Page 42 - Occupational Health & Safety, April 2019

WELDING
Welders’ Protection By the Book
The protective measures and equipment that welders require are spelled out in OSHA’s 29 CFR 1910.252, the welding, cutting, and brazing standard.
BY JERRY LAWS
Being exposed to welding fume and gases is one of the leading hazards faced by welders. Burns and electrical shock are significant hazards, as well.
England’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) sig- naled its increased concern about welding fume when it announced in February 2019 that, regardless of the duration a worker may be exposed to welding fume, it will no longer accept any welding undertaken without any suitable exposure control measures in place—be- cause there is no known level of safe exposure, the agency stressed.
There is new scientific evidence that exposure to all welding fume, including mild steel welding fume, can cause lung cancer and limited evidence it is linked to kidney cancer, HSE pointed out in a notice it called a “change in enforcement expectations.”
The agency stressed that all businesses undertak- ing welding activities should ensure effective engi- neering controls are provided and correctly used to
control fume arising from those welding activities, and where engineering controls are not adequate to control all fume exposure, adequate and suitable re- spiratory protective equipment is also required to control risk from the residual fume.
The new scientific evidence is from the Interna- tional Agency for Research on Cancer that exposure to mild steel welding fume can cause lung cancer and pos- sibly kidney cancer in humans. The Workplace Health Expert Committee has endorsed the reclassification of mild steel welding fume as a human carcinogen.
“With immediate effect, there is a strengthen- ing of HSE’s enforcement expectation for all welding fume, including mild steel welding; because general ventilation does not achieve the necessary control,” HSE announced. “Control of the cancer risk will re- quire suitable engineering controls for all welding ac- tivities indoors e.g. Local Exhaust Ventilation (LEV). Extraction will also control exposure to manganese, which is present in mild steel welding fume, which
38 Occupational Health & Safety | APRIL 2019
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