The Ontario government recently launched an eight-week health and safety awareness campaign designed to enlighten construction workers and their employers.

They unveiled the campaign at Algonquin College, at the site of the school’s  new construction trades building, which will open to about 2,500 construction trades students next year. The new campaign follows a 90-day safety enforcement blitz of more than 2,800 construction sites.

Even though the province’s lost-time injury rate among construction workers is one of the lowest in Canada, the 90-day blitz revealed numerous violations, including improper equipment use and poor supervisor and worker training. As a result, Ontario officials decided that it was time to emphasize the need for the entire construction industry to learn the importance of safety.

The campaign is being run in Canadian cities with the highest construction activity, including Ottawa.  It is sponsored by the Ministry of Labour, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board and the Infrastructure Health & Safety Coalition, and will feature newspaper advertising in the key ethnic languages spoken in the construction sector, and posters will appear on construction fences.  Tip sheets for workers will be available on the ministry’s website at www.ontario.ca/ConstructionSafety.

Another aspect of the campaign revolves around a hope that the public can become more involved in providing information to ministry officials. To that end, a toll free phone number (1-877-202-0008) has been established for the public to call in and report safety issues they see. If a follow-up visit deems a jobsite unsafe, the province can issue a stop-work order in the interests of safety.

In the wake of the tragic scaffolding accident that occurred last Christmas Eve  in which four foreign workers plummeted to their deaths, two Ontario companies now face the prospect of paying $17 million in fines for violations of the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA), as well as at least $30 million in lawsuits.

Last December  24, five workers were working from a scaffold on the side of aToronto high-rise, when the scaffolding broke apart, causing the workers to fall 13 storeys to the ground, killing four of them, and leaving the one worker who survived with a broken spine and two broken legs.

After a seven-month investigation, the Ontario Ministry of Labour has announced that it would lay 30 charges against the workers’ employer, Metron Construction, four charges against Swing ‘N’ Scaff, the scaffolding supplier, 19 charges against the directors of each company and eight charges against a supervisor. Among the charges against the companies were; failure to ensure workers used devices to prevent them from falling, failure to ensure the platform wasn’t overloaded, failure to ensure the platform was designed according to safety regulations and failure to ensure the workers were properly trained. The charges against the individuals include improper training of employees.

The companies face possible fines of up to $500,000 for each of the charges, while the individuals potentially face a fine up to $25,000, and up to a year in jail for each charge. In addition to facing the potential fines, 22-year-old Dilshod Marupov, the worker who survived, has also filed a lawsuit against the companies, the building owner and the Ministry of Labour, seeking $16.3 million in damages. The lawsuit claims the workers weren’t trained properly or given safety gear, and alleges the scaffolding was faulty. The ministry is included because the suit claims it allowed the companies to continue operating at the worksite despite two previous stop work orders for safety violations. Marupov’s lawyer has also filed a $14 million lawsuit on behalf of the estate of one of the workers killed.

In addition to the civil fines under OHSA, the employers could also face serious fines and prison sentences based on a criminal investigation under the Criminal Code of Canada. Bill C-45, passed in 2004, expanded the criminal liability of organizations for workplace accidents and broadened the range of individuals who are subject to criminal charges. While there have been previous cases in which Ontario employers in have served jail time as a result of workplace accidents, the Criminal Code has rarely been used since Bill C-45 was passed.

According to the Ontario Federation of Labour, the number of Canadian workers killed on the job has risen over the past 15 years. Altogether, 479 work-related fatalities in Ontario were reported to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board in 2009.

Edmonton-based equipment dealer Finning Canada faces four counts for violations of Alberta’s occupational health and safety code in the wake of a worker’s death two years ago.

On July 8, 2008, a worker was killed on the job at Suncor Energy Inc’s Millennium mine site near Fort McMurray, when he and other Finning workers were moving a disabled hauling truck to the shop for repairs. The worker was run over by the vehicle and fatally injured, and two other workers also sustained minor injuries in the accident. One was treated on-site, while the other was taken to hospital in Grande Prairie, where he was treated and released.  A stop-work order was issued at the time, restricted to the immediate area around the site of the accident.

