Nearly two years after three of their workers were killed and two received major brain injuries after being overcome by toxic fumes, the operators of a mushroom farm near Vancouver were finally charged with a series of offences under British Columbia’s labour laws last week.

A total of 29 charges under the Workers Compensation Act and Occupational Health and Safety Regulations were brought against two companies; A-1 Mushroom Substratum Ltd., H.V. Truong Ltd.; and four individuals — Ha Qua Troung, Vy Tri Trong, Van Thi Truong and Thinh Huu Doan — who are either officers or directors of those companies.  Among the charges were; failing to ensure the health and safety of workers;  failing to fix hazardous conditions; failing to ensure workers are aware of safety hazards; inadequate training; and failing to create an adequate safety plan.

The incident that led to the charges occurred on Sept. 5, 2008, when a group of workers at a mushroom farm and composting plant in Langley were overcome by toxic fumes in a shed. What happened inside that shed set off what WorkSafeBC considers to be one the most complex investigations in the agency’s history.

According to investigators, a pipe carrying a compost mixture broke and released a toxic gas. Two men were overcome by the fumes relatively quickly, and when co-workers came to their aid, several of them were also overcome. Three workers died, including one of the rescuers. One worker is still in a coma and another was left unable to speak or hear.

The New Democrats and the British Columbia Federation of Labour, among others, have called for a public inquiry into overall farmworker safety, and also called for changes to the province’s agriculture industry. The Federation claims that the company offered a single pamphlet on working in confined spaces at the work site. Unfortunately, the pamphlet was available only in English, despite the fact that the workers involved were Vietnamese-Canadians, and spoke very little English.

This particular incident isn’t the only case in recent years involving the deaths of British Columbia farmworkers. In March 2007, three farmworkers were killed when a 15-passenger van carrying 17 people flipped onto a concrete median on the Trans-Canada Highway near Abbotsford. In that case, the deaths were ruled accidental, although the coroner’s jury made18 recommendations, including ensuring farmworkers are better informed about their rights.

Last week, a 58-year-old electrical contractor fell to his death in Carman, Manitoba after a hydro pole snapped while he was unhooking power lines.

The man, an electrical contractor whom area residents have identified as Bob Murray, who owned Bob Murray Electric Ltd., had been working at Vanderveens’ Greenhouses Ltd., located in the Rural Municipality of Dufferin, west of the town of Carman.  According to RCMP, they had hired Murray’s company to do electrical work as part of an addition to their facilities.

Murray was apparently in the process of unhooking hydro power lines, and was on a ladder that he had propped up against the pole before it snapped and fell over around shortly before 11:30 a.m., according to Carman RCMP. The pole apparently belonged to the greenhouse and was not owned or maintained by Manitoba Hydro, according to a Hydro spokesperson.

The incident is currently being investigated by Manitoba Workplace Safety and Health.

On August 27, 2010, at 6:00 p.m., injured worker and Paralympics medalist Josh Dueck took to Empire Field and the Pacific National Exhibition in British Columbia to attempt to break a world record for the “most High Fives by any individual in 24 hours.” The record attempt was part of WorkSafeBC’s Raise Your Hand campaign — an annual initiative to increase young workers’ understanding of their safety rights and how to stay safe at work.

Dueck became paralyzed from the waist down in a workplace accident at the age of 23. Since then, he has become a world-champion para-alpine skier. He has won national and international competitions and recently won a silver medal at the 2010 Paralympics Winter Games. And as a member of the WorkSafeBC Paralympics Speaker program, he has shared his experiences with youth across British Columbia for the past several years.

Since 2007,  the Raise Your Hand campaign has used its website at RaiseYourHand.com, street teams that travel to high schools and universities around the province, and other means to raise awareness about workplace safety to the province’s 350,000 young workers.

Last weekend a large number of bad drivers got behind the wheel, and proceeded to smack into guardrails, run into ditches, and smash into other vehicles, because they were being distracted by cell phones and other gadgets. The distractions caused them to fail to stay in their lanes, maintain their speed, and overall, they were pretty reckless.

Thankfully for everyone, these particular drivers were at an Alberta shopping mall, and were merely operating a driving simulator developed by the Insurance Bureau of Canada to demonstrate the risks of distracted driving, so the vehicles were virtual.  But their inability to drive safely surprised a number of them, and encouraged support for a new law that would ban the use of digital devices while driving.

Alberta is one of just two provinces without such a law, but legislation has been introduced that could change that status by this time next year.

Bill 16, which the provincial government introduced in April, which would outlaw the use of phones, music players and most other digital devices while driving, with hands-free devices excluded. The law would also make it illegal to tend to other tasks, such as personal grooming and writing on notepads, while operating a vehicle. The proposed penalty for a violation is a $172 fine.

According to the Transportation Ministry, the bill is scheduled to be debated when the legislature resumes sitting in October. If passed, the law would likely go into effect in 2011.

Based on a survey prepared for the Alberta Motor Association this past spring, fully 76% of Albertans would support such a ban. The survey also found that 61% of respondents felt the law should include hands-free devices.

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.

Who could ever have imagined that breaking wind could make the roads safer and the air cleaner?  That’s certainly the hope of the Ontario provincial government.

