OHS Canada January/February 2012

C A N A D A’ S O C C U PAT I O N A L H E A LT H & S A F E T Y M A G A Z I N E J A N U A RY/FEBRUARY 2012

C A N A D A

Stripping away threats and violence

Red tide

Quick action on bleeding is key

safe bet

Miner certification a first

dust up Putting a lid on wood dust

good stretch Making moves to combat injury

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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

B l o o d loss

CC AA NN A AD DA A

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In the Flow

J A N U A RY / F E B R U A RY 2 012 Vo l u m e 2 8 , N u m b e r 1

There are plenty of injuries that can make workers bleed — inside and outside.

Appropriate response to lacerations, amputations and trauma is critical.

By Peter Kenter

Se x W ork

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Rough Trade The world’s oldest profession could see a health and safety restart if an Ontario ruling that struck down federal provisions hindering precautions stays down.

By Greg Burchell

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m i n e r certification

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Under Current

Canada’s mining sector has scored a first with a new national certification program that could enhance safety by recognizing both miners’ skills and work experience.

By Jean Lian

departments 42

Ac c i d e nt Prevention

Inside Out

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Good indoor air quality that keeps occupants healthy, happy and comfortable demands looking at issues from maintenance to scents, fungi and mould.

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Oc c u pational Hygiene

Suspended Concern The move by some provinces to have industry track wood dust exposure has raised concerns over the potential impact on worker health.

By Danny Kucharsky

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e r g o n omics

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Stretching the Truth A combination of sound ergonomics and stretches suited for the task at hand can inject healthy movement into the workday and keep static postures at bay.

in this issue

By Greg Burchell

E ditoria l

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LAW FILE To Test or Not to Test

letters

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O H &S UP DATE

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Medical tests are a routine part of the return-to-work process. Whatever the test, though, it must meet the tests of safety, privacy and reasonableness.

Foul Play

Radiation exposures under-reported; British Columbia expands compensable stress; Alberta identifies dearth of fall protection; Saskatchewan judge rules buckling up not always safest move; Ontario owner fined for ignoring orders; charges follow death of young worker in New Brunswick; and more.

Dis patc hes

Cold comfort; tattoo taboo; trucker safety within a hair; oh&s goes social; and more.

Profess i o n a l d i r e c t ory product sh owc a s e Ad I ndex /Rea d e r S e rv i c e I n f o

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By Donalee Moulton

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s a f e t y gear

Warming Trend Keeping warm while working outdoors requires head-to-toe protection and consideration of how protective gear will perform when battling the elements.

By Jason Contant

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Ti m e Ou t

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54 56 57

Sea weed; show and tell; sign language; par-ty crasher; bullying billy; and more.

The door to safety swings on the hinges of common sense.

– anonymous

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

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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

EDITORIAL

C A N A D A

Vol. 28, No. 1 January/February 2012

Foul Play P

lay ball: the phrase conjures images of a relaxing summer’s day warmed by the gentle excitement that precedes a game about to begin. Do not play ball — made less inviting when directed at child’s play — seems foul, indeed.

Fun was out; safety was in — at least that seemed to be the thinking behind a chilly November move by officials at a Toronto elementary school to take the bounce out of recess by banning the dreaded orbs. A few incidents involving staff and students being hit by these wayward, propelled or otherwise airborne rounded menaces was enough to ground soccer balls, footballs, volleyballs and tennis balls; Nerf and sponge balls were handed a playful reprieve.

But within weeks, balls of all sorts had rebounded nicely when the resulting kerfuffle and backlash prompted the embargo to fall. Exactly how this reversal of fortune rectified the safety concern precipitating the ban was not entirely clear.

Safety on or off the job matters, but some decisions transform concerns into Chicken Littles that make potential allies want to bury their own heads in the sand and forfeit support, perhaps when it will be needed most.

The flap gained public notice in November, the beginning of a recent silly season declared open by several head-shaking moves — both work-related and not.

Consider this bit of idiocy from Kansas. When a couple held hostage in their home filed a $75,000 lawsuit against their kidnapper for emotional distress, the captor counter sued for breach of contract. He alleges that he informed the couple he was fleeing from the authorities, he feared for his life and he would pay them if they hid him. Further arguing that they agreed to do so, the couple reneged when they escaped after he fell asleep while the three were watching movies.

Closer to home, an inmate awaiting trial in the Yukon will remain on the inside a few months longer after he pinched a plastic knife (with the intent of inflicting harm) and was convicted of a weapons charge. Or what about the Toronto man ordered to spend 26 days in jail for assaulting a bus driver? When the two became embroiled in a fare dispute, the perpetrator poured contents of a water bottle over the driver’s head and pushed him, clear missteps that breached a probation order.

To be clear, having workers subjected to any touching, pushing or hitting is rightly verboten. But jail for a month when in beautiful British Columbia, something far worse has elicited a proposal of only four months behind bars?

Can a drenched head compare to this bit of blatant opportunism: the owner of an asbestos abatement and drywall removal business is alleged to have exposed workers — none of whom had proper protective gear and some as young as 14 — to conditions where asbestos may have been present, concealed that potential danger and forged documentation to prevent any disruption in business operations?

In October, British Columbia’s appeal court took the rare step of issuing a warrant against the man found to be in contempt of a court order requiring him to cease operating the business. The ruling notes “his misconduct grievously endangered workers under his direction.”

Or then there was the Ontario sole proprietor recently fined $17,000 for 15 violations of the province’s Occupational Health and Safety Act. Although provincial inspectors noted infractions, made follow-up visits and wrote almost two dozen orders, remedial measures were not adopted, including those relating to improperly stored flammable liquids and failure to ensure workers wore respirators.

Like a ball thrown out of bounds, much ado about something (something like oh&s) can serve as a powerful tool. Skillfully employed, public voice can affect change — beyond health and safety legislation that spells out the minimum, but hopes for the maximum. But hastily delivered, it can twist attempts to make things safe into perverse forms of grandstanding worthy of dismissal.

Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada Angela Stelmakowich

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ohs canada

EDITOR ANGELA STELMAKOWIch

astelmakowich@ohscanada.com Assistant EDITOR JEAN LIAN

jlian@ohscanada.com editorial assistant greg burchell

gburchell@ohscanada.com ASSOCIATE EDITORS Hazardous substances WILLIAM M. GLENN Safety gear jason contant ART DIRECTOR anne miron PRINT PRODUCTION MANAGER PRODUCTION MANAGER MARKETING SPECIALIST Circulation Manager

PHYLLIS WRIGHT Cathy Li DIMITRY EPELBAUM 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

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Date of issue: January/February 2012

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LETTERS

Recent editions of ohs canada and our website, www.ohscanada.com, have provided readers with plenty to chew on: cellphone use and cancer; reversing longcombination vehicles; aircraft crash investigations; and a probe into the deaths of three farm workers. Below is a sample of reader comments about these and other articles.

signal, indeed, clear In the September, 2011 issue of ohs canada, “No Clear Signal” explored cellphone use and cancer, as well as the classification of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as a Group 2B carcinogen.

I read with interest the article by Donalee Moulton concluding that there was “No Clear Signal” regarding the “brouhaha” about potential health effects of radiofrequency (RF) electromagnetic fields, upon the announcement by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the new classification of RF as a Group 2B carcinogen.

Gary Scott Holub, a spokesperson for Health Canada, seemed to register “possible” as “no concern” based on Safety Code 6, with a limit of 10 Watts per square metre (W/m2).

The article generally referred to studies collectively as being “inconclusive.”

But the August 25, 2009 report, “Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern, Science, Spin and the Truth Behind Interphone,” by L. Lloyd Morgan, USA, Bioelectromagnetics Society, Electronics Engineer, was endorsed by 43 professionals from 14 countries.

Two major points: studies, independent of industry, consistently show there is a “significant” risk of brain tumours from cellphone use; and the electromagnetic field exposure limits advocated by industry and used by governments are based on a false premise that a cellphone’s electromagnetic radiation has no biological effects except for heating.

Safety Code 6 is the Canadian exposure standard based on thermal effects, the ability of RF to increase the temperature of cells. Some other countries

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have more stringent limits based on biological effects.

For example, Russia, China, Italy and Switzerland have a legal limit of 0.1 W/m2, one hundred times lower than Safety Code 6. Even more stringent are research collectives: the ECOLOG Institute in Germany recommends 0.01 W/ m2, and both the Salzburg Resolution and the Bio-initiative Report recommend 0.001 W/m2, 10,000 times lower than Safety Code 6.

When legal and consortium-recommended limits by so many educated and qualified individuals are so much lower, how can you not feel concern that Canadians should be more cautious about the potential health risk of RF? As safety practitioners, we know the formula: Risk = Frequency × Severity. The WHO, with the support of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), has thrown up a yellow caution flag: Frequency = (Class 2B) Possible; Severity = (human carcinogen) Critical. The assessed risk, with no controls in place, would be High.

Considering controls, the only engineering control is device design. Design engineers typically look at a safety factor below the legal limit in order to safely maximize, in this case, the RF transmission for optimum product functionality. With the legal limit apparently off by at least two and quite likely four orders of magnitude, how can the safety factor (reduced by this amount) not be in question?

This is not like lead (another Class 2B carcinogen) or other toxics where elimination or substitution (lead-free solder) are practised to prevent exposure. The legal limit, an administrative control, becomes a critical parameter between safety and product viability: Safety Code 6, as an administrative control, is inadequate.

Another administrative control is the separation distance. Some cellphone manuals tell us to keep the phone 1.5 centimetres or more away from our heads. Who does that? For some Wi-Fi routers, which also operate at 2.4 gigahertz, recommended minimum separation distance is eight centimetres.

For the residual risk assessment which considers controls — the administrative legal limit appears inadequate when compared with the aforementioned countries and the recommended best practices from international scientific consortiums — one could conclude that the residual risk level is still “high”. Therefore, corrective action is required immediately.

France, for example, has limited use of cellphones to teenagers, and some schools are eliminating cellphone use and removing wireless routers in favour of fibre-optic lines or older wired systems that eliminate wireless RF. Lowering the legal limit would also be a logical step. So implying in the opening statement of the article that “experts agree that wireless communications should not cause concern regarding the propagation of cancer” is inaccurate and misleading. Status quo while we wait for more studies is not the logical, safe option.

The fact that wireless RF has been moved up from nowhere to possible human carcinogen by the WHO and IARC is a strong indicator that we take notice, implement controls and adopt a precautionary approach — especially around children.

Sending “No Clear Signal” about the hazard from these incredibly convenient, useful and profitable devices appears to support suppression of a message that no one wants to hear.

If we wait for several years to be “undoubtedly” certain cellphones and other RF products promote cancer, it is highly likely that it will be too late for a number of workers and children who are being exposed daily as we speak.

Doug Stowe, P.Eng., CHMM Stowe Engineering Almonte, Ontario

blind faith The website carried an article from our sister publication, canadian occupational health & safety news, about almost $300,000 in fines levied in the death of

an Alberta worker, 20, hit by a combination vehicle as the unit was backing up.

And the guilty party is… some yard worker and a dead kid. This combination of vehicles is just plain unsafe. The driver is blind the minute he backs up.

Imagine being blind and controlling a piece of machinery that articulates in multiple places. It’s like steering a noodle with your eyes closed. You could put six spotters in the yard and it would only increase the likelihood of running over one of them.

The real guilty parties here are industry and legislators who govern it.

The only reason these units are operating is it saves employing another driver and tractor. Long-combination vehicles are inherently unsafe, but the greedy in transportation will defend them until death (or, in this case, after death).

How about this for legislation: “No vehicle combination that articulates or pivots in more than one spot shall be equipped with a reverse gear,” and “No combination of vehicles that pivot in more than one spot shall operate on any highway at more than one-third of the posted speed limit?”

How about we just outlaw the greedy practice of operating these death machines altogether and create a job for a second truck!

Steve P. (Online)

crash course The website offered an article from The Canadian Press about a public transit operator whose bus crashed into a hydro pole. It was initially reported the driver may have experienced a medical issue.

Maybe bus drivers should have to complete a medical when their licences are renewed… There seems to be more and more of these medical-related incidents occurring, so maybe it is time to update the requirements necessary to drive a bus carrying passengers.

Frankie 5 (Online)

deadly flight The website had a story from

canadian

occupational health & safety news

in November about a turboprop plane crash in British Columbia that claimed the life of the pilot (and later the co-pilot). The aircraft had turned back to the airport, but crashed just short of the runway.

The investigation carried out by the authorities lead them to typically seek answers to the following questions: • What was the reason for the pilots to decide on an immediate return to the airfield? Some reports state an oil leak was a problem, or a lack of oil.

Because aircraft engines do not leak oil, they will try and find the source of said leak and the reasons for it.

• Particularly if an aircraft had recently come out of maintenance, the type of maintenance carried out and the systems on which it had been conducted will be scrutinized. This includes the complete documentation regarding such maintenance kept by the maintenance organization.

• These aircraft are quite capable of climbing on one engine, so descending to land on one engine should be no issue if the pilot follows certain logical processes and procedures. For this reason, the investigators will ask themselves why the pilot lost control of the aircraft during a phase where a single-engine approach to land is a fairly straightforward exercise and regularly practised, and on which the pilot is tested for proficiency… a close determination can be made whether the pilot allowed the aircraft to slow to below standard speeds, or attain a higher rate of descent as is prescribed for such a condition.

• The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder will greatly assist the investigators to correlate actual flight conditions with that which the final flight path calculations reveal.

Aircraft accident investigation is not a black art; it is following a set of logical questions, finding answers to these, forming hypotheses and trying to find

evidence which will prove each hypothesis incorrect. This process is kept up until a final hypothesis of events can be formulated that cannot be disproved by hard evidence. That then will be the finding of the proximate cause of the adverse event.

If a real, get-to-the-heart-of-the-matter investigation is carried out, the set of root causes that contributed to the existence of the hazardous condition that had led to the impact will be found, and only then can one ensure that no serious systemic deficiency exists within the operations of the air carrier.

There are times when these are the real root causes of an event — the actual hazard that bred the risks which evolve as symptoms of a deeper, ongoing problem. Real corrective action to prevent a recurrence must be carried out at the root cause, system level.

Andries Marais Freelance Investigator (Online)

needless loss The website had an article by The Canadian Press in which WorkSafeBC identified inadequate protections at a British Columbia mushroom farm where an oxygen-deficient space claimed three lives.

If all workers, including agricultural workers, had the right to a governmentinspected workplace, the flawed compost facility would have been ordered corrected prior to the unnecessary loss of life and severe injuries that eventually, and inevitably, occurred.

Linda Vannucci, Lawyer and Director Toronto Workers’ Health & Safety Legal Clinic Toronto (Online) Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada

Would you like to comment on an article in ohs canada? Letters to the Editor can be emailed to astelmakowich@ ohscanada.com. Comments may be edited for style, grammar and length.

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

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OH&S UPDATE

Calculation glitch reveals exposure concern FEDERAL — Canada’s nuclear safety watchdog has cau-

tioned that a calculation error, in place since June of 2008, has resulted in under-reporting of radiation exposure levels for almost two thousand workers.

The Ottawa-based Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has requested the Nuclear Dosimetry Service (NDS), a division of Health Canada, to investigate the root cause of the error and to outline corrective actions that have or will be taken. The miscalculation applies to 1,769 workers in 300-plus different organizations.

The misstep dates back to 2008, but was not identified until this past October. As part of an internal quality assurance review at the NDS, it was discovered that some algorithms approved by the CNSC and used in the NDS’s testing licence were not implemented, says Dr. Patsy Thompson, the commission’s director general of environmental radiation and assessment.

“We would have expected performance tests conducted by the NDS to have flagged these issues and they did not.

It’s something we expect the [NDS’s investigation report] to identify,” Dr. Thompson says.

The error occurred on wrist and ring dosimeters, typically worn by workers whose hands and arms are exposed to radiation. This includes university researchers, X-ray technicians and workers who handle radiopharmaceuticals, says Gary Holub, a spokesperson for Health Canada in Ottawa.

Plane crashes shy of runway FEDERAL — A 44-year-old pilot was fa-

tally injured and another left in critical condition on October 27 when a Beechcraft King Air 100 went down near Vancouver shortly after takeoff.

Captain Luc Fortin, who had been flying with the plane operator, Northern Thunderbird Air Inc., since 2007, died a few hours after the crash. As of November 2, first officer Matt Robic, who suffered critical injuries, was expected to remain in hospital for “quite some time,” says Bill Hesse, general manager of the company in Prince George, British Columbia. (Robic later succumbed to his injuries.)

The seven passengers on board the chartered plane, built in the early 1970s and in service at Northern Thunderbird Air since 2004, are in “various states of injury,” notes a company statement.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB), located near Ottawa, reports the twin turboprop plane left Van-

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Dr. Thompson points out the problem was with the computers that analyzed the dosimeters, not the devices themselves. Calculations provided by wrist meters showed radiation doses 25 per cent lower than actual exposures, while ring dosimeters were under-reported by 40 per cent.

An NDS statement notes that after correcting the error and making adjustments to worker exposure amounts, it was determined that three individuals had experienced dose levels higher than the annual limit for extremities, set at 500 millisieverts. These workers were employed at hospitals in Saskatoon, Montreal and Sherbrooke, Quebec.

The area of exposure was people’s hands, not their full bodies or major organs,” says Holub. “Radiation dose limits are conservatively set to ensure dose thresholds for health effects are not reached; the levels of the three workers were only slightly over the limit and not at the level where a health effect would be observed,” he adds.

The doses for other affected workers are well below the annual limit, notes a Health Canada statement. All employers of affected employees have been informed of the miscalculation and provided recalculated exposure limits.

Dr. Thompson reports that the CNSC has asked the NDS to review calculations for all dosimetry services, including for full-body dosimeter calculations. The request has gone out to the 11 other dosimetry service licensees as well.

— By Greg Burchell

couver International Airport shortly after 3:30 pm for its flight to Kelowna, British Columbia. However, the plane turned back to Vancouver when its instrumentation indicated a problem on board.

On approach, the aircraft banked and clipped a wing on something, causing the plane to crash onto a road just short of the runway and burst into flames.

Photos from the accident scene show the plane’s fuselage engulfed in flames and, later, the exterior of the pilot’s cabin and engines blackened from the fire, and the tail section broken off.

“During the course of the investigation, if we identify any urgent safety deficiencies requiring immediate action, we will make those deficiencies known to the appropriate change agents as quickly as possible,” Mark Clitsome, director of TSB air investigations, notes in a statement.

The TSB has previously investigated one crash involving a Northern Thunderbird Air plane. In 2005, a plane was ascending out of a narrow canyon when it crashed, claiming both pilots on board.

garage worker hit by car dies WHITEHORSE — An employee of Integra

Tire in Whitehorse succumbed to critical injuries sustained when he was hit by a car in the auto centre’s parking lot.

Shortly after 3 pm on November 15, members of the Whitehorse RCMP, emergency medical services and the Yukon Workers’ Compensation Health and Safety Board attended the scene where the 34-year-old worker was being treated for serious injuries, the RCMP reports.

The employee was taken to hospital where he was declared deceased.

NEW LINE ON STRESS CLAIMS VICTORIA — Proposed legislative amend-

ments could open the door to a wider array of events precipitating compensable stress claims in British Columbia.

Draft changes to the Workers Compensation Act (WCA) — tabled in the

legislature by labour minister Margaret MacDiarmid on November 4 — would see coverage expanded to include workrelated stress caused by cumulative or significant workplace stressors, and as a reaction to one or more traumatic events.

At present, the WCA covers mental stress resulting from an acute reaction to a sudden and unexpected traumatic event.

“There are injuries that can happen to people in the workplace that build up over time, maybe over a number of months, and they end up with a chronic problem that gets in the way of their work. We’re putting exactly the same perspective on mental health problems,” says MacDiarmid.

“Just as we wouldn’t expect a window washer who sustains physical injuries to go it alone, we shouldn’t expect workers who experience mental health problems as a result of their job to fend for themselves,” says Bev Gutray, CEO of the British Columbia arm of the Canadian Mental Health Association in Vancouver.

MacDiarmid says the draft changes were introduced amid concerns that covering only acute reactions to single trau-

matic events could result in challenges under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or human rights laws.

If passed, the requirements were to take effect in early 2012. It is estimated that any resulting claims will carry costs of approximately $18 million annually.

Officials for WorkSafeBC, based in Richmond, British Columbia, will outline as part of a new policy what situations and circumstances could be linked to a compensable condition. “Stress resulting from employment decisions like discipline, termination or a change in working conditions will continue to be excluded from coverage,” adds the ministry.

Individuals will need to obtain a diagnosis and the stress must be shown to be work-related, MacDiarmid emphasizes.

safety deficiencies identified RICHMOND — Investigators say the absence of an occupational health and safety system and missed opportunities to remedy unsafe conditions contributed to the deaths of three workers and the

life-altering injuries of two others at a mushroom composting farm in Langley, British Columbia in 2008.