Finning released a statement on its website calling the worker’s death “truly a tragic incident – one that will forever impact Kevin’s family, all those who worked alongside him in the oil sands and our company as a whole.” The statement goes on to say that “at Finning, safety is a core value that influences everything we do. We remain committed to achieving and sustaining health and safety excellence in all of our business operations.”

The charges the company faces include;

• Failing as an employer to ensure, as far as it is reasonably practicable to do so, the health and safety of workers engaged in the work of that employer, as stipulated under section 2(1)(a)(i) of the provincial Occupational Health & Safety Act;
• Violation of sections 7(4) and 8(1) of the Act. Section 7(4) states that an employer must ensure that a hazard assessment is repeated at reasonably practicable intervals to prevent the development of unsafe and unhealthy working conditions.  Section 8(1) stipulates that an employer must involve affected workers in the hazard assessment and in the control or elimination of the hazards identified.
• Violation of section 15(1) of the Act, which demands that an employer must ensure that a worker is trained in the safe operation of the equipment the worker is required to operate.

The company is scheduled to first appear in Fort McMurray Provincial Court August 30 .

A Toronto researcher is looking at ways to reduce the number of falls on ice, by trying to develop what she refers to as “winter tires for feet.”

Jennifer Hsu, (her name is pronounced “shoe” — no lie), a PhD candidate in biomedical and mechanical engineering at the University of Toronto, has spent a large portion of her summer inside of a cold lab at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute,  trying to find out more about why and how people fall during the winter months, in the hope that she might design shoes that could ultimately help to  prevent falls.

Hsu has been concentrating on falls by postal workers in the past, because they work outside in all conditions and often lose work time because of injuries suffered through falls on ice. More specifically, she’s looking at the cleats Canada Post provides for mail carriers.

Coat wearing volunteers in the climate-controlled lab,  which is typically set to temperatures as low as –20°C, traipse over walkways  designed to imitate surfaces such as steep ramps and stairs, while sensors record their movements. Each volunteer is equipped with a safety harness to prevent them from being injured.

In addition to researching the materials and design of the shoes, Hsu is also examining how people walk while wearing different types of footwear.

Past research has shown that most falls occur at a temperature of about 0°C outside, when a thin layer of water ices over, or after a thick layer of snow falls on top of ice . It is estimated the injuries due to falls cost the Canadian health care system about $2.8 billion a year.

Hsu’s research is being conducted with the help of an Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board grant.

Ontario courts continue to slam companies with huge fines for violations of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

Wal-Mart Canada Corp., for example, was hit with two fines totaling $120,000 in less than a month; a $45,000 fine on June 23 and a $75,000 fine on July 16.

The $45,000 fine resulted from an incident that occurred on September 27, 2008. A worker was operating a forklift outside a Wal-Mart store in Barrie, to place skids of bottled water near the main entrance. While doing so, the forklift struck and injured a customer’s feet.

A Ministry of Labour investigation found that the worker did not have full view of the forklift path of travel and its load.

In that case, the company pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that the operator of material handling equipment has a full view of the intended path of travel of the equipment or its load, and to failing to make sure material handling equipment is only operated as directed by a competent signaler who is stationed in full view of the operator with a full view of the intended path of travel of the vehicle and its load.

The $75,000 fine resulted from an incident that occurred on January 19, 2009, when a worker employed by a Wal-Mart store in Welland climbed a ladder to get five boxes of toys from a shelf. As the worker began to climb back down with the boxes held in one arm, he missed a step at the bottom of the ladder and fell, injuring his arm.

A Ministry of Labour investigation found that the worker carried the boxes in such a way that his or her safety was endangered by not keeping the required level of contact with the ladder.

Wal-Mart Canada Corp. pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that materials required to be lifted, carried or moved were lifted, carried or moved in a way that did not endanger the safety of any worker.

Also on July 16, Concord-based Welded Tube of Canada was fined $140,000 for an incident that occurred on July 31, 2008, in which a worker was injured as he prepared a two-and-a-half ton bundle of steel tubes and sent them down a conveyor to be processed for shipping. That worker and a co-worker then began to make a mechanical adjustment in the path of the conveyor. The bundle of tubes needed to be rearranged, so it was sent back on the same conveyor, where it struck the worker and injured his leg.

