to fit. Cabinet colour, incidentally, is convention rather than law — yellow for flammables and red for fire equipment is widespread practice, but no regulation requires it. The COSHH cabinet requirements guide works through what is genuinely required.
Where the symbol stops being useful
Three honest limits, because a pictogram gets you started and no further:
- It does not tell you the quantity threshold. One aerosol and two hundred litres of the same solvent carry the same diamond and need entirely different arrangements. Volume, not classification, usually decides the cabinet.
- It does not tell you what is incompatible with what. Two substances with the same symbol can still be dangerous together. Section 10 of the data sheet is the only reliable source.
- It does not tell you about spill containment. None of the nine pictograms says anything about what happens when a container leaks — which is the failure that actually causes most incidents. That is a sump and bunding question, and it is worth reading our spill pallets guide alongside this one.
One thing we will not do is estimate a cabinet's sump capacity from its footprint. GPC publish no sump volume for any cabinet in the hazardous range, so if containment volume is your binding constraint, ask us to confirm it against the manufacturer's drawing before you order — and be prepared for the answer to be that a cabinet is the wrong product and you need floor-level bunding instead.
Getting from a symbol to a decision
Read the pictogram, then the signal word, then the H statements. Pull the safety data sheet and read sections 7 and 10. Total up how much of each substance you actually hold. Group by compatibility — flammables together, oxidisers separately, acids apart from alkalis, cylinders outside. Then size the storage, and only then look at prices.
Our range runs from a £269.00 Bott Verso cupboard for a few litres to £2,575.86 security cupboards for controlled substances, with the full hazardous storage range here and sizing worked through here. If you would rather send us the safety data sheets and the quantities, we will specify it against them.