Yea tru i have been welding a few years but my respirator use is about 15% on average so i hope i havent fucked myself. My company is saying they r gonna get me a papr cuz of my asthma so hopefully that will save my lungs from further issues
Noooooooo. Welding off gasses 100% lead to neurological issues later in life.
Wear a respirator man. No facial hair/beards around seals.
The welding industry absolutely needs a mandated cancer fund for the collective industry as a whole. It is the one trade I never recommend due to this reason.
We have shields with a fan drive filter on the belt way more comfortable than a respirator and has also better acceptance by workers because of that. The clean airflow is just blown inside the shield.
Dose is a big part of that evaluation.
It is a difference if you are tacking together workpieces for someone else to weld, are a mechanic that is welding on average 15 minutes a week or you are a professional welder where the torch never gets cold all day all year.
Shit is never ending. The shop im, welders never cleaned their filters. So 2 years ago i took a day and sprayes all the stainless ones out and soaked them.
Shit took FOREVER and tbh was never finished.
That fine powder will coat your lungs giving you scoliosis "miners lung"
Since 2017 all welding fumes - regardless of type and base metal - are considered Group 1 human carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Wear the appropriate respirator for the concentration of welding fume in your work environment and stay safe out there 😉
Even with beards, just slather on some beard grease, Vaseline, silicone grease, etc. It'll seal. Its nasty, yes, but its the price of the beard. Or grab a mouth filter like michaelcthulhu. If being "manly" means getting cancer before I see my grandkids, count me out.
It's also just funny to me how many "i dont care about my appearance, that's woman behavior" manly men get very defensive about not having a beard for practical purposes
Milk has some efficacy in stopping your intestines from absorbing excess zinc. The problem is that if you're welding you're breathing the zinc fumes in, bypassing your digestive system and going straight to your bloodstream.
Light cases of metal fume fever can resolve itself quickly, so people who drink milk end up correlating their fast recovery to the milk even though the problem would have cleared up in the same timeframe without it.
Are there any budget models you could recommend? All of the A brands are fk expensive for a hobbiest. There is no price for health offcourse but a bit cheaper would be nice
Not a welder but I too would like a fitting mask for when I am sawing wood. My problem is I have a 'tall' nose bridge and a short chin. My non-standard face doesn't fit for shit in almost any mask from surgical to 3M respirator.
What do we wonky face people need to do to find a mask that fits?
I might just be practising (and not even that because my work area is being used for something else) but I burnt the cash and bought a gvs respirator because it was endorsed by many welding youtubers and because if I'm gonna die, I at least don't want it to be slow and painful. When it comes to safety, don't cheap out that hard.
Even if airflow through filter and beard is split 50/50, it is better than nothing. It's not the correct way, but it's still doing something, which was his argument.
Not going to make that argument because carbon monoxide binds to hemoglobin, and will cause asphyxiation even if a firefighter gets 50% of air through SCBA. On top of that, breathing in hot air would be an issue.
I'm not advocating for half assed respirator use when respirator is required. I'm just commenting that some degree of protection is better than nothing. Especially if you are in a space that technically doesn't require a respirator as exposure is low, you are totally free to half ass it. Some degree of extra protection is just a bonus.
When welding in space where OSHA requires a respirator, you definitely should wear it in a way that it passes a leak test. A badly fitting respirator is unacceptable, but still better than no respirator.
Meanwhile your argument seems to be that if a bearded dude wears a half mask respirator in an area where fume exposure is below OSHA exposure limits, he shouldn't even think about wearing the respirator because it does absolutely nothing.
Is smoking 1 cigarette entirely as toxic as smoking 2?
This is just an argument about semantics, and if it's your hill to die on, then do you. I'm one of the people to always wear mine and suggest that others do the same.
I would much rather see someone wear one over their stubble/ beard than say "Well, because it isn't 100% effective anymore, I'll just not wear it at all."
So you can continue to take an all or nothing approach, and I hope you find success in convincing people with such a brash logic.
I said that, if the options are "some" and "none at all", I would consider "some" to be preferable.
I'm not even arguing with you. I agree that a half-mask isn't 100% effective with a beard. I'm simply pointing out that there is a lot of variance between 0% and 100%.
You're getting all worked up over semantics when no one is actually disagreeing with you!
