IIW History 1990-2015

At the core of this important document were the considered concerns on the possible hazards and risks to be encountered during arc welding in order to help welding fabricators to identify counter-measures to minimise risk. In contrast, most ISO standards on health and safety that had been approved to date were on requirements for testing, including methods and procedures for the sampling of fumes. An antidote to delays, and a less arduous route for providing this information to industry, was through the issue of best practice documents, sometimes called consensus statements. Some of these documents issued by C-VIII, included: Exposure and the Need for Control Measures ; IIW Statement on Manganese: Chromium and Manganese in Welding: Exposure and the Need for Control Mechanisms ; Health and Safety in Fabrication Repair of Welded Components: Aspects, Impacts and Compliance to Regulations ; and Lung Cancer and Arc Welding of Steels, all of which were of real importance to the welding industry. The efficacy of producing best practice documents, such as these, came from the authoritative views of some of the best experts in the world on health and safety. Dr Martin Cosgrove (UK) was a significant contributor on health aspects to C-VIII and his treatise on Arc Welding and Airways Diseases was an excellent example of the quality of debate and discussion that were typical of C-VIII meetings. His conclusions, like McMillan before him, were quite succinct ‘…whilst it is difficult to come to any firm conclusions on the basis of the epidemiological evidence as to whether exposure to welding fumes and gases does or does not cause an accelerating decline in lung function, it seems sensible to take a precautionary approach’. 44 Mr David Hisey (Canada) was another national delegate of C-VIII to provide valuable insight into such areas as electrical safety hazards in welding and, more recently, potential health problems involved in thermite welding. The statement on Lung Cancer and Arc Welding of Steels Martin Cosgrove

HEALTH SAFETY & THE ENVIRONMENT was a perfect illustration of how such a document could be a continuing reference work when it was updated to take into account the latest information when distributed through IIW by C-VIII to IIW’s membership in 2010. 45 Attention was focused on studies published since the previous statement that had identified the risk from a number of metal compounds such as iron, nickel and asbestos, as well as ionising radiation and ultrafine particles. The studies

David Hisey