Making Canadian workplaces safer day by day

A new business owner in Halifax...
A Health and Safety Committee at a Moose Jaw fertilizer plant...
A production manager in Sherbrooke...
A Safety Manager in Winnipeg...
A student in Trois-Rivières...
A new employee at a company in Welland...
An operations manager in Vancouver...

Safety is everybody’s business. Most people know this only as a familiar slogan, a reminder of the need to be alert to risk and danger.

It is also, however, the guiding principle for all the pursuits and objectives of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety. By recognizing everyone’s role in workplace safety - the basis for the Internal Responsibility System, or IRS - and assisting everyone in filling that role, CCOHS makes a difference thousands of times each day across Canada.

Thanks to its authoritative, unbiased content, CCOHS services are utilized and valued by all sectors - employees, employers, trade unions, health and safety professionals, health care providers, governments, educators, and others. From its inception, CCOHS has been dedicated to improving the health and safety of individual Canadian workers. No goal is more important; it remains the over-riding purpose of CCOHS and its staff.

On a typical day, Canadians everywhere draw upon the unique services of CCOHS, in a wide variety of ways:

A new business owner in Halifax, searching for information on establishing a WHMIS program and Health and Safety Committee for her T-shirt printing shop, calls the Inquiries Service at CCOHS.

The CCOHS Inquiries staff promise to send the information by mail as requested. They explain that OSH Answers on the CCOHS website offers several documents relating to her questions, and provide local telephone numbers of government departments where she can obtain information about legal requirements, interpretative documents and other materials.

Safety is everybody’s business. The CCOHS staff member offers to search for additional literature that will provide relevant and concise information relating to health hazards associated with the silk-screening process. While the staff searches for the literature to be forwarded by mail, the new business owner logs onto OSH Answers on the CCOHS website to find answers to health and safety questions. OSH Answers is a free web information service that currently covers 475 health and safety topics in a question and answer format. New topics are being added continuously. The questions are prepared by CCOHS subject specialists who draw upon more than 20 years experience answering hundreds of thousands of inquiries from Canadians.

A Health and Safety Committee at a Moose Jaw fertilizer plant needs to confirm correct handling procedures for a new chemical.

Unfamiliar products can carry unknown risks. The Committee needs to know if protective clothing is required, if the plant’s ventilation system is sufficient, if existing storage facilities are adequate, precautions needed in handling and using the chemicals, and what action to take in the event of a spill or accidental contact.

Safety is everybody’s business. The committee representative checks the CHEMINFO database on CCOHS' CHEMpendium service and obtains relevant information. CHEMINFO, created by CCOHS, details chemical hazards by utilizing international information which is then adapted to reflect Canadian rules. For further information the representative slips the IPCS INCHEM CD-ROM, obtained from CCOHS, into a company PC. This joint production of CCOHS and the International Programme on Chemical Safety was a direct response to a priority set by the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety. The Forum was created to address global concerns of chemical safety and consists of governments, non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), industrial associations, and trade unions from some 130 countries.

INCHEM provides instant, internationally validated information on health concerns and methods of dealing with the unfamiliar fertilizer chemical.

Within a few minutes the Committee knows the steps to take. They share this information with supervisors and fellow employees, and take steps to implement the necessary safety procedures, dramatically reducing both the risk of illness among the workers and potential damage to the environment.

A production manager in Sherbrooke turns to the CCOHS website for ergonomic evaluation of assembly line activities by production personnel.

The company’s manufacturing process has been modified to improve efficiency and reduce costs, and requires new procedures to be followed by assembly line personnel. A retraining program will teach the revised actions and procedures, but are they the most effective way of working... and do they represent any potential risk?

Safety is everybody’s business. Logging onto the CCOHS website, the production manager opens OSHLINE a service created by CCOHS to provide ongoing, authoritative coverage of published occupational health and safety-related literature from around the world. The data is integrated with bibliographic information from the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSHTIC®) database, covering worldwide literature from 1900 to 1998. Upon discontinuation of updating of the NIOSHTIC database in 1998, CCOHS initiated OSHLINE to keep users up-to-date and current with the world’s best health and safety
literature.

In searching OSHLINE the production manager locates a study on ergonomic aspects describing near-identical actions to the ones planned for her firm. Within the study are alternative methods of performing the same job tasks with dramatically reduced incidence of possible injury. What’s more, they produce greater overall worker comfort and increased productivity. When the production manager implements the methods in her modified program, both the workers and the company benefit.

A Safety Manager in Winnipeg is looking for training programs that are available to the firm’s multi-branch locations across Canada.

He obtains it from one authoritative source: the CanOSH Internet Portal via the CCOHS website. Canada’s most extensive gateway to occupational health and safety services and information, CanOSH provides easy access to a defined collection of public governmental resources, including those from Canadian government agencies at the federal, provincial and territorial levels.

Safety is everybody’s business. That’s why Canadians everywhere can use the information available on CanOSH to keep up-to-date on available training programs, hazard alerts, research and statistics. The Safety Manager locates the data he needs, and alerts each branch about the training programs given in their jurisdiction.

A student in Trois-Rivières preparing for a summer position with a local garden nursery looks for information that will help prepare her for this work.

She is aware that she may be handling pesticides and herbicides, and that proper handling, storage and use of these chemicals is critical. She obtains the names and manufacturers of chemicals used in the workplace. This represents an important step in preparing youth to deal with workplace hazards.

Safety is everybody’s business. That’s why CCOHS maintains more than 50,000 current French, and 120,000 English Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS). An MSDS provides the student with information about personal protective equipment she will need, and other vital chemical hazard information. Like much of the resource material at CCOHS, the MSDS library is accessible, via the Centre’s Academic Support Program, to nearly 2,000,000 students in Canada and around the world. They share the information among themselves and with their parents, broadening everyone’s knowledge of health and safety issues.

A new employee at a company in Welland uses the wrong glassware for a substance, which explodes and causes breathing problems for the worker.

A co-worker alerts the company Safety Officer, who has a copy of the CCOHS CHEMpendium CD-ROM. Under the Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB), the officer locates information about acute toxic effects resulting from exposure of skin to the substance. These include breathing difficulties and rapid heart rate, leading to potentially fatal consequences. The worker is rushed to the hospital and placed in an ICU, where she eventually recovers.

Safety is everybody’s business. Accessing potential toxicity concerns of a substance, using the CHEMpendium CD-ROM takes literally a moment or two. It’s a convenient and reliable method of verifying potential hazards and determining correct handling procedures - one that Canadians can utilize at any time.

An operations manager in Vancouver uses the CCOHS Canadian enviroOSH Legislation web service to assist the firm in submitting their ISO 14000 certification application.

The process of finding and retrieving relevant federal, provincial and territorial legislation is often complex and intimidating. Yet...

Safety is everybody’s business. That’s why CCOHS makes the enviroOSH Legislation web service available, enabling Canadians to remain informed and in compliance with government regulations from all Canadian jurisdictions regarding workplace and environmental health and safety. This service also provides the relevant guidelines, codes of practice and referenced standards for the convenience of users.

In thousands of locations across Canada, 24 hours each day, 7 days a week, employees, supervisors, and other decision-makers including government officials, trainers, practitioners, and health and safety professionals obtain the data they need to work within a safer, more productive environment thanks to CD-ROMs, booklets, pamphlets, web postings and training materials provided by CCOHS.