The 2026 Australian Worker Exposure Survey puts construction at the top of the national table for cumulative exposure, for silica and for lead. It also shows the industry running the country’s highest rate of high level exposure to three agents that rarely make the toolbox talk.

Construction is the most exposed industry in Australia. Not by a small margin, and not on one hazard.

The 2026 Australian Worker Exposure Survey assessed 68.2 per cent of construction workers as probably exposed to five or more hazardous agents at the same time. Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing came second at 60.1 per cent. Mining came third at 60.0 per cent. Financial and Insurance Services sat at 1.8 per cent.

Safe Work Australia released the survey in September. The Social Research Centre ran it for them, surveying 6,617 workers aged 15 and over between December 2025 and February 2026, with 517 of those working in construction. Results are weighted to represent the Australian working population.

Silica is the agent the industry will talk about, and it deserves the attention. But it is not the only number in the construction column, and it is not the one that should be most surprising.

What the survey measured, and what it did not

The physical and chemical exposures were not measured with air monitoring. Workers were asked what tasks they perform, and a rules based assessment system called OccIDEAS estimated probable exposure from those answers, at low, medium and high levels.

The levels are not vague. The report’s methodology sets them against the workplace exposure standard for each substance. Low means exposure higher than the general community but below roughly ten per cent of the standard. Medium means between about ten and eighty per cent of it. High means exposure at or around the standard itself.

What probable exposure means

AWES 2026 does not measure airborne concentrations. OccIDEAS, the rules based system behind the survey, infers probable exposure from the tasks a worker reports doing, then bands that estimate against the workplace exposure standard for the substance. Low sits above general community levels but below roughly ten per cent of the standard. Medium sits between about ten and eighty per cent of it. High sits at or around the standard. A probable exposure figure is an estimate of likelihood and intensity. It is not a measurement, and it is not a finding that any workplace is in breach.

That is why the high level figures further down carry more weight than the headline ones. A worker counted at high level is one the model puts at or near the legal limit, on the tasks they described.

Six agents deep, not one

The construction column of the survey runs like this. Silica at 71.8 per cent. Solar UV at 67.5 per cent. Ocular UV at 66.5 per cent. Diesel exhaust at 56.8 per cent. Heat at work at 55.8 per cent. Environmental tobacco smoke including vapes at 45.5 per cent. Then benzene at 41.7 per cent, wood dust at 33.5 per cent, chromium VI at 30.9 per cent and formaldehyde at 21.8 per cent.

Ten agents, and the tenth still touches one construction worker in five.

Silica is where construction leads the country outright, at 71.8 per cent against 63.8 per cent for mining and 30.8 per cent for agriculture. Lead is the other outright lead, at 19.9 per cent of construction workers against 8.5 per cent for the next industry.

On the rest, construction places high without topping the table. Second on solar UV behind agriculture. Second on heat at work behind mining. Third on diesel exhaust behind agriculture and mining. Third on welding fumes at 12.4 per cent. Fourth on asbestos at 6.1 per cent, behind mining, utilities and agriculture.

Construction tops the country on wood dust, tobacco smoke and formaldehyde

The industry rankings above are for exposure at any level. Run the same comparison for high level exposure, the band the methodology puts at or around the workplace exposure standard, and construction comes first on three agents. The report publishes a high level industry breakdown for nine agents only, and silica, lead, asbestos and welding fumes are not among them.

Wood dust is the first. High level exposure runs at 22.7 per cent of construction workers, ahead of agriculture at 19.6 per cent and administrative and support services at 16.7 per cent. Nationally only 5.2 per cent of workers reach that band, so construction runs at more than four times the national rate. Among Construction Trades Workers, wood dust exposure at any level reaches 55.2 per cent.

Environmental tobacco smoke including vapes is the second, at 10.8 per cent at high level, ahead of accommodation and food services at 9.7 per cent and mining at 8.7 per cent. The report reads the prevalence of that agent across all industries as a sign of gaps in the enforcement of smoking restrictions at work.

