Page 12 - Australasian Paint & Panel magazine Jul-Aug 2021

NEWS
12
PAINT&PANEL JULY / AUGUST 2021
WWW.PAINTANDPANEL.COM.AU
WELDING FUME RESEARCH
TO CREATE A BETTER UNDERSTANDING
of workers’ exposure to welding fumes in Australia, the NSW Government’s Centre for Work Health and Safety is conducting new research.
Together with the University of Syd- ney and Curtin University, the Centre is focusing on broadening the knowledge of Australian welding industries and oc- cupations, current controls being used and the effectiveness in risk mitigation.
SafeWork Director, Research and Evaluation, Skye Buatava said it’s im- portant to understand which interven- tion strategies are effective in reduc- ing worker exposure to harmful welding fumes.
“The long-latency period for occupa- tional cancers and diseases can cause a
significant challenge to establish a di- rect connection between welding fume exposure and lung cancer.”
Lead researcher, Professor Tim Driscoll said: “Welding is a cross-in- dustry technology and there is limited knowledge about this high-risk activ- ity and the risk profiles among weld- ers in Australia. We want to know who is being exposed to these fumes, and what their levels of exposure are. This information is needed so appro- priate control measures can be de- signed that minimise exposures as much as possible.”
The research is being undertaken in a bid to learn how different workers or industries use personal protective equipment, the equipment’s effective-
ness as well as a workers’ understand- ing of the long-term harm.
A specialised cancer agency of the World Health Organization, the Inter- national Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), recently re-classified welding fumes from ‘possibly carcinogenic to humans', to ‘carcinogenic to humans'.
It concluded that there is sufficient ev- idence in humans supporting that weld- ing fumes cause cancer in the lungs (and a positive association has been ob- served with cancer of the kidneys).
“The recent reclassification of weld- ing fumes carcinogenicity has high- lighted the need to better understand exposure to the fumes in a practical set- ting in order to protect NSW workers from long term harm,” Buatava said.
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