OHS Canada March 2013

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 MAR C H 2013

art

Culinaire Kitchen safety goes under the knife

BUMP-AND-RUN

The neurological trauma of scoring touchdowns

OF CARS AND WOMEN The lowdown on automotive plastics

UNDERGROUND MAN

The long and short of miner training

STRETCH AND HEAL

Yoga meets chronic neck pain

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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

Features

co ncu s s ion s 28

CC A A NNA AD DA A

Grey Matter

M A R C H 2013 Vo lu m e 2 9 , Nu m b e r 2

The heat is on — sports-related concussion is being fingered as a likely culprit in the heightened neurodegenerative mortality rate among National Football League players.

By Jason Contant

au t o m otiv e p las tic s 34

Deadly Mimicry

The link between breast cancer incidence and carcinogens in Ontario’s automotive sector is gaining traction after a study revealed a disturbing connection.

By Sabrina Nanji

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i ns t i t u tion al kitc hen s

28

What’s Cooking?

Behind every gastronomic experience is a high-pressure institutional kitchen fraught with the dangers of working with heat, sharps and grease.

By William M. Glenn

departments 56

s pe ci al r ep ort

Going Underground

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Less is more as Ontario trims down the certification training for underground miners from 12-weeks to three days, but some educators are holding out.

By Greg Burchell

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S af e t y Gear

Arc of Safety

Before arc meets metal, welders must choose between passive and auto-darkening helmets. They also need to consider comfort, fit and compatibility with other types of personal protective equipment.

By Jason Contant

40 in this issue E ditor ial

4

letters

6

Panor ama

8

Weather Knocks

OH & S UPDATE

Hunters rescue pilot in Nunavut; British Columbia acts on flu hazard; rail workers struck in Alberta; fire at Saskatchewan mill; Ontario construction workers get coverage; worker fatality in New Brunswick; poor air sickens teachers in Nova Scotia; and more.

D ispatches

Cash for calories; change in hockey culture needed; seeing red on the road; and more.

Partners in P r ev en t io n 2 0 1 3 P r ofess io n a l d ir ec t o ry p r oduc t s ho w c a s e A d I n d ex/ r ea d er s erv i ce i nf o

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E r g o nom ic s

Tackling Chronic Pain

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Physiotherapy treats physical injuries with exercise, massage and heat. But a new study suggests that yoga could serve as an alternative therapy for chronic neck pain.

By Jason Contant

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A cci de n t Pr ev en tion

Under Pressure

The hazards associated with compressed gases, which include asphyxiation and combustion risks, demand protective measures to keep workers out of harm’s way.

T i m e Out

Man’s best friend; shot straight-up; chocolate faux pas; bomb scare; and more.

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Security is the chief enemy of mortals.

– William shakespeare

47 66 67 68 www.ohscanada.com

MARCH 2013

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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

Vol. 29, No. 2 MARCH 2013

Weather Knocks I

t was yet another pounding from Mother Nature in what was described as the worst snow storm in the last five years.

Like many people across eastern Canada and parts of the United States, I spent the weekend of February 8 digging out my driveway after a blizzard resulted in more than a dozen fatalities and power outages affecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in both countries.

Welcome to the era when extreme weather events have become the new norm. And if some of you think that severe weather talk is beginning to sound whiney, that is because they are occurring with increasing frequency around the world.

The Canadian ice storm in 1998, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, the clobbering of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the battering of Atlantic Canada by Hurricane Igor in 2010 and the rampage caused by Hurricane Sandy sweeping through the Caribbean and up the east coast of the United States last year are among the litany of mega-storms in recent memory.

A study out of Princeton University in New Jersey, published in November of 2011, found that day-to-day weather has grown more erratic and extreme, with significant fluctuations in sunshine and rainfall affecting more than a third of the planet. Extremely sunny or cloudy days are more common now than they were in the early 1980s; swings from thunderstorms to dry days have risen considerably since the late 1990s.

Over the past few decades, the northern regions of Canada have also experienced a rate of warming about twice that of the rest of the world. The Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released in 2011, indicated that winter temperature in the great white north is expected to rise between 3.5 and 12.5 degrees Celsius by 2080. And that will have a direct impact on the structural integrity of essential infrastructure, as design standards in northern Canada were based on permafrost and snow load levels of a previous climate regime that is no longer reflective of the new weather reality we are experiencing, the report notes.

So what has that got to do with worker safety? A lot, actually. For employees who are required to be physically present at the workplace — be they commercial drivers, outdoor workers, couriers or staff in the service, retail and healthcare sectors — commuting to work in inclement weather poses a real personal risk.

For first responders and those whose job is to keep essential services running, they are exposed to a heightened risk created by unpredictable weather events. The electrocution of a hydro worker last October in Sarnia, Ontario while repairing the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy is a case in point. Workers who were exposed to high levels of radiation while working on the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors in Japan in the aftermath of the tsunami is another example.

Health and safety management systems have traditionally addressed workplace hazards caused by human error, gaps in safety procedures and risks related to the immediate work environment, such as fire hazards, confined spaces and toxic materials in an industrial facility. However, the rising frequency of severe weather events requires the forces of nature to be taken into consideration as part of the environmental factor, and that necessary precautions be taken as far as reasonably possible to protect workers of all stripes.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach: the practicality of mitigating work-related risks cased by hostile weather will have to strike a balance between worker safety and unique job requirements.

Eating the humble pie and acknowledging that Mother Nature still has the last laugh is a start.

Jean Lian

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C A N A D A

EDITOR JEAN LIAN jlian@ohscanada.com managing editor jason contant jcontant@ohscanada.com assistant editor greg burchell gburchell@ohscanada.com editorial assistant Sabrina Nanji snanji@ohscanada.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Hazardous substances WILLIAM M. GLENN ART DIRECTOR anne miron PRINT PRODUCTION MANAGER PHYLLIS WRIGHT PRODUCTION MANAGER gary white DIMITRY EPELBAUM MARKETING SPECIALIST Circulation Manager Barbara Adelt ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER SHEILA HEMSLEY

shemsley@ohscanada.com PUBLISHER peter boxer pboxer@ohscanada.com

PRESIDENT, BUSINESS INFORMATION GROUP BRUCE CREIGHTON

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS

DAVID IRETON, Safety Professional, Brampton, Ont. ALLAN JOHNSON, Director of Construction, Hospitality, Oil and Gas, Workers’ Compensation Board of B.C., Vancouver, 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 Business Information Group as to the absolute correctness or sufficiency of any representation contained in this publication.

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Date of issue: MARCH 2013

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LETTERS

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

TAINTED MEAT The massive recall of pathogen-tainted meat in Brooks, Alberta has raised food and worker safety concerns. (ohs canada, January/February 2013) I fully understand the need to protect the workers. But could I also address in your article the fact that [it] is common occurrence that a fair number of animals slaughtered are not sufficiently stunned and enter the slaughter areas conscious. I find this very disturbing.

If I am correct, there is supposed to be a standard that the animals are to be rendered insensible prior to slaughter and it seems that this is not the case.

Where are the inspectors that are supposed to monitor this? Where is the reporting? I have contacted the CFIA who assured me that the slaughtering of animals is humane. I can’t believe this. There needs to be a system for 24/7 random video audits in every slaughter place by a completely independent and unbiased third party.

Deborah

Deborah, I understand your concern regarding humane animal handling.

Most of the larger beef slaughter facilities in North America do use an unbiased third party video auditing system, [for] example Arrowsight. They have stringent animal handling policies and procedures and inhumane treatment is never tolerated.

The issue I have with the article is the focus on the historical aspects of slaughterhouse safety and food safety.

Most modern facilities, especially those run by larger corporations, have very large QA [quality assurance] departments monitoring every aspect of food safety and they all have competent oh&s teams in their plants and their management has a strong focus on animal, human and environmental health 6

MARCH 2013

ohs canada

and safety.

These are not the slaughterhouses Upton Sinclair wrote about. If you want to see what a modern slaughter facility looks like, check the videos by Temple Grandin on the American Meat Institute’s website. They are a much more accurate representation of what goes on in a modern meatpacking facility.

Rick

random testing Mill workers in New Brunswick fought against their employer’s bid to introduce random alcohol testing. (canadian occupational health and safety news, December 17, 2012) As an occupational hygienist, I strongly agree that the company has the right to arrange a random drug/alcohol test.

The OHS Act sets out the employer’s responsibilities as well as workers’ responsibilities for a safe workplace.

Risks in the workplace include machine safety, falls, fire, etc., but behavioural issues of workers are a big concern as well. If you agree that the worker should behave properly at [the] work site, then we should ask them to follow the rules of the company, including not to be drunk at [the] work site for certain jobs.

To enforce the company safety programs and rules, some monitoring is necessary, such as a random drug test.

The best way to keep privacy is to stay at home.

Qifu Gui

As someone who works in the Alberta oil patch, I can confirm without any hesitation that random testing is needed. I have worked in the industry for 23 years and have seen a shift from alcohol use to drugs becoming more common all the time.

From what I have been told, it is harder to detect and the issue becomes “impairment.” Because I smoked a joint last night, what does that have to do

with my ability to work this morning?

There is tremendous pressure on workers not to rat their co-workers out if, in fact, someone is still impaired from whatever substance was used. So now, you are forced to work at heights, complete confined space entries, complete live electrical terminations, rig overhead loads, run huge machines in close proximity to other workers, etc.

These tasks are at times life and death. So where does the individual’s rights for privacy give way to others’ rights not to be killed in the course of employment?

Vmax

TAGGING RISKS A labour dispute over the safety repercussions of wearing name tags on uniform has delayed border crossings in Windsor and Sarnia, Ontario. (the canadian press, December 12, 2012) It takes very little experience and knowledge of the CBSA [Canada Border Services Agency] operations to realize that officers wearing a name tag can and does present the risk of contact with [un]savoury characters possibly holding a vengeance against an officer for doing their job, and the taking of that vengeance to another level off the job.

However, taking into consideration the positive affects of having a name tag when dealing with the general honest members of the public, this factor has considerable positive weight in any decision. I suggest that each officer be given an alias name tag on a daily basis, a log being kept of each tag’s daily assignment. Make it a win-win situation.

Rapid Rambler Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada

Would you like to share a comment?

Send an email to jlian@ohscanada.com.

Letters may be edited for style, grammar and length.

panorama $

51billion

1 2

Cost of mental illness on the Canadian economy annually.

Mental illness accounts for nearly 30 per cent of all disability claims in the country.

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3

Source: Workplace Safety & Prevention Services

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5

1. Camera, Action: With effect from 2013, all those who work in British Columbia’s film and television industry will be eligible for workers’ compensation benefits. Extended coverage applies to all applications from Source: WorkSafeBC motion picture or television productions made after January 1.

2. Mill Fire: A fire broke out at the Fraserview Cedar Products mill on January 19 in Surrey, British Columbia.

No injuries were reported in the blaze, which started in a maintenance shop and spread to the main office building, Source: Canadian Occupational Health and Safety News (COHSN) destroying both.

3. Green Light on Kirpan: Alberta has become the first province in Canada to allow Sikhs to wear a kirpan, a ceremonial religious dagger, into courthouses — provided that it is worn in a sheath and not longer than Source: World Sikh Organization of Canada 10 centimetres.

4. Rudder Chaos: The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has voiced concerns about the lack of emergency training and the availability of voyage data recordings (VDR) following the release of a report on February 7. The investigation report on the grounding of a bulk carrier in Quebec in December of 2011 indicated that rudder malfunction was a major cause. Findings also show that the crew did not receive adequate training on emergency procedures in the event of a helm failure and VDR had not been operational since last May. Source: Transportation Safety Board of Canada

5. On Trial: A project manager with Metron Construction in Toronto faces criminal charges over four fatalities that occurred on Christmas Eve in 2009. Four temporary foreign workers were killed when the scaffold they were Source: Ontario Federation of Labour working on collapsed.

6. Eye on Safety: The CNIB (formerly the Canadian National Institute for the Blind) delivered its 100th eye safety workshop to 20 students enrolled in the College of the North Atlantic’s welding program on January 16.

The move was in celebration of a new series of workshops that the Newfoundland and Labrador college will be Source: COHSN offering to its students.

360°

Party inferno A pyrotechnic fireworks show gone wrong led to a blaze that killed more than 230 people in a nightclub in the college town of Santa Maria in southern Brazil on January 27. Police say the fire likely started when a band set off flares that ignited soundproofing foam on the ceiling. Safety violations, which included the use of flares banned for indoor use and the lack of basic fire safety equipment, are being looked into as possible contributing factors.

Source: Reuters

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1.5 million

Penalty slapped on Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Company Canada for the deaths of two foreign workers, who were killed when the oil storage tank they were building collapsed on them near Fort McMurray, Alberta in 2007.

Source: Alberta Human Services

13,073

Confirmed cases of influenza as of January 5. The 20122013 flu season began on August 26, 2012.

Source: Community and Hospital Infection Control Association-Canada.

820

Fatigue-related crashes between 2007 and 2011 through­ out British Columbia.

Drivers who have to go on long road trips during the winter months face the additional challenge of road conditions — on top of fatigue.

Source: British Columbia Automobile Association Traffic Safety Foundation

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OH&S UPDATE

Flawed landing blamed — A flawed landing and improper recovery techniques were cited as causes of a deadly collision between an aircraft and a building in 2011, a Transportation Safety Board of Canada investigation found.

The Twin Otter plane was flying in gusty conditions from a mining camp in Thor Lake, Northwest Territories to a Yellowknife float plane base on September 22, 2011 with seven passengers and two pilots on board. After smashing down hard and bouncing off the water during a landing attempt, the pilots tried to abort the landing, but struck power lines before crashing into the building.

Both pilots were killed and all seven passengers were injured, four seriously.

“The Twin Otter’s aircraft flight manual cautions against raising the nose beyond level flight attitude during a go-around with fully extended flaps, as

FEDERAL

raising the nose too high might cause a rapid decrease in airspeed and a possible aerodynamic stall,” notes the investigation report, released on January 9.

“The aircraft lifted off the water with its nose very high and the right wing low. In this configuration, the aircraft could not accelerate or climb, and it collided with power lines and a building,” the report adds.

Fatigue cited in train collision FEDERAL — A foreman’s lack of attention to the job was found to be the cause of a collision between a train and a maintenance vehicle a year ago.

A freight train crashed into a maintenance vehicle on the tracks on January 14, 2012 as it was travelling from Kamloops, British Columbia to Edmonton.

An investigation report from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, released on January 23, 2013, indicates

that the lead locomotive of the Canadian National (CN) train was not damaged and did not derail. No injuries were reported as the foreman was performing maintenance work outside of the vehicle at the time of impact.

The foreman, who was responding to a malfunctioning signal, took the north track instead of the south. There was no one to detect the error as the foreman was working alone and had only slept a couple of hours after having worked a shift the day before. The rail traffic controller was supervising a trainee at the time of the incident.

“It is common for foremen to work alone on the track. In the event of a distraction, there is no associated defence mechanism in place to prevent a lone foreman from mistakenly travelling outside the limits of authority given,” the report notes. Although advance warning systems are available, they are often not used in Canada.

Following the incident, CN issued a

Trapped hunters come to pilot’s rescue ARVIAT — A pilot sent to retrieve two stranded seal hunters in

Canada’s North ended up needing rescue after his helicopter broke through ice and started sinking.

At about 2:45 pm on January 9, the pilot from St. Andrews, Manitoba-based Custom Helicopters Ltd. landed on an ice floe near the hamlet of Arviat, Nunavut on the western shore of Hudson Bay when the helicopter began to sink into the icy waters, reports Corporal Yvonne Niego, a spokesperson for the Nunavut RCMP. A statement from the hamlet of about 2,850 people says an aircraft from the Canadian Forces was dispatched to assist in the search and rescue operation, along with the craft from Custom Helicopters Ltd. and a local rescue team.

There was some initial confusion as it was reported to the RCMP that a helicopter had crashed near the community of Arviat and military aircraft in the area attempted to reach the scene of the accident. It was later discovered that the aircraft had successfully landed but broke through the ice, Corporal Niego says.

According to media reports, one of the hunters used his harpoon to pull the pilot from the water and wrapped him in one of the sleeping bags the pilot had initially dropped from the plane. The two hunters — a father and his son — and the pilot were treated for hypothermia, Corporal Niego reports.

The average temperature on the day of the accident was about -36 degrees Celsius excluding wind chill, a weather

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report from Environment Canada notes. Fortunately, “the injuries were not as serious as initially projected,” the RCMP adds in the statement.

One of the hunters, identified as Joe Karetak, community education development co-ordinator with Nunavut’s Department of Education, could not be reached for comment.

Jim Hawes, president of Custom Helicopters, says the pilot has several thousand hours of flying experience in Quebec, Labrador and the eastern Arctic region.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada gathered information on the incident for statistical purposes, but will not be conducting a formal investigation or releasing a report to the public, says Peter Hildebrand, the agency’s regional manager in Winnipeg.

“There is nothing to indicate that a full investigation would reveal more facts than we have now or that we’d be able to take safety action that would prevent a similar accident in the future,” Hildebrand notes.

It does not appear that flight procedures or any technical problems related to the helicopter were an issue. “The helicopter landed on an ice floe and the ice was quite thin, so when the hunters approached the helicopter, it broke through,” Hildebrand explains. “The landing site eventually proved to be insufficient to hold the weight of the helicopter and the hunters.”

— By Jason Contant

safety alert to its employees. Two months later, the company conducted 18 rail efficiency tests, which set out the responsibilities of the rail traffic controller in ensuring that track work and track units are protected. The permits must be read by track foremen to all employees working on a track unit, and all employees holding a certificate of rules of qualification must read and initial the permit, amongst other requirements.

Health hazard declared SURREY — The vicious flu season this year

has prompted the Fraser Health Authority in Surrey, British Columbia to take emergency action in an effort to protect its most vulnerable patients.

Effective January 15, anyone who has not taken a flu shot will be required to don a face mask and practice “stringent hand hygiene” when entering any of the approximately 125 residential care facilities, a statement from the health authority says. The order applies only to residential care and assisted-liv-

ing facilities, with no plan to expand it to hospitals.

“We are not seeing the same degree of outbreaks in hospitals and when we get them in hospitals, they are not as severe,” says Dr. Paul Van Buynder, the authority’s chief medical health officer.

Van Buynder has declared the current influenza virus a health hazard under the Public Health Act after 19 residential long-term health care facilities reported outbreaks — more than twice the number reported in the last two years. “It is a bad flu year,” he notes, adding that this flu season involves a particular strain that tends to be nastier for old people.

This flu season has seen four times the average number of hospitalizations in long-term facilities than during a typical season. The number of deaths associated with influenza among residential care residents is more than triple the last three years combined, the statement adds.

Margi Blamey, a spokesperson for the Hospital Employees’ Union, says its members have been advised to comply with the order and she has not received any complaints from its 17,500 mem-

bers in the Fraser region. She contrasts the acceptance of the order with the backlash last year after the provincial government introduced regulation requiring all healthcare workers to get flu shots or wear masks during flu season.

That regulation was suspended in December and efforts will focus instead on education and awareness. Roy ThorpeDorward, a spokesperson for the health authority, says more than 75 per cent of full-time employees have been vaccinated against influenza — more than double the rate last year.

Van Buynder says this can be attributed to the policy, even though it has been revoked. “That policy was only changed on the first of December, by which time 75 per cent had been vaccinated.”

Tractor trailer rolls over WILLIAMS LAKE — The driver of a tractor trailer carrying potentially explosive cargo through British Columbia was airlifted to hospital after his truck rolled over.

The incident took place on January

Congratulations to the following OHS professionals who have recently been granted the Canadian Registered Safety Professional (CRSP)® Professionnel en sécurité agréé du Canada (PSAC)® designation.

