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Study has legs:Standing at work bad for the heart
Azzura Lalani
The Toronto Star , Aug. 18, 2017
If you tend to do a lot of standing at work, you may want to sit down to read this.
A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that workers who primarily stand on the job are twice as likely to have heart disease than workers who mainly sit.
That puts them more at risk of getting heart disease than smokers, said Peter Smith, a scientist from the Institute for Work and Health (IWH) and lead author of the study.
The study, by researchers at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and the IWH, followed 7,300 heart disease-free Ontario workers for 12 years, from 2003 to 2015, to compare their standing/sitting work habits with whether they developed heart disease.
The workers were respondents to the 2003 Canadian Community Health Survey, which collected information on them ranging from work conditions and job title to health and health behaviour.
In total, 3.4 per cent of workers developed heart disease. Of that, 6.6 per cent of workers who mainly stood – in jobs that ranged from cashiers to chefs and from nurses to bank tellers – and 2.8 per cent of those who mostly sat at work developed heart disease.
The risk of heart disease remained the same even after adjusting for factors like age, education, health conditions and ethnicity.
“There are a couple of different mechanisms by which prolonged standing can increase your risk of heart disease,” Smith said.
“One of them is by blood pooling in your legs and the other is by increased venous pressure in your body by trying to pump that blood back up to your heart and that increases oxidative stress.”
The results may come as a surprise to many, after earlier studies found prolonged sitting can raise the risk of dying.
Smith acknowledged being sedentary is bad for health, but said not enough attention has been given to too much standing.
Hilary Poirier, a customer service agent at WestJet in Halifax, spends most of the workday on her feet.
“We don’t really sit down very frequently at all because we’re always out on the floor,” she said. Though she said she has “the best job ever,” all the standing puts a toll on her body: feet, back, hips, legs, everything.
The results came as a surprise to her.
“For something like heart issues, I wasn’t imagining that because usually, you’re on your feet, you’re being healthy,” she said.
Karen Messing, an ergonomics expert and professor emeritus at the Université du Québec à Montréal, called the study “an important contribution.”
The volume of participants is both one of its strengths and its weaknesses, though she said that because of the size, it’s hard to know exactly what people’s working posture is.
“Control over your working posture is a really important variable that is really hard to study, so there’s a lot of complexity in the area of working postures and health,” she said.
“For example, when you talk about standing, would you say a hockey player stands at work? And what’s the difference between a hockey player standing at work and a supermarket cashier standing at work?” she asked.
The solution to all that standing is relatively simple: sit more.
“If you think about all the work we do across Canada to prevent people being exposed to smoke at work, I think one of the things we need to ask ourselves is how much are we doing to prevent people being exposed to prolonged standing,” Smith said.
Help on the way for ailing miners; WSIB ends policy that barred Ontario workers from making claims of neurological diseases they believe are caused by exposure to toxic ‘miracle’ dust
Sara Mojtehedzadeh
The Toronto Star , Aug. 18, 2017
The province’s worker compensation board has rescinded a decades-old policy that prevented Ontario miners from claiming for neurological diseases they believe were caused by years of exposure to toxic aluminum dust.
The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board will also commission an independent study to assess the development of neurological conditions resulting from exposure to the aluminum-based McIntyre powder, which was used extensively in the province’s northern mines between 1943 and 1980.
As previously reported by the Star, miners were routinely forced to inhale the powder, which was sold as a miracle antidote to lung disease. Historical documents suggest it was created by industry-sponsored Canadian scientists bent on slashing compensation costs in gold and uranium mines across the north.
“When a loved one becomes sick or gets hurt, it’s natural to ask why,” said Scott Bujeya, a vice-president for WSIB.
“We ask that question, too, and we won’t leave any stone unturned until we are satisfied we have an answer based on evidence,” he said Thursday.
About 10,000 workers were forced to inhale dust, which was blasted into a sealed room before miners were sent underground.
Some have since claimed they were treated as “guinea pigs” in a human experiment aimed at cutting company costs. Until now, potential victims were unable to make successful claims at the WSIB because of a policy formed in 1993 that said insufficient evidence existed linking aluminum exposure to neurological disease.
“I’m glad some things are happening and moving forward,” said Janice Martell, who began advocating for workers two years ago after her own father, a former miner exposed to the dust, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He died from the disease in May. “The time that it’s taken for this is frustrating because so many of the workers are dying. My dad is the most recent one that I’m aware of.”
In 2016, the WSIB commissioned an independent health consultancy to research existing science on aluminum powder. The review, published Thursday, did not find a link between aluminum exposure and the development of “adverse health conditions in general,” the board said.
