Occupational safety promotes environmental protection
A number of environmental disasters could have been avoided, or lessened, if their organizations had better promoted occupational safety, says Dave Gouthro, safety manager for Highland Asphalt in Halifax.

He points to the Sydney Tar Ponds in Nova Scotia. The hazardous waste site, which suffered in the last century from the contaminant runoff from nearby steel-mill ovens, could have been avoided if modern occupational health and safety best practices had been in place, he suggests.

“If we look after things on the OH&S side, for the most part it’s going to be a positive thing for the environmental side,” he says. This is especially true, in regards to chemicals and disposal.

“If people don’t care what they are doing with used chemicals and they just dump them out in the lot in the back, on a health and safety side that isn’t good because employees would be exposed to it, and obviously it also wouldn’t be good for the environment.

“So if we go around making sure that we have good disposal habits and good housekeeping, it’s also good for the environment. I’m concerned that it’s an OH&S issue, but at the same time if we do it right then the environmental part is also taken care of.”

Gouthro says the relationship between occupational safety and environmental conservation parallels the interconnection of the ecosystem. Safety motivated by the protection of the worker, extends to protect the community, and vice versa.

Jason Hoffman, past president of OHAO, says he believes we will soon see greater overlap between occupational hygiene and environmental conservation teams.

“They overlap, it’s just the units are different,” he says. “The principles are similar; it’s just one is more of a micro- versus macro-scale.”

“If we bring in a product that’s environmentally friendly, it’s going to have low toxicity (for the workers) as well.”

Hoffman also notes that occupational hygienists have the toxicology background needed to help support environmental safety.

Keeping environmental innovation in check
One aspect around green efforts is business as usual: occupational health and safety professionals need to stay on top of every new material or product handled in their organization, whether being implemented for eco-friendly reasons or not.

Gouthro says his organization recently started to incorporate recycled asphalt into their mix. No new product or material was involved in this recycling effort, so his OH&S group did not need to be consulted; however, as any new products, for example eco-friendly cleaning materials, are introduced he pays close attention and ensures every product has a WHMIS report properly filed.

Hoffman says his company, ArcelorMittal-Dofasco Inc., has a few thousand products in its chemical inventory, and any new eco-friendly product must be properly tracked and handled through its life from use to disposal.

Both Gouthro and Hoffman say communication and collaboration between groups are key. Hoffman says that any new products or larger projects (anything with a capital range above $50,000) must go through systematic joint approvals of both ArcelorMittal’s environmental safety and occupational health groups before project leaders can advance them.

“With anything in the workplace, not just the environment, good communication with the safety person is needed,” says Gouthro. He says that safety individuals faced with the potential of being otherwise bowled over by environmental efforts must “build up the trust and rapport with all levels of the company and with whatever lines of communication you can have, so that when something’s going on they let you know.”

It’s not necessarily easy, UBC’s Bartlett suggests.

She says occupational health and safety professionals need to ensure they are part of any solution during the design stage “by use of willpower.”

Lawrence Cummer is a freelance journalist based in Toronto. You can reach him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it