OHS January/February 2017

C A N A D A’ S O C C U PAT I O N A L H E A LT H & S A F E T Y M A G A Z I N E J A N U ARY / F E BR U ARY 2017

C A N A D A

Behind

BARS Keeping danger out of prisons

THE ROAD AHEAD

Turning loss into a force for change

NO SMOKE WITHOUT FIRE

Questions raised on manganese exposure limits

A ROUGH RIDE

Tackling challenges in return-to-work

TAKE FLIGHT

Staying healthy when flying high

Protecting you from micro-sized particles.

When exposed to the dust from blasted rock, crushed brick or cut concrete, you’re at risk of inhaling a microscopic hazard called silica. 3M helps keep you safe by applying advanced electrostatic media to its respiratory protection solutions. Because your health and safety on the job is always our priority.

See how we can help protect you from asbestos, silica, mould and manganese.

Magnification of Silica

3M.ca/SilicaSafety 3M and 3M Science. Applied to Life. are trademarks of 3M. Used under license in Canada. Š 2016, 3M. All rights reserved.

C A N A D A’ S O C C U PAT I O N A L H E A LT H & S A F E T Y M A G A Z I N E

C A N A D A

J ANUARY / F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 7 Volu m e 3 3 , N u m b e r 1

FEATURES

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PRI S O N V IOLEN C E

Trouble in the Big House

Understaffing, overcrowding and changing inmate demographics are reshaping the occupational hazards that correctional officers face.

BY JEFF COTTRILL

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S AF E T Y AD V OC AC Y

When It Hits

Workplace fatalities change lives. Two safety champions share how their personal losses led them to embark on a journey to make job sites in Canada safer.

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BY JEAN LIAN

DEPARTMENTS O CCU PATION AL HY GIEN E

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A New Low

A new study linking manganese in welding fumes to neurological problems raises the concern that existing occupational exposure limits may not be adequate.

BY JEAN LIAN

S AF E T Y GEAR

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BY JEFF COTTRILL

ACCI DE NT P R EV EN TION

ED ITORIA L

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PAN ORAMA

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LETTERS

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The Dark Side

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British Columbia court overturns decision; Alberta upholds work refusal; Saskatchewan worker guilty of fraud; Toronto beefs up transit security; Newfoundland contractor killed; and more.

D ISPATCHES

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AD IN D EX

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Asbestos spy; gender differences shape responses to bullying; and more.

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Fire brings heat and light, but it can also sear and burn. For those whose jobs involve working with heat or fire, donning the right clothing can save their skins.

IN THIS ISSUE

OH &S UPD AT E

Going through Fire

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Taking Flight

Flying may be an occasional affair for many of us, but pilots and flight attendants face numerous job hazards that the general public knows little about.

W O RK E RS ’ C OM P EN S ATION

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Getting Back on One’s Feet

Injured workers suffering from complex illnesses, multiple injuries or invisible conditions present unique challenges to healthcare providers.

BY JEAN LIAN

T I M E O UT

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In the doghouse; squirrel away; pizza goes with beer; milking spiders; and more.

The real enemy of safety is not non-compliance, but non-thinking.

— DR. ROB LONG

www.ohscanada.com

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EDITORIAL

C A N A D A’ S O C C U PAT I O N A L H E A LT H & S A F E T Y M A G A Z I N E

The Dark Side

JEAN LIAN jlian@ohscanada.com EDITOR

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ar kills, and fatalities continue after soldiers leave the battlefields and return to what should have been the comfort and sanctuary of their homes.

Peace was shattered in rural Nova Scotia on January 3 when war veteran Lionel Desmond shot his wife, mother and 10-year-old daughter before turning the gun on himself. Desmond had been struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following his deployment to Afghanistan in 2007.

The murder-suicide has raised questions about the adequacy of and accessibility to mental-health supports available to military personnel who suffer from PTSD. A study comparing trends in the prevalence of suicidal behaviour and the use of mental-health services between Canadian military personnel and the general population from 2002 to 2013, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in May 2016, found that from 2012 to 2013, personnel in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) had a 32 per cent increased odds of thinking about suicide and a 64 per cent higher odds of planning suicide.

The findings are mirrored in the 2016 National Defence report on suicide mortality in the CAF, published in November. By using Standardized Mortality Ratios to compare suicide rates between the general Canadian population and the CAF from 1995 to 2015, researchers found that those with a history of deployment had an increased risk of suicide compared to those who had never been deployed, although this difference was not statistically significant. Military personnel who were part of the army command also had significantly elevated risks of suicide relative to those who were part of other commands from 2006 to 2015.

Suicides are often multi-factorial, and inadequate access to mental-health support is only one of the contributing factors. According to the CAF report, nearly 93 per cent of those who committed suicide had accessed mental- and non-mentalhealth-related care within a year prior to their suicides. A whopping 64 per cent of those who died by suicide in 2015 had at least two mental-health disorders at the time of death, and more than half of the Regular Force males who ended their lives had at least three concomitant stressors prior to their deaths.

Addressing the problem of suicides among military personnel requires a focused and sustained effort in taking a deep, hard look at the lives of soldiers who return from battlefields years down the road. Unlike physical injuries, the psychological trauma and pain of witnessing death — even killing as part of operational duties — does untold damage to the human psyche. It carries a shame and pain so deep that soldiers who return to their civilian existence often find it hard to talk about what they have seen, done or failed to do on the battleground. That disconnect can lead to alienation, social difficulties and marital problems.

Bringing the topic of PTSD out into the open will help to destigmatize the issue. Creating a system to track the physical, mental and social well-being of postdeployment soldiers is also important. Indicators of an individual on a downward spiral include leave of absence, access to mental healthcare and substance abuse — all or some of which signal the need for timely, active intervention that could pull soldiers from the brink of “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,” in William Wordsworth’s words.

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EDITOR ART DIRECTOR

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EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS DAVID IRETON, Safety Professional, Brampton, Ont. AL JOHNSON, Vice President, Prevention Services WorkSafeBC, Richmond, B.C. JANE LEMKE, Program Manager, OHN Certification Program, Mohawk College, Hamilton, Ont.

DON MITCHELL, Safety Consultant, Mississauga, Ont. MICHELE PARENT, National Manager, Risk Management and Health and Wellness, Standard Life, Montreal, Que.

TERRY RYAN, Workers’ Compensation and Safety Consultant, TRC Group Inc., Mississauga, Ont.

DON SAYERS, Principal Consultant, Don Sayers & Associates, Hanwell, N.B. DAVID SHANE, National Director, Health and Safety, Canada Post Corporation, Ottawa, Ont.

HENRY SKJERVEN, President, The Skjerven Cattle Company Ltd., Wynyard, Sask.

PETER STRAHLENDORF, Assistant Professor, School of Environmental Health, Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto, Ont.

JONATHAN TYSON, Association of Canadian Ergonomists/Association canadienne d’ergonomie, North Bay, Ont. OHS CANADA is the magazine for people who make decisions about health and safety in the workplace. It is designed to keep workers, managers and safety professionals informed on oh&s issues, up to date on new developments and in touch with current thinking in the oh&s community.

WEBSITE: http://www.ohscanada.com INFORMATION AND RECOMMENDATIONS contained in this publication have been compiled from sources believed to be reliable and to be representative of the best current opinion on the subject. No warranty, guarantee nor representation is made

by Newcom Business Media Inc. as to the absolute correctness or sufficiency of any representation contained in this publication.

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Date of issue: JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017

ohs canada

JEFF COTTRILL

CANADIAN OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH & SAFETY NEWS jcottrill@ohscanada.com

Jean Lian

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C A N A D A

Vol. 33, No. 1 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017

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panorama

$200,000 Maximum grant that the Ontario Ministry of Labour is giving to the province’s employers and research projects aiming for innovations in workplace safety this year.

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Source: Ontario Ministry of Labour

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$105,000 Fine issued to a metal-recycling plant in Ajax, Ontario on January 23 for failing to carry out regulated safety measures, resulting in a worker’s death.

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Source: Ontario Ministry of Labour

New Code Published: The workers’ compensation authority for the Northwest Territories and Nunavut released a new code of practice on the occupational risks of lead and how to control them on November 30.

The document includes information on the health effects of lead exposure, identifying and evaluating lead hazards, conducting worksite reviews, developing a lead-exposure control plan and other employer responsibilities.

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Source: The Workers’ Safety and Compensation Commission

Avalanche Risks: Employers in British Columbia need to identify, assess and mitigate avalanche risks, as workers in the construction, primary-resource and adventure-tourism sectors may be at higher risk of avalanches at backcountry worksites than usual this year. January has seen a large snowpack in several of the Source: WorkSafeBC province’s regions.

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Tell Your Tale: The Alberta Federation of Labour and the Canadian Injured Workers Association of Alberta jointly launched a campaign in November, encouraging injured workers to share their experiences with a Source: Alberta Federation of Labour panel that is conducting a review of the province’s Workers’ Compensation Board.

Number of workers who died of asbestos-related illness in British Columbia between 2006 and 2015.

App on Air: The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety in Hamilton, Ontario launched a free cell-phone app for workplaces to evaluate indoor air quality on January 6. The app, called AirAssess, includes a questionnaire about stress levels, allergies and other factors in the work environment and provides links to information on what actions to take.

Source: The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety

Source: WorkSafeBC

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Presumed Related: Presumptive coverage of cancer as an occupational disease for career and volunteer firefighters in Newfoundland and Labrador could become a reality if amendments to the Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Act and Regulations pass into law. The amendments will cover 11 types of cancer, including brain, breast, bladder, kidney and lung cancer.

Source: WorkplaceNL 5.

360° 6

MINE COLLAPSE CLAIMS NINE The partial collapse of a coal mine in northern China has killed nine workers, who were doing maintenance work inside a mine shaft on January 17. Rescuers saved one person, and the cause of the incident on the outskirts of Shuozhou city in coal-rich Shanxi province remains under investigation.

Source: The Associated Press

65 and older The age of more than half of Ontario workers who have been diagnosed with noiseinduced hearing loss.

Source: Workplace Safety and Insurance Board

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ohs canada

SAFETY KNOWS

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LETTERS Recent issues of ohs canada and our website, www.ohscanada.com, have provided readers with plenty to chew on.

PHASE OUT OLD VESSELS A union representing marine employees calls on B.C. Ferries to speed up the abatement of older vessels with asbestos. (canadian occupational health and safety news (cohsn), January 3, 2017) If B.C. Ferries is doing all they can to limit working on asbestos ships, why are the new ships tied up a lot of the time and the older ones are running?

Because health comes second to money.

Health First

BEARING THE BRUNT Three veterans say they endured years of racist abuse in the Canadian Forces. (the canadian press, December 29, 2016) I was a member of the Canadian Forces for several years and personally experienced the type of things that these soldiers describe. As an indigenous person who was in the “ranks” for 11 years and then an officer for nearly 20 years, I saw, heard and experienced all types of crap.

I spent my last years as a military social work officer and was finally medically released due to the cumulative effect on me. I would welcome the opportunity to share my experiences!

Dennis G. Gabriel (Captain, retired)

GOING IN BLIND A CONTROVERSIAL BILL A Newfoundland police officer who shot and killed a man in his home says he would have taken backup had he known about an old file cautioning violence. (the canadian press, January 18, 2017) Another incident where the RCMP does not share information with other law-enforcement agencies... The current case most likely would not be where it is now, and certainly, most likely no death.

Judith Harrower

SPEAKING UP Newfoundland and Labrador’s finance minister became the latest female politician to speak out against cyber abuse. (the canadian press, December 13, 2016) I would love to hear from more women of influence to speak out about their experiences to educate all, and especially the fathers of daughters.

Kim Halfyard

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Unions in Ontario protest a provincial bill they claim could have a detrimental effect on workplace safety if it passes. (cohsn, December 6, 2016) Bill 70 is way overdue. I have worked in the health and safety field for over 30 years, and the Ministry of Labour inspectors (I was one for a few of those years) have minimal influence of safety in workplaces. Good employers treat employees with dignity and respect.

They are also keenly aware that unsafe workplaces make it difficult to recruit and hold onto the best employees.

The better employers (I would estimate at least nine per cent of all employers) understand that efficiency and profitability are intrinsically linked to a well-run health and safety program.

Too often, Ministry inspectors are used as “unleashing the dogs”. This negative and ineffective strategy has to stop...

The Ministry has hired hundreds of the most knowledgeable experts in the field. Why not use them as a “positive” reinforcement tool to work with employers to improve health and safety?

That was my approach when I was a

Ministry inspector, and I gained the trust of many organizations that dramatically improved their safety record in that period.

John Spencer

This bill is long overdue. Union resistance to this bill is nothing more than an expression of their displeasure that they might no longer have Ministry of Labour inspectors go out and do their bidding. If unions want to make workplaces safer, they should quit their aggressive defence of workers who deliberately defy company safety policies, quit defending workers who intentionally deny knowledge of incidents and sweep valuable information under the rug because of their primary priority of “never ratting on a brother.”

Unions need to realize that nearly 30 years of pressuring union-friendly provincial governments to put all of the responsibility for safety on the employer has done very very little to reduce injuries and deaths. Only when unions and their members take responsibility for their actions will the statistics improve.

Being entrenched in the fallacy that “sending in the MOL inspector to whip the employer into shape” will never fix the workplace health and safety issues that this province faces. In fact, it probably only makes things worse.

Gordon

STEMMING VIOLENCE Violence against nurses continues at Abbotsford Regional Hospital in British Columbia. (cohsn, November 22, 2016) The hospital only has three guards working on any shift, and those guards are asked to perform duties from tracking down patients, parking violations, walking doctors and nurses to their cars, helipad duties and lost and found.

They are also asked to assist in feeding and managing patients. In an incident last December, a guard prevented a pa-

tient from committing suicide. It took two guards to prevent that patient from causing themselves further harm. When the police came, they just returned the patient to the hospital waiting room where another incident occurred…

Obviously, nothing has changed. The guards are not trained or equipped to deal with the traumatic events of working daily in that type of environment and have no PPE to protect themselves as first responders to violent events. To add insult to injury, what training they do have, they are not permitted to use to protect themselves. Just another disposable punching bag, not a violenceprevention strategy.

