Some medical lab workers in the Fraser Valley are demanding a more thorough study of the incidence of cancer at Mission Memorial Hospital, particularly of the lab where they work.
This follows the release last week of a provincial study that failed to show a link between the lab and the health of the employees — despite an unusually high incidence of cancer among them.
The alarm was first raised a few years ago, and it led to the study by the Occupational Health and Safety Agency for Healthcare in B.C.
Researchers looked at 57 people who worked in the lab between 1970 and 2004. That grouping included 10 of the cancer cases — including seven with breast cancer.
The study confirmed an unusually high number of cancer cases among the workers at Mission Memorial — eight times the normal cancer rates in B.C. But the researchers also said they cannot link the cause to anything in the lab.
- LINK: Cancer cluster study by the Occupational Health and Safety Agency for Healthcare in B.C. (.pdf)
Mission Memorial lab worker Anne Marie MacFarlane, who has breast cancer, said the study didn’t go far enough, and said that researchers should have tested the fumes from the hospital incinerator, which burned waste for 14 years.
She is now dealing with a second cancer diagnosis, this one in her left breast.
The B.C. Nurses’ Union is also dissatisfied with the report. Spokeswoman Linda Pipe said the study should have looked at workers outside the lab as well, noting that there are 26 other Mission Memorial Hospital employees who also have cancer.
“I think it pertains to the worksite itself and I think we need questions answered so that people feel safe going to work,” said Pipe.
Dr. George Astrakianakis, who was one of the researchers, says the group did the best it could with the information it had.
“Did we have access to all the information that was available?,” Astrakianakis asked. “Yes we did. Was that enough? Clearly not, because we didn’t come to the conclusion that it was work related. We couldn’t support the idea even though it was clear that there is a cluster.”
His agency has now received funding for a look at the bigger picture. It will begin a study on cancer rates among all hospital workers across the province.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mission-hospital-cancer-study-panned-1.593642
Mission Hospital Cancer Cluster : From Cell Towers or BC Hydro Transformers below Lab?
“The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled in favour of three Mission Memorial Hospital workers
who claimed they developed breast cancer as a result of conditions in their laboratory workplace.”
https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/16042/index.do
https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/16042/1/document.do
The Hospital moved the transformers out of the basement area to the west side of the parking lot. Knowing that the transformers would normally be placed close to the outside wall where the power lines enter the building, and knowing that the outside wall was under the lab area, and knowing that most cancer was in the lab area, it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure the most likely cause. BC Cancer agency checked the place out and found “no particular cause”? Transformers were moved when the new building was being built on the hospital grounds south west of the hospital. The main power lines run along Hurd street, cross over Hurd to a pole, run underground to the transformers, which used to be in the building, on the same side as the labs.
B.C. healthcare workers win breast cancer claim against Fraser Health Authority
Three medical workers argued they developed breast cancer as a result of their jobs
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled in favour of three British Columbia medical workers who argued they developed breast cancer as a result of their jobs.
The cases involve Katrina Hammer, Patricia Schmidt and Anne MacFarlane, who worked in a lab at Mission Memorial Hospital.
The Workers’ Compensation Board originally denied their applications for compensation benefits on the grounds their cancers were not occupational diseases.
But rulings by the Workers Compensation Administrative Tribunal in 2010 and 2011 overturned those decisions and linked the cancers to the workplace.
The British Columbia Court of Appeal, however, said the tribunal’s decisions were unreasonable because there was no evidence that the women’s cancer was caused by their work environment and the tribunal ignored expert advice to the contrary.
Enough evidence, court rules
But on Friday the Supreme Court ruled for the women, saying while the expert evidence might not have met a standard of scientific proof, it was enough to link their cancers and the workplace together.
“While the record on which that decision was based did not include confirmatory expert evidence, the Tribunal nonetheless relied upon other evidence which, viewed reasonably, was capable of supporting its finding of a causal link between the workers’ breast cancers and workplace conditions.”
But the court was not unanimous in its decision, with Justice Suzanne Côté filing a dissenting opinion.
“In my view, the original decision of the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal is patently unreasonable. On my reading, there is no evidence — and certainly no positive evidence — capable of supporting a causal link between the workers’ employment and the development of their respective disease,” she wrote.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/health-care-workers-cancer-1.3651071
Ex-workers taking hospital to Supreme Court over alleged cancer cluster
April 26, 2016 By Jeff Cottrill
Cancer diagnoses date back to 1970: union lawyer
(Canadian OH&S News) — Three former employees of the Mission Memorial Hospital in Mission, B.C. are claiming that a laboratory in the workplace caused them to contract breast cancer — and their case is heading to the Supreme Court of Canada.
An investigation into the laboratory found that its rate of breast cancer was about eight times the rate for the overall British Columbia population, according to an April 20 press release from the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE). The ex-employees — Katrina Hammer, Anne MacFarlane and Patricia Schmidt — initially brought claims to WorkSafeBC, which denied benefits to them. An appeal to the B.C. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal (WCAT) ruled in the workers’ favour, but subsequent appeals have brought the case to the Supreme Court.
Several employees in the lab contracted breast cancer between 1970 and 2004, according to Tonie Beharrell, a staff lawyer for the Health Sciences Association of B.C. who represents Hammer and MacFarlane.
“About seven lab workers during that time had contracted breast cancer, and by the time some of the later cases happened, they were kind of looking around and going, ‘Wow. This seems to be quite a high rate,’” said Beharrell.
The investigation report, issued in 2005, indicated a cancer cluster in the lab. “What it didn’t indicate was whether or not there was any specific workplace causation,” explained Beharrell. “And it was hindered by the fact that this was from 1970 onward, and documents from the early years were simply not available, whether they hadn’t been kept or had never existed. So in trying to determine what the causation might be, there were complications.”
Among the possible explanations suggested in the report: possible carcinogens in the regents and solutions that the employees had handled; a hospital incinerator with venting problems; that the diagnosed women all had genetic predispositions to cancer or were part of a high-risk group; or simply a statistical anomaly.
“The women who were, in fact, diagnosed with cancer have a range of risk factors and non-risk factors, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any significant similarity between them in that regard,” said Beharrell.
Fraser Health Authority, the organization that runs the hospital, declined to comment to COHSN due to the matter being before the courts.
After WCAT called the evidence in the workers’ case “sufficient to conclude it was as likely as not that some workplace exposure was of causative significance,” as quoted in the NUPGE release, Fraser brought the case to a judicial review with the B.C. Supreme Court, which concluded that there was no evidence that the cancer cases were work-related. Then a five-judge panel with the B.C. Court of Appeal voted three to two that there was no occupational causation.
“It’s not the shortest process in the world,” said Beharrell, referring to the appeal system.
Beharrell and two other lawyers representing the workers made an appearance at the Supreme Court of Canada on Jan. 14, to challenge the B.C. Supreme Court and Court of Appeal decisions.
“The scientists and physicians were weighing the evidence against the standard required to reach ‘scientific conclusions’ based on ‘scientific evidence,’” read NUPGE’s statement in the Court, as quoted in the release. “That is a significantly higher test than that required in the administration of the workers’ compensation scheme for the adjudication of workplace disease claims.
“Requiring the appellants to meet that test would fundamentally undermine the purpose of that scheme.”
source : https://www.ohscanada.com/ex-workers-taking-hospital-supreme-court-alleged-cancer-cluster/
6 Breast, 1 Ovarian, 1 Thyroid, and 1 Lymphoma in cohort
https://www.cbc.ca/bc/news/060523_mmh-cancer.pdf