But as a result of the research compiled by Martell, the board has now engaged experts from the Toronto-based Occupational Cancer Research Centre (OCRC) to conduct a new study to investigate any connection between exposure to McIntyre powder and neurological disease.
Minister of Labour Kevin Flynn said he was encouraged by the WSIB’s announcement.
“Exposure to hazardous substances is a major cause of occupational illness. That’s why it is important to me, and everyone at the Ministry of Labour, that occupational diseases be treated with the same seriousness as traumatic injuries,” he said.
Of the 397 former miners who contacted Martell, about one-third suffered from a neurological disorder – and she says 14 have developed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative and incurable condition also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, that slowly kills the ability to swallow, speak and breathe.
In Ontario, the prevalence of motor neuron disease, which includes ALS, is estimated at less than one in a thousand people.
Research conducted in the United Kingdom found “strong evidence” linking aluminum to Alzheimer’s when absorbed into the blood stream.
There are 53 pending WSIB claims for illnesses attributed to McIntyre powder exposure. Because the 1993 policy is now revoked, the board says it will reach out to claimants to discuss next steps, including an option to have interim decisions made based on existing scientific evidence.
That evidence is still evolving. The OCRC study will not be complete until 2019, and McMaster University has also launched a project to test aluminum levels in surviving miners’ bodies using a non-invasive technique called neutron activation analysis.
Martell says more money is needed to help workers navigate the health care and compensation systems, including compiling evidence to help workers make claims. That effort is being spearheaded by Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers, which is still waiting for its funding proposal to be approved by the Ministry of Labour.
“I’m certainly hoping that funding comes through very soon,” Martell said.
Disability Law Will Make History
Vjosa Isai
The Toronto Star , Aug. 24, 2017
As pen hits paper in drafting Canada’s first federal accessibility legislation, disability experts say they want to see independent enforcement and standardized accessibility features in the new law.
Among others, these recommendations were heard by Carla Qualtrough, federal minister of sport and persons with disabilities, at a conference on Tuesday, as the government works to draft its new law following months of public consultations.
“This law, when created, will be very proactive and basically tell employers, and service providers, and programmers, and the government itself, these are the expectations we have on you and we’re going to hold you to account,” Qualtrough said. “I think that we’re going to make history.”
Although the prospective act would govern only those areas under federal authority, such as banks, telecommunications and interprovincial transportation, Qualtrough believes it will also show leadership beyond this jurisdiction and inspire provinces to create similar laws.
Currently, seven provinces do not have accessibility legislation.
Disability advocate and lawyer David Lepofsky has been closely involved in holding the provincial government to account in its goal of being fully accessible by 2025, since it passed its landmark Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act in 2005.
Lepofsky commended Ottawa for participating in Tuesday’s conference, which included experts from the U.S. and Israel and was accessibly broadcast online from the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University. However, he said, it’s important for the law to contain features that will make it endure past this government’s time in office.
“We need a national champion,” he said. “It’s great to have a minister, but we need someone who’s not political, but who’s got the mandate to stand up and lead the enforcement, lead making the standards, and also be the one to say where we’re doing well, and call us out.”
Other suggestions from the expert panel include accountability functions from an independent body, detailed and standardized accessibility requirements, and greater enforcement action for non-compliance.
Bila Berg, a lawyer at the Israeli commission on the rights of people with disabilities, said the country has 12 inspectors nationwide tasked with enforcing accessibility laws. There are five with comparable duties in Ontario, Lepofsky said.
The minister also heard about how technology procurement by the government can help steer private companies or vendors to innovate accessibility into their products.
Lucy Greco, an Albertan web accessibility expert based at the University of California, Berkeley, has worked with companies like Google in developing an accessible interface for their web collaboration tools.
“It’s your role to help find experts to help people achieve the accessibility they need … they can’t do this in a vacuum,” said Greco, who has been blind since birth.
For Qualtrough, the law will help to create a consistent accessibility experience for Canadians.
“We’re going to say as a system, and as a society, that we need to remove barriers because you’re entitled to live in a world that thinks of you and includes you as someone with a disability,” she said.
The legislation is expected to be introduced by the end of the year or early 2018.
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Tribunal Overturns Hundreds of WSIB Decisions
In this article, the Windsor & District Labour Council president states that workers pay into the WSIB fund. It is employers who contribute financially to the compensation fund.
http://blackburnnews.com/chatham/chatham-news/2017/07/03/tribunal-overturns-hundreds-wsib-decisions/