Prevent Climate Change Impacts on Workplace Health and Safety with Dr. Sarah Henderson

Ashley: Hello and welcome to Health and Safety to Go, a CCOHS podcast. From heat domes to polar vortexes to atmospheric rivers, extreme weather events driven by climate change are happening across Canada with increasing frequency. It makes sense, then, that we're starting to see impacts from climate change in Canadian workplaces where it needs to be considered as part of emergency planning, health and safety programs and policies, and worker mental health. Today's guest has been studying the health effects of climate change for decades. Dr. Sarah Henderson currently oversees a broad program of applied research surveillance, knowledge translation and training to support evidence-based public health policy and practice in British Columbia and across Canada. She's the Scientific Director of Environmental Health Services at the BC Centre for Disease Control and the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health as well as a professor partner in the University of British Columbia School of Population and Public Health. Sarah, thanks for joining us today.

Sarah: Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Ashley: It's hard to argue with the data that weather events driven by climate change are increasing in frequency and severity. What does this mean for the health and safety of Canadian workplaces?

Sarah: I think you nailed the start to this question in your intro, which is really about planning. We know that weather is changing because the climate is changing and that we're seeing much more variability in weather patterns than we have seen previously. We also know from the climate models that we have and the precedent over the past few years, what that weather variability is going to look like, We've got more wildfire. We've got more extreme heat. We've got more rainfall, more snowfall, more drought, more of everything. And because we have that information, both from the climate models and our own experience, we can use it to do some pre-planning about how to manage these events when they occur, no matter what type of workplace we're talking about or, you know, what type of society we're talking about. And the key thing when it comes to planning is, like, we know that when individuals and agencies and communities and municipalities have plans to manage these unforeseen but foreseeable circumstances, they do better. The mental health outcomes are better. The physical health outcomes are better. The structural outcomes are better, so, there's all kinds of evidence to suggest that the planning process is key to resiliency when we're talking about these climatic changes.

Ashley: Well, that makes sense. Tell us a little bit about how your research and surveillance work is shaping environmental and public health policy.

Sarah: Yeah, so my research and surveillance is focused not on all of climate change entirely. My areas of expertise are wildfires and wildfire smoke and extreme heat events. But my work also touches on extreme cold weather, flooding, landslides, all of these types of things we've been seeing more of, but I’ll speak specifically about wildfires and extreme heat. So, we've been studying the health effects of wildfire smoke in BC and across Canada for almost 20 years now. We know that when it is smoky outside there are increases in a wide range of health outcomes when the smoke is happening. We increasingly know that there's longer lasting health effects from these exposures. So, you know, folks who have conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease might experience reductions in their lung function during a big wildfire smoke event and then never recover their lung function again afterwards. You know, those events just knock them down. We have seen that populations that are exposed to wildfire smoke are at higher risk of developing dementia, even higher than we would expect from air pollution from other sources, like traffic and industry. And I think all of this work is starting to feed into kind of a whole of society preparedness approach for wildfire smoke events. And, you know, looking at what individuals can do for themselves, and their homes, and their families, looking at what workplaces can do to help protect their workers, be they working indoors or outdoors, and then looking at what our much larger policy levers can do with respect to protecting the indoor environment from smoke exposures. And, you know that, at that point, we're talking about the National Building Code of Canada. How do we build buildings to make sure they can exclude smoke when we have these conditions? So, it's been really fascinating to look back over the past 20 years and see this momentum build. These changes don't happen quickly, but they do happen. When you have the necessary data and evidence in place to drive them forward.

Ashley: Thinking a little bit about building codes and, you know what the implications are for the workplace, what kind of steps should employers be taking to build a more climate-resilient workplace?

Sarah: So, for folks who are working indoors, the best advice I can give you is understand your building. Buildings are like people. They have personalities, they are not uniform across structures. Every building behaves differently, depending on its envelope, depending on its design, depending on its HVAC system. You kind of have to have an intimate relationship with your building to know how you can exclude smoke when it's smoky outside, how you can keep it cool when it's hot outside. And that comes down to really kind of having a building management committee I would say. And this is what we've recommended in the recently published ASHRAE guidelines for wildfire smoke. You need a group of people who know the building, and who have the plan for the building when these environmental stressors occur. And it's not exciting work necessarily, unless you're pretty geeky, but it is really helpful work for building that kind of resiliency to these weather events that happen. For folks who are working outdoors, obviously, it gets more complicated because their exposures are very different. And for most folks who are working outdoors, they tend to have more physically active jobs as well. So, they may be more exposed because they're outdoors, and they may be more exposed because of the demands of the work that they're doing. And really thinking through who your outdoor workers are, and what their exposures may be, and the plans for mitigating those exposures, if and when they occur, is going to be a necessary step for keeping those workers safe.

Ashley: Absolutely. What are things that that workers can be doing to advocate for their own safety and for that of their co-workers?

Sarah: So, I think when we're talking about outdoor workers, there can be a disconnect between management and the actual lived experience in the field. And I would encourage those outdoor workers to be documenting what's happening to them out there and to be thinking through for themselves the ways that they may be able to mitigate those exposures and then to be working, you know, with their health and safety teams to try to get that information to management. And I think, you know, I teach in an occupational and environmental health program. We train occupational hygienists and, you know, there is a workforce that is meant to help protect people from the risks that are associated with work. And they should really be kind of the nexus point of these conversations. They are taught to advocate for workers during their education. They are taught to work with management to protect workers, so really engage them in the conversations.

Ashley: That makes sense. And yeah, obviously, we don't want to be putting the onus on the workers.

Sarah: Exactly. 

Ashley: It's the teams, it's the employers, it's the people that are put in place to advocate for them.

Sarah: Absolutely, but I would reiterate that I think the role the workers can really play is elevating their lived experience to occupational health and safety so that they can play that advocacy role with management.

Ashley: Now, Sarah you mentioned being a fan of something called a tabletop exercise. Tell us a little bit about what that is and what it looks like.

Sarah: I work in the public health sector and I have a leadership role with respect to Preparing BC for extreme heat events like the deadly 2021 event. We never want to see outcomes like that in our province in future again. And one of the things we do every year to prepare for the summer ahead is a tabletop exercise. And the value of this exercise is impossible to overstate. The idea of getting everyone together to run through the plan, what's going to happen, identify the pinch points, identify the places where there's not enough information, identify the places where the plan actually maybe doesn't even make sense. You know, we set aside half a day to do that. Sometimes I've been part of tabletop exercises that are more deep and they’re a couple of days long. It's very hard to make the time to co-ordinate those efforts but the payoff is huge. So, thinking about ways to build tabletops into the planning process on a regular basis to ensure that the plan is working as well as possible before you actually need it. It’s pretending that the thing is happening.

Ashley: What’s our battle plan, so to speak?

Sarah: Exactly, our tabletop exercise last year for extreme heat in BC was an event of the same, or similar magnitude, to the one in 2021, and a widespread power outage at the same time. So, you know, thinking through, how are we going to manage something like this together? So that, in future, when we see an extreme heat event and a widespread power outage, we all have that memory of the exercise, we have the documentation from the exercise and the plan has been stress tested a little bit before it's needed.

Ashley: Got it. That's helpful. Thank you. Thank you very much for being our guest today. For more information on climate impacts on the workplace and many other workplace topics, visit our website ccohs.ca. Thanks for listening.