Athavale, Rajiv Balderson, Daryl Barnett, Meghan Berry, Stan Binette, Brenda Bjelland, Troy Black, Timothy Bredin, Patrick Brode, Dennis J. Brown, Crystal Brunelle, Justin Burke, Laura Burton, Candice Campbell, Amy Cholewski, Richard Christenson, John Comeau, Aaron Condon, Robin Connelly, Christina Cowdrey, Patricia Cribb, Lacey da Silva, Giovanni

Daly, Janis Davis, Candice Davis, Darrel deJong, MIchael DiPenta, Heather Donaldson, Eric Douglas, Paul Downs, Ron Eshleman, Suzanne Finn, Deidra Flaherty, George Foxton, Deanna Fuller, Rebecca Gaunt, Blake Geldreich, Ray Genoway, Phil Georgopoulos, George Gray, David Gray, Tim Green, James Groot, Ryan Guidolin, Melanie

Guzmicky, Michael Harris, Ron Hart, Darrell Hawksby, Trevor Ho, Jenny Kin Ling Hodges, Allen Hodgson, Greg Jabbar, Khalig Raza Jasper, Mark Jordan, David Kimmie, Christopher Krahn, Krista Kriz, Patricia Lawrence, Nigel Lee, Jon Li, Ellick Lu, Tina Lundberg, Kylee Luyckx, Ted MacFadgen, Don Maclean, Tracy McCracken, Brendan

McInroy, Adam McKay, Charlene McMahon, Peter McMaster, Rhonice Millis, Teri Mosby, Catherine Nickmann, Matt Nowack-Thompson, Scott Olynick, Randy Pagani, Cleaven Patton, Donald Pektzilikoglou, Joachim Phillips, D. Paul Reid, Paul Risser, Jesse Robinson, Jaime Ross, Neil Rossi, Robert Saindon, Jacques Santiago, Sigfrid Shukla, Maneesh Simpson, Ian

Sinclair, Dean Stevenson, Tasha Stoddart, Nicole D. Subotin, Denise Sulkhova, Antonina Swanson, Jaret Sweeney, Deanna Theodore, Jason Thorn, Andrew Tiv, Sovannara Verma, Paul Waite, James Waite, Jeffrey Wark, Kelly Wilcox, Angela Williams, Erin Williams, Art Williston, Shane Wilson, Kathleen Wiseman, Andrea Wolanski, Coreen Young, Sharon

The Board of Canadian Registered Safety Professionals is a self-regulating, self-governing organization accredited by the Standards Council of Canada to ISO 17024:2003 (Personnel Certification Body) and by BSI Management Systems to ISO 9001:2008 (Quality Management System).

Board of Canadian Registered Safety Professionals/Conseil canadien des professionnels en sécurité agréés 6519-B Mississauga Road, Mississauga, ON L5N 1A6 905-567-7198, 1-888-279-2777, www.bcrsp.ca

www.ohscanada.com

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17 at around 6 pm when the single-tractor trailer went into a ditch on Highway 97 near Williams Lake, located between Kamloops and Prince George. The driver was sent to a hospital in Williams Lake before being airlifted to Vancouver General Hospital.

He sustained serious injuries to his neck and shoulder after being pinned to his vehicle, reports Sergeant Bob Verbree, a spokesperson from the traffic

services branch. “The truck in the slow lane just went into the ditch, straight in.

It was a liquid load, so as soon as it touched the shoulder, it overturned into the snow.”

It was later determined that the substance was a derivative of ammonium nitrate and not as volatile as initially thought. “It is a product that is used in blasting, and they pour it over blast holes and it assists with the blast,” Verbree

says. The substance by itself is “not really dangerous unless there is a fire nearby.”

According to DriveBC, a road monitoring tool run by the province’s Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, a 14-kilometre stretch of the highway was closed off in both directions and traffic had to be rerouted. As the highway sees a lot of traffic from outside the area, the RCMP investigation may take longer than expected due to the challenge of tracking down witnesses.

Resin use sparks fears — A mill in a rural town in British Columbia plans to make a bid for the use of a potentially toxic resin in its manufacturing process, prompting health and safety fears from residents and workers alike.

Peace Valley Oriented Strand Board, owned by the Canfor Corporation and Louisiana-Pacific Canada, indicated that they will be submitting an application to the Ministry of the Environment at the end of January for the right to use methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) at their factory in Baldonnel. The Environmental Protection Agency in the United States reports that exposure to the chemical can cause breathing problems and asthma.

The company says the resin will be used in a safe manner to manufacture particle board and that it will comply with government-established or regulatory threshold limits to protect workers and neighbouring residents, who have expressed concerns to the media. More than 1,000 people have signed a petition opposing the plan.

If the mill gets the green light to use the resin, WorkSafeBC says certain precautionary measures must be taken, adding that MDI is one of the most commonly used isocyanates. It is also used in the production of polyurethane polymers to create soft and hard synthetic rubbers, foam and coatings.

“It has been estimated that one in 20 workers who work with isocyanates will become sensitized to them. Some worker deaths from isocyanate asthma have also been reported,” a statement from WorkSafeBC notes. “The occupational exposure limits for isocyanates in British Columbia are very low — an eight-hour time-weighted average of 0.005 parts per million and a ceiling value, which cannot exceed 0.01 parts per million.”

Symptoms of isocyanate exposure

BALDONNEL

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include sore eyes, coughing, a runny nose, wheezing, sore throat and chest tightness. Employers are responsible for putting in place precautionary measures, such as personal protective equipment, barriers and ventilation systems.

Officer hit by impaired driver KELOWNA — A police officer in a patrol car was hit by an impaired driver around midnight on January 15.

The officer, a member of the Kelowna RCMP, was conducting routine patrols when an oncoming pick-up truck smashed into the side of the squad car after allegedly running a red light.

The 27-year-old driver was arrested.

Both the officer and the driver were taken to hospital with minor injuries.

RAILWAY WORKERS STRUCK — Three railway workers were hit by a Canadian National (CN) freight train while clearing snow from

EDMONTON

railroad switches in Edmonton on the morning of December 26.

The train was passing through a crossing north of Yellowhead Trail between 9 am and 10 am when the workers, employed by A&B Rail Services Ltd., were performing contract maintenance work for CN, reports Lisa Glover, a spokesperson for Alberta Human Services.

The injured employees were transported to local hospitals. One employee was released from hospital on December 28, while a second worker was discharged three days later. The third worker remained in hospital as of January 4, a statement from the company notes.

Glover says Alberta Human Services issued a stop-work order related to track cleaning and maintenance work involving noise-generating equipment, as the workers were using snow blowers and wearing noise protection at the time of the incident.

The order was voluntarily extended by the company to all of its workplaces in Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan until it was lifted on December 28.

calf-roping case to be heard — The Alberta Court of Appeal has agreed to hear an appeal from the employer of a worker who was killed by a calf-roping machine during a work party in 2007. The employee was assisting in the operation of the machine rented by the company when he was struck in the head by a metal lever.

The employer, XI Technologies Inc., was charged with failing to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, the health and safety of its employee and that all equipment at the work site would safely perform the function it was intended for.

Although the firm was found not guilty after the trial judge declared that it had performed its due diligence regarding the safety of the machine, which was malfunctioning, the Crown appealed and the Court of the Queen’s Bench overturned the trial judge’s decision.

The Court of Queen’s Bench ruled that the company should have placed the machine out of service and as such, had not done its due diligence.

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Mill fire rocks facility MEADOW LAKE — A wood products plant

in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan has reopened four days after a fire broke out.

The blaze occurred at about 3 am on January 18 inside a bulk storage facility adjacent to the Meadow Lake oriented strand board plant operated by Tolko Industries Ltd. in Vernon, British Columbia.

A statement from the company says its emergency team responded immediately and the fire was brought under control within a few hours, assisted by the local fire department. There were no injuries, but an evacuation order was issued after the incident. Smoke continued to billow throughout the mill even after the scene had been cleared by emergency responders, the statement adds.

“The cause is under investigation, but

it has been determined that it is not dustor explosion-related,” plant manager Parker Snyder says. “We are currently reviewing the situation to determine how mill operations will be impacted.” Eighteen people were on-site at the time of the incident.

“Due to the effective functioning of the facility’s fire suppression systems, quick action by our emergency response team and the Meadow Lake Fire Department, there was relatively little damage to the plant and equipment,” Snyder adds.

Maritza Reilly, communications coordinator with Tolko, confirms that operations at the facility restarted on January 22. She says the company will not release estimates on damages in accordance with its policies as a privately held company, but “the fire was not extensive” and “damage was kept to a minimum.”

Synder notes in a statement that the company plans to implement preventive measures as required and that production in the rest of the mill would continue.

“Work in the affected area has stopped and will not resume until we are satisfied that it is safe to proceed,” he adds.

worker ill from co build-up

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SASKATOON — An employee at a hotel in Saskatoon was hospitalized on December 26 after a build-up of carbon monoxide (CO) caused him to pass out.

The maintenance worker, who had been working on domestic water heaters in the mechanical room of the Hilton Garden Inn hotel, was found unresponsive by firefighters and paramedics.

After being treated with oxygen, he regained consciousness and remained alert and responsive when transported to hospital, says Bill Coffin, assistant chief in charge of communications and public relations for Saskatoon Fire and Protective Services.

The CO build-up was caused by an issue with one of the boilers, the fire department reports. The room where the employee was working had CO levels of 18 parts per million (ppm) after being vented. The CO level in the adjacent change room and electrical room, which were not properly vented, were around 110 ppm, Coffin says, adding that anything above eight ppm could indicate a problem. It took about an hour to vent the area and return levels to normal.

Ray Anthony, director of safety services with Saskatchewan Labour Relations

Police cruisers get in-vehicle cameras — The installation of video cameras inside police vehicles in Saskatoon has given officer and public safety a boost.

The Saskatoon Police Service completed the installation of in-vehicle cameras capable of capturing audio in its 54unit fleet last December, says police spokesperson Inspector Jerome Engele. Each vehicle is now equipped with one front- and one rear-facing camera to record and document police interactions with the public.

Engele says the cost of the project hovers between $750,000 and $800,000. The video cameras are not being installed in unmarked vehicles except traffic patrol cars, which consist of both marked and unmarked vehicles.

Engele expects the cameras will help reduce complaints against officers and detect risks, such as a suspect with a weapon in the back of the cruiser. “If you missed it on your initial pat-down when you put somebody into a vehicle, you have it right on the laptop,” he says.

The Saskatoon Police Service has a policy in place that requires officers to advise people that they are being audio and videotaped. “I think that de-escalates that confrontationtype of issue where people are upset,” he says.

For the police service, Engele suggests that it is about putting the best evidence before the courts. Every officer has also been outfitted with a lapel microphone and a car-

SASKATOON

rier that can be attached to a vest, belt, tie or other piece of clothing. “Some officers like it and some don’t,” he reports, adding that “you get a lot of wind noise sometimes, so it isn’t as clear.”

Saskatoon is not the only city in the province to install cameras in police vehicles. Elizabeth Popowich, manager of public information and strategic communication with the Regina Police Service, says they plan to equip approximately 50 vehicles in their front-line fleet of patrol units, traffic and canine vehicles with one front- and one rear-facing incar video over the next few years, subject to budget approval from city council.

“The cameras can enhance officer safety in that they may deter someone from attacking an officer. They can also gather evidence that could be used in a prosecution,” Popowich suggests. “The cameras provide an objective record of our interactions, which could be important in resolving a public complaint and similarly discouraging malicious, unfounded complaints.”

Popowich says the installation cost per vehicle is about $10,000. Vehicles owned or leased by the service, such as unmarked cruisers used for surveillance or for transportation by civilian staff when carrying out work-related duties, are not slated for the installation.

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and Workplace Safety in Regina, says the ministry’s occupational health and safety division is investigating the incident.

The problem of CO accumulating in offices and residential buildings is more common when the weather gets colder, Anthony notes. “Especially in the winter, you want to make sure your intakes are open and your filters are clean. Otherwise, these boilers can cause problems if they don’t have a certain amount of fresh air for combustion,” he cautions.

COLD STRESS ALERT ISSUED WINNIPEG — The Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba has issued a reminder on safe work procedures during the winter months to outdoor workers.

“Extreme cold is as serious as any other health risk in the workplace and must be taken seriously,” the board said in a statement on January 22.

Cold stress, which affects the body’s ability to control its internal temperature, can result in serious illness or death.

Cold temperatures, high wind, immersion in low temperature water, physical exertion and improper or inadequate clothing are some factors that can put a worker at risk of frostbite and hypothermia, the statement adds.

Some of the measures to prevent cold stress include assessing weather conditions before heading out to the worksite and monitoring oneself and co-workers once there; donning layered, dry and insulated clothing with a windproof and waterproof outer shell; taking warm-up breaks in heated shelters; staying hydrated with warm, sweet drinks; and keeping the body in motion but limiting heavy work to avoid perspiration.

A worker suffering from cold stress should be moved to a warm area and encouraged to keep moving. Wet clothes should be replaced with dry ones and medical attention should be sought immediately if a worker is experiencing hypothermia or extreme frostbite, the statement adds.

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WINNIPEG — SAFE Manitoba has announced the SAFE Work Awards to recognize organizations and individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to building a safety culture in their respective workplaces.

The awards, sponsored by the Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba and Manitoba Family Services and Labour, will be presented during the North American Occupational Safety and Health Week, which runs from May 5 to 11, a statement from the organization noted on January 15. The four categories open to nomination are employer, worker, educator or safety professional and health committee or group award.

orders follow Worker amputation HAMILTON — Ontario’s Ministry of Labour has issued two orders against a dollar store after a worker lost two fingers in a work-related incident.

The employee was lifting boxes onto a conveyor on the loading dock at the Dollarama in Hamilton, Ontario on the morning of December 18 when his hand got caught in a pinch point on the conveyor system. Two of his fingers were amputated and a third was severely injured. The 30-year-old employee was taken to hospital for non-life-threatening injuries, the Hamilton Regional Police Service says in a statement.

Matt Blajer, a labour ministry spokesperson, reports that the ministry issued two work orders to the company under Section 25 of the Regulations for Industrial Establishments. One pertains to preventing access to a pinch point on a conveyor system and the other is an accompanying stop-work order until the guarding is in place.

The dollar store can return to full operations only after ministry investigators deem the appropriate safeguards have been put implemented, he adds.

Lyla Radmanovich, a Dollarama spokesperson in Montreal, confirms in an email that the store has reopened for business.

“The equipment in question had guarding in place and as a result of this incident, Dollarama is in the process of implementing additional measures to further improve the safety of the equipment and the process,” Radmanovich adds.

Mandatory coverage takes effect — Most construction workers in Ontario are now covered by the provincial workers’ compensation board as Bill 119 came into effect in 2013.

The introduction of the bill has seen four new policies and several “housekeeping changes” being made to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board’s (WSIB) Operational Policy Manual, some of which are as follows: • Under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, mandatory coverage has been extended to include independent operators, sole proprietors, partners in partnerships and executive officers in corporations working in the construction industry, with exemptions for those doing exclusive home renovation work for and paid by the occupant or member of their family; • Construction employers must calculate the amount of premiums owed, report and remit the amount to the WSIB. The calculation of premiums is based on the insurable earnings paid to all their workers, with the WSIB setting a minimum amount of insurable earnings for sole proprietors, partners and executive officers of a corporation in construction; • A principal who directly retains a contractor or subcontractor to perform construction work must obtain a clearance certificate before the contractor or sub-contractor undertakes the work and that certificate must be in effect for the entire time the work is performed; and • For the first year of the mandatory coverage, the board will waive penalties and refrain from launching investigations or charges if an employer or individual does not have proper coverage and has not met the requirements set out by the new bill. But it will pursue charges if an employer or individual is found to have made false or misleading statements or commits an offense by willfully failing to comply.

Details of the new policies are available on WSIB’s website.

TORONTO

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MARCH 2013

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health was officially released on January 16.

The 76-page voluntary guide, Psychological health and safety in the workplace — Prevention, promotion, and guidance to staged implementation, is the result of a collaborative effort among the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC), the Bureau de normalisation du Québec and the Canadian Standards Association Group. The country’s first national standard is designed to help organizations and their employees improve workplace psychological health and safety.

One in five Canadians experience a mental health problem in any given year and many of the most at-risk individuals are in their early working years, says MHCC president and chief executive officer Louise Bradley. “It is time to start thinking about mental well-being in the same way as we consider physical well-being, and the standard offers the framework needed to help make this happen in the workplace.”

Bonnie Rose, president of standards with CSA Group, adds that “workplaces with a positive approach to psychological health and safety have improved employee engagement, enhanced productivity and a better financial outlook.”

The standard provides a systematic approach to develop and sustain a psychologically healthy and safe workplace by addressing the following: • The identification of psychological hazards at work;

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Worker survives fall from scaffold PORT COLBORNE — A 54-year-old man, who was installing scaffolding, fell approximately 10 metres into the cargo hold of a ship docked near the Mellanby bridge in Port Colborne, Ontario on January 8.

The man was extricated by Port Colborne Fire and airlifted to a hospital in Hamilton with non-life threatening injuries, notes a statement from the Niagara Regional Police Service.

The Ontario Ministry of Labour and Transport Canada’s marine division attended the scene, the statement adds.

workshop on leadership training launched NORTH BAY — A new leadership workshop has been launched by Workplace Safety North (WSN) following a mining industry roundtable, which found that while 84 per cent of leaders know when a difficult conversation is required, only 14 per cent are having them.

The pilot workshop, which runs from March 19 to 20, is a partnership between WSN and the Institute of Health and Human Potential.

The workshop will “address the science behind why technically competent people often struggle once moving into leadership roles. It will provide leaders with the tools they need to have critical conversations regarding safety, communication, and the knowledge and skills to help cultivate an effective internal responsibility system,” notes a statement from WSN.

Occupational injuries down: report — Incidents of occupational injuries and disease dipped more than 16 per cent even though full-time worker equivalents in Quebec increased by eight per cent between 2002 and 2007.

In mid-December, the Institut de recherche Robert-Sauvé en santé et en sécurité du travail (IRSST) released a detailed analysis on compensated occupational injuries in the province. The IRSST found that among young workers aged 15 to 24, the average compensation period (43.2 days) was half of that for the workforce as a whole (87.9 days) and almost a third of that for workers aged 45 years or older (112.4 days). But youth held a higher proportion of manual or combined jobs that are at a greater risk of accidents compared to older workers.

“In a context of shortages and the aging of the workforce, these statistics are important,” Marie Larue, chief executive officer of IRSST, says in the statement. “They indicate that we must not neglect any preventive measure, be it for young workers who more frequently work in occupational categories at greater risk, or for older workers with more serious injuries

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plant Fire prompts evacuation — A fire that broke out at an industrial plant in Oshawa, Ontario prompted the evacuation of neighbouring businesses and a lockdown of nearby residents.

In the early morning hours of January 19, flames engulfed the McAsphalt Industries plant, which produces paving technologies and manufactures asphalt. A statement from the city of Oshawa confirmed that employees of nearby businesses, namely General Motors and Minacs Worldwide, were evacuated at around 11 am.

“The smoke is blowing in an easterly direction and the fire has progressed to the point where Oshawa Fire Services closed businesses on Colonel Sam Drive at 11 am,” the statement notes.

Residents in the surrounding area were instructed to keep the windows and doors closed, turn off fans and close vents — including turning down furnaces to avoid drawing in air from outside — and remain indoors until the lockdown was lifted. No injuries were reported.

Although the fire department had the blaze under control by 9 am, it flared up again after spreading to other areas of the warehouse, resulting in the collapse of several areas in the building. The hazardous material team also responded to the incident.

Shortly after the fire broke out, the provincial Ministry of OSHAWA

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the Environment sent in their team of investigators to scope out any potential hazards. As the McAsphalt factory handles plastic and rubber materials, any smoke has the potential to be carcinogenic. As a result, the ministry sent in officials to conduct air sampling.

“The ministry’s primary focus was ensuring the fire water was being properly managed and that there were no impacts to the surrounding environment,” ministry spokesperson Kate Jordan says in an email. “We conducted air monitoring in the area of the fire. Ministry air monitoring results did not show any readings of concern.”

Jordan adds that two outfalls to the Oshawa Harbour continue to be monitored and the booms — which serve as a containment method placed on the surface of the water to absorb any excess material — will remain in place for now.

The Ministry of the Environment team will continue to monitor the area to ensure that all appropriate clean-up activities are properly completed.

