space Press Releases, News Stories

Charlie Angus, HighGrader Magazine

• Ontario's Ministry of Environment is looking at giving okay to massive expansion as questions about plant conditions arise.  
• Canