The three numbers that run the whole regime
Lead is one of the few hazards where the law hands you a blood test result and a threshold, and tells you what to do at each one. There is no judgement call about whether the control is adequate. There is a figure, and either you are above it or you are not.
Safe Work Australia sets these out on its own duties page for inorganic lead. Note that two of them differ for a female of reproductive capacity, which in practice means the same workplace runs two sets of numbers.
| Trigger | Males, and females not of reproductive capacity | Females of reproductive capacity |
|---|---|---|
| Must remove from lead risk work when blood lead exceeds | 30 µg/dL (1.45 µmol/L) | 10 µg/dL (0.48 µmol/L) |
| May only return to work when blood lead is below | 20 µg/dL (0.97 µmol/L) | 5 µg/dL (0.24 µmol/L) |
| Previous return figure, before the 2025 change | 40 µg/dL (1.93 µmol/L) | 10 µg/dL (0.48 µmol/L) |
Removal and return thresholds for lead risk work under the model WHS Regulations, as published by Safe Work Australia. The 10 µg/dL removal figure also applies to a worker who is pregnant or breastfeeding.
The gap between the two rows is deliberate and worth noticing. A worker comes off the job above 30 and cannot come back until they are under 20, so the regime builds in a margin rather than letting someone bounce across a single line. For a female of reproductive capacity that margin runs from 10 down to 5.
The return figures were already halved
The return-to-work numbers are not long-standing. Safe Work Australia’s page records
the current 20 as down from 40µg/dL (1.93µmol/L)
and the current 5 as
down from 10 µg/dL (0.48 µmol/L)
. In the Commonwealth jurisdiction that
change was made by the Work Health and Safety Amendment (Blood Lead Level Exposure
Values) Regulations 2025, registered on 24 March 2025.
So a duty holder who set up a lead health monitoring programme a few years ago and has not revisited it may be working to a return threshold that is twice the current one.
How often you must test
The testing interval is itself set by the last result, which means a rising blood lead level automatically pulls the next test forward. Again there are two ladders.
| Last result | Next test due |
|---|---|
| Males and females not of reproductive capacity: below 10 µg/dL | 6 months |
| 10 to below 20 µg/dL | 3 months |
| 20 µg/dL or more | 6 weeks |
| Females of reproductive capacity: below 5 µg/dL | 3 months |
| 5 to below 10 µg/dL | 6 weeks |
Biological monitoring intervals for lead risk work, as published by Safe Work Australia. Where a worker must be removed, the supervising doctor arranges a medical examination within seven days.
What the consultation would change
Safe Work Australia opened its review of Part 7.2 on 13 July, saying that
recent incidents and stakeholder feedback suggest that the current lead regulations may
not be adequately protecting workers, there may be gaps in awareness and application of
duties, and the regulations may be challenging to implement and enforce
.
Two of its three issues bear directly on the numbers above. One asks whether the
definition of lead risk work, which is what triggers mandatory health monitoring, should
change, with options including lowering the blood lead level that defines it or requiring
health monitoring for every worker doing lead work regardless of level. The other asks
whether the blood lead levels that trigger action should come down, or whether a separate
action level
should be set below the removal figure.
Read against the table, the direction is not subtle. The removal and return figures have already fallen once. The live question is whether they fall again, and whether the gate that currently decides who gets monitored at all is removed.
Our view, labelled as such
If you run a lead process, the useful thing to do in the next eight days is not to write a submission about principle. It is to take your last twelve months of blood lead results and sort them. Count how many sit between 20 and 30 for your male workers, and how many sit between 5 and 10 for women of reproductive capacity. Those are the people who are compliant today and would not be if the thresholds moved down one notch.
That number is also the most persuasive thing you could put in a submission, because Safe Work Australia has said explicitly that it wants data quantifying current occupational lead exposure in Australia. A regulator asking for evidence is a cheap moment to supply it. After 24 August the conversation moves to advice for Members and then to ministers, where a duty holder has no seat.
How we sourced this
Every threshold and testing interval comes from Safe Work Australia’s own WHS duties page for inorganic lead, read on 16 August 2026. The 2025 change is recorded on that page as a parenthetical against each return figure, and the instrument that made it in the Commonwealth jurisdiction is on the Federal Register of Legislation. The consultation wording, the three issues and the closing time come from Safe Work Australia’s news item of 13 July 2026 and its Consultation Hub page.
A jurisdictional caution that matters here. Safe Work Australia writes the model WHS laws; it does not enforce them. The Commonwealth, states and territories each implement the model laws separately, and Western Australia and Victoria are not straight adopters of the model framework. The figures above are the model position as Safe Work Australia publishes it, and the March 2025 instrument we cite is the Commonwealth one. Check your own jurisdiction’s regulations before acting on any number in this story.
What we have not done. We have not read the consultation paper itself. The Consultation Hub is a single-page application that returned no readable text to us by fetch or in a browser, so our account of the options comes from Safe Work Australia’s own summaries rather than the paper, and the paper may contain proposed figures we have not seen. We have not established which jurisdictions have adopted the 2025 change, and we do not assert that any particular state has. We have not contacted Safe Work Australia. We have not covered the separate workstream on the airborne workplace exposure standard for lead, which is a different instrument from these regulatory triggers and is easily confused with them.
Sources
- Safe Work Australia, Inorganic lead: WHS duties (read 16 August 2026): the removal thresholds of 30 and 10 µg/dL, the return thresholds of 20 and 5 µg/dL and the parentheticals recording the previous 40 and 10, the biological monitoring intervals for both cohorts, the application of the 10 µg/dL removal figure to workers who are pregnant or breastfeeding, and the seven-day medical examination requirement.
- Federal Register of Legislation, Work Health and Safety Amendment (Blood Lead Level Exposure Values) Regulations 2025 (F2025L00404, registered 24 March 2025, read 16 August 2026): the Commonwealth instrument making the blood lead level change.
- Safe Work Australia, Have your say on protecting workers from exposure to lead (news item, 13 July 2026, read 16 August 2026): that Part 7.2 of the model WHS laws is the lead regulations, the rationale quoted verbatim, and that the consultation is open until 11.59 pm AEST on Monday 24 August 2026.
- The Duty Holder, Safe Work Australia says the lead rules may not be protecting workers, and is consulting on three changes (21 July 2026): our account of the consultation’s three issues and their options, and the path from feedback to advice to WHS ministers.
See an error? Request a correction and we will check it against the sources above and log the outcome.