S. Smith

CLASS-ACTION SUIT LAUNCHED A group of LGBTQ individuals launched a class-action lawsuit against the federal government, claiming decades of discrimination during their past employment. (cohsn, November 8, 2016) I have worked for CBSA from May 1988 to May 2016. During this time, I experienced bullying, disrespect, ridicule and hatred from peers and management regarding my sexual orientation. I retired early, as my doctor advised me to retire from the unhealthy work environment, since he diagnosed me with post-traumatic stress disorder. Over the past several years, I have had to take sick leave, often without pay, as I could not cope.

I have paperwork accumulated over the years when I made complaints. I’d like my name added to the list of victims.

Connie McDougall

SPOTLIGHT ON FATIGUE Workers with the Canadian National Railway Company (CN) took part in an information picket to highlight chronic workplace fatigue in the industry. (cohsn, October 18, 2016)

I worked for on-track railway operations (CN contractor) and got the exact same treatment. What is worse is that I was a unionized CN employee. I had my shift start times change four times in five days, with some shifts starting only eight hours apart. I needed one day off, and my on-track supervisor (retired CN manager) gave me five days off for discipline. I am a good worker, and I don’t need to work in fear and to be fatigued. All railroads and their contractors don’t care about anyone’s time.

Danny

When an employee decides that he or she is unfit, it is company policy that they need to speak with a manager. This is also where the intimidating starts where numerous questions are asked, many of which are of a personal nature.

If you say you have a bad headache or migraine, they ask what you take for it. If you say you are not rested due to family issues, they ask why and what is happening. If you say you are unfit, they ask when do you think you will be ready to return to work. If you are sick, they ask when do you think you will feel better. Any answer given will be used against you if the company decides to do an investigation. There is no doubt that this is 100 per cent an intimidation tactic and it is used to deter employees from booking unfit or sick.

Kevin

A TALE OF TWO SEXES Women have a higher risk of musculoskeletal injuries than men. (ohs canada, September/October 2016) Your recent article on gender-based mechanism of injury will be useful for injured-worker advocates in workers’ compensation claims for musculoskeletal strains and injuries where the work-relatedness is in question. When a woman gets an RSI, there is often an attempt to blame other causes outside

the workplace… Thanks for writing about work-related injuries.

John McKinnon Injured Workers’ Consultants, Toronto

A STUNTED VIEW ran an editorial on a judge’s sexist comment towards a sexual-assault victim in September/October 2016. ohs canada

Once again, a truly awesome editorial in September/October OHS Canada. But for the sake of argument, it is not always the “weaker sex” who is the “complainant”. All too often in the workforce, it can be seen or experienced from both sides of the fence, no matter how harmless it may seem. I think a lot of us have experienced some form of this type of harassment and not come forward because of the oftentimes sacrificial nature of any repercussions. Food for thought.

Jim Stacey, Commercial Vehicle Safety and Enforcement, Thompson Nicola District, British Columbia

BLACK TIDE published a feature on pipeline leaks in September/October 2016. ohs canada

Statistics on pipeline leaks to console ourselves are deceptive. One cannot use the averaging technique... The companies should come out with key performance indicators like no rupture event, no more than one minor leak (for example, hole size less than three mm or on similar lines), and only then take pride that things are under control.

Prakash Shende Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada

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Send an email to jlian@ohscanada.com.

Letters may be edited for style, grammar and length.

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OH&S UPDATE

RISK MANAGEMENT INSUFFICIENT FEDERAL — A report from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) has concluded that ineffective risk management led to the death of a crew member of a fishing vessel in 2015.

According to the report, published on January 19, a deckhand fell overboard while trying to free a lobster trap caught on a port guard rail with his feet on November 30, 2015. The crew managed to recover the victim, who was later pronounced dead.

The TSB investigation determined that the crew members had been insufficiently prepared for such an emergency.

They had tried to save the deckhand with the trap hauler, as the boat’s overhead block was stowed away, and 10 minutes passed before the crew decided to lower the overhead block.

“If fishing-vessel operations do not

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have a system for onboard risk management, such as safety or toolbox meetings, there is a risk that crew members will not mitigate onboard hazards effectively,” the TSB says in the report, which recommends regular emergency-response drills for fishing crews.

CALL FOR BETTER SECURITY BURNABY — The B.C. Nurses’ Union (BCNU) is demanding better policies to protect nurses and hospital employees after a man attempted suicide with a firearm in an emergency room.

The shooting occurred at Boundary District Hospital in Grand Forks on the evening of January 12, when the man entered the back of the hospital through the ambulance bay, pulled out a gun and shot himself in the emergency room, according to a BCNU statement. A physician and a manager attended the victim

while others moved patients to a different location in the facility. The man was airlifted to a hospital near Vancouver.

The day after the incident, BCNU president Gayle Duteil commended the hospital staff for their quick and professional response to the shooting, but also stressed that it had traumatized them.

“Staff were caught off-guard,” Duteil says in a statement. “They are extremely distraught as a result.”

Interior Health Authority (IH), the organization that runs the hospital, sent its crisis-management team to provide support for the employees. The morning after the shooting, BCNU representatives spoke with IH senior leaders about how to improve security for frontline staff at the latter’s facilities.

“There is nothing protecting our members and other frontline staff from this sort of violence,” Duteil notes. “I fear that the problem is only going to get worse.”

The Boundary incident was “the tip of

VIOLENT CONVICT TRIGGERS CONCERNS WHITEHORSE — A Yukon Supreme Court judge has signed an order to allow a man convicted of assault with a weapon and forcible confinement to be assessed for mental-health issues in an Ontario hospital, but at least one doctor at the facility has expressed concern about staff safety.

Michael Nehass, 32, was found guilty on May 22 and is awaiting sentence for offences committed in December 2011. Beginning on November 22, he underwent a hearing to determine whether he should be declared a dangerous offender. During the hearing, Nehass’ mental health and fitness for court proceedings came under question.

Judge Scott Brooker and the lawyers agreed that Nehass should undergo a fitness assessment at the Ontario Shores for Mental Health Sciences in Whitby, Ontario, according to a judgement document dated November 24.

But a CBC News story from November 24 reported that Ontario Shores’ vice president of medical affairs had spoken to the court by teleconference and brought up the possibility of safety risks at the hospital. “We need to be thoughtful about what level of security this gentleman would need,” Dr. Philip Klassen reportedly told the court. “If he is a medium-security inmate, we can take him.”

In addition to a previous conviction for violent assault, Nehass has also been charged with physically attacking prison guards at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre in the

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past. He has also reportedly damaged the prison building itself by setting fires and smashing windows.

Dr. Barbara Mildon, Ontario Shores’ vice president of professional practice and research as well as its chief nursing executive, stresses that the hospital has sufficient security to protect staff from potentially aggressive patients. Dr. Mildon says that employees receive ample training through a program called Safety Management Group. “We have daily safety huddles on our units, where we actively talk about each patient and what their needs are that day and what, if any, safety considerations are appropriate.”

Staff also get to practise safety skills when dealing with patients, and Ontario Shores has a good roster of highly trained security officers. “We use an outside provider for our safety officers, and they are also trained in terms of helping us with patient care,” Dr. Mildon adds.

Other safety features at the facility include metal detectors at the doors of the general forensic unit, personal safety alarms that trigger immediate assistance when employees activate them and a Code White Response program.

“We have very few incidents where we have any kind of significant safety outcomes,” Dr. Mildon says. “These measures that we have put in place are quickly brought to bear and generally are successful in managing most situations.”

— By Jeff Cottrill

the iceberg,” Duteil adds. “At many of these small hospitals, there isn’t a security guard or any line of defence between the front door and the triage area,” she explains. “Sometimes, locking the doors after hours is the only option.”

The union calls on the provincial health ministry to get involved in developing more effective policies to protect workers.

QUESTIONS RAISED OVER CONSTRUCTION FATALITY VICTORIA — The B.C. Federation of Labour (BCFED) is questioning whether the provincial government and WorkSafeBC are doing enough to enforce workplace safety rules.

The concern came on the heels of the death of construction worker Rolan Huetzelmann in Victoria on January 15, when he fell more than 10 metres after a gust of wind caused a plywood sheet to knock him off scaffolding.

“Why Huetzelmann wasn’t using a safety harness while working three stories off the ground in high winds will be a central question for the workers’ compensation board to delve into,” BCFED president Irene Lanzinger says in a statement dated January 20. Lanzinger adds that any employer whose negligence leads to a worker fatality should face a prison sentence.

CITY LAUNCHES SAFETY REVIEW EDMONTON — Nearly three months after the death of a sewer worker, the City of Edmonton announced a review of the safety culture of municipal workplaces on January 25. But a spokesperson says the review, which will examine the three distinct areas of people, processes and technology, is not a response to the sewer tragedy, but a part of a general safety initiative that the City has already launched.

“The initiative was started before that was going on,” Doug Jones, Edmonton’s deputy city manager of operations, says of the sewer fatality in which a 44-year-old City employee died while working underground on a sanitation sewer project last November 2. A stop-work order from Alberta’s Ministry of Labour shut down the site to allow for an investigation, and the City suspended all tunnelling work in Edmonton.

The safety initiative came from a new leadership team that made a decision to pursue safety excellence last year. “Technology’s changing so rapidly,” Jones says. “Are there other things out there that we could use that maybe weren’t available five years ago?”

The City has hired consulting firm DuPont Sustainable Solutions to conduct the review. Among the areas that DuPont will examine are training and equipment.

FALLING TRUCK CLAIMS EMPLOYEE EDMONTON — A 61-year-old employee of a business that sells recycled vehicle parts was killed while he was working underneath a truck in east Edmonton on December 29.

Lauren Welsh, a spokesperson for the Alberta Ministry of

Labour, says the incident occurred at about 4 p.m. at Jasper Auto and Truck Parts Ltd. “A worker was working under a truck chassis when it fell and pinned him,” she reports. Emergency medical services were called to the scene immediately, but the worker was declared dead at the scene.

Occupational health and safety officials from the Ministry attended the scene. “A stop-work order was issued at the time, but has since been lifted. It was just on the area where the incident occurred,” Welsh adds.

The Ministry is investigating the fatality.

UNION GETS PAID DOMESTIC-VIOLENCE LEAVE FORT SASKATCHEWAN — A new three-year agreement between a long-term care centre and United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1-207 now allows employees at the Rivercrest Care Centre in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta to take paid time off for legal, medical and therapeutic reasons if they are domesticviolence victims.

A statement that the union sent out on January 19 says the domestic-violence leave also resulted from the USW National Women’s Committee’s anti-violence initiative. “New provisions on domestic-violence leave are an important precedent because domestic and sexual violence is still a problem,” Local 1-207 president Ray White says. “We are doing something about domestic violence by negotiating leave provisions at the bargaining table.”

USW Western Canada director Steve Hunt says he is “proud” of the union for having taken action against violence.

“If we can get more employers adding leave provisions, provincial governments will have to follow suit, so all employees will have these protections.”

RULING SUPPORTS WORK REFUSAL EDMONTON — The federal labour ministry’s ruling in support of a work refusal by an armoured-car guard employed

by Brink’s Canada was welcomed by the national union representing armoured-car personnel.

The verdict, delivered on December 29, stemmed from an investigation following the employee’s refusal to comply with the “All Off” model for assigning the guards, in which only two guards accompany the vehicle rather than three, according to a statement from Unifor. The decision is also an expansion of an August directive in which the government ordered Brink’s to abandon the “All Off” model and increase the number of guards per armoured car.

“This decision stresses the lack of safety of frontline armoured-car workers,” says Unifor national staff representative Mike Armstrong. “We call on the entire industry to recognize this ruling and immediately halt the use of two-person, ‘All Off’ crews, which unnecessarily expose the driver and messenger to risk as they both exit the armoured car at drop-offs and pickups.”

Brink’s is appealing the federal order. www.ohscanada.com

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WORKER CONVICTED OF FRAUD REGINA — The Regina Provincial Court ordered an equipment operator to pay restitution and serve a conditional sentence on December 20, after he pleaded guilty to defrauding the Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) of about $80,000.

A WCB statement says the worker went back to his job while still receiving benefits. The sentence requires him to adhere to a curfew of 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. for six months as part of an order lasting about two years. He must also pay back the $80,000 plus a victim’s surcharge.

“The WCB has a responsibility to safeguard the workers’ compensation system,” the statement notes. “It relies on workers, employers and caregivers to accurately report injuries, employment activities, payroll and medical treatment.”

MAN ASSAULTED TWO OFFICERS WINNIPEG — Two officers with the Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) were assaulted by an intoxicated man who

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resisted arrest on December 20.

According to a WPS statement, the officers recognized 32-year-old Serge Rene Chartrand, who was a wanted man. When they tried to arrest him, Chartrand became violent and seized a Taser from one of the officers before deploying it on them. The officers managed to restrain the man and recover the Taser, but two of them had already sustained minor injuries.

Chartrand faces numerous charges, including assaulting a peace officer, pointing a firearm, disarming a peace officer and failing to comply with condition recognizance.

SAFETY SUBCOMMITTEES FORMED TORONTO — In the wake of recent amendments to the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) regarding the mining sector, the provincial Mining Legislative Review Committee has formed four new subcommittees to deal with the industry’s safety hazards.

According to a January 3 statement from Workplace Safety North (WSN), a non-profit organization that provides

oh&s training and resources for northern Ontario industries, these subcommittees will focus on ground control, traffic management, water management and ventilation/industrial hygiene respectively. A hoisting subcommittee that already exists will continue to function.

“The reason for the change is to allow for the Review Committee to better align its resources and efforts with the priority health and safety hazards in the Ontario mining sector,” Bob Barclay, the provincial coordinator for mining with the province’s Ministry of Labour (MOL), says in a statement. “These priority health and safety hazards were identified in the Mining Health, Safety and Prevention Review, which was completed in 2015.”