A Ministry of Labour investigation found that the conveyor was not protected by a guard to prevent access to the path of travel while it was in motion.

Welded Tube of Canada pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that a machine with moving parts that may endanger a worker is equipped with a guard or other device which prevents access to the moving parts.

And on July 9, 2010, grocery store operator Metro Ontario Inc. was fined $100,000 for an incident that occurred on January 18, 2009. A worker at the company’s North Bay location was using a band saw to cut beef in the meat department, when his hand slipped, and the saw’s blade partially amputated some of his fingers.

That Ministry of Labour investigation found that the machine’s blade was improperly guarded, and Metro Ontario Inc. pleaded guilty to failing to ensure the saw was equipped with a guard that prevented access to its moving blade.

In addition to the huge fines levied in the cases above, in each case the court imposed a 25% victim fine surcharge, as required by the Provincial Offences Act, which is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.

The numbers tell the story.

According to a Workers Compensation Board (WCB) report published in 1999, a total of 1,482 work related deaths were reported over a 10 year period. Of those, 519, or 35%, were the result of industrial vehicle accidents. Just as troubling was the WCB calculation that for every work fatality, there were 29 injuries. Statistics also show that every fatality costs an insurance company from $2 to $5 million. Since every extra dollar spent by an insurance company gets passed on as part of a client company’s premiums, fewer fatalities saves everyone money.

It was statistics like those above that motivated Pro-active Safety Systems Technology Inc. (PSST) to develop a truly revolutionary heavy equipment safety system to reverse the numbers and make workers safer.

In 2006, industrial electricians Rick Shervey and John DaSilva heard about a couple of accidents at nearby companies involving loaders within the space of a month, and realized just how ineffective the warning systems were. So, they set about to build a new warning system that would properly alert people when they were in the path of a moving piece of equipment and stop it in the event of an imminent disaster.

The idea they came up with is a system in which every piece of equipment is fitted with a detector, and every worker wears a vest with a RFID (radio frequency identification) tag embedded or attached.  An antenna broadcasts at a 30º angle to the front and back of the machine, and as it moves around, it senses every worker within the critical area, and sends a signal to the unit on the vest. If a worker enters the zone, the machine activates a two-stage warning light system and actually activates the brake.  The range is accurate from 70 cm to 400 m, but the company has targeted the zero to five-meter range as the critical zone for preventing accidents.

This potential benefits from this type of safety system are so great that the National Research Council Canada has provided the company with research-specific grants; and the WorkSafeBC Research Secretariat has provided two Innovation at Work grants; $46,000 in 2007 and $100,000 in 2008. Not only that, but this past January, the device received the Northern British Columbia Business and Technology’s Workplace Health and Safety Award.

And the product has thus far only been used in 22 test cases thus far. The company is preparing to make its first production units available by January 2011. You can read more about this at the PSST website.

After a fire broke out on the roof of a large paper mill in New Brunswick, one worker was taken to hospital as a precautionary measure, but released by about midnight.

The fire, which broke out on the roof of Irving Paper Limited in Saint John at about 5 pm on June 15,  started in the thermal mechanical pulping area of the building, and eventually affected 12 workers, including several who were part of the emergency response team. The hospitalised worker, who had complained of a sore throat was also part of that response team.

Saint John Fire Department officials say that when the fire was first discovered, the affected worker  had used a dry chemical fire extinguisher to try to put out the blaze, but it was windy, so he inhaled some sodium bicarbonate powder. Though basically harmless, the chemical is known to cause coughing and can lead to an irritated throat.

Though the company and WorkSafeNB have opened investigations into the incident, fire officials suggested that the cause of the fire could have been an overheated or malfunctioning electric motor.

Is your workplace prepared for every possible emergency? Hopefully, you have policies, procedures and equipment in place to keep your workers safe from accidents and workplace violence. But what if a worker simply turns blue and collapses from a heart attack? Surely, you have at least a few workers who know CPR, but what if the CPR isn’t enough? Wouldn’t it be great if other employees were able to grab an automated external defibrillator (AED) and could revive that worker within minutes?

An AED is a small, portable device that assesses the heart of a person in cardiac arrest for a “shockable” rhythm. If such a rhythm is detected, a button is pressed to deliver a shock or series of shocks to the victim’s heart, which then allow the heart to return to a normal rhythm.