David Selby of the Durham Regional Police Service reports that his team received the call at around 5:30 am and saw thick black smoke coming out of one of the buildings. At that point, the fire department took over and police assisted in keeping residents indoors.

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Collision kills ski instructor CENTRAL HAINESVILLE — A perfect day on

the slopes turned tragic when a part-time instructor at Crabbe Mountain in Central Hainesville, New Brunswick was killed after colliding with a skier.

David Moore was skiing down Dave’s Dream run in a “relatively flat, big, wide open space” on the morning of January 8 when he collided with a member of the public, says Crabbe Mountain’s general manager Jason Crawford.

Moore, who was not teaching at the time of the crash, and the other skier were both wearing helmets. The other skier sustained minor injuries and was taken to hospital as a precautionary measure, Crawford reports. Counselling was provided to Crabbe Mountain workers.

Moore, 62, was a retired mediator and had worked at the ski hill’s snow school for the past three years, teaching skiing to “hundreds and hundreds of beginners,” mostly children and disabled skiers, the company’s website notes.

The investigation was turned over to WorkSafeNB, which will determine if the incident involves an employer/employee relationship, says Richard Blais, director of the chief compliance office at WorkSafeNB in Saint John. The investigation will focus on trail conditions, visibility, the application of protective ski equipment and first aid responder statements, the safety regulator notes. An autopsy will also be performed to determine the cause of death.

Crawford says it was a sunny day, visibility was good and snow conditions were excellent.

Poor indoor air cited YARMOUTH — Poor indoor air quality at a school in Yarmouth is being blamed for making staff sick, prompting many to refuse work in an unsafe environment.

In a meeting on January 4, the Nova Scotia Teachers Union met with teachers at Yarmouth Consolidated Memorial High School regarding complaints about headaches, fatigue, dizziness, sore throats, drowsiness and dry eyes, says Shelley Morse, president of the teachers’ union in Halifax.

More than 20 sick teachers were off between November and mid-January, with some exercising their right to refuse unsafe work. Morse adds that those who can perform their duties from a remote location have been reassigned to different areas for the time being.

The problems started last November after a doctor’s note prescribed a teacher two weeks off work and attributed her illness to poor indoor air quality. Initially, the board thought the illness was a common circulating cold or flu.

But as more teachers began experiencing similar symptoms, “the administration contacted me and we did our own investigation,” says Jamie Moses, occupational health and safety director for the Tri-County Regional School Board in Yarmouth.

Moses, who tested the air for carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, particulate temperature and humidity, says results came back within normal limits and no trace of carbon monoxide was detected.

A second, independent contractor came to the same conclusion, but determined that the mechanical systems in the school were not functioning to par, citing poor air flow, ventilation and pressure variances could be causing some staff to be sick. Humidifiers and air handlers were also not functioning, resulting in dry air.

“There was one air-handling unit that was only working intermittently, the others in the building were running but weren’t working properly,” Moses reports. This results in some rooms having a lot of air flow, while the other rooms had hardly any.

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Man overboard prompts scrutiny YARMOUTH — A fisherman who fell overboard and is presumed to have drowned has prompted the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) to scrutinize the design of fishing vessels.

At around 6:45 pm on January 12, lobster fisherman Michael Jeffrey Doucette headed out onto the deck of Row Row, a 15-metre long fishing vessel owned by Wedgeport Lobster Ltd. of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, says Pierre Murray, the TSB’s marine manager of regional operations for the Maritime, Newfoundland and Labrador region.

“That was the last thing they ever heard from him,” Murray says. An hour later, the captain of the lobster fishing vessel went to Doucette’s bunk as he was supposed to take over the wheel and found him missing.

The boat and its three-person crew had been returning to shore after about a day at sea and was about 50 kilometres southwest of Yarmouth when the crew discovered Doucette was missing, Murray reports.

Major Martell Thompson, a member of the Joint Task Force Atlantic Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Halifax, says a Cormorant helicopter, a Hercules aircraft, two coast guard vessels and 12 to 18 other local ships that were in the area at the time launched a search for Doucette. While search conditions were excellent, the effort proved futile and the

search was scaled back by 9 am the next morning.

“In terms of survivability models, in this case we deemed that the cold exposure survivor model had been expended,” Thompson says. The investigation has been handed over to the RCMP as a missing person’s case.

Reg LeBlanc, owner of Wedgeport Lobster, describes Doucette was “an upbeat kind of guy.” Doucette, who lived in Yarmouth and was well known in the community, started working for him right out of school and had been employed by the company seasonally for two years.

In view of the various uncertainties regarding how Doucette fell overboard, the TSB will focus on the ship’s construction and what changes could make fishing safer for all ships. “We had an accident like this just before Christmas and last fall. The problem is when it happens, rarely is it seen,” Murray says, adding that this further complicates the rescue operation.

“We are focusing on the vessel itself. We had a few cases like this and we wonder why somebody can fall overboard so easily,” he notes. The TSB will examine the height of the bulwark and the design of the vessel itself.

“As for the operation of why he fell overboard, we don’t know exactly. It is hard to just guess,” Murray says.

— By Greg Burchell

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“All of these symptoms that people were complaining about — the sore throat, dry eyes, drowsiness, headaches — were all related to those things.”

safety a priority in every workplace,” Bill Reid, director of occupational health and safety with the workers’ comp board, says in a statement.

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Changes made to regulations

Many of the preceding items are based on stories from our sister publication,

CHARLOTTETOWN — Effective January 31, nearly 20 amendments have been made to Prince Edward Island’s oh&s regulations regarding first aid kits, providers, rooms and records.

The changes, among others, are as follows: workplaces with only one worker will now require a first aid kit; first aid providers are now needed in workplaces with less than five workers; a detailed written record of injuries is mandatory; a first aid room is required only for workplaces with 100 or more workers per shift and only those workplaces determined to be conducting work other than low hazard work; and hospitals and nursing homes are exempted from the regulations.

“We are here to work with Islanders to keep each other safe and to make

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news, a weekly newsletter that provides detailed coverage of Canadian oh&s and workers’ compensation issues. For more information, please call (416) 442-2122 or toll-free (800) 668-2374.

Didn’t see it here? Why not check out www.ohscanada.com for more web-exclusive news?

So, what’s on your mind?

Ever wonder what other oh&s types are thinking about? Find out by making our website poll at www.ohscanada.com a regular stop.

Is $1.5 million in compensation to an employee who was bullied at work over the top?

Yes 68% No 32% Total Votes

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DISPATCHES

Firms dangle cash rewards to workers who lose weight

By Jean Lian

T

he start of a new year is often greeted with enthusiasm, with many people zeroing in on weight loss as among their resolutions. However, the battle against the bulge is also a test of willpower and keeping that resolution on top of the list becomes increasingly difficult as the year wears on.

A company down south has come up with the novel approach of using financial incentives to maximize weight loss success. New York-based HealthyWage says more than 400 firms in the United States are using competition and cash rewards to compel employees to lose weight and boost wellness.

“This past year alone, we have seen a surge in businesses, healthcare companies and school districts seeking to offer weight-loss programs that will better engage and excite the staff and, ultimately, more successfully achieve health and overriding fiscal program goals,” HealthyWage chief executive officer David Roddenberry noted in a statement in January.

He says people are more effective at losing weight when their own money is at stake and social networks play a large role in reversing obesity. By helping employees get fit and healthy, he claims that it helps organizations to significantly stem staff health-related losses.

The company offers three cash reward-based diet programs for individuals, teams and corporations. Its Body Mass Index (BMI) Challenge offers $1,000 to those who invest $300 to participate in the challenge and reduce their BMI from an obese range of 30 and higher to a normal range of under 25 over a year’s time.

For those who are motivated by team spirit, they can stand to win $10,000 by competing in teams of five for the greatest percentage of weight loss not exceeding 16.59 per cent of starting body weight over a three-month period. Employers can up the ante and compete against another organization by having their employees lose the greatest percentage of weight.

Dr. Arya Sharma, scientific director and professor of medicine and chair for obesity research and management at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, says such incentive programs may have some value for some people. “As a general approach to obesity, however, they are not very helpful.” As cash incentives do not address the root causes or drivers of

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excess weight, it is for the same reasons that cash incentives to promote smoking cessation, reduce alcohol intake and increase compliance with medications have always had a rather limited impact on behaviour change, he adds.

Obesity is not unique to our neighbour down south. The Obesity in Canada report, released by the Public Health Agency of Canada in June of 2011, indicates that one in four Canadian adults are obese. The economic cost of obesity was estimated at $4.6 billion in 2008, based on costs associated with the eight chronic diseases that are most consistently linked to obesity.

Apart from avoiding a raft of health problems, a primary benefit of reducing obesity in the workplace is having healthier, happier employees who are more productive at work, says the Workplace Obesity Prevention report of June, 2012 by the Canadian Council on Integrated Healthcare (CCIH).

Research has shown that obesity may have a negative impact on workers more often through presenteeism than absenteeism.

Obese women aged 35 to 64 were more likely than women with normal weight to report reduced productivity due to a chronic health problem. Similar findings were cited for obese men aged 55 to 64, the CCIH report notes.

For employers who wish to encourage employees to adopt a healthy lifestyle, the CCIH recommends a voluntary program that includes health screenings and counselling, regular voluntary weigh-ins, wellness subsidies, friendly competitions, health education, healthy food in cafeterias and benefits for employees’ families to make use of programs and services.

Jean Lian is editor of

ohs canada.

A pat on the back for efforts to improve worker health

By Jason Contant

T

he Quebec branch of the RCMP has become the first federal agency to be certified for taking concrete action to improve the health and well-being of its employees.

The Healthy Enterprise — Elite certification from the Bureau de normalisation du Québec (BNQ) recognizes the integration of an individual’s health and well-being into an organization’s management practices. The certification was made official at a ceremony on December 5 at the branch’s headquarters in Westmount.

“I am very proud of this certification,” assistant commissioner François Deschênes, commanding officer of the Quebec RCMP, says in a statement. “This certification confers on

us the right to act as ambassadors of wellness in the workplace.” On top of being the first federal agency to achieve the Healthy Enterprise — Elite certification, the achievement is the culmination of two years of efforts in implementing a major healthy workplace project.

The certification is based on the BNQ standard 9700800 Prevention, Promotion and Organizational Practices for Health in the Workplace, commonly called “Healthy Enterprise” and officially launched in February of 2008. The RCMP is one of only 14 certified organizations in Quebec.

“This certification is about how to integrate health and promotion of best practices in your management practices,” says BNQ business development co-ordinator Marie-Claude Drouin. To achieve certification, an organization must demonstrate commitment to employee health and well-being in a structured way, based on company priorities and the needs of employees as identified in their data collection.

The Elite designation requires an organization to address the following areas of activity: • Employee habits: advice on nutrition, physical activity awareness programs, training in stress management and educational activities on health conditions, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and menopause; • Work-life balance: a work-life balance policy, flexible hours, daycare at work, days off for family reasons, a gradual return-to-work following an absence for health reasons, etc.; • Working environment: healthy food vending machines, secure parking for bicycles, support programs for employees with physical disorders, relaxation areas, etc.; and • Management practices: activities to promote team spirit, a personalized professional development plan, employee consulting mechanism and manager training on recognition and effective communication.

Jason Contant is managing editor of

ohs canada.

Call for change in hockey culture to reduce injury risk

By Sabrina Nanji

C

anada’s pastime has historically been a rough game — but new research is calling for changes to hockey rules as a means of reducing the risk of injuries on ice.

The study, Effectiveness of interventions to reduce aggression and injuries among ice hockey players: a systematic review, concluded that strict penalties and limiting or eliminating body checking reduced the rate of injuries among hockey players three- to 12-fold — from junior leagues all the way up to professional franchises. The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in December, also looked at educational programs and incentives for good sportsmanship, but found that rudimentary changes were the most effective method in mitigating aggression.

The report could not have come sooner, says Michael Cusimano, the study’s lead author and a neurosurgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. “It says something about the

culture of things going on at all levels of hockey right now that needs to change to make the game safer.”

Cusimano points out that players in the National Hockey League have the highest rates of injury among hockey players. To reduce their occupational health risk, he advises them to look at rules and enforcement of rules that would enhance player safety.

He cites Todd Bertuzzi, who violently attacked Steve Moore from behind during a game in 2004, as an example. Moore, who has not played a game since the incident, suffered three fractured neck vertebrae, facial cuts and a concussion. Cusimano says his team studied 50 games prior to and after Bertuzzi was criminally charged and found that severe penalties preceded a reduction in aggression on the ice for games following the attack.

According to the NHL rulebook, strict regulations are in place to protect players.

For instance, Rule 48 on illegal checks to the head stipulates that “a hit resulting in contact with an opponent’s head where the head is targeted and the principal point of contact is not permitted.”

Although the recommendations are welcomed by Hockey Canada, fundamental changes to the way the game is played remains a far way off. Paul Carson, vice-president of hockey development, says the organization has methods in place to limit injuries and concussions on the ice. An example is the zero-tolerance policy for head contact.

“It is multi-factoral,” Carson says, citing risktaking behaviours, aggressive play and the feeling of invincibility. “In the women’s program, where there is no body checking but there is incidental contact and certainly aggressive play, there is also a high rate of injuries.”

Sabrina Nanji is editorial assistant of health and safety news.

canadian occupational

Ontario court clarifies use of due diligence defence

By Greg Burchell

A

recent decision from the Ontario Court of Justice involving a worker fatality seven years ago clarifies what it means for an employer to demonstrate due diligence in the workplace.

Yves Blondin, an employee of Black and McDonald Limited headquartered in Toronto, was laying concrete piping on a construction site in Ottawa in February of 2006 when a wooden brace — used as part of a winch system — snapped and fatally struck him. The brace was created as part of a makeshift system built by defendant Thomas G. Fuller and Sons Ltd. in Ottawa to pull together pieces of concrete piping. www.ohscanada.com

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In the November 23 ruling for a retrial in the death of Blondin, the court said the Crown failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the wooden brace was not designed and constructed to withstand the forces likely to be exerted against it and that Thomas G. Fuller and Sons had been duly diligent in the circumstances. Justice David Paciocco rejected the argument that the firm was negligent because they did not engage a professional engineer to design the wooden brace.

The appeal courts initially acquitted Thomas G. Fuller and Sons, along with Black and McDonald, of failing to take every precaution reasonable in the circumstances for the protection of a worker. After the final appeal, the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered the retrial. “‘All reasonable care’ cannot and is not understood to require the accused to take each and every precaution that would be reasonable to take in the circumstances,” the judge writes.

“As indicated, due diligence is a negligence-based standard.

The pertinent question is whether the accused ‘took all of the care that a reasonable [person] might have been expected to take in the circumstances.”

While Paciocco noted that no engineer was consulted before the company constructed a modified brace to deal with the irregular pipe they were trying to fit, the supervisor was an experienced construction supervisor who had become familiar with the relevant installation process.

The breakage, a shear failure, can also occur “without warning,” says professional engineer Dr. Claude Pillette.

Paciocco says he prefers the term “likely” as opposed to “foreseeable” when it comes to judging possible outcomes for an action as it deals with anticipated conditions, rather than evaluating the results in hindsight.

“Whether the men noted signs of failure prior to the fourby-four breaking, or whether Mr Blondin was authorized to be in the trench where the pipe was being laid, or whether he issued the order to apply more pressure to one of the pullers, or whether the pipe was almost in place at the time, are not directly relevant to the sufficiency of the design and construction of the brace,” Paciocco notes. “At most, the accident offers a hindsight illustration of forces that, at the time it was built, the wooden brace could have been subject to.”

Greg Burchell is assistant editor of health and safety news.

canadian occupational

Road rage a major safety risk for drivers: study

By Jean Lian

F

or those who drive for a living, take heed. A new study by the Toronto-based Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) found that driver aggression is a major safety concern and a factor in nearly half of all motor vehicle collisions.

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The findings are based on reviewing thousands of entries posted on a website called RoadRagers.com, which invites drivers to submit complaints about unsafe and improper driving. “These websites can tell us more about what people are doing out there in the real world,” Dr. Christine Wickens, a post-doctoral fellow with CAMH’s social and epidemiological research department, said in a statement in January.

Dr. Wickens and her colleagues evaluated more than 5,000 entries posted on the website between 1999 and 2007. Complaints, which consist mostly of reports on driving in Canada and the United States, were grouped into various categories.

Cutting and weaving topped the list of complaints at 54 per cent, followed by speeding (29 per cent) and hostile displays (25 per cent). The research team also looked at how slighted drivers might feel compelled to retaliate, noting that in some extreme cases, one reckless action can escalate into a hostile situation between multiple drivers.

Road rage in all its forms can refer to speeding, profanity, following too closely, intentionally cutting off another driver and exiting a vehicle leading to physical confrontations, notes information from Kanetix, a Canadian provider of online insurance quotations.

Drivers who admit to engaging in hostile behaviours say they are most commonly set off by distracted drivers and seeing other drivers behaving aggressively around them.

While the frustrations of driving is not unique to commercial drivers, those who spend the bulk of their workday on the road are more likely to encounter and be affected by aggressive driving behaviour. High exposure driving and the size of the vehicle driven means commercial drivers have to deal with additional stressors arising from the socio-economic environment in which they operate.

Economic factors, which include operating expenses, profitability, fleet size and the type of commodity being delivered, put psychological pressure on commercial drivers that can influence their risk-taking behaviour and driving orientation or philosophy, notes Principles of Driving Psychology, an article by Dr. Leon James, professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu.

Like any confrontation, it takes two hands to clap. Not responding to a provocation can prevent an unpleasant interaction on the road from escalating into a full-blown hostile exchange. Other containment techniques recommended by Dr. James include counting to 10 and appearing unaffected by the other driver’s actions.

If an altercation has already started, damage control measures include seeing it from the other driver’s perspective and apologizing if necessary.

Dr. Wickens advises drivers to work hard at keeping cool when behind the wheel. Educating drivers on the most common complaints on the road is also important in helping them realize the impact of their actions and avoid these types of behaviours. “Remind yourself to take a deep breath, stay calm and do whatever it takes to bring your anger down,” Dr. Wickens says.

image: THINKSTOCK

CONCUSSIONs

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Grey Matter By jason contant Understanding the human brain has always been a challenge. But like the brain itself from birth until death, that understanding is constantly evolving.

“I equate the brain to the universe, nobody really knows how it works, nobody knows how far the universe expands,” says Tom Bair, regional director of industrial client solutions with ProgressiveHealth, a provider of rehabilitation management, prevention and wellness services in Atlanta.

“There are so many unanswered questions,” adds Bair, who is also a member of the National Athletic Trainers’ Association (NATA) in Dallas.

So when the journal Neurology published a study in September that found the neurodegenerative mortality of a cohort of retired professional football players was three times higher than that of the general population in the United States, it understandably raised more questions than answers.

BRAIN MAP The study, funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Washington, D.C., examined 3,439 National Football League (NFL) players with at least five pension-credited playing seasons from 1959 to 1988 to analyze neurodegenerative causes of death, specifically Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

While the neurodegenerative mortality was three times higher than the general population, the rate for two of the major subcategories — Alzheimer’s and ALS — was four times higher.

“Recent studies suggested that football players who play certain positions are at higher risk of concussion because of the high acceleration, rotational acceleration and multiple impacts they experience during games,” the study notes. Although the results do not establish a cause-and-effect relationship between football-related concussion and death from neurodegenerative disorders, “they do provide additional support for the finding that professional football players are at an increased risk of death from neurodegenerative causes.”

Even with those findings, experts disagree about the extent of the relationship between neurodegenerative diseases and concussions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta define a concussion as a traumatic brain injury caused by a direct or indirect bump, blow or jolt to the head that can change the way the brain works. Concussions, which give rise to various non-specific symptoms and physical signs such as unsteadiness, can also occur from a blow to the body that causes the head to move back and forth.

Professional players in sports such as hockey, football, soccer and boxing are among those at risk.

Blaine Hoshizaki, an associate professor with the School of Human Kinetics at the University of Ottawa, says while he thinks the evidence is fairly well-established that there is some connection be-

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tween neurodegenerative diseases and concussions, the specific mechanisms at play have yet to be uncovered.

