158 / 234
HEALTH SAFETY & THE ENVIRONMENT
of Directors in July 1999 a resolution of the General Assembly approved the creation of a
Select Committee
Environment
(SC-ENV) to encompass such issues. The first meeting of
this committee took place at the Annual Assembly in Florence on the 10 July 2000 with an
attendance of 15 people and Dr Mauro Scasso (Italy) took on the position of Chair, an action
that was confirmed at the next meeting at the Annual Assembly in 2001. SC-ENV’s first
actions were to draft its terms of reference and to elicit comments from all other Working
Units regarding their views on environmental issues, as well as to have direct liaison with
C-VIII on health and safety issues. Eventually, SC-ENV was amalgamated into the activities
of C-VIII in 2007 which became
Health, Safety and Environment
. The environment was
an issue that all Commissions could contribute to through promoting the minimisation of
failure rates of welds, better weld inspection and assessment, extending the life of structures,
reducing the use of raw materials, and energy savings by more efficient fabrication
procedures. For instance, changes in welding consumables and technology had already
resulted in a considerable reduction in emissions from welding between 1960 and 1990.
22
The debate on thoriated tungsten electrodes for TIG welding,
supposedly due to the content of thorium in the fume, and the effects of arc
welding of mild steel and stainless steel, continued in some depth at C-VIII
meetings in the early years following 2000. In the latter, epidemiological
studies of lung cancer in welders underwent critical analysis through the
contributions of a number of presenters at the two-day meeting of C-VIII at
the Annual Assembly in Copenhagen, Denmark in July 2002. Overall, in the
face of continuing uncertainty, the Commission believed that welders should
be encouraged not to smoke and every effort should be made to reduce their
exposure to welding fume, especially fume containing nickel and chromium
VI. The Commission issued a revised statement on this important topic at its
meeting in Bucharest in July 2003 and approved a resolution to send this to
the Secretariat and the General Assembly.
23
The vexing question of thoriated tungsten electrodes and the effect of their
constituents in fumes still remained unresolved although the Swiss delegate informed the
meeting that all thoriated tungsten electrodes would be banned in Switzerland from the
beginning of 2004.
24
Subsequent studies would provide evidence that oxides of thorium
were only present in very small quantities in the arc and the exposure times were invariably
small, not sufficient to be injurious to the health of the welder. The ingestion of particles
into the respiratory system was attributed mainly to the grinding of the tip of the electrode
to maintain the correct profile for optimum welding conditions.
25
The definitive answer as
to whether or not cancer could be caused by the use of thoriated tungsten electrodes was
still open in 2004 and its resolution by C-VIII was still pending. Denmark was also to join
Switzerland in banning the use of tungsten electrodes containing thorium.