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January 10, 2007
Deadly workplaces take a huge tollAs deaths from cancer and other occupational diseases rise, there's no let-up in fatal accidents on the jobBy MEGAN GILLISOttawa Sun Fire Capt. Barry Quinn says new technology, including better breathing equipment, has reduced the chance of a firefighter being injured on the job, but it's still hard to avoid exposure to a cocktail of potentially dangerous substances. (BLAIR GABLE/SUN) When Capt. Claude Levesque died last year after 37 years of firefighting, his casket was wrapped in a Canadian flag and placed in the back of a fire truck draped in black. An honour guard flanked the truck as it drove from Fire Station No. 57 on Beechwood Ave. to the funeral. Levesque didn't die when a burning house collapsed or while pulling a child to safety but firefighting killed him just as surely. The Workers Safety and Insurance Board recognized that it was decades of breathing toxic fumes from burning buildings that caused the brain cancer that killed him. "My dad dedicated his life to the service of others," daughter Johanne Levesque said. "He gave up his life. He accepted his fate with courage and strength. Firefighters are the only people I know who are running into burning buildings while the rest of us are leaving. That is what they do." Across Ontario, about 850 firefighters are sick or have died of illnesses they link to toxins given off by burning materials, including plastics, tar and asbestos. The minority whose cancers have been officially recognized as work-related are counted in a disturbing trend. While for most Canadians work is safer than ever, the number of people literally dying to work is rising --not falling. The national rate of fatal accidents has increased while the rate of reported cases of people sickening and dying -- like Levesque decades later -- has doubled. The 1,097 workplace fatalities Canada-wide in 2005 were almost evenly split between accidents and disease. A decade earlier, accidents outnumbered disease deaths two to one. Nearly two-thirds of deaths from occupational diseases --and 30% of all workplace fatalities --are caused by exposure to one deadly substance: Asbestos. Nearly five workers are now dying every workday, argues Andrew Sharpe, an economist at the Ottawa-based Centre for the Study of Living Standards and the co-author of a new study on workplace deaths. The number of workplace fatalities jumped by almost a fifth between 2004 and 2005 alone. "Workplace fatalities in Canada are actually going up, not down," Sharpe says. "More people are getting killed. It was three people (a workday) 30 years ago. A lot of those are people dying of cancer. That's still dying on the job. "People should not lose their life when they go to work." As deaths from occupational diseases spike, on-the-job accidents aren't dropping. Sharpe's new study shows that while time-loss injuries have fallen by a third since the early 1990s, the rate of fatal accidents actually increased slightly over the past decade. Fatal accidents are concentrated in a handful of high-risk jobs -- including fishing, mining and construction --and among men, who are 30 times more at risk than female workers, who traditionally work in safer industries. "There's been so much stress on workplace safety yet it doesn't seem to have any effect on fatal accidents," Sharpe said. Experts can't pinpoint why injuries are falling fast while fatalities stay the same or rise, said Dr. Cameron Mustard, president of the Institute for Work and Health. Experts believe there are fewer injury claims because the economy has shifted from industrial to service-sector jobs and the workers' compensation system may lag at recognizing the new dangers of work, such as repetitive strain injuries. The same trend isn't true for deaths. "That's troubling. It means they're not exactly the same thing," Mustard said. "While the world of work seems to be becoming safer over time, there are still too many opportunities for people to get into situations where they are at risk of dying. I think it has to do with the special challenges of protecting workers in work which is dangerous ." Traditionally dangerous jobs --forestry and construction for example --are still dangerous. Meanwhile, the number of people dying of diseases they got on the job --most after age 65 --now rivals the number of people killed in accidents. Cancer is now the number one cause of workplace deaths. While those statistics are startling, Mustard stresses they are largely the result of past --not present -- workplace hazards. "The rising occupational disease fatality numbers are telling us a story not about today but 20 or 30 years ago," he said. But an illness or death is only listed in occupational injury statistics if a doctor links it to the workplace and a claim is accepted by a workers' compensation board. "We underestimate the amount of disease in working age and retired patients that has part of its origins in work exposures," Mustard said. "It has a lot to do with how complicated it is for a physician to see the cause." LINKS HARD TO ESTABLISH While some links are clear --for example deadly mesothelioma in asbestos workers -- some are more subtle. One B.C. study found that while there are an estimated 15,000 cases of work-related asthma in the province, only 500 people filed workers' compensation claims. Mustard suspects that's because a doctor is more likely to ask a patient about smoking or pets than whether they work on a dusty construction site or use lung-irritating chemicals. The good news for most of us is that workplaces are healthier and safer than ever before, Mustard said. He cites the near elimination of second-hand smoke as a workplace change that will pay future health dividends. "There's no doubt that work is safer in the last 50 years. It's safer in the sense fewer and fewer workers are injured as a result of traumatic injury," Mustard said. "The risk of workers contracting a disease as a result of their work -- often 10 or 15 years later -- is less than 30 or 50 years ago. There's no reason to expect that we can't continue making it safer." Industry, unions and government are working to make work safer with a host of new initiatives, such as campaigns aimed at young workers and an Ontario Ministry of Labour project targeting the 2% of workplaces with the most injuries. The Canadian Standards Association recently launched a new voluntary standard to help companies integrate a patchwork of government regulations to reduce the risk. It would cost a small company about $5,000 to implement it. " Even if you don't care about the people who work for you, you should care about the costs of injuries and deaths," CSA vice-president John Walter said bluntly. "Legal bills, retraining workers, health costs --this isn't a good way to spend a company's resources." The Canadian Auto Workers, meanwhile, has launched the Prevent Cancer Campaign and Cancer Care Ontario has proposed a new way to examine workplaces for carcinogens. Today's firefighters are better protected than ever. New ways of tracking firefighters at blazes have reduced the risks they face in burning buildings. Better breathing apparatus -- and an end to the culture of the "smoke eater" -- mean they're breathing less toxic smoke than ever. FIGHTING FOR LEGISLATION "They're much better today than 20 years ago or even 10 years ago or five years ago," said Capt. Barry Quinn of the Ottawa Professional Firefighters Association. "But we're always going to be exposed to a cocktail of substances." Firefighters are fighting for legislation that would automatically recognize a series of ailments as work-related. "We have to make sure when one of our guys contracts cancer he knows his family will be taken care of," Quinn said. "It's proven the firefighting is causing these deaths. We treat those deaths exactly as if a guy went through a roof or a wall fell on him and he was crushed. "We don't have the luxury of saying we're not going in. Other workers in Ontario have the right to refuse dangerous work -we don't." --- HURTING FOR CHANGE - In 2005, 1,097 Canadians died because of workplace accidents and disease; 350,000 more get hurt or sick annually - Cancer is now the leading cause of workplace deaths - Canada has the worst rate of reducing workplace fatalities over 20 years among OECD countries, according to a Canadian Centre for the Study of Living Standards study - Workplace injuries dropped by almost one-fifth from 1980 to 2001 but fatalities fell by only 6.6% over the same period --the smallest drop in the OECD - 3% of Canada's GDP is spent on treating sick and injured workers Back to Article Index |
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