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Joe Scholz
Principal Consultant

WorkSafe WA released a bulletin in June 2026 with a number that should stop most site managers in their tracks: across 2024 and 2025, roughly two thirds of welding fume samples submitted to the department exceeded the workplace exposure standard (WES). Not a handful of outliers. Two out of every three.

That matters because welding fume isn't a "nuisance dust" problem. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies it as a Group 1 carcinogen, meaning there's sufficient evidence it causes cancer in humans. The health effects run from respiratory irritation and metal fume fever right through to COPD and long-term cancer risk, and because the WES concerns cumulative exposure, the consequences can show up decades after the work is done.

What's driving the exposure

A few factors consistently push welders over the standard:

  • Cutting or welding painted and coated metals, which release toxic pyrolysis products
  • Welding galvanised or cadmium-coated metals
  • Welding stainless steel, which generates chromium (Cr(VI)) and nickel oxide fume
  • High-fume processes like arc air gouging or stick welding
  • Thicker materials that need higher current and produce more fume
  • Poorly ventilated or confined spaces without effective local exhaust ventilation (LEV)

Controls matter, and WorkSafe's guidance is clear on the hierarchy: eliminate or substitute where you can, engineer the problem out with on-torch extraction or LEV, back it up with administrative controls like rotation and scheduling, and use properly fitted respiratory protective equipment as the last line of defence.

Why controls alone aren't the full answer

Here's the part that often gets missed: WorkSafe is explicit that air sampling and health monitoring are not control measures in themselves. They're the verification step. You can have extraction fitted, RPE issued, and a rotation schedule on the wall, and still not actually know whether workers' exposure is under the 1 mg/m3 WES inside the helmet over an 8-hour day. The only way to know is to measure it.

That's the gap QED works in. We carry out workplace air monitoring to test whether welding fume exposure sits within the current WES, and we help PCBUs understand what the results actually mean for their obligations under work health and safety legislation, not just hand over a number and walk away.

A standard that's about to shift

There's also a timing element here. Australia is transitioning from workplace exposure standards (WES) to workplace exposure limits (WEL), with the WEL list taking effect from 1 December 2026. Until then, PCBUs need to keep complying with the WES list, but sites that get ahead of the transition now, rather than scrambling in November, are in a much stronger position.

Where QED fits in

Getting monitoring right requires more than turning up with a pump and a filter. It means understanding the process being used, the materials involved, the ventilation setup, and how to interpret a time-weighted average result against the standard that actually applies to that workplace. That's the service QED provides: workplace exposure monitoring that gives PCBUs a clear, defensible answer to the question "are we actually compliant," not just a control measure they hope is working.

If your site is running welding, cutting, or gouging processes and you haven't had exposure levels independently verified, now is a sensible time to do it, particularly with the WEL transition on the horizon.

Get in touch with QED to talk about workplace air monitoring for welding fume and other airborne contaminants.

Source: WorkSafe WA, Health and Safety Bulletin No. 26, "Reducing exposure to carcinogenic welding fumes," 25 June 2026.