“If you increase the physical trauma to the head, you are increasing the risk of long-term neurological disability — that is pretty well understood,” Hoshizaki says.

Although pinning down the number of concussions that need to occur before they can be associated with certain types of conditions is premature, Hoshizaki says “there is probably pretty good evidence that it doesn’t take a lot of impacts, or even serious impacts to the head, to create risks of neurological conditions later in life.”

A study examining cognitive dysfunction and depression in aging, retired NFL players published in January, is a case in point. Thirty-four retired NFL players from the north Texas region recruited for the study underwent neurological and neuropsychological assessment. A subset of 26 players also underwent detailed neuroimaging, results of which were compared with imaging data acquired in 26 healthy matched controls.

Findings show that cognitive deficits and depression seem to be more common in aging former NFL players, compared with the healthy study subjects. Neuroimaging data also found significant differences in white matter abnormalities among cognitively-impaired and depressed retired players. Regional blood flow differences in the cognitively-impaired group corresponded to regions associated with impaired neurocognitive performance, such as problems relating to memory, naming and word finding, the study notes.

Weighing in The risk of sustaining an occupational-related concussion is by no means exclusive to professional sports players.

Dr. Charles Tator, a neurosurgeon in Toronto, estimates that about 25 per cent of concussions occur in the general workplace. “If you are a hydro lineman, you can fall off your ladder,” notes Dr. Tator, who is also the leader of the Canadian Sports Concussion Project, which studies the possible correlation between repeated concussions and late deterioration of brain function. “One of the last school teachers I saw was struck in the head by a disturbed child.”

Bair says although they are uncommon, he has come across concussions in the airline industry.

For instance, a worker standing up or crawling under an airplane can strike his head; motor vehicle accidents involving fuel trucks, drivers and baggage carts can similarly lead to a head injury.

Testing Trauma The Sport Concussion Assessment Tool 2 (SCAT2) is a standardized method of evaluating athletes aged 10 or older for concussion. While the test can be helpful for interpreting post-injury test scores, it is not — on its own — a diagnosis of a concussion or determination of an injured athlete’s recovery or return-to-play status, both of which can only be made by a medical professional who has experience in the treatment of sports concussion.

In addition to an evaluation of symptoms, the test includes a cognitive assessment of the patient’s orientation (such as the current day, month and year), immediate memory and concentration (repeating a list of words or numbers), and balance

and co-ordination tests.

The tool also offers a six point return-to-play guideline for athletes who suffered an injury. The guideline prescribes at least 24 hours between each of the following stages and requires the athlete to go back to the first stage if symptoms recur: 1. Rest until asymptomatic (physical and mental); 2. Light aerobic exercise (like stationary cycling); 3. Sport-specific exercise; 4. Non-contact training drills (start light resistance training); 5.

Full contact training following medical clearance; and 6. Return to competition (game play).

“On the athletic field, collisions and contact is expected in many sports,” he says. In an industrial setting, “concussions do happen, just not as often.”

Ted Bergeron, a personal injury lawyer with Bergeron Clifford LLP in Kingston, Ontario, says brain injuries are synergistic in that they feed on each other to amplify the effect. “One brain injury plus a second brain injury doesn’t equal a total of two brain injuries,” he says, suggesting that a person who had a prior brain injury is predisposed to an adverse reaction in a second trauma.

“We are now pretty confident that repeated concussions cause brain degeneration,” Dr. Tator adds.

But Lucie Pelland, a professor at the School of Rehabilitation Therapy at Queen’s University in Kingston, notes that while there is an association between repetitive impact to the brain and neurodegenerative diseases, many people with these diseases do not have concussions.

One particular challenge is the neurodegenerative disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), caused by the progressive decline in neuron functioning years or decades after exposure to repetitive concussive injuries. The condition, which exhibits symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s and ALS, is diagnosed post-mortem and affects mental status, balance and movement, the study notes.

The suicide of star NFL linebacker Junior Seau, who was 43 years old when he shot himself last May, points to the devastating impact of neurodegenerative brain diseases. An autopsy report from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland last December confirmed that the findings are “consistent with a diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy.”

To date, the Canadian Sports Concussion Project has examined the brains of six retired Canadian Football League players who sustained repeated concussions. While they all showed some form of brain or spinal cord degeneration, only three had

CTE and additional signs of Alzheimer’s or other neurodegenerative disorders.

“We don’t have good imaging tests for any of it, even when it goes on to cause brain degeneration,” Dr. Tator says, noting that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) cannot diagnose concussions. Even newer diagnostic procedures like functional MRI have yet to be proven effective.

“There isn’t a specific test that will identify whether the damage is from trauma or some other process like normal aging or Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease, so that is a problem for us,” he adds.

ONE STEP BACK To better understand the health risks associated with concussions, it is necessary to analyze how the injury is sustained.

Todd Jackson, senior manager of insurance and membership services with Hockey Canada in Ottawa, says concussions can occur from a blow to the head, a body collision resulting in a whiplash effect or even from simply falling down. “We have seen players where they fall down on their back ends and the head goes back and forth and it causes that kind of concussion,” he says.

Jason Mihalik, co-director of the Matthew Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says most sports-related concussions do occur from a direct impact to the head, such as head-to-head, head-to-board, head-to-ice and head-to-post.

“But there is also an impulsive mechanism,” the NATA member notes, describing a scenario in which a football player running down the field is tackled aggressively by another player who stopped his body from moving forward. “The head might still continue to travel in that direction, so you get this kind of whiplash mechanism” that can also cause concussion, he suggests.

“Professional football players are at an increased risk of death from neuro– degen­erative causes.”

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The treatment of a concussion is a workin-progress.

Symptoms of a concussion, which differ in duration and severity depending on the individual, can surface immediately after contact or days later.

“You could take identical twins, subject them to the same brain trauma and they are going to react differently,” Bair notes.

For baseline testing, Dr. Tator recommends use of the Sport Concussion Assessment Tool 2 (SCAT2), which can be conducted by someone trained on its use, such as a physician or an athletic therapist or coach. The tool — a standardized method for evaluating concussion in injured athletes aged 10 and older — includes cognitive and physical evaluations, such as balance and co-ordination examinations.

It also lists 22 symptoms for evaluation on a scale from none to severe. They include headache, pressure in the head, neck pain, nausea, balance problems, sensitivity to light and noise, difficulty concentrating or remembering, confusion and feelings of irritability, sadness and nervousness.

Mihalik says most people recover from their symptoms within seven to 10 days, although some may take longer than others. He cites National Hockey League player Sidney Crosby, who was sidelined for more than a year from the lingering effects of a concussion sustained in 2011.

The jury is still out on the permanent effects of concussions. “When the symptoms clear up, have you recovered from your injury?” Hoshizaki asks.

“That is where a great deal of confusion exists.”

Dr. Tator argues that most people appear to recover from their symptoms without any permanent effects. “But a small percentage doesn’t get over it — even a single concussion — and we don’t know why that is,” he says, suggesting that some people may have a susceptibility to the injury.

Tell-Tale Signs As a sports concussion does not exhibit visual symptoms and some athletes may not experience or report symptoms until hours or days after the injury, knowing the signs of head trauma is important for early detection and remediation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta lists the following signs to watch for, which could arise over the first 24 to 48 hours following an injury: • a headache that gets worse; • drowsiness or inability to be awakened; • inability to recognize people or places; • repeated vomiting; • confusion, irritability or unusual behaviour; • seizures (arms and legs jerk uncontrollably); • weak or numb arms or legs; and • unsteadiness when standing or slurred speech.

Any athlete with a suspected concussion should be removed from play, medically assessed, monitored for deterioration and should not drive a motor vehicle.

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in the grey Repetitive concussions are also linked to longterm health consequences, which include depression, anxiety, dementia and movement disorders, Dr. Tator notes.

Mihalik points out that some research indicates the longer patients remain in bed-rest, the likelier they will have psychological issues. “If you tell an athlete who enjoys working out and training that they can’t, that is a big blow to them,” he says.

“Some of those symptoms they are experiencing might not be concussion symptoms; they might be symptoms related to depression or the psychological outcomes of prolonged absence from teammates or being part of their sport,” Mihalik adds, noting that the clinical research field is still struggling to determine just how much rest is enough and how much is too much.

Even the diagnosis of a concussion may not be an exact science. Besides the lack of a good imaging test for these types of injury, reliance on subjective reporting presents an added challenge. A patient who does not want to disrupt work schedules or jeopardize employment may hide the fact that he had a concussion, Dr. Tator notes.

Bair concurs. “Some want to get back to work very quickly and some want to stay out as long as they can,” he adds.

Baseline tests, which are neurological tests that set a starting point to determine athletes’ pre-injury level of cognitive functioning, usually come in the form of computerized, web-based programs or the SCAT2 test.

A baseline test, which is more practical in the athletic world than in the industrial sector, can be useful in tracking a player’s progress from, say, junior hockey through their professional career and the different teams they play on.

“The disadvantage to it is some people realize what the test is used for, so they make an effort not to perform well so that their post-concussion test will resemble minimal effort pre-concussion,” Bair suggests.

Dr. Tator, who recommends the free SCAT2 tool as a baseline test, points out that “there is a lot of variability from one person to the other.”

Like any injury, the treatment of a concussion is a work-in-progress.

“There is really nothing that is scientifically proven to reduce the symptoms of concussion,” he says. Such injuries are often managed by rest and a gradual return to the sport or workplace.

Mihalik calls rest “the cornerstone of concussion management,” adding that medications can alleviate some of the symptoms. However, he points out that rehabilitation is not part of the current medical treatment for concussion. “There is no drug for concussion and likewise, there is no rehab for concussion,” he notes.

CONSTRUCTIVE MEASURES That said, there are things that can be done to prevent concussions from occurring in the first place.

Hockey Canada’s Todd Jackson says his organization lists the following preventive measures: • Skill development: impart basic skills, such as how to skate and where not to stand; • Culture of respect: players should show respect for themselves and others in the game, including coaches and players’ parents; • Rules and enforcement: observe the rules of the game and obey the officials as they enforce these rules. For example, Hockey Canada introduced a no head contact rule in 2011 that forbids players to intentionally or accidentally touch the head without getting a penalty; and, • Proper equipment: donning the right protective gear, such as helmets, can protect the head from serious injuries and skull fractures, but not concussions.

Hoshizaki is of the mind that managing play on the field or on the ice is most effective in reducing the potential for trauma among professional players. Providing educational sessions to coaches and trainers on trauma risks to the head also helps. “Having coaches understand that as you have these sorts of aggressive practices, you create a higher risk of injury to the athletes,” he adds.

Jackson stresses that coaches and trainers should ensure that a player has fully recovered before returning to play, as sustaining a second concussion before recovering from the first trauma can cause prolonged problems.

Mihalik recommends controlling head contact during practice in sports like football or hockey and reducing tackling in drills to minimize the chances for injuries. “There are ways in which coaches and athletes can change the style of their practice without eliminating the technical skill improvement that is required to perform well and compete, but that protects the athlete from unnecessary impacts,” he offers. in or out Like any employee, professional athletes who become injured come under workers’ legislation coverage in the United States, but not in Canada where specific industries are excluded from workers’ compensation acts.

For example, Section 3(f) of Nova Scotia’s Workers’ Compensation General Regulations, made under Section 184 of the Workers’ Compensation Act, states that “work upon golf courses, tennis grounds, grounds used for open air sports, games or athletics when performed by workers of the owner or occupier” are excluded from coverage.

In Prince Edward Island, the workers’ compensation act is not extended to sports professionals, sports instructors, players and coaches.

Out west in British Columbia, “the exemption from coverage for professional sports competitors or athletes does not apply to non-competing workers of a sports team such as coaches, management, trainers or other support staff. So they would be covered by WorkSafeBC,” says agency spokesperson Megan Johnston, adding that professional sports competitors cannot purchase optional coverage.

Bergeron suggests that there is an assumption of risk for every activity involved in a contact sport. During the NHL lockout, players like Sidney Crosby would not play overseas in other professional leagues because the premiums for insurance coverage to secure their future earnings would be so cost-prohibitive, he suggests.

However, the fact that sports participants in Canada are not necessarily covered by workers’ compensation does not mean there are no legal responsibilities. Bergeron says he can envision several training scenarios where a player becomes injured as a result of deficiencies in equipment, trainers or the work process.

Consider a trainer who made a player run up and down stairs in a stadium which collapsed, or equipment that was not properly tightened or maintained falling onto somebody. “Under the principle of vicarious responsibility, the employer, the owner of the team, is going to be responsible for that trainer’s actions,” Bergeron cautions.

For example, a hockey player who was hit on the ice by an opponent demonstrating callous disregard for his actions “can still be negligent and still be covered under the league’s insurance policy,” Bergeron adds.

Regardless of whether a person suffers a concussion while playing professional sports or as a result of performing other work duties, our understanding of concussion injuries has come a long way since the time when they were defined as involving a loss of consciousness.

Dr. Tator says an estimated 95 per cent of concussions occur without losing consciousness.

“When I first started, the standard of care was a player could return to activity if they didn’t have a headache. We know now that that’s so wrong,” Bair says. “We didn’t know better at the time.”

Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada

Jason Contant is managing editor of

ohs canada.

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Automotive PlasticS

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Deadly Mimicry

By Sabrina Nanji The women working in the heart of the automotive district in southern Ontario are unlike any other autoworkers in the world.

Their plants in Windsor, which manufacture the majority of cars in the country, hire an exceptionally high number of women. Although the workforce is largely represented by the fairer sex, health concerns unique to these autoworkers have previously flown under the radar.

In November of 2012, a groundbreaking study linked a heightened risk of breast cancer with the automotive plastics industry, shedding light on what many of these women say they only discussed in hushed tones and behind closed doors — until now.

dismal findings The six-year study, spanning from 2002 through 2008, looked at 1,006 women with breast cancer and 1,146 women without the disease in Essex and Kent counties in southern Ontario, where there is an extensive base of manufacturing and agriculture industries.

Jobs classified as highly exposed to cancer-causing substances and endocrine-disrupting chemicals include automotive plastics, agriculture, food canning, metalworking, bars and the gambling industry.

Findings reveal a statistically significant association between breast cancer risk and work in high-risk jobs. Women employed for 10 years in these occupational groups were found to have approximately 42 per cent higher risk of developing breast cancer — the most common form of cancer diagnosed in women, the study notes.

“Why do essentially healthy women develop this disease? It is really important to look at the most highly exposed population, because they usually are the ones that can indicate potential associations,” says James Brophy, one of two lead authors of the study and an adjunct professor at the University of Windsor.

While previous research has hinted a connection between these chemicals and certain types of cancer, this study claims to be the first to link breast cancer risk with occupational hazards.

And the findings are disconcerting: breast cancer risk increased more than two-fold among women employed in the automotive plastics and food canning industries. That number rose almost five-fold for those who were pre-menopausal. Female workers in the farming sector have a 36 per cent higher risk of breast cancer, with several pesticides being fingered as mammary carcinogens.

Those in metalworking were found to have a whopping 73 per cent heightened risk as a result of exposure to a variety of potentially hazardous metals and chemicals used in tooling, foundries and metal parts manufacturing. Women who hold jobs in bars, casinos or racetracks demonstrate a two-fold risk of breast cancer. This is likely due in part to second hand smoke and night-shift work, which has previously been found to affect the endocrine system.

As cancer develops in different stages, the timing of exposure plays a key role in the growth of hormones in a woman’s breast tissue. In general, a woman is increasingly more vulnerable to hormone-mimicking agents the younger she is, the study adds.

According to information from the Breast Cancer Fund in San Francisco, phthalates are a group of endocrine-disrupting chemicals used to render plastics soft and flexible. It can be absorbed by the body through the skin, ingestion, inhalation or medical injection procedures and is found in polyvinyl chloride — commonly known as PVC — which is used

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to make a wide range of products. They include toys, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, baby bottles, building materials and automobiles. dawn of knowledge Sandy Knight, who has worked in the automotive plastics industry for 20 years, personifies the cold statistics. In 2001, Knight, who was the health and safety representative at her factory in Windsor, was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to undergo a mastectomy to have her lymph nodes removed.

“When I was diagnosed, it was a disbelief,” Knight recalls. “In the back of my mind, I always thought it might have something to do with the plastics,” Knight says.

She began to see the light after reading up on carcinogenic chemicals and the effect they have on the body. “I may not believe it 100 per cent caused the cancer, but I believe it contributed.”

In the study, most plastics manufacturing jobs held by women involved injection moulding. The process requires handling molten mixtures, such as resins and monomers, and forming them into defined shapes. The resulting vapour or mist released into the air can put anyone in the area at an elevated risk of inhalation and exposure — a hazard that is amplified by physical contact.

Emissions are created when pigments, dyes, flame-retardants, plasticizers and ultraviolet protectors are used during the processing of plastic. Overheating of plastic materials is another common root of polymer fumes, smoke and gases. By processing such materials, resins are forced through plastic presses at extremely hot temperatures, Brophy explains in a forthcoming publication.

“Our occupational standards are completely inadequate. Most of them haven’t been altered for 40 years and not a single one of them accounts for the ability of a synthetic chemical to mimic hormones,” Brophy contends. He cites the “complete breakdown in engineering controls” observed in some plants in Windsor. “We couldn’t find, with one exception, any of the plastics plants that had any local ventilation on these machines, even though these women are being

“I always thought it might have something to do with the plastics,” Knight says. exposed on a daily basis to what they refer to — and which we agree — [as] a toxic soup.”

It is on the floor of automotive plastics plants where workers find themselves exposed to this toxic soup of chemicals, comprising solvents, phthalates, styrene and bisphenol A (BPA), which was banned in 2010 in Canada for the manufacturing of baby bottles.

In particular, three types of plastics have been found to leach toxic chemicals when heated, worn out or put under pressure: polycarbonate (which leaches BPA); polystyrene (which leaches styrene); and PVC (which leaches phthalates), notes information from the Breast Cancer Fund.

Vinyl chloride, which is formed in the making of PVC and one of the first chemicals to be designated as a known human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, has also been previously linked to an increased mortality rate from breast cancer among those who manufacture the material.

On a day-to-day basis, poor ventilation and cleanup processes are likely suspects in the health repercussions reported by workers. Women who participated in the study recalled excess globs of steaming, smelly plastic oozing on to the floor and complained about poor ventilation systems. Knight says she remembers seeing her fellow female co-workers and friends suffer from nosebleeds, headaches, dizziness — even extreme instances of miscarriages and leukemia.

But female employees, especially those in the automotive sector in Windsor, remain tight-lipped, fearing for their jobs or reprisals from their bosses if they raise their concerns.

Gina DeSantis, who works in an automotive plant in Windsor, says most women residing in the area make a living in these plants. Like her mother, she got a job at the automotive factory, with DeSantis’ daughter following in their footsteps. Three generations of watching fellow female co-workers becoming ill did not stop DeSantis from going to work each day — it is simply a way of life.

“Workers are nervous about this,” suggests Jeanne Rizzo, president of the Breast Cancer Fund. “They don’t want to be in a situation that if they complain too much and if it is too costly to meet the health demands, then they will move the plants. So they are a lower income group of people that are, really, pretty much stuck.”

DEFINING LIMITS In order to protect workers, legislative regulations dictate the appropriate Threshold Limit Value (TLV) that each workplace must adhere to. Bob Whiting, senior project manager at the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety in Hamilton, Ontario, points out that these harmful substances are not toxic

in the conventional sense.

“Normally when you have a TLV, you are looking for a prevention, for finding out what levels cause health effects and then making sure you are way below that,” Whiting explains, noting that TLVs are established when there is a proven or observable acute health effect. “But if you are not aware of the health affects, then what levels do you control?”

Further complicating the matter is the fact that the evidence presented in the Windsor study covers relatively new territory: only three prior related studies have probed the connection between breast cancer risk and exposure to endocrine-disruptors — one of which examined the relationship between hormone-mimicking chemicals and animals.

“You rarely hear of women workers being studied and whether there is a gender bias out there or not, occupational exposure studies on women are few and far between,” argues Sari Sairanen, the health, safe-

in hindsight While more definitive research is needed to bolster our understanding of occupational exposure risks on the incidence of breast cancer, studies conducted in recent years may shed some light.