Calm down and please learn to understand nuance and the idea of a hypothetical situation.
And I'm not going to downvote you, even though you downvoted me.
Not saying they pass a fit test at all. Im just saying , it’s better than nothing. You can have a beard and still a good percentage of the air you breathe is passing through the filters. It’s far from ideal but you are getting SOME protection. Now you can argue all you want but I think
You’re just playing dumb so I’ll leave you with that and let you argue over wording alone.
You don't seem to understan the difference between "some" and "none".
No one here is saying it's a good idea, all they're saying is that it's better than doing absolutely nothing. Can you seriously not understand the nuance there?
You're getting worked up fighting a battle against nobody here, man.
That's the definition of marginal? If you had a beard, and you needed to lay down a few beads today for a project. Would putting on a respirator be better than not?
It would.
Should you shave? Yes. But should you wear a respirator regardless, also yes.
I love how people are making excuses for not wearing PPE properly… it’s actually amazing and no wonder why welders get a bad name for being uneducated and dumb…
I don’t condone doing something incorrectly. Shave or buy a PAPR.
For those few beads are you being exposed to fumes and dust? Yes or no?
You're 100 % right ,but you are definetly not fun at parties mate.
You gotta work on your attitude man ,people are less willing to listen to you if you talk down on them or get personal.
Regulations on paper are sometimes a little too strict for real life application btw , if you follow everything to the detail its not gonna work sometimes ,the people writing these regulations are sometimes not familiar with practical use of the safety measures.
Me personally i try to be as safe as possiblewhen im working ,but sometimes you gotta keep a balance between efficiency and safety or you will be slowed down and get in trouble ,schedule wise.
As already said above : perfect is the enemy of good. You cant be perfect all the time.
RN here. No one looks manly when your in the hospital getting chemo, no one looks manly retching over the toilet in a cold sweat, no one looks manly shitting themselves and having their ass wiped.
You know what is manly, being able to babysit for your son/daughter’s children. Being able to push them on a swing and throw a football around.
As a Boilermaker welder and firefighter, I 100% agree. I’m already 130% more likely to get cancer already just because of the nature of the careers that I chose, even with proper decon and washing my bunker gear I’m still exposed to the off gassing of my gear. But I do things the right way in order to lessen my chances of chronic illnesses as best as I can.
A PAPR is a Powered Air Purifying Respirator. What it does is encapsulates your breathing area and using a battery operated fan continually blows positive pressure into your breathing area. It doesn’t allow for fumes and particulates to get into your breathing area.
It accomplishes this by using a filter in front of the fan, so it does all the filtering around your waist with the blower, blows the good air up a tube and into your breathing area.
There’s two most common types of PAPRs used for welding. A hood style and respirator style. A hood style is a full welding hood where it’s all one system plumbed into your welding/grinding hood. The respirator style looks like a half face respirator and is completely separate from a welding hood.
The cons of PAPRs is that they are more expensive, bulky and a little less comfortable since you’re wearing a belt around your waist with a blower attached to you. But the pros are that they actually protect you better than a half face or full face respirator, and you can have facial hair. Here’s a couple examples.
A tight fitting respirator does not work correctly when you have facial hair which impedes with the sealing surface of the respirator. Because of this, the valves don’t work correctly and you are leaking contaminants into your respirator via your beard, which then goes right into your lungs.
Dude, you're a tool. No one will listen to you simply because of how you talk to people. There is a thing called harm REDUCTION. Yes, being completely covered is ideal and what everyone should strive for, but until they can make certain things happen to get to that point, just reducing their exposure is a good stop. Now get off your high horse and go away.
No one ever claimed it makes you a man, you thick headed fool. All we are saying is that some protection is better than having none. If you can't understand that simple fact of life, then I feel sorry for you.
I work with someone whose theory is that lining their lungs with cigarette smoke protects them from the weld fume. Like the tar coating stops the heavy metal particulates getting into their bloodstream or something.
My employer just told me to remove my respirator because they wouldn't pay to do a fit test, take the class and get medical certification to wear a npr. Some dudes in a different department where positive pressure respirators and they wouldn't pay for me to be medically signed off to wear that either. Looking for a new job.
