Canadian Occupational Safety (COS) magazine is the premier workplace health and safety publication in Canada. We cover a wide range of topics ranging from office to heavy industry, and from general safety management to specific workplace hazards.
Issue link: https://digital.thesafetymag.com/i/351674
20 Canadian Occupational Safety www.cos-mag.com S eparating health and safety from environment is an increasingly difficult task. Whether it's the aftermath of a natural disaster — such as massive fl oods — or human or machine error — such as a derailed oil tanker — both the environment and the health and safety of workers are implicated. When these instances occur, occupational health and safety pro- fessionals are quickly becoming the go-to people to deal with both sides of the coin. "In the past, it was sort of an after- thought, health and safety, then we'll look at the environment, and now we're shifting to people seeing it as interconnected and they need to be thought of in the same system," says Jo-Anne Clarke, associate director of teaching and learning at the University of Calgary Continuing Education. And OHS professionals are in a great position to tackle environmental issues, says Andrew Cooper, president of the Canadian Society of Safety Engineering. "It's really about stewardship, and stewardship of process, activities and results; and the occupational health and safety folks are so well aligned with that duty of care that for many of us, it's a natural synergy." There seems to be a genuine incli- nation of OHS professionals toward the environment. The University of Calgary Continuing Education has an environmental stream as part of its occupational health and safety program that is very popular among students, says Clarke. "We try to emphasize the OHS and E because we live in Alberta where many people in health and safety are employed in the oil and gas sector, doing fi eld work, and environmental issues defi nitely cross over and inter- sect with that," she says. "You need to look at it as a full system… And we fi nd our students have a real thirst for that knowledge." As a rule of thumb, if it's a problem inside the plant, it's likely going to be a problem outside the plant, says Laura Rourke, principal of Hummingbird Environment Safety and Health in Cambridge, Ont. "It's often that you're connecting those two worlds — things you do to manage things inside sort of fl ow out- side the building and have those other implications," she says. Chemical spills is one major area where OHS and environment inter- sect, and spills make up the biggest regulation under the Canadian Envi- ronmental Protection Act. If a spill does occur, the employer has a duty to report it to the Ministry of Envi- ronment, which may come on-site to conduct an inspection. From an environmental perspective, the ministry wants to make sure the spill does not enter the waterways, and from an OHS perspective, it's also a concern, says Tehzin Dhanani, man- ager, health, safety and environment at Enwave Energy in Toronto. "If we have sulphuric acid, for example, that has huge implications for how much those fumes can be inhaled by our employees… Or if our employees are not wearing the proper MANY SYNERGIES EXIST BETWEEN ENVIRONMENT, HEALTH AND SAFETY By Amanda Silliker GREEN GREEN THINK