A study, Exposure to Phthalates and Breast Cancer Risk in Northern Mexico, released in 2010, indicates that exposure to phthalates can lead to an increased risk of breast cancer in women. The study assessed the urinary concentrations of nine phthalate metabolites and breast cancer incidence among 233 women with breast cancer and 221 healthy women in northern Mexico.

After adjusting for breast cancer risk factors, results indicate that phthalate metabolites were detected in at least 82 per cent of women. The geometric mean concentrations of monoethyl phthalate were found to be higher in study subjects with breast cancer than those in the control group.

This led to the conclusion that monoethyl phthalate urinary concentrations were positively associated with breast cancer — an association that became stronger for pre-menopausal women.

Another study out of France in 2011 linked occupational exposures to chemicals, solvents and non-metallic mineral products to a high risk of breast cancer. Findings were based on data derived from 1,230 breast cancer cases and 1,315 population controls with detailed information on lifetime work history.

Women employed in the manufacture of chemicals and non-metallic mineral products have a higher incidence of breast cancer, while the risk was decreased among women in agriculture. Results suggest a possible role of occupational exposures in breast cancer, including night-shift work, solvents and endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

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ty and environment director of the Canadian Auto Workers union in Toronto.

Although exposure levels are standardized and regulated in safety codes, the problem is compounded when these substances are combined. “What makes it very difficult is the synergies of chemicals that workers are exposed to. We have exposure limits on single chemicals, but not when they are in unison,” Sairanen contends. “How do you control your exposure to these hazards when the Threshold Limit Value tells you that you are within the norms, but then you have five other chemicals that you are exposed to?”

Exposure to combinations of chemicals can occur partly because many workers have multiple job responsibilities. Drilling, grinding, sanding and buffing can produce dust, while painting or gluing products can take place in a spray booth with poor ventilation.

As breast cancer can take years — sometimes decades — to develop, the study suggests that health and safety standards (or lack thereof) in factories during the 1970s or 1980s may be a contributing factor to female employees who are now showing symptoms of, or are being diagnosed with breast cancer.

Take as an example the Pontiac Fiero, a sports car made almost entirely out of plastic in the mid- to late’80s. “That was a plastic vehicle. The compound, the glues that were used were cancer-inducing and no matter what we did, we could not get enough air quality in a plant to prevent this concentration of those chemicals,” says Steve Rodgers, president of the Toronto-based Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, which represents 90 per cent of independent parts producers in the country. “And consequently, plastic body vehicles died.”

While Rodgers acknowledges that the Windsor study, which establishes a correlation between plastics and endocrine-disruptors, has some clout, the majority of employers have indicated that researchers need to take a closer look at the problem before any definitive conclusions can be drawn.

Kathryn St. John, senior director of communications at the American Chemistry Council in Washington, D.C., points out that the study only examines occupations, rather than exposure levels, to substanc-

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es themselves. She cites a slew of outlying factors — family history, lifestyle and age — that must be considered before raising alarm bells.

“The potential carcinogenic properties of chemicals and the ability of some agents to affect the endocrine system are all subjects of intense research and testing. Most evidence is mixed and does not indicate any clear breast cancer-causing agents that would operate in humans at exposure levels that they experience in the environment or workplace,” St. John says in a statement.

However, Rizzo counters that the study authors did take those factors into account. By enlisting almost the same number of women — both with and without breast cancer — and tracking the details of their personal and work lives, study authors were able to control for such variables.

“The thing that was consistent was the work history in automotive plastics,” Rizzo notes. making progress Perhaps the most vital change to mitigate the dangers associated with exposure to potentially harmful atmospheres is ventilation.

Rodgers says changing out the air in the facility is vital to maintaining clean air inside the factory, which in turn alters the volume of air in the plant. He estimates that many facilities go through this process 10 or 12 times every hour, on the hour.

As well, equipment must comply with the latest safety measures. Rodgers cites the newer models of shot sleeves, used in the injection moulding process to exert pressure on molten plastic in a cylindrical tube to form the material, are made with better controls and more effective seals. This ensures that the plastic is melted within a confined, controlled space and keep workers from being exposed to excess muck spurting out when opening the mould.

There is also a difference between the plastic manufactured today from those a generation ago. The make-up of plastics contributes to potentially hazardous fumes eking out of exhaust pipes. What goes in, comes out much worse.

“If you have high sulphur fuel going in, you are going to have to have more contaminants coming out,” Rodgers says. If more attention is paid to the purity of resins, that will contribute to a cleaner atmosphere.

Personal protective equipment is usually the last line of defense as they tend to be uncomfortable for machine operators, he adds.

Nadia Collins, who works as the workers’ compensation representative for her local union and financial secretary with the Ford Motor Company plant in Oakville, Ontario, says protective gear for women was a luxury back when she started working for an automotive company 29 years ago.

“We have exposure limits on single chemicals, but not when they are in unison.”

“Simple equipment, such as gloves for women, was a novelty. We had to take the gloves home, wash them, shrink them in the dryer to fit our bodies,” Collins recounts, adding that safety measures have since improved by leaps and bounds.

For instance, the past practice of dumping excess molten plastic from injection moulding machines onto the floor where it might lay for up to an hour, is now safely transferred into covered barrels.

Just as safety codes have only come up to par in recent decades, it could take some time for workers’ compensation boards to catch up with advances in knowledge. Collins says the recent study opens up the possibility of compensation, although establishing breast cancer as an occupational illness can prove challenging, given its long latency.

“The legislation says that in order to be entitled to benefits for a work-related injury, it must be shown that it [happened] in the course of employment, not at the course of employment,” Collins notes.

Most workers’ compensation boards in Canada — with the exception of Manitoba — have yet to rec-

ognize breast cancer as an occupational disease. In 2011, the prairie province included breast, prostate and skin cancer into the list of presumptive cancers, although it applies only to firefighters employed by the Office of the Fire Commissioner.

For industry stakeholders and employees, the study is only the first step towards understanding the link between the most common form of cancer in females and their workplaces. But for women like Knight, who have spent decades working in automotive plastics plants and are just beginning to deal with the health effects of what is believed to be caused by occupational exposure, the study raises questions that might not even have been asked.

“To me, there has got to be a link,” Knight opines.

“Everybody has got to get involved and stop using us as a canary in the mine. I went to work healthy at 19; I should have left there healthy.”

Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada

Sabrina Nanji is editorial assistant of canadian occupa-

tional health and safety news.

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Institutional Kitchens

What’ s Cooking?

By William M. Glenn

If you can’t stand the heat, the razor-sharp knives, the slippery floors, the scalds and burns, the long hours, the caustic cleansers or the vermin hiding in the pantry — is it time to get out of the kitchen?

L

ora Kirk, chef de cuisine at Toronto’s critically-acclaimed Ruby Watchco restaurant, is sporting a fresh — and very angry looking — scab on her left wrist. Three days earlier, while transferring a pan of spitting-hot broccoli purée into a larger pot, a large glob of steaming sauce burped out and flowed down her arm.

“Without thinking, I immediately wiped the purée away and, along with it, a loonie-sized roll of my own skin,” says chef Kirk. “If I had run my hand under cold water, I might have escaped with a little blister. But now, I will have a brand new scar.”

With the dining room full and a kitchen staff of four working hard to keep up, chef Kirk slapped on a Band-aid, wrapped her wrist with gauze and finished the service. Like an estimated nine out of 10 accidents in professional kitchens, chef Kirk did not take any time off, did not submit a workers’ compensation claim and worked through the discomfort.

“Everybody has a different pain threshold,” she says. “I kept cooking, but I certainly wouldn’t discourage one of my staff from seeking medical attention or taking time off to recover from a slip or a cut or a burn.”

Scratching the Surface In 2011, more than 6,000 workers in professional kitchens across Canada did just that. Provincial and territorial workers’ compensation boards accepted and processed 3,416 claims for time-loss injuries by chefs and cooks, and another 2,603 by kitchen helpers, food counter attendants and back-of-house workers in the food and beverages sector.

According to data compiled by the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada (AWCBC), sprains and strains topped the list at

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28.8 per cent of all time-loss accidents, closely followed by cuts and lacerations (27.2 per cent), burns and scalds (17.8 per cent), bruises and abrasions (8.5 per cent) and a host of other nasty injuries, including fractures, back problems, concussions, insect bites, electric shocks and dermatitis.

And these are only the more severe injuries where a worker has lost time due to a workplace accident or exposure and filed the necessary paperwork with a compensation board. It does not include the myriad of painful burns, cuts and scrapes where a kitchen worker wraps on a bandage and soldiers on.

Although it does not show up in the AWCBC database, many top chefs insist carelessness may be the greatest threat in a cramped, hectic professional kitchen where potential dangers lurk everywhere. Knives may be abandoned on a cutting board or tossed in a soapy sink instead of being replaced in the proper rack. Pot handles can stick out over the edge of the stove top. Treacherous puddles of grease or oil may be smeared across the floor. Crates of produce can jut out into a busy walkway.

Add on to that time pressures, ergonomic issues, hot environments and worker fatigue. Exhaustion erodes good sense and increases the chances of workplace injury. “Human error — people not paying attention to what they are doing — is the biggest hazard in the modern kitchen,” says Ken Marshall, director of operations at Daniel et Daniel, an event-creation and catering firm in Toronto.

“You can have all the policies in place, have all of your staff trained on the proper use of equipment and make sure that everyone is using their personal protective equipment, but if someone is not paying attention to what they are doing, the chances for an injury increase dramatically,” Marshall says.

The catering business faces some special safety challenges. While the majority of the work is done at Daniel et Daniel’s headquarters, much of the cooking and plating is done in someone else’s kitchen. “Our staff has to be aware of the possible hazards around them at all times and that can be difficult if we go into a home or venue we have not been before,” Marshall suggests. “Our personal approach [to occupational safety] starts on a daily basis,” he says. “If someone is seen doing something unsafe, they are immediately stopped and reminded of their training.”

The company also has an active health and safety committee that meets on a regular basis, provides training to all staff, including new hires, and offers annual refresher courses. Finally, Daniel et Daniel works closely with an oh&s consulting firm to make sure that all its policies and training programs are comprehensive and up-to-date.

Despite a company’s best efforts, accidents can still happen. “Last year, we had a worker slip on ice that had gathered at the entrance at one of our walk-in refrigerators,” Marshall recounts.

“He slipped on the way out, fell forward and broke his arm. We have since put daily fridge checks on our equipment checklist to ensure it never happens again.”

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Accepted Workers’ Compensation Claims for Chefs, Cooks and Kitchen Workers, 2011 in Canada Nature of Injury

Number

%

Sprains, strains and tears

1,733

28.8

Cuts, lacerations, open wounds and amputations

1,637

27.2

Burns and scalds

1,073

17.8

Bruises, abrasions and contusions

511

8.5

Fractures

291

4.8

Back problems and hernias

115

1.9

84

1.4

575

9.6

6,019

100

Concussions Other (insect bites, electric shocks, dermatitis, tendonitis, repetitive strain injuries, etc.) or unspecified Total reported injuries

Source: Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada.

cial kitchen get wet, greasy and occasionally icy, and a slippery floor is a dangerous floor. A three-month study of three major food chains in the United States revealed an overall average of 0.44 slips per 40 work hours. While the rate varied greatly among participants, that translates to about one slip, trip or fall every day in an eight-person kitchen.

The research published in the journal, Occupational and Environmental Medicine in April of 2011, showed that wearing certified slip-resistant shoes can reduce the reported numbers of slips and falls by half.

Safety Sense “Our philosophy is that safety is an important part of our business and should be seen as a system of continuous improvement that contributes to the business’s overall success,” says Jill Ramseyer, manager of health and wellness for Tim Hortons in Oakville, Ontario.

And that system starts at the top with the individual franchise owners and managers. Safety is integrated into each of several classes that owners attend as part of the seven-week training program at Tim Hortons University in Oakville or its training centre in Lachine, Quebec.

Ramseyer says participants are instructed on the technical and compliance aspects of safety “but more importantly, they learn the human aspect of safety.” With nearly 100,000 workers in more than 3,300 Tim Hortons restaurants across Canada, employee buy-in is integral to a safety program’s success.

Once they graduate, owners and operators implement the company’s specific health and safety template. This includes policies, procedures and other supporting documentation for 20 core health and safety elements, such as first aid, work-

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place violence, return-to-work and education and training.

“Because our locations are independently owned and operated, we give our franchisees the choice of what program they would ultimately like to use and implement,” Ramseyer adds. “Our program needs to be customized to the specific location. Even though we are all Tim Hortons, there are differences that need to be considered.”

For example, some locations include drive-throughs while others offer larger menus and more seating.

Whether one is working in a neighbourhood diner or part of a multi-national conglomerate, “you have to be on the ball all the time,” cautions chef John Higgins, director of The Chef School at George Brown College in Toronto. “You think it will never happen to me, but every piece of kitchen equipment can be dangerous if you don’t respect it.”

A typical kitchen is a hot, crowded and high-pressure environment. When service starts, employees are often riding a “rollercoaster of emotions” as they struggle to keep up with the orders, tackle new recipes and deal with problems as they arise. Chef Higgins adds that the adrenalin levels can be so high that one may cut or burn oneself and never notice it.

He recounts a personal experience when he was an apprentice chopping parsley in the kitchen of a hotel in Glasgow, Scotland. “I looked down to see blood all over my work station,” chef Higgins recalls. “I turned to the only other person in the room and asked what happened? Met with a blank stare, I realized that I was the one bleeding.”

A trip to the hospital and some eight stitches later, the parsley and the knife were still waiting for the then 16-yearold Higgins, along with a curt “try not to cut off the other hand” taunt from his supervisor.

First Steps First “The kitchen is such a familiar environment,” says Carola Hicks, chief executive officer of Workplace Safety Group in St. Catharines, Ontario. “Everyone has a kitchen in their home.”

Hicks has written extensively on kitchen safety issues and her company provides training to the restaurant industry. But with its human-sized mixers, walk-in fridges and huge mincers capable of grinding up an entire carcass, “the professional kitchen is a workplace and can be just as dangerous as a construction site or the factory floor,” she suggests.

According to the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, the restaurant industry is Canada’s fourth-largest employer with 1.1 million workers, representing 6.5 per cent of the country’s workforce. Some 44 per cent of these workers are under 25 years of age — approximately one in five Canadians find their first job in a restaurant or fast food outlet.

The most common occupations are food counter attendants, kitchen helpers and related jobs.

For Hicks, kitchen safety is personal. Her son, like many young Canadian men and women, started his working career in a professional kitchen. “I can’t tell you the number of times 44

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he came home with nicked and bleeding fingers or an aching back from bending over a too-low workstation for hours and hours,” she says.

Then there was the heat stress, the sheer exhaustion and the painful contact dermatitis from working with harsh cleansers, degreasing agents and even exotic spices and peppers. “It is a hard way to earn a living,” Hicks says. It is hard on your body, hard on your family and even harder on your bank account.

“Cooking is a blood, sweat and tears business.”

There is no doubt about it — “cooking is a blood, sweat and tears business,” says chef Samuel Glass, a professor at Centennial College’s School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culture in Toronto. “Cuts are inevitable, kitchens are hot and onions make you cry.”

However, chef Glass believes that 99 per cent of kitchen accidents are preventable. “Just as you need to learn to walk before you can run,” he says, “you need to learn safety, skill and accuracy before speed.”

Before his students are taught how to peel and dice an onion in 30 seconds, they must first learn how to properly hold a knife, where to store it and why it is so important to keep it sharp. “And they learn that if a knife slips from their fingers, don’t try to catch it,” he says. “You can replace a knife, but not a tendon.” That is another good reason why all his students wear safety shoes.

Kitchen safety begins in the classroom and is integrated into each of the college’s practical cooking and food preparation courses. “Each of our professors share their personal experiences — what to do and what not to do — in the kitchen and in the dining room,” chef Glass says.

Students learn about each piece of equipment, how to disassemble and reassemble it, and how to use it safely. They are also given WHMIS training, taught about material safety data sheets and introduced to the various toxic chemicals used in the food and beverage business.

But students get a reality check once they leave school. “We teach best practices,” chef Glass says, but a student may not end up working at a place that embraces those practices. “The more you reinforce best practices, the greater the probability that they will question bad practices in the working world.”

While cooking school graduates may have mastered the basic skills, most lack practical experience. “You have to keep a close eye on them until you are confident they are a good fit,” says restaurateur Ed Ho, who has been in the business since 2006. Ho has welcomed dozens of cooking school interns into his three establishments in Toronto — the Globe Bistro, earth Rosedale and earth Bloor West.

“We encourage new cooks to ask questions, but there is a lot of pride in the kitchen,” Ho offers. An intern or a new hire may be reluctant to admit he or she does not know something or has not used a particular piece of equipment before.

“That is why we work so closely with new staff and take them www.ohscanada.com

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through every station in the kitchen,” he adds.

But sometimes, even the closest supervision fails to prevent an accident. Ho recalls an intern on the first day on the job. The intern, who was assigned the task of cleaning out the deep fryer, took the oil that is approximately 180 degrees Celsius hot “and before anyone had a chance to say ‘hey’ — emptied it straight into a plastic bucket,” Ho says, shaking his head.

“In about 15 seconds, the oil had melted through the plastic and spread all over the kitchen floor. He burned one foot quite badly and was laid up for about a week,” Ho adds.

Just Once Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) understands the difficulties of instilling a safety ethic in new hires.

When the end of the hockey lockout was announced in mid-January, dozens of the company’s part-time cooks and kitchen staff had already found other work. In less than 10 days, MLSE’s executive sous chef Paul Thomas says he had 25 new cooks across three restaurants and catering operations, and another 20 to be trained to work in concession stands at the Air Canada Centre (ACC). “We needed to repeat our ‘welcome aboard’ season startup training session,” he says.

“A simple mistake almost cost him his life.”

This training session introduced new hires to the ACC’s operations and covered basic health and safety rules, such as the right to refuse dangerous work, the right to ask questions and the need to report any injury. “It also gave us an opportunity to refresh the whole staff on the importance of being vig-

ilant,” Thomas adds.

The greatest challenge is to get new hires to appreciate the importance of kitchen safety. “Young staff members sometimes believe it won’t happen to them… that they are immortal in some way,” suggests Chef Thomas. “I like to share real life experiences to try to hammer it into them.”

Before Chef Thomas started working at the ACC, a dishwasher cleaning the restroom in his restaurant unwittingly mixed bleach and toilet bowl cleaner together. The sodium hypochlorite in the bleach reacted immediately and violently with the hydrochloric acid in the cleaner to produce clouds of acrid chlorine gas.

“He got blurry real fast and was unconscious when I reached him,” he says. “I needed to drag him out of the bathroom by his feet. They told me another five minutes and he would have been dead.” The dishwasher spent three days in hospital and was off work for a week. “It scared the heck out of me. A simple mistake almost cost him his life.”

The professional kitchen can be a dangerous workplace and employees have a responsibility to keep their eyes open, work carefully and methodically, and remember their training. Knife safety is key; hygiene and housekeeping are important. So too are proper ergonomics and lifting techniques.

“But first and foremost, we must teach young workers in the food services sector about their [employment] rights,” safety trainer Carola Hicks stresses. “We have to raise their awareness. Teach them it is alright to speak up when they think they might be at risk, when they are too tired to perform their job safely or when they don’t understand how to do something.”

In short, if one cannot stand the heat, the hours or the conditions, don’t quit. Speak up.

Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada

William M. Glenn is associate editor of hazardous substances.

Between the Cracks In 2008, public health staff and researchers from the University of California, Berkley inspected 106 restaurants, both take-out and eat-in, in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

The majority of the kitchens were cramped, stove tops were overcrowded with woks and pans, and supplies spilled out of even smaller storerooms — sometimes even blocking the emergency exits.

