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Features
On the Road
By Danny Kucharsky Distraction, fatigue and human errors have…
The Drone Wars
Unmanned air vehicles are no longer the stuff of science-fiction. Drones are the latest gadgets sharing the airspace with planes today. And there are few barriers to launching a drone that could come into the path of a commercial jet or a towering crane, posing some serious safety concerns.
Out of the Shadows
The passing of legislation presuming that post-traumatic stress disorder among Ontario’s first responders is work-related points to a growing recognition across Canada that occupational injuries are not just physical.
In a Split Second
A workplace accident cannot be undone, and the resulting injury can have lifelong ramifications on those who live to tell the tale.
Hand in Hand
The debate on the role of unions in influencing workplace safety is as old as unions are. Organized labour, by serving as employee advocates, may have a positive influence on job safety after all, according to a recent study.
Shifting Winds
In an energy-hungry world, power derived from a renewable resource is a good thing. But a recent study by researchers from Quebec has highlighted a gap in both safety practices and awareness of the occupational risks associated with working at wind turbines, which is growing in Canada. How can we harness wind power without throwing caution to the wind?
Ties that Bind
Your workplace has a health and safety program in place; the employees are well trained and aware of the hazards in the workplace. With an impressive safety record, employees can be proud of your commitment to safety. But what about the contractors that a company engages?
Spiralling Down
New research suggests that seriously injured workers tend to have shorter lifespans and that those who are permanently impaired following workplace incidents in their younger years have the highest risk of dying early.
Digging in Foreign Lands
Canada’s mining industry accounts for nearly half of the
world’s mining and mineral-exploration activity. But who holds Canadian operations abroad accountable when workplace-safety violations occur, and what standards are they required to live up to?
Claims of Canadian companies disregarding the rights of foreign workers and changes to Canada’s corporate social responsibility strategy are throwing a spotlight on the way our extractive sector does business abroad.
Raising the Bar
Construction sites are dangerous workplaces with some of the highest on-the-job injuries and fatalities. The National Construction Safety Officer program, administered by provincial construction-safety associations, certifies individuals who have practical knowledge in various construction-related health- and safety-management skills.
But some are questioning the credibility of this entry-level certification and whether it undermines the overall standard of the safety profession.
Toxic Fissures
What goes down must come up. Flowback fluids — returning high-pressure fluids injected into the ground to fracture the rock formation and release natural gas or oil — have been linked to the deaths of four workers who appear to have suffered from acute chemical exposures during flowback operations at well sites in Williston Basin in North Dakota and Montana since 2010. As Canada’s oil-and-gas boom continues to fuel projects that involve hydraulic fracturing, just how much — or how little — do we know about what goes on underground?
Growing Pains
Often, the final punctuation in a life story is not a period, but a question mark. After 15-year-old Christopher Lawrence was entangled in a conveyor belt at a gravel-crushing site outside Drumheller, Alberta in July, safety inspectors fanned out across the province in early commencement of a planned inspection blitz on gravel-crushing sites. The death of the teenage worker has raised a larger question: should Lawrence have been permitted to work in that position at all?