In its November 28 investigation report, WorkSafeBC outlines circumstances surrounding the confined space deaths in a pump shed at A-1 Mushroom Substratum Ltd. On September 5, 2008, two company workers were trying to clear a blocked intake pipe when they were overcome by hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and an oxygen-deficient environment.

Unaware of the conditions inside the shed, fellow workers and employees of two adjacent mushroom businesses — H-V Truong Ltd. and Farmers’ Fresh Mushrooms — attempted a rescue. Without protective gear though, three men succumbed, one was left unable to speak or hear, and one remains in a coma.

“The investigation into this incident has probably been the most complex in WorkSafeBC’s history and required significant resources and highly technical expertise,” notes a statement from the board. “It took months to access key areas of the work site, many more months to fully understand the industrial process

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involved and the chronology of events and decisions over a five-year period that played a role in the incident.”

This past May, WorkSafeBC referred the case to the Ministry of Attorney General. On November 25, $350,000 in fines were handed down: $200,000 for A-1 Mushroom Substratum (which has since gone bankrupt); $120,000 for H-V Truong; and $15,000, $10,000 and $5,000 for three officials, says defence lawyer Les Mackoff.

The WorkSafeBC investigation determined that none of the three employers had developed or implemented an oh&s program or co-ordinated safety activities.

“The workers were told to ‘be careful’ on an informal basis, but no meetings were conducted to discuss health and safety matters,” the report notes.

“Poor housekeeping, lack of preventative maintenance, failing to correct anaerobic conditions in the process water tank, and lack of compliance with regulatory requirements for the facility (which may have led to detection of elevated levels of hydrogen sulphide gas production in the process water recycling system) represented missed opportunities to prevent the development of conditions that led to this incident,” the report states, acknowledging that, as a board, WorkSafeBC missed chances to advise on or enforce oh&s requirements.

It was further determined that, dating back to 2004, the facility was designed, built and operated with inherent flaws that created conditions for hazardous gases to build up and for pipe blockages to develop.

A WorkSafeBC 3-D re-enactment video shows that, on the day of the incident, two men were working in the shed and trying to clear a blockage at a butterfly valve in a pipe. One worker used a screwdriver to pry open the top flange of a valve, then used another to pull out straw and sludge lodged in the valve.

As one worker “pulled straw from the valve, he complained to the supervisor that there was a strange smell,” the report notes. The supervisor told the workers to exit the shed. “The worker at the valve took a step and then collapsed.”

WorkSafeBC measurements of the air below the valve, taken four months after the incident, showed that maximum H2S readings were greater than 500 parts per million (ppm), the highest reading available on WorkSafeBC monitors. At this level, notes the report, there is “immediate loss of consciousness. Death is

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rapid, sometimes immediate.”

Raj Chouhan, labour critic for British Columbia’s NDP, reports a plumber had been unable to clear the pipe. (The WorkSafeBC report notes the plumber informed the supervisor that a sewer service company would need to use an auger to clear the blockage.) “Instead of having professionals look at it, the company told workers to go inside an enclosed compartment,” Chouhan says.

Both the NDP and British Columbia Federation of Labour had called for a coroner’s inquest. In late December, the BC Coroners Service announced a public inquest would begin May 7, 2012.

Chief coroner Lisa Lapointe concluded there is benefit to holding an inquest to examine some of the broader circumstances to prevent future deaths from happening in similar circumstances.

warrant issued to employer VANCOUVER — British Columbia’s high

court has taken the unusual step of issuing an arrest warrant to an individual alleged to have exposed workers to asbestos and then concealing the danger by forging reports.

On October 19, the Court of Appeal for British Columbia found Arthur Moore in contempt of a court order requiring him to stop operating his asbestos and drywall removal business. The decision follows a WorkSafeBC appeal of a Supreme Court of British Columbia ruling in April that rejected the contempt application because the reference to Moore “doing business as AM Environmental” created ambiguity.

In a unanimous decision, the appeal court concluded there was no question that Moore knew he was the target of WorkSafeBC’s investigations and directives and, in fact, had operated under several other business names after the order was issued. “His misconduct grievously endangered workers under his direction,” notes Justice Ian Donald, writing for the court. “Unless he can in some way mitigate his indifference to the lives and safety of his workers and his open defiance of the injunction, his misconduct requires a severe response.”

The ruling notes that Moore worked at about 15 job sites from September to October of 2010, after the injunction was issued. He hired vulnerable workers, most of whom were “recovering addicts” under 18, and some as young as 14.

At least two employees provided affidavits that they were told by Moore to “run away” if they saw a WorkSafeBC officer on site, the decision adds.

The supreme court ruling notes that among services offered by Moore was the removal of drywall from buildings slated for demolition. Moore purported to take samples, have them analyzed by a lab and provide a report certifying the structure as asbestos-free. Workers would then remove drywall from the building as part of the demolition process without the benefit of protective equipment.

“Mr. Moore did not have any qualifications as an inspector,” Justice Jeanne Watchuk of the Supreme Court of British Columbia writes in her April 11 ruling.

“The lab reports provided by Mr. Moore were forgeries on letterhead stolen from legitimate labs. Mr. Moore poses a significant public safety concern.”

In one incident, a WorkSafeBC officer visited a residence after Moore claimed an asbestos inspection had been done. A hazardous materials survey found asbestos throughout, “including in drywall taping compounds, flooring felts, duct tape materials, window putty materials, roofing mastic materials, and was suspected to be in the cast iron drain piping bells and spigots,” Justice Watchuk writes.

WorkSafeBC has recommended 120 days in jail for Moore, confirms WorkSafeBC spokesperson Megan Johnston.

fall protections falling down EDMONTON — A focused inspection

campaign involving residential construction sites in Alberta has resulted in almost 400 orders against employers, about one-third of which relate to a lack of fall protection or an associated plan.

Between September 12 and October 11, inspectors with Alberta Human Services (AHS) conducted 611 inspections involving 387 employers. The focus was on new home construction and materials, methods and procedures used for typical wood-frame single and multi-family dwellings, notes a statement from the ministry, based in Edmonton.

Of the 394 directives issued, 83 were stop-work orders and seven were stop-use orders. At 131, fall protection violations under Alberta’s Occupational Health and Safety Code accounted for the largest single category of orders issued.

“Obviously, when we have the numbers that we see come out of a focused

safety inspection like this, it is a little disheartening,” suggests AHS spokesperson Barrie Harrison. “Unfortunately, you don’t need to go far, it would seem, to find infractions like this on construction sites.”

The inspection report, released in November, states the majority of stop-work and stop-use orders — 67 and two, respectively — revolved around fall protection. Orders issued related to entrances, walkways, stairways and ladders (74), safeguards (64) and elimination and control of hazards (60).

Over the past several months, Harrison says the AHS has been holding a pilot program of evening and weekend inspections, and this stepped-up schedule will continue as part of the ministry’s ongoing inspection efforts.

Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour in Edmonton, supports evening and weekend inspections. Still, “workers need the protection of a union so they can refuse to do unsafe work, so they can demand safety equipment and insist on safety processes being followed without fear of being punished or fired,” McGowan contends.

“Employers were warned about this inspection blitz in advance and given a chance to clean up their act,” he says.

“Can you imagine how many health and safety violations would have been found if these had been surprise inspections?”

Noting that there were 24 work-related deaths year to date as of early November, MLA Rachel Notley, labour critic for Alberta’s NDP, recommends hiring more inspectors. Harrison says the plan is to beef up the complement of provincial inspectors from 100 to 132.

honour of the deceased); and $131,000 to the Alberta Motor Transport Association, used to develop a course on the safe operation of specialized long combination vehicles. Hargrave pleaded guilty to failing to protect his safety and that of other workers.

On August 8, 2008, James Rintoul, about a month shy of his 21st birthday, sustained fatal injuries when he was run over by a transport trailer in the yard of

Volker Stevin Contracting Ltd., where Denel Trucking had rented space, says AHS spokesperson Barrie Harrison.

The ministry notes the driver was slowly moving the rig with two attached trailers to a wash bay. Rintoul was walking and steering the rear trailer from controls on a dolly at the trailer’s driver side when he was run over by the rear wheels.

An agreed statement of facts filed with the court states the young worker

firm, spotter fined in fatality CALGARY — An Alberta trucking firm

and one of its workers were ordered to pay almost $300,000 following a deadly incident in Calgary three years ago.

On October 24, a numbered company operating as Calgary-based Denel Trucking and a worker, Keith Hargrave, were issued penalties of $286,500 and $10,000, respectively, after pleading guilty to violating Alberta’s Occupational Health and Safety Act, AHS reports.

Denel Trucking was fined $10,000 plus a $1,500 surcharge, but the bulk of its penalty is earmarked for prevention: $144,000 to the Job Safety Skills Society ($109,000 for the JobSafe Program and $35,000 for a scholarship program in

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crane incidents claim worker, injure another EDMONTON — One Alberta worker has died and another

sustained injuries as a result of separate incidents involving cranes in mid-November.

At about 2 pm on November 18, an employee of Weatherford Ampscott Ltd. was using an overhead crane to manoeuvre an oilfield pumpjack component on a site in the Alberta hamlet of Nisku.

The inadequately secured component fell onto the crane operator, resulting in crush injuries to his lower body, says AHS spokesperson Barrie Harrison. The worker, 40, was transported to an Edmonton hospital and a stop-work order issued against the company, Harrison says.

Joe Harnest, president of Canada Crane Training in Stoney Creek, Ontario, says it is critically important to have a good understanding of the primary danger zone — defined as a 45-degree angle from the edge of the load being lifted to the ground — and that operators keep out of this area. “The higher we lift the hook, the larger it [the primary danger zone] becomes,” Harnest explains.

Checks should also be carried out to ensure that any load is properly secured, he adds.

The day before the incident, a Precon Manufacturing Ltd. employee was using a crane to lift a concrete box at a work site west of Lethbridge. At about 4 pm, the 23-year-

old worker was struck by a shackle, a steel ring used as a connector between the cables and the strap, that was on a lifting strap suspended from the crane, Harrison reports.

The worker was taken to hospital, but later succumbed to his injuries. Again, an AHS officer issued a stop-work order against the company.

Shackle eye and pin holes should be inspected regularly for any signs of wear and elongation, which indicates the metal is being overloaded, notes information from the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) in Hamilton, Ontario. Shackles that are bent, show wear by more than 10 per cent of the original diameter or have an elongated eye or shackle pin holes should be replaced, the CCOHS advises.

Harnest says factors contributing to a shackle disengaging include that it is damaged, improperly applied or not suited for the task at hand.

“When you put your sling under the tension of a load, the possibility of failure of some kind would result in the sling coming loose in a very rapid fashion like a whip,” he explains. “The sling itself — if they were made of chain or some other material — or the accessory that is attached to it, becomes a lethal weapon.”

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was walking alongside the dolly when his foot became caught under its wheels, trapping him between the equipment and a scrap metal bin next to a metal rack.

Rintoul called for help and a mechanic employed by Volker Stevin yelled at Hargrave, who was acting as a spotter, to direct the driver to stop. The mechanic, not receiving any response, rushed to Rintoul but was unable to pull him free.

The agreed facts note Hargrave left his spotting position and failed to maintain sight of or contact with Rintoul.

NEED TO BUCKLE IN TOSSED OUT SASKATOON — For workers who spend their days behind the wheel, it would make sense to assume the thin strip of nylon or polyester that keeps them securely in place should a collision occur is there to protect them.

But a Court of Queen’s Bench judge in Saskatoon has ruled buckling up may actually be more dangerous for bus drivers. In an October 20 decision, Justice Grant Currie overturned bus driver Dean

Christianson’s traffic court conviction for failing to wear his seat belt.

“His experiences, and those of others that had come to his attention in the course of working in his industry, gave him reason to believe that his safety may be compromised by wearing a seat belt,” Justice Currie writes. The driver argued that if he was assaulted by a passenger on the bus, being buckled in would make him less able to defend himself.

In his first trial, Christianson characterized violence against transit operators as a “growing, nationwide epidemic,” reporting that he had been threatened by three people still riding his bus when he was pulled over, and in a separate incident, had been spit on.

“You do not know who is going to grab your steering wheel while you’re driving, or sucker punch you, or stab you, or spit on you. You have no idea who it’s coming from,” he said at the time. “Some of the drivers have been sucker punched while they are driving and took repetitive blows while trying to get their seat belt off so they can defend themselves.”

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states that a bus driver need not wear a seat belt if he or she has reason to believe the aid may lead to risk of injury.

The Crown argued the exemption applies only when a specific risk of injury exists. But the justice disagreed, noting it could also apply if a driver “may be continuously exposed to a compromise of his or her safety on a random basis.”

Marcus Davies, a lawyer with Bainbridge Jodouin Cheecham in Saskatoon, who represented Christianson, says “‘may’ is a very flexible word, and ‘reason to believe’ is very flexible and that doesn’t mean you have to point your finger and allege they were threatening you.”

Once operators have identified a specific risk of injury, Davies says, it is often already too late to get their seat belts off.

A Saskatoon civic policy states that all public employees must be buckled in whenever behind the wheel of a municipal vehicle. That said, transit union reps are hoping the court ruling offers convincing reasoning that the policy, introduced in 2008, should change.

“We believe the exemption was put in place specifically for safety reasons and obviously the court has found, with the argument Mr. Christianson has put forward, that they’re in agreement with us,” says Jim Yakubowski, vice-president of Local 615 of the Amalgamated Transit Union. “Being able to make the decision whether or not you feel threatened whatsoever and whether seat belt usage is a restriction in that capacity, that should be left up to the individual operators.”

Despite the ruling — and until the policy changes — Yakubowski says members will be instructed to wear seat belts.

“All drivers don’t want to take their seat belt off, but all drivers want the discretion to make that choice,” Davies says.

laundry facility closed SASKATOON — The Saskatoon Health

Region has opted to close its central laundry facility after safety issues were raised in November and infrastructure deficiencies subsequently identified.

On November 3, four laundry bags weighing 1,225 kilograms that were attached to a hoist fell approximately three metres into laundry transfer carts, reports Linda Walker, a media relations consultant for the health region. There were no injuries, but washing and drying operations were subsequently shut down.

Walker says it was determined a bolt

that attaches the mechanical system of cables and pulleys to the hydraulic cylinder had come loose and fell off. “We were told the bolt and the shaft threads show no sign of wear or stress point damage from tension of the lifting system,” she says. “It is likely that it loosened over time due to vibrations.”

A facility assessment done by VFA Inc. identified infrastructure deficiencies, including those related to fire protection, accessibility, asbestos abatement, ergonomics, ventilation, the electrical system and the age of the equipment.

“The safety of Saskatoon Health Region employees is more important to us than keeping this facility open,” says Bonnie Blakely, vice-president of people strategies at the health region.

Walker notes that long-term solutions are being explored. These include building a new structure, remodelling the existing building or expanding nearby facilities to better meet the needs of the large facility, which services Saskatoon’s three hospitals and some long-term care homes in the province.

Glennis Bihun, executive director of the OH&S Division of Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety in Regina, said in November that an investigation was continuing.

A stop-work order was also issued.

equipment falls into void THOMPSON — A mine worker died on October 19, almost two weeks after he and the scoop tram that he was operating at Vale’s T-3 Mine in Thompson, Manitoba fell into a void.

Greg Leason, 51, was using a scoop tram on the morning of October 7, says Stella Long, an administrative assistant for corporate affairs at Vale.

A co-worker went to the open stope to help Leason install a barrier called a “rockfill bumper,” Long reports. Upon arrival, however, the co-worker discovered that the scoop tram “had entered the void and fallen to the level below,” notes a company statement.

The void was approximately 45 metres deep, says Cory McPhee, vice-president of corporate affairs for Vale, who adds that installation of rockfill bumpers was suspended following the incident.

“Our focus and support is on Greg’s family, friends and co-workers,” Lovro Paulic, a general manager at Vale’s Manitoba operations, says in the statement.

mould shuts down arena WINNIPEG — Just in time for the hockey season, health concerns forced a fourdecades-old arena in Winnipeg to shut its doors and cancel programs last fall.

Hockey, skating and other activities at the city-owned Maginot Arena were put on ice November 3 after municipal officials noticed stains developing on the 2,300-square-metre wooden ceiling, notes a City of Winnipeg statement.

Testing revealed mould levels exceeded the city’s permissible limit. Initially, city officials expected the arena would be closed until at least the end of 2011.

Barry Evanson, manager of the City of Winnipeg’s municipal accommodations division, says that a new arena roof was recently installed and appears to be trapping moisture, something which was not an issue with the old structure.

“As a result, we couldn’t get rid of the moisture and it sat on the cedar decking that makes up the roof, and as that dried out, the mould started to grow,” Evanson explains. He says the area of concern is 12 metres above floor level.

Contractors began using a dry-ice blasting system to remove the mould on November 7, Evanson reports. Once removal is complete, he says a protective coating will be applied to the wood.

City officials are also investigating if dehumidifiers will need to be installed.

After the mould was found, he says all 29 public arenas in the city underwent testing. There was evidence of less extensive staining at three other facilities.

Barry Thorgrimson, director of planning, property and development for the City of Winnipeg, notes in an email that plans are under way to add mould to the city’s Indoor Air Quality Management Program, which currently covers asbestos, carbon monoxide, gas appliances and ice resurfacing inspections, as well as ventilation maintenance.

The improvements are anticipated to include protocols to identify and remediate any mould found through visual inspections, a reporting process for identified locations, and testing and remediation procedures, Thorgrimson writes.

Bomb squad called to store TORONTO — Workers at a costume store

in Toronto were unharmed, but put under considerable stress during a series

of bizarre incidents involving explosive devices discovered inside the business.

From October 28 until November 1, seven suspicious packages were found at Amazing Party and Costume, reports Constable Tony Vella, a media relations officer with the Toronto Police Service.

“These are sophisticated devices with the potential to cause serious bodily harm,” Vella says, adding that they look to have been set by someone with knowledge of constructing such devices.

Three devices were found, forcing the store to close several times over the course of a few days. It was reopened by Halloween, its busiest season, but other devices were subsequently discovered.

All were “safely disposed of,” Vella says.

proprietor ignores orders PERTH — The sole proprietor of Infinity

Marble of Canada in Carleton Place, Ontario was fined $17,000 in late October for failing to comply with the orders of a Ministry of Labour (MOL) inspector.

On May 22, 2009, inspectors visited the company that manufactures synthetic marble and granite and noticed a number of oh&s infractions. As a result, several orders were issued to the sole proprietor, Waldemar Kozuchowski.

However, certain violations — such as improper storage of flammable liquids, having no system to contain spills, not having material safety data sheets for controlled products readily available to workers and failing to ensure workers wore respirators — were not addressed, notes a statement from the MOL in Toronto. In fact, from May of 2009 to May of 2010, 23 orders were written, with compliance outstanding on 15 of these.

One order was a stop-work order on the spray booth as a result of inadequate air flow. Kozuchowksi was found guilty of 15 counts, resulting in a $3,000 fine for failing to adhere to the stop-work order and $1,000 apiece on the 14 remaining counts.

Worker struck by plywood OTTAWA — Help was close at hand when a Bellai Brothers Construction Ltd. employee was seriously injured after some plywood came crashing through the second-storey roof of a hospital wing under construction in Ottawa.

On October 17, the worker was pour-

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ing concrete for stairs in the south wing expansion of the Queensway Carleton Hospital, notes the MOL’s accident report. Firefighters arrived on scene shortly after noon to find the 41-year-old worker unconscious, but sitting upright.

“His eyes were open, but the guys said he wasn’t responsive,” says Marc Messier, a spokesperson for Ottawa Fire Services. It looked like at least one sheet of plywood fell on the worker’s head, Messier reports.

Paramedics treated the man with spinal immobilization and intravenous fluids before taking him into the hospital, adds the superintendent of public information for Ottawa Paramedic Services.

Stop-work orders were issued to site constructor, Vanbots Construction Corporation, citing the need to ensure all scaffolding and work platforms are secure and safe prior to use.

Bellai Brothers and Vanbots Construction, a division of Concord, Ontariobased Carillion Canada, were also directed to submit documentation for safety and training procedures, says labour ministry spokesperson Matt Blajer.

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brewery cleaners burned MONTREAL — Two workers at a Montreal brewery remained in hospital more than a week after being severely burned when they came into contact with an extremely hot cleaning solution.

Just before midnight on November 29, the workers came into contact with the solution used industry-wide to wash and sterilize beer bottles, says Marie-Hélène Lagacé, a spokesperson for Molson Coors Canada. The injuries were the result of a “combination of the solution itself and [its] temperatures,” Lagacé reports.

Jacques Nadeau, a spokesperson for the Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CSST) in Montreal, says the workers — both long-time employees in their 50s — were washing recyclable bottles when they opened a panel on the bottle-washing machine and were splashed with the solution.

