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June/July 2013 11 UP CLOSE BACKED BY SCIENCE PROFILING PERSONALITIES WITHIN THE HEALTH AND SAFETY COMMUNITY By Mari-Len De Guzman S cience can be a powerful tool in eliminating hazards and preventing injuries and ill- nesses in the workplace, but signifi cant investments must be made to support relevant research in occupational health and safety. is is the belief of Marie Larue, who has spent the last 25 years of her career in OHS prevention policy devel- opment, enforcement and research. She is now the president and CEO of Quebec's primary research institute for occupational health and safety — Montreal-based Occupational Health and Safety Research Institute Robert- Sauvé (IRSST). e landscape of occupational health and safety looks a lot diff erent today than it did a few decades ago. For one thing, the factors that were causing neg- ative eff ects on workers back then are somewhat diff erent than the hazards they face today, Larue says. Quebec has come a long way in reducing workplace injuries and fatali- ties, she says. When she started in the OHS fi eld about 25 years ago, the province of Quebec was recording more than 230,000 injuries per year. Today, the number is down to 70,000 per year. While traditional types of injuries have been generally managed through prevention efforts, workplaces are facing a diff erent set of workplace haz- ards today, Larue says. "It was easy to have the prevention message come across when the acci- dent was obvious — you break your leg or you have a bad cut — nobody will argue it happened in the workplace," she explains. "As the workplace has evolved… we don't have injuries like we used to have many years ago. Now, it's more subtle — it's musculoskeletal disorder, it's psychological health diffi culties. And then it's becoming harder and harder to make people believe the workplace has something to do with it. It may not have everything to do with it, but it has something to do with it." One of the challenges has to do with the nature of many of these hazards. ere is typically a delay between the exposure and the bad outcome — usu- ally the result of repeated events or exposures over the years. Pulmonary diseases, certain cancers and certain types of musculoskeletal disorders are some examples, Larue says, and these are some of the areas the IRSST is con- ducting research on. IRSST is a not-for-profi t organi- zation focused on research around occupational exposures, hazard iden- tifi cation and injury prevention. e agency is mostly funded by the work- ers' compensation board of Quebec, La Commission de la Santé et de la Sécu- rité du Travail du Québec (CSST). Larue, who rose through the ranks at the CSST prior to joining the IRSST, says research is her "fi rst love." "I'm really happy here because (IRSST) is a place where you can try to foresee diffi culties prior to that (incident when) workers will become injured and that the employers will have to pay for that," she says. As rewarding as research can be, their work at the IRSST is not without challenges, particularly when trying to learn about new potential hazards that are already at play in the workplace. Nanotechnology is a good example. The U.S. National Nanotechnol- ogy Initiative defi nes nanoscience and nanotechnology as the study and appli- cation of extremely small things that can be used across all the other science fi elds, such as chemistry, biology, phys- ics, materials science and engineering. e problem with nanotechnology is that because it is a relatively new tech- nology, very little is known about the potential health and environmental hazards of exposure to nanoparticles. "Nobody is really fully certain as to their toxicity — in which form, at what level, for what substances," Larue says. She adds the biggest research challenge is trying to protect workers, who are already being exposed to these minute substances, while still building up the knowledge around the health and safety eff ects of nanotechnology. Another emerging area of research has to do with so-called "green jobs" along with climate change-related haz- ards that never existed before. As organizations move towards greener products and services, they may be introducing new risks to workers. "People are more conscious of their environment and some companies provide new services and new risks can come with those services," Larue points out. "It's not that green jobs are bad; green jobs are good for the envi- ronment, but it does not mean that just because it's good for the environment that there's no (occupational) risk." e climate change phenomenon, too, seems to be introducing new risks to workers, albeit indirectly. "Climate change makes things occur that did not occur before. We have warmer weather up north now, so we have workers dying of heat stroke up north, we have more fl ood, we have more forest fires. Climate change changes the environment for some workers," Larue says. Research to prevention Having worked both sides of the pre- vention aisle — research and policy development — it is easy for Larue to see where the gaps are in the whole prevention and workers' compensa- tion system. e last 25 years before she was appointed to head the IRSST in 2008, Larue worked in various leader- ship capacities at the CSST, including regional director and director of com- pensation and rehabilitation. She has worked with the workers' compensation board long enough to understand its strategies for preven- tion are largely driven by the workers' compensation system. e board has a set of compensable injuries and illnesses and — much like an insurance company — they focus their prevention strategies on those types of injuries and illnesses. If an injury or illness is not covered under workers' compensation, then generally, prevention eff orts on those fronts are not a priority, Larue explains. is can be problematic, particularly for the emerging types of workplace hazards that aren't necessarily part of the compensable items. "I think people are devoting too much energy in trying to decide who is responsible for (these incidents) — because, of course, there are insur- ance compensation issues — and not enough energy into preventing these stuff . ere is way too much emphasis on who is going to compensate what, and not enough emphasis on preven- tion," she says. Cancer-causing agents, mental health or the aging workforce — these are some of the emerging workplace factors that can negatively aff ect work- ers' health and safety but may not yet be on the radar of the compensation boards, the workplaces or the workers. Workplace health and safety issues are not always a black-or-white sce- nario. It is o en diffi cult to convince workplaces about potential risks that may not be immediately evident. "It's much more diffi cult to convince the workforce or the workplaces to do prevention for something which will occur 20, 25, 35 years from now," says Larue. "But if we don't do research and prevention now, the people who will hold our job in (the future) will be stuck with as much diffi culty as we have now." is is where research can play an important role. As researchers pro- duce the science to back up prevention programs and policies, the goal is to translate those to real workplace improvements. Every year, the IRSST conducts between 150 to 200 research projects. For every research project, there is a committee that follows the progress of the researchers. ese committees are composed of workplace stakehold- ers, including labour and employer representatives. " e only purpose of the committee is to make sure that there is a good fi t between the need in the work environ- ment and the work of the researchers," Larue says. e agency also has a knowledge transfer team, which makes sure research results are processed into simple terms to facilitate eff ective com- munication, integration or application to the workplace. Educating the workplace about research studies related to OHS and hazard elimination, and translating research results into workplace poli- cies and programs that produce positive results in the workplace, are important aspects of IRSST's operations. "We have made progress in that direction, but we have to devote more energy and eff ort into it — and money," Larue says. Marie Larue President and CEO Occupational Health and Safety Research Institute Robert-Sauvé Marie L Preside Occup PROFILING PERSONALITIES WIT