I had a hair test done a few years ago to check for heavy metals, and high levels of tungsten were found in my body (obviously caused by years of TIG welding). I can't find much info on the health effects of this metal, and the doctor couldn't give me much input either. Does AWS have any info about this?
Find another Doctor that cares enough about their patients to answer their questions. Demand you get your moneys worth out of this highly overpaid professional. When you look at the symptoms of over exposure to heavy metals, the type of metal seems to be irrelevant, all the nasty stuff that happens inside the human body is consistent.
Most of the data available says that only the most heavy exposures to tungsten have resulted in lung disease... And this typically from mining rather than sharpening tungsten welding electrodes.
AWS has specific safety fact sheets... The closest is a fact sheet on thorium tungsten electrodes... But the article speaks specifically to thorium and not much is mentioned about tungsten at all... I just reread the sheet.
Edit:
"Heavy Metal" is a bad/non-standard term when discussing toxic impact... Here is a pretty simple link explaining why. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_(chemistry)
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