November 26, 2009

Occupational health and safety

Ontario clinics ready to diagnose construction worker health risks

VINCE VERSACE

staff writer

Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers are ready and able to help pinpoint hazardous exposure and other health dangers for construction companies and workers.

In construction, multi-substance hazardous exposures are a major concern, especially since a worker’s environment is constantly changing. OHCOW can help detect occupational injuries and diseases, which can assist in workers’ compensation claims and supporting prevention efforts, through its intake clinics and other “collective interventions,” said Leslie Piekarz, executive director, OHCOW.

“Anyone can use our services, any worker, whether they are unionized or non-unionized — sometimes we even get questions from employers,” explained Piekarz. “Lawyers and doctors use our services and we offer services to joint health and safety committees.”

OHCOW was established in 1989 and has clinics in Hamilton, Toronto, Windsor, Sudbury, and Sarnia. They are a free service to all workers across Ontario and are funded by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, under its prevention division. Piekarz provided a walkthrough of OHCOW’s benefits recently to the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario.

OHCOW is dedicated to preventing occupational injury and disease by providing medical assessments to individual workers, groups of workers and addresses ergonomic issues and chemical and physical hazards. Also, OHCOW staff must be invited into a workplace in order to conduct an assessments or clinics.

“Keep in mind our physicians are not treating physicians. When you come to see our doctors, they are not going to give you a prescription,” said Piekarz. “Rather, they will talk to you about your job, what the exposures are at your job and try and figure out is that exposure making you sick.”

The occupational disease intake clinics consist of a group of workers sharing the same employer, workplace or workplace exposures meeting with OHCOW staff when they have reason to believe they have similar and related health concerns. The goals of the clinics are simple: collecting information about the workplace, the working conditions and exposures and the work and health histories of the workers.

“We try to offer practical solutions, and not solutions that cost millions of dollars. Not all corrections have to be expensive and that can help convince employers to invite us in,” added Piekarz.

Processes known as “body mapping” and workplace hazard mapping can be used by OHCOW and are often components of occupational disease intake clinics. OHCOW staff use body mapping to record and chart illnesses and injuries of clinic participants using life-sized body posters. The results create a visual tool that can demonstrate possible clusters or trends in that worker population.

For more information about OHCOW visit www.ohcow.on.ca

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