Three Weeks to the New Exposure Limits: Could You Show WorkSafe Tasmania Your Review?

On 1 December 2026 the Workplace Exposure Limits for Airborne Contaminants replace the workplace exposure standards in the jurisdictions that have adopted them. That is three weeks from this Monday. This week WorkSafe Tasmania spelled out what its inspectors will look for. The first thing on the list is not your air monitoring results. It is your records. Businesses should be able to show they identified the airborne contaminants used or generated at work and reviewed them against the revised list.

More Than a Rename

It would be easy to treat this as a terminology change. Exposure standards become exposure limits and life goes on. That reading misses the substance. The new list carries revised values for many substances and a new limit for diesel particulate matter. A process that was comfortably under the old number may sit close to or above the new one.

WorkSafe Tasmania names the industries it expects to be significantly affected. They include diesel plant users, welding and fabrication, road construction and asphalt, mining, construction, sawmills and timber, food manufacturing and bakeries, healthcare sterilisation, grain handling, automotive refinishing, plastics and laboratories. If your business appears on that list, assume the change touches you until a documented review says otherwise.

What a Defensible Review Looks Like

Drawing on the Tasmanian guidance, I would expect a good review to answer these questions in writing:

• Which airborne contaminants are used or generated at each site and in each task?
• What was the old exposure standard and what is the new exposure limit for each one?
• Where the limit has dropped, is existing monitoring data still below it?
• Which controls, air monitoring or health monitoring need to change as a result?
• Are contractors and labour hire workers included in the review, not just direct employees?

That final point deserves attention. WorkSafe Tasmania has said explicitly that contractors and labour hire workers must be covered too. If a labour hire welder works in your fabrication bay, their exposure is part of your review.

The Patchwork If You Work Across Borders

For businesses operating in more than one state, the start dates are no longer uniform. Benzene drops to 0.2 ppm from 1 June 2027 rather than 1 December. NSW has now made its Harmonisation Regulation, which keeps the current phosphine values of 0.3 ppm TWA and 1 ppm STEL and sets an interim diesel particulate limit of 0.05 mg/m³ until 30 June 2028. South Australia has deferred grain dust, flour dust and methyl bromide to no earlier than July 2028. Western Australia has pushed phosphine back to 1 December 2029.

A single national spreadsheet with one column of limits will not be accurate. You need a column per jurisdiction for any substance on the deferral list.

• Have you mapped which value applies at each of your sites?
• Does your hygienist know which jurisdiction's limit to report against?
• Are monitoring rounds booked against the new limits, not the old ones?

Why Records Come First

I think WorkSafe Tasmania's emphasis on record keeping is telling. An inspector cannot see your thinking. They can only see what you wrote down. A business that reviewed its contaminants carefully but kept no record looks identical on 2 December to a business that did nothing at all.

The good news is that a review does not need to be elaborate. A dated table listing each substance, its old and new value, current monitoring results and any action needed is a strong start. Sign it, date it and file it where you can find it.

If an inspector asked on 1 December to see your exposure limits review, would you have a document to hand them or only a plan to write one?