Thread: Melting Lead - fumes

Originally Posted by No.3

Don't put the range hood over the smelting pot, put it behind it so it's not pulling the fumes past your head but away from you. Wear a decent 3M 6200 type half face mask with good matching goggles or a P3 full face mask with the correct metal fume filters, and be bloody fastidious about water or moisture where you are working...

If you can find some fibrecement board, this makes a nice fume area and is perfectly good as a solid fume settling point that's quite permanent and if you have some hinges loafing you can set it up so that it just folds out and bridges the gap to the fume hood. The HRV or similar HEPA-rated filters you get from Bunnings or the like for the home ventilation units are good, but I'd use the metal filters in the range hood (pretty much non flammable if cleaned of fats) and then a section of ducting after the rangehood into a filter holder and by that stage (3-odd meters after the range hood) the fume should have either dropped into the ducting and settled or will get caught in the filter on the way out for later disposal. Discharge the outlet from the range hood over a pathway/driveway/back lawn area that is fairly 'dead' ground...

The only risk with that is that the dust will sit in the ducts and motor creating a large contaminated zone where you can re-mobilise contaminants when changing filter etc. Lead fume can happen if you overheat the lead but oxides at smelting/fluxing are more likely a risk.

I would suggest that a proper P100 mask is the best protection but an extractor would seem better than nothing.