Formaldehyde is the third, at 9.3 per cent at high level against 5.3 per cent in manufacturing. Nationally only 2.3 per cent of workers reach that band.

On the agents construction is known for it sits near the top without leading: third for high level heat at 14.2 per cent behind mining and manufacturing, second for high level solar UV at 14.2 per cent behind Rental, Hiring and Real Estate Services, and second for high level ocular UV at 12.2 per cent behind agriculture.

Ten agents in the construction column, and the tenth still touches one worker in five.

The number changes depending on where the worker stands

The survey cuts the same population three ways, and the three do not agree. It is worth knowing which one a figure comes from before quoting it.

By industry, construction silica exposure is 71.8 per cent. By occupation, Construction Trades Workers sit at 86.2 per cent. By work location, workers who spend most of their time at a construction site sit at 85.4 per cent.

The same spread shows up across the other agents. Solar UV runs 67.5 per cent by industry and 78.0 per cent for site based workers. Heat runs 55.8 and 63.1. Diesel exhaust runs 56.8 and 63.9. Lead runs 19.9 and 24.4. Asbestos runs 6.1 and 9.6.

The industry figure includes everyone on the books, estimators and contract administrators included. The site figure is the one that describes the person in the work. Where the two diverge most, asbestos and lead, is where office based averaging hides the most risk.

One caution on the occupation cuts. Construction and Mining Labourers is a single classification group, so the 89.9 per cent silica figure and the 81.4 per cent multiple exposure figure for that group bundle mining labourers in with construction ones.

Lead and asbestos, the two the industry stopped watching

Lead barely features in industry conversation now, and the survey suggests it should. Construction is the industry most affected, with 19.9 per cent of workers probably exposed against 8.5 per cent in the next ranked industry. Construction Trades Workers record 38.9 per cent, the highest of any occupation group in the country. Workers based at construction sites record 24.4 per cent, against 1.1 per cent for office based settings. Nationally only 3.8 per cent of workers have any probable lead exposure, so the licensing and compliance obligations around it apply to a hazard that sits almost entirely in one industry.

Asbestos looks smaller. Construction places fourth by industry at 6.1 per cent, behind mining at 22.1 per cent, utilities at 10.5 per cent and agriculture at 6.9 per cent. The report notes mining exposure may reflect naturally occurring asbestos, while exposure elsewhere is more likely to come from work involving asbestos containing materials. On site the figure climbs: 9.6 per cent for workers based at construction sites, and 12.3 per cent for Construction and Mining Labourers.

The age pattern is the part worth sitting with. Across the workforce, probable asbestos exposure is 3.2 per cent among workers aged under 25, 3.5 per cent among those aged 25 to 34, and peaks at 3.9 per cent among those aged 35 to 44. It falls to 1.1 per cent for workers aged 45 to 54 and 0.8 per cent for those aged 55 to 64. The report describes it as significantly higher likelihood among younger to middle aged workers.

That is a national cut rather than a construction one, but it runs against the assumption that asbestos belongs to the generation that worked before the bans. The tasks that generate it, renovation, demolition, maintenance and strip out, are construction tasks.

Where construction does better than the national average

Not every finding runs against the industry, and the psychosocial results are the surprise. On the measure with the highest national disagreement, having a say in changes at work that affect you, 21.8 per cent of Australian workers disagreed. In construction it was 13.1 per cent, and among workers based at construction sites 13.9 per cent. Of the industries the report names on that item, only Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing came in lower, at 5.8 per cent. The highest was Public Administration and Safety at 35.9 per cent.

Where construction sits high is demand. Workers based at construction sites recorded 91.5 per cent answering often or all of the time to at least one statement about concentration, deadline pressure, emotional demand or hostile behaviour, the highest of the work locations the report names. At industry level construction recorded 86.7 per cent. Those demands are now a named safety hazard under the law rather than a cultural feature of the industry.