But representatives for the company and Teamsters Canada disagree with CSST investigators about the solution’s contents. While Molson Coors Canada

reports “the solution itself is not acid” and the union characterizes it as a “cleaning solution at high temperature,” Nadeau says the solution is made up of mostly caustic acid. He emphasizes that the investigation is continuing.

A stop-work order was issued on the machine, he says, adding that a preliminary examination has determined the unit was not malfunctioning.

Lagacé reports the company is undertaking an internal investigation parallel to those by the CSST and Teamsters Canada, and that safety measures are being reviewed.

fostering return to work MONTREAL — Research funded by the In-

stitut de recherché Robert-Sauvé en santé et en sécurité du travail (IRSST) in Montreal has identified practices for supporting an employee’s return to work (RTW) following mental health leaves.

Researchers have penned a program that is based mostly on an analysis of work absence data, interviews with pro-

notes a statement from WorkSafeNB in Saint John. Desjardins was using an old floor buffer plugged into a 110-volt outlet on the wet floor when he received an electrical shock that proved fatal.

It is alleged that the company failed to comply with New Brunswick’s OH&S Act and associated regulations. On December 6, WorkSafeNB announced the seven charges against the company: • failing to ensure employee health and safety by allowing the use of an inappropriate floor polisher and a faulty extension cord; • failing to ensure that workers complied with specific requirements when using a tool; • failing to inspect the garage at least once a month to identify any risks to nine charges in youth’s death the employees; • failing to inspect a power-operated GRAND FALLS — Nine charges have been hand tool before use or repair, or laid against Walmart and one of its suto replace the unit if necessary, and pervisors in connection with the death of maintain the floor polisher in proper a young employee last year. working condition; At 8:30 pm on January 5, 2011, 17-year-old Patrick Desjardins was work- • failing to instruct employees to use the polisher only for the specific puring in the garage area of the Walmart half page EcoLog 2008 7x4.875 with price.pdf 1/23/08 9:25 AM Page 1 pose for which it was designed; store in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, fessionals and a review of scientific literature, with the goal being to promote recovery and RTW. “We focused primarily on the organizational factors that contribute to worker absence or that may increase their negative perception of the return to work,” says Louise St.-Arnaud, principal author of the program’s report.

It includes a RTW preparatory interview and tips on how to offer support.

“The underlying tenet of this approach is that work represents a very powerful factor in the recovery process and in the worker’s discovery of his or her ‘power to act’ on situations,” Arnaud says.

• f ailing to use a continuity tester or ground fault circuit interrupter to test the polisher for the effectiveness of the double insulation or bonding to ground before each use; and, • failing to ensure electrical equipment is suitable for its use and is maintained and modified in accordance with the manufacturer’s specifications by permitting use of a faulty extension cord.

For his part, the supervisor faces provincial charges citing the alleged failure to ensure employee health and safety by allowing an inappropriate floor buffer and faulty extension cord to be used, as well as failing to make the young worker aware of potential hazards associated with the use of a floor buffer.

WorkSafeNB reports Walmart did not comply with several orders following the incident. The directives revolved around installation, maintenance, modification and operation of the buffer in line with the manufacturer’s specifications; ensuring a tool is of good quality and maintained by a competent person; and storing a tool in a proper area.

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“Our deepest thoughts remain with Patrick Desjardins and his family,” notes a company statement. “Walmart is taking every opportunity to understand and investigate this incident so that similar incidents can be prevented in the future.”

fatality spurs single charge BLACKS HARBOUR — Dominion Refuse Collectors faces one charge under New Brunswick’s OH&S Act in connection with the death of a worker in late 2010.

Dominion Refuse and two companies that make up the partnership, TwoEx Capital Inc. and Mar Mor Enterprises Inc., are charged with failing to provide adequate supervision and training to ensure worker health and safety.

The charges follow an incident on December 2, 2010 at about 8:25 am.

Adam Harris, 25, was struck by a large garbage bin being hoisted into the back of a waste collection truck, notes a statement from WorkSafeNB in Saint John.

Following the deadly incident, WorkSafeNB reports that several oh&s orders were issued to the company, including the need to repair the bin’s locking mechanism at the back of the truck, train workers on how to safely dump bins and develop a training program for operators required to hoist bins into trucks.

derailment issue with one car HALIFAX — Nova Scotia’s Department

of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal has its answer after asking federal investigators to look into circumstances surrounding a train derailment near Avondale, Pictou County in 2010.

On November 7, the TSB released its

investigation report citing the mechanical condition of a tank car as the main reason for the Cape Breton & Central Nova Scotia Railway derailment.

The train had five locomotives, 62 loaded and 10 empty rail cars, notes the TSB report. In the June 13, 2010 derailment, 15 cars were damaged — seven of these were pressure tank cars loaded with liquefied petroleum gas, while an eighth was a residue car containing stabilized hydrogen peroxide. There were no injuries or release of dangerous goods, but 10 residences were evacuated.

The TSB points to an abnormal repair in 2006 that adversely affected the car’s turning ability. Specifically, the board cites the following factors: • the derailment occurred when the leading truck of the tank car climbed the high rail while negotiating a curve as a result of a stiff truck condition, which increased lateral forces; • reduced vertical forces on the unlubricated high rail as the train was travelling at an under-balance speed contributed to the wheel climb; and, • the stiff truck condition was created when the welds of the tank’s body centre plate were not ground smooth.

The repair issue appears to have been unique to the car and train operation met all company and regulatory requirements, the TSB notes. In addition, the conductor and locomotive engineer were qualified for their respective positions, met fitness and rest standards, and were familiar with the subdivision.

lobster season safety urged HALIFAX — As fishers across South Shore and southwest Nova Scotia took to the water in late November for the start of

lobster season, provincial officials urged them to stay safe.

“Fishing is one of the most dangerous occupations in the province, particularly in the harsh winter months,” Stuart MacLean, acting CEO of Nova Scotia’s Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) in Halifax, says in a statement. “We want to remind everyone in the industry to wear proper life vests and check their safety equipment and work procedures to ensure no one gets hurt,” MacLean adds.

In 2010, almost 400 people working in the fishing industry suffered injuries on the job, 150 of those serious enough to be off work. The 23 work fatalities in the sector over the last three years account for more than a quarter of all such deaths in the province over that timeframe.

The 2012 premium paid by fishing employers is $7.85 per $100 of payroll, up from $7.50 in 2011 and well above the average assessment rate of $2.65.

However, the WCB statement notes that there are positive signs that industry is taking actions that promise to improve safety performance.

LOWer rate GETS GREEN LIGHT CHARLOTTETOWN — Prince Edward Is-

land’s WCB has approved an average assessment premium of $1.99 per $100 of payroll for 2012, a six cent reduction from last year and the lowest average premium in more than a decade.

“Not only does it reflect an overall reduction in WCB costs, when so many other expenses are on the rise, but it is a tangible reward for continued investment in injury prevention and return-to-work efforts, the real drivers of assessment rates,” notes Sharon Cameron, CEO of the Charlottetown-based board.

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“New OHS CANADA video: Bill 160 amendments to Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act set the stage for major reform …”

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“Alberta tightens guidelines for COR-holding companies…”

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“PEI worker’s burn injuries spur new safety measures (Canadian OH&S News) …”

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harvesting enhanced worker safety ST. JOHN’S — Determining how best to achieve fishing vessel stability is at the heart of a new software program that simulates real-life situations experienced by fish harvesters.

The first version of the Fishing Vessel Stability Simulator Project, developed by Memorial University of Newfoundland, will be released to the Ottawa-based Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters (CCPFH) on March 31.

The CCPFH will then distribute the information to members, reports Kim Thornhill, educational marketing co-ordinator for the university’s Fisheries and Marine Institute.

Available in English and French, the idea is to enhance knowledge around fishing vessel stability concepts through the use of multi-media materials and electronic simulations.

Thornhill says the e-simulator will feature scenarios that mimic fishing trips, such as pre-departure provisioning of a vessel; fish loading while at sea; and depletion of consumables.

“As the user progresses through different levels of the software, greater risk factors — such as unexpected environmental and operational elements — will be introduced

Beyond a streamlined administrative budget, a strong investment year and an increase in assessable payroll, “most importantly, the rate reduction reflects significant progress for Prince Edward Island in building a culture of workplace safety, with no increases in either injury frequency or average claim duration.”

PAYMENT OPTIONS WELCOMED ST. JOHN’S — Employers in Newfound-

land and Labrador can now take part in a deferred payment plan to spread premium costs throughout the year.

The option was announced by the Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission (WHSCC) of Newfoundland and Labrador in St. John’s on November 17.

Under the new plan, employers will be able to set up interest-free equal payment plans using pre-authorized debit from March through December, says WHSCC spokesperson Lana Collins. Employers can choose payment intervals of weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, monthly or quarterly — but they will need to “apply and come up with a payment plan with us,” Collins says.

“We are the only jurisdiction in Canada offering a plan like this. Other [boards] may offer monthly reporting or different reporting arrangements, but not payment arrangements,” she points out.

“The improved plan will be of particular benefit for sectors with seasonal

throughout the scenarios, challenging the user to quickly apply the knowledge they have gained,” Thornhill says.

The software has six modules, beginning with basic stability principles. In later modules, users can build their own vessels and navigate a 3-D simulation in which, for example, fuel is burned and drinking water is consumed, says John Sutcliffe, executive director of the CCPFH. Sutcliffe estimates that vessel stability is a factor in about 75 per cent of work-related accidents. “I’ve fished for many, many years and what I’ve learned in regard to stability through this project is almost counterintuitive,” he says.

“What you think your vessel is doing and what it can take in terms of heavy seas and loading and so on is often not related to the feel of the vessel.”

The province has provided more than $500,000 to the project. Fisheries and aquaculture minister Darin King says in a statement he sees the initiative as having “the potential to enhance safety for fish harvesters around the world.”

— By Jason Contant

variations in cash flow, such as construction, fishing, logging and tourism, and will now offer the interest relief for all employers regardless of size,” Paul Davis, provincial minister responsible for the WHSCC, adds in a statement.

Bradley George, the St. John’s-based director of provincial affairs for the Newfoundland and Labrador arm of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, says the group has been lobbying the WHSCC to adopt greater flexibility in how payments can be made.

The option shows recognition “of the financial impact that workers’ compensation employer insurance premiums have on employers in this province,” adds

Richard Alexander, executive director of the Newfoundland and Labrador Employers’ Council in St. John’s.

Many of the preceding items are based on stories from our sister publication, canadian occupational health & safety 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 tollfree (800) 668-2374.

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

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DISPATCHES

Bite, bluster and bother of the Great White North

By Greg Burchell

A

Canadian’s ability to withstand the icy freeze of this land’s bitter winters is a badge of honour willingly displayed to “weaker” folk from southern climes. How can they know the sheer exhilaration of negotiating kneedeep snow while being battered by a cruel, biting wind?

Pride aside, for those who brave the cold snap of working in snow and ice, winter’s deep freeze poses a constant threat.

Workers would do well to carefully monitor both the weather and how they and their co-workers are responding to the elements.

“As the core body temperature goes lower, the person starts to show fatigue and possibly euphoria. Their thinking can become muddled, and it goes from there to the point where the person can lose consciousness,” explains Rita Coshan, director of health services with Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety in Regina.

Distracted workers are more likely to make mistakes and put themselves in danger, says Judy Kainz, chief safety officer for the Workers’ Safety and Compensation Commission of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. When workers can only think about how cold they are, Kainz says, they are less able to focus on the work at hand.

Edmonton-based Work Safe Alberta recommends workers keep an eye (and ear) out for any hint of “unusual -umbles” in fellow employees: stumbles, mumbles, fumbles and grumbles should throw up a red flag that something is awry.

When someone begins to shiver, says Coshan, it is an early sign that the body is trying to warm itself. But how quickly a body goes from productivity to hypothermia depends on more than temperature and humidity — there are also variables such as a person’s age, weight and activity level.

Employers should know how hardened their workers’ winter shells are and understand that every employee experiences cold differently. “Best Practice: Working Safely in the Heat and Cold,” a guide from Work Safe Alberta, offers the example of workers filleting fish who can submerge their hands in near-freezing water without pain. Their bodies are acclimatized and divert more blood to their extremities.

“You’ll see people around here running around at -40 Celsius with no hat and coats wide open, and then you’ll see others that are bundled up and you can’t see anything,” says Kainz. The territories get a lot of workers from southern

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Canada who may be ill-prepared — physically and mentally — to deal with an average temperature that can plummet to below -25 C in January, she points out.

Temporary foreign workers may be especially at risk and need to be trained on measures that locals may assume is standard knowledge, says Jim Barry, vice-president of health, safety and environment for PCL’s North America and Australia operations. “Even just the simplicities of not breathing through your nose because your nostril hairs will freeze, and how to maintain a consistent body temperature without overdoing it and exposing you more, there’s a fair amount of education that has to go on there,” Barry says.

How well an employee is outfitted can have a marked impact on his or her safety in cold weather, but personal protective equipment (PPE) can create its own hazards. “If you’ve got big, heavy gloves on, you don’t have the dexterity in your fingers,” Kainz says.

And then there is what can happen to some PPE when cold gets extreme. She points out that work boots with rubber soles can become extremely slippery when they freeze, and some fall arrest equipment is only good to -35 C. Any colder and it can grow brittle and possibly snap.

Even heavy equipment needs to face some cold hard facts. Reduce crane capacities since hydraulic hoses can crack, Barry cautions.

Sometimes, he advises, Mother Nature will not be bested no matter how extensive the preparation. If this is the case, it is best to call it a day before work even gets under way.

Greg Burchell is editorial assistant of

ohs canada.

Asthma aggravated by paint vapours on the job

By Jason Contant

A

British Columbia tribunal has overturned earlier rulings by WorkSafeBC and its review division that a worker’s pre-existing asthma was not aggravated by on-the-job exposure to paint vapours.

Andrew Elliot, vice-chair of the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal in Richmond, British Columbia, found that the worker’s asthma was exacerbated by exposure to isocyanate fumes at the office of a Vancouver-area auto body shop two years ago. Elliot’s ruling reverses earlier decisions denying compensation, first by a WorkSafeBC case manager in June, 2010 and then by a review officer last January.

“The evidence shows that the pre-existing asthma had not been a significant problem to the worker until he began

working in this workplace,” notes the latest decision from August 19. “The anecdotal evidence supplied by the worker of people reacting to the smell of paint in the office… would tend to confirm there is, in fact, exposure to paint fumes.”

On December 17, 2009, the 43-year-old estimator went to hospital with shortness of breath after experiencing a serious asthma attack and was also diagnosed with pneumonia. Two days later, he returned to hospital with worsening shortness of breath.

By February, the worker visited a respirologist, who reported the workplace had very little, if any, ventilation and that the worker had “a very significant exposure to auto spray paint (toluene diisocyanate),” the decision states.

An occupational hygiene officer with WorkSafeBC went to the workplace that March and noted paints containing isocyanates were being sprayed in a paint booth adjacent to the worker’s office. As well, contaminated air was being exhausted by a fan at the rear of the booth.

The next month, the officer returned to check the air flow rate. Elliot notes “the officer stated the paint booth had some typical deficiencies, and would not be considered best practice, but was not in violation of the health and safety regulations.”

A WorkSafeBC review officer acknowledged the worker may have been exposed to isocyanates when he walked into the paint booth, but concluded his worsening asthma was the result of non-work factors, including sleep apnea, gastroesophageal reflux disorder and smoking.

The worker argued the hygiene officer had not taken air quality measurements, Elliot notes in his ruling, adding the WorkSafeBC file does not contain the officer’s original report. With only the case manager’s account of what the officer reported, “it is impossible to tell how much detail was lost,” and if the investigation was “full and complete.”

Elliot notes that positive pressure in the paint room compared with that in the office created “a mechanism for leakage of fumes into the office through cracks in the wall and through the large filtered opening over the doorway.”

Jason Contant is editor of safety news.

canadian occupational health &

Are tattoos still taboo in the workplace?

By Samuel Dunsiger

T

he adage, “Do not judge a book by its cover,” offers the wisdom of not equating surface and inner qualities.

Throw body art into the equation, though, and regard for that caution seems lessened, especially in work settings where employees are in the public eye.

Cayla Martin, a graduate student in the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Education, is conducting a study to find out

if tattoos are still taboo on the job. The research, which is ongoing, focuses on responses from women at the university who have tattoos or body piercings.

A 2010 study released by the Toronto-based Canadian Liver Foundation shows that 20 per cent of baby boomers aged 40 or older had a tattoo or had considered getting one, and eight per cent have a piercing. “Despite the fact that body art has become more mainstream in recent years, there still seems to be a stigma attached to the choice of personal appearance when it comes to finding a place in the working world,” notes a statement from the University of Calgary.

Martin says that she was drawn to the research because it hits close to home. “As a female university student with piercings and tattoos, I’ve definitely felt some stigma because of these forms of expression,” she adds.

Shelley Mathieson, owner of Sink or Swim Tattoo Studio in Aurora, Ontario, says many of her clients work in “traditional job settings,” such as retail, real estate and finance. “Even though there may still be a [negative] perception about tattoos and the people who have them, the trend towards acceptance is improving,” Mathieson suggests.

However, the potential for a cool reception from employers and co-workers remains, says Antoinette Blunt, president of Ironside Consulting Services, a human resources consulting company in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

Traditional tattoo locations — say a flower on a woman’s shoulder — seem not to cause much of a stir. But workers who are all-in, covering their arms or chest, can be viewed as “extreme and distracting at the workplace,” Blunt suggests.

This may prove more of an issue for workers who interact with customers. “If I’m running a business, I have to think about customers and what would be seen as appropriate.”

For certain sectors, the objection to piercings is grounded in a proven concern: jewellery can potentially expose a worker to the hazard of getting caught in machinery.

Manufacturing workers are just one example, says Ian Howcroft, vice-president of the Ontario division of Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME) in Mississauga, Ontario. Howcroft says he remembers a recent call from a CME Ontario member about “someone whose bracelet got caught in a conveyor belt.”

Injury risk is present any time that a worker wears something which can get entangled: loose clothing, bandanas or key chains, notes Dhananjai Borwankar, a technical specialist at the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety in Hamilton, Ontario. The risk of piercing-related injuries is greater when working around rotating equipment, like in the aforementioned manufacturing sector, but also in carpentry, mining and welding, Borwankar says.

Blunt points out that the key to mitigating related hazards is to temporarily remove piercings. However, she cautions against a full ban on displaying body art.

“There needs to be a balance between thinking about safety and respecting the needs and freedoms of employees.”

Samuel Dunsiger is a writer in Toronto.

www.ohscanada.com

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

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Firefighters concerned solar panels may be “shocking”

By William M. Glenn

O

n a sunny day, a standard array of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels can produce 600 volts of electricity — more than enough to stun or kill a firefighter unlucky enough to stumble into a panel or chop through its wiring while trying to ventilate a burning building.

Spurred by soaring energy costs, PV panels are sprouting on the roofs of homes, offices, schools, churches and community centres across Ontario.

Firefighters are not particularly worried about solar panels bursting in flame — unless installed improperly, the panels seldom malfunction or overheat. But if a building sporting solar panels catches fire, a responding fire crew must still deal with these potentially lethal high-voltage units.

Electric shock can be a huge problem, says Denis St.-Denis, an incident safety officer with Ottawa Fire Services. The high voltages generated by solar PV systems “can definitely travel back through a water stream from a fire hose or down a metal ladder leaning against a panel,” St.-Denis says.

If solar panels block access to a roof, firefighters will need to consider horizontal or positive pressure ventilation. If electricity arcing is a problem, switching to a hose’s fog pattern — small droplets of water instead of a stream — interrupts water flow and protects the firefighters from shock.

Concerns about roof access, as part of routine maintenance or in emergencies, has prompted both California and Oregon to draft policies requiring access pathways around or between solar panel displays. “But you still have to worry about weight loads, ventilation and ensuring ingress and egress from a roof,” St.-Denis points out. “If the s--- hits the fan, you have to be able to get off the roof in a hurry.”

In response to growing concerns in Ontario, the Fire Service Health & Safety Advisory Committee, established under Section 21 of the province’s Occupational Health and Safety Act, has released new guidelines for dealing with solar PV systems. Fire Fighters Guidance Note #6-34 offers these precautions: • Assume the solar PV array is energized. Shutting off the utility disconnect switch that links the system to the grid still leaves panels and other upstream components live.

• During the daytime, the system continues to generate electricity. (At night, some contend lightning strikes are bright enough to create an electrical surge. Still, other fire experts argue moonlight is not bright enough to produce an electrical current.)

• Burning panels, especially the ones that are used in large commercial installations, can release toxic and carcinogenic combustion products, necessitating the use of personal protective equipment.

• Power cables and PV panels pose slip and trip hazards on roofs, while the weight of panels and fire crews may further compromise roof joists weakened by fire.

Panels can be quite difficult to spot, especially in the dark

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or when a building is wreathed with smoke.

