First of all, let me tell you what is welding. Mainly welding is the process to join metal by increasing the heat with electricity. Simply, it’s just two pieces of iron or it’s a part of a car that doesn’t matter. At overheat, metal melts and welders join them with each other. Now, when it’s on you to weld any metal or you’re a professional welder, sometimes you may think is welding bad for your health?
Well, giving the answer frequently is a bit tough. But, the answer is, no it’s not. As both arc welding and gas welding emits gasses, carbons, and fumes, it’s quite injurious to health. But if you fulfill some requirements and follow some basic rules, welding will not harm you.
Anyway, in this article we are going to answer the question is welding bad for your health, discuss the arc welding safety procedures, the side effects of welding, and some basic tips, and tricks.
Stay with us!
Some basic tips and tricks to follow
Here are some tips which will help you enough to have the smooth and safest welding experience.
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Pay much attention to safety
Whatever you are doing, be conscious about your safety first. Paying attention to safety during welding is a must. You can kill yourself if you’re not aware of dangerous stuff. Grab your all kinds of accessories like helmet, jacket, boot, gloves and Shirts and welding Pants.
Get started staying in a safe position. An explosion in welding is common now. While welding the material in the ground, keep the 45-degree angle between your run and body so that you can stand up quickly if something bad happens.
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Hold and handle the gun carefully
The welding gun is the main thing to weld anything. Well, it’s like a giant control and can betray you also. So be careful, hold it with your right hand if you’re a right-handed person or the left hand if you are a left-handed person. With the other hand, place the neck of the gun at your target.
When filling material comes out the gun may slip. Set the MIG gas at ease, slipping the gun may cause an explosion or firing. After all, it has the ability to melt down anything like water. It melts the metal, so don’t think to be careless about it.
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Clean the material body every time
Cleanliness is much important for welding. Oil, dirt or grease can ruin your whole day simply. Any of the junk can enter into the pool of your welding and that place will remain blank. To make the welding genuine the pool needs to be solid.
Without being solid the welding and joint won’t be much durable. Experts say that hydrogen is the enemy of welding. Melted metals can’t grip each other if there is some hydrogen left between them. Hydrogen is in the air, how can you solve it? The answer is you can do nothing but cleaning the pool each and every time.
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Try to make the best use of filler metals
The importance of the filler metal is various. You can’t finish your welding without the filler metal. It closes the gaps that remain after joining the two pieces of metal.
Now, using the filler metal is a bit risky and many of the welders waste it. But it costs much. So, don’t underestimate the significance of the filler metal. Try to make the best use of it, don’t split it from the welding plate. Before filling the gaps, clean them with dry clothes or tissues. Leaving a gap in the joint will cost you rework and it’s not that much good you know!
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Be careful about the direction, angle, and speed
When you’re welding it’s essential to be careful about the direction and angle. Suppose, you’re joining two pieces of iron. It would of rectangular shape. What if you mess with the angle? The rectangular shape will no longer remain beautiful.
Besides, the measurement is an important thing. Perfect welding is too much relatable with the measurement. So, try to weld at the correct position and perfect angle. Keep an extra eye on the speed and gas. Don’t weld the iron and the aluminum at the same pressure of the gas. Try to weld metals putting on something hard. It’ll help enough to keep the fit position.
You need to be more conscious if you’re welding a cars’ part. Being unconscious may leave a defect in its body. To avoid such troubles, use the best welding electrodes, best welding torches, and best welding machines.
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Be careful about the electricity
The electricity is a dangerous thing to deal with. Welding is something like playing with the electricity and it’s too risky if you’re just unconscious. Electric shocks are deadly and can cause you fatal harm.
Don’t lose the wires and cables. Try to keep the pointer of the gun away from the cables. If you fire the spark towards the cable they’ll burn down and cause a short circuit. This may occur in big trouble. Explosion or firing is the most common.
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Don’t look at the light directly
Looking for long, the light of spark can damage your watching. But the matter of sorrow is, it’s essential to look at the light during welding. Otherwise, you won’t be able to understand where you are actually welding. This will occur a low-quality welding. On the other hand looking at that point is a bit tough. So what are you gonna do now?
What you can do is buy a mask with the light turn off the feature, or a helmet which reduces the brightness. There are some shields that also protects the eyes too. You can try them. You can try the basic goggles to protect your eyes, though using goggles during welding is not a good enough idea to keep up.
So these are some common tips to handle welding. What you just need to do is, before start welding goes through all these processes described up there.
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What are the side effects of welding?
The side effects come through you when you’re not prepared for welding. You’re callous about the protectors and shields. If you don’t follow the rules of welding there are many health effects of welding including some respiratory effects and non-respiratory effects.
Here are some of those.