Controls built one hazard at a time

The 68.2 per cent figure is the one that should change how a site is run, and it is the easiest to skim past. Across the workforce, hazards cluster. Of workers exposed to silica, 71.2 per cent are also exposed to diesel exhaust and 66.0 per cent to heat at work. Of workers exposed to solar UV, 91.6 per cent are also exposed to ocular UV. The report is direct about it: hazards occur in clusters rather than in isolation.

Most site controls are not built that way. A silica plan, a sun policy, a heat policy, a dust extraction procedure, each written and audited on its own. The survey suggests the person those documents land on is usually carrying all of them at once, and that coordination between contractors on shared sites is where the cumulative picture either gets managed or gets lost.

The timing is not incidental. From 1 December 2026 the Workplace Exposure Limits list replaces the Workplace Exposure Standards list nationally. Respirable crystalline silica is one of nine substances held back from that revision pending further impact analysis, so its figure of 0.05 mg/m3 carries across unchanged. Wood dust is not one of the nine. Its limit is among those being revised on that date.

What to hold lightly

Fieldwork ran across the Australian summer, and the report notes this may have inflated both solar UV and heat exposure results.

The construction subsample is 517 workers. The Construction Trades Workers figures rest on 125, and elsewhere in the report occupation groups are reported down to samples of 5, with smaller groups suppressed entirely. About a third of the total sample was recruited through non probability online panels rather than the probability based panel.

This is a baseline, not a trend line. The report describes itself that way and makes no comparison to any earlier Australian exposure survey, so nothing in it supports a claim that exposure in construction has risen or fallen.

Safe Work Australia’s own release led on apprentices and trainees, and we have left those figures out of the body of this article. They are severe: across the workforce, apprentices and trainees recorded 51.1 per cent probable exposure to heat against 28.8 per cent of other workers, silica 35.7 against 12.5, lead 17.0 against 3.1, and asbestos 13.7 against 2.0. But the survey publishes no construction apprentice cut, so none of those are construction figures, and this piece is about construction.

The report also warns against reading it too finely. Its methodology appendix notes a small number of job module misallocations, meaning some workers were not asked the most relevant questions about their tasks, and says this should be considered when interpreting findings at very detailed levels of granularity. The occupation level and high level cuts in this article are exactly that kind of read.

There is also an error in the report’s own executive summary. Its Implications page puts construction at 25.9 per cent for five or more exposures. That is the figure for Administrative and Support Services, ninth on the list. The key findings page, the body text and Figure 31 all give construction 68.2 per cent, which is the number used throughout this article.

A companion qualitative report, drawn from interviews and a three day online board with 23 participants in total, is far too small to generalise from. One finding in it is worth carrying anyway, because it describes a control failing quietly rather than loudly. A participant identified a compliance gap where respiratory protection fit testing was enforced on paper but not on the ground, because workers have to be clean shaven to be fit tested and then grow their beards back out afterwards. The mask passes. The seal does not.

That is the gap the whole survey points at. Exposure data tells a builder where the risk is concentrated. It does not tell them whether the control is working on Tuesday afternoon.

The Good Builder Take

Every outlet covering this release will lead on silica in construction, and they should. It is the highest rate of any industry in the country and it maps onto the disease the sector already knows it has.

The finding worth reading twice sits further down. Of the nine agents the report breaks down by industry at high level, construction tops three, and the highest of them is wood dust at 22.7 per cent. High level in this survey means at or around the workplace exposure standard, and the national rate for wood dust in that band is 5.2 per cent. Wood dust does not get a silica style conversation, it does not get engineered stone headlines, and unlike silica its limit is not among the nine held back from revision on 1 December.

The pattern underneath the whole report is that construction’s risk is not one hazard managed badly. It is ten hazards managed separately, on the same worker, on the same day.

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Last updated: 23 September 2026.

General information only. This article does not constitute legal, financial, or professional advice.

Author: TGB Editorial