It would be helpful if the location of solar panels was known before responders arrived on the scene, says Michael Ng, a fire protection engineer with the Office of the Ontario Fire Marshal in Toronto. “We need better communication between the municipal building departments that issue the permits for installing solar panels and the fire departments that respond to the emergency calls,” Ng contends.

Ottawa has approved such a system and is in the process of entering information into its computer dispatch system.

“If you understand the risks, there is no reason to let a building with solar panels burn. It’s all about education,” says Suzanne Cyr, vice-president of sales and marketing for SolPowered Energy Corp. in Ottawa.

The company offers a three-hour training course that covers weight bearing concerns, electrical hazards, the fundamentals of isolating and shutting down the system, ventilation and post-fire safety tactics, among other issues.

With more than a dozen municipalities signed up for the course in the new year, stakeholders seem to be getting the potentially “shocking” safety message about solar panels.

William M. Glenn is associate editor of hazardous substances for ohs canada.

Enhanced driver safety within a hair: company

By Angela Stelmakowich & Greg Burchell

A

trucking company in Washington state is betting that instituting extra testing to ensure new hires are driving clean will help reduce the number of accidents.

“Research has shown most accidents occur within the first 90 to 120 days of employment,” Scott Manthey, vice-president of safety and compliance at Gordon Trucking Inc., based in Pacific, Washington, notes in a company statement.

“Once a driver makes it through that initial period, the risk of an accident drops dramatically.”

Enhanced drug screening is regarded as one way to knock down the accident rate. Gordon Trucking began using Omega Laboratories in Mogadore, Ohio last July to drug screen all applicants using hair samples, a move meant to supplement mandatory urine testing for trucking, a minimum legislative requirement of the Department of Transportation in the United States.

The testing method used by Omega Laboratories measures drug molecules embedded inside the hair shaft, notes information posted on the company website. A standard test employs a hair sample — 90 to 120 strands cut as close to the scalp as possible and weighing at least 60 milligrams — to determine the presence of cocaine, marijuana, opiates, methamphetamine and phencyclidine (PCP). The detection

period for a standard test is about 90 days.

“We feel that a urine test combined with the longer timeframe of a hair test offers one of the best possible screening tools,” Manthey says. Of the 170 drivers who had been screened as of late September, hair tests detected 10 positive candidates who would have otherwise been hired, he says.

Beyond the positive tests, Manthey points out, “we also routinely have candidates dismiss themselves from orientation classes once they confirm a hair test will be conducted.”

Legal obligations differ at home, but random alcohol and drug testing has gotten a step closer at Canada’s largest public transit system. This past fall, the Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) Board of Directors gave the green light to random testing for those in safety-sensitive positions, including operators, maintenance staff, supervisors and executives.

The TTC had been pushing to add random testing to its Fitness for Duty policy because the existing rules, adopted in 2010, have not been effective enough in deterring intoxication at work, says Brad Ross, director of public communications for the TTC. Workers in safety-sensitive jobs can currently be tested for alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, opiates, amphetamines and PCP (using breathalyzers and saliva swabs) when there is reasonable cause, or post-incident, post-violation, post-treatment and pre-employment.

But the policy change has stirred up considerable debate — and polar opposite views around what is allowed under Ontario’s Human Rights Code.

Ian Fellows, a lawyer for Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents most TTC workers, said in October that the union is already challenging the existing policy and will add random testing to its grievance. “It’s an invasion of our members’ privacy.

It treats everybody as if they’ve done something wrong and it requires them to submit to an invasive procedure,” Fellows charges.

Although the specifics have not been pinned down, Ross says, “in theory, the way it works is you show up for work and the system tells us it’s your turn for random testing.”

By using saliva swabs, he says the associated drug test would indicate a pass or fail threshold on current impairment, not if drugs had been used in the past. “We’re interested in ensuring that when you report for work, you’re fit for duty, not what you did two days ago or two weeks ago.”

Greg Burchell is editorial assistant of ohs Stelmakowich is editor of ohs canada.

canada;

Angela

Getting out the right oh&s message... in the right way

By Astrid Van Den Broek

M

ore and more occupational health and safety organizations, ministries and boards are blogging and using social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn to reach stakeholders, but the effectiveness of these vehicles as messengers continues to evolve.

While some organizations offer social media interaction around specific initiatives — such as the “Raise Your Hand” campaign by Richmond, British Columbia-based WorkSafeBC — others use these tools as a general venue to blast oh&s information to the public and beyond.

Ontario’s Ministry of Labour (MOL) in Toronto launched its Facebook page in July of 2010, having certain expectations as to how the site would be used.

“We expected it to be a community square, where people would share stories and exchange with each other and we’d sit back as host and not intervene too much,” recalls Bruce Skeaff, social media planner for the MOL. Today, however, the page has almost 2,000 fans asking specifics about regulations or safety concerns on the job.

“We usually give them applicable information from our website so it’s pre-approved material; we don’t have to get something run through the ladder of various approval processes,” Skeaff says.

Although that approach is not new, Facebook and Twitter offers the MOL the luxury of immediacy and spontaneity. “If something happens in the news, we can start tweeting about it and say, ‘Here’s what the law says about this particular thing you just read.’”

But as much as quick responses can be made available, it is prudent to note that speed can create problems in record time as well.

Terence Little, manager of corporate internet services for WorkSafeBC, advises that caution still needs to be exercised. “Let’s say there’s an accident in downtown Vancouver — we can’t immediately comment on that accident because it’s still under investigation,” Little says. Once the issue is resolved, anything that can be released and would be valuable to followers is tweeted.

“People expect responses, and the doors are basically open with social media. So when they post on your wall or tweet, the challenge is keeping on top of the incoming messages in a timely basis. You’re trying to show you are there and listening, but since we don’t work around the clock, there can be a disconnect,” says Krista Travers, marketing communications officer at the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety in Hamilton, Ontario.

Tracking via website click-through or utilities that measure social media influence are available, but just how effectively is social media reaching target audiences? “It’s hard when you’re a health and safety program, making it attractive to the younger work force,” says Jenny Houlroyd, a hygienist and research scientist with the Centre for Young Worker Safety and Health at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “That’s really been a struggle about what they want to receive, not just what we want to put out.”

Astrid Van Den Broek is a writer in Toronto.

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

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illustration: D.C. Langer

Blood Loss

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In the flow

By Peter Kenter

Blood may be one of the body’s most undervalued resources, constituting five litres of fluid that completes a circuit through the veins, arteries and capillaries in under a minute.

That speed is matched by performance: tasks quietly checked off include everything from transporting oxygen and nutrients to cells to delivering disease-fighting antibodies and removing waste products from the body.

Happily contained inside the circulatory system, blood calmly goes about its routine by the day, the minute, the second. It is almost completely forgotten — that is until it is released from the body through a cut, tear, puncture or impact wound. And then, all hell breaks loose. drain away All this breaking loose — a daily potential for any work environment where something sharp, big, heavy or moving comes a worker’s way — can be shocking, not only to the individual mostly intimately affected, but also to any witnesses in the vicinity.

It may not get more primal than the response to seeing what is supposed to be on the inside suddenly appearing on the outside. For the person whose circulatory system has been breached, seeing red may be enough to change his or her emotional state.

And depending on the volume of blood lost, bleeding can set into motion an array of complex biological responses, with the prognosis of the injured person hanging in the balance.

Advanced Trauma Life Support guidelines from the Chicago-based American College of Surgeons offers the following hemorrhage classifications: • Class I — loss of up to 15 per cent of blood volume, typically with no change

in vital signs.

• C lass II — loss of 15 to 30 per cent of total blood volume. With a narrowing of the difference between the systolic and diastolic blood pressures, the injured person often experiences rapid heart beat. The body works to compensate for blood loss by constricting peripheral blood vessels, perhaps resulting in the skin looking pale and feeling cool to the touch, and the patient exhibiting slight changes in behaviour.

• Class III — loss of 30 to 40 per cent of circulating blood volume. Blood pressure drops, heart rate increases, mental state may worsen and the individual may go into shock.

• Class IV — loss of more than 40 per cent of circulating blood volume. The body reaches the limits of its ability to compensate for blood loss, necessitating aggressive resuscitation to prevent death. hard knocks The World Health Organization estimates that almost six million people die from injuries each year; in all, 600,000 of these individuals bleed to death.

The situation seems not to be so dire here at home, but blood loss from on-the-job injuries is something that many, many workers will (or could) encounter. Although workers’ compensation entities do not track deaths or injuries specifically according to blood loss, some work-related incidents almost certainly involve bleeding.

For example, WorkSafeBC in Richmond, British Columbia paid out 5,250 claims — short-term disability, long-term disability and fatal — for cuts in 2010, down from 7,210 in 2006. The board also accepted 260 claims for amputations, down from 340, over the same timeframe.

“Cuts, lacerations and punctures are common causes of lost-time claims in Ontario workplaces,” reports Christine Arnott, a media relations specialist for the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) in Toronto.

“The good news is that the number of these types of injuries is decreasing,” Arnott says, citing WSIB figures that indicate cuts, lacerations and punctures accounted for 9,485 lost-time claims, 9.1 per cent of all claims, in 2000. Just shy of a decade later, in 2009, the lost-time tally had dropped to 4,257 such claims, or 6.6 per cent of the total.

“Amputations occur most often when workers operate unguarded or inadequately safeguarded” powered equipment that includes presses, conveyors, roll-forming and rollbending machines, food slicers, meat grinders, drill presses and milling machines, notes a fact sheet from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the United States.

Care is needed around the point of operation, power transmission apparatuses such as pulleys, belts, couplings and gears and other reciprocating, rotating and transverse moving parts.

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Much of the published literature that explores bleeding injuries focuses on major amputations caused by machines and equipment. But lifethreatening bleeding can result from almost any force, producing internal or external harm.

When someone, including workers, encounters an injured person who is bleeding, there are a couple of basic reactions: shock at seeing the blood and a desire to stop that flow as quickly as possible, says Percy Pilatzke, lead educator and simulation specialist at the ORNGE Academy of Transport Medicine in Mississauga, Ontario.

“In the workplace, most bleeding I see occurs in the hands, with everything from small cuts to large punctures, lacerations and avulsions — tears of digits that are not severed across the bone, but across soft tissue, nerves, veins and arteries,” Pilatzke reports.

“The next most common injuries we see are injuries to feet.”

Most of the bleeding injuries he has treated over his 33 years in critical care medicine have not been the result of events on the job. This he attributes to the safety policies in place at workplaces and the requisite personal protective equipment, including protective gloves and steel-toed boots.

But no gear can protect against every contact. “When we get into higher-risk equipment, such as saws and moving belts and other machinery, we get into larger types of injuries like hand amputations or whole limbs,” Pilatzke says.

“Surprisingly, most of the chain saw injuries we see occur when the chain saw is off and people are sharpening their chains,” says Adam Moreland, owner of Adam Moreland Woodlot Services in Christopher Lake, Saskatchewan.

“There’s sawdust in the chain and it doesn’t move freely, so people grab the chain to push it backwards and the chain stops moving while the hand continues on,” adds Moreland, who is also a chain saw training instructor.

Clearly, injuries caused by chain saws can be severe. “That’s an ugly, jagged cut, not a clean one like a scalpel,” he says. “It usually doesn’t heal well and can be dirty because of the oil and sawdust in the chain, which can cause infection.”

Moreland emphasizes the importance of technique, ensuring the body is out of the way of the chain’s path. here and there But loss of life (or limb) is not confined to forestry. “Amputations can occur anywhere,” Pilatzke says. “Someone in a grocery store can remove a digit with a box cutter in seconds.”

Moreland says that he keeps a first aid kit attached to his tool belt at all times. “Even if my truck is parked 300 metres away, it’s no good to have the first aid kit there if I’m spurting blood over here,” he says.

World of Safety Contest 2012 For over 10 years, OHS CANADA has provided the opportunity for our readers to sample products and receive information from the world’s leading manufacturers of health & safety products and services.

Go to http://www.ohscanada.com/world-of-safety/2012/ to see this year’s participants and to have a chance to win great prizes from OHS CANADA.

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Pilatzke agrees the most important preparation is having a workplace first aid and rapid response program in place so that it is clear who does what and in what order. Responders should call 911 immediately, since rapid response from trained professionals offers the greatest promise of a successful outcome. Without that call first, he says, “that’s probably 15 minutes of critical care you will never be able to replace.”

Whether a responder to an injury scene is a trained professional or simply a co-worker, Pilatzke offers this bit of advice: “If it’s wet and sticky, and not yours, don’t touch it.”

Blood-transmitted diseases can be spread by contact with blood, meaning responders should always don latex gloves.

Being properly equipped is essential, particularly since a bleeding injury can be unpredictable for the uninitiated. Pilatzke reports these can include everything from spurting to slow bleeding, and internal injuries of organs or unexposed blood vessels that offer no obvious signs or symptoms.

Past and present “History is important,” Pilatzke emphasizes. “If someone was struck by a car and thrown into the parking lot, and there’s no obvious injury, I would assume the car has transferred a tremendous amount of force to a fragile body. The injured person may not say much, but I would automatically assume

that they have internal injuries and may be bleeding inside.”

For external bleeding, the best first aid treatment that can be offered is contained in the acronym, RED: Rest, Elevation of affected area, and Direct pressure.

Once a patient is rested, the affected area should be elevated to help control the volume of bleeding. Follow that by applying direct pressure to the wound.

Pilatzke advises against applying a tourniquet, simply because most people do not know how to properly make one, instead employing makeshift items and failing to understand the importance of using broad bands of bandage or cloth.

“Even with gunshot wounds or complete amputation, veins and arteries are already constricting and the body is sending clotting factors to help stop the bleeding,” Pilatzke explains. Place gauze on the wound and apply pressure. If there is any bleed-through, add more dressing, but never remove the first level of dressing, he advises, since this will disturb the clotting process.

Beyond first aid, a responder offering positivity can have a calming effect on a doubtlessly agitated individual. “People are often overwhelmed because of screaming. If they’re screaming, that’s a good thing because it shows they have open airways and a strong enough heartbeat,” Pilatzke says.

“Your job is to act like a good customer service rep. What-

blood stops here Clinical trials involving an array of chemicals are showing promise in improving the prognosis of patients who exhibit bleeding.

The British government funded a recent trial exploring tranexamic acid (TXA) and involving 20,000 adult trauma patients. Results of the study indicate that patients who received the drug intravenously had a 15 per cent lower chance of dying from hemorrhage and a 10 per cent lower chance of dying from other causes.

Inexpensive and considered safe, the drug is typically used to control menstrual blood flow or bleeding in patients having surgery. If administered to patients soon after an injury, though, it appears more promising still.

“Nothing is mutually exclusive,” says Ian Roberts, director of the Clinical Trials Unit at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “TXA reduces death due to bleeding by about 30 per cent if given in the first few hours of injury. That is well worth doing and offers quite a significant benefit,” says Roberts, one of the investigators of the study, published last March in the Lancet.

That said, he cautions that TXA can be counterproductive if administered many hours after the injury occurs, slightly worsening patient prognosis.

TXA may be considered as a first-line treatment for any patient demonstrating or at risk of significant bleeding, including internally. “Intravenous TXA is a prescription-only medicine and I can’t see that changing soon,” Roberts says. “But it could be given by paramedics.”

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Another treatment currently being studied is administering nanoparticles containing nitric oxide, which were infused into the bloodstreams of hamsters in trials conducted at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in the Bronx, New York.

“When you have significant blood loss from trauma or gunshot wounds, the patient can go into hemorrhagic shock,” says Dr. Joel Friedman, professor of physiology and medicine at the college, and co-author of the study in the February 21, 2011 online edition of Resuscitation.

“The therapy counters hemorrhagic shock by increasing the body’s levels of nitric oxide (NO) gas, which relaxes blood vessels and regulates blood pressure.”

In hemorrhagic shock, the linings of the patient’s blood vessels typically produce an inflammatory response that introduces a downward cycle in the patient’s condition.

Eventually, the body produces its own NO, resulting in significant dilation of the vessels.

“In the early stage, administering NO through an intravenous drip short circuits that inflammatory cycle,” Dr. Friedman explains. “Administered too late, it would throw fuel on the fire. The nanoparticles deliver NO in a sustained and prolonged manner,” he adds.

Dr. Friedman reports that a certain percentage of the population reacts poorly to blood transfusions. “Our study shows that if you include NO nanoparticles with the transfusion, it will improve the effectiveness and safety of the procedure,” he adds.

ever you say to the patient should be limited to what you’d be comfortable hearing yourself, say on an evening news broadcast,” he counsels. Do not get upset, do not swear, speak in low tones and tell the injured person the worst is over, that the injury has already passed and an ambulance is on its way.

“In the most severe injuries, such as bleeding caused by an explosion, people can exsanguinate within minutes,” Pilatzke says. “We have about five litres of blood, so eventually all bad bleeding will stop unless we do something. In the majority of cases, we really can do something to help.”

Much of what we know about the body’s response to bleeding has been learned in the past decade, says Dr. Sandro Rizoli, a trauma surgeon at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, and director of Sunnybrook Research Institute’s trauma, emergency and critical care research.

Injured people are often treated with transfusions of individual blood components — such as red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma, clotting factors and platelets. Some patients accept transfusions well, while others may demonstrate a negative reaction to the introduction of new blood.

Then there are patients who experience shock, which often causes the body’s counter-productive release of a biological agent that dissolves clots. “My opinion is that the body detects the constriction in blood vessels and assumes that a clot has blocked the flow of blood and oxygen to the organs, so it’s sending out an agent to dissolve the clot,” Dr. Rizoli says.

Use of drugs, like tranexamic acid, shows promise in improving patient outcome by convincing the circulatory system to act in a way that helps the patient’s real condition, rather than reacting to mixed signals that the body is receiving.

The use of advanced diagnostic equipment also aids trauma departments. “Ideally, we would have one of the Tri-corders that they used on Star Trek to get an instant reading of the patient’s condition,” Dr. Rizoli quips.

we don’t want to progress to an above-the-knee amputation.”

A client receives extensive rehabilitation and strengthening exercises for about three weeks, spends four weeks or so healing at home, and then returns for three weeks to be fitted with the prosthesis and trained to become ambulatory.

With traumatic injuries involving bleeding, however, it is often difficult to determine if some cognitive problems are the result of intracranial bleeding or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suggests Dean Powers, a vocational expert practising at Harbourview Rehabilitation and Occupational Health Consultants Ltd. in Surrey, British Columbia.

“A person experiencing PTSD may record the same lower test scores in auditory processing or broad attention span as someone who has an actual cognitive disability as a result of inter-cranial bleeding,” Powers explains. “That may be a direct result of the violence of the traumatic injury and witnessing the tremendous loss of blood.”

“It’s tremendously important to assess psycho-social issues as well as physical conditions resulting from a bleeding injury to help effect a positive outcome,” he emphasizes.

“However, we’re one of the first hospitals to use a ROTEM hemostasis analyzer hooked directly into the emergency room displays to get rapid information on how the patient’s blood is coagulating, so we can respond appropriately,” he says.

Once the immediate threat has passed and healing has begun, the injured person will be assessed for rehabilitation and the eventual return to work.

“When clients with amputations first arrive, we need to get them strong,” says Dr. Jeffery Wulffhart, a physician at St. John’s Rehab Hospital in Toronto, a facility specializing in rehabilitation of patients with lower limb amputations. “Quite often there’s a little blood seepage around the flap of skin that covers the amputated area, but no major bleeding.”

Care of the area around the amputation is essential, says Dr. Wulffhart. “If it’s a below-the-knee amputation, we want to make sure that the area does not become necrotic. The human knee is superior to any prosthetic we can devise, and

Worse than a sharp knife, however, is a dull one. The latter is responsible for “the most injuries because you need to apply even more force to complete the cut and stand more of a chance of having the knife deflect from the bone,” he says.

Workers already wear chain mail gloves and sometimes similar vests, and all cutting and grinding equipment is fitted with guards, safety switches and stop mechanisms.

They know first aid, Van Groningen says, but injury prevention centers on worker training. Although all workers are instructed on how to use each piece of equipment, only some are actually tasked with operating the machines The preventive approach bodes well for workplaces, whatever the particular sector, and keeping safety in the flow.

stop before start The best way to stop bleeding is to avoid it in the first place.

On the job, that objective is greatly aided by ensuring workers are properly trained and appropriately equipped.

“Knives don’t come with guards,” says Keith Van Groningen, a partner in VG Meats, a butchering and meatpacking company in Simcoe, Ontario.

“Some cuts require a bit of force and if the knife should deflect off the bone and come out of the meat, you want to make sure it isn’t heading toward the person who is doing the cutting,” Van Groningen notes. “We watch our new employees very carefully to make sure that they’re holding their knives properly. They can make mistakes, especially early on.”

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Peter Kenter is a writer in Toronto.

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Sex work

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Rough trade

By Greg Burchell From 1982 to 1998, Gary Leon Ridgway preyed on sex workers in King County, Washington.

Ridgway picked up the women, took them back to his house and strangled them, later writing in his defendant’s statement that his goal was to kill as many sex workers as he could.

