ENVI Committee Report
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14. THE SPECIAL INFORMATION NEEDS OF WORKERS AND HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS
14.1 The need for Canadians to be fully informed about the pesticides used in their communities is especially important in the case of workers who may be continuously exposed to potentially harmful substances in the workplace.
14.2 In order to inform workers about the hazardous materials used in their workplace a national system, the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS), was instituted in 1988. The key elements of this program are cautionary labelling of containers of hazardous materials, provision of Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) and worker education programs. At the federal level, the Hazardous Products Act was amended to require the suppliers of controlled products to provide adequate labels and MSDSs as conditions of sale and importation. Complementary federal, provincial and territorial occupational safety and health legislation was also modified to require employers to label hazardous materials in the workplace, make MSDSs available to workers and implement worker education programs.
14.3 Unfortunately, pest control products were excluded from the WHMIS at the time the program was set up. Their exclusion, which was maintained following a parliamentary review in the early 1990s, continues to this day. The Committee is not satisfied that the exclusion should be retained. A recapitulation of events may, in part, explain our position.
14.4 The federal WHMIS legislation came into force in October 1988. Among other things, it called for a parliamentary committee to conduct a review of the products excluded from the WHMIS program two years after the proclamation date of the legislation. In anticipation of this review, the (then) Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs launched an administrative review in January 1990, in consultation with industry, labour, provincial/territorial governments and relevant federal departments. Five sectoral committees were created under this initiative to review the exclusions, including the Pest Control Products Sectoral Committee.
14.5 The Pest Control Products Sectoral Committee was chaired by Agriculture Canada. It initiated a tripartite consultation process involving pesticide manufacturers, labour and provincial occupational safety and health officials; its specific terms of reference were to:
- consider the need for "WHMIS-type" information in relation to pest control products;
- harmonize the requirements under the Hazardous Products Act and the Pest Control Products Act, keeping the safety of workers as a paramount principle; and
- prepare a report outlining how the two systems could be harmonized.
14.6 Based on a consensus of the parties, the Pest Control Products Sectoral Committee recommended in its report that "WHMIS-type" measures be implemented in relation to pest control products, including the provision to workers of MSDSs that met the WHMIS standards, and the requirement that suppliers of pesticides disclose ingredients (formulants) according to WHMIS standards.
14.7 An amalgamated report of the five sectoral committees was tabled in Parliament on April 10, 1991, and was subsequently referred for study to the Standing Committee on Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Government Operations. This Committee tabled its report in the House of Commons on April 27, 1992. Noting that consensus of the parties had been an integral component of the WHMIS at the time of its creation, the Committee expressed the view that it would be not only impractical but also contrary to the philosophy of the WHMIS to undo any agreement that had been reached by the participants in the review process. Without questioning the consensus recommendations of the Pest Control Products Sectoral Committee, the House Committee simply recommended that the federal government accept and implement them.
14.8 The Committee wishes to stress that the issue of whether to retain the WHMIS exclusion for pesticides appears not to have been specifically considered given the terms of reference of the Pest Control Products Sectoral Committee. Rather, the Pest Control Products Sectoral Committee studied whether parallel measures outside of the WHMIS could be implemented.
