ONTARIO
WSIB takes claims for powder


THUNDER BAY — Miners who became ill after inhaling an aluminum-based powder mistakenly believed to protect them from exposure to silica dust can now make compensation claims to the province’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).

Up until last week, the board had refused to recognize claims from workers in mines and other industries who had occasion to inhale what was called McIntyre Powder over a 35-year period until 1979.

“The theory, eventually proved false, was that inhaling the powder would protect workers’ lungs” from diseases like silicosis, a United Steelworkers union news release said on Tuesday.

“Instead, it made workers sick, and led to many deaths,” as well as cases of Parkinson’s disease.

The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board was unmoved until last week, after a relentless campaign by Sudbury resident Janice Martell to have McIntyre Powder-related ailments recognized appeared to get through to the provincial government.

According to the Ministry of Labour, in March of 2020 it received a report from a cancer specialist who “found a statistically significant increased risk of Parkinson’s disease in miners exposed to McIntyre Powder.”

A ministry spokeswoman said her department has since “made amendments to a regulation under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, to now formally recognize Parkinson’s disease as an occupational disease linked to work-related McIntyre Powder exposure.”

In a statement, Labour Minister Monte McNaughton said the change “will guarantee compensation for workers who have suffered unfairly as a result of exposure to McIntyre Powder.”

McNaughton said the decision “is just a start.”

“Our government will continue to make investments to help identify and recognize occupational illnesses and support those who have been injured by exposure on the job,” he added.

Martell’s father, who worked in an Elliot Lake uranium mine in the late 1970s, died in 2017.

“My dad did not live to see this day, but it is a fitting legacy to a man who always enjoyed breaking the trail . . . to make the path easier for those coming behind him,” Martell said in the United Steelworkers news release.

Carl Clutchey, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Chronicle-Journal