1.1 What is a Workplace Injury?
Broadly speaking, a workplace injury is any form of ill health—such as a physical or mental injury or illness—that arises because of a worker’s employment. Instances of work-related ill health can encompass a vast array of injuries and illnesses. Most work-related injuries will be minor and temporary (such as a slight burn), while others will be permanent (such as an amputation) or life-threatening (such as cancer). Some injuries will be acute (such as a laceration) and some will take years to manifest themselves (such as silicosis). Let’s review a workplace incident that resulted in several workplace injuries and two fatalities.
Story: The Lakeland Sawmill
On Monday, April 23, 2012, the Lakeland sawmill exploded and then burned, lighting the night sky of Prince George, British Columbia. The explosion and subsequent fire killed Alan Little, 43, and Glenn Roche, 46, and injured more than twenty other workers. Brian Croy, a vice-president with the United Steelworkers’ local, was sitting in a training session when the mill exploded. The room’s plywood walls were blown down on top of the workers, and Croy and his colleagues escaped through a section of outer wall that had been destroyed by the blast.
“It’s almost like you were coming out of a war zone. Everything was leveled. I met one fellow I think his fingers were blown off, and his clothing, a lot of it was gone. It was off and his hair,” Croy told The Canadian Press. Upon arriving at an outdoor first-aid station, Croy found workers sitting on a tarp, holding up burned arms and hands while one worker lay naked on the tarp, burned black and without any hair. [1]
A WorkSafeBC investigation found that an overheated fan shaft had ignited the dust-laden air, resulting in the explosion. [2] Wood dust is a well-known explosion hazard in sawmills. The Lakeland mill was sawing large amounts of trees killed by pine beetles. This wood is extremely dry and, when milled, creates a large amount of fine dust.
The employer had been aware of the dust issues, and five dust-related incidents (e.g., fires) had been recorded in the months leading up to the explosion. The employer had failed to remediate the hazard or, indeed, engage in adequate preventive maintenance of the mill’s systems. Internal safety inspections were inconsistently undertaken and dust buildup was not mentioned, with some workers stating “that they were tired of complaining about it as nothing was ever done.”
The Lakeland mill explosion—one of two in BC that year—was a major workplace incident. Yet, sadly, these deaths and injuries were but a drop in the bucket. In 2012, the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada (AWCBC) reported 245,365 accepted workers’ compensation claims for time-loss injuries. Time-loss injuries are injuries so serious that workers cannot go to work for a period of time. The AWCBC also reported 977 accepted workplace fatality claims. [3] As we’ll see below, these (alarming) statistics significantly under-report the true level of workplace injury in Canada.
What is a Workplace ?
The Occupational Health and Safety Act defines a workplace as ““workplace” means any land, premises, location or thing at, upon, in or near which a worker works”[4] which could include locations such as a factory, office, food truck, or a delivery vehicle.
Before turning our attention to the practicalities of how to reduce the risks of work-related injuries, it is important to spend some time thinking about what we mean by a workplace injury. While there is little dispute that the injuries that occurred at the Lakeland mill were workplace injuries, the work-relatedness of other injuries can be contested. It is also important to give some thought to what causes workplace injuries. Most explanations tend to focus on the immediate cause of the injury (e.g., the mill blew up). While the explosion did indeed cause the workers’ injuries, that is a superficial analysis of injury causation. Other, less obvious factors created the conditions that led to the explosion.
Despite the vast range of potential injuries, when most people think of a workplace injury, what comes to mind is an acute injury caused by an obvious physical cause. For example, a fall from a height may break a worker’s wrist. There are three main reasons why we tend to focus on acute physical injuries:
- Acute injuries are commonplace. In 2012, 92.5% of Canada’s 245,365 accepted time-loss injuries were acute physical injuries while only 7.5% were illnesses. [5]
- Acute injuries are easy to see and understand. It is obvious when a worker falls from a height, and we intuitively understand how the fall hurt the worker. Contrast this with a diagnosis of mesothelioma (a form of cancer caused by asbestos). Such a diagnosis is often known only to the worker, his family, and his doctor. And the 20-year lag between exposure and diagnosis obscures the work-relatedness of the injury. Indeed, the worker may not know that he was exposed to asbestos in the workplace.
- Acute injuries receive a disproportionate share of public attention. Most of us have limited personal experience with workplace injuries. Instead, what we know about them comes from media reports.
Occupational health and safety (OHS) laws often specify clear rules to protect workers from falls and other physical hazards. The rules around exposing workers to hazardous substances are much more ambiguous.
Similarly, workers’ compensation boards (WCBs)—which provide injured workers with wage replacement and other benefits—use the “arises-and-occurs” test to determine whether an injury was work-related (and thus whether the worker will receive compensation). The arises-and-occurs test requires workers to demonstrate that their injury arose from and occurred during the course of their employment. It is easier for workers with acute physical injuries to show that this is the case than it is for workers who have developed an occupational disease. This is because occupational diseases often take years to manifest themselves and the cause of the disease may be unclear. Not surprisingly, then, the majority of accepted workers’ compensation claims are for acute physical injuries.
- Hoekstra, G., & Carman, T. (2012, April 25). Two dead, 22 injured after massive explosion destroys Prince George sawmill. Vancouver Sun. http://www.vancouversun.com/dead+injured+after+massive+explosion+destroys+Prince+George+sawmill/6506952/story.html ↵
- You can read the full incident investigation report here: https://www.worksafebc.com/en/resources/health-safety/incident-investigation-report-summaries/lakeland-mills-incident-investigation-incident-investigation-report?lang=en ↵
- AWCBC. (2014). National work injury, disease and fatality statistics 2010–2012. Ottawa: Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada. ↵
- Occupational Health and Safety Act, R.S.O. (1990, c.O.1). Retrieved June 7, 2022, from https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90o01 ↵
- Ibid ↵
Any form of ill health—such as a physical or mental injury or illness—that arises due to a worker’s employment.
A government agency established by the legislature of a province or territory that operates that jurisdiction’s workers’ compensation system.
A test used by a workers’ compensation board to assess whether an injury claim is compensable. To meet this test, an injury must arise from and occur during the course of a worker’s employment.
