New Flour Dust Limits: Here's What You Need to Know
From 1 December 2026, the air in your production area is under new rules.
Safe Work Australia is updating the Workplace Exposure Standards (WES), and the change will affect every business that works with flour. For the first time, flour dust will have its own legal exposure limit. If your site mills, mixes, bakes, or packs flour, this is a change worth understanding now, because the work to get ready takes longer than most people expect.
This guide covers what is changing, why it matters, who it affects, and the practical steps you can take before the December deadline.
What is changing
Until now, flour dust had no limit of its own. It sat inside a broad group called “Particulates Not Otherwise Classified,” with allowed airborne levels of 3 to 10 mg/m³. That band was wide, generic, and never designed with flour in mind.
From December, flour dust gets its own workplace exposure limit (WEL) of 0.5 mg/m³. That figure is measured as an eight-hour time-weighted average, which is the average concentration a worker breathes across a normal shift. In plain terms, it is roughly a tenfold drop from where many sites have been operating. This is a real shift, not a small tweak.
Flour dust is not the only substance affected. Grain dust gets its own limit of 1.5 mg/m³, and the change is part of a much larger reform: Safe Work Australia is replacing the older Workplace Exposure Standards with updated Workplace Exposure Limits across a long list of airborne contaminants. Flour and grain dust are simply the ones that matter most to food manufacturers.
It is worth being clear on what a workplace exposure limit actually is. It is not a target to aim for; it is a legally enforceable ceiling. Once the new figure takes effect, keeping worker exposure at or below 0.5 mg/m³ becomes part of your work health and safety duties, and going over it is a compliance breach, not just a housekeeping problem.
Why change?
Flour dust looks harmless. It isn’t.
Breathing it over time is linked to occupational asthma, ongoing respiratory irritation, and other lung problems. Flour is one of the most common causes of occupational asthma in workplaces that handle it, and the effects tend to build quietly over years rather than appearing overnight. Once a worker becomes sensitised, even small amounts of flour dust can trigger a reaction.
The people most at risk are often the ones who have been on the tools the longest: bakers, mixers and mill operators who breathe in low levels of flour dust year after year. For some, sensitisation becomes serious enough to force a change of role or end a career in the trade. That is a heavy price for a hazard you cannot see.
That is why the regulator has drawn a clear, measurable line. The old generic band allowed exposure levels we now understand are too high for a substance that can permanently affect someone’s breathing. The new 0.5 mg/m³ limit is health-based: it reflects what the evidence says is needed to protect people who spend their working lives around flour.
Who these lands on
If flour or grain moves through your site, this change applies to you. That includes:
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Bakeries and mixing plants
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Flour and grain mills
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Food processors and packing operations
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Anywhere flour is tipped, poured, decanted or transferred
The dustiest moments are almost always handling ones. Opening and emptying 25 kg bags, tipping ingredients into hoppers and mixers, sieving and weighing, decanting between containers, and cleaning up at the end of a shift all release fine flour into the air. Habits like dry sweeping or blowing surfaces down with compressed air make it worse, because they lift settled flour straight back into the breathing zone.
Size does not exempt you. The limit applies just as much to a small craft bakery or an on-site production kitchen as it does to a large mill or packing plant. If flour is in the air your people breathe, the same number applies.
What you can do before December
The deadline may feel far off, but once you allow time for monitoring and any equipment changes, it is closer than it looks. A sensible order of play:
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Find out where you stand. Air monitoring by an occupational hygienist tells you your real exposure levels. You can’t manage what you haven’t measured, and you will need a baseline to show whether you sit above or below the new limit.
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Control the dust at the source, and protect your people. The rules expect you to reduce dust at the source first: ventilation, local extraction, enclosed handling and cleaner transfer methods. Under Safe Work Australia’s hierarchy of control, source controls and correctly fitted P2 respirators work together to keep exposure under the limit.
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Review how flour moves through your site. Every tip, pour and decant is a dust moment. Reducing open handling, switching to closed transfer where you can, and tightening housekeeping all cut the amount of flour that ends up airborne.
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Train your team and keep records. Make sure people know why the limit matters, how to use respiratory protection correctly, and what good housekeeping looks like. Keep monitoring results and risk assessments up to date so you can show what you have done.
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Don’t leave it until November. Monitoring, reviewing the results, and acting on them all take time. Sites that start early will be calm in December. Everyone else will be scrambling.
A quick readiness checklist
Use this as a simple starting point:
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Have you had recent air monitoring for flour dust?
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Do you know which tasks and areas are the dustiest?
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Are your dust controls (ventilation, extraction, enclosure) working as intended?
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Is the right respiratory protection available, and are people fit-tested and trained?
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Are your cleaning methods reducing dust rather than spreading it?
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Are your risk assessments and records current?
If you answer “not sure” to any of these, that is where to start.
How Foodcare can help you?
Getting ready is largely practical, and that is where Foodcare comes in. Once you understand your exposure levels, we can help you put the right gear in place: respiratory protection matched to fine flour dust (P2 respirators), colour-coded hygiene sweepers and lobby pans to keep settled flour under control, and washdown equipment so cleaning does not stir dust back into the air.
You don’t have to work it out alone. Talk to a Foodcare specialist and we will help you review your site, choose the right products for each task, and build a simple kit list you can act on before December. Our team works with food manufacturers across Australia every day, so we can point you to what fits your process.
Get in touch:
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Call 1800 211 290 and ask to speak with a product specialist
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Email team@foodcare.com.au
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Send an enquiry through our contact page and a team member will get back to you shortly
Where this leaves you
Flour dust now has a number attached to it, and a date: 0.5 mg/m³, from 1 December 2026. The sites that treat it as an early job will have a far easier December than the ones that wait.
If you want to talk through the gear that helps, contact the Foodcare team. We will keep it straightforward.