The Mining Health, Safety and Prevention Review made 18 recommendations to improve employee safety in the mining sector. The MOL accepted all of the recommendations, which included mandatory risk assessments, mandatory water-management programs and formal traffic-management plans for mines.

With the reorganization of the subcommittees, Barclay says, the Review Committee will be more focused, en-

COURT OVERTURNS DECISION VANCOUVER — The British Columbia Court of Appeal recently threw out a decision by the provincial Supreme Court last year that rejected a WorkSafeBC order against an asbestos-removal contractor.

On February 26, 2016, Judge George Macintosh of the B.C. Supreme Court ruled that Seattle Environmental Ltd. had not violated a 2012 order to comply with the province’s Workers Compensation Act and Occupational Health and Safety Regulation. The judge stated that the order had been too complex and vague for the company to follow and that WorkSafeBC had not set it out “in unambiguous terms.”

But WorkSafeBC appealed the decision. On January 13, Justice John Savage of the Court of Appeal in Vancouver wrote in a unanimous court decision that the order’s terms “are not ambiguous or insufficiently clear so as to be incapable of supporting a finding of contempt, given the nature of the statutory regime for workplace safety and the procedural history.”

The case’s origins date back to July 31, 2012, when WorkSafeBC filed a petition for orders restraining Seattle from exposing people to asbestos. WorkSafeBC cited 17 incidents in which the firm had allegedly violated the Act and

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Regulation, while noting that it had issued 244 orders to it.

The judge noted that while the Act and Regulation may be complex pieces of legislation, this does not excuse people in a highly regulated profession like asbestos removal from following them. “Requiring familiarity and understanding of statutory and regulatory requirements for workplace safety from voluntary industry participants is not an impermissibly onerous requirement,” Judge Savage wrote. “This is especially so, given the nature of the business in this case.”

The B.C. Federation of Labour and the B.C. Insulators Union applaud the decision. In a statement dated January 29, Federation president Irene Lanzinger says she is “comforted that the Court of Appeal reinforced employers’ responsibility to abide by health and safety laws.”

But Lanzinger cautions that the provincial Liberal government is still not doing enough to protect workers and that its asbestos-removal laws are inadequate.“They failed to act on practical solutions that unions proposed to protect the well-being of workers in the asbestos-abatement industry,” she says. “Workplace protections are weak and not always rigorously enforced.”

— By Jeff Cottrill

abling it to provide more information to the MOL, which is expected to result in oh&s improvements in the sector.

The subcommittee announcement came two days after a series of amendments to Regulation 854, the section of the OHSA regarding mines and mining plants, went into effect. The January 1 changes to the Act require employers to assess and manage safety hazards, mine owners to develop water-management programs, employers to maintain traffic management and all seismic events to be recorded.

“Risk assessments are the building blocks for successful health and safety management systems,” WSN mining director Mike Parent says about the new laws. “Due to the levels of risk water impoundment and traffic bring to a mine, it is important to conduct risk assessments, as they are essential in the development, implementation and maintenance of management programs for these hazards.”

POT-SHOP EMPLOYEE ATTACKED TORONTO — The Toronto Police Service (TPS) is searching for three men who robbed a marijuana dispensary and injured an employee on January 14.

The TPS reports that three men wearing black clothes and black ski masks entered the Green Leaf dispensary in an eastern neighbourhood of the city and ordered three of its workers to lie on the ground. One of the men was carrying a pistol, and he discharged the firearm and pistol-whipped one of the employees. The

masked men fled the shop with an unstated amount of money and marijuana.

Police were notified, and the injured worker was sent to a hospital.

HOSPITALS TO BAN SMOKING TORONTO — Starting on January 1, 2018, the Smoke-Free Ontario Act will require all hospitals and psychiatric facilities in the province to be smoke-free.

Currently, healthcare facilities may have designated outdoor smoking areas that must be at least nine metres away from any entrance or exit and identified as designated smoking areas by signage. But these designated areas will no longer be permitted to protect workers and patients from second-hand smoke.

“A smoke-free hospital is a positive step in promoting health and wellness, but to be truly effective, we need to do more than implement a policy,” Janet Allen, the tobacco-control program coordinator with Algoma Public Health, said on January 6. “Having services available both in hospital and the community to help individuals effectively manage and comply with restrictions or stop smoking when they are ready is essential.”

ASBESTOS EXPOSURE SPURS FINE KITCHENER — The Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Ontario was fined $50,000 on January 13, after eight municipality employees were exposed to asbestos for 25 days while removing

and replacing equipment in a well house at the Waterloo water-pumping station from October 2 to 27, 2015.

The Ontario Ministry of Labour says the employees drilled into the interior concrete block walls of the building, which caused asbestos-containing vermiculite to spill out of the holes. The workers were not wearing proper personal protective equipment and did not treat the vermiculite as containing asbestos.

The Regional Municipality later pleaded guilty to failing to provide required information about materials containing asbestos to workers.

INJURY PROMPTS PENALTY LONDON — A construction-equipment seller in London, Ontario was fined $115,000 on January 5 over a worker injury. A drive assembly weighing about 2,200 kilograms fell from its support stands at Toromont Industries Ltd.’s maintenance shop for heavy equipment on August 21, 2015, trapping a Toromont worker’s hand between the fallen axle and the concrete floor.

The investigation found that the company had tested the axle’s stability on the support stands, but the test was insufficient because the device had still been attached to an overhead crane.

The company pleaded guilty to failing to comply with Section 46 of the Industrial Establishments Regulation, which requires securement of any machinery, equipment or material that could injure a worker against tipping over and falling.

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PERMANENT INJURY YIELDS PENALTY GUELPH — A firm that manufactures rubber parts for the automotive sector was fined $80,000 on December 16, after a temporary worker was permanently injured by a hydraulic power press.

A court bulletin from the Ontario Ministry of Labour states that the incident took place on May 27, 2014, when an employee of Poly-Nova Technologies GP Inc. was training the temporary worker on how to clean the press’ upper ejection mould. As the trainee was reaching into the press between two plates, someone else started the machine, trapping the trainee’s hand and arm and resulting in serious burns and injuries.

The Ministry’s investigation found that the press had no guard or device to prevent access to dangerous moving parts.

Poly-Nova pleaded guilty to contravening Section 24 of the Industrial Establishments Regulation.

CAMPAIGN SEEKS TO CURB ABUSE TORONTO — The United Steelworkers’ (USW) Canadian branch, which represents about 10,000 call-centre employees across the country, has launched a campaign to let these workers hang up on customers who are verbally abusive.

The campaign, called Hang Up on Abuse, is urging call centres nationwide to discard the widely-practised policy that prohibits call-centre workers from hanging up when a customer

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becomes abusive. A new website, HangUpOnAbuse.ca, also encourages call-centre employees to share their stories publicly and to sign a petition to demand that their employers allow them to pass on abusive calls without fear of being fired.

“We know that abuse and harassment of call-centre workers is a problem, and it has to stop,” USW national director Ken Neumann says in a union statement dated December 7.

“While we can’t persuade everyone to treat call-centre workers respectfully, we can persuade companies to adopt policies that empower workers to end abusive calls.”

Hang Up on Abuse urges call centres to give their workers the right to hang up on abusive callers, train managers to support employees who undergo abuse, flag clients with a history of abuse or harassment, have a policy of zero tolerance of abuse, give all workers the option to report threats to the police and ensure that workers who report abuse are not disciplined.

Lee Riggs, president of USW National Local 1944 or the Telecommunications Workers Union, calls verbal abuse of these workers dehumanizing. “This can lead to problems at home and to mental and physical pain,” Riggs says, adding that employers have a legal responsibility to create safe working environments.

NEW DATA-SHARING AGREEMENT CREATED TORONTO — Ontario’s Ministry of Labour has worked out a new information-sharing agreement with the federal government to protect the rights of the province’s temporary foreign workers (TFW). The agreement, announced by the Ministry on December 16, will facilitate the exchange of data about employers and recruiting agents between the federal and provincial governments.

The information exchange is expected to improve the province’s oversight of workplaces that hire TFWs and help the provincial government better determine whether employers are qualified to hire TFWs. It will also ensure that employers comply with oh&s law and identify non-compliant employers and report them. “We are concerned about the potential exploitation of temporary foreign workers, and this new information-sharing agreement will help us to better protect some of our most vulnerable workers,” Ontario Labour Minister Kevin Flynn says.

The new agreement is the latest step in the Ministry’s ongoing plan to make sure that TFWs have the same protections that other provincial workers have. The Ministry conducted an inspection blitz on workplaces using TFWs from May 2 to June 30, focusing on the employers’ adherence to employment standards. The province has also amended the Employment Protection for Foreign Nationals Act, 2009 to extend protections to foreign nationals seeking work from a temporary-employment program as well as to TFWs.

CORPORAL ACQUITTED OF ASSAULT GATINEAU — A master corporal with the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) has been found not guilty of two charges under

the National Defence Act, relating to the alleged sexual assault of a female military officer in October 2011.

Master Corporal Dustin Jackson was accused of assaulting his colleague in Ottawa in a complaint reported in January 2014, says a statement from the Department of National Defence. The ensuing standing court martial began on August 17 of last year and ended on January 4, when Judge Lt.-Col. Louis-Vincent d’Auteuil acquitted Master Corporal Jackson of sexual assault and of behaving in a disgraceful manner.

“The CAF takes all allegations of any form of sexual misconduct seriously and is committed to dealing with them as quickly as possible,” the statement adds.

WORKER DIES AFTER FALL FREDERICTON — A foreman is dead after falling approximately 12.5 metres from the fourth storey of a building at a construction site in Fredericton.

The incident happened on January

30 at about 9:30 a.m. at the construction site of the city’s new Hilton Garden Inn, according to Manon Arsenault, director of communications with WorkSafeNB, who identifies the victim’s name as Steven Lutes.

Lutes, a resident of the community of Upper Coverdale, was born in 1975 and employed by LEAD Structural Formwork in Moncton, according to his online obituary. The contractor for the hotel’s construction is J.W. Lindsay Construction, which is headquartered in Halifax, but has a Moncton branch.

“It really hit us all hard here,” Lindsay president Cory Bell says. Lindsay has a crisis counselling hotline, which it activated immediately after the tragedy.

“Within a couple of hours, we had onsite counselling available for anybody, any workers and employees that were in close proximity to the worksite when it happened,” Bell adds.

Although WorkSafeNB is investigating the incident, it did not issue any order to halt work or shut down the worksite, according to Bell. “We have an ISO-reg-

istered quality- and safety-management system in place, so we have safety at the highest standards. We are always committed to meet or achieve any of the requirements of the Occupational Health and Safety Act and all the regulations.”

Bell adds that the company does enforce the use of fall-protection equipment for employees who work at heights, but cannot confirm whether or not Lutes was wearing fall-arrest gear at the time of the incident.

LIEUTENANT PLEADS GUILTY OROMOCTO — A military officer with the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) was fined $3,000 with a severe reprimand, after he pleaded guilty to a charge of disgraceful conduct.

Second Lieutenant Antoine Brunelle was charged with sexual assault and disgraceful conduct towards another officer regarding an alleged incident in Gagetown, New Brunswick in November 2014, according to a statement from the

CITY TO ENHANCE TRANSIT SECURITY TORONTO — The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is proceeding with a plan to put special constables on some buses and streetcars to prevent violence against drivers.

The initiative is an expansion of a pilot project that the TTC enacted in December, BUS STOP, or Bringing Uniform Support to Surface Transportation Operating Personnel. This program had special constables boarding 373 buses on seven routes to prevent assaults while protecting revenue, says TTC chief special constable Mark Cousins.

“What we found during that time was that because we were present, you had less fare evasion, you had less fare disputes, less assaults,” Cousins says. “We felt that we were having a positive impact in supporting the operator and also reminding folks of the proper rules of engagement.”

Nearly 400 TTC employees were physically assaulted in 2016, and 285 of those were vehicle operators. About twofifths of the assaults resulted from fare disputes.

For the moment, the extra visibility of security will be on selected buses, streetcars and routes. Cousins employs 41 special constables, and the TTC puts out more than 1,500 buses per day. Deployment of the constables will depend on which routes need the most assistance, as per the TTC’s data.

But not everybody is optimistic about the TTC’s plan.

“There is always talk about increased levels of visibility and things like that, and it never really generally comes to light,”

says Kinnear, ex-president of Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), which represents TTC operators.

One of the biggest problems is that neither the public nor the ATU takes the TTC’s special constables seriously as an authority. He cites the incident at Union subway station nearly two years ago, when Russell Gillman and son Jamie Gillman were involved in a scuffle with TTC personnel after a Toronto Maple Leafs game, as an example of their ineffectiveness. “We have a special name for them,” Kinnear says about the special constables. “We call them the Rainbow Squad. They always arrive after the storm.” A better solution, he suggests, is to have a regular presence of Toronto Police Service officers aboard TTC vehicles.

Cousins reports that the special constables will not be the only enhancement of security on the TTC. The system is also increasing its video-review process. “Every single bus is equipped with CCTV,” he says. “As long as the equipment is working, every single assault that is committed on an operator is caught on tape. And so we review that tape, we look for the suspect. If the suspect can be identified and charges are appropriate, they are charged.”

Of the assaults against TTC drivers, 34 per cent involve spitting, while another 31 per cent are physical strikes like slaps and punches, Cousins notes.

— By Jeff Cottrill

www.ohscanada.com

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Department of National Defence. The standing court martial began on January 10 of this year. Two days later, the assault charge was dismissed and the military judge, Commander J.B.M. Pelletier, accepted 2nd Lieut. Brunelle’s guilty plea and passed the sentence.

“In addition to a military judge’s sentence, CAF members can be subject to an administrative review, which can result in actions that range from remedial measures up to release from the CAF,” the statement says.

PROVINCE ACCEPTS SUGGESTIONS HALIFAX — Nova Scotia has agreed to implement all 12 recommendations on reducing violence in hospital emergency departments following the publication of a report that evaluates safety threats in the province’s healthcare sector.

Improving Workplace Safety in Nova Scotia’s Community Emergency Departments (EDs), published on January 20, was compiled by a working committee

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of healthcare stakeholders formed by Premier Stephen McNeil late last year.

