Exposure to asbestos is the No. 1 cause of workplace-related deaths for Quebec workers and amounts to about 60 per cent of all such fatalities this year, according to statistics gathered by Quebec’s workers compensation board. These statistics are based on death certificates that relate the cause of death directly to workplace exposure, which is usually the current workplace for the victim. That factor is important because the asbestos exposure that causes lethal asbestos diseases often occurs decades before the disease makes an appearance.
The data provided by the body, known as the CSST, for the first eights months of 2009 show 104 Quebec workers died of an occupational disease. Of those workers, 61 died from an asbestos-related ailment. During the same period last year, 58 Quebec workers died of exposure to asbestos, compared with 64 people who died of an occupational disease related to the fibrous material for the same period in 2007.
Some of the medical officials in Quebec are not taking this statistic lightly. “These are pernicious and chronic diseases that will keep on killing workers for decades,” said Fernand Turcotte, an emeritus professor of public health at Université Laval. The latent period between asbestos exposure and the development of asbestos cancer is between twenty and forty years – and sometimes longer.
Quebec is home to Canada’s only remaining asbestos mine. The mine’s product is mostly exported to developing countries – in large part because the industrialized nations have banned most asbestos products. The workplace exposure to toxins in some of the developing countries is often either legal or ignored by authorities.
Labor officials believe the new figures are just the tip of the iceberg because not all cases are registered with compensation boards. Larry Stoffman, an occupational health-and-safety consultant who works with the Canadian Labor Congress, suggested - based on recent studies - there are many more cases of mesothelioma across Canada than what has been documented. “About 60 per cent of the cases aren’t registered. That’s a pretty big number,” he said. “And that’s only for mesothelioma, it doesn’t factor in asbestos lung cancers.”