“I picked prostitutes as my victims because I hate most prostitutes and I did not want to pay them for sex. I also picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing right away, and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught,” the statement notes.

For 16 years, Ridgway went undetected by police. As he pursued his perverse objective, the number of sex workers he could kill ballooned to 48, their forgotten bodies dumped in clusters around the county.

Home front In 2002, Canadians learned their home and native land was not immune to this sort of violence. Police unearthed the DNA and partial remains of 26 women — some of this dating back to 1995 — on a pig farm about 30 kilometres east of Vancouver. All of the women had been sex workers and all had lived and worked in Vancouver’s drug-drenched and poverty-infested Downtown Eastside neighbourhood.

Robert Pickton was convicted of second-degree murder for six of the women and charges were stayed for the other 20, although he confessed to an undercover officer that the true body count was 49 and he “was gonna do one more, make it an even 50.”

Rene Ross, the executive director of Stepping Stone, a sex worker advocacy and support organization in Halifax, says tragedies like these are evidence of the systemic violence against workers society has deemed disposable. Although offering the legal service of exchanging money for sex, these workers are denied occupational health and safety protections, forced to work in unsavoury areas and around dangerous people because of what Ross calls “old, useless laws that do not do anything but harm.”

Provisions in the Criminal Code of Canada make it almost impossible to work in the sex industry without breaking the law. Although provinces may have oh&s requirements that could help keep sex workers safe, these protections do not apply to work that violates Canadian law.

In 2006, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights released its review of Canada’s prostitution laws. “Prostitution takes place on the street, through escort and call-girl services, in massage parlours, private apartments, and in specialty clubs and bars, including strip clubs, hotels and some restaurants,” notes the report.

Speaking before the committee, Kara Gillies, president of Maggie’s: The Toronto Prostitutes’ Community Service Centre, said the laws of the day increased the risk of violence by outlawing safety measures sex workers could take and reinforced the stigma that they are “acceptable targets of derision and abuse.”

Susan Davis, a sex worker for 25 years, is a member of the West Coast Co-op of Sex Industry Professionals in Vancouver. “Are we going to continue down this path, where sex working people are completely excluded from the discussions and only people who won’t be affected get to impose their moral ideal?”

Says Davis, “I’ve been assaulted numerous times. From an occupational health and safety standpoint, there’s not a lot of control of your environment when you’re standing on a street corner, especially under the current legal framework.”

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Emphasizing that the existing approach is costing people their lives, Davis contends that in “any other industry, if the working conditions had degraded to the point ours have, [the government] would do something about it.”

Struck down Ridgway’s serial murders and the horrors at Pickton’s farm were cited in a September, 2010 Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruling that offers the potential to completely transform Canada’s sex work industry.

In their arguments before the court, sex workers and sex work activists Terri Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott noted that although Sections 210, 212(1)(j) and 213(1)(c) of the Criminal Code — which includes criminalizing sex-for-money transactions conducted in public — do not cause direct harm to sex workers, the provisions “prevent prostitutes from conducting their lawful business in a safe environment.”

This, they claimed, represented a violation of both Sections 2(b) and 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which address the freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, and the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

The federal government — along with the Ontario government, the Christian Legal Fellowship (CLF), Real Women of Canada and the Catholic Civil Rights League — submitted that the risks in prostitution are inherent in the nature of the activity itself and its association with physical violence, drug addiction and trafficking, organized crime and sex trafficking. Any Charter violations could be justified under Section 1 as a reasonable limit to rights “in a free and democratic society,” they argued.

It was also put forward that the laws are a reflection of societal views, with the CLF asserting that “prostitution is immoral and should be stigmatized” and if the Charter provisions were struck down, prostitution would become a “last resort” occupation.

Almost a full year after hearing initial arguments, Justice Susan Himel of Ontario’s superior court issued her 132-page ruling, siding with Bedford, Lebovitch and Scott and striking down three provisions in the Criminal Code.

“These three provisions prevent prostitutes from taking precautions, some extremely rudimentary, that can decrease the risk of violence towards them. Prostitutes are faced with deciding between their liberty and their security of the person,” Justice Himel writes.

“Thus, while it is ultimately the client who inflicts violence upon a prostitute, in my view the law plays a sufficient contributory role in preventing a prostitute from taking steps that could reduce the risk of such violence,” she adds.

The Ontario Court of Appeal is reviewing the case in the wake of a challenge by the federal government. Jeremy Warning, a labour and employment lawyer at Heenan Blaikie in Toronto, says what happens in Ontario is not binding elsewhere, but cites the appeal court’s influence.

“I would anticipate, regardless of the outcome, but particularly if it’s struck down, you’re likely to see an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada,” he adds.

House and home Section 210 of the Criminal Code makes it illegal to own, use or even be in a place used for prostitution, a law the Ontario government argued was in place to protect the dignity of, and prevent physical and psychological harm to, sex workers, Justice Himel writes.

The inference, however, is not supported by the law’s history. “The evidence suggests that working in-call is the safest way to sell sex; yet, prostitutes who attempt to increase their level of safety by working in-call face criminal sanction.”

The Ottawa-based Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics reports that between 1994 and 2003, at least 79 prostitutes in this country were murdered while on the job. The overwhelming majority of deceased women worked the streets, despite these workers accounting for only five to 20 per cent of all prostitution activity in Canada.

When sex workers have a base of operations, there is the opportunity to work together and develop personal and professional relationships, says Frances Shaver, head of the anthropology and sociology department at Concordia University in Montreal. If a sex worker goes missing, his or her absence will be noticed, argues Shaver, who has contributed to three government-funded research projects into the sex industry and taken part in numerous independent studies.

As part of an inquiry into the actions of the Vancouver police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) during Pickton’s deadly spree, John Lowman, a prostitution researcher from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, says that almost 150 on-street sex workers have gone missing or been killed in British Columbia since 1980.

The figure dwarfs the number of escorts and women killed while working in homes — two and one, respectively, Lowman notes. “Instead of having an opportunity to become serial killers, the men who murder indoor sex workers are usually apprehended relatively quickly, unlike the men who target

street workers, who rarely leave tracks,” he says.

Although working indoors is safer, sex workers based in brothels and homes or who make calls to clients’ residences are not immune to violence, Kevin Vickers, chief superintendent of the RCMP, noted in the federal standing committee’s 2006 study.

Vickers said he had investigated deaths involving escort agency workers, citing two women “who worked specifically for an escort service right in Calgary. So violence is there.”

Section 212(1)(j) of the Criminal Code makes it illegal to live parasitically “on the avails of prostitution of another person” — commonly referred to as pimping. “Prostitution, including legal out-call work, may be made less dangerous if a prostitute is allowed to hire an assistant or a bodyguard; yet, such business relationships are illegal due to the living on the avails of prostitution provision,” Justice Himel writes.

The illegality of hiring bodyguards or drivers reduces the visibility of sex workers and removes an option for assistance should violence arise, Ross contends. “When those who provide you with transportation are at risk of being arrested and charged because they are transporting you for the purposes of sex work, this form of security enhancement no longer works to benefit those involved,” Eleanor Maticka-Tyndale, professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Windsor, told the standing committee.

Communication gap Perhaps the most contentious Criminal Code section, namely 213(1)(c), is the one that outlaws sex workers soliciting their services in a public place, including in vehicles. “The communicating provision impairs the ability of prostitutes to communicate in order to minimize their risk of harm,” Justice

Experimenting Down Under In 2003, New Zealand passed the Prostitution Reform Act (PRA), effectively decriminalizing sex work and opening up the industry to occupational health and safety regulation.

New Zealand’s Occupational Safety and Health Service issued “A Guide to Occupational Health and Safety in the New Zealand Sex Industry,” which outlines basic rules for employers, employees and sex worker organizations and provides explanations of what is expected for safe work.

These expectations include the following: • beds that are in good repair and offer proper support; • comfortable outfits that do not adversely affect posture; • secure access to a safe workplace; • a plan to deal with hazards or emergencies; • employer supply of water-based lubricants and non-allergenic massage oils; and, • adequate break times between clients and shifts.

Three years after the reforms rolled out, the New Zealand government had struck a multi-stakeholder committee to study the impact of decriminalization. Members included

sex workers, brothel operators, a doctor, a researcher, a nun, a city councillor, a public health official, social workers and a retired police officer.

“The basis for working collaboratively was established through concentrating our efforts on the human rights, welfare, occupational health and safety of sex workers, and the prohibition of the use of young persons in prostitution,” states the report, released in 2008.

The committee declared the PRA a success because the vast majority of sex workers were better off than before passage of the act, although they acknowledged a negative stigma around sex work persisted and many workers still experienced exploitative conditions.

“There is no doubt that there have been improvements all round for sex worker safety,” Catherine Healy, national co-ordinator of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, says from Wellington. Healy points to the ability to challenge bullying bosses through dispute tribunals and mediation services and improved relations with police.

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Himel notes, reasoning that the provision was an unjustifiable limit on freedom of expression and “simply too high a price to pay for the alleviation of social nuisance.”

The image of the woman leaning into a car deserves a closer look. “She’s negotiating the terms of her employment and doing an environmental scan, seeing if there’s anything dangerous in the car,” Davis says.

“Under the current legal framework, that’s illegal. She has to get in the car, close the door and drive away before negotiating the terms of her employment or having a moment to do a scan to see if the guy has a gun, is he sober, is he living in his car.”

The federal Department of Justice’s 1998 study, “Report and Recommendations in Respect of Legislation, Policy and Practices Concerning Prostitution-Related Activities”, indicated Section 213 of the Criminal Code has not discouraged prostitutes from plying their trade; it has simply moved them out of the public eye and into harm’s way.

Against the Law Researchers often say laws around sex work create a “discourse of disposal” that encourages violence and neglect from police, a situation made worse because the police are often a sex worker’s only (albeit grudging) option for protection against violence and harassment.

John Lowman, a prostitution researcher at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, testified during the Robert Pickton inquiry that police seem to be sending the message that the only way sex workers can get help is to stop the legal act of prostitution.

“They try to rehabilitate you — into what? What is it they want us to do?” laughs Susan Davis, a sex worker for 25 years.

In a study of escort licensing in Windsor, Ontario, researchers Jacqueline Lewis and Eleanor Maticka-Tynedale found that police justified ignoring violence against sex workers because they believed “the experience of victimization and lack of police assistance would provide incentive to leave sex work.”

Frances Shaver, a sex work researcher at Concordia University in Montreal, says she has dealt with instances where police have refused to follow up on an assault charge because a sex worker would not agree to facilitate a pimping charge.

The criminalization of sex work makes it part of an illegal market and pushes sex workers into the criminal underground with gangs and drug dealers, notes an information booklet published by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network in Toronto. This encourages an adversarial relationship with police — fearing harassment, arrest or not being taken seriously, sex workers often will not go to police when they need help.

Knocking down the laws would help erode the barriers between police and the sex work industry, argues Rene Ross, director of the Halifax-based Stepping Stone, and encourage workers to report crimes against them.

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All sex workers who testified before the standing committee agreed Section 213 forces on-street sex workers into the shadows, to isolated areas away from police and other protection services while giving their clients complete anonymity.

After the communication law was enacted in 1985 to reduce the visibility and nuisance of prostitution — it had previously been the solicitation law, which did not punish customers — local media in Vancouver reported an increase in the average number of sex workers murdered.

“It appears the discourse on prostitution of the early 1980s dominated by demands to ‘get rid’ of prostitutes created a social milieu in which violence against prostitutes could flourish,” Lowman noted in a 2000 study.

Adds Ross, “We, as a society, continue to treat sex workers as a punching bag and they’re very much seen as disposable, so when crimes and violence occur against them, we fail to take that seriously.”

Rebuilding process Back in 2005, a statement issued by the Canadian Union of Public Employees called on the Canadian Labour Congress in Ottawa to investigate the possibility of union representation for sex workers. “It is only fair that sex workers get the recognition and protection given other workers, including a minimum income, social security, sanitary and healthy workplaces, freedom from discrimination, harassment, violence and coercion, and the right to union representation.”

Sexual service work is generic, “if you look at it from the point of view of providing a service to consenting adults,” says Shaver. Provisions in the Criminal Code already deal with physical violence, sexual assault, sexual violence, coercion, kidnapping, theft “and all the rest of it, so those things would continue to be in place and continue to get called upon when necessary,” she adds.

Knocking down the Criminal Code provisions under debate will clear the way for oh&s standards and labour laws, Shaver contends. “Demolishing the law is in place. We’re demolition experts, but there’s a big job in working to build up what can then be done,” she says.

But there are plenty of questions that need answers. “How do you build up what we’re going to have in the labour code?

What kind of health and safety regulations do we need? How do we set in place some assistances to make it possible for sex workers to unionize, if they should choose to? What kind of educational programs can we set up if there are workers who would like to move on and do something else?” Shaver asks.

Toronto lawyer Jeremy Warning explains that if sex work is to be regulated under provincial health and safety legislation, industry-specific safe-work practices would need to be developed, the regulating body would have to create an enforcement protocol and inspectors and hygienists would need to be provided additional training.

“If the provisions are struck down and there’s no other legislative change that’s brought forward to recriminalize or

Permits and Permitted otherwise regulate the sex trade, then there may well be a requirement or need for the government to regulate it if it becomes a legitimate profession or occupation,” he says.

If sex trade work is legitimized as a profession in Ontario, the Employment Standards Act would apply, Warning says. Employment law would not be changed; rather it would “extend employment law’s reach into what had previously been an unorganized or unregulated occupation.”

Shaver points out that “if anybody is wanting to organize and run a business, if we’ve got our labour laws in place, then they will be subjected to the labour codes of what it means to be a responsible employer as well as what it means to be a responsible employee.”

Davis says the West Coast Co-op of Sex Industry Professionals is working to develop a voluntary system of accreditation that would allow business owners to prove that they are ethical and are providing healthy and safe workplaces.

“Opening the Doors” from the Vancouver-based BC Coalition of Experimental Communities cites unclean workspaces and inaccurate information as a health issue for indoor sex workers. The “XXX Guide” from Stella in Montreal recommends sex workers always use condoms and gives tips on how to convince reluctant clients to do so.

However, Shaver notes, with 10 provinces and three territories, “what might happen in Alberta might be a whole lot different from what might happen in British Columbia, depending on how open people are to working with this new idea and this new vision of the sex industry.”

If the Criminal Code provisions stay struck down, Alberta’s Occupational Health and Safety Act should be ready to handle the new industry, Barrie Harrison, a spokesperson for Alberta Human Services, says from Edmonton. “As far as we’re concerned, Alberta’s OH&S Act applies to every occupation, employment or business, and the OH&S Act would have jurisdiction,” Harrison says.

Already in existence are provincial requirements revolving around work-related violence and working alone, he notes.

“At least initially, we feel that we probably have our bases covered,” he says. However, “any time there’s something new that comes up or we feel that some sort of provision needs to be made to our [oh&s] code, we would do that.” necessary voice Ross and Shaver agree it is imperative that the voice of sex workers be part of the dialogue around development of oh&s requirements or policy. “The best person to direct their health and safety are sex workers themselves, which is why they need to be at the table when policies are decided that impact their lives,” Ross maintains.

Harrison says that whenever new policies and amendments are being introduced in Alberta, the provincial government tries to bring all stakeholders to the table. “A lot of times it’s certainly discussion within industry itself as to whether the current legislation is doing the trick. Does it apply to them? Are there any loopholes they feel we need to close?” he asks.

Regulating sex work like any other legal industry could re-

Some Canadian studies and experts have cautioned against the potentially volatile situation that could arise in a showdown between federal and provincial or municipal safety requirements.

If the laws are struck down, it would be possible for the provinces or municipalities to set policies that would “create new quasi-criminal or punitive regimes that just use fines and penalties to do what the criminal law was doing, but at a lower level,” says Frances Shaver, head of the anthropology and sociology department at Concordia University in Montreal.

Many municipalities across the country already have licensing systems for escort, body rub and massage parlours, representing a “schizoid system of regulation” that refuses to acknowledge it is licensing sex work, contends John Lowman, a prostitution researcher from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.

“Escorting isn’t about prostitution... it is prostitution.

But we can’t say that,” one police rep is quoted as saying in Jacqueline Lewis’s and Eleanor Maticka-Tynedale’s 2000 study of escort licensing in Windsor, Ontario.

The study found that licensing can create confusion over the legal status of the work. After a raid, brothel owners could not understand how they could be charged with living off the avails of a prostitute, but the city and Revenue Canada could make money though escort and brothel licences and taxing the industry.

“This is ridiculous. How can anyone imagine that escort work is about anything but sex?” one sex worker said.

This sentiment was echoed in a 2005 Sex Trade Advocacy and Research report, which found that licensing could prevent managers from providing occupational health and safety information and safe sex supplies because owners and operators had to pretend there was no sex work going on.

sult in minimum oh&s standards, employment contracts on minimum wages and working hours, possible access to workers’ compensation benefits and access to any other benefits and restrictions that come with a traditional employment relationship, Warning says.

“Success depends upon the recognition and acceptance of [sex workers] as full citizens and sex work involving consenting adults as a legitimate revenue-generating activity,” notes a 2010 study by Jacqueline Levis and Eleanor Maticka-Tynedale of 450 sex workers in street prostitution, exotic dancing, escorting and message.

Shaver says that she regards Justice Himel’s decision as a big victory for the health and safety of sex workers, although there is still a long way to go. “All of the ways of making sex work safe are really against the law. If they want to operate safely, then they have to break laws,” she says.

Ridding the landscape of “inappropriate laws” will serve as a step toward affording sex workers the same rights and protections now enjoyed by other workers across the country, Shaver suggests.

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Greg Burchell is editorial assistant of

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Image: Thinkstock

miner certification

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Under Current

By Jean Lian Henry V of England is often credited as the architect of the world’s very first passport some 600 years ago.

Designed to identify its holder as English, the document served as a means to gain passage into a walled city while travelling abroad.

Today, the passport offers not only literal access to origins known and unknown, but also a figurative entrée to new experiences.

For miners across Canada, the document has an added significance — a door to employment opportunities and advancement — thanks to a new certification program that verifies work competencies and experience under the aegis of a skills passport.

new view Euclide Haché, president of Local 5385 of the United Steelworkers (USW) union, is a mobile equipment miner with Xstrata Zinc in Bathurst, New Brunswick. With more than 30 years of mining experience under his belt, Haché was recently certified under the Canadian Mining Certification Program (CMCP) as a Level 2 underground miner in production and development.

This achievement he wears as a badge of honour, a validation of mining skills born of three decades of hard work.

“With certification, that gives you that opportunity to show to the industry that you have skill,” he says, then switching to his native French, “and connaissance, so the ability to [produce] right now in a safe way.”

Haché’s certification could not come at a more opportune time; the mine where he works is set to close in 2013.

“Is that going to help us find another job?” he asks. “I believe so.”

That prediction would surely be viewed as validation by those who have themselves toiled for years to develop the passport and get the CMCP off the ground. Barbara Kirby, senior director of work force development at the Mining Industry Human Resources (MiHR) Council in Kanata, Ontario, has spent the better part of the last six years travelling and speaking with employers, workers, educators and others in mining about creating a national certification program.

“I’ve had people coming up to me saying, ‘We’ve been waiting for this for so long,’” Kirby says.

Unlike some trades, skilled workers in mining have never had an industry-recognized credential that supports mobility and retention within the work force at their disposal, notes information from MiHR. “This is the first time there’s been a real national recognition of a skill set that has been very well-developed,” Kirby says. “These are people who operate multi-million-dollar pieces of equipment in fairly hazardous work environments.”

Without a formal credentialing framework, employers were unable to easily evaluate the qualifications of experienced miners and had to allocate time and resources to retrain new hires who had achieved certain competencies in former workplaces, but lacked an objective means to verify their proficiencies. Beyond that duplication of effort, MiHR also cites hindrance to recruitment and advancement.

Dave Pagnucco, a CMCP-certified minerals processing operator at Teck’s Highland Valley Copper open pit mine in British Columbia, had to swallow the bitter pill of starting from scratch when the operation where he previously worked shut down in 2001. “I had no credentials,” Pagnucco says plainly, adding that no program was in place to offer assistance. “I think that in the future, we will be able to move from

“Is that going to help us find another job?” he asks. “I believe so.”

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one mine to another, and start off at a level that reflects our skills and credentials.”

Wayne Fraser, Torontobased director of the USW’s Ontario and Atlantic Canada division, calls the program long overdue. “We’ve been fighting for that since the early ’70s,” Fraser says, adding he believes the move is good for industry and miners alike. “It’s a way to ensure that [miners] have portability and carry their skill from one location to another.”

Jim Utley, vice-president of human resources at Teck in Vancouver and co-chair of the CMCP steering committee, concurs. “In other occupations, technicians and technologists all have credentials from the colleges they have attended. We never had a way to really recognize our experienced miners,” Utley says. career path A skills passport not only provides a record of a miner’s growing competencies for current and prospective employers, it also supports career development planning. “They can submit their skills passport along with their new record of assessment as they gain additional skills,” Kirby reports.