Among the recommendations in the report are the following: enhancing teamwork between Nova Scotia Health Authority and unions on reducing ED violence; conducting risk assessments tailored to every ED; having a provincial workplace-violence-prevention program in place; installing emergency communication devices and alert systems for ED staff; establishing a system to track all incident and injury reports; putting in place better emergency-planning policies; and having a protocol to notify unions of major incidents.

“The safety of nurses, physicians, staff, patients and families at emergency departments across the province is very important to all of us,” McNeil says.

Janet Hazelton, president of Nova Scotia Nurses’ Union, says the committee is proud to offer “a positive strategy” to reduce injuries from workplace violence in EDs. “Regardless of the situation, no one should feel threatened or unsafe in their workplace. Much remains

to be done, but this is an important step in the right direction.”

DEPARTMENT SHARES FINDINGS HALIFAX — Nova Scotia’s Department of Labour and Advanced Education met with stakeholders in the healthcare industry on January 5 to share the results of a recent ministry report on musculoskeletal-injury (MSI) prevention.

The report, Long-Term Healthcare: Targeted Inspections on Musculoskeletal Injury (MSI) Risk Factors, resulted from discussions between healthcare workers and safety officers who had visited 36 facilities from March to July. The officers asked the employees about health and safety programs while promoting MSI awareness and identifying areas that needed improvement, according to a statement from the Department.

The report made recommendations: updating and reviewing training, education and awareness regarding maintenance, management and safe use of

FATALITY SPARKS CALLS FOR BETTER GRIEF SUPPORT HALIFAX — Nova Scotia’s first fishing fatality of the year has motivated people in the industry, including professional fishers and the president of a safety organization, to call for a better support system for surviving colleagues of victims.

On January 7, a lobster fisherman on the vessel Secret Sea fell overboard while setting traps near the town of Shelburne, according to information from the provincial Department of Labour. Although the worker was recovered from the water, he subsequently died.

“We are in the preliminary steps of the investigation,” the Department says. “Occupational health and safety officers will be gathering information and will continue to investigate the incident to determine what happened.”

Stewart Franck, executive director of the Fisheries Safety Association of Nova Scotia (FSA), identifies the victim as Jimmy Buchanan. Franck, who is also a Canadian Registered Safety Professional, says that tragedy has a devastating effect on fishing communities. “When an incident like this happens in the small fishing villages in Nova Scotia — or anywhere, for that matter — the entire community is greatly affected,” he says. But the lack of mental-health resources in remote areas means that survivors usually turn to their families, friends and local churches for support.

“I imagine if someone calls the Nova Scotia Health Authority, they might get some support there, but I don’t know

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how much of that is used,” Franck adds. “It would be nice if there were something more formal.”

The Health Authority reportedly provides counsellors for communities affected by tragedy if a community requests one. It also has a 24/7 helpline.

While the FSA does not provide grief support or other counselling services, Franck has sometimes been called upon to advise and assist fishing crews or individuals after fatalities, typically for more practical services like helping people deal with media requests or fill out necessary forms.

Although Nova Scotia has seen relatively high rates of fishing fatalities over the past few decades, the situation appears to be improving. In 2015, the provincial government launched Fishing Safety Now, a plan to make the industry safer through better regulations, practice codes, training and public awareness. That year, the number of fishing deaths in the province dropped to three.

“Statistically, over the last 20 to 30 years, we average about five or six fatalities a year. And that is about half of the fatalities in fishing across the nation,” Franck says. “This is the first one and hopefully the last in 2017,” he adds, referring to Buchanan’s death. “The industry is improving, but we have got a long way to go to establish any kind of long-term trend.”

— By Jeff Cottrill

equipment; ensuring effective joint oh&s committees who support well-defined practices for hazard assessment and mitigation; and implementing communication tools to update staff on safety policies and procedures.

“Our healthcare industry is the largest single employer in the province. Unfortunately, it also has the highest injury rate. We are working to change this,” says Kelly Regan, Nova Scotia’s Minister of Labour and Advanced Education.

SURVEY SEEKS INSIGHT CHARLOTTETOWN — Healthcare workers in Prince Edward Island are asked to share their views and concerns on workplace violence in a new survey from Health P.E.I., the Crown Corporation that runs the province’s healthcare facilities.

The survey, available online since January 16, is aimed at members of the P.E.I. Union of Public Sector Employees (PEIUPSE), according to a statement from the National Union of Public and General Employees, which is affiliated with PEIUPSE. Questions address health and safety practices at respondents’ worksites, incidents of physical and verbal violence, training, reporting violent incidents and more.

“You are being invited to take part in this survey so that we can make improvements to our health and safety policies and practices,” Health P.E.I. says.

INCIDENT CLAIMS CONTRACTOR STEPHENVILLE — Friends and colleagues are mourning the death of a Stephenville, Newfoundland man who was killed in an industrial accident at the Maritime Link Project near Stephenville Crossing on January 16.

Officers from the RCMP’s Bay St. George detachment were called to the Indian Head Grounding Site where 30-year-old Phil Parsons was employed by energy company Emera Newfoundland and Labrador as a contractor, a statement from the Newfoundland and Labrador RCMP states.

RCMP media-relations officer Cpl. Trevor O’Keefe says the investigation

of the incident has been turned over to Service N.L., the provincial government entity in charge of occupational health and safety. “There is nothing criminal on our part, so our job is done, and it is starting over with them.”

A spokesperson with Service N.L. confirms that the department’s investigation is underway.

Jeff Myrick, Emera’s senior manager of communications and public affairs, says all transmission-line stringing and overhead work is on hold until the investigation has been completed. “We will take the necessary time required to fully understand what happened.”

CONVICTION SPURS FINE ST. JOHN’S — The Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Transportation and Works was fined $90,000 on December 22, following its conviction for violating five sections of the province’s Occupational Health and Safety Act. According to court documents, the conviction stemmed from an incident that had resulted in the death of a line painter on the Trans Canada Highway more than three years ago. Wayne Wall, 40, was working with a paint crew on the highway on the west coast of Newfoundland, about two kilometres west of Flat Bay, on the morning of July 23, 2013.

As the workers were preparing to paint a “yield” indicator on the eastbound lane, a pickup truck struck and killed Wall, while reportedly hospitalizing an-

other Department employee. Two people in the truck were also injured.

Two years to the day after the incident, Service N.L. charged the Department of Transportation with eight workplace-safety violations. In her written decision, Judge Lynn E. Cole sentenced the Department to pay a $15,000 fine within 90 days. The Department was also ordered to set aside another $75,000, partly to pay for a safety audit of its traffic-control programs, as well as for donations to WorkplaceNL and Threads of Life, a national organization that assists families of victims of workplace tragedy.

“The safety audit is to be conducted by an independent safety consultant mutually agreeable to the Department of Transportation and Works and the occupational health and safety branch of Service N.L.,” writes Judge Cole, referring to the province’s labour ministry. “The Department… is to implement any recommendations made as a result of the safety audit, including [the provision of] any further training to staff identified.”

The audit is to be completed by July, with recommendations implemented within the following six months.

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DISPATCHES

Filmmaker accused of being a spy on asbestos movement

By Jeff Cottrill

A

British man who claimed to be a documentary filmmaker and spoke with a number of anti-asbestos advocates in Canada last year is accused of working as a corporate agent paid to infiltrate the anti-asbestos movement.

The story came to light in early January, when a publication ban was lifted on the man’s name, Robert Moore, regarding his involvement in a civil case before the High Court of Justice in the United Kingdom. Moore and a company called K2 Intelligence Limited allegedly infiltrated a worldwide anti-asbestos network to gather information on behalf of an unknown public-relations firm that had contracted them, according to court witness statements.

Among the individuals that Moore interviewed was Laura Lozanski, an occupational health and safety officer with the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT).

Ottawa-based Lozanski is an activist who has taught asbestos-awareness courses. “He said he was a documentary filmmaker, he was really interested in doing asbestos filmmaking,” Lozanski says. Moore was planning to interview other anti-asbestos advocates.

Lozanski referred him to other contacts, adding that he seemed credible at the time. “He actually worked for a reputable documentary company that did some stuff for National Geographic.”

Lozanski allowed Moore to interview her in her office in September, but she did not feel afterwards that she and her associates had given him any potentially harmful information. “We are a very transparent group of people,” she says.

“We were just talking about what we do.”

Just before the Christmas holidays, Lozanski found out about the court case in the United Kingdom, but she did not know that Moore was involved, due to the publication ban.

She knew that Laurie Kazan Allen, the founder of the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat, had filed a claim along with two other people, alleging breach of confidence and misuse of private information.

“When I first came back to work, the first week of January,” Lozanski recalls, “the ban got lifted, and lo and behold, it was this person that had been sitting in my office.”

What concerns Lozanski and her fellow activists is that corporate spies may be infiltrating anti-asbestos communities elsewhere. “It wasn’t just here in Canada, it was in a number of countries,” she says, referring to Moore’s alleged activities.

“We do have a number of activists in other countries, particu-

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larly in Asia and south Asia, who might be quite vulnerable to whatever it is that might be going on behind the scenes.”

Jeff Cottrill is editor of canadian occupational health & safety news.

Men, women respond differently to bullying: study

By Jean Lian

W

orkplace bullying doubles women’s sickness absence, leads to an increased use of antidepressants and affects women’s health negatively and for a long time, while men are twice as likely to leave the labour market for a period of time. These are the findings of a study out of Aarhus University and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, released on December 12. The findings are based on the responses of 3,182 people in public and private organizations who took part in the study.

“The million-dollar question is why men primarily react by leaving the workplace, while women react to bullying by taking prolonged sick leaves. If anything, this illustrates that men and women handle bullying differently,” says assistant professor Tine Mundbjerg Eriksen from the Department of Economics and Business Economics at Aarhus Business and Social Sciences in Aarhus, Denmark. “It seems that men who are bullied are more likely than women to go to work even though they are actually sick.”

The study suggests that bullying might affect men’s salary levels negatively by hampering their opportunities for pay increases and promotions. When it comes to the type and frequency of bullying, the research shows that men are just as exposed to work or personal-related bullying as women are. In fact, men are slightly more exposed to physical intimidation.

The findings of the Danish study might shed some light on workplace bullying in the Canadian context. A 2007 workplace-bullying survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute found that 37 per cent of workers in Canada had been bullied. Of those who had been subjected to bullying, 40 per cent had not told their employers and 62 per cent of employers ignored the problem, did not know what to do or normalized this damaging behaviour.

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety in Hamilton, Ontario says there are various forms of bullying, which include spreading malicious rumours, excluding someone socially, intimidating a person, undermining or impeding a person’s work and assigning unreasonable duties.

Jean Lian is editor of

ohs canada.

Poor health could hike truckers’ crash risk

By Jean Lian

A

trucker’s poor health could be a hazard not only to himself, but also to others around him. A new study by the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City found that commercial truck drivers who have three or more medical conditions double-to-quadruple their chances of being involved in crashes.

“What these data are telling us is that with decreasing health comes increased crash risk, including crashes that truck drivers could prevent,” the study’s lead author, Matthew Thiese, Ph.D., says in a statement dated January 16. Dr. Thiese is an assistant professor at the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health in Salt Lake City.

The study, which examined the medical records of 49,464 commercial truck drivers in the United States, found that 34 per cent of the truckers had signs of at least one of several medical conditions that had previously been linked to poor driving performance. These conditions included heart disease, low back pain and diabetes.

Matching the medical and crash histories of drivers also revealed that those with at least three of the flagged conditions were more likely to have been involved in crashes. The researchers also found that 82 truck drivers in the highest risk group had an elevated risk for different categories of crashes.

Dr. Thiese says the rate of crashes resulting in injury among all of the observed truck drivers was 29 per 100 million miles travelled. For drivers with three or more ailments, the frequency increased to 93 per 100 million miles travelled. The trends held true even after taking into consideration other factors that influence truckers’ driving abilities, such as age and the amount of commercial driving experience.

“Right now, conditions are thought of in isolation,” Dr. Thiese suggests. “There is no guidance for looking at multiple conditions in concert.” Current commercial motor-vehicle guidelines pull truckers with major health concerns from the pool, but do not factor in an accumulation of multiple minor symptoms. The new findings could mean that one health condition, such as diabetes, is manageable. But when it is combined with high blood pressure and anxiety, that could substantially increase a driver’s risk.

Irregular schedules, long hours, little physical activity and limited access to healthy foods make it hard for truckers to adopt a healthy lifestyle. They also have a greater chance of developing chronic diseases and health conditions like heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and obesity, notes the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) in

Hamilton, Ontario. To address these challenges, the CCOHS and the Canadian Trucking Alliance signed a memorandum of understanding last October to boost awareness of workplace-safety issues in the trucking industry, which continues to suffer from high injury and fatality rates.

Controversial legislation sparks safety concerns

By Jeff Cottrill

A

number of unions in Ontario have been protesting a new provincial law that they claim could have a detrimental effect on workplace health and safety.

While Bill 70, or the Building Ontario Up for Everyone Act (Budget Measures), 2016, tabled by Finance Minister Charles Sousa, implements budget measures in many areas, two middle sections sparked outrage in Ontario’s labour community before the bill received Royal Assent on December 8. Schedule 16 amended the Occupational Health and Safety Act — affecting Ministry of Labour inspections of workplaces, in particular — while Schedule 17 altered the Ontario College of Trades and Apprenticeship Act to give the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) power to overrule decisions by the Ontario College of Trades.

The latter schedule sparked a public demonstration of tradespeople and organizations in front of the Ontario legislature in Toronto on November 30, as demonstrators felt that the section threatened jobs and workplace safety by potentially allowing the OLRB to give a pass to unqualified workers to do work that requires certified tradespeople. “We had 4,500 people on the front lawn,” says John Grimshaw, the executive secretary-treasurer of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Construction Council of Ontario.

Len Elliott, the regional vice president for southwestern Ontario with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, gave a presentation in the legislature opposing Schedule 16 on December 1. The union charged that the section would help employers dodge safety inspections. A previous Ministry statement said it wanted to “lessen the burden on employers by taking away unnecessary proactive inspections.”

