Welding Fume Exposure: A Victorian Manufacturer's WHS Duties

Why welding fume deserves its own risk assessment

Welding fume is not a single substance — it is a variable mixture of metal oxide particles and gases whose composition depends on the base metal, the filler rod or wire, any coating or surface contaminant, the shielding gas, and the welding process itself. That variability matters legally: Safe Work Australia's welding fume guidance confirms the mixture changes with the process, the metal being welded, any shielding gas or flux, the rod composition, and any coatings or contaminants on the metal — so a generic "dust and fumes" risk assessment copied from another task will not hold up if WorkSafe asks how you identified what was actually in the air.

WorkSafe Victoria and Safe Work Australia have both tightened their position on welding fume in the last two years. In January 2024, the national workplace exposure standard (WES) for welding fumes "not otherwise classified" was cut from an 8-hour time-weighted average (TWA) of 5 mg/m³ to 1 mg/m³, and WorkSafe Victoria confirmed the new limit applied in Victorian workplaces from 18 January 2024. WorkSafe's own notice is blunt about the stakes: it lists respiratory irritation, asthma, nervous system damage, and lung and kidney cancer as documented health effects, and notes that three Victorian workers have died from welding-fume-related disease since 2019.

How the regulators currently treat the carcinogen question

Welding fume is widely reported elsewhere as having been reclassified a Group 1 human carcinogen by an international cancer research body in 2017. We could not independently verify that specific classification on a WorkSafe Victoria or Safe Work Australia page in this review, so we won't assert it as regulator language. What we can confirm directly from both regulators' own current guidance is simpler and just as serious: WorkSafe Victoria and Safe Work Australia each list lung cancer (and, on WorkSafe Victoria's page, kidney cancer) among the recognised health effects of welding fume exposure, and both regulators point to that cancer risk as the reason the exposure standard was tightened rather than left unchanged. In practice, for a Victorian manufacturer, the legal question is not which classification label applies — it's that your duty under section 21 of the OHS Act 2004 to eliminate risks so far as reasonably practicable already captures a substance your own regulator associates with cancer.

What's actually in the fume

Neither regulator's current public hazard page we reviewed names every chemical individually — Safe Work Australia's welding fumes page instead points employers to the safety data sheets for their specific welding rods and consumables to identify what's actually being generated, and confirms separate exposure standards exist for some individual fume components. That said, the underlying metallurgy is well established and worth naming plainly so you know what to look for on those SDSs:

• Manganese — present in most welding fume, particularly from mild and high-tensile steels, and associated with nervous system effects on long-term exposure.
• Hexavalent chromium and nickel — generated when welding stainless steel and other high-chromium, high-nickel alloys, because those metals are present in the base metal and consumables themselves. Hexavalent chromium is a recognised carcinogen independent of the general welding fume classification.
• Ozone, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide — generated directly in the welding arc rather than from the metal, with higher concentrations typically associated with open-arc processes such as MIG and TIG.

This is why stainless steel and higher-alloy fabrication work needs a different conversation to mild-steel fabrication: the fume isn't just "more of the same" — it may contain additional hazardous chemicals with their own separate exposure standards. Victoria's forthcoming move from workplace exposure standards (WES) to workplace exposure limits (WEL) on 1 December 2026 will affect several of the metals found in welding fume — see our guide to the WES-to-WEL transition for what's changing there, rather than duplicating it here.

Your duties under the OHS Regulations 2017

We could not find any indication that WorkSafe Victoria has adopted the national model Code of Practice: Welding Processes — that document has legal status only in jurisdictions running the model WHS laws, and Victoria runs its own OHS Act 2004 and OHS Regulations 2017 instead. Your duties flow through that Act and those Regulations, with WorkSafe Victoria's Compliance Code: Hazardous Substances setting out one way to comply with the hazardous substances provisions. Taken together, the core duties are:

1. Identify what's hazardous. Get and keep a current safety data sheet for every welding consumable and base-metal coating in use, and maintain a register of the hazardous substances on site and the people who use or may be exposed to them.
2. Don't exceed the exposure standard. Employees must not be exposed to airborne concentrations above the relevant exposure standard for welding fume as a whole, or above any separate standard that applies to an individual component of the fume.
3. Monitor when you're not sure. If it's uncertain whether exposure could exceed a standard, you must carry out atmospheric monitoring, give the results to affected employees, and keep records.
4. Arrange health monitoring where it applies. The Regulations require health monitoring in specified circumstances for substances listed in Schedule 9 — check whether any of the metals your welders are exposed to fall within that schedule, and arrange monitoring through a registered medical practitioner if so.
5. Consult your HSRs. Employees and health and safety representatives must be consulted when identifying welding fume hazards and deciding on controls, and control measures must be reviewed if a medical practitioner or HSR requests it, or when the process or substances change.

The control hierarchy — in the order WorkSafe expects

Safe Work Australia's own guidance on the welding fume standard sets out the same order of preference regardless of which metal is being welded, and "wear a respirator" is deliberately last on the list, not first:

1. Eliminate — use pre-cast or pre-fabricated components so the weld, and the fume, is never generated.
2. Substitute — switch to an alternative welding consumable or a lower-fume process such as TIG (GTAW) where practical.
3. Isolate and engineer it out — weld in isolation booths away from other workers, and fit on-torch fume extraction and local exhaust ventilation (LEV) to capture fume at the source.
4. Administrative controls — provide appropriate worker training.
5. Respiratory protective equipment (RPE) — select appropriate respirators, such as powered air-purifying respirators, but only after the controls above are in place; well-maintained, correctly worn RPE can only be factored in once higher-order controls are implemented. See our PPE obligations guide for the fit-testing and selection duties that come with RPE as a last-resort control.

Welding inside tanks, vessels or other confined spaces compounds all of this — fume that would disperse in an open workshop can accumulate rapidly in a confined space, alongside the separate atmospheric and permit duties that apply there. If that's part of your operation, read it alongside our confined space permit-to-work guide.

Where aluminium fits in

If your shop welds aluminium — common in boat building and repair — note that the aluminium welding fume exposure standard was separately reduced to match the general welding fume standard: 5 mg/m³ down to 1 mg/m³ TWA, effective 17 November 2025. Safe Work Australia's guidance on that change notes workplaces already meeting the 1 mg/m³ general welding fume limit, or welding aluminium only occasionally with effective controls, may already be compliant — but it's worth confirming rather than assuming, and an occupational hygienist can advise on air monitoring to check.

A practical starting checklist

• Pull the SDS for every rod, wire and flux currently in use and note which contain chromium, nickel or manganese.
• Separate your stainless/high-alloy welding tasks from mild-steel welding in your risk assessment — the fume isn't the same hazard.
• Check on-torch extraction or LEV is fitted and actually being used, not just available.
• If you can't confirm exposure is under 1 mg/m³ by inspection, commission air monitoring in the welder's breathing zone.
• Confirm RPE is fit-tested per person, not shared untested between shifts.

This article is general information for Victorian manufacturers, not legal advice. Last updated: 18 October 2026.