14.9 Pesticides continue to be excluded from the WHMIS, but some voluntary steps have been taken. The Crop Protection Institute, for example, pointed out to this Committee that under the Warehousing Standards program set up in 1995, all pesticide warehouses have to be certified by the Agrichemical Warehousing Standards Association (AWSA)247 in order to do business with the Institute's member companies. In addition, as part of the certification requirements, MSDSs have to be made available. The Institute also indicated that industry is developing an electronic database for MSDSs, to be made available to growers through retailers in both electronic and hard copy format. Participation in this database will be required under the AWSA warehousing requirements. The Institute also noted that all member companies are required to submit MSDSs with their submissions to the PMRA. If they fail to do so, the submission package would be rejected.248
14.10 While the Committee supports these initiatives, we are concerned that workers handling or exposed to pesticides are not given the same comprehensive legal protection afforded the workers who are covered by the WHMIS. This point was made forcefully by the Canadian Labour Congress:
| [If] you look at some very, very strict rules about what manufacturers must disclose and what they may conceal, you see that there's an enormous discrepancy between the way the industrial chemicals are treated and the way that pesticides are treated. They're all chemicals. Many of them are toxic. They're all potential pollutants, and yet, there is a huge discrepancy between the way the pesticides are treated and the way that industrial chemicals are treated.249 |
14.11 During its appearance on November 23, 1999, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) provided the Committee with a copy of a report entitled The Right to Know About Chemical Pesticides: A Discussion Paper, which was prepared for the CLC in December 1998 by Katherine Davies of Ecosystems Consulting Inc.. Ms. Davies noted in her report that the 1992 recommendations of the Standing Committee on Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Government Operations to harmonize the workers' right to know requirements for pesticides with the WHMIS standards had not been implemented. Having examined the MSDSs developed in relation to pesticides, she concluded that few, if any, of these met the requirements for MSDSs under the WHMIS. She also compared other WHMIS requirements such as classification of hazards, confidentiality of information, labelling requirements, training and education, with the measures adopted in relation to pesticides and she came to a similar conclusion. Ms. Davies stated in her report:
| There is only a very limited worker and public right to know about pesticides in Canada because WHMIS does not apply to pesticides and the PCPA [the Pest Control Products Act] contains different and mostly weaker requirements for classification, labels and hazard symbols. Furthermore, the PCPA (as well as the relevant provincial legislation/regulations) does not contain any requirements for the preparation of MSDSs. In addition, the PCPA's failure to address confidentiality has resulted in an unwritten policy of blanket secrecy regarding pesticide identity(ties) and hazard information, this is clearly a very inequitable situation. Workers and the public should have the same rights to know about pesticides as they have for other types of hazardous materials. This situation is not conducive to occupational health and safety or public health and safety.250 |
14.12 Based on her analysis, Ms. Davies recommended that pesticides be brought within the WHMIS framework and that they be required to meet all the WHMIS requirements, recognizing that some modifications will be needed to labels and MSDSs to account for the differences between pesticides and other types of hazardous substances.
14.13 The Committee sees value in voluntary initiatives. In our opinion, however, they must supplement and not replace legislated standards. Ensuring the safety of workers through legislated standards which can be enforced is of paramount importance. The Committee finds it unacceptable that pesticides are not dealt with as strictly as other chemicals used in the workplace. In our opinion, they should be placed on an equal footing and brought within the WHMIS framework.
| The Committee recommends that the current exemption of pesticides from the Workplace Hazardous Material Information System (WHMIS) be removed and that pesticides be required to meet all the WHMIS requirements, subject to such modifications as are needed to account for the differences between pesticides and other types of hazardous substances. |
14.14 Workers who may be continuously exposed to pesticides are not the only ones to have special information needs in relation to pesticide products. Health care professionals must also have access to detailed information above and beyond what is available to the general public.
14.15 It is evident to the Committee that the kind of in-depth and readily accessible information needed by medical practitioners to properly diagnose and treat cases of pesticide poisoning is lacking. The PMRA has a toll-free number, but this number is little known and, based on the evidence presented, is not particularly "user-friendly." This point was made to the Committee by Peggy Land of the Campaign for Pesticide Reduction, who stated that, the toll-free number "is not even in the phone book and it's certainly not widely advertised. If you do call, you have to know exactly what to ask for."251 Ms. Land also described the run-around she was given when she attempted to obtain information on the pesticide "Par 3" on behalf of a physician who had contacted her organization:
| I didn't have a file on Par 3, so I called Weed Man and various other companies and was given not only contradictory information but utterly useless information. One girl told me she had to look it up and said it was the name of the lawn care product. I asked her what it was exactly, and she told me it was the name of it, like baking soda is baking soda.252 |
14.16 The Urban Pest Management Council of Canada spoke encouragingly of the toll-free number that is printed on the label of the great majority of domestic products. This organization stated that if there are any concerns about the environment, health or whatever, the companies welcome the calls on their twenty-four hour help line service and they track such calls.253 The Committee's own investigation, however, was not as encouraging. A member's legislative assistant purchased two products. One product was a fungicide, for which there was no toll-free number. The other product had a toll-free number, but when the call was placed, the assistant was told to talk to someone during business hours.