Elliott, an oh&s inspector in London, Ontario, describes the Ministry’s stance as “unbelievable and unacceptable.” He adds that the bill gives Ontario’s chief prevention officer unwarranted power to outsource certification and accreditation standards, leading to the privatization of health and safety inspectors. “This will result in more injuries and more deaths in workplaces if you ban inspectors from going into those workplaces proactively.”

A statement from Labour Minister Kevin Flynn’s office denies that the accreditation standard proposed by Schedule 16 will result in fewer inspections. “Proactive health and safety inspections have been an important element of the Ministry’s health and safety enforcement and will continue to be.”

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PRISON VIOLENCE

BIG HOUSE TROUBLE IN THE

BY JEFF COTTRILL

Penitentiaries have always been dangerous workplaces. But violence in Canada’s correctional centres has been on the rise over the past several years, especially in facilities with low staff-to-inmate ratios and high gang activity. Something has to be done to keep workers safe, but how can this be accomplished without infringing on inmates’ rights?

T

he riot began with the ringing of a buzzer. On September 4, a teenage inmate at a provincial youth prison in Waterville, Nova Scotia sounded a buzzer to notify a female employee that he had to use the washroom. The youth worker let the boy through, and he attacked.

More inmates rushed into the area. One of them broke a wooden door to get through and pummelled the worker with punches and kicks as she called for help on a radio system.

A group of colleagues came to her aid, but the youths turned their attack on them as well. The melee ended with five of the facility’s workers with broken bones, bruises and cuts, while four boys aged 17 to 19 faced criminal charges of mischief, rioting and assault.

This was just one of many violent incidents that took place in correctional facilities across the country over the past few years — occurrences that have made unions question whether the correctional officers they represent are kept safe enough from potential attacks by inmates.

As recently as December 14, about 185 prisoners rioted at the federal penitentiary in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, leaving one inmate dead and the property damaged extensively. Another riot at the Burnaby Youth Custody Centre in Burnaby, British Columbia lasted for more than six hours on July 19. Assaults against correctional staff have been on the rise in British Columbia’s ten provincial facilities, particularly at the ones in Surrey and the Fraser Valley.

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A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE “Working in the correctional environment can have both physical and emotional effects,” explains Avely Serin, the senior communications advisor for communications and engagement with Correctional Service Canada (CSC) in Ottawa. “Staff can be subject to verbal and physical attacks from inmates and can find themselves in situations where there is a potential to be subjected to contamination with diseases such as Hepatitis and HIV.” Recent statistics from CSC’s Offender Management System state an average of 310 recorded assaults on staff in federal institutions every year across the country. Of the ones

that occurred from 2011 to 2016, roughly two-fifths were physical assaults, while the others involved less harmful actions like spitting, throwing or swinging objects, lunging or making threats. More than 300 of these physical assaults were punches, hits or kicks, while more than 40 entailed the use of weapons. Out of all of the reported assaults over the same five-year period, about 30 per cent occurred in situations involving prison security intervention, roughly one-quarter during escorts and/or handcuffing and more than 10 per cent during kitchen meal service.

In addition, CSC reports a total of 247 assaults on fellow inmates over the same period, including 62 over the fiscal pe-

riod of 2015 to 2016 — representing an increase of nearly 20 over the previous year. There were also 76 reported fights between inmates from 2011 to 2016, along with 10 murders.

This internal violence only heightens the hazard for officers, who are obligated to intervene, according to Serin.

“Correctional officers actively observe internal and external activity for signs that the safety of others or security of the institution might be at risk. When necessary, they take appropriate security measures,” Serin says. “They monitor, supervise and interact with offenders and face the challenge of unpredictable situations on a daily basis.”

The situation is even worse in many provincial correcwww.ohscanada.com

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tion. But little has progressed so far.

“Not much came out of the meeting with the Minister.

That was unfortunate,” Purdy says. Two meetings with WorkSafeBC did result in safety inspections at four facilities and some subsequent orders, but nothing else. “Now we are seeing recommendations for both risk assessments and accident investigations ignored around the province, and even interim measures are not being implemented,” he adds, criticizing what he sees as WorkSafeBC’s “soft approach” to the problem.

HELP WANTED For Purdy, chronic understaffing has been the most significant factor in the growing violence in British Columbia’s prison system. Until 2002, the province had a cap on the officer-to-inmate ratio of one to 20 in every living unit. Today, a ratio of one officer to 72 inmates is not unusual, as is the case for the recently expanded Surrey Pretrial Services Centre. The new Okanagan Correctional Centre is expected to have a similar ratio.

“When you have capacity issues inside correctional centres, everything tends to suffer,” says Purdy, citing healthcare and programming as examples. With one officer in a living unit with up to 72 inmates, he adds, “they just don’t have the time and resources during the day to deal with all of the inmates’ problems.”

Prison capacity is also regarded as a major problem in Saskatchewan. At the Saskatoon Correctional Centre, inmates have often been double-bunked or even triple-bunked, leading to tension and fights over space, privacy and food. In an August 2015 letter to the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, inmate Cory Cardinal claimed that unavailable toilet facilities had led some prisoners at the institution to urinate in milk jugs, in Styrofoam cups or even on the floor.

Bob Bymoen, president of the Saskatchewan Government and General Employees’ Union in Regina, says that Saskatchewan simply does not have enough facilities these days — a tional facilities. Ontario’s prisons, for example, have seen a fact that the provincial government “doesn’t want to hear.”

The province’s growth in population should have steady increase in inmate-on-staff violence: the led to greater expansion in space in correctional total number of assaults, attempted assaults and centres, he adds. threats leaped from 505 in 2014 to 654 the fol“Working in Bymoen, who has long been lobbying for safer lowing year, according to information from the the correctional conditions for correctional workers in the provprovince’s Ministry of Community Safety and ince, also blames gang activity among inmates for Correctional Services. There were also 361 asenvironment can the increasing violence.

“If you get gangs mixed saults, attempted assaults and threats during the up, especially if they are more the senior people first half of 2016 alone. have both physical or the leaders, ” he says, “you have fights between British Columbia has also seen an alarming the gangs. ” rise in inmate assaults on officers: the total numand emotional More than a year ago, Saskatchewan’s correcber went up by 39 per cent from 2014 to 2015, effects.” tions system experimented with what is known according to Dean Purdy, the vice president of as “speckling”, or integrating members of different correctional and sheriff services with the B.C. gangs together in the cells, “to try to get them to Government and Service Employees’ Union like each other, ” Bymoen says.

“That didn’t work very well.”

(BCGEU), based in Burnaby.

Compounding the problem is the reduction in education “That is part of the reason that we have rolled out our camand rehabilitative programming for inmates across Saskatchpaign around the violence, to try and identify how to prevent ewan, Bymoen suggests.

“There is less for the inmates to do, the violence,” Purdy says. Last year, BCGEU representatives and boredom encourages violent acts as well among people.” met with provincial Public Safety Minister Mike Morris, as Inmates’ mental-health problems also play a role, as well as well as WorkSafeBC, to get something done about the situa 22

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socio-economic issues on the outside, including the lack of education on First Nations reserves, he adds.

Jason Godin, the national president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers (UCCO) in Montreal, observes that the typical offender profile has changed quite a bit over the last 20 years. “We have newer, younger inmates coming into our system, more likely to be affiliated with gangs.

I think that is our single biggest problem — managing the different populations.”

This perceived rougher breed can make it more difficult for frontline officers to do their jobs safely without compromising inmates’ rights. “It is a fine-line balance between public safety and security and, of course, the rehabilitation-programming end of it,” Godin says. “In order to be successful, the system needs to have both.”

ONLY THE LONELY Jennifer Metcalfe, the executive director of the West Coast Prison Justice Society (WCPJS) in Burnaby, believes that the use of solitary confinement, also known as administrative segregation, as punishment exacerbates violence behind bars.

In November, the WCPJS published a report, Solitary: A Case for Abolition, stating among other findings that the practice increases prisoner violence.

“The report is about solitary confinement, but it sort of looks at the broader picture,” Metcalfe explains. “When correctional officers respond to somebody who might be in an emotional crisis, maybe due to a mental disability or some-

thing, when they respond with violence instead of using mediation and de-escalation tactics, I think that it just escalates things.” Some inmates have even resorted to throwing excrement at staff in response to their treatment, she adds.

The report advocates the use of dynamic security over static security — meaning that prison life should be based more on empowerment, dignity, a supportive environment and shared responsibility than on antagonistic barriers between officers and offenders. “When people are in prison, we hope that the professionals that are working with them are going to work to help them to see the alternatives to violence and demonstrate that,” Metcalfe explains. “That is not what is happening, so violence just gets worse.”

Yet Metcalfe has had difficulty in convincing either UCCO or BCGEU to take her views on prison violence seriously.

Both unions declined even to discuss the possibility of abolishing solitary confinement after she submitted the WCPJS report to them.

“That was really disappointing,” she says. She hopes that these organizations will consider the value of de-escalation and dynamic security in correctional facilities. “We can have a dialogue about it, because I think that we all have the same goals of reducing violence and making it a safe place to work.”

Godin recognizes the importance of respecting inmates’ rights as far as possible. But he also points to segregation as among the necessary tools that correctional officers use to keep discipline in an unruly environment, saying that eliminating it would have disastrous consequences. www.ohscanada.com

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“We just can’t afford to have a population-management tool like that diminished. It is like sending a construction worker to the site without his hardhat, his steel-toed boots and his safety belt,” Godin says.

“We are dealing with the most unpredictable human behaviour in the country. Let’s face it,” adds Godin, noting that about 80 per cent of use-of-force incidents in federal prisons involve spontaneous reactions, which often result in more unpredictable behaviour from the inmates. “Sometimes, those violent incidents towards staff just aren’t preventable,” he says. “We do the best we can in managing what we have, while respecting the rights and the legislative framework that we are required to carry out.”

Purdy agrees that administrative segregation remains a necessity for inmate behaviour that crosses the line. “If there were no consequences for the actions of inmates, you can imagine what kind of an environment we would have inside our jails,” he says. “Inmates are charged internally. They go to segregation to serve their time when they violate a section of the Corrections Act regulation, and that is just like in any kind of situation — you have to have penalties for bad behaviour.”

TAKING ACTION Last year, the Ontario government began taking more serious action on prison violence. In January 2016, the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services announced that it had hired 144 new correctional officers to increase employee safety through additional staffing. In May, the Ministry revealed a plan to install full-body scanners in all 26 of its adult correctional facilities, making Ontario the first province to do so.

And late in the year, the government hired Howard Sapers as the province’s Independent Advisor on Corrections Reform. Sapers, who just came off 12 years as Canada’s federal Correctional Investigator — “essentially an ombudsman for federally sentenced offenders,” as he describes it — has recently started reviewing Ontario’s correctional system.

“The initial part of the review will be focused on segre-

THE MENTAL CONSEQUENCES Injuries and physical pain are not the only hazards of inmate violence that employees of correctional facilities face.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is another common consequence, and the mental health of correctional officers is something that Correctional Service Canada (CSC) takes seriously, according to Avely Serin, its senior communications advisor for communications and engagement in Ottawa.

In 2015, CSC commissioner Don Head launched a steering committee to deal with workplace mental health in the correctional system. As a result, the employer adopted programs to support and counsel workers who have been involved in critical incidents, including a Critical Incident Stress Management Program and an Employee Assistance Program.

“We provide online tools and resources as a single-

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window approach to support staff,” says Serin, adding that CSC also has a return-to-work program to help injured or ill employees return when they are ready. “We have consistent communications to reinforce the need for managers to be receptive and responsive to the needs of staff when they bring PTSD issues forward.”

Jason Godin, the national president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers in Montreal, also recognizes that PTSD is a problem among correctional officers. Andrew Morrison, a spokesperson for Ontario’s Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services in Toronto, notes that the province’s new law making PTSD a presumptively occupational disease for first responders applies to correctional officers.

gation,” explains Sapers, who is now based in Toronto. This to training,” he adds. “We are saying the exact opposite, that first part will examine the various forms of segregation, the there needs to be more enhanced training.” alternatives to it and how successful recent reforms have been Purdy says he wants to see the British Columbia governbefore offering recommendations. Sapers’ team plans to in- ment and WorkSafeBC take the crisis more seriously. Imcorporate some of the findings of the WCPJS report into their proving the officer-to-inmate ratio would be a great start, but work to see if it applies to Ontario. better enforcement after incident investigations “Following that initial review will be a more is also needed.

The typical broadly based review looking at other aspects of “We are starting to believe there is a double correctional operations,” Sapers adds. “And then, standard of enforcement between the private hopefully, the government will move on those offender profile sector and the public sector, specifically in correcommendations, and I will be involved in the has changed quite rections,” Purdy suggests. Private employers implementation of that.” always face penalties when they violate WorkSince starting the new job on January 1, Sapers a bit over the last SafeBC orders, but “written orders are not being has been meeting with correctional officers and applied equally.”

20 years. union representatives across Ontario to hear their Occupational violence in correctional centres concerns and stories about violent incidents. stems from numerous factors, including over“Primarily, it comes down to concerns about adcrowding, gang involvement, budget cutbacks equate training, adequate staffing, adequate policies and ap- and inmates’ mental-health issues. That makes it difficult to propriate infrastructure.” generalize causes and solutions, Sapers notes. But he is hopeGodin emphasizes that training officers to deal with ful that his work in Ontario will make progress on the issue. violent situations is always essential. “You can never have “It is really a matter of looking at the corrections system enough training in our jobs,” he says, citing the use of non- and integrating modern reforms,” he says, “just to make sure lethal munitions as another vital tool in controlling rowdy that the system is working the way it was intended.” inmate populations.

“Believe it or not, they are actually proposing cutbacks Jeff Cottrill is editor of canadian occupational health & safety news.

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SAFETY ADVOCACY

WHEN

ITHITS

BY JEAN LIAN

It doesn’t happen to you — until it does. For two fathers, losing their sons to workplace incidents created a void in their hearts so deep that it has driven them to embark on a journey to make jobsites across Canada safer. This story looks at how occupational fatalities change the lives of those who are left behind.

