Canadian Safety Reporter

June 2015

Focuses on occupational health and safety issues at a strategic level. Designed for employers, HR managers and OHS professionals, it features news, case studies on best practices and practical tips to ensure the safest possible working environment.

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Safety Reporter Canadian www.safetyreporter.com June 2015 NEWS BRIEF Workplace > pg. 6 REGULATING TRAINING The deaths of 2 Ontario firefighting trainees raise questions around the government regulation of private training courses pg. 3 MILITARY MISCONDUCT pg. 2 A damning review of sexual misconduct and harassment in the Canadian Armed Forces by a former Supreme Court justice has sounded the call for organizational change DOCTOR'S NOTES A recent decision by the Federal Court of Appeal has confi rmed it is "reasonable" for employers to request more information when circumstances warrant such a request pg.8 INSIDE Credit: Burlingham/Shutterstock Greater > pg. 4 'Study drug' misuse graduates to workplace Use of stimulants such as Adderall, Ritalin or Concerta becoming more widespread among workers desperate for productivity boost BY LIZ BERNIER PRODUCTIVITY in a pill may seem like a pretty tempting pos- sibility for workers who are in highly competitive fields and in- creasingly asked to do more with less. And that's likely a major factor why medications for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are graduating from an illicit study aid for college exams to workplace "career boosters." Though there's no reliable data on how many workers rely on ADHD stimulant drugs such as Adderall, Ritalin, Vyvanse or Concerta, numerous doctors re- port an increase in the amount of patients using such drugs for a productivity boost at work, according to an April New York Times investigation. The increase in usage has Many students use ADHD drugs to get through exams, a practice that seems to be spreading into the workplace as staff struggle to be more productive in the "do more with less" era and gain an edge. WORKPLACE CLEANING PRODUCTS CAN MAKE ASTHMA WORSE (Reuters Health) - Fumes from cleaning products used at work can make existing asthma worse, according to a new study of pro- fessional cleaning service em- ployees. Products such as bleach, glass cleaner, detergents and air fresh- eners exacerbated asthma-related symptoms for the women, and their reduced lung function lasted until the morning after exposure, in some cases worsening with time. "These results support the im- portance of developing workplace health and safety practices de- signed to limit exposures to irritant chemicals in cleaning products," the study team wrote. A wide variety of cleaning prod- ucts are used by workers in set- tings like offi ces, factories and hospitals, says David Vizcaya, of the University of Montreal Hospital Research Center. Professional cleaning services are necessary to clean, disinfect, and control dust and mold on surfaces, but a number of studies have reported associations be- tween exposure to cleaning prod- ucts and asthma, the researchers note. Time-lost claim system ineffective: Study BY LIZ FOSTER WHILE it's common practice to classify workplace injury claims as either lost-time or no-lost- time, this may not be wise. Lost-time and no-lost time claim categories are not as valu- able as they once were in evalu- ating how well workplaces are performing in primary preven- tion, according to a study from the Toronto-based Institute for Work & Health (IWH). The study — "The Relation- ship Between Worker, Oc- cupational and Workplace Characteristics and Whether an Injury Requires Time Off Work: A Matched Case-Control Analysis in Ontario, Canada" — was published by the American Journal of Industrial Medicine in April 2015. REGULATING TRAINING The deaths of 2 Ontario firefighting trainees raise questions around the government regulation of private training courses pg. INSIDE

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