IIW History 1990-2015

The newly created tradition of holding scientific seminars with the host country during an Annual Assembly continued in Osaka, Japan, when C-VIII met over two days 12-14 July 2004 with six presentations, including one from Mr Michel Diss (France) and five speakers from Japan, on a range of topics that illustrated the work being undertaken by Japanese researchers. In addition, Mr Richard Boekholt (The Netherlands) presented a report on The Welder as a Strategic Resource in Shipbuilding . A finding of this report was that one of the most important reasons for health disturbances and chronic disease in US shipyards was muscular-

Richard Boekholt

skeletal ailments, a leading cause in the early retirement of shipyard welding personnel. 29 In an expression of solidarity on this issue the Select Committee Shipbuilding (SC-SHIP) expressed a desire to contribute to these studies, with the support of European shipyards, when it was formed with Boekholt as Chair. Later, Kadefors was to inform C-VIII that a project had been set up under the auspices of SC-SHIP to look at the relationship between ergonomics and musculoskeletal health. Mr Glenn Ziegenfuss (USA) also addressed the meeting on standardisation and it was decided that C-VIII would issue technical reports on safety and health topics related to welding, some of which could be used for international standards or publications through IIW’s connections with ISO. At an intermediate meeting in Cologne, Germany

in January 2005 it was confirmed that the consensus statement on lung cancer had finally been accepted by IIW and would be published in Welding in the World . The other statement on manganese had been modified and had been submitted to the Board of Directors for their approval. There was some urgency in this since Hedrick reported on welding rod litigation in the USA.He indicated that ‘thousands of lawsuits have been filed against manufacturers of consumables

Steve Hedrick

and equipment in the USA alleging that exposure to manganese from fumes was causing neurological injury’. 30 In a subsequent meeting during the Annual Assembly in Prague in July 2005, Brown was to elucidate further on the manganese problemby reporting that a recent Danish study onmanganese had found no excessive degenerative neurological diseases in welders. He also provided updates on progress of Duke University’s manganese literary research programme and details of theHarvard School of PublicHealth Study.

HEALTH SAFETY & THE ENVIRONMENT