May 14, 2010

FOCUS | General & Trade Contracting

Canadian Standards Association aims to reduce confined-space danger

IAN HARVEY

correspondent

In trauma medicine, rescuers and doctors talk about the “golden hour,” the 60 minutes between event and treatment that determines the outcome. In the event of a confined space workplace accident, that time is measured in 360 seconds.

About six minutes is what you have in some cases,” says Division Chief Doug Silver of Toronto Fire Services, adding that’s why its important to have training, equipment and protocols establisaed and on hand before anybody enters a confined space since coworkers will be front-line rescuers.

Between smoke, fire, toxic fumes or just the absence of oxygen, a worker caught in a confined space can die long before rescuers can reach them.

It was that scenario that led to Bell Canada being fined $280,000 in the deaths of two men in 2007.It was the largest fine for a federally regulated company for Canada Labour Code violations.

A 33-year-old and 52-year-old man died in an Oakville underground vault while installing fibre-optic cables for Bell. They were about 15 feet below ground when they were overcome by toxic fumes. By the time firefighters pulled them out, they were dead.

No industry faces the challenge of confined workspaces so much as the construction sector.

While Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act sets the provincial standard, the Canadian Standards Association has now launched a set of national guidelines.

Like the OHSA, CSA standard Z1006 defines a confined workspace and what all stakeholders must do to ensure workers in those spaces are protected.

The announcement of the new standard was more poignant given recent ceremonies to honour the five “sandhogs” who perished after a fire broke out in a tunnel they were digging at Hoggs Hollow 50 years ago.

“Things have really come a long way since then,” says Construction safety expert Dan Padden, principal of the consulting firm Construction Safety Solutions.

“There are some grey areas people still need to work through with the current OHSA, but it more teething troubles than anything in terms of definitions of a confined workspace. But the legislation is good.”

Statistics on the subject are difficult to track, but British Columbia alone recorded 18 deaths in confined spaces between 1989 and 2004; including five where rescuers came to the aid of initial victims.

The CSA defines a confined space as a workspace that is fully or partially enclosed, is not designed or intended for continuous human occupancy and has limited or restricted access or exiting or internal configuration that can complicate provisions of first aid, evacuation, rescue or other emergency-response services.

Every confined space is considered to be hazardous unless deemed not to be by a competent person through a hazard identification and risk assessment.

The standard, mirroring legislation in effect in some jurisdictions across Canada, requires employers to ensure no one works alone in a confined space, that crews outside and inside the space are trained in rescue protocol and related equipment and that the equipment required — including breathing gear and lifting harnesses — be in working condition and on hand.

The CSA standard is important, says Jim Armstrong, of Safe Workplace Promotion Services Ontario, because not all jurisdictions have gone as far as Ontario and the CSA now enshrines best practices.

“This standard will save lives,” says Armstrong.

“Confined workspaces are not restricted to just one industry and this will raise awareness about what a confined workspace is.”

The bigger issue, says Silver and why it’s an issue near and dear to Toronto Fire Services, is that 60 per cent of the deaths from a confined workspace accident involve the rescuers.

“They would have to get into these spaces and sometimes they take off their self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA),” he says.

“They then have one hand on the tank and one on the ladder and they slip, losing the tank which rips off their face mask and they often fall. Now they’re down, too.”

The standard procedure for TFS now is to deploy respirators fed by air hoses snaked in from the outside with a small backup air bottle in the event a line gets crimped or broken.

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