I

t was a day that Paul Kells, the principal of a workplace safety consulting company in Halifax, will never forget.

His son, Sean, was on his third day at work in a small industrial unit in Brampton, Ontario on November 17, 1994.

The 19-year-old was transferring a thick and highly flammable noxious liquid to be used as undercoating for new vehicles from a large drum into a small container. There were seven ignition sources nearby, and Sean, who was wearing a pair of sneakers, was not grounded.

“It is sort of like touching a door knob and you get a static spark of electricity that ignites the fumes around the drum,” Kells explains. As ventilation in the work area was not in place, the fumes gathered around Sean and burst into a ball of flame that came into contact with the gooey substance in the drum. The resulting explosion inflicted third-degree burns on 95 per cent of Sean’s body.

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Kells, who was in a meeting in Toronto, was notified of his son’s hospitalization. “I went to hospital and wondered if he had burned his hand,” Kells says. “I didn’t know how bad things were.” When he walked down the corridor at the hospital, Kells saw a friend standing there with a look on his face that gave it away. “I screamed. Most painful thing I ever gone through in my life.”

Sean died a day later from his injuries. Until the death of his son, Kells had little idea about workplace safety. “I was unaware of the workplace-injury issue myself. Never thought of it,” he says. “Doesn’t happen to my family.” But the ensuing three-week inquest changed all that. “I became acutely aware of my own ignorance,” he recounts. “I was like most of the people who are just not aware of the issue.”

When the inquest findings were released, Kells became very involved in making recommendations and participated

Nations. To date, there are 67 designated Safe Communities across Canada. This official designation indicates the start of a community’s expressed commitment and concerted effort to make injury prevention and safety promotion a top priority. The designation also requires the completion of a Priority Setting Exercise (PSE), which determines the priorities, activities and programs towards building a safer community.

Every three years, these communities will review and assess whether the priorities established at the PSE are still valid, which priorities have been addressed and to what effect and what is happening in the community relating to injuryprevention activities. Safe Communities must also renew their designation statuses every five years.

According to 2013 statistics from the Public Health Agency of Canada, injuries are the leading cause of death for Canadians between the ages of one and 44 and the third-most frequent cause of death for those aged 45 to 64. Injuries are among the top causes of hospitalizations for Canadians of all ages, the Agency adds.

“I achieved as much as I could, but the injury-prevention movement in Canada is a small one compared to when you talk about prevention of diseases,” Kells says, adding that nothing that is sustainable can ever be carried on by only one person. “I am very happy that I was able to leave it in a way that I thought would be for the better.”

Today, Safe Communities Canada has become Parachute, a national charitable organization tasked to prevent injuries.

Parachute was formed in 2012 by amalgamating four safety organizations, namely Safe Communities Canada, Safe Kids Canada, SMARTRISK and ThinkFirst Canada.

“I became convinced along with one of my colleagues that we needed to align, as we were just competing for dollars,” Kells says. “We had to get our act together.”

in the process actively. “Every person who gets injured, disabled or killed has a face, has a family. And that is what really moved me to move this out of the abstract, the statistics and the numbers.”

A NEW TRAJECTORY Sean’s demise defined the next 17 years of Kells’ life. “Most of that time was [spent] making a living, and the other was trying to make Safe Communities grow.”

Kells founded Safe Communities Canada in 1996 to help communities across the country launch programs to reduce injury and promote a culture of safety. “First of all, they have got to identify what issues they have got, what is hurting people in their communities.”

A community can be a municipality, a city or any group of people who define themselves as a community, such as First

FOUR BECOME ONE The amalgamation process started in 2009, when the leaders of the four organizations explored ways to work together.

Two years after a national consultation, which led to the June 2010 release of the One Voice, Safe Canada report on how the four organizations could integrate to advance their collective mission, Parachute was officially created in July 2012 to further the cause of injury prevention.

Pamela Fuselli, who is the interim chief executive officer with Parachute in Toronto, says Parachute is an overall preventable-injury organization focusing on three priorities: motor-vehicle collisions, fall prevention and concussion.

“Workplaces are a part of what we do,” Fuselli says. “Motorvehicle crashes are a significant part of workplace issues, as well as falls. We are starting to see more focus on concussion as well in the workplace.”

One of the major initiatives Parachute undertook last year is related to the international Vision Zero framework, which has the goal of no fatalities or serious injuries from motorvehicle collisions on Canadian roadways, Fuselli reports.

“Underneath the foundation of all our activities is our ability to translate knowledge and information,” she adds.

This includes publishing resources, such as reports on www.ohscanada.com

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cognitive injuries and Canada’s first textbook on injury pre- had been inspected 18 months before, and the company had vention and guidelines on what to do after sustaining a con- received a verbal warning that the mixer needed guards and cussion, the latter for both the general public and the con- a safety lockout system. But the owners ignored the warning, struction sector. Parachute also organizes campaigns: Safe and no government inspectors followed up on the non-comKids, which runs in summer, looks at a different topic each pliance. As David was cleaning the machine, it somehow got year, while a national awareness campaign in October focus- activated, drawing him head first into the blades of the mixer.

He was taken to hospital and died six days later. David had es on teen-driver safety.

“We do a lot of work under thought leadership,” says Fu- planned to go to university that September.

According to a June 20, 2001 document from the Legislaselli, adding that finding new ways to share information and tive Assembly amending the Occupational Health and Safety bringing about culture change are the biggest challenges in Act to increase the penalties for contraventions, the owners of elevating health and safety to the next level. She cites the seatthe company were found to be negligent and fined $62,500. belt campaign about two decades ago as an example of the One of the supervisors was also fined $7,500, while the other length of time it takes to effect changes. supervisor was sent to jail for 20 days, served “We have a real opportunity with the players on weekends.

But the fines were subsidized and to spread the message around workplace safety “I screamed. would not have to be paid off for another four and to put very concrete policies and procedures Most painful years.

After a downtime of a mere eight-hour into place that increase the likelihood that injushift, the bakery was back in business. But David ries will be prevented,” she says. thing I ever never came back. gone through Shortly after David’s death in 1999, Ellis startONE TOO MANY ed My Safe Work. “We decided we would try to Like Kells, Rob Ellis, founder of non-profit orgain my life.” improve the standards of safety in the workplace, nization My Safe Work, which promotes workin schools and in communities across Canada.” place safety in businesses and schools across The loss of David has affected his surviving siblings as North America, lost his son to a horrific workplace accident. well.

David’s sister in Calgary, Jessica DiSabatino, is reachOn the night before 18-year-old David’s fateful second day ing out to large construction and oil-and-gas companies out on the job at a bakery in Oakville, Ontario, Ellis had tried to west through her role as vice president of My Safe Work. Daget his son to talk about his first day. But like a typical teenvid’s brother Caleb, a lawyer, works on improving workplace ager, David did not volunteer much information. Ellis did not safety through legal avenues.

“If we can just impact the life probe further. of one person every day, we will make a difference in our fuOn a cold winter morning on February 11, 1999, David ture, ” Ellis says. was cleaning dough from an industrial mixer. He was workMy Safe Work has recently completed a tour of 13 cities ing on the largest piece of equipment at the bakery alone, across Canada, speaking to frontline workers and engaging without supervision or proper training. The industrial mixer 28

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leaders to improve safety standards. The charitable organization tries to engage the media so that the message of saving lives and improving workplace safety can reach parents and new Canadians alike. “So our message is not just to young workers,” Ellis stresses.

The Jersey of Courage, which has garnered 638,000 signatures on it to date, is a safety charter that My Safe Work created. Each signature, including those from Prime Ministers, Premiers, chief executive officers, frontline workers, parents, students and many others represents a commitment to making Canada the world’s safest place in which to work. The Jersey of Courage also led to the creation of the League of Champions in 2016, after My Safe Work did a presentation at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario.

According to Ellis, students at the college said the Jersey of Courage was a good initiative, but they have little idea of the companies behind the signatures and which are the safest performers. “So we went back to the largest construction company in Canada and said, ‘Can you help us in creating the League of Champions?’”

As a result, the Ontario General Contractors’ Association partnered with My Safe Work to create the League of Champions, which aims to promote a safety culture and build awareness in the industry. “Fifty companies have already signed up with us and will spread to all sectors across the country,” Ellis reports.

WALK THE TALK Making safety a regular conversation at the kitchen table is what workplace-safety advocates likes Kells and Ellis are trying to do. “It is engagement from all levels of society; it is not just an initiative for chief executive officers and presidents,” Ellis says.

For Kells, job safety in Canada has changed a fair bit since he embarked on this journey in the ’90s. “More young people are aware of their rights and responsibilities than they ever were before.” He also observed an overall significant reduction in workplace injuries among young people. “But at the same time, there are places where we are still in limbo.”

Kells suggests that there are two groups of people in any organization: those who get the safety message and those who do not. The latter outnumber the former by a significant amount. “So to identify and move people from the ‘I don’t get it’ side to the ‘I got it’ side — that is hard to do.”

Kells thinks that focusing on inculcating safety into the mindsets of young people through schools and employers is a good start. “When they become employers, they are already in the ‘got it’ camp. We don’t have to start from scratch with a complete brain makeover.”

Apart from planting the safety message in tender minds, bridging the gap between safety at work and outside of it is also key. Fuselli reports that a number of mining companies out of Alberta conducted a review of their extended healthcare benefits and found that more employees were injured off the job than while they were at work. “And it was having an impact on their business.”

She cites how employees will drive a company fleet ac-

cording to the regulations, but may demonstrate vastly different driving behaviour when they are off duty, driving their own private vehicles. Closing that gap between safety at work and at home “is essential,” Fuselli notes.

Ellis says he would like to see more small-business leaders recognized as safety champions. “Where that would begin is the young champions who run small businesses, the entrepreneurs who will take up the mantle of workplace safety and will really have a tremendous impact on the future of our country. I think the future in Canada looks very bright.”

While the irrevocable loss of one’s flesh and blood has created a hole in their hearts, both Ellis and Kells have come up with their own way of accepting their losses and managing the pain. “My journey is different than other people’s journey in life, and I am able to learn from a lot of tremendous people across North America,” says Ellis, referring to the people he has crossed paths with when promoting workplace safety in schools and organizations across the country. “That has been most rewarding.”

As for Kells, the turning point came when he realized that he did not have to forget his son in order to move on. When he was seeking help with the Bereaved Families of Ontario in Mississauga to manage the grief of losing his son, Kells met a woman who had experienced a similar loss. She told him that when one loses a child, there is an open wound in the heart.

Over time, scar tissue forms over that wound, and every time one touches the wound, the scar tissues are there.

“That, I think, may have saved my life because I didn’t have to forget Sean,” Kells says. “Every time I touch it, I know he is there — all the time.”

Jean Lian is editor of

ohs canada.

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OCCUPATIONAL HYGIENE | MANGANESE FUMES

A New Low (mg/m3) of air — far below the five mg/m3 set by the United States’ Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

By Jean Lian

C

urrent safety standards on manganese exposure may not protect welders adequately, as welders who are ex- FALLING THRESHOLD posed to airborne manganese at levels below federal Manganese is a key component of important industrial proworkplace-safety standards exhibit neurological problems cesses such as welding and steelmaking. At high levels, this substance can cause manganism, a severe neurologic disorsimilar to Parkinson’s disease, a recent study suggests.

Manganese, a grayish-white, metallic element often found der resulting from chronic exposure to manganese and exin minerals in combination with iron, is used chiefly as an hibits symptoms that include slowness, clumsiness, tremors, alloying agent in steel to give it toughness. “We found that mood changes and difficulty in walking and speaking.

The four industries in which manganese is a hazard are the chronic exposure to manganese-containing welding fumes is associated with progressive neurological symptoms such as mining and extraction industry, the general manufacturing slow movement and difficulty speaking,” says Brad Racette, industry in which manganese is used as an input into someM.D., professor of neurology with the Washington Univer- thing that was manufactured, the welding industry and the sity School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. “The more demolition or decommissioning industry, says Christopher Rahm, an occupational hygienist with Golder exposure you have to welding fumes, the more Current safety Associates Limited in London, Ontario. quickly those symptoms progress over time,” Workplaces that are regulated federally and adds Racette, senior author of the study, Low standards on governed by the Canada Labour Code follow Levels of Manganese in Welding Fumes Linked to manganese the same standards as those prescribed by the Neurological Problems.

The study, released on December 27, ex- exposure may not American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH), which recommends amined 886 welders at three worksites in the protect welders a Threshold Value Limit (TLV) of 0.02 mg/m3 Midwest, comprising two shipyards and one heavy-machinery fabrication shop. Each welder of airborne manganese averaged over an eightadequately. completed a detailed job-history questionnaire, hour workday in 2013. This represents a tenfold which was used to calculate each participant’s exposure by reduction from the previous TLV of 0.2 mg/m3. The new TLV combining the estimated manganese exposure for specific for manganese also includes a 0.1 mg/m3 limit for inhalable job titles with the amount of time spent in each job. Each manganese particulate. participant also underwent at least two standardized clinical Other types of businesses, with a handful of exceptions, evaluations of motor function spaced a year or more apart. fall under provincial labour regulations. “So no consistency, A score of six or lower on the evaluation scale was con- province-to-province or federally, on what the current mansidered normal, and those with scores of 15 or higher were ganese exposure limit is,” Rahm says. placed in the category of Parkinsonism, which is a set of neuNorman Tran, director of the occupational health unit rological symptoms similar to those in Parkinson’s disease. with Manitoba’s Department of Growth, Enterprise and The first evaluation revealed that the welders had an average Trade in Winnipeg, reports that oh&s officers in the province score of 8.8, and 15 per cent of them fell under this category. conduct regular inspections to ensure that appropriate conThe study also found that participants’ scores increased trol measures are in place to keep manganese exposure levels over time and that welders who were exposed to the high- below Manitoba’s occupational exposure limits. est levels of manganese showed the biggest changes in their Inspections are often complaint-driven, although certain scores — an indication that their neurological problems were industries that have high exposure risks or have historically worsening more quickly than those of workers exposed to not controlled risk factors well can be targeted for inspeclower levels of manganese. The scores for workers at the same tions, Rahm explains. Sectors with high claim rates or many sites who were not exposed to welding fumes did not change job-related incidents and injuries are also likely targets. over time, suggesting that welding fumes — not aging — Tran adds that it is common for officers to issue improvewere responsible for the increasing scores. ment orders related to implementing engineering controls, For Racette, the “most worrisome aspect” is that neuro- such as local or general exhaust ventilation, and administralogical signs are showing up in people with an estimated ex- tion controls like donning personal protective equipment, posure of only 0.14 milligrams of manganese per cubic metre providing worker education and training and substituting 30

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welding wire with one that has a lower manganese content.

