IIW History 1990-2015

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.

HEALTH SAFETY & THE ENVIRONMENT