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Compensation and Occupational Disease: Submission to Canada's Royal Commission on Workers' Compensation

OCCUPATIONAL DISEASE IN CANADA A recent study, issued by Statistics Canada (1), states: • 4.9 million workers reported dust and fibers in the air where they work; • 4.5 million were affected by working with Video Display Terminals (VDTs); • 3.7 million were exposed to loud noise; • 3.2 million were affected by poor air quality; • and, another 2.7 million were exposed to dangerous chemicals and fumes. Dr. Grayson, author of the report, concludes: "A substantial proportion of Canadians exposed to potential workplace hazards believed that their health had been affected ... Fully 70 percent of the workers exposed to poor air believed their health had been affected. Dangerous chemicals or fumes were perceived as having an effect by about half the workers exposed to them, while more than 40 percent of those exposed to dust or fibers or to loud noise considered them to have been harmful." (2) Dr. Allen Kraut, in an article in a recent issue of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, entitled "Estimates of the Extent of Morbidity and Mortality Due to Occupational Diseases in Canada" (3), suggests between "77,900 and 112,000 new cases of occupational diseases and 2,381 to 6,010 occupational disease deaths" occur in Canada each year. Dr. Kraut further concludes that occupational diseases are a significant and underestimated cause of morbidity and mortality in Canada. He points out, for example, that in Ontario, ''less than 50 percent of the individuals dying of asbestos-related malignancy, compensable under the (Ontario) Workers' Compensation Board (WCB), received benefits [Finkelstein,1989]." (4) These findings confirm the longheld view of Labour that the work environment contains serious hazards which are adversely affecting the health and well-beingof thousands, if not millions, of Canadians. Dr. Grayson also substantiates Labour's position that workers are fully aware of the potential risks, but are having great difficulty in actually doing something to change these harmful conditions. Workers also have had great difficulty in convincing the WCB about the relationship between their illnesses and the workplace. But if these potential hazards are