It is a fact that one of the great difficulties with clearing highways during winter is having to deal with blowing and drifting snow. It’s not unusual for snowplow operators to clear a section of road, only to have to do so again because of snow that has drifted from a nearby field.

To combat this problem, Ontario has developed a special project in the West region to build partnerships with farming agencies and groups to encourage the planting of farm windbreaks, which are lines of trees designed to block drifting snow from blowing onto the highway. But it is also hoped that the project, which is supported in part by the Ontario Public Service Innovation Fund, will also provide environmental benefits.

The effects of blowing and drifting snow accounts for as much as 30% of plowing, salting and sanding costs,  which comes to about $3,000 per two-lane kilometre per year. Combined with the province’s purchase of state-of-the-art, efficient snow removal equipment and technology, it is hoped that the planting of farm windbreaks will result in significant cost savings.

But the benefit is not just about winter highway maintenance. While last winter saw major reductions in snow removal costs in areas where windbreaks already existed, area farmers who plant windbreaks see crop yields increase by 5-25% on average. The windbreaks reduce soil erosion, provide wildlife habitat, improve air quality, and have a cooling effect on climate.

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To help raise awareness, provincial environmental officials launched an advertisement campaign last year designed to attract the attention of farmers, including a brochure featuring the slogan “Break Wind, Make Money” that is currently being distributed at farm shows, grower meetings, conferences and workshops throughout Ontario. .

The Farm Windbreaks project is intended to promote sustainability, reducing the effects of climate change and to reduce the environmental contamination by road chemicals, as well as improve road and transportation safety.

So go ahead, break wind, and keep the roads clear.

Based on a new report, British scientists have apparently found that what a person does for a living could play a role in how they die. The study found major differences between occupational groups and their risk of death from drug and alcohol-related diseases

The scientists analyzed all deaths among men and women aged 16-74 years in England and Wales between 1991 and 2000 – a total of more than 1.6 million deaths overall — and found some disturbing trends, based on a person’s chosen profession.

For example, their study found that merchant seamen had a high risk for death from cirrhosis and other alcohol-related illnesses such as cancer of the liver and mouth, as well as expected causes, such as from accidents like falling down stairs.

They also found that painters, bricklayers and roofers were twice as likely to die as a result of drug abuse, based on the statistical average. Accidental drug overdoses and poisoning was nearly twice the average among male painters, decorators, bricklayers, plasterers and roofers, and they found that cooks and bartenders were far more likely to suffer an alcohol-related death than the population as a whole.

Male tailors and dressmakers and make hairdressers were found to have a risk of death from HIV/AIDS that was nearly nine times higher than the statistical average.

The authors of the study hope to use this information to encourage employers to promote the implementation of general health information into their existing health and safety training programs.

Following a recent  90-day safety enforcement blitz of more than 2,800 construction sites that uncovered what the Ontario Labour Ministry considered to be an unacceptable number of safety infractions throughout the province,  the government has launched a new campaign aimed at worker safety education.

The blitz found violations ranging from missing guardrails to inappropriate use of scaffolding, and laid bare a marked lack of worker and supervisor training.  As a result, the ministry has ordered a culture change of sorts, and have made a new commitment to constant prevention and protection.

The new safety campaign will focus on education, and features posters with X-rays of broken bones with the tagline “Don’t let these be the last pictures someone takes of you.” The ministry will also operate a toll-free line, 1-877-202-2008, for anyone to report unsafe conditions on a work site.  To encourage absolutely anyone who sees something unsafe to call the line, all calls will be anonymous, and all will be passed on to inspectors for investigation.

The ministry also intends to pass on the message through its web-site and Twitter, as well as in ethnic newspapers, where it will be delivered in 10 languages.

A new report from the Conference Board of Canada, entitled “What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You: Literacy’s Impact on Workplace Health and Safety,” suggests that workers are being put at serious risk due to many employers’ overreliance on written manuals and policies and a serious lack of attention to building and maintaining workers’ literacy skills.

The report, which was released July 21, is the culmination of a two-year study for Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. The purpose of the study was to examine the health and safety aspects of literacy skills development in the workplace.

The study found that employers often assume that because they set a minimum recruitment standard of a Grade 12 education level, that all workers are fully literate, and no literacy issues could possibly exist in their workplaces.  According to the report,  64% of employers felt that employees understood their health and safety policies to a large extent or fully, while only 40% of workers themselves agreed with that assessment. At the same time, only 5% of immigrant service agency respondents said they believed workers understood health and safety policies to a large extent or fully.

The report also noted that because literacy is an essential skill in terms of understanding health and safety policies, such as a worker’s right to refuse unsafe work, safe work procedures, safe handling of materials and comprehension of WHMIS information, employers should be more proactive in assessing their workers’ literacy levels by reviewing past incidents. It recommends that employers take a close look at their current  OH&S policies from the perspective of a low-literacy worker. It suggests that all workplaces work towards putting their OH&S policies into plain language to minimize communication difficulties between employers and workers.

Employers are also encouraged to address the stigma surrounding literacy, and recognize that some workers who may be struggling with literacy or communications skills will be reluctant to admit it for fear of reprisal, job loss or even just because of fear that other workers might make fun of them. Therefore, a good practice might be to integrate literacy and essential skills training into regular technical and safety training.

Review the entire report here.