Employers taking part in the voluntary CMCP will need to appoint a workplace assessor, who will undergo a two-day training program on how best to use the program’s assessment tools to conduct on-the-job evaluations. These will be based on the requirements set out by industry and described in the CMCP’s National Occupational Standards.

Standards have been developed for four key mining occupations: underground hardrock miner, surface miner, minerals processing operator and diamond driller. Certification criteria for each occupation are based on competencies outlined in related provincial training programs for miners, such as the Ontario Common Core.

Those seeking certification will need to demonstrate competencies and complete work hours required for each occupational group. For example, Level One certification for three of the four groups requires a minimum of 1,000 hours of work experience (this translates to approximately six months of work), while Level Two certification for underground miners requires 7,000 hours.

Each occupational group has a component entitled “Work Safely,” which addresses numerous occupational health and safety issues: compliance with oh&s regulations and policies; identification of and response to work-related hazards and emergencies; donning of personal protective equipment;

training on the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System; and instruction on lockout and tagout.

“When an employer sees somebody with a certification under the CMCP, they know that the same set of assessment tools have been applied no matter where that person received [his or her] certification, so it’s all about providing a standardization nationally that’s recognized across provincial borders,” Kirby says.

MiHR reports that the existing mandatory standards and assessment systems will remain in place while council and provincial or territorial authorities continue to work to identify any common ground between CMCP and other systems.

In 2010, the program was piloted at seven sites: Xstrata Zinc’s Brunswick Mine in New Brunswick; Cementation Canada at Totten Mine in Ontario and Trout Lake Mine in Manitoba; Rio Tinto’s Diavik Diamond Mine in the Northwest Territories; Teck’s Greenhills Operation and its Highland Valley Copper mine, and Northgate Minerals Corp.’s Kemess South Mine, all in British Columbia.

Since completion of the pilot, some 98 miners across the country have been certified and new sites have been added.

Kirby notes that plans to roll out the program elsewhere, including in Newfoundland and Labrador, are in the works. get ready Research from MiHR indicates that between now and 2021, the mining industry will require about 112,000 workers to support growth and replace retiring workers. It is anticipated that production miners, development miners, heavy equipment operators and mill operators will account for approximately 20 per cent of new hires.

Over the last 20 years, the average retirement age in Canada’s mining industry has been 59.5 — younger than the average age of 62 for all sectors. That means mining will likely face retirement pressures sooner than other industries, predicts the report, “Canadian Mining Industry Employment and Hiring Forecasts 2011.”

Add to that the impact of economic expansion, declining birth rates and an aging work force among all sectors.

For example, a 2006 survey in British Columbia showed that mining engineers and supervisors, geologists and maintenance supervisors were among the jobs facing the greatest challenges in recruitment and retention, notes a backgrounder by the British Columbia Mineral Exploration and Mining Labour Market Task Force. Among the contributing factors were undesirable working conditions — either real or perceived — in parts of the industry and too few trained workers.

Pointing to the mining boom, Fraser says “junior mining companies require miners and we’ve got a demographic in the mining industry that has an average age of 45 to 50.”

Beyond age, practice is also changing. Shadowing — a previously common way in which novice miners learned the ropes by shadowing experienced workers — is less prevalent today. “In the ’70s and ’80s, the industry was not as demanding for the miner,” Haché contends. “That opportunity or flexibility to shadow an experienced miner and pass the experience to the young guys, they don’t have that.”

Utley cites the increasing use of technology in mining as an exacerbating factor. “With the demand for commodities, there’s going to be many new mines — operations opening up that are going to require competent people to run these mines efficiently and safely,” he suggests.

Winds of Change Certification programs such as the Canadian Mining Certification Program seem to be part of a growing trend in trades across the country.

Last June, a Certificate of Recognition (COR) program for Ontario construction contractors was implemented in response to a key recommendation in the final report of the Expert Advisory Panel on Occupational Health and Safety, which contained numerous suggestions on how to overhaul Ontario’s oh&s system.

The COR is a voluntary audit program that seeks to reduce human and financial costs associated with workplace incidents and injuries by equipping construction employers with an effective health and safety management system (HSMS). Developed by the Infrastructure Health and Safety Association (IHSA) and the Ontario General Contractors Association (OGCA), certification is often required for contracts with both public and private sector construction projects, notes information from IHSA in Mississauga, Ontario.

Senior management and one full-time employee of participating firms must undergo prescribed training offered by

IHSA. After completing the training, the employee will audit his company’s HSMS, followed by an external audit conducted by IHSA. The company that successfully passes the audits will be issued a COR and a letter of good standing.

COR is well-established in about eight of the 10 provinces, notes David Frame, director of government relations for the OGCA in Mississauga, Ontario. “It’s been around for over 10 years in some provinces and it is generally recognized as a standard in construction industry as the designation for those companies that operate to the highest standard,” Frame says.

The experience of other provinces with a longer history of COR, such as Alberta and British Columbia, “showed that it has translated into fewer injuries,” Frame offers, adding that adhering to procedures set out by the audit program will help companies prove due diligence in the event of a workplace accident.

The pilot in Ontario, which currently has more than 40 construction firms participating, was launched last summer and is scheduled to conclude in early 2012.

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safe and sound While the CMCP scored a first for the Canadian mining industry, will it ultimately translate into oh&s gains?

Dwayne Plamondon, vice-president for northeast Ontario and mine rescue at Workplace Safety North in North Bay, Ontario, characterizes the program as a win-win for workers and industry. “A certified miner would have the benefit of being competent in their duties. That means they have the ability to assess the hazards and actually put some controls in place to prevent an incident or an injury,” Plamondon says.

From a worker’s perspective, it is also reassuring to know that a certified co-worker has achieved the same standard of competencies and understands how working safely is important to all, Kirby adds.

Utley has received positive feedback from some of the workers who took part in Teck’s pilots at two sites where, in all, 15 miners received certification. Survey respondents reported feeling the “standards that had been established were very appropriate.”

Given that CMCP has only recently been implemented, it has not yet been verified that certification had netted health and safety improvements. However, Utley suggests, logic dictates that with a “comprehensive, thorough type of training that incorporates these safety and environmental standards that the outcomes are going to be positive.”

As an example, he points out that a Teck review of occupational standards identified that an important safety component for a lockout procedure was not included in one of the company’s training programs. By checking the internal program against the new standard, “they get an immediate benefit which, presumably, will have a positive effect in the safety of that particular workplace,” he adds.

For Plamondon, any measure that reduces the chance of

the western front In Wild Rose Country, Alberta’s former employment and immigration minister, Thomas Lukaszuk, announced last summer that stricter guidelines have been adopted for the province’s Certificate of Recognition (COR) program in an effort to enhance scrutiny of COR-holding firms that experience serious injuries or fatalities.

Under new rules that took effect last July, a review of COR-holding companies would be launched as soon as a workplace incident occurs. A certified company charged under Alberta’s Occupational Health and Safety Act will also have its Partners in Injury Reduction (PIR) rebate withheld, pending the outcome of the charges.

As per the provincial PIR program, a company can be certified by developing a health and safety management system and meeting established standards.

Certified firms are eligible for rebates of as much as 20 per cent of their assessment premiums and are able to bid on contracts where a COR is a prerequisite.

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workers being injured is a good thing. “By giving [miners] the education and awareness to be able to identify and assess the hazards and control them, we actually arm them properly to work safely on a daily basis.” mine country Mining in Canada, which dates back 150 years, has come a long way since its early days. Consider that some of the country’s deadliest mine disasters occurred at the turn of the 20th century: the 1902 Coal Creek mine explosion in British Columbia, which claimed 128 men; and the 1914 Hillcrest mine disaster in Alberta, where 189 miners died in another underground blast.

Today, the mining industry — governed by 19 acts and 14 regulations at the federal level and dozens more in the provinces and territories — is recognized as among the safest industrial sectors, notes information from the Government of Canada’s website.

Jack Caldwell, a consultant with Robertson GeoConsultants Inc. in Vancouver and author of a mining blog, has seen his fair share of mines, having worked on projects in southern Africa, Europe, Canada and the United States. Noting that Canada now has “the safest mines in the world,” Caldwell says that was not always so.

Years ago, “people actually laughed if you opened a meeting with a health and safety talk. These days, people don’t even think about it; it’s just done automatically,” he says.

Despite Canada’s “enviable” safety record, the challenge continues to be “complacency or a reduction of, should we say, emphasis, vigilance, action,” he adds.

One concern raised by Caldwell is the influx of young workers lured by high wages and available jobs. The pressure to increase production, coupled with younger workers who often lack relevant experience — what he calls the “youthening” of the work force — create conditions that could downgrade work-related safety.

“Health and safety is a multi-faceted diamond; it starts obviously at the top,” Caldwell says. But workers also must assume some responsibility for ensuring their own well-being, he contends.

“At the end of the day, health and safety comes down to each person looking after themselves and their buddies,” Caldwell says. “All management can do is provide the systems and the equipment.”

Some see the responsibility for ensuring that workers are well-acquainted with unique conditions and accompanying hazards as falling squarely on the shoulders of employers.

“We’ve got to make sure that these mining companies aren’t using certification to say, ‘You’re a hardrock miner,’” to alleviate their oh&s obligations, cautions the USW’s Wayne Fraser. He emphasizes that “some on-the-job training to familiarize people with the environment in which they are working, the types of product that they are producing” are still required.

That is especially important since many mining hazards relate to specific environmental conditions that vary, some-

times significantly, from site to site. Think confined spaces, dangerous gases, explosion risks, water bodies, unstable cave structures and the risk of roof collapse.

Plamondon highlights the need for workers to have an understanding of policies and procedures governing their operation, legislation pertaining to the particular type of mine and the provincial jurisdiction, and manufacturer recommendations for the equipment they are using. “If you combine that with the certification program, I think you have a very winning combination,” he suggests.

Environmental conditions, however, may have little to do with certification. “I can be trained all I want, but if the environment doesn’t have fresh air coming down and these carcinogens aren’t taken care of by the mining industry,” Fraser says, workers will continue to be at risk.

Apart from site conditions, would the mobility provided by a skills passport contribute to higher turnover in a labour market where competition for qualified miners is already fierce? And does that put oh&s on shaky ground as inexperienced hands take hold of the jobs of exiting miners?

“This is not a chocolate factory,” Fraser says. “Mining is

a very dangerous industry whether it’s done on surface or whether it’s done underground, and training becomes really, really critical to having less injuries.”

Workplace health and safety is likely to benefit from certified miners moving between employers and bringing with them their competencies and knowledge, Kirby opines. That, in fact, could help build a safety mindset among their new peers, she predicts.

Plamondon says he sees the CMCP as being built on a continuous improvement model. “All that’s going to do is increase the safety awareness of everybody else at the other operations,” he maintains. second rush In the Yukon, certification of a different kind has taken root.

An online certification e-course, available since last April, seeks to equip first line supervisors in mining and resources-related sectors with the knowledge to comply with applicable oh&s legislation, consistently apply appropriate operating procedures and demonstrate a performance level that meets industry standards.

The six-module course, Core Competencies for First Line

Supervisors: Yukon Mining, was developed jointly by the Yukon Mine Training Association and the Yukon Workers’ Compensation Health and Safety Board, in collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety in Hamilton, Ontario.

Completing the course is part of the process to obtain the Permanent First Line Supervisors Certificate. The territory’s Occupational Health and Safety Act requires that a first line supervisor certificate be held by all underground mines and operations relating to diamond drilling, surface mining and exploration activities involving 12 or more workers (or less than 12 workers where the health and safety director considers it warranted).

Related hazards “are unique and have the potential for catastrophic consequences if safe work procedures and processes are not followed,” notes Yukon’s compensation board, based in Whitehorse.

Like elsewhere in the country, the mining sector in the Yukon is experiencing a resurgence. With gold prices on the rise, the territory is still riding high from the exploration boom in 2010, when claim staking peaked at almost 80,000, bringing the total to 160,000 active mining claims.

There is, however, bane to the boom.

In many smaller mines, “the poor old supervisor gets to be the chief, cook and bottle-washer many times. They are very, very busy and they feel the pressure,” says Robert Scott, chief mines inspector at the Yukon board.

Competing priorities can often prompt those taxed supervisors to put their supervisory duties on the back burner, Scott suggests.

The CMCP continues to be a work in progress. MiHR is endeavouring to develop a national network of workplace assessors “so that folks [who] are conducting assessments in the same occupation in different parts of the country can talk to [one another],” Kirby reports. About 25 workplace assessors have signed on to the network, with 12 more expected to join in by the first quarter of 2012.

Teck is also working to roll out the program at more company sites across the country. “By next year, we’ll probably have 10 or 15 sites that adopt these standards,” Utley reports.

“It’s going to take a few years, but I think it’s a great step in the right direction for managing the human resources in the mining industry.”

“Health and safety is a multi-faceted diamond; it starts, obviously, at the top.”

Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada

Jean Lian is assistant editor of

ohs canada.

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ACCIDENT PREVENTION

Indoor air quality

Inside Out Sound advice: Hear that? It is neither the crunch of snow underfoot nor the whistle of wind through leafless trees, yet it is undeniably the sound of winter. The unmistakable clatter of someone hacking in the office heralds this year’s flu season — just one of many events that can put occupants on the outs with indoor air.

Complaint chameleon: There is no shortage of ittybitty things that can cause big problems for indoor air quality (IAQ): viruses, fungi, bacteria, moulds, scents, temperature fluctuation and humidity, just to name a few.

However, determining what factor (or combination of factors) is causing an individual to feel ill, fatigued or just plain “off ” can be a tough slog. Many IAQ-related complaints are similar to those produced by other events or health conditions: itchy or watery eyes, headaches, nausea and respiratory irritation.

“Exposures from building dampness and mould have been associated with respiratory symptoms, asthma, hypersensitivity pneumonitis and sarcoidosis in research studies,” notes a draft of a damp and mould standard, released by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in the United States.

unwelcome visitor: Mould is not particularly fussy about where it sets up shop, apparently feeling quite at home in drywall, upholstery, fabric, wallpaper, drapery, ceiling tiles and carpeting. “For some people, the inhalation of the mould, fragments of the moulds or spores can lead to health problems or make certain health conditions worse,” notes information from the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) in Hamilton, Ontario.

It all comes down to humidity, which the CCOHS suggests be at 30 to 50 per cent to keep mould at bay.

This goal can be achieved by, among other measures, using air conditioners and/or dehumidifiers; using exhaust fans when cooking, dishwashing or laundering; insulating cold surfaces to prevent condensation on pipes, windows, exterior walls, roofs and floors; and keeping heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in good repair.

Note that “vacuuming may increase exposure to mould and spores by making them airborne. Central vacuums that exhaust to the outside, or those equipped with high-efficiency particulate filters, will minimize this exposure,” the CCOHS adds.

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Dark and dank: Moisture is essential if moulds and fungi are to grow. In modern buildings, this moisture can be the result of flooding, leaks in roofs or plumbing, sealed buildings that do not allow excess moisture to escape, or just too much humidity, the CCOHS reports.

South of the border, NIOSH recently released a draft standard entitled, “Preventing Occupational Respiratory Disease From Dampness in Office Buildings, Schools and Other Non-Industrial Buildings.” The information notes that “exposures in damp buildings can be highly complex and vary from building to building, and at different locations within a building.”

Scent-sitive: Everyone likes to smell nice, but good scents do not necessarily equate to good sense. Aromas from products like detergents, cleaners, air fresheners and candles and from personal fragrances such as soaps, make-up, lotions, shampoos, perfumes, colognes and aftershaves can be at once pleasing and disagreeable, depending on the individual.

“Scented products can contain several toxic chemicals that constantly turn into vapour in the air and attach themselves to hair, clothing and surroundings,” notes information on The Lung Association’s website. And with about 95 per cent of chemicals using petroleum-based synthetic compounds, “these include chemicals made from benzene, aldehydes and many other known toxins and sensitizers,” the information adds.

“In sufficient concentrations, scented products may trigger responses for those with allergies or chemical sensitivities,” notes information from WorkSafeBC in Richmond, British Columbia. “Allergic and asthmatic people, as well as those with other conditions, report that exposure to scented products, even in the smallest amounts, can trigger response.”

The CCOHS offers some tips: promote the arm’s-length rule; adopt scent-free zones; and ban scented products outright.

Hot stuff: Being too hot or too cold can put work productivity on the losing end. True thermal comfort may mean feeling “nothing” — but feeling nothing means temperature, humidity and air movement all must be operating within the “comfort zone,” the CCOHS reports. Consider a constant temperature in the 21 to 23 degrees Celsius range, relative humidity at about 50 per cent and air velocities below 0.25 metres/second.

Homeward bound: Almost half of the manufacturing industry professionals surveyed by Kimberly Clark Professional in the fall of 2010 reported that events like flu outbreaks or other contagious illnesses had had an impact on their organizations in the last 18 months. To address the impact, 97 per cent of respondents said hand hygiene education was the main peg of their company’s strategy to limit germ transfer on the job, while about 78 per cent said employees are encouraged to go or stay home when sick.

If an illness seems work-related, the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon suggests a worker keep a diary of exposures and symptoms both on and off the job; see a doctor to rule out other medical causes or influences; meet with a supervisor or manager to provide medical documentation and to discuss an appropriate resolution; and contact the health department if the doctor believes that symptoms are a direct result of atwork exposures.

Sick time: It seems a term of a time gone by, but sick building syndrome (SBS) persists. However, imprecision of the term makes it difficult to pin down exactly what is wrong and how to best remedy the issues.

“SBS is a complex phenomenon, and although a number of potential contributory factors have been suggested, much of the evidence is circumstantial, and no single underlying cause has been found,” notes information from the Health and Safety Executive in the United Kingdom. Associated symptoms “generally increase in severity over the working shift and diminish on leaving the building at the end of the working day.”

Some common features of buildings at risk include forced ventilation or air-conditioning, lightweight construction, indoor surfaces covered in fabrics and airtight rooms. Employers are advised to consider these first steps: • conduct an employee survey to determine if the prevalence of symptoms is higher than expected or if the symptoms are caused by a common virus; • ensure proprietary cleaning materials are correctly used; • check that vacuums are effective, regularly emptied and have clean filters; and, • check HVAC operation, including damper settings, particlarly in the fresh air supply system.

OCCUPATIONAL HYGIENE

Wood dust

Suspended Concern

By Danny Kucharsky

T

he good news is there seems to be greater awareness that wood dust exposure poses a health threat to wood processing workers; the bad news is that determining if exposures are higher than they should be has been made tougher with the move by a number of provinces to task industry with tracking compliance.

Provinces like Ontario and British Columbia “have downloaded those responsibilities to employers and so it’s not happening on a routine basis,” especially among small- and medium-sized employers, argues Paul Demers, an epidemiologist trained as a hygienist and current director of the Occupational Cancer Research Centre in Toronto.

“We don’t have a real means to monitor or track whether [wood dust] levels are actually decreasing over time because that data is no longer in the public domain,” Demers cautions. Not only is it “a big challenge” to determine if there is widespread compliance, California the murky situation does little to allay conwent so cerns, he suggests. “One of my biggest fears is that there’s a lot of uncompensated wood far as to dust-related health effects out there.”

require Serious consideration Numerous studies have shown that wood warning dust can cause health problems to workers exposed at all stages of wood processing, signs. notes an occupational health and safety bulletin issued by Work Safe Alberta in August, 2009. Serious related ailments include asthma, dermatitis, allergies and a form of sino-nasal cancer.

That acknowledgement represents progress from the view for many years that “wood dust was considered to be a nuisance dust that irritated the nose, eyes or throat, but did not cause permanent health problems,” the bulletin notes.

The Cincinnati-based American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) now recognizes wood dust as a “confirmed” human carcinogen. In 2009, California went so far as to require warning signs at retail locations where wood products are sold, cautioning against inhaling the dust and recommending use of “a dust mask or other safeguards for personal protection.”

Just how much of a threat wood dust poses comes down to size. Aerosol particles can easily deposit in various parts of workers’ airways as they inhale, reports Staffan Melin, president of Delta Research Corp. in Vancouver. Melin also serves as a professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of British Columbia and a research director for the Wood Pellet Association of Canada.

At issue are chemicals or chemical substances in the wood caused by bacteria, fungi or moulds.

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and contaminants such as fungal spores and other microbials, wood preservatives, coatings, sealants and glues, notes a SAFE Manitoba report from 2005. This mixture makes it difficult to determine a specific irritant or allergen.

“When you inhale large amounts of wood dust, dust doesn’t clear from the nose,” Demers says. “That dust can be sitting there for a long time and the chemicals that are within the dust have more time to actually absorb within the body.”

The action mechanism of wood dust at the molecular, cellular or tissue level that produces symptoms and diseases is still not well-understood, notes a document from the 2nd International Symposium on Wood Dust, held last May in Portland, Oregon.

