On a cool evening in September, a small group of retirees in London, Ontario, share a pizza with occupational hygienists. The retirees all worked at the local Westinghouse plant in the 1960s and 70s, manufacturing electrical transformers and capacitors.

They’re reminiscing. They’re also trying to reconstruct, both verbally and in a drawing, their old workplace. The hygienists hope to determine whether health problems reported by other Westinghouse retirees might be due to long term exposure to PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) at the old plant.



John Oudyk is one of those hygienists. This sort of detective work is what makes his job “quite unusual” as far as occupational hygienists go. Studying diseases in groups falls in the realm of epidemiology, a science he added to his arsenal when he was hired at the Hamilton office of the Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers (OHCOW) in 1989.

OHCOW clinics are funded by the prevention branch of Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. Clinic staff specialize in occupational medicine and work with workers and retirees to evaluate whether their health symptoms, or a disease such as cancer, might be related to their job. Oudyk says they always have about 10 projects going at once.

“We don’t advertise a lot…we’re absolutely at the limit of our capacity.”

If Oudyk feels any stress, it doesn’t show. He speaks softly and looks completely relaxed, even when addressing a large audience.  
 
A bit of a jack-of-all-trades, Oudyk works in all industrial sectors. Being an occupational hygienist requires a good knowledge of biology, chemistry, toxicology, physics and some familiarity with the psychosocial sciences and local OH&S laws.
 
The hygienist’s job at OHCOW also spans epidemiology and medicine. Oudyk feels lucky to be working closely with physicians, ergonomists and nurses. “It’s a great environment to do hygiene in.”


Famed formula
When the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW) had a fatality in one of its workplaces in 2002, the union was frustrated with the traditionally accepted way of measuring heat stress. That method used “web bulb globe temperature,” which is as complicated as it sounds. A WBGT machine costs thousands of dollars. To interpret the results, there’s a formula that combines ambient temperature, web bulb (humidity) and radiant energy, as well as how much energy the worker expends on the job.
 
“A lot of hygienists make mistakes at it,” Oudyk laughs. “I know I have.”
 
The CAW asked if there could be a simpler process using humidex. Oudyk and his colleagues worked out a new formula theoretically, and tested it in a plant with the help of three hired students who did nothing but measure heat stress every 10 minutes for a whole summer. A GM plant in Oshawa piloted the measurement with management’s support and negotiated a form of it into their contract.

The formula worked, and OHCOW posted it on its website.

To this day, Oudyk gets calls from all over the country about the new way of measuring heat stress. “It has been adopted in workplaces I’ve never been in,” he says. “That one worked really well.”
 
Years after asbestos was big in the news, it’s still an ongoing occupational health issue. Oudyk recently visited a long-term care facility where staff often hang signs and streamers from asbestos ceiling tiles.
 
“One woman had been poking away at something, and the thing crumbled and fell in her face,” he says. “So we went in there to explain the long term implications of asbestos exposure.”
 
Meanwhile, he is invited to visit the Baie Verte Asbestos mine in Newfoundland as part of his volunteer work at McMaster University’s Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics program. Retired miners are getting sick, so the group has taken about 5,000 measurements. Oudyk will quantify the exposure based on those measurements.


(Next: Busy volunteer)