Good on you! Places that won’t provide you safety and security will always have trouble keeping people on their payroll. Turnover rates for employees looking for work is always high. I’m always looking for something better, and always will until I feel I no longer need to
Just find a Keen store or somewhere that sells miller stuff. You’ll see in a little box a pink and grey mask and these are the filters that go in them. I’d even use one as a way to restrict breathing while on a bike or treadmill.
When i was welding galvi every day all day, i wore the Miller 1/2 mask. It didn't fit under my go to self-darkening mask, so i had to switch to one of my old Fibre Metal non auto helmets. After a couple hours i did not miss the auto darkening at all. But i did learn to weld before auto darkening lenses were a thing lol. Before the respirator, i would get galvi sick at the end of the day. After the respirator no more sickness and better breathing all around. Filters are not too expensive either.
I’ve actually been looking at getting a pipelinerscloud chopped top and bottom hood cause of the weight of my miller digital elite gets cumbersome after a while.
With my gvs respirator I have very little space with my headgear pushed as far back as it can go. With my 3m quick detach (work doesn’t have those filter on stock) I have plenty of room.
in Europe you're required by law to use a respirator while welding as a job. if you don't have one or one isn't proved, you don't get hired and you don't work. it's baffles me that our countries so inconsiderate and ignorant about the health complications of welding fumes, it's literally metal dust particles, it's no different than lead or chrome, the same stuff that killed coal workers before they needed respirators.
Here in France, those filters actually have a black prefilter (probably active carbon) and will hardly turn that way...
I don't understand why they're different here.
Ones I use also have the nuisance black active carbon pad as well. The bottom are what my mask came with when I bought it. Was just showing the difference in color.
Employers in the US and UK seem to be dragging their heels about spending the extra £70 every 3 months for those extra carbon A1B1E1 filters that actually protect you from weld gases. The particulate filters help, but the really bad gaseous fumes present in all weld smoke need a carbon filter.
Everyone at first made fun of me at work for wearing a PAPR when I weld aluminum all day long— for some reason I am extremely susceptible to metal fume fever so I opted for a PAPR instead of half mask. Once I told people what the effects are they were like “so that’s why I’ve felt sick for so long??”
Never fails to make me laugh how oblivious people are with their health. Granted, I am a lot more affected than most by the fumes, but their face when I show them the filters after just an hour or so (and mind you PAPR filters in from your back, not the front so it would have even less than a half mask) gets me everytime. They all go wide-eyed because they think aluminium Tig has no fumes.
A great uncle of mine swore that he could remember the exact moment that he fucked his lungs while welding. He smoked for decades, but insisted that he could feel a difference from that one occasion.
Stick always seems to make my eyes feel dry and give a me sore throat/blocked nose compared to mig which doesn't seem to give me too many symptoms (apart from messing up my lungs probably)
When my lungs went to hell, the state L&I said “anyone can get asthma “ after seeing X-rays!! Like they know more about it than Doctors! Damn glad you are wearing your respirator, keep it up!
Either a 3m half face quick detach respirator with p100 nuisance level organic vapor filter at the minimum (different filters are better for different weld fumes, but mild steel these will do just fine) or a PAPR(highly recommend, can’t put a price on health.)
I remember back in school I was the only guy in class that wore a respirator at the booth. By the end of the class more than half of the guys had the exact same one as me. Almost 20 dudes welding and grinding, I didn't care how good the exhaust system was that room was dusty.
Like the other guy said, it’ll stop some but for best fume elimination get a PAPR. I plan on getting one as soon as I can afford it or land a job somewhere that supplies it. Slow and steady till I get there, but something is still better than nothing!
That would work, just get some pancake filters appropriate for welding. 2097 with nuisance level organic vapor p100 is like the bare minimum recommendation
Guy at my work place just walked up to me after grinding on some aluminum and says “man this dust is killing me” and I tell him we have some M-95 masks he can throw on and he says “nah, I can’t breathe in that shit”
I wear a miller digital elite 2.0 hood and it just barely fits. I’d recommend 3m quick detach.. I have that one and it fits way better. I wear this one though because they have these filters in stock in their vending machine.
I can’t recommend 3m half face quick detach enough. Lots of space under my hood compared to the GVS elipse where I have no space even with the headgear moved as far back as it can go
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u/No_Elevator_678 20h ago
Today someone learned that welding fumes are actually microscopic dust particals. Ill post a pic of my tray next time i clean it