In 2005, the ACGIH set one milligram per cubic metre (mg/m³) as an inhalable threshold limit value for wood dust in workplaces, the same as that recommended by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. It is estimated that 62 per cent of exposed workers in Europe are exposed above this value, with exposure levels considered to be similar in North America, notes information from the ACGIH. In Canada, occupational exposure limits (OELs) vary by provincial, territorial or federal jurisdiction. For example, British Columbia has an OEL of 1 mg/m³ for allergenic wood and hardwood and 2.5 mg/m³ for softwood; Quebec’s levels are set at 2.5 mg/m³ for Western Red Cedar (a common wood that causes allergy) and 5 mg/m³ for hardwood and softwood.

“Exposure limits are higher than they should be in a lot of jurisdictions,” Demers contends.

With regard to sino-nasal cancer, Demers says that not many cases are seen in North America and almost none are compensated. “The average exposure of a lot of their compensated cases was about 3.5 mg/m³. That’s right there in the ballpark of what a lot of provinces are regulating at.”

In British Columbia — home to much of Canada’s wood processing industry — WorkSafeBC has funded research to evaluate whether or not there is a need to change exposure limits for wood dust, says Al Johnson, an industrial hygienist and regional director for the board. “We’ve put our exposure limits out there for review every year,” Johnson reports.

Melin, however, says he sees no need to change the OELs. “There’s no statistics as such which I have seen which is monitoring the potential injuries from exposure to wood dust.”

Task at hand A 2009 report by Carex Canada says furniture and cabinetry shops are generally thought to have the highest exposures to wood dust, particularly during sanding and finishing work.

Higher exposures have been measured in plywood and particleboard mills where wood is sawn and sanded, and near chippers, saws and planers in sawmills and planer mills.

“When you’re sanding or machining wood and trying to get a smooth surface, you’re generating a finer level of particles that do tend to stay airborne, that do lead to higher levels

of dust exposure,” Demers explains, adding that workers also tend to put their faces close to the wood during the process.

“It’s the responsibility of employers to have an exposure control plan,” Johnson says. To help prevent dust from accumulating, employers are asked to provide local exhaust ventilation and dust capture, as well as proper clean-up of dust after hours, blow-down of dust and dust management.

Demers points out that many woodworking operations use compressed air. By doing so, “you’re basically throwing a lot of the dust back into the air where it can be inhaled.”

Melin says that airborne dust ranges in size from 400 microns to sub-micron level. “Many of them can be lofted into the air for hours, even days in some cases,” he cautions.

Rather than using compressed air, Demers says a better dust control method is to use a vacuum system to collect dust.

While simple dust masks provide some protection, he says he favours controlling dust at source over using gear. “If you go into woodworking industries, you almost never see a mask anywhere,” he says. “It usually isn’t perceived as being a big enough hazard,” except among those who have asthma.

A 2007 study out of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario found that most workplace parties in the province’s sawmill and veneer or plywood plants are aware of the health hazards associated with wood dust exposure, but that is not always the case. A lack of understanding or knowledge can sometimes lead to smaller woodworking shops not having any dust control measures in place, Johnson says.

“People tend to think about the safety side of health and safety, but they often forget about the health side of health

and safety. They have their ladders secured and all their saws have the proper guarding on them, but they haven’t thought about breathing in wood dust,” he observes.

While inhalation risks are recognized as a hazard, industry’s main concern around wood dust centres on the risk of explosions, notes Gordon Murray, executive director of the Wood Pellet Association of Canada in Revelstoke, British Columbia. The association has developed a safe certification program, which is curA better rently voluntary, “to address these issues dust control and make sure plants are safely managed,” Murray says. The long-term plan is to certify all plants for safety, he adds. method is While companies often say that worker to use a safety comes first when talk turns to wood dust, Murray notes, “it’s all just empty vacuum words until you actually set about proving that, indeed, safety is number one and that system. you decide collectively that any kind of incidents are totally unacceptable.”

Johnson says economic issues cannot be used as an excuse by companies to avoid complying with proper dust control, but adds WorkSafeBC officials are open to exploring options with employers who may be experiencing financial problems.

“The final outcome is we want to make sure workers are not exposed. There are different ways to achieve that.”

Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada

Danny Kucharsky is a writer in Montreal.

Announcement - Board of Canadian Registered Safety Professionals The Board of Canadian Registered Safety Professionals (BCRSP) is pleased to announce the appointment of Ronald Durdle, CRSP, to the position of Board Chair for a two-year term beginning January 1, 2012.

Employed as the Safety and Environment Manager for the Department of National Defence at Fleet Maintenance Facility, CFB Esquimalt in Victoria, BC, Mr. Durdle is the nineteenth Chair of the BCRSP since the certification body’s incorporation in 1976.

Mr. Durdle graduated from the British Columbia Institute of Technology’s Occupational Health & Safety program in 2000. He is an active member of the Pacific Rim Chapter of the Canadian Society of Safety Engineering (CSSE) and a volunteer coordinator and trainer with the Victoria Emergency Management Agency.

Mr. Durdle resides in Victoria with his wife Patricia. He has been a Canadian Registered Safety Professional (CRSP)® since 2001.

In addition to Mr. Durdle, the 2012 Governing Board includes executive officers Daniel Lyons, MPH, CSP, CMIOSH, CHRP, CRSP (Vice Chair); Dave Turner, MBA, PEng, CMSP, CRSP, (Secretary-Treasurer); Howard J. McGraw, CRSP (Past Chair) and Governors Paul Andre, CRSP, Brett Christie, BSc, CRSP, F. Mulford Clark, CRSP, CHSC, Kevin J. Dawson, MBA, PEng, CRSP, Jason R. Hercun, MBA, CRSP, Covena K. Hilford, CSP, CRSP, John Hollohan, B.Sc., BASc., CIPHI, CRSP, Gregory B. McInnes, CET, EP, CRSP, Yvonne O’Reilly, CRSP, and David A. Williamson, CRSP, CHSC. The Board’s Public Member is Barbara Nytko, BSc, MSc, and the Executive Director is Nicola J. Wright, BA (Hons), CAE. The Board of Canadian Registered Safety Professionals (BCRSP) is a self-regulating, self-governing, ISO 17024:2003 and ISO 9001:2008 accredited organization established in 1976 under The Canada Corporations Act. The Board governs its members in order that the public interest may be served and protected.

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

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

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ERGONOMICS

Static postures

Stretching the Truth

By Greg Burchell

T

he belief that getting up and moving around will help stave off musculoskeletal injuries (MSIs) is widely held, but just how to achieve that benefit at work is more complicated than flailing limbs about every hour or so.

A proper stretching routine — with an emphasis on “proper” — can save employees from unnecessary pain now and employers from expenses later. “Without stretching every half hour to 40 minutes, you actually put yourself at the greatest risk for work-related injuries,” argues Steve Kvaterman, a training co-ordinator at Ergonomics Canada in Thornhill, Ontario.

Stretching In 2006, injuries such as back pain and joint strains accounted for 42 per cent of reactivates all lost-time injuries in Ontario, the Ministry of Labour in Toronto reports. muscles and Those who spend much of their workpromotes days hunched over a desk or in other jobs that require maintaining static postures blood flow. are at risk of developing MSIs, including sprains, strains, tears and damage to connective tissue, says Diane Stinson, a certified professional ergonomist and president of HealthWorks in Calgary.

STOPS AND STARTS These injuries — which most commonly affect muscles, bones, nerves, tendons, ligaments, joints and spinal discs — are the result of decreased blood circulation, notes Edgar Vieira, Ph.D., assistant professor at Miami’s Florida International University. By staying in a static position for an extended period, “you start accumulating the products of metabolism in those body parts that can generate pains and aches

and dysfunction,” says Dr. Vieira, co-author of “Stretching to reduce work-related musculoskeletal disorders,” a study published in the Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine in 2008.

Stretching reactivates muscles and promotes blood flow through them, he says. “If you have improved range of motion, you may decrease the risk of injury,” Dr. Vieira adds.

The potential cost benefits from stretching are worth noting. A study that ran in the Journal of Occupational Medicine in 1990 considered results from 469 firefighters as part of a six-month stretching program. After two years, researchers determined that the number of injuries among stretchers was marginally lower than in non-stretchers.

More dramatic was that stretching firefighters were apt to bounce back more quickly from injury: lost-time cost was less than a third of the almost $150,000 for non-stretchers.

Dr. Vieira emphasizes that stretching exercises are not a one-size-fits-all deal. “Stretching requires consideration of the physical demands of the job and a strong consideration of the activities that are being performed,” he says. “It needs to be tailored to the specific needs of the worker and the job.”

In offices, Stinson suggests that doing warm-up stretches is not necessary. Office workers do not “need the blood distributed the same way as you would in physical work.”

What office workers do need is a means to get the blood flowing to the muscles “so we don’t have that static loading that occurs from sitting in a constrained position working hour after hour after hour,” she adds.

After sitting for 50 minutes or so, Stinson says muscles slacken enough that there is not proper support in the back and uneven compression of discs in the spine. She recommends standing up and gently stretching until feeling some tension. “This isn’t a ‘no pain, no gain’ type of thing.”

Dr. Vieira cautions that for some work tasks — for ex-

to the Limit No subject, of course, is without debate.

The burn a company feels from workplace stretching may not be in its muscles — but in its wallet, argues Blake McGowan, managing consultant and ergonomics engineer at Humantech in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

McGowan says the tab for productivity lost to stretching time can add up quickly: implementing a program for a medium-sized manufacturing facility — 1,000 workers over three shifts, each paid $US25/hour, who stretch for an hour each week — can be almost $US1.4 million annually.

Compare that to what McGowan calls the negligible costs of ergonomic material handling devices, new tooling and repositioning or adjusting aids and equipment.

Related improvements can be realized without employees having to take the lead, unlike stretching programs,

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where productivity gains will be lost if a worker stops participating, notes a statement from Humantech.

Steve Kvaterman, a training co-ordinator at Ergonomics Canada in Thornhill, Ontario, points out that after completing a course, for example, less than half of participants will typically still be practising what was learned a year later.

Most reports of stretching’s benefits “are based on uncontrolled or quasi-experimental in-house evaluations that rely on self-reported outcomes rather than objective measures,” researchers Jennifer Hess and Steven Hecker wrote in a 2006 report.

Workplace fitness also depends on endurance, strength and co-ordination, they noted. “These other aspects of musculoskeletal health and an ergonomically optimized work environment must not be overlooked in an effort for a quick fix.”

Matter of Time “There’s some evidence that stretches should be held for at least 30 seconds,” says Edgar Vieira, Ph.D., assistant professor at Florida International University in Miami. “If you do less than 30 seconds, you may not gain the benefits of stretching, and if you do more than 30 seconds, there are not many increased benefits.”

There are three types of stretching: • active stretching — when an individual uses his or her own muscles to stretch opposing muscles; • passive stretching — when a person uses his or her own weight, or someone helps a person to stretch; and, • ballistic stretching — jerk motions.

“The safest mode of stretching is using your own muscles to stretch opposing muscles,” says Dr. Vieira, characterizing ballistic stretching as the least recommended.

ample, where strength and power activities are typical characteristics — stretching beforehand can be dangerous. When muscles loosen up, he explains, joints become less stable and the body cannot react as quickly or as forcefully to the unexpected, such as slips and falls.

Margo Fraser, executive director of the Association of Canadian Ergonomists in Calgary, would agree. “There’s research that comes from the athletics side of the world that says if you do the stretch-and-hold technique, the muscle does relax and it doesn’t fire as readily, so you’re not going to be ready to apply those forceful applications to whatever the work is that you’re doing,” Fraser says, advising workers in physically demanding jobs to prepare with more dynamic movements.

MASKING THE PAIN Just as job demands vary, so too should stretches. Office stretching does not have to mean strapping on leg warmers and sweatbands — and research has shown that it typically should not, especially absent a well-conceived program.

Stretching may have analgesic effects, says Dr. Vieira, cautioning that temporary relief from aches and pains could be hiding underlying problems. “If you have less pain, you don’t know you are exposing yourself to certain risks,” he says, creating a false sense of security that could lead to even more debilitating injuries over the longer term.

To combat hidden hurts, workplace parties should understand that stretching is not a replacement for good ergonomics and should never serve as the first line of defence against MSIs, Dr. Vieira advises. “You’re putting [in] measures to alleviate or compensate for the exertions that are taking place, but it’s not removing the very source of potential injuries, which are the exertions on the job,” he adds.

Stinson says there are two main pegs of injury prevention: engineering controls and administrative controls. Before implementing an administrative control like a stretching program, a company must explore how best to reduce work process-related stresses through engineering controls.

Consider the following: for a construction worker who does a lot of manual lifting, aids can be employed to eliminate some stress on the body; for a computer user, it is a good idea to look at where input devices are located and the kinds of software being used, Stinson says. “Are there other things that can be done, from a design standpoint, that can

reduce stresses on the individual in the first place?”

While ergonomics and stretching are both part of workplace safety and injury prevention, they are not the same, Fraser cautions. Even when a workstation is set up properly, individuals who sit static all day long are still damaging their bodies because of the stresses being applied to their backs.

ON DISPLAY Stretching itself can be stressful. Standing up in a crowded office — drawing maybe the admiration, perhaps the exasperation, of staring co-workers — just to loosen up?

“An old-school manager, who’s not open to it, when they see their guys stretching, they might think, ‘Oh, they’re slacking off. Something’s got to be done about this,’ and by doing that, it discourages [workers],” Kvaterman says.

Stinson says there are ways that workers who are nervous about plain-view stretching can inconspicuously work the activity into their daily routine.

“Maybe when the phone rings, you would stand up and answer the phone. And while you’re standing there you might do a few shoulder rolls, for example,” she says. In meetings, position the water container away from the group so workers have to get up and walk over to get a drink, Stinson suggests.

It is easier to get in the habit of stretching if there is management support and co-worker participation, Kvaterman says. “We explain to management that it’s a positive thing. A healthy employee or Stretching worker is a much better asset to the company than somebody who suffers from is not a aches and pains.”

In the past year, Kvaterman says that replacement he has seen something akin to a train-thefor good trainer trend developing in larger companies where ergonomists train a handergonomics. ful of staff members in safe ergonomics practices, such as stretching, and those workers then spread the word.

Software-based stretching programs and alerts for employees working at computers are other options that seem to be gaining ground, Stinson reports. Once installed, break software can lock down a computer and force a hard stop; some programs feature illustrated guides to show what type of stretches should be performed and a countdown timer indicating how long these should be done.

A string of ifs, however, need to be answered, Stinson says. “If you can get a stretch break program accepted into the company, and they check from an IT standpoint, and it’s compatible with the system, and [employees] are willing to do it, and it’s oriented to the employees well, and they have some control over how often to take the breaks…”

Individual action, ultimately, will be the deciding factor.

If people do not want to stretch, there is little that will force them to do so to help relieve the stress that inevitably builds up over the course of a workday.

Despite the apparent health benefits, getting people to stretch can often be an uphill battle, Kvaterman says.

Of software prompts, Stinson adds, “A lot of people will say, ‘Oh, this is annoying. It’s coming up when I’m busy.’”

In a nutshell, taking a break then is the whole point.

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Greg Burchell is editorial assistant of

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

47

LAW FILE

Medical tests

To Test or Not to Test

By Donalee Moulton

T

he road to recovery is often paved with medical tests, physical examinations and prescription drugs. Determining which (or which combination) of these is most appropriate — and if either workplace party has the right to say “no” to particular tests — can be divisive.

“This is difficult for employers [and others] to navigate because of the different laws and variables from one case to another. It is one of the touchiest subjects out there in the labour and employment law world, and one of the most controversial,” suggests Kevin MacNeill, a partner at Heenan Blaikie LLP in Ottawa.

Consider a situation that may arise before a person is even hired: pre-employment testing. An employer may have requirements around medical testing and Disputes do medication use before proffering a job offer, something that is “a fairly standard occur, with situation,” says Michael Mulroy, associate counsel in the Employment and Labour Law Group for the Toronto office necessity and of McMillan LLP. “If there is a bona fide timing most safety issue, an employer can request information about the medications [workfrequently at ers] are taking,” Mulroy reports.

Adrian Miedema, a partner at Fraser the heart.

Milner Casgrain LLP in Toronto, says that all provinces have legislation prohibiting medical testing unless it is necessary to ensure that someone can safely do the job. “A medical exam could reveal a person’s disability,” Miedema points out.

as needed Another area that raises the spectre of potentially inappropriate testing is an injured employee’s return to work, although just how common this occurs depends on the workers’ compensation entity in question. “As a board, we have not encountered situations where medical testing is requested or directed if it is not needed,” reports Marcela Matthew, communications director for the Workers’ Compensation Board of Alberta (WCB) in Edmonton.

Information from the WCB notes the board will “provide or pay for any reasonable and necessary medical costs needed to treat injuries or lessen the effects of injuries resulting from compensable accidents.”

There are hundreds of tests and medications that a doctor may prescribe to an injured worker, Matthew says, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), X-rays, computer tomography (CT) scans, nerve conduction studies, hearing tests, functional capacity assessments and many more. “If a test, treatment or medication is directly related to the work injury or illness, is prescribed by a physician and meets cur-

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rent medical standards, we would provide coverage for the test costs and could expedite a testing referral on behalf of the worker and his or her physician,” she says.

The most challenging type of testing, which may require more than one referral to gather reliable information, relates to psychological injury cases, Matthew notes. But the most common evaluation undertaken would be for back injury assessments to “determine the level of strain and an appropriate course for the resumption of physical activity.”

Yes and no Whatever the injury, disputes do occur, with necessity and timing most frequently at the heart of these disagreements.

The insurance carrier, compensation body or company “will say they have given treatment and the person should be fit to return to work. The injured worker and doctor are saying more treatment or medication needs to be provided or ‘healing times’ adjusted as it may take longer for some people to heal,” says Sari Sairanen, the Toronto-based national health and safety director for the Canadian Auto Workers union.

One particularly thorny issue: painkillers with punch.

“Doctors of the day prescribe quite a fair amount of narcotics to treat people,” Sairanen contends, but goes on to say her take is that WCBs and other insurers are moving away from accepting claims for certain such drugs.

Whatever the nature of, or reason for, a particular examination, the test is never mandatory. Employers can request a test and injured workers can refuse to take it, Miedema says.

Insurance Assurance Does workers’ compensation (WC) insurance influence diagnosis and treatment of hand and wrist disorders?

That was the question researchers from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School sought to answer as part of a study, results of which appeared in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery in 2010.

Patients with WC insurance and those with other thirdparty coverage were compared, notes the study. Participants were patients who visited an academic orthopedic hand clinic from January, 2005 through January, 2007.

Of the 1,413 patients, just eight per cent had WC insurance. The group, on average, was younger than patients with standard insurance and more likely to be male.

Results show that WC patients underwent surgery in 44 per cent of cases compared with 35 per cent for those with standard insurance; had a higher average number of visits pre-surgery (2.3 versus 1.2); and were more likely to undergo electrodiagnostic testing (26 per cent versus 15 per cent) or MRIs (16 per cent versus nine per cent).

— By Angela Stelmakowich

Should that happen in Ontario, for example, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) has the final say on what course of action will roll out.

Injured or otherwise, all employees have the right to say “no” to medical tests, although that decision may carry certain consequences. MacNeill says that “if individuals don’t consent, insurance companies or compensation boards can withhold benefits, but they must be acting reasonably in their original request.”

Perhaps the most controversial of all medical investigations are alcohol or drug and genetic testing. While the legal parameters for such testing are well-defined in Canada, the landscape may be changing.

Testing mechanisms for the former, to date, have had limitations. They could identify the presence of a drug, but could not pinpoint when it was taken, something new saliva tests claim they can. “The previous challenges to drug testing were always based on the fact the test does not establish the individual was impaired at the time,” Mulroy notes. However, he says that he expects “the [latest] technology will open new legal questions. There will be challenges.”

Genetic testing, a hot and discordant topic in the United States, is relatively dormant in Canada. “You can’t test for the sake of testing,” Miedema explains.

“With genetic testing, the purpose is to see if there is a familial disease. The purpose is to determine if a person does or will have a disability. That violates human rights legislation unless you can demonstrate it directly affects the ability

to do the job,” Miedema says.

What is acceptable is usually spelled out in policies, legislation, contracts and other documents with clout. In most cases, rules are available to all parties involved, Sairanen says, but argues that associated costs seem to put the rules in flux.

“Some treatments may be suitable on certain occasions.

However, if they are too expensive, then “You can’t the rules can change,” she contends.

The legal response to medical testing is test for the also evolving. “With a few exceptions, the legal principles are fairly well-settled, but sake of the law continues to develop in this area,” MacNeill reports. “Each case has different testing,” facts in it. It’s never absolutely clear how a legal decision-maker will deal with an isMiedema sue,” he adds.

