A frequent complaint from industrial workers is that they suffer from the negative effects of hand, arm and foot vibrations in the workplace. In many cases, the damage is irreversible, and so researchers are pushing prevention as the key response.
It was a key topic of discussion Jan. 24 at the fifth annual CROSHCon online mining health and safety event.
CROSH is the Sudbury-based Centre for Research on Occupational Safety and Health. The agency is partially funded by the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development. CROSH is led by a director, Dr. Sandra Dorman, and supported by Laurentian University and an advisory board.
Friday's keynote speech was presented as part of the Leo Gerard Lecture Series on Workplace and Labour Studies. A video clip of Gerard explained that the reason for the lecture series is to give workers a voice in the key issues of health and safety in the workplace.
Gerard said the lecture series gives the opportunity to broaden the base of knowledge.
The keynote speaker, Dr. Aaron Thompson, is an occupational medicine specialist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Toronto.
Thompson also serves as the chief medical officer of the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).
As he outlined the concerns of hand arm vibration syndrome (HAVS), he said it was not a new condition, but the research continues in the hope of finding ways to better treat the condition that affects so many workers in Ontario and across Canada.
He said there were no firm statistics of the number of cases, but based on surveys from the United States and the United Kingdom, the estimate for Canada is between 70,000 and 150,000 cases, said Thompson.
"So you saw on that last slide, there could be about 150,000 prevalent cases of HAVS in Canada, but you're seeing only every year, perhaps four to 500 cases being reported to workers’ compensation boards. What does that tell me as an occupational physician? That tells me that this is a condition that is under-reported," said Thomspon
He said that forces researchers and the medical community to take action on two fronts.
"When you have a condition that's that prevalent, we need to really double down on efforts for prevention, right? We have to focus on that. And the other thing we have to do is we really have to double down our efforts on education to make people aware of this condition so that it is being detected early on," said Thompson.
He said clinicians need to recognize the problem among workers earlier so that remedial action can be taken. Thompson said workers will report things like having white fingers, cold fingers and loss of feeling in the extremities — fingers and toes.
That means neurological damage is occurring. The nerves are being lost, he said. Blood vessels are being damaged.
There is also musculoskeletal damage that can occur and this can affect things like a person's grip strength, meaning they will lose strength in their hands.
What has to be remembered, said Thompson, is that in many cases the nerve damage, the loss of feeling in fingers, toes and elbows is not reversible. He said prevention is essential.
"So I know so many of you are specialists in health and safety prevention, and really, you know, this will speak to you from a hierarchy of control standpoint. So the best thing is, you know, elimination, of course, or substitution," said Thompson, adding that more companies are finding ways to stop using vibrating tools or substitute low-vibration tools.
"Let's use the mining industry, where the person isn't necessarily right on the jackleg or stoper, but controlling it from a distance," said Thompson. He said those activities can be changed so that the work is done by machines in a lower vibration setting.
"And actually, the introduction of the European standard has really driven companies to focus more on low-vibration tools."
He said it would be important for industries to have a policy to purchase tools that are actually designed to operate at low vibration.
Thompson also recommended that workers take steps to ensure their fingers and toes stay warm in the workplace to offset the effects of vibration. He said even anti-vibration work gloves are helpful.
"These things sound kind of very simple and straightforward, but they're super important to reduce the level of disability in people with the condition. Smoking cessation kind of goes without saying," said Thompson.
Len Gillis covers health care and mining for Sudbury.com.