But even the hardened public health inspectors could not have expected the occupational safety violations would be so rampant and ingrained. The study, published in Public Health Reports (September-October 2011), found the following contraventions: • 96 per cent of the restaurant workers only used rags to hold hot items and 90 per cent of the cooks did not wear long-sleeve shirts;

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• 8 7 per cent of the restaurants lacked proper storage for knives on counters or walls; • 82 per cent did not have fully stocked first-aid kits (although bandages were available in 70 per cent of the restaurants); • 81 per cent did not have any visible guards for slicing, grinding and food processing machines; • 65 per cent had not posted employment standards or workers’ compensation notifications. Few of these were in Chinese, even though 95 per cent of the workers did not have a good grasp of English; • 62 per cent had wet and greasy floors and 52 per cent lacked anti-slip mats; • 3 7 per cent lacked adequate ventilation; and 8 per cent did not provide adequate lighting.

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6900 AIRPORT ROAD, MISSISSAUGA, ONTARIO

PartnersinPreventionConference.com

The Partners in Prevention Trade Show More than 400 exhibit booths with an extensive range of products and services.

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trade shows

under one roof!

C anadian Environmental Conference and Trade Show returns in 2013, located in Hall 1

The Safety Factor Quiz Show Come on down! You might be the next contestent on “The Safety Factor Quiz Show”. A hosted audience response event that will test your health and safety knowledge in a fun and informative way. Held twice daily on the trade show floor, Partners in Prevention gets YOU in the game!

Healthy Living Centre The Healthy Living Centre offers interactive, educational demonstrations and presentations to ensure you make the healthiest choices in lifestyle, body and mind and improved quality of life. Don’t forget to check your health by visiting the FREE health check screening area.

Healthy Living Cooking Stage Join renowned chef Rose Reisman and Mood Food’s Patricia Muzzi as they share their healthy recipes and take you on a delicious journey to help you achieve optimum physical and mental health.

Health & Safety e-Learning Higher retention, self-paced, faster learning – these are only some of the benefits to be gained from taking e-courses. Come to the CCOHS e-Learning Classroom at conference for a personal test drive – at no charge! (Courses valued at $80-$100 each). Plus you get to choose the course you wish to take, (one seating per person please). They are one-hour in duration and participants receive a certificate upon completion. Make a point to check it out and see how easy and valuable e-Learning can be. For more information regarding CCOHS’ e-Learning Programme, please visit www.ccohs.ca/education.

Thanks to our sponsors Platinum

GOLD

silver

BRONZE

premium

Board of Canadian Registered Safety Professionals Conseil Canadien Des Professionels En Sécurité Agréés

Health & Safety Ontario Health & Safety Ontario (HSO) is the result of a bold move to reorganize the independent efforts of 12 health and safety associations into four streamlined organizations in order to better serve more than 236,000 Ontario businesses.

HSO is comprised of:

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Program is preliminary only. Final Show Guide will be published in April.

Professional Development Courses PDC 101 – Sunday, April 28

8:30 am to 4:30 pm 1-day course $309 + HST (price includes breakfast, lunch & breaks)

Conducting Office Ergonomics Assessments Sandra Patterson Ergonomics Specialist, WSPS

PDC 103 – Sunday, April 28

8:30 am to 4:30 pm 1-day course $568.50 + HST (price includes breakfast, lunch & breaks)

Inspecting & Maintaining Steel Storage Racks Chuck Leon Material Handling Specialist, WSPS

PDC 201 – Monday, April 29

8:30 am to 4:30 pm 1-day course $399 + HST (price includes breakfast, lunch & breaks)

The Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals Mark Roehler Ledher Environmental Services Limited

Special Half-Day Courses covering two newly released CSA Standards. Each course is priced at $300 + HST. Take both courses at a combined price of $525 + HST and save $75.

Course Location: The Centre for Health & Safety Innovation (CHSI), 5110 Creekbank Road, Mississauga, Ontario

CSA 001 – Monday, April 29 8:30 am to 12:00 noon Ha l f - day course $300 + HST (price includes Workbook and copy of CSA

PDC 202 – Monday, April 29

Z1003-12/BNQ 9700-803/2012 Standard – Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace- Prevention, Promotion and Guidance to Staged Implementation)

I Can’t Stand the Gossip!

– Mastering the Incivility Challenge

Psychological Health & Safety in the Workplace – Navigating for Successful Implementation (Can/Csa Z1003-12/Bnq 9700-803/2013)

8:30 am to 4:30 pm 1-day course $399 + HST (price includes breakfast, lunch & breaks)

Sharone Bar-David Bar-David Consulting

PDC 203 – Monday, April 29

8:30 am to 4:30 pm 1-day course $199 + HST (price includes breakfast, lunch & breaks)

Nanotechnology Renzo Dalla Via MBA, MA, OHST, CRSP Chair of CSA NanoOHS Technical Committee and SMC-ISO/TC 229 WG3 OHS Kenneth F. Martinez MSEE, CIH Field Studies Team Leader Nanotechnology Research Center, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health CDC Warren Chan Ph.D. Professor of the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto.

Thursday PDC Course Location: The Centre for Health & Safety Innovation (CHSI) 5110 Creekbank Road, Mississauga, Ontario

PDC 301 – Thursday, May 2

8:30 am to 4:30 pm 1-day course $399 + HST (price includes breakfast, lunch & breaks)

Mental Health and Return to Work Nancy Gowan B.H.Sc. (O.T.),O.T.Reg.(Ont.) President, Gowan Consulting

PDC 302 - Thursday, May 2

8:30 am to 12:00 noon Half-day course $99 + HST (price includes breakfast)

Business and Professional Ethics

The implementation of CAN/CSA Z1003-12/BNQ 9700803/2013 – Psychological Health & Safety in the Workplace can help organizations support and continuously improve psychologically healthy and safe work environments for their employees. With a focus on the prevention of hazards and risks associated with mental injury, this New voluntary National Standard draws attention to this important and complex subject and provides comprehensive and systematic guidelines.

CSA 002 – Monday, April 29 1:00 pm to 4:30 pm Ha l f - day course $300 + HST (price includes workbook, audit tool, and copy of the New CSA Z1001.13 Standard – Occupational Health and Safety Training)

Is Your Occupational Health and Safety Training Program Up to Standard?

OHS training is a necessary control for reducing the risk of harm from workplace hazards. To be truly effective OHS training must meet the needs of both the organization and its workers.

This course will provide participants with the opportunity to assess how effective their OHS training program is and how it conforms to CSA Z1001, the NEW Canadian Standard on Occupational Health and Safety Training. This new standard has been developed by CSA Group to help employers identify what training they need and for whom, and to enable them to select appropriate training products and services to meet all their training needs, internally or externally provided.

José Vera P.Eng., MEPP, Standards and Guidelines Development Coordinator www.ohscanada.com

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PARTNERS IN PREVENTION 2013 is pleased to offer three Canadian Society of Safety Engineering (CSSE) Professional Development Courses.

These are two-day courses on Sunday and Monday, April 28-29, 2013.

Location: Conference Centre, The International Centre, 6900 Airport Road, Mississauga.

These courses are three of the six core courses required for the Certified Health and Safety Consultant (CHSC) certification.

Applied Risk Communication

CSSE Members $749.00 plus tax

Project Management for the Health & Safety Professional

Non Members $949.00 plus tax Register directly with CSSE online at www.csse.org or call the CSSE at 416-646-1600.

Measurement and Evaluation in OHS Managed Systems

BCRSP has awarded 1.0 CMP for each of these courses.

Sessions & Workshops T uesday A p r i l 3 0 – 8 : 0 0 a m

The Monumental Shift: An In-Depth Look into the Future of Canada, Technology and the Changing Workforce Leonard Brody - Business and Technology Visionary

Over the last five years, our personal and professional worlds have gone through more dramatic change than any other period in history. The Industrial Revolution was a blip on the radar compared to where we are now. We don’t communicate in the same way and our concept of self and work has entirely changed. Those that do not understand these underpinnings will simply be left behind. Technology and the Web in particular, has left us completely exposed as human beings. We have learned more about ourselves as a species because of the connectivity of the Web than anything known before it. We have entered an era of a true global dialogue. Participation is no longer optional. Not joining the conversation will mean difficulty in hiring and retaining talent. More importantly, it will create massive dissonance between an enterprise and its customers. Do you know the new rules and trends to watch for?

T uesday

10:00 am – 12:00 pm

View from the Top Provocative Conversations with Today’s Leaders

Panel Moderator

Wendy Mesley

Award Winning Broadcast Journalist Presenting Sponsor

Claude Bigras President & CEO, GDI

Greg Nordal President and CEO, Nelson Education

Saajid Khan President and CEO, Compass Group Canada

Jane Riddell Chief Operating Officer GoodLife Fitness Canada

Join us for a lively and provocative discussion featuring a panel of noted CEO’s recognized for organizations’ commitment to health and safety. What is the difference between a CEO who “gets it” and one who doesn’t? Just how much does the CEO influence the culture of an organization? How should the CEO be engaged in health and safety and the organizations’ culture? What are the challenges and consequences of complacency? How does the CEO motivate staff to be engaged? What scares CEO’s about Bill C-45? Is there a health and safety “prize” at the end of the rainbow? You’ll have to attend this session to hear the discussion and the answers.

T U E S D AY 1 0 : 0 0 a m – 1 1 : 0 0 a m Humans – The Strongest Link in the Safety Chain Corrie Pitzer CEO, SafeMap MSD Forum – Benchmarking MSD Hazards in Ontario Workplaces Random Drug Testing in Canada: The New Standard of Due Diligence Dan Demers Operations Manager –

Occ. Health, CannAmm Occupational Testing Services

An Overview of Psychological Health and Safety: An Action Guide for Employers Dr. Merv Gilbert Adjunct Professor, Centre for Applied Research in Mental

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Health and Addictions, British Columbia Childrens Hospital, Gilbert Acton Ltd.

Dr. Dan Bilsker Ph.D, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University and Clinical Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia

The GHS System Is Now Ready For Implementation: Are You? Mark Roehler Principal, LEHDER Environmental Services Ltd. CSA Z462 – Workplace Electrical Safety – Technical Committee Process and Potential Upcoming Changes in 2015 Mike Doherty Health & Safety Manager Powertel Utilities Contractors Limited

Program is preliminary only. Final Show Guide will be published in April.

Navigating Alphabet Soup – Professional Development, Certification and You Ron Durdle, CRSP, Chair of the Board of Canadian Registered Safety Professionals (BCRSP)

Dylan Short CHSC, CRM, Director, Educational Services, Canadian Society of Safety Engineering (CSSE)

Peter Strahlendorf BSc., B.E.S., LL.B., LL.M., S.J.D., CRSP, Associate Professor, School of Occupational & Public Health, Ryerson University Moderator: Yvonne O’Reilly CRSP

Train Your Brain Brian Thwaits Brain Trainer and Author of “The Big Learn: Smart Ways

to Use Your Brain”

T U E S D AY 1 1 : 3 0 a m – 1 2 : 3 0 p m The First 10 Minutes John Collie President and CEO, Rescue 7 Leading a Safety Culture Change Grady Schuett Safety Advisor, Service and Hospitality Safety Association of Saskatchewan

Transforming Driver Behaviour: A Culture Shift Paul Greco Director of Corporate EH&S CanadaSpectra Energy/Union Gas IMS for Industrial Response Mark van der Feyst Firefighter, Woodstock Fire Department Occupational Disease – Prepare Now for MOL Mandatory Awareness Training Dr. Linn Holness M.H.Sc., MD, University of Toronto Hot Topics in OHS Law Jeremy Warning and Rhonda Shirreff Partners, Heenan Blaikie LLP

MSD Forum – Implementing an Ergonomics Program for a Multinational Corporation Don Patten B.HK., CCPE, CRSP, Global Ergonomic Specialist – EHS, Corporate Operations, RIM

Essential Skills through Safety and Health Dr. Johanna Faulk Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters Health & Safety E-Course

Available All Day

Visit the e-learning room and take a one-hour health and safety e-course at no charge. And you get a certificate when you are done.

T U E S D AY 2 : 0 0 p m – 3 : 0 0 p m Complacency: The Silent Killer Larry Wilson Vice President, Electrolab JHSC Worker Members, Leaders in Health & Safety?

Jerry Traer CRSP, Program/Training Specialist Workplace Safety North

The Art of Living Well Rose Reisman Your Workforce is Changing: Keep Productivity Up and Injuries Down Sandra Patterson Ergonomist Workplace Safety & Prevention Services

The Canadian Alliance for Sustainable Health Care (CASHC) Glen Hodgson Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, Conference Board of Canada

Orienting New Workers – Approaches for Successful Onboarding

Derek Suzack CRSP, CHSC, Manager, Health & Safety; Casino Rama Robert Blake Director EHS, Siemens Canada Ltd William Haflidson Sr. Instructional Designer Workplace Safety and Prevention Services, Moderator

I Can’t Believe That Just Happened!

– The Challenge of Abrasive Leaders Sharone Bar-David Bar-David Consulting Workplace Evaluation Tools Used in the Construction Sector CRE-MSD and Hydro One T U E S D AY 3 : 4 5 p m – 5 : 0 0 p m MOL Priorities for 2013 Sophie Dennis Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations Division Ontario Ministry of Labour

Top 10 Mistakes – Investigating Workplace Violence and Harassment Complaints Lauren Bernardi Bernardi HR Law Shiftwork Programs By Design Dhananjai Borwankar Technical Specialist, CCOHS Comparing Office Ergonomics Training Methods: In-person, eLearning, and a Blended High-Engagement Approach Trevor King MHK, CCPE Knowledge Transfer Associate, Institute for Work and Health

Nanotechnology – What You Need To Know, And How It Will Affect Your Work Environment Renzo Dalla Via MBA, MA, OHST, CRSP, Chair of CSA Nano-OHS Technical Committee and SMC-ISO/TC 229 WG3 OHS

Disability Management Audits: Developing a Program that Works Dean Case Public Services Health and Safety Association Leading and Lagging Indicators in Contractor Management Kim Cravens ISN Falls Prevention

Falls are the second largest cause of workplace death in North America.

This session offers an overview of the main causes of fall injuries in various industry sectors across Ontario, how to recognize and evaluate fall hazards, legislation, standards that apply to fall hazards, and the controls.

w ed n esday M a y 1 – 8 : 0 0 a m Overcoming Obstacles to Achieve the Olympic Dream Clara Hughes — Six-Time Olympic Medalist in Summer and Winter Games

She is one of the darlings of Canadian sport. With six Olympic medals to her credit, Clara is the only Canadian to have won medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games. An Officer of the Order of Canada, Clara continues to compete, most recently participating in her last Olympic Games in London, 2012, and also sits on the International Board of Directors of Right to Play. What many of us didn’t know until recently is that she has accomplished all this while battling deep depression. Reflecting upon her own experiences, Hughes will tell you how hard it is to be an elite athlete – pushing herself to the limit, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, and all the while dealing with deep-rooted human emotions and keeping herself in check. www.ohscanada.com

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W E D N E S D AY

9:30 am – 12:00 noon

Ministry of Labour Mock Trial Defence Counsel - Jeremy Warning Partner, Heenan Blaikie LLP Christina Hall Senior Associate, Heenan Blaikie LLP Crown Prosecutor - Jennifer Malabar, Legal Services Branch, Ministry of Labour Justice of the Peace -

Donald Dudar

W E D N E S D AY 9 : 3 0 a m – 1 0 : 3 0 a m Supervisor’s Forum: Managing Health and Safety from a Distance: The Obstacles, Challenges and Opportunities Jeremy Shorthouse National Health, Safety and Environment Manager, Constellation Wines

Jeff Dinyer Director of EHS for Canada Patheon Pharmaceuticals Breakthrough Change in Workplace Occupational Health and Safety Performance Lynda Robson PhD, Associate Scientist, Institute for Work & Health

Keep Your Dock Moving; Loading Dock Safety Chuck Leon CRSP, PMM, Technical Consultant, Workplace Safety and Prevention Services

IVulnerable Workers – Their Health, Safety and Mental Well Being Sandra Bello Technical Specialist, CCOHS Susan Freeman Senior Marketing Specialist, CCOHS Electrical Safety for Non Electrical Workers Andy Kerr Powerline Technician Training and Apprenticeship Consultant, Infrastructure Health and Safety Association

Ergonomic Program Implementation Continuum (EPIC) Derek Morgan Field Consultant Public Services Health and Safety Association

Canada’s Safest Employers Mark Henderson COO and EVP Asset Management PowerStream Steve Loftus GM/Owner, Innovative Automation Inc. Ester DiGiovanni Health, Safety, Environment, Quality & Security Specialist, Atotech Canada

Noise: A Practical Investigative Approach Susan Ing Occupational Hygienist, Workplace Safety and Prevention Services

W E D N E S D AY 1 1 : 0 0 a m – 1 2 : 0 0 noon Developing the Leader Within: Strengthening Professional Relationships and Teams Réjeanne Dupuis Ph.D., & Lana Bullough B.G.S Awareness is Your Best Protection – Security Tips for Prevention Ms. Terry Nusyna CEO of TN Security Intelligence New National Standard on Occupational Hearing Conservation Elizabeth Rankin Project Manager, CSA Electrosmog – What Is It And Can It Hurt Me? Dr. Magda Havas Trent University Health 2.0: How Medicine, Media, Personal Decisions, Behaviours, and Stories are Creating a Whole New Way of Navigating Health Care Dr. Mike Evans Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Public

PSRs – When do you Really Need Them?

Don Caskie Engineering Consultant, Ministry of Labour Michael Wilson B.E.Sc. P.Eng. CRSP Technical Consultant, WSPS Health & Safety E-Course

Available All Day

wednesday 1 2 : 1 5 p m Lunch and Keynote

Included with your conference registration fee

Work-Life Balance – Rhetoric versus Reality Dr. Linda Duxbury Professor, Sprott School of Business at Carleton University

With Canadian corporations losing over $4 billion a year to employee absenteeism, the wellbeing and satisfaction of employees cannot be overlooked. Dr. Linda Duxbury, Canada’s most accomplished researcher, writer and speaker on work-life balance will tell you that work life balance and stress have increased over the past 10 years while organizational outcomes such as job satisfaction and organization commitment have decreased and absence, turnover and job stress have increased. But why? Demographic shifts in the workforce, lack of action by employers, increased workloads, technology, downsizing and rightsizing, employee behaviour and organizational culture are all factors.

Dr. Duxbury will discuss key reasons why and how organizations need to make it easier for employees to balance work and life. She maintains that for there to be significant change organizations need to change their culture and she has some ideas.

W E D N E S D AY 2 : 4 5 p m – 4 : 0 0 p m Strengthening Your Organization’s Proof of Due Diligence Cheryl Edwards Partner, Heenan Blaikie LLP Christina Hall Senior Associate, Heenan Blaikie LLP Supervisor’s Forum: Beyond Teambuilding: How Group Coaching Leads to Sustainable Change Jill Malleck Epiphany at Work Workplace Violence, Domestic Violence – Keeping Workers Safe Liz Sisolak Public Services Health and Safety Association Risk Assessment and Control CSA Z1002 Elizabeth Rankin Project Manager, CSA The Future at Work – Trends & OH&S Implications Dan Lyons MPH, CRSP, CSP, CMIOSH, CHRP, President, SafetyMatters Inc., Cambridge, ON

Increasing Electrical Safety by Leveraging Technology Mark Jorgensen Electrical Safety Authority Stephen Grant Opus2 Mobile Solutions Changing the Game: Achieving and Sustaining Next-Level Human Performance Tim Autrey CEO, Practicing Perfection Institute The Time is Right to Start Tackling Workplace Stress John Oudyk MSc CIH ROH, Occupational Hygienist, Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers

Health, University of Toronto

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Program is preliminary only. Final Show Guide will be published in April.

013 ntion 2 a, ON e v e r P saug rs in Partne entre – Missis #653 Booth tional C Interna – April 1, 2013 May 30

www.ohscanada.com

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exhibitor previews 3M

Blackline GPS Corp. carswell

3M Personal Safety offers a wide array of personal safety solutions for visibility, respiratory, head, face, eye, hearing and fall protection.

3M is passionate about protecting the health and safety of workers in all types of industries. This passion helps drive us to continue to innovate across technologies and industries to help keep your workers safe and protected.

We strive to deliver comfortable, well-designed PPE that offers your workers the most effective protection available.