Several companies are making a push to see to it that such machines are available  everywhere, but at this point, AEDs are still relatively rare in workplaces throughout Canada, in part because Canada doesn’t mandate their use.

According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, more than 40,000 people suffer  cardiac arrests in Canada each year. Fewer than 5% of those who suffer an attack outside a hospital survive — and roughly 70% of cardiac arrests occur outside a hospital. Their studies have shown that workplaces with 2,000 employees and an average age of 40 can expect at least one cardiac arrest incident every year.

Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) has reported that there have been 200 claims for workplace heart attacks over the last three years. Since not all heart attacks that occur in the workplace are job related, the WSIB considers each case on its own merits.

According to studies, keeping an AED onsite can increase the chance of survival from heart attack by 75% or more over CPR on its own. Defibrillation is more successful if performed within five minutes of cardiac arrest and survival chances decrease 10% for every minute that passes after the arrest.

Those who think the devices are just too expensive should know that prices have dropped dramatically in recent years, with units priced well under $2,000 now. Most units can be installed without professional assistance. AEDs are battery powered and the batteries are not rechargeable, so they don’t require a power supply.  For maintenance, they only require daily spot checks to ensure the status indicator light is on, and monthly checks to make sure the unit is in good working order. Batteries, which currently cost about $200-300, last 3-5 years. The pads, which currently run between $70-100 per pair, only have to be replaced when used.

It is necessary to train employees on how to use AEDs, but the training is not difficult or intensive. The Heart and Stroke Foundation suggests that anyone with a Grade 6 education can learn to use an AED in 20 minutes. In order to reduce liability risks, the Heart and Stroke Foundation recommends companies ensure operators have medical oversight, ensure certain members of staff are properly trained and that protocols for continued training, operation and equipment maintenance are in place. The Heart and Stroke Foundation recommends that all employees, if possible, have the skills necessary to perform CPR and the use of an AED.

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) has created a new guide designed to introduce Canadians to the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS), to help prepare workplaces for anticipated changes, as the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS) looks forward to adopting the GHS standards.

The purpose of GHS is create a universal set of rules for classifying hazards and the same format and content for labels and safety data sheets (SDS) to be adopted and used around the world. The new guide, entitled “WHMIS After GHS: Preparing for Change” will help organizations negotiate the anticipated changes, understand the new requirements and facilitate a successful transition to the global standard.

While the exact details of the changes won’t be known until the legislation is published in the Canada Gazette II, there is sufficient information available to encourage workplaces to begin preparation. The guide will:

• Provide an overview of the new Globally Harmonized System (GHS)
• Describe the changes to WHMIS that should be expected when GHS rules for classification, labelling, symbols/pictograms, and safety data sheets (SDSs) are adopted.
• Provide advice on steps that employers can take in order to transition successfully to WHMIS After adoption of GHS

A copy of  WHMIS After GHS: Preparing for Change can be purchased by clicking on the title.

Vancouver officials are investigating a building demolition in which two walls and a lamp collapsed onto the street, barely missing a flagperson and several cars.

Unfortunately, the incident, which occurred at 5:30 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon during a demolition being conducted by Global Excavation and Demolition, was caught on video, and several of the videos have gone viral on YouTube, raising questions about the company’s safety procedures.  The company, however, claims the situation was “under control” and suggested that in any demolition, “sometimes things happen that are out of your control.” Karmjeet Singh Panesar, one of the owners of Global Excavation and Demolition,  was apparently operating the crane at the time.

One video (see below), taken from a high angle, shows one wall of 1102 Hornby St. collapsing onto Helmcken Street.  Seemingly undeterred, the operator continued to work, and proceeded to follow that up by knocking down an adjacent wall, part of which fell onto Hornby Street and took out a lamp post.

This is not their first incident. The company has received six compliance orders in the last three years, including one for an excavation. They currently have one other demolition permit for Vancouver, but that has been put on hold while city officials and WorkSafeBC review the company’s safety practices.  The YouTube videos will be used as evidence in the investigation.

The company has promised to pay for replacement of the $4,000 lamp post.

Here is the video of the first collapse:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKIZk4qAqKU

And here is the video of the second:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvWRKojULbo