What do rec centres and care homes have in common? They've been using toxic cleaners, but now workers and unions are cleaning up the cleaners.
by Sean Griffin
Nancy Jir, a member of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union-CAW (Canadian Auto Workers) who works at Canadian Fishing Company in Vancouver, doesn't usually talk much at meetings. But when she stepped forward at a union environment workshop last year to explain how the commercial cleaning materials she was using at the plant were giving her rashes and chronic eye irritation, she had no idea of the campaign it would spark.
That workshop inspired UFAWU-CAW activist Mae Burrows, the executive director of the Labour Environmental Alliance Society (LEAS), to get going on a unique project that will see workers, their unions and environmentalists working together for change – in the work place and the ecosystem. The project is called Cleaners, Toxins and the Ecosystem, and it's a key example of the kind of work that this labour-environmental organization is doing.
With backing from the UFAWU-CAW, the Hospital Employees Union and CAW Local 3000, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and the UFAWU-CAW, LEAS has begun working with health and safety committee members in fish and food-processing plants as well as janitorial services, a recreational complex and a health care facility, to determine what cleaning products may contain toxins and carcinogens and to replace them with safer, more environmentally-friendly alternatives. The CAW and the BC Federation of Labour, as well as several environmental funders, have provided financial support for the project.
The goal of the campaign is to "green" jobs by eliminating toxins in common cleaning products used in processing plants and other work sites. But it's also aimed at reducing pollution in community watersheds and the Strait of Georgia, since many of the toxic cleaners currently being used discharge into local waters.
For plant workers and janitors, it's an issue about their right to know what substances they're being exposed to in the work place. Occupational health and safety regulations state that Material Safety Data Sheets, which provide handling information on hazardous materials, are supposed to be provided. But in many cases, suppliers don't provide new ones and the sheets quickly become out of date. Often employees haven't been given the training to know how to use them.
"This project is about making people aware of the toxins and carcinogens in their work environment, demonstrating the impact on their health and the environment – and then working with health and safety committees to eliminate those toxins," says Burrows.
The project is one of a number of campaigns initiated by LEAS, all based on the idea that sustainability, the right to a healthy and safe work environment and a socially just society can be complementary goals for trade unionists and environmentalists. That same idea is what prompted a number of trade unionists and leading environmentalists to come together to form LEAS three years ago.
A major inspiration for LEAS was CAW's Prevent Cancer Campaign, which demonstrated the commitment of a major trade union to confront an environmental issue.
And cancer certainly is an issue in the cleaners project. In examining the data sheets for the cleaning materials currently in use at Buchanan Lodge, a long-term care facility in New Westminster, LEAS researchers found two carcinogens.
One was Trisodium nitrilotriacetate, which was found in both a carpet stain remover called Enz-All and a dishwasher detergent called Trump. The chemical is listed as Class 2B (possible human carcinogen) under the ranking system developed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Another product, known as Crew Klean and Shine, used by janitorial services in many facilities, contains Cocamide diethanolamine, which has been shown to cause tumours in mice.
Those chemicals are in addition to more than a dozen hazardous ingredients found in the cleaning materials used on the various sites involved in the project. Among them are ethoxylated nonylphenols , endocrine disrupters that continue to wreak damage in the receiving environment after they've been used in the work place. They're frequently found in laundry detergents used in commercial laundries.
Often finding out what's in the cleaners is a real education for workers. Even where the data sheets have been made available, the manufacturing companies don't provide a lot of information about the hazardous materials or their effects.
"I had no idea what was in these products," says Linda Gagnon, a member of the joint CAW-employer health and safety committee at 8-Rinks, a huge recreational complex in Burnaby that is participating in the project. "This has been a real eye-opener for all of us."
The management at the 8-Rinks facility has already made some changes in cleaning products and expects to be making more, based on the committee's work and recommendations.
The project got similar action at Buchanan Lodge where the environment manager immediately contacted his supplier to drop the carcinogenic products after receiving the committee's initial report. He'll also be working with the health and safety activists to review all the cleaning materials used and make further substitutions where necessary.
Health and safety committee member Elizabeth Smith recalled an incident in the past where carpets had been saturated with the carcinogenic stain remover "and residents started getting sick.
"But even then, we didn't know what was in it," she says.
LEAS researchers are using a number of benchmarks in assessing the cleaning materials, including checking hazardous ingredients against Scorecard, the ranking system for environmental and occupational health hazards developed by Environmental Defense and the Canadian site, www.pollutionwatch.org. They're also looking at research done by the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the city of Windsor and data bases developed by health and safety departments in several US cities and states. One particularly useful tool in identifying cleaning product toxins is a project that was initiated in California by state and federal environmental agencies called Janitorial Products Pollution Prevention Program, on the Internet at www.westp2net.org/Janitorial/jp4.htm
Providing much of the expertise for the project is an advisory committee that includes health and safety expert Larry Stoffman, a member of both the BC Federation of Labour and Canadian Labour Congress occupational health and safety committees, as well as Jay Ritchlin from Reach for Unbleached!.
Although the project has only been under way for a couple of months, it has already demonstrated a tremendous potential. By bringing the groups together, LEAS has been able to involve workers in an environmental initiative that could see dozens of toxic cleaning products dropped from order lists and the toxic ingredients eliminated from the waste stream.
"Since this project was launched, it has grown more than we imagined, with more sites wanting to take part," said Burrows. "We see it as a template that can be used in dozens of sites, where workers and unions can really make a difference not only in making their work places safer but in reducing environmental toxins."