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HEALTH SAFETY & THE ENVIRONMENT
Richard Boekholt
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-
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
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.
Steve Hedrick