Respiratory effects:
Respiratory effects are mainly for the fumes and gasses. The emitted fumes are aluminum, silica, lead, iron, copper, chromium, titanium, cadmium etc. Some hazardous gases are carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and ozone. Radiant energy like ultraviolet or infrared also exposures during arc and gas welding. There are some other hazards vibrations, heat, and noise. The effects depend on the time of work, place of work and precautions.
Here’s a list of most probable respiratory illnesses.
- Asthma
- Lung Cancer
- Metal Fume Fever
- Pulmonary Function
- Pneumoconiosis and Fibrosis
- Bronchitis
- Respiratory Infection and Immunity
Non-respiratory effects:
The non-respiratory effects are for the other hazardous items like vibration, noise, heat, electricity. Here are some brief histories of that kind of diseases.
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Damage of cornea
This happens when you’re reckless about the mask or goggles. Welding is dealing with heat and this heat produces some sparks and toxic fumes. These fumes may cause corneal damage. When you’re joining the two metal the sparks spreads. Looking at those horrible sparks for a long time may interrupt your watching.
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Losing hearing
The long-term terrible noise from welding may occur this problem. To prevent this, you need to wear the helmet with ear protection feature.
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Metatarsal problem
A metatarsal problem occurs from objects of welding that falls down like hot melted metals or a heavy piece of metal. These types of things can do harm to your feet.
To avoid this type of circumstances you need to use a metatarsal guard or a protector.
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Nervous system effects
When the vibration is extremely high, it may cause harm to your nerve. To get rid of this wear heavy clothes and welding jackets.
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Electric shock
As welding is a process of electricity there’s a high chance to have an electric shock. Beware of using the electric machine.
So, these are some probable effects of welding if you don’t follow the rules and regulations. With your welding equipment, welding is nothing but fun.
Is welding bad for your health? Do you have the question in your mind till now? I hope you got your answer. It’ll remain no longer harmful for you if you fulfill the safety precautions in arc welding workshop.
A list of essential accessories to put on during welding
To stay safe and welding with a better experience you need to wear a few protectors. Here we’re going to discuss these types of accessories.
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Welding boots/metatarsal guard
Well, this one is a vital protector, it’ll protect the five bones of your foot. Though you think this is an easy task thing can go wrong and anything can fall down on your feet. It’ll be just roasted. So, you have to be prepared for this type of situation. To protect your foot from any kind of injuries you need to use one of the best welding Boots.
You might be thinking what are the best metatarsal work boots. For your kind information, we have a list of metatarsal boots. Among them, you can choose the suitable one for you.
- Redwing welding boots
- Timberland welding boots
- Carolina welding boots
- Wolverine welding boots
- Keen welding boots
- Redwing RW 5686 work boots
- Timberland Pro 53580 met guard steel- toe boot
So, these are our top 7 metatarsal guards for welding. You can choose any one of them. The choice is yours.
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Welding mask/welding helmet
This item is as important as the boot. Or you can say this one is more important than the boot from another point of view. Wearing a helmet or musk is very much important because it covers the most important part of the human body, the head.
Besides, it protects the eyes from spark and the ear from noise. The fumes from welding are too much harm to a person. The helmet and mask protect the body from fumes. According to a practical survey, the workers who have the respiratory sickness for welding, most of them didn’t use the welding mask. So it’s very necessary to protect such diseases.
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Gloves
This one is another important thing to wear during welding. It protects the hand. Arc welding and gas welding produces much heat. With wearing this your hand will be protected from the heat. Sometimes the sparks fall on, to defend you must wear the gloves.
Wearing a pair of gloves will be much helpful to avoid these types of problems.
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Welding jacket/body shield/ Welding Shirts
Welding jacket or body shield mainly protects the front body part. The jackets and shields have the ability to resist heat, electricity and ultraviolet rays. Besides, it protects the body from hazard items that exposures from the welding metal.
Not wearing the jacket may cause many problems to your inner body and skin. for more comfortable you can use welding shirts, in the market, there are so many welding shirts are available you should choose the best welding shirts.
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Goggles
Goggles are the protector of eyes from the reflection of extra light and spark. This item reduces the brightness of the spark so that it can’t do any harm. By wearing this looking at the point of your welding pool is much easy despite the light. So it’s important to put on goggles when you are headed to welding.
Conclusion
Anyway, in this article we’ve tried to answer a common question that runs on every welders’ mind, is welding bad for your health? Besides, we have shared some tips on welding and described some accessories briefly which you must use during welding. Welding with these tips will be easier and fun. Just go through the process and safety procedure, otherwise, you know the side effects right?
Make safety your first priority because a proverb goes, “prevention is better than cure”. We hope that you find the article helpful.
You Can Read our another Safety related articles :
- 10 Safety Tips for Garage-Keep Your Vehicle Safe in Garage
- Necessary Safety Tips for Cars, Motor Bikes & Heavy Vehicles in Winter !!
- Safety tips during car maintenance
Happy welding.