“Workers may rely on their senses and experiences, and they may think that because they are not experiencing any symptoms, there would be no exposure issues and no control measures needed,” Tran suggests. While having local exhaust ventilation helps to reduce exposure risk, “it does not mean it would eliminate or reduce the exposure to a safe level.”

Tran says recent studies carried out in Manitoba have shown that training welders to work outside of the welding plume and using the pulse setting on metal inert gas welding units can reduce exposure risk. Depending on the level of risk, several control measures may need to be used simultaneously.

“Respiratory protection is meant as a last line of defence.

It is used when it is not feasible or practical to reduce worker exposure through the use of standard exhaust or ventilation equipment, administrative practice (job scheduling or other engineering controls),” the Department notes.

MONITORING RISKS Elimination of exposure risk is the first control hierarchy, one that the welding industry is trying to enhance by reducing or eliminating the manganese content of consumables and raw inputs used in welding. In workplaces that have not been able to remove or lower the manganese content, engineering and administrative controls would apply.

According to Rahm, the welding industry has taken a lot of steps over the years to reduce exposure through equipment like downdraft tables, each of which has a large surface with holes in it and connected to an exhaust that pulls everything down and away from the worker. “That works well in a fixed facility or a place where they make a product over and over,” he notes, but it is not suited for welding that is performed on, say, a ship. “The circumstances are different on many of the different types of jobs [welders] do.”

Tran advises employers to assess their workplaces for potential manganese exposure, so that appropriate control measures can be implemented. Workers’ education and training should also be provided, so that they will recognize the potential health risks and use the control measures in place.

While monitoring the level of manganese fumes in vulnerable work areas is essential, part of the difficulty lies in how the sampling of fumes and particulates has changed over the years. Previously, particle size was irrelevant, as everything that got captured were analyzed, Rahm explains. “Over time, we moved to looking at the inhalable fraction, which is smaller than the total. We eliminated the very large particles under the assumption that they are too big to get into the respiratory tract.”

Now, exposure sampling focuses on the respiratory tract only and on particles with a diameter of 10 microns or less, under the assumption that this is a size which would enter the upper respiratory tract through the nasal cavity and contaminate the lungs. “Most regulators say you need to do baseline assessment and periodically repeat it. Periodically is often interpreted to be annually, but that is not necessarily the best answer,” Rahm suggests. “The best answer would be whenever conditions change.”

That means if the welding process and the metals used have remained the same for 15 years, doing a baseline assessment once a year should suffice. “But if you are frequently changing your consumables or layout of your plant, have workers working on site, at different sites and conditions are always different, then perhaps you need to look at exposure sampling quarterly or twice yearly,” he adds.

As the ACGIH standards do not speak specifically to the frequency of monitoring, but rely heavily on best industry practices, “there is nothing to stop a regulator from walking into a workplace, seeing what you have done and saying, ‘I don’t think you are doing this enough,’ although this doesn’t happen often,” Rahm suggests.

There is also the challenge of changing mindsets. During his conversations with people in the welding industry, Rahm has learned that there is no universal acceptance that exposure to welding fumes causes issues. “That is not my opinion,” he affirms. “But if people out there think that exposure doesn’t cause illness, it is pretty hard to protect the workers.

Jean Lian is editor of

ohs canada.

TAMING TOXIC FUMES Welding fumes, which are gases used or produced during welding and cutting processes, are a complex mixture of metallic oxides, silicates and fluorides. Fumes are formed when a metal is heated above its boiling point and its vapours condense into fine particles. Vapours are also produced from the thermal breakdown of coatings and residues containing toxic ingredients on metal that is being welded, according to information from the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety in Hamilton, Ontario.

Hazards from welding gases include asphyxiation, fire or explosion and toxicity. Factors that influence exposure risk include the type of welding processes used, the composition of welding rods, the type of coatings present, the location

where the welding is conducted (an open area or confined space) and the type of ventilation controls available. The following measures can prevent exposure to welding gases: • Use substitute materials, such as water-based cleaners or high-flashpoint solvents; • Avoid welding on surfaces that are wet with a degreasing solvent or near degreasing baths; • Ensure that there is adequate ventilation to prevent the displacement or enrichment of oxygen and the accumulation of flammable atmospheres; • Use local exhaust-ventilation systems to remove fume and gases from the welder’s breathing zone; and • Wear appropriate respiratory protective equipment.

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SAFETY GEAR

FIRE-RESISTANT APPAREL

Going through Fire are just inherently more expensive,” he explains. While materials treated with FR qualities may be cheaper, there is no common hazard in many professions is the possibil- guarantee that the apparel will last for a long time. “If you ity of getting burned by a sudden flash fire or electri- have inherently FR materials where the chemistry of the fibre cal arc. Regardless of whether one handles flamma- itself does not support combustion, that is always better.”

Other factors that may raise the price of a garment include ble materials in the oil and gas industry or deals with highly coatings or membranes that make it more breathable or can charged equipment as an electrician, donning fire-repellent manage the moisture content, Wirts adds. A buyer should declothing is a necessary protection in many industries. termine what protective qualities the work needs and whether Flame-retardant apparel comes in many forms, and they the extra bells and whistles are worth the added expense. are designed to protect the user from two potential hazards: As important as FR gear is to many occupations, it should a type of quick explosion called a hydrocarbon flash fire, or not interfere with other types of personal protective equipa sudden flash of electricity called an electric arc. Fire from ment (PPE).

Fortunately, most manufacturers are aware of combustible dust and burns from molten-metal splashes this, and it is their responsibility to ensure that an are additional hazards that would warrant the FR product does its job in the relevant applicause of FR garments. Other work environments “It doesn’t have tion while allowing other PPE to function as well. that make up the market for FR apparel include to be the “The most common FR garment for industrial chemical plants, sawmills, plastics manufacturuse is just a plain coverall, ” Hillmer says, “so obing and any other workplaces that create flamcheapest one, viously, a hard hat is not going to be interfered mable products. but they want with, nor is any kind of respiratory protection.”

The protective function of FR apparel is deOther apparel is specifically designed to be comrived from either the fabric used or a coating something that is patible with other PPE, such as FR hard-hat linadded to it that is designed to make a fire exgoing to last.” ers.

Many hard hats are also designed to have tinguish itself or not burn at all, explains Randy higher melting thresholds these days, he adds.

Hillmer, the national sales manager for Lakeland Protective Wear Inc. in Brantford, Ontario.

“You have got either a treated fabric, like an FR cotton, CLEARING THE AIR which takes the cotton and has a chemistry added to it,” says “The biggest area of common misconceptions within the Hillmer, “or you have got inherent FR fibres like a Nomex or FR industry is how users should properly care for their garments,” says Brian Schmidt, senior merchandising manager PBI or Kevlar.” of industrial and PPE with Carhartt in Dearborn, Michigan.

Some customers believe that laundering the apparel will PROOFING AGAINST FIRE wash out the FR abilities over time, particularly if the materiMark Saner, the FR technical manager with Workrite, which al has been treated with protective qualities rather than being manufactures and sells fire-resistant clothing from its headinherently FR. But users can keep the clothing flame-resistant quarters in Oxnard, California, cites three main factors that as long as they follow the manufacturer’s instructions. Garan employer should consider when deciding what type and ments can be washed in a regular home laundry setting as brand of FR apparel to supply. long as no bleach, starch or fabric softeners are applied.

“Number one is always the protection level,” Saner says.

“Fabric softener doesn’t remove the FR treatment, but the The second factor, comfort, ensures that users will wear the fabric softener itself may coat the fibre and mask flame-reapparel and do it in a proper manner that complies with stansistant performance, ” Schmidt explains. “It may also serve as dards, such as not rolling up sleeves or unzipping the front. fuel in case of combustion. ” Lastly, the product should give the user good value for the Additionally, bleach will break down the molecular bond money spent. “It doesn’t have to be the cheapest one, but they between the fabric and the FR treatment over time. Water want something that is going to last,” Saner says. with a very high temperature can also have an adverse affect, Andrew Wirts, a sales and marketing director with Washbut this is not a problem with ordinary home washers. “Inington, Indiana-based NASCO Industries Inc., points out dustrial launderers are where you need to be careful of too that price varies mostly with the type of raw material used in much heat, so it is recommended to reference temperatures the clothing. “When you have materials that are engineered on garment care labels, ” Schmidt adds. to protect against electric arcs and flash fires, those materials

By Jeff Cottrill

A

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PHOTOS (CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT): NASCO INDUSTRIES INC.; WORKRITE UNIFORM CO.; CARHARTT.

Another common myth is that provide more comfort.

FR apparel should always be washed “Most of these people are separately because the FR treatwearing them at least during ment has a negative effect on other the summer months, outclothing. “The only reason somedoors, hot conditions, and one would separate FR from regular they don’t necessarily perceive clothing is to keep very dirty work the FR as being as comfortable clothes separate,” Schmidt says. as other clothing.”

According to Hillmer, many usIn the past year, Workrite ers believe that they can throw on has begun selling an FR fabric any other clothing on top of an FR designed for laboratories, in garment and still have ample progarments that balance comtection. But this notion is “really fort with protection against unwise,” he cautions. If a flash fire various chemicals. “These or electric arc occurs, a plastic garpeople sit in there in the laboment will melt, stick to the FR gear ratory all day long, exposed and increase the risk of body burn. to flammable chemicals and That said, wearing a disposable acids and corrosives,” Saner FR garment on top of one’s main FR observes. “So they want to gear can be a good way to keep dust have something that would and dirt off it. “On the economic provide that protection and side, it protects your expensive FR still be a daily wear.” thermal garment,” Hillmer sugIn addition to lighter magests. Another advantage is having Among the choices for fire-resistant apparel are full-body terial, another way to make two protective layers, in case the rainwear from NASCO (left), winter outerwear from FR garments more comfortouter apparel gets contaminated Workrite (top right) and full-body protection from Carhartt able and breathable is to inwith something flammable. clude moisture-management (bottom right).

Extra layers can also keep a layers, according to Wirts. worker warm, which is important during the winter months. That means taking the heat and the moisture that the body “You can get some heavy outer layers, jackets and parkas and produces and dissipating it to keep the worker dry. things that are FR. That is not difficult these days,” Saner says.

Another trend in FR gear is applying a high-visibility One distinctive category of fire-resistant apparel is rain- component to the apparel, such as neon fabrics or stripes, to wear, which is designed to protect against flame hazards add another layer of protection by making workers more viswhile working in wet or damp environments. Oil drilling is a ible, Saner says. profession that often relies on rainwear, according to Wirts.

It is important that the FR apparel meets the industry “A lot of times, rainwear will be worn over the top of FR standard. In Canada, the federal government has authored clothing, just to protect it.” one of the accepted standards for FR gear through the CanaWhat makes rainwear different from other FR clothing is dian General Standards Board. CGSB-155.20-2000, or Workthe technology behind the material. “Most rainwear is made wear for Protection against Hydrocarbon Flash Fire, provides out of some combination of a substrate for structural integ- minimum performance requirements, testing and evaluating rity and then a membrane, or liquid-proof moisture barrier, requirements for manufacturers and users, requirements for to hold out the liquid or the rain,” Wirts explains. This ex- outer clothing and other essentials. For electrical workers, tra membrane prevents other materials in the clothing from CSA Group has published CSA Z462-15, or Workplace Elecmelting and dripping when exposed to flames, wet sparks or trical Safety, featuring guidance on selecting proper PPE for other carriers of high temperatures. working with energized equipment.

Because of the special coating on rainwear, which has a Maintaining FR apparel is vital. A user should store gardifferent reaction to high-temperature water and solvents, it ments in a dry place, away from the sun and high temperamust not be laundered in the same way as other FR apparel. tures. It is a good practice to inspect FR gear regularly for Fire-resistant rainwear has its own separate laundry protocol damage or contamination, and any garment whose protecso as to maintain its waterproof membrane. Wirts recom- tive function has been compromised in any way should be mends cleaning rainwear after any exposure to chemicals or repaired or replaced immediately. contaminant occurs.

If an employer takes good care of workers’ FR apparel, it should be able to last between one and five years. “Our conGOOD TO BETTER sumer shouldn’t have to sacrifice on comfort for safety to do Manufacturers of PPE are always looking for ways to improve your job well,” Schmidt says. their products. In the case of FR apparel, a trend that Saner has observed is the production of lighter-weight garments to Jeff Cottrill is editor of canadian occupational health & safety news. www.ohscanada.com

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ACCIDENT PREVENTION

AIRPLANE HAZARDS

Taking Flight FLYING HIGH: Whether one is going on a vacation, taking a business trip or visiting family, air travel has become an indispensable mode of transportation in modern life. Flying may be an occasional privilege for many of us, but workers like pilots and flight attendants, who spend the better part of their waking hours in the air, face numerous occupational hazards of which the general public may not be aware. These hazards include circadian-rhythm disruption, cancer risk, exposure to communicable diseases, hearing loss and fatigue.

EYES WIDE SHUT: Chronic fatigue and disruption to the circadian rhythm are among the greatest occupational risks of air travel. As pilots and flight attendants work through different time zones, constant disruption of their sleep patterns and internal biological clocks can compromise vigilance and attention. According to Fatigue Countermeasures in Aviation, a paper published in 2009 for the Aerospace Medical Association, pilot fatigue is a significant problem that has led to aviation errors and accidents, since people who are sleep-deprived think and move more slowly, make more mistakes and have memory difficulties.

