diff --git a/includes/objects/attention.php b/includes/objects/attention.php
index 6c8b8832d..9e53685d6 100644
--- a/includes/objects/attention.php
+++ b/includes/objects/attention.php
@@ -111,6 +111,12 @@ public function submit()
 			);
 		}
 
+		// Emojis and other four byte characters are not allowed by MySQL in the
+		// utf8 columns these are stored in, so replace them with their numeric
+		// character reference, as core does for report text.
+		$this->attention_title = utf8_encode_ucr($this->attention_title);
+		$this->attention_description = utf8_encode_ucr($this->attention_description);
+
 		parent::submit();
 	}