One thing does seem certain: the issue explains. is not going away; in fact, it is likely to escalate. “As the technology changes, the likelihood is that requests for medical tests will increase,” Miedema predicts.

From a legal perspective, he likens testing to a balancing act. “There is a strong privacy interest on the part of employees. On the other hand, employers need to run a safe business. Reasonableness is the foundation.”

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Donalee Moulton is a writer in Halifax.

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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

49

SAFETY GEAR

Winter gear

Warming Trend

By Jason Contant

T

here is no other way to say it — Canadian winters are cold. Although this year is so far proving an exception to the rule, it is best not to assume “now” is forever when it comes to necessary protections against the elements.

To help keep cold at bay, outdoor workers ranging from construction crews to marine personnel require head-to-toe protective clothing. Starting from the top and working on down, some of these options include winter hard hat liners, balaclavas, warming vests, waterproof gloves and boots.

In line With the well-worn argument that a Keeping significant amount of heat loss occurs through an uncovered head — a comwarm is mon estimate is 45 per cent, although important, some argue it is simply that the head is more sensitive to temperature changes — but so too the top is a logical place to start.

Typically designed to protect just the is safely head and ears, there are, however, winter hard hat liners that cover the mouth, cheeks and neck through an extended completing nape and wraparound collar, notes inthe task formation from Mine Safety Appliances Company (MSA) in Cranberry Townat hand. ship, Pennsylvania.

Same goes for face masks. Some of these “have an elastic body around the face, so you can move it up to your chin,” which, along with the neck, can get really cold, adds Claudio Dente, president of Dentec Safety Specialists Inc. in Newmarket, Ontario.

A balaclava, for its part, covers the entire head, including much of the face and neck. Choosing the specific type of balaclava will depend on the level of protection needed from the elements, work policies (some companies set a “no skin” rule to avoid frostbite and other cold-related injuries) and, as always, personal preference, says Adria Ensrud, a product specialist at Ergodyne in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Susan Pingree, a product line manager of eye/face protection and hard hat accessories at MSA, says that her company offers a water-repellant line of products that includes a neck gaiter for extra warmth on the neck — and the face when pulled up. Featuring green, soft-brushed twill on the inside, the winter liners have been chemically treated to resist burns from flames, with flame-retardant properties lasting for approximately 50 washings, Pingree reports.

Another product is made of special fibres that allow the layers of fabric to self-extinguish. These properties cannot be washed out, she adds.

And if there is the need to shine some light on a work

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situation, this can be aided by Ergodyne’s two-layer winter liners with LED lighted brim. The product has four LEDs spaced for illumination up to about 15 metres.

“Say good night to those bulky headlamps and cumbersome flashlights,” Tom Votel, president and CEO of Ergodyne, notes in a company statement released in December.

The new liners are said to “offer the ultimate partnership between warmth and lighting for a safe and productive work site,” Votel contends.

Compatible combos Keeping warm is important, but so too is safely completing the job at hand. “Think about a guy welding on a ship or a guy welding a building, doing steel structural work,” Dente offers. “They’ll be wearing a hard hat and a welding helmet and they are going to do something to keep themselves warm, especially if they are up high with the wind blowing.”

For any workers who may need to wear several forms of personal protective equipment (PPE) at once, compatibility and comfort are essential. While winter liners can weigh as little as about 60 grams, Dente cautions that some products are bulky, making comfort an ongoing challenge.

“You want [winter liners] to be soft around the skin, particularly around the chin and cheeks,” he says, citing fleece as a good choice of material.

While there is little concern around face shields worn by welders since liners fit underneath the helmet and the shield attaches to the brim, Dente suggests the compatibility of liners and hearing protection may not be quite as sound.

Consider a construction worker who wears earmuffs over Core Crunch

Subjected to intense cold without the benefit of adequate clothing, the body is unable to compensate for heat loss and its core temperature will start to fall, notes information from the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) in Hamilton, Ontario.

The sensation of cold followed by pain in exposed parts of the body is an early sign of mild hypothermia.

If core temperature drops from the norm of about 37 degrees Celsius to 32 to 34 C, the CCOHS reports that the body’s response may include violent shivering, difficulty speaking and sluggish muscle movements, as well as the person possibly showing signs of depression.

Should core temperature fall even further — say from 28 to 30 C — muscle rigidity, semi-consciousness, stupor, loss of awareness of others, decreased pulse and respiration rate and possible heart fibrillation may occur. Heart activity stops at approximately 20 C, followed by brain function at about 17 C, the information adds.

photos: mine safety appliances

a liner. “It is not going to give you the seal because the liner interferes with the seal to the ear cup,” Dente cautions. “It would be recommended that you go to an earplug, which would fit in underneath and provide the hearing protection.”

To help ensure a proper fit with earmuffs, Pingree says MSA has four winter liners which feature quilted flaps that open at the ears. “Without interference from the fabric, the muff has a secure seal, and does not negate the expected hearing protection levels. When not in use, the flaps close to help ensure warmth.”

The company also offers a two-piece liner, the bottom portion of which can be removed to accommodate earmuffs.

Pingree says that MSA has made some changes to its products after taking a cue from workers in the field. “In field observation, not one person used the back hook or loop closure that generally goes over the suspension, intended to hold the liner securely,” she reports. “When asked why they didn’t use it, most cited that they didn’t need it to keep the product secure, and the fastener actually interfered with the ratchet or other closure on the helmet suspension.”

For those wanting to beef up liner protection, Dente says some that products can be fitted with pockets to carry warmers. The warmers — which can be inserted into gloves, footwear and between layers of clothing — typically provide heat for six to 18 hours.

There are also cold weather survival heat packs, which can be carried in a vehicle and slipped inside a coat if a worker becomes stranded and is waiting for help to arrive. Dentec Safety has a pack that comes in a resealable container and cold weather kits with warmers that provide dozens of hours of welcome heat.

Over, under Some liners Stranded or not, layering can help have flaps to keep the cold out, although if done accommodate incorrectly, it can have the oppo- earmuffs (above site effect, advises Chris Ransome, left); some propresident of Ranpro Inc. in Sim- vide greater facial coe, Ontario. “Most often, people coverage (above right); focus on protecting themselves and a liner knit cap against cold entering externally prevents the liner from and forget to consider what is hap- obstructing vision. pening at the core where body heat is generated,” Ransome says.

“Wrapping yourself in thick protective layers to keep the cold out becomes a problem once the body begins to work and generate heat,” he explains. “This heat leads to perspiration which, if allowed to dry on the skin, cools the skin and subsequently lowers your internal body heat.”

Using an appropriate base layer is the foundation from which to safely build protection. Thermal base layers that wick moisture away from the skin not only prevent the chill from setting in, they allow for enhanced mobility by eliminating the need for many bulky layers, Ransome says.

A moisture-absorbing base layer coupled with a moisturewicking mid-layer keep internal temperatures steady and lessen the need to doff outer layers during strenuous work and re-dress once work becomes less taxing, he adds.

Ergodyne’s Adria Ensrud notes that the average worker

sweats eight litres in an eight-hour workday. “The key is to manage the perspiration effectively, by wicking it away from your skin where it can evaporate,” Ensrud says.

With effective heat transfer in mind, Ranpro offers three heavy-duty, mid-layer garments specifically designed for marine workers who face a mix of wet and cold — a basic jacket, a hooded jacket and pants.

In addition to providing a comfortable, protective layer, the clothing uses foam technology to help regulate the wearer’s core temperature. When a wearer is active and working, the foam expands to release warm air and allow cool air to enter. When the worker is at rest, the foam constricts to retain body heat.

Ransome says the suit maintains thermal-regulating properties in water, employing the four-millimetre-thick foam shell as insulation. It also serves as a “float assist,” providing 83 per cent of the buoyancy of a personal flotation device.

At Ergodyne, the company’s CORE Performance Work Wear features a thin, moisture-wicking tight layer next to the skin that transports moisture to mid- and outer layers.

Loose-fitting mid-layers work to trap warm air, Ensrud explains, while the outer layer provides additional insulation and protection from the harshest elements.

All suit seams are flat-stitched to ensure they will not rub or irritate the skin, and knees and elbows are articulated to provide freedom of movement, he says.

If flexibility and warmth are desired, Ergodyne has a mid-layer warming vest that uses argon gas for insulation. With a density of about 1.78 grams per litre (g/L) compared with the density of air at 1.29 g/L, Ensrud contends that it is the lightest insulation agent on the market. “It comes with a dial, so a worker can let out some of the gas to custom and vary their level of warmth.”

All wet For jobs like fishing and outdoor construction that are performed not only in the cold, but in wet conditions, a waterproof glove or glove with a waterproof membrane can help complement other PPE, says Joe Geng, vicepresident of Superior Glove Works Ltd. in Acton, Ontario.

Geng’s company has one glove that features a layer of polyurethane between the outer glove and inner lining, a waterproof membrane that extends from the fingertips to the top edge of the cuff, elasticized cotton backs and split-cowhide palms, fingertips and index finger, notes a product information sheet.

Of course, when minimal dexterity and maximum warmth are required, mitts fit the bill. “Mitts are warmer than gloves because of less surface area and improved circulation,” Geng says, which helps prevent isolated cold spots from forming.

For glove liners, he recommends using either those made from wool or Thermolite liners over cotton or poly liners.

Wool continues to insulate even when wet; Thermolite helps to wick moisture away from the skin.

A chart from Superior Gloves compares lining materials commonly used in gloves: While cotton flannel registers midrange for both warmth and bulkiness, the counts for foam fleece liners is somewhat higher for both categories. Warmth

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photos: clockwise from lower left- Ranpro Inc.; Superior Glove

measures for boa acrylic (a synthetic lining) and 3M Thinsulate are higher still.

Geng says using a liner inside of a nonwinter glove is a good option, provided the fit is okay. “You want to make sure there is plenty of room for the liner as this will improve the insulation — too tight and the insulation factor will suffer.”

Geng reports there is a trend toward two-layer knitted glove construction, which seeks to balance needs around warmth and touch sensitivity. For example, nylon gloves with a polyvinyl chloride-coated palm feature micropores — tiny air bubbles that stay supple even in cold temperatures — to provide optimal flexibility, notes a product sheet from Superior Gloves.

Well-suited for commercial fishing, agriculture, construction, utilities and cold storage, the quick-drying glove also provides a good grip in wet or dry conditions.

But tiny air bubbles are not just for waterproof gloves. Ransome says Ranpro’s line includes boots that can keep feet warm at as low as -50 degrees Celsius.

Ransome points out that cold can be transferred from standard steel plates and toe caps in safety shoes or boots into the foot. One of his company’s offering is designed to prevent

this cold transfer by employing the same tiny air pockets that regulate the temperature of the rest of the foot.

“The best way to reMid-layer garments duce or eliminate the (left) help regulate risks associated with core temperature, cold stress is simply to while boots and be aware of the risks, be gloves can keep prepared and be ready the cold out. to react,” advises Ensrud. “Plan for work in cold weather, wear appropriate clothing and be aware of how your body is reacting.”

Whether a company’s strategy is using thousands of insulating bubbles, layering or a combination of products and techniques, it is clear that workers should look at the big picture to keep coldrelated injuries at bay. By focusing on the head, feet and everything in between, workers can keep warm — and safe — as Canada’s coldest season gets settled for its months-long stay.

Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada

Jason Contant is editor of

safety news.

canadian occupational health

&

WARM TOES ARE JUST ABOUT THE ONLY THING YOU’LL ENJOY AT -50 DEGREES. Another long day on the frozen tundra you call a work-site.

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12/16/11 3:51 PM

Stock u p on M SA’s N E

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MSA introduces a new addition to the V-Gard Accessory System: V-Gard Winter Liners.

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VISIT OUR WEBSITE:

www.ohscanada.com C A N A D A

presents C A N A D A

stayin’ alive A young workers’ handbook for on-the-job safety Categories Include: What is Safety? • Then there’s Health • It’s the Law WHMIS • What is Workers’ Comp? • Repetitive Strain Harassment • The Committee • Protect Yourself For customer service and pricing call: 416-442-2122 or 1-800-668-2374 fax 416-442-2191 www.ohscanada.com

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OHS Canada’s E-Learning: train anywhere, anytime at your own pace.

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PRODUCT SHOWCASE an advertising feature

MSA V-Gard Winter Liners MSA introduces a new addition to the V-Gard Accessory System: V-Gard Winter Liners. There are 11 new products, offering the same high-quality “under the helmet” as the iconic V-Gard Helmet does on top! V-Gard Winter Liners offer under-the-helmet warmth, flame retardancy, water repellency and style. Liners are available in several high-quality offerings, with optional quilted earflaps to accommodate hearing protection without compromising protection.

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3M™ welding helmet The new 3M™ Speedglas™ 9100-Air Welding Helmet Series is specially created to satisfy a wide range of welder’s unique welding needs. It combines comfort with enhanced respiratory protection, wider precision viewing and increased flexibility for safer work efficiency. Designed to protect, this revolutionary technology fundamentally changes not only how the user wears the helmet, but also how the welder experiences its fit, comfort, stability and balance.

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NASCO: Understanding FlasH Fire Rain wear Work in the Gas & Oil industry? Required to wear FR clothing? Do you know if the rain suit you wear meets the new ASTM F2733 standard? For an overview of the standard and to see test video of several commonly used products, request a copy of our Flash Fire Burn video and test your FR rainwear IQ. NASCO Contact us at sales@nascoinc.com or 800-767-4288. www.nascoinc.com

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HANDI-GUIDE SERIES

NOW AVAILABLE FROM CARSWELL

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ADVERTISING DIRE C T O R Y

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advertising DIRECTORY

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Canadian Occupational Health & Safety News

So, what’s on your mind?

January/February 2012

December 2011

Should whistleblower legislation prohibit employees from using the media to publicize suspected wrongdoing?

Do you experience eyestrain, blurred vision and headaches after reading from a computer screen for hours on end?

Yes:

41%

Yes:

77%

No:

59%

No:

23%

Total Votes:

147

Total Votes:

148

Go on — have your say.

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

www.ohscanada.com

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

57

TIME OUT

Web stage: Oh, what a tangled web we weave — or something to that effect. A letter carrier with a flair for the dramatic (and a disdain for spiders) stopped delivery to a home in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia because of a blockbuster of a web adorning the front door. The interruption lasted for more than a week, CBC News reported in September. An explanation for the homeowner was not forthcoming until a second postal employee delivered a handwritten note on a piece of mail, citing “spider webs.” The homeowner responded by brushing aside the web, literally clearing the way for service to resume. In advance of Halloween, he also erected a giant plastic spider over the mail box. And… scene.

Hope floats: Who knew floating could produce such

a sinking feeling? An engine malfunction stranded three suspected drug smugglers down Mexico way in their vessel for more than a day before they decided to radio for help, The Associated Press reported in August. And help they got, in the form of Mexican marines. The rescue proceeded without a hitch, but things quickly went sideways when bales of marijuana were spied floating nearby. The smugglers had chucked the stash overboard, but there is no keeping good weed down — in all, about 120 kilograms were found floating in the area.

Face off: Getting social has its own rules. A New Jersey teacher learned that lesson when her Facebook post, referencing her Grade 1 students, noted she felt like a “warden for future criminals.” The let-it-all-hang-out comment did not make the grade with some of her 333 “friends,” including a few parents, the Toronto Sun reported in November. Nor did the comments go over well with a judge, who deemed them “inexcusable” and concluded the teacher should lose her job.

After some sensitivity training, she could possibly return to school — but certainly not one in Paterson, New Jersey.

QMI Agency reported in November. And there is apparently no saying “no” to these personal displays; opt for underexposure and receive demerit points for running afoul of the rules. Change’s CEO disputes this, saying the tags simply show customers what size may be right for what body shape.

Whatever the case, it might be time for a change at Change.

X-rated X-ing: Winnipeg motorists who came upon flashing signs erected at a dozen deer hot zones were recently shown a saltier message than usual, CBC News reports.

Someone hacked the signs, meant to reduce deer-vehicle collisions, reprogramming the relatively tame, “Be Alert For Deer,” to the considerably more wild, “Slow The F--- Down.”

Manitoba Public Insurance, partnering with police, had the signs erected as part of a pilot project. The architect of the reprogramming flap, if fingered, could face mischief charges.

Below par: A man transformed from fan to fanatic

when he tried driving into a barricaded area near Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club, host of the PGA Tour Championship last September. The motorist apparently grew irate after being told by a state trooper that he could not enter the area, noted a story on the Golf Channel website. When the trooper opened the car door, the man hit the gas, and the officer was dragged a short distance. Another trooper fired two shots, resulting in non-life-threatening wounds to the motorist.

Hide and seek: A 66-year-old man Down Under faces criminal charges after police discovered a gun down under his prosthetic leg. Police were called to a Sydney hospital after a doctor spied the camouflaged weapon, QMI Agency reported last fall. The gun was found under a sock in the man’s prosthesis; his visiting son and girlfriend also had some ammunition in their possession. Charges have been laid.

Quick response: It was an emergency call that hit a speak no evil: Comparing unions to consummate little too close to home for a volunteer firefighter in Simcoe, Ontario. This past fall, QMI Agency reported the firefighter had to listen to an incoming call twice before realizing it was his own home in need of dousing. The 12-year firefighter arrived at his residence lickety-split — in less than two minutes and ahead of other volunteers. No one was hurt, but the house sustained an estimated $40,000 in damage.

Impaired judgement: An Australian woman pleaded guilty to common assault following a drunken prank in which she tossed a tampon at a McDonald’s employee. The 27-year-old dampened the unused tampon before dabbing it on the worker’s hand and then throwing it at him, QMI Agency reported in October. The woman says she was surprised that police were even called; the employee responds she has only herself to blame for whatever comes her way.

Show down: Apparently, size does matter — at least in some lingerie stores in Sweden where staff wear name tags indicating their bust sizes. One employee of Change claimed that dirty old men come callin’ to check out her cup size, 58

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evil has not gone over well with the brothers and sisters. The head of the postal workers’ union recently fired off a letter to the CBC’s ombudsman in response to “offensive, anti-union remarks” made by Kevin O’Leary, co-host of The Lang and O’Leary Exchange. Denis Lemelin says immediate steps must be taken, QMI Agency reported in November. The remarks included that unions “are born out of evil. They must be destroyed with evil,” Lemelin writes. “These comments were disrespectful, poorly informed and unnecessarily inflammatory.”

Butt ugly: It is hardly the way to promote tourism, but

a German couple hiking in Austria apparently got this goat’s goat. Decisive action had to be taken after the put-upon twosome were battered and harassed by a badass goat for three hours, Austrian state broadcaster ORF reported in August.

The husband took the bullying billy by the horns, quite literally, and holding on tight, dragged the territorial animal down the mountain into the village of Ausservillgraten. Police managed to calm the animal, but let its owner know he would be footing the bill for the tourist’s ripped trousers.

Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada

• stand-up

doRsal d-Ring

the neWlY designed delta haRness:

Patented spring-loaded design automatically stands-up, ensuring fast, easy and safe connections to your fall arrest system.

• Repel™ Webbing

Water repellent to reduce attraction of mold and dirt – also has more abrasion resistance.

™

• delta™ pad and coMFoRt pad

Cushioned padding provides extra comfort throughout the neck, shoulders and back.

Improvements we can all live with.

• lanYaRd keepeRs

Lanyard keepers hold your unused snap hooks and help reduce trip hazards.

Delta™ harnesses from DBI-SALA™ are newly designed with the features that keep your crew going home at night and coming back to the job the next day.

no tangle design •

Defining the Delta™ name, the patented triangular design creates a frame that allows the harness to fall into place when donned.

• RevolveR™ veRtical toRso adjusteR

Simple and fast adjustment that eliminates loose ends and locks into place, preventing slippage.

delta™ coMFoRt hip pad •

Improved ergonomic fit constructed with a soft, breathable, comfortable interior that supports your back and hips.

tongue buckles •

Easy to adjust buckles provide quick adjustment.

• Optional tech-lite™ Quick Equipped with

connect buckles

Weight capacitY •

Lightweight aluminum alloy buckles for fast and easy connections.

420 lb.

T H E U LT I M AT E I N FA L L P R O T E C T I O N 8 0 0 - 3 8 7-74 8 4

w w w. c a p i t a l s a f e t y. c o m

i n f o.c a @ c a p i t a l s a f e t y.c o m

Š 2011, 3M. All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. 3M is a trademark of 3M. Used under license in Canada. 1112-03777-E

3M is passionate about protecting the health and safety of workers in all types of industries and workforce environments. This passion helps drive us to continue to innovate across technologies, disciplines, and industries to help keep your workers safe and protected. We strive to deliver comfortable, well-designed personal protective equipment (PPE) that offers your workers the most effective protection available. You can buy 3M Safety PPE, confident in the knowledge that 3M is working hard to provide products that your employees will feel good about wearing.

A new 3M Safety Talk series is coming soon. Check back in the New Year to learn about Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) from 3M that can offer workers the most effective protection available.

SCAN HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT 3M SAFETY PPE.