Question about warning and caution icons

[Dick Margulis <margulisd -at- comcast -dot- net>]

I landed a contract to do a user manual for a medical device to be used 
in operating rooms, ICUs, etc.

The customer provided several pages of warnings and cautions for me to 
drop in at the beginning of the book, and our agreement is that they're 
responsible for them; I'll use them for reference so I can drop copies 
of individual warnings and cautions into the procedures where needed. 
I'm not involved in editing them.

However, while I'm going to make this manual reasonably consistent with 
existing manuals for older products in terms of design, the client did 
ask for my input on ways to improve the usability of the document. The 
one big issue I've found so far has to do with these warnings and cautions.

At the suggestion of the company's EU distributor, they formatted 
warnings and cautions as follows:

There is a run-in heading (either "Warning:" or "Caution:") in bold, 
followed by the text of the message. To the left of each such paragraph, 
rather than a standard triangle icon, there is a low-res, screened image 
of a typographic "fist" (or "index"), that is, a hand with its 
forefinger extended to the right. The same fist is used for both 
warnings and cautions. This particular fist is taken from some very 
informal dingbat font; it looks like something you'd see in a 1940s 
comic book, frankly. That is, it does not convey gravitas in any way, 
shape, or form.

I'd like to recommend strongly that they move away from this convention 
and use standard warning and caution icons. Two questions:

1. Is there any argument you can think of for not suggesting the change? 
That is, is there any justification for what they're doing now?

2. Can you point me to a source for standard (IEEE??) symbols, 
preferably EPS, but I can deal with any format? I haven't done a 
hardware manual in a long time, and I'm not sure where to look. By the 
way, this is a black and white job, so I don't need color icons.

Thanks,

Dick

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