14.17 Dr. Kelly Martin, a staff emergency room physician and also a member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, was quite categorical in stating that in terms of the kind of information needed by medical practitioners there was nothing or next to nothing available, whether it be the web sites, the hot-line numbers or the Health Protection Branch within Health Canada. She stated in reference to two of her emergency cases:
| The person went to the company that had sprayed their neighbours' property and brought in the product. There was very little information. There was the 1-800 number or you could go on the web and get it -- which we did through the hospital. It told you to wash your hands, and if the child drank it you should make them vomit -- very basic things. This was not medical information. It didn't give you the probability of them going into seizures or cardiac toxicity. |
| One child had a lot of difficulty breathing, had to have help breathing, and had seizures. What do you do? What sort of interventions do you do? There's nothing available on that. From the Children's Hospital we made very valid attempts through mother-child risk in Toronto, poison control, and the numbers and websites. We thought maybe we could find something from pesticide websites from the government, but there wasn't anything.254 |
14.18 Dr. Martin also told the Committee that some physicians are so poorly informed about pesticide poisoning that they don't even know enough to run a blood analysis to detect the pesticide's presence in the body.255
14.19 The Committee is very concerned by this evidence. In our opinion, it is essential that health care professionals have access to detailed toxicological information to be able to detect and treat cases of pesticide poisoning. As was mentioned in Chapter 13 (the disclosure of information), some help appears to be on the horizon; the PMRA recommended that the new Act permit the disclosure of confidential business information to physicians for the purpose of making a medical diagnosis subject to their maintaining the confidentiality of the information.256 If pesticides are brought under the Workplace Hazardous Material Information System (WHMIS) as we recommend in the previous section (The Workers' Right to Know), medical personnel will also have access to otherwise privileged confidential business information for emergency purposes.
14.20 While these initiatives should improve the situation, it is questionable whether the information will be accessible when needed. Medical personnel require not only access to information, but "timely" access to information. To this end, the Committee believes that the Minister of Health acting alone or with his provincial and territorial counterparts, should set up a twenty-four hour medical emergency information service on pesticides. This could involve the creation of a dedicated toll-free number or a dedicated website, such as the Canadian Health Network. Alternatively, it could involve the designation of selected hospitals across the country as "poison information centres." The Committee did not receive any evidence on this issue and is, therefore, not in a position to make a specific recommendation on the means that should be employed. It is important, however, that a medical emergency information system be set up. Since cases of acute distress could involve toxic substances other than pesticides, we recommend that such a service cover all toxic substances and not just pesticides.
| The Committee recommends that the Minister of Health, solely or jointly with the provincial and territorial Ministers of Health, establish an effective twenty-four hour medical emergency information service with respect to pesticides and other toxic substances. |
14.21 There would be little point in providing a medical emergency information service on pesticides and other toxic substances if health care professionals were not concomitantly educated about the service's existence or, more generally, about the known or potential risks and adverse effects associated with the use of these substances. It is important that the medical profession receive the requisite training, both in medical school and through professional development programs. It is also important that they be encouraged to report cases of adverse effects to the PMRA for inclusion in the adverse effects database that the Committee recommends be created in Chapter 9. Their reporting such cases will not only add to the existing pool of knowledge, it might also play a pivotal role in having the product re-evaluated under the special review provisions, discussed in Chapter 10. Since the provinces and territories have primary responsibility in these areas, the Minister of Health should work closely with his provincial and territorial counterparts to ensure the achievement of these goals. Professional medical bodies, as well as the national/provincial/territorial medical associations, could also play a pivotal role by providing their members with up-to-date information on disease related to pesticides and other toxic substances and by encouraging members to report adverse effects, The Minister of Health should, therefore, enlist their active participation.
| The Committee recommends that the Minister of Health, in partnership with the provincial/territorial Ministers of Health, the governing bodies for medical practitioners and the national/provincial/territorial medical associations: |
| (a) ensure that health care professionals are given the necessary education and training to identify and treat illnesses caused by, or involving exposure to, pesticides and other toxic substances; and |
| (b) encourage health care professionals to report cases of adverse effects to the Pest Management Regulatory Agency for inclusion in the adverse effects database recommended by the Committee. |
247 The Agrichemical Warehousing Standards Association (AWSA) was established to succeed the Warehousing Committee of the Crop Protection Institute of Canada in activities related to warehousing standards. Its bylaws permit a Supervisory Board of not more than 13 persons representing certificate holders, manufacturers, distributors, public warehouses and government; AWSA Web site, January 2000.
248 Crop Protection Institute, Brief to the Committee; Evidence, Meeting No. 9, November 25, 1999.
249 Evidence, Meeting No. 7, November 23, 1999.
250 K. Davies, The Right to Know About Pesticides: A Discussion Paper, prepared for the Canadian Labour Congress, December 1998, p. 24.
251 Evidence, Meeting No. 3, November 4, 1999.
252 Ibid.
253 Evidence, Meeting No. 8, November 24, 1999.
254 Evidence, Meeting No. 11, December 1,1999.
255 Ibid.
256 Pest Management Regulatory Agency, Proposed Amendments to the Pest Control Products Act, January 1999.