To address fatigue in the aviation sector, the paper recommends fatigue-prediction models that can help determine the impact of work/rest schedules on aviator performance. Crew members should be educated on sleep hygiene, so that they can snag some restorative rest before duty or during layovers.

The paper also encourages onboard cockpit napping and the use of wearable sleep-tracking technologies to measure preduty and layover sleep of flight crews to manage their sleep more effectively.

Minimizing flights that are long, cross many time zones or are scheduled at night is also a good measure, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Washington, D.C. says.

AIR IN THE AIR: Flying for a living often means spending a lot of time breathing in cabin air. Some of the potential cabin-air hazards include carbon monoxide, high ozone and carbon-dioxide levels, transmission of communicable diseases, cabin altitude and pressurization changes and air-contamination events, such as when cabin air becomes polluted by breakdown products from heated engine oil or hydraulic fluid, according to NIOSH. One of the significant concerns relating to cabin air is toxic fumes. According to a recent study from the University of GĂśttingen in Germany, scientists found dangerous chemicals in blood and urine samples from aircrew members, suggesting that they had been exposed while working on board. The 34

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research team tested 140 patients, mostly aircrew members, who reported symptoms. Results indicated the presence of organophosphates, which are chemicals known to have a negative effect on enzymes in the human body, as well as traces of volatile organic compounds. The substances identified could attack the nervous system, circulation and the airways.

According to the scientists, cabin air in almost all passenger aircraft is drawn from the engines and is regularly found to be contaminated with oil or antifreeze. Such fume events have been recorded since the 1950s, with 663 cases recorded by the German Air Accident Investigation Authority between 2006 and 2013.

RIDDING PESTS: Another lesser-known hazard that is present in planes is pesticides. As food and beverages are served on planes, spillage is inevitable. To keep the plane free from insects, some countries require the application of pesticide to inbound flights in a process called disinsection.

Aircraft disinsection is allowed under international law, but not all countries require it, NIOSH says. Disinsection methods include spraying the aircraft cabin with an insecticide that can be effective at killing insects for up to eight weeks, as well as treating the aircraft’s inside surfaces. According to the World Health Organization, symptoms reported by crewmembers who are exposed to pesticides on aircraft

behind the engines and propellers and close to the windows.

Wearing hearing protection and moving to other locations in the cabin can reduce one’s exposure to high noise levels.

ILLUSTRATION BY SCOTT PAGE

include headaches, dizziness, nausea, respiratory symptoms and skin and eye irritation.

Flight and ground crews may also be exposed to pesticides when they enter aircraft shortly after disinsection and before treated surfaces have dried. To reduce the risk of exposure, NIOSH recommends that aircrews avoid skin contact with surfaces that are still wet with pesticide and talk to their employers or employee representatives about concerns regarding pesticide exposure. Their healthcare providers should also be informed of their occupations when addressing the concern of potential pesticide exposure.

HEAR NO EVIL: During flight, the constant drone from aircraft engines, takeoff preparations and braking are among the most commonly cited discomforts of flying. Aircraft engines and high-speed turbulence over the fuselage are the largest sources of noise on aircraft, followed by announcements and mechanical noises from food and beverage service.

In-Cabin Noise Levels during Commercial Aircraft Flights, a study published in 2006, reported levels of 60 to 65 decibels (dBA) before takeoff, 80 to 85 dBA during flight and 75 to 80 dBA during landing. As hearing loss accumulates over a lifetime, hearing protection can go a long way in preserving auditory faculties.

Noise levels are higher in the rear of the cabin, near and

UNFRIENDLY SKIES: A high-flying job like piloting a plane or having the opportunity to travel around the world and getting paid for it sounds alluring. But being in the air also carries the risk of exposure to cosmic radiation from solarparticle events and galactic cosmic radiation, which is always present. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, ionizing radiation causes cancer and reproductive problems in humans.

So just how much cosmic radiation are crewmembers exposed to? According to the 2009 National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, aircrews have the largest average annual effective dose of all radiation-exposed workers in the United States at 3.07 millisieverts (mSv). Other estimates of annual aircrew cosmic radiation exposure range from 0.2 to five mSv per year. A millisievert is defined as the average accumulated background radiation dose to an individual for one year, exclusive of radon. According to NIOSH estimates, pilots fly through about six solar-particle events in an average 28-year career.

While bidding for a flight schedule to reduce cosmic radiation exposure is complicated, NIOSH advises reducing the amount of time working on very long flights, flights at high latitudes or flights over the North and South Poles, as these conditions or locations tend to increase the amount of cosmic radiation to which crewmembers are exposed.

SAVING THE SKIN: In addition to cosmic radiation, aircrews are more likely to be diagnosed with melanoma and other skin cancers, while female flight attendants may have a higher risk of breast cancer than the general population.

The reasons behind their propensity for certain types of cancer are not known, but ultraviolet (UV) radiation from sun exposure has been cited as a major risk factor for malignant melanoma and other skin cancers, as the level of UV radiation is higher at commercial aircraft altitudes than it is at sea level, NIOSH notes.

Sunlight is made up of two types of harmful rays: the longwave ultraviolet A (UVA) and the short-wave ultraviolet B (UVB). The former penetrates deep into the dermis, or the skin’s deepest layer, while the latter burns the superficial layers of the skin and plays a key role in the development of skin cancer. Some research suggests that plastic windshields block most UVA and UVB radiation from the sun, while glass windshields block most UVB radiation, but shield slightly less than half of the sun’s UVA radiation. Applying sunscreen and watching for abnormal moles that develop on the skin are good precautionary measures.

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WORKERS’ COMPENSATION | RETURN TO WORK

Getting Back on One’s Feet anxiety, chronic pain and some musculoskeletal disorders is another challenge.

Healthcare providers who offer input on recovery ofealthcare providers who treat injured workers with multiple injuries and complex illnesses find the ten have a major impact on the RTW trajectories. Dr. Chris workers’ compensation system and return-to-work McLeod, an assistant professor at the University of British Co(RTW) process “opaque and confusing.” Divergent views on lumbia in Vancouver who delivered a plenary on RTW outthe timing and appropriateness of RTW in these complex comes in November, defines RTW as a trajectory consisting cases among healthcare providers and case managers can also of a sequence of events.

“Return to work is not a single event. People who do work give rise to “tension and suspicion.”

These are some of the findings of a two-year, multijuris- in this area with respect to returning injured workers to work dictional study that the Institute of Work and Health (IWH) after a work-related injury or disease know that it is comreleased in December. Focusing on healthcare providers’ ex- plex and challenging,” Dr. McLeod says. While the goal of periences with the workers’ compensation system and their full RTW is to have an injured worker assume the same level roles in the RTW process, the researchers interviewed 97 of job responsibilities with the same employer, “we certainly healthcare providers and 34 case managers in British Colum- know that doesn’t happen in many cases.”

Dr. McLeod’s study found that back strains are associated bia, Manitoba, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador. with early RTW, while fractures have longer RTW tra“What we found was that for acute, visible injuries that healed relatively quickly and people went “Return to jectories. Age gradient and workers in primary resources like manufacturing, construction and transportation back [to work] quickly, the processes in place seem to work well for healthcare providers. They reported work is not are also associated with longer RTW trajectories.

Given the complexity of RTW, the IWH study recencountering difficulty when they saw patients who a single ommends that workers’ compensation policy makers, had gradual onset and complex conditions, invisible event.” healthcare providers and stakeholders engage in a diainjuries like chronic pain, some musculoskeletal inlogue to provide clear guidelines on the role of healthjuries and mental-health conditions,” says study lead care providers in the RTW process. Possibilities for their role author and IWH scientist Dr. Agnieszka Kosny in Toronto.

Many healthcare providers cited the lack of clarity about include flagging issues that may complicate recovery and their roles in RTW as a challenge. Some see their involvement RTW, identifying chronic pain or deterioration in mental as fairly minimal, while others regard it as essential. While Dr. health and communicating with WCBs about further treatKosny thinks that involving healthcare providers in RTW de- ment needs, such as counselling or occupational therapy. If cisions is important, many find it difficult to determine an attempts to involve healthcare providers in the RTW process injured worker’s functional limitations and evaluate the suit- are unsuccessful, WCBs can then turn to medical consulability of their job duties, due to a limited understanding of a tants, who are hired to help case managers interpret medical evidence and make decisions. patient’s job demands.

Messaging around the role of healthcare providers and “Doctors don’t get a lot of training in this area in occupational medicine,” Dr. Kosny says. “Many of them learn about their RTW involvement should also be outlined consistently across materials. Most WCBs have sections on their websites workers’ compensation and return to work as they practise.” that define the roles of healthcare providers. This section can include information about how the workers’ compensation NAVIGATING OBSTACLES Administrative hurdles and rigidity in the workers’ compen- system operates, its requirements relating to matters such as sation system have also been cited as roadblocks. For pro- reporting and who makes the decisions, the study says.

Creating a central portal to house treatment notes, recomlonged and complex injury claims, WCB forms are ill-suited for conveying important information needed for decision- mendations and decisions of case managers and giving healthmaking and effective RTW planning. In some jurisdictions, care providers access to these information about their patients “the doctor has to look up a code for a certain system or inju- will also improve the lines of communication between healthry, and that becomes complicated if it is a complex injury,” Dr. care providers and WCBs, Dr. Kosny suggests.

Kosny says. The strict requirement for objective evidence of disability or work-relatedness for conditions like depression, Jean Lian is editor of ohs canada.

By Jean Lian

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TIME OUT DOG DAY AFTERNOON: Postal workers have always had trouble with dogs and vice-versa, but a former Canada Post supervisor in Ottawa is lobbying to get his job back following his dismissal last June, after a customer accused him of threatening her Shih Tzu with a knife. The 35-year-old worker was delivering a key for a community mailbox to a lady whose hyper, nine-pound dog, Willow, started barking and yapping at him, according to a National Post report from January 25. The mail carrier panicked, and the customer claims that he yelled, “I have a knife!” He denies the accusation, alleging that the dog bit him and that he is allergic to the rabies vaccine. Talk about a dog-eat-dog world.

WRONG TURN: It must have looked like a poorly-

thought-out protest against fur products, but it was really an accident. The owners of a fur store in Windsor, Nova Scotia had a big shock on the morning of January 23, when a white sports utility vehicle plowed right through the shop’s front window, hitting a wall and furniture along the way. Local newspaper The Hants Journal reported that the driver was a client of the store who had mistakenly hit the accelerator.

Fortunately, the driver was not injured, and nobody was in the shop at the time except the two owners, who were not near the front window.

CONSIDERATE CARJACKER: A pizza-delivery guy in St. John’s thought he would never see his car again after it was stolen while he was on the job. According to CBC News, the worker was making a delivery during a snowstorm on the evening of January 20, when he heard an engine rev and looked back to see his car speeding away. The next day, a family friend found the car on the same street. Although the suspension, transmission and exhaust were damaged, the mystery thief had bought a full tank of gas and left behind a shovel and a losing lottery ticket. The worker also got a $15 sympathy tip from a nearby hospital whose employees bought a pizza from him that night.

SQUIRRELING IT AWAY: As if human shoplifters were

not frustrating enough, a convenience store in the east end of Toronto is contending with a gang of thieving squirrels. Nuts are not good enough for these furry little pests, which have developed an insatiable craving for chocolate, the Toronto Star reported on January 5. Each one sneaks in the door when it is open, creeps over to the nearby candy-bar rack and grabs a Wonderbar, Crunchie or Mr. Big before bolting out. The shop owner has had this problem for nine years, but it went into overdrive in 2016 with one or two rodent visits a day, resulting in significant revenue loss. Hopefully, the neighbourhood raccoons will never find out about this.

RAINING MARBLES: It was a “marbly” time to be out on the roads in Indianapolis when a truck lost its trailer carrying 38,000 pounds of marbles after spilling the contents onto a 38

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highway. One lane of the highway was closed while clean-up was underway, the Huffington Post reported on January 23.

No injuries were reported, and the scattered marbles gave a new twist to winter driving — in addition to bringing a dash of colour to an otherwise bleak winter day.

SKY’S THE LIMIT: Creative sentencing has been applied

in courts of law as an alternative to imprisonment, especially when such innovative sentences require offenders to face the consequences of their actions or make some form of amends.

But what about creative excusing? That was what a pickup driver in Western Australia did when he was caught speeding by police officers, The Age reported on January 23. The man blamed it on the wind for pushing his vehicle beyond the legal speed limit. But the officers did not buy his outlandish excuse and issued him a fine of AUD$200 for driving 10 miles per hour over the limit.

CATCHING SPIDERS: Catching venomous spiders to milk them for an antidote for spider bites can be a dangerous job. An Australian zookeeper has shifted part of that occupational risk to the public by asking them to help catch and donate deadly funnel-web spiders to replenish stocks of an antidote that ran low after a spate of spider bites. According to a Reuters report on January 24, the Australian Reptile Park is the country’s sole supplier of funnel-web venom to antidote producers since 1981, and it relies on the public to hand in spiders that are milked for the venom used to produce an antidote. Despite the fearsome reputation of these creatures, the zoo assured that nobody had died from the bite of a funnel-web spider since the anti-venom program began in 1981.

For those who want to give the zoo’s anti-venom program a helping hand, donning some form of personal protective equipment may be a good idea.

WANTED: Police in South Wales, United Kingdom has

their work cut out for them when a thief, brazenly dressed as a Heineken beer bottle, was caught on camera stealing two pizzas from a pizzeria. The unidentified thief entered a staff-only area, grabbed two pies and left without paying, the Huffington Post reported on January 20. Police tried to strike the iron while it was hot — or if you like, apprehend the thief when the pizza was still hot — by releasing a photo of the thief and asking members of the public to contact them if they see the wanted man.

THE LAST RIDE: Loss of employment could make one do irrational things. A former trolley driver with the Vienna Lines transport authority was one such example, when he decided to hijack a tram and take it for a joy ride on the streets of Vienna. The driver, who was apprehended, gave no motive for his action other than acting on impulse, The Associated Press reported on January 23.

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