Do your employees work alone or in isolation? Blackline GPS is a wireless location leader that develops, manufactures, and markets products and services for employee safety monitoring, covert tracking, and consumer applications. Our solutions deliver safety, security, and location awareness through innovative wireless hardware and custom user interfaces, including web, mobile, messaging, and web services. Loner Solutions -- Alert.

Locate. Respond.

Pocket Ontario OH&S Act & Regulations 2013 – Consolidated Edition is a must have resource for every Ontario organization! This best-selling reference gives you the most up-to-date information in a comprehensive, inexpensive format. The 2013 now includes the Mining and Mining Plants Regulation.

Canadian Red Cross

Red Cross training saves lives.

Red Cross offers workplace first aid & CPR training to Canadian Companies, helping them meet their health & safety mandates.

Our courses are recognized by provincial worker safety and insurance boards (with the exception of Quebec). Red Cross also offers a menu of online health and safety courses, including WHMIS, TDG, and Fire Safety. Meet us at booth 505 and enter our draw.

Carswell, a Thomson Reuters business carswell.com thomsonreuters.com

1-877-692-6644

3M.ca/PPESafety

Toll Free (North America): 1 877 869 7212 Elsewhere Call: 403 451 0327 Email: sales@blacklinegps.com

Visit us at Booth #748, 749

Visit us at Booth # 813

Visit us at Booth # 413

Visit us at Booth # 505

dentec

draeger

electrolab

glove guard

Dentec Safety Specialists Inc. specializes in providing safety solutions to protect the worker. Leading brands include SQWINCHER Sports Rehydration Drink, DECADE Repetitive strain injury products, ELK RIVER Fall Protection, ERB head Protection, TASCO Hearing Protection, DueNorth Slip Resistant Traction Aids, US SAFETY Eye, Face and Respiratory Protection products, SPEAKMAN Emergency shower systems, SKEETSAFET insect repellents, SHIELD First Aid and Medical Supplies and A-MED eye/skin rinse products.

Dräger is an international leader in the fields of medical and safety technology. Dräger products protect, support and save lives in mining, fire and emergency services,. The safety division offers products and services for integrated hazard management, including stationary and mobile gas detection systems, respiratory protection equipment, fire training systems, professional diving equipment as well as alcohol and drug detection units.

“Technology for Life” is the guiding philosophy.

dentec@dentecsafety.com www.dentecsafety.com 888-533-6832

Toll free number: 1-877-372-4371 www.draeger.ca

For more information: www.electrolab.ca www.safestart.com or call 800-267-7482

Visit us at www.gloveguard.com

Visit us at Booth # 661

Visit us at Booth # 653

Visit us at Booth # 605

Visit us at Booth # 819

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For over 35 years, we have worked with business and industry across Canada to help create a skilled and safe workforce. Our blended learning solutions include DVD, digital and streaming media, as well as elearning with over 1400 titles available online.

We are also the producer of SAFESTART, a personal safety skills program, which has been used by over 2 million people in 50 countries.

mas@redcross.ca redcross.ca/firstaid

Reduce suit up time while increasing wrist and hand mobility with the Glove Rings® accessory!

Made from a strong, flexible plastic they provide a firm surface for taping that makes a better and more consistent seal. Perfect for hydro-blasting, industrial cleaning, hazmat, raingear, asbestos abatement and much more!

haws

Axion MSR – Medically Superior Response® is the only eyewash system specifically designed to operate in concert with standard healthcare protocols and the natural function of the human eye.

moldex

Industrial Scientific lakeland

Industrial Scientific Corporation, the global leader in Gas Detection as a Service, is proud to introduce the Tango TX1 single gas monitor at the Partners in Prevention Conference 2013. By wearing the Tango, workers will be the safest single gas monitor users in the world. A three-year runtime and patent pending DualSense™ Technology increases worker safety, regardless of bump test frequency, while reducing overall maintenance costs. To learn more, visit www.indsci.com.

Lakeland Protective Wear is the leader in disposable, chemical, HazMat, FR clothing and turnout gear. We have a dedicated sales team to assist end users in determining the correct clothing requirements to match the needs of each unique end user. Please visit us at the PIP 2013 and Brad and Jason will be happy to assist you with your safety clothing needs!!

With over 33 years of innovation (including over 60 patents), Moldex hearing & respiratory protection solutions provide comfort and style for wearers and cost savings for employers: • As no two ear canals are alike, GLIDE earplugs feature a unique curved-stem design. Just push & twist, to find your fit.

• AirWave breathes easier than even a valved disposable respirator. And its SmartStrap series adds an adjustable and hangable cloth strap to its comfort.

Haws Corporation 775.353.8390 www.Hawsco.com www.AxionMSR.com

1-800-DETECTS (338-3287) E-mail: info@indsci.com

www.lakeland.com 1(800)489-9131

Visit us at Booth # 824

Visit us at Booth # 912

Visit us at Booth # 613

Visit us at Booth # 714

MSA

ProTELEC

Showa-Best

UNB

800-421-0668, x550 sales@moldex.com

Do you have employees that work alone?

The GALAXY® GX2 Automated Test System provides simple, intelligent testing and calibration of MSA ALTAIR® Single and Multigas Detectors. Easy-to-use automated test stand offers high performance as either stand-alone unit or integrated portable detector management system, enabling total data access and control of the MSA ALTAIR family Gas Detector fleet.

New MSA Link™ Pro Software for proactive safety management; gas exposure email alerts, direct data input, live filtering, test and exposure queries, collecting and printing reports.

ProTELEC is a proactive, automated communication service designed to check on people working alone to ensure their safety. ProTELEC’s emergency response team responds to any unanswered calls or alarms.

CheckMate does not require the purchase of hardware or software. CheckMate provides an audit trail and helps to meet workplace safety legislation for employees working alone.

ProTELEC CheckMate Sales Inquiries and for more Information 1-866-775-6620 info@protelecalarms.com visit www.msasafety.com Visit us as booth # 513

Visit us at Booth # 313

Showa-Best Glove the inventors of the world’s first disposable nitrile glove, N-DEX®, now bring you the world’s first biodegradable disposable nitrile glove GreeN-DEXTM. Reaching a major breakthrough with ECO BEST TECHNOLOGYTM (EBT).

EBT accelerates the biodegradation of nitrile in biologically active landfills and anaerobic digesters as validated by independent certified laboratories using internationally recognized test methods.

www.showabestglove.com/

Visit us at Booth # 560

The University of New Brunswick is the leader in online OHS education.

Certificate in Occupational Health and Safety Designed to help practitioners develop the broad base of competencies needed to be effective in OHS programs and systems.

CRSP Exam Preparation Designed to help aspiring CRSPs write the Board exam successfully.

Advanced Diploma in Occupational Health and Safety Designed those wishing to advance their careers in OHSManagement and Leadership.!

University of New Brunswick www.unb.ca/cel/unbohs 1 888 259 4222 ohssales@unb.ca

Visit us at Booth # 948

www.ohscanada.com

MARCH 2013

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SPECIAL REPORT

TRAINING

Going Underground

By Greg Burchell

W

ith any change, there is always someone who believes that the old ways are still the best.

So it is with Bob Mack. Despite Ontario’s introduction last year of the trimmed-down common core training that will take potential miners only three days to obtain certification, the vice-president of community, business development and employment services at Northern College of Applied Arts and Technology in Timmins, Ontario, decided that the school will continue offering a full-featured, 12-week training course.

“You get a more skilled, more qualified Teaching individual after the 12 weeks. They have the time to prove themselves and have every miner that practical experience that you can’t get from a shorter program,” Mack says. skills they Starting in 2012, those looking to enter the underground hard rock mining may never industry saw the barrier to entry lowered use could significantly. Before that, participants had to complete 13 modules before they were have its qualified to work underground.

As a result of consultations that began pitfalls. in May of 2011, changes from the ministry’s mining tripartite committee saw the six-to 12-week course being shrunk to around three days. It is now up to employers to identify any additional, specialized training their workers may need and get them certified.

The ministry, along with industry representatives, believe the change was needed to update an antiquated program.

“What used to be common 20 years ago is not common anymore because of the mechanized way we mine,” says Glenn Staskus, provincial mining specialist with the Ministry of Labour. “There are a number of different tasks related to mining that all miners no longer perform.” He cites drilling, blasting and building wooden or mechanical staging as examples.

Staskus adds that the common core training course has been reconfigured so that new employees would be given a more robust orientation and hazard awareness training. They include identification of hazards and ground conditions, how to scale loose rock, a background understanding of the mining operation and emergency preparedness procedures.

CHANGING NEEDS One driver to whittling down the program was the need to respond to changing labour demands and attract more workers to the underground mining industry, which employed more than 16,000 workers in Ontario in 2011.

It is also meant to aid smaller employers and contractors who hire those coming out of high school and post-secondary colleges, offers Steve Ball, manager of talent management 56

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and people development at Vale in Toronto.

“The well-intentioned and well-designed program from almost three decades ago now had not kept pace with the changes in the mining industry,” contends Ball, who is one of the representatives in the mining tripartite committee.

Staskus says the condensed training makes it easier for workers from different industries — such as those in the forestry sector, which has seen a downturn — to move into the mining sector. As many of the skills are transferrable, equipment operators can work in an underground environment as long as they have good hazard awareness and are taught to drive the different machinery.

Richard Paquin, president of Canadian Auto Workers/Mine Mill Local 598 in Sudbury, says he thinks that the abridged program “allows our workers to more quickly be able to work underground.”

While workers are getting less practical, hands-on experience before going underground, Ball does not think that this will pose a safety issue as the modified common core courses have addressed any potential knowledge gaps. He cites the elements in the drilling and blasting module have been built into the first three modules to make sure people have that level of awareness. “If they are asked to guard a blast, they know what their obligations are,” Ball says.

Teaching every miner skills they may never use could have its pitfalls, Ball suggests. As the training certificates are valid for life, a miner could possess a ticket that says they are certified in a practice that they have not done for years.

Mack says the Northern College’s decision to run the 12-week program is driven by industry need. Major mining companies, such as Goldcorp and Richmont, are among the employers who hire from the school’s graduates.

Noting that the six-person classes typically have 30 to 50 applicants, he reports that they have not seen a decline in the number of applicants — many of whom come from the Second Career program of the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, which provides financial support for laidoff workers.

Unlike mining in the past, Ball says miners today tend to specialize in a particular area in the workplace. “Once people get proficient in something and they find a series of tasks they really enjoy, they tend to stay in that work.”

While Northern College has no immediate plans to reduce the course load on its students, Mack does not think that the cutback to the training duration will undermine safety in underground mines. “They are covering what is in the legislation and as long [as] what the mine is doing in terms of legislation and skills development, I don’t see a problem.”

Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada

Greg Burchell is assistant editor of health and safety news.

canadian occupational

safespec.dupont.com

SAFETY GEAR

WELDING HELMETS

Arc of Safety

By Jason Contant

W

hen welders call 3M Canada’s technical assistance line inquiring about the various options of respiratory protection to use with their welding gear, it is not surprising to hear them ask for chemical cartridges to help protect against welding fumes.

“A fume is a particulate, not a gas, and that is where a lot of confusion comes in,” explains Bev Borst, a technical service specialist with 3M in London, Ontario. Since welding metal creates fumes that are tiny solid metal oxide particles formed when metal vapours cool, this requires a particulate filter instead of a chemical one. “I think that is one of the most common misconceptions.”

Although gases such as carbon monStriking a oxide, oxides of nitrogen and ozone may be given off during welding operations, balance they are less common. Gases including acetylene, argon, fluorine, helium and between nitrogen are simple asphyxiants and concentrations can often be controlled comfort and with adequate ventilation. Supplied air respirators are required for protection safety remains against carbon monoxide, carbon dioxa challenge. ide, nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide and phosphine, she adds.

Understanding the contaminants generated during the welding process and their physical state is only some of the factors that need to be considered when selecting welding personal protective equipment (PPE), whether that be welding helmets, gloves or accessories.

Arguably, the most important consideration is the welding helmet. “In environments where electromagnetic energy given off by an arc or flame can injure workers’ eyes, a welding helmet is usually required,” says Katie Twist-Rowlinson, product manager for welding helmets and hard hats with Honeywell Safety Products in Smithfield, Rhode Island.

When choosing a helmet, she adds that considerations such as filter type, shade range, screen size, heat tolerance and compatibility with other PPE must be taken into account.

PASSIVE, ACTIVE There are two types of welding helmets: passive and autodarkening. Passive helmets use a shaded piece of glass or polycarbonate, “but because the filter is so dark, the welder must remove the helmet to prepare the weld and then replace the helmet before welding begins,” Twist-Rowlinson says.

“This can not only slow productivity, but leave the welder at risk when the welding helmet is raised.”

By contrast, an auto-darkening filter (ADF) automatically darkens when the welding arc is struck, but is light enough to see through when not activated. “Because the welder does not 58

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have to continually raise and lower his welding helmet between welds, this type of lens allows for greater productivity and higher-quality welds,” Twist-Rowlinson adds.

Eric Sommers, welding helmet product specialist with Miller Electric Manufacturing Company in Appleton, Wisconsin says he receives many questions from users who transition from a passive to an ADF helmet, wondering if the latter is safer. “In most cases, it is just as safe — if not safer — than a non-auto-darkening helmet, because you are not flipping down your helmet all the time,” he says. “By keeping it down, you are eliminating a lot of the risk of getting stray arcs from people around you or even during that split second that you are striking your arc and nodding down your helmet.”

Borst adds that ADFs can eliminate the potential for neck strain associated with “helmet nodding” when a welder jerks his head down to bring the helmet into position — an act that can lead to repetitive stress injury over time.

Information from Kimberly-Clark Professional cites a study, Productivity Claim for Welders Using an Auto-Darkening Filter (ADF) Helmet Vs a Passive Helmet, released in 2010.

Findings show that welders who use passive helmets spend three per cent of the day “lifting and nodding.” The time-savings generated from not engaging in this head-jerking motion is estimated to increase productivity by 12 minutes per welder each day.

Borst says avoiding this head movement also increases the accuracy of electrode placement during the weld. This, in turn, helps to reduce the need for grinding and rework.

LIGHT, DARK One major benefit of the ADF, which consists of a laminate made of several layers — an ultraviolet (UV) and infrared filter, polarizers, liquid crystal elements and a cover glass — is that it continually blocks out harmful UV radiation regardless of whether or not the filter is on or off, light or dark.

Twist-Rowlinson notes that welding helmets contain a filter lens with a shade number, indicating the intensity of light radiation allowed to pass through the filter lens to a welder’s eyes. The greater the filter shade number, the darker the filter and the less light able to pass through.

Auto-darkening filter helmets offer shades ranging from 9 to 13 to “deliver versatility to meet the demands of most standard welding operations,” she says, adding that workers should reference a shade selection chart from a reputable manufacturer to choose the specialized lens tint appropriate for the job.

The screen size of a welding helmet, which varies from a standard two-by-four-and-a-quarter inch to a 10.2 square inch, is another consideration. “The larger the non-distorted viewing area and the higher the optical rating, the greater the clarity and comfort and thus, the greater the safety and productivity afforded industrial welders,” Twist-Rowlinson offers. “Welders who can see clearly and work at awkward

COMFORT, FIT As with most PPE, fit and comfort are crucial. “The head or cap suspension and adjustability of the welding helmet is key to providing a good fit and comfort,” Blundell says.

Borst is of the mind that helmets specifically designed for welding will focus more on comfort and fit. “If someone goes and buys one of the relatively inexpensive welding helmets,” she says, “they don’t have a lot of adjustability on them.”

Twist-Rowlinson points out that most welding helmets are outfitted with a ratcheting headgear mechanism so that the user can get a personalized fit. If a crown adjustment is also available, she advises users to take the time to adjust the headgear accordingly so that the filter viewing area is in line with the eyes and provides a good range of field of vision.

UP, DOWN Blundell reports that 3M’s new products ofWhile ADF helmets offer distinctive adfer enhanced suspension systems with pads on vantages, the glass of the viewing the front of the headband that self-adjust to area is often heavy and welders match the user’s forehead. Two crown straps “are not going to wear that for that gently saddle the top of the head increases eight hours,” Sommers says. shield stability and distributes the weight over The Canadian Standards a larger area.

Association tests and apThere are also more shield adjustment posproves welding helmets Welding protective gear sibilities, allowing users to precisely match includes gloves (above) the suspension to their head’s shape and conand welding respiratory and helmets, which can trol how far the shield and its lens are from systems based on the Z94.3 be used in high-amperEye and Face Protection Stantheir face. “Extremely stable and firm on the age (middle) and heavy head, the resulting ‘tailored’ fit means welddard. However, it is important to industries (bottom). note that ADFs do not work in seers do not have to over-tighten the headband verely cold temperatures. as is commonly done by users of traditional At the other end of the spectrum, highshields as they struggle to keep their headgear on while heat environments and overhead welding working in unusual positions,” Blundell adds. jobs will require a heavy-duty helmet The new designs also incorporate a lower centre of to withstand the resulting high heat, gravity that hovers just above the user’s ears. sparks and splatter.

This makes the shield’s design more stable “It is important to be sure the weldin the up and down positions and reduces ing helmet is constructed of highthe strain on a welder’s neck. quality, durable materials that amply Users should also consider the compatibildeflect sparks and reduce the risk of burnity of the helmet with other forms of PPE that through for the specific application,” Twistmay be used at the same time, such as respiratory, Rowlinson says. “Lesser quality materials will eye, hearing and head protection. Blundell says some result in burn-through and potential serious injury to the welding helmets also serve as a powered air-purifying welder’s face, neck and ears.” respirator. Otherwise, a welder may be looking at using a With worker safety in mind, Miller Electric introduced its disposable or reusable respirator, which would require aderedesigned Arc Armor Titanium Series last year, featuring an quate room underneath the welding helmet. aluminum heat shield to protect the auto-darkening lenses in With regards to eye and hearing protection worn undermost high-amperage (300+ amp) applications, notes a state- neath the helmet, Twist-Rowlinson recommends low-profile ment from the company. eyewear for the greatest fit and comfort. “Since welding helDesigned with a silver shell to reflect heat and keep both mets are considered a secondary form of protection, safety the helmet and the user cool, the 9400 series also offers a du- eyewear must always be worn under them,” she says, noting rable, shock-absorbing gasket to protect the lens from drop that those working within 10 feet of the welding arc must also impact and a 9.22-square-inch viewing area. be protected by UV- and infrared-filtering safety eyewear.

Sommers says the series is ideal for high-amperage enviFor hearing protection, some ear muffs can be mounted ronments, such as pipe welding where heat shields are neces- on hard hats. Other options include low-profile, behind-thesary. “It is actually designed for when you are welding out- head ear muffs that can fit under helmets or even dual hearing side,” he says, adding that the series also offers a feature called protection, such as ear plugs and ear muffs.

InfoTrack, which keeps a running count of how long a worker HEAD, HANDS has been welding.

“A lot of larger production facilities are trying to optimize When welding helmets are worn with a hard hat, some form weld time,” Sommers explains, noting that machines were of mounting system must be used to attach the face protecpreviously used to track weld time. “But if operators move tion. Considerations include frequency, ease of use, durability, flexibility and compatibility with different products, around, it is kind of hard for them to follow it.”

photos: from top to bottom - Superior Glove Works Ltd., Miller Electric Manufacturing Co., 3M Canada.

angles more easily are more comfortable and productive,” she notes, adding that decreased eye fatigue also enables welders to perform better for a longer period of time.

Stacey Blundell, a technical service specialist at 3M, observes that many new products feature a larger viewing area.

For example, one of 3M’s Speedglas ADF helmets offers a 4.09 by 2.13 inch viewing area.

Of all the different viewing screen options, Borst reports that the larger ADFs are the best sellers. “People want the largest viewing area possible, helping them to improve the quality of their work.” Some helmets have side windows, which increase peripheral vision and offer an optional magnifying (cheater) lens for those requiring additional magnification.

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Complete Package With risks related to radiation, slag, sparks, fumes, oxides and a host of other dangers, welders often need a comprehensive set of personal protective equipment to shield them from head to toe. Below are some options to consider: • A welding helmet, hand shield or goggles which protect against radiation, hot slag, sparks, intense light, irritation and chemical burns; • Respirators to protect the lungs from fumes and oxides; • Fire- or flame-resistant clothing and aprons to protect exposed skin against heat, fires and burns; • Ear muffs and plugs to protect against noise, with fireresistant ear plugs to shield against sparks or splatter that may enter the ear; and • Boots and gloves to protect the feet and hands against electric shock, heat, burns and fires.

Twist-Rowlinson says.

For situations involving high-frequency of use, she recommends looking for attachment systems that are fully adjustable to fit any style of hard hat and have a brim tab design that allows the face shield or welding helmet to fit securely onto the hard hat. For long-term use, attachment components that are pre-installed and permanently fixed onto the hard hat for ease of use is the way to go.

Another piece of PPE that can be used during a welding application is gloves. Depending on the type of welding pro-

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cess performed — whether that be metal inert gas or tungsten inert gas welding — heat, dexterity and flame resistance are all important considerations, says Stacy Thomas, product specialist at Superior Glove Works Ltd. in Acton, Ontario.

For tungsten inert gas welding, she recommends a fine dexterity glove for touch sensitivity, noting that gloves for metal inert gas welding gloves tend to be thicker and heavier, with various linings added for heat protection. She adds that Superior Gloves has pioneered the use of Temperbloc — a layer of silicone-coated Kevlar that resists melting, burning or charring — for high-heat applications, offering strong grip, dexterity and durability properties.

Like other forms of PPE, fashionable gloves that also serve a protective function will prove appealing to consumers. “The same revolution that happened to mechanics’ gloves 10 years ago is happening now in welding gloves — more form-fitting and cooler-looking gloves,” Thomas adds.

Striking a balance between comfort and safety remains a challenge. Sommers says manufacturers strive towards offering welding helmets with a variety of features and the best vision possible at the right weight and price.

Consider Miller Electric’s auto-darkening options, which range in price from just under $100 to more than $400. “There is obviously a reason why we have a wide range, because there is such a wide range of user needs,” he says.

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Jason Contant is managing editor of

ohs canada.

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ERGONOMICS

yoga

Tackling Chronic Pain

By Jason Contant

F

or people who suffer from neck pain, treatments have traditionally included physiotherapy or exercise. But a recent study out of Germany suggests that hatha yoga could be an alternative therapy to treat chronic neck pain.

The study, published in last November’s issue of The Journal of Pain, involved a clinical trial of 77 patients with chronic neck pain. About half of the participants were assigned to do a 10-week Iyengar yoga program with weekly 90-minute classes, while the remaining followed a self-care or exercise program. Results showed that patients in the yoga program had reduced neck pain and felt better in terms of vitality, sleep, vigour and emotional well-being, reports lead study author Dr. Andreas Michalsen, chief “Static physician at the Charité-University Medical Center in Berlin.

“The 10-week yoga classes led to very good muscular and rapid pain relief, and to improvements of work is mobility, function, quality of life and also of psychological well-being,” Dr. Michalsen says. fatiguing He suggests that yoga may be more therapeutic than exercise as it combines the benefits work.” of muscle strengthening and stretching with mental relaxation and breathing.

“I would highly recommend yoga as a primary approach for neck pain and also for low back pain,” he says, noting that similar studies have shown yoga to be effective in treating chronic low back pain.

One study, A Randomized Trial Comparing Yoga, Stretching, and a Self-care Book for Chronic Low Back Pain published in 2011, analyzed data based on 228 adults with chronic low back pain. Of the subjects studied, 92 attended 12 weekly viniyoga-style classes, 91 were assigned to do stretching exercises and the remaining 45 were given a self-care book to read.

Participants in the yoga group reported greater improvement of symptoms and function than the self-care group, but yoga was not more effective than those who attended stretching classes in improving function and reducing chronic low back pain, notes a statement from the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.

MUSCLES, NEURONS While an office worker toiling away in front of a computer is the poster child for a sedentary lifestyle, there are various occupations that require workers to engage in awkward postures at prolonged durations, notes Kathy Kawaja, principal ergonomics consultant at Human Factors North in Toronto.

She notes that there is an increased risk of injury whenever “awkward neck postures exceed what the acceptable limits are for cumulative loading for that area of the body.”

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Kawaja cites the following jobs as examples in which awkward posture and repetitive movement can combine to pose an ergonomic issue: jobs on assembly lines, mechanics and painters who crane their necks, bus operators who constantly flex their neck muscles to check blind spots, and workers who service and build airplanes by using a jig with parts on it.

“A little bit off can have a really cumulative effect on posture and on static muscular work,” Kawaja says. “Static muscular work is fatiguing work and when the fatigue builds up, the tissue tolerance is exceeded and we are open for injury.”

Noting that bending the neck forward or to the side by more than 30 degrees for more than two hours cumulatively in a day is a concern, Kawaja points to a hazard risk assessment checklist from the Occupational Health and Safety Council of Ontario’s Musculoskeletal Disorders Prevention Series for guidance. In toolbox 3B of the guidelines, two other awkward postures are identified: working with the neck rotated more than 45 degrees sideways or forward for more than two hours total per day, and postures that involve bending the neck back or up more than 20 degrees for more than two hours total per day.

MIND, BODY Kimberly Carson, a health educator and yoga therapist at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, says part of the problem with chronic pain is that a sensitization process can occur over time.

“Even if there is no injury in the periphery, the central nervous system begins to act as though there is.” She cites individuals suffering from chronic pain over a decade or two, for whom the physiotherapy approach of strengthening muscles and fixing imbalances only works to a certain degree. “It is like the whole central nervous system has basically created a new baseline.”

In such instances, chronic pain management requires not only a physical, but a neurological restructuring. And this is where yoga can complement physiotherapy, Carson suggests.

She says yoga’s integration of breathing techniques with movement and muscle strengthening is a broader-based approach.

“When you are actually using the integration of breath with movement, there is an effect where it actually quiets the central nervous system,” Carson says, noting that muscles contract when the central nervous system perceives pain or a threat. “So what you want to do is train the muscles to develop strength and flexibility, create those balances but in the context of relaxation.”

Kawaja says the musculoskeletal system is so interrelated with respect to loading that it is common to have neck, shoulder and upper back issues occurring at the same time.

Although the neck can be the origin of a musculoskeletal disorder involving the neck, shoulders and upper back, the

problem can start as a shoulder concern and develop into a neck issue.

Calling the body a “kinetic chain,” Kawaja says the huge trapezius muscle — originating at the base of the neck, branching out to the sides of the shoulders and into a ‘V’ shape down to the lower back — often bears the brunt of stress, awkward postures and static posture loading, along with the scalenes (three pairs of muscles in the lateral neck) and the sternocleidomastoid muscle (a paired muscle in the superficial layers of the anterior portion of the neck).

Traditional physiotherapy helps to restore, maintain and maximize a person’s strength, function, movement and overall well-being through remedies such as physical exercises and massage, notes information from Saskatchewan Physiotherapy Association in Saskatoon. If there is weakness in the scalenes in the neck, for example, Carson suggests that the physiotherapist may strengthen those areas and reduce tension in the sternocleidomastoid muscle or trapezius “where the whole muscular configuration is adding or contributing to the pain process.”

With chronic pain, however, it can be tricky. If the neck muscles are fatigued, Kawaja says they need to be stretched and massaged to relax and loosen the muscle. “But if you have chronic, really, really tight neck muscles, we don’t really want to be strengthening them. We want to be stretching them first to get them settled down and then strengthen them,” she advises.

In the United States, Carson points out that there are ef-

forts within the yoga therapy community to come up with professional standards, such as training requirements and populations that can be safely worked with. She points to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that looks at a multi-regional trial to examine coping skills and yoga-based intervention for opioid-dependent chronic pain patients in the primary care setting.

“That there was that kind of support from the NIH for an integrated medicine approach on this scale speaks strongly to where yoga therapeutics are positioned currently in the medical community,” she argues.

Introducing yoga in the workplace could also lead to health benefits for workers, Dr. Michalsen suggests. He cites stretching exercises involving the shoulder-neck region while seated as an example.

At Toronto’s Institute for Work & Health, a weekly hatha yoga class was created about a decade ago, says Lynda Robson, associate scientist with the institute. After soliciting suggestions for healthy workplace activities from staff, several activities to promote employee wellness were proposed and led by workers over the following year, including lunchtime walks, board games, potlucks, skating and yoga.

Regardless of the type of physical activity one engages in, “always listen to the body’s response,” Carson says. “If something hurts, it is generally not something you pursue.”

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Jason Contant is managing editor of

ohs canada.

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ACCIDENT PREVENTION

compressed gases

Under Pressure BRIDLED SUBSTANCES: Being under pressure at work takes on a whole new meaning when compressed gases are part of the environment.

Regardless of whether that gas is a cryogenic liquid in a laboratory, oxygen used for human respiration in health care settings or propane or acetylene for welding and cutting applications, basic safety practices should be employed to help control hazards in the event of an accidental release.

THREE’S COMPANY: A compressed gas is a gas or mixture of gases at normal room temperature contained under pressure, usually in a cylinder, says information from Health Canada. There are three types of compressed gases: • Liquefied compressed gases can become liquids at normal temperatures when stored in cylinders in a liquidvapour equilibrium, notes a fact sheet from the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) in Hamilton, Ontario. Examples include anhydrous ammonia, chlorine, propane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide.

• Non-liquefied gases, such as oxygen, nitrogen, helium and argon, do not become liquid when compressed at normal temperatures — even at very high pressures.

• Dissolved gases like acetylene, which is chemically very unstable and can explode even at atmospheric pressure, is routinely stored in cylinders at high pressures.

OUT OF CONTROL: There are many hazards associated with compressed gases, which can be released by opening the cylinder valve or through a broken or leaking valve. If an unsecured or uncapped cylinder is knocked over, the valve can break and transform the container into an uncontrolled rocket or pinwheel as high pressure gas escapes, notes information from York University in Toronto.

The pressure of the gas in the cylinder is denominated in units of kilopascals (kPa) or pounds per square inch gauge. Compressed gases have an absolute pressure exceeding 275.8 kPa at 21 degrees Celsius or more than 717 kPa at 54 C. Compressed liquids have an absolute vapour pressure exceeding 275 kPa at 37.8 C, while normal atmospheric pressure is about 101.4 kPa, the information adds.

TYPES OF HAZARDS: Apart from the aforementioned dangers, asphyxiation is the main hazard associated with inert gases, such as helium, argon and nitrogen. Consider that one litre of liquid nitrogen forms 700 litres of nitrogen gas at room temperature, which can quickly reduce oxygen levels below concentrations necessary to support consciousness and life should they escape undetected, notes information from the University of Saskatchewan’s workplace safety and environmental protection unit in Saskatoon.

Many compressed gases are also toxic, raising the possibility of health problems depending on the type of gas, its concentration, mode of contact (through inhalation, eye or skin) and length and route of exposure. Contact with liquefied gases in a liquid form can freeze tissue and result in a burn-like injury. Gases escaping from a cylinder can be very cold and cause severe frostbite, possibly leading to permanent skin damage, Health Canada cautions.

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COMBUSTION RISKS: Fire and explosion hazard is a major risk associated with compressed gases. Flammable gases, such as acetylene, butane, ethylene, hydrogen, methylamine and vinyl chloride can become combustible or explode in the presence of an ignition source if the gas concentration is within the flammable range, the CCOHS says.

For this to occur, the concentration of the gas in air or in contact with an oxidizing gas must be between its lower flammable limit (LFL) and upper flammable limit (UFL).

For example, the LFL of hydrogen gas in air is four per cent and its UFL is 75 per cent at atmospheric pressure and temperature. This means hydrogen can be ignited when its concentration in the air is between four and 75 per cent.

There are many possible ignition sources in workplaces — open flames, sparks and hot surfaces, to name a few.

The auto-ignition temperature of a gas is the minimum temperature at which the gas self-ignites without any obvious ignition sources, the CCOHS says. For example, phosphine’s auto-ignition temperature of 100 C is low enough that it could be ignited by a steam pipe or a lit light bulb.

Compressed gases like silane and diborane are pyrophoric — meaning that they can ignite spontaneously in air.

MOVE WITH CAUTION: When transporting compressed gases, the University of Saskatchewan recommends always using a cart or hand truck designed for this purpose and that the cylinder is secured to the cart with a chain or strap.

After the cylinder has been moved to its designated place, it should be secured in an upright position by a cylinder stand, clamp, chain or cable at a point about two-thirds the height of the cylinder and placed such that the valve handle at the top is easily accessible at all times.

safe, not sorry: Substitution, process changes, ventilation and the use of personal protective equipment are some of the ways to control the dangers of compressed gases. More stable gases with narrower flammable limits can replace highly combustible acetylene as fuel gases for cutting, welding and brazing, York University notes.

In the workplace, many cylinders of the same gas may be used in different areas. Installing fixed pipelines connected to a central gas supply in a safe area can help avoid the hazard of storing many cylinders of compressed gases supplied through flexible hoses. Similarly, ordering cylinders equipped with flow-limiting restrictors can minimize the risk of a process gas line’s sudden failure.

From an engineering perspective, ventilation systems should be designed and built such that hoods, ducts, air cleaners and the fan are made from materials compatible with the gas being used. Explosion-proof and corrosionresistance may be a requirement for some ventilation systems. As well, separate ventilation systems may be needed for certain compressed gases to keep them away from systems exhausting incompatible substances.

On a personal level, wearing protective equipment such as gloves, chemical safety goggles and respirators reduces the chances of skin contact with harmful gases.

SAFETY COMPRESSED: Preventive actions aside, emergency response measures need to be developed so that the correct actions can be taken should an incident occur. Information from Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., a manufacturer of industrial gases and specialty chemicals in Allentown, Pennsylvania, cites the following elements the plan should address: • practise implementing emergency plans, including assigning responsibilities and lines of authority; • make self-contained breathing apparatuses and special protective clothing available for emergencies and provide training in the proper use of these equipment; • provide gas cabinets, eyewashes, emergency showers and fire extinguishers; and • co-ordinate with local hospitals and fire departments by informing them of the gases in use so that they can be prepared with the needed expertise, equipment and medical support. www.ohscanada.com

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PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY

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DuPont Personal Protection many safety hazards – one solution provider

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Search with the most powerful tool from DuPont 1-800-387-9326 www.SafeSpec.com Copyright © 2012 DuPont. All rights reserved. The DuPont Oval Logo, DuPont™, The miracles of science™ and all products denoted with ® or ™ are registered trademarks or trademarks of E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company or its affiliates.

So, what’s on your mind?

March 2013

January/February 2013

Is $1.5 million in compensation to an employee who was bullied at work over the top?

Do you think Canada’s oil and gas sector has a good safety record?

Yes 49.5%

Yes 68%

No 50.5%

No 32%

Total Votes

Total Votes

240

111

Go on — have your say.

Check out www.ohscanada.com to vote in our latest poll.

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TIME OUT

RETRIEVERS RETRIEVED: It has been said that dogs are of themselves — walking up and down the aisles of the train, man’s best friend. The reverse is certainly true for a pair of Labrador retrievers when two RCMP officers put their lives on the line to retrieve the canines that fell through ice while walking along a river in Kitimat, British Columbia, The Canadian Press reported on January 7. One of the dogs was able to pull itself out of the water, but the other was struggling to stay afloat. One of the constables valiantly doffed his jacket and vest for a life preserver and attached a tow rope to his belt before crawling over the ice, while the other officer held on to the rope. The dogs were reunited with their owners.

LOST, NOT FOUND: You never know what you will get

until you get there — that essentially describes the nature of first responders’ work. For two firefighters who responded to a call at a residence in Calgary, the surprise awaiting them was an exotic, half-metre-long serpent. A man who had recently returned from a trip to India was unpacking his luggage when he discovered the slithering souvenir, The Canadian Press reported on January 11. An animal control company was called in to assist the firefighters in their search for the reptile. After hours of search proved futile, the responders set traps around the house, hoping that would help bait and capture the elusive creature. Sweet slumber, baby.

OFF LIMITS: A parking lot is an unlikely place to be consid-

ered private, but a Court of Appeals judge certainly thought so when he ruled that private parking lots are off limits to police looking for drunk drivers. The judge concluded that police had infringed on the liberty and privacy rights of a woman who was stopped in a hotel parking lot in Humboldt, Saskatchewan for a random check in 2009, the Toronto Star reported on January 15. He refuted the Crown’s argument that the driver may have exited the parking lot onto the highway, noting that accepting this argument will mean all drivers can be detained on private property based on the possibility that they may drive onto a highway while impaired. Before law enforcers stick a breathalyzer into a driver’s face, it would serve them well to check the ground where they stand.

FREE WHEELING: This is certainly not a case of four

wheels good, three wheels bad. Despite losing a wheel that fell off an Air Canada Jazz plane after it landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport, none of the 72 passengers on board was injured, The Canadian Press reported on January 20. The plane from North Bay, Ontario was taxiing to the terminal when the right wheel on the nose gear loosened, a spokesperson from Air Canada says. The airport’s emergency vehicles raced to the small propeller plane, but the pilots managed to keep the aircraft in control during the incident.

questionable behaviour: It was one helluva raucous ride for six women from Windsor-Essex, Ontario, who were out to paint the town red. Windsor police were called to the VIA Rail train station to deal with the intoxicated passengers, CBC News reported on January 21. VIA employees alleged that the women were making a spectacle 70

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yelling and screaming when they were cut off from being served alcohol. The six bad girls, who had travelled to Toronto for the weekend to see a stage production, were charged with trespassing and banned from riding VIA trains in future, police report.

GAS ATTACK: Blame it on the gas — not the man who

released it. The United States Social Security Administration has rescinded an official reprimand issued to a federal employee for excessive workplace flatulence. The letter charged the worker with “conduct unbecoming of a federal employee” and for creating “a hostile work environment” with his repeated gas passing, The Huffington Post reported on January 11. It also lists the dates and times when he released the unpleasant odour in his Baltimore office, including launching a trio of attacks in September. A spokesperson from the agency says no further comments would be made on the matter.

Some things are better left to dissipate in thin air.

FIRED UP: A man who staggered into a Minneapolis bar in

the wee hours of a Sunday morning was not inebriated and asking for a shot, but was shot. The 22-year-old male, who was injured about a block away from the bar, had stumbled into the right place at the right time as the bar was filled with nurses chilling out at the watering hole, The Huffington Post reported on January 7. In a move characteristic of the nurses’ occupational creativity, they used the man’s belt to make a tourniquet. They managed to halt the bleeding until paramedics arrived, using bar towels to keep pressure on the wound. The nurses were later tested to ensure that they had not been exposed to any disease while tending to an injured person in a recreational setting.

NUTS ABOUT CHOCOLATE: It was a heavy-handed act on the part of an employer, who fired a worker for being heavy-handed when sprinkling chocolate toppings. A McDonalds employee in the United Kingdom was fired for misconduct after giving her co-worker’s ice-cream an extra shake of chocolate topping, The Telegraph reported on December 18. The worker, who brought her case to an employment tribunal after her bosses accused her of giving away food without payment, was awarded the equivalent of almost C$5,000 after her unfair dismissal claim was settled out of court. A classic case of penny wise, pound foolish.

CLOSE CALL: Ignorance is certainly not blissful in this case involving a man in Cyprus, who unwittingly triggered a major security scare when he walked into a police station carrying a bomb he found on his driveway. The man decided to have the package checked out by educated eyes, Reuters reported on January 16. Alarm bells went off when police realized the package was a makeshift bomb that had failed to go off, resulting in the evacuation of the complex. Explosive experts were able to defuse the high-intensity explosive and put the scare to rest.

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Miller TurboLite™ Personal Fall Limiter The cost-effective and competitive pricing of the Miller TurboLite Personal Fall Limiter will make shock-absorbing lanyards obsolete on the job site.

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3M helps provide safety solutions and personal protective equipment (PPE) to those responsible for the safety and security of workers at height with reliable fall arrest equipment.

If you are using a fall arrest system as a protective piece of equipment it is essential that the user is wearing it correctly and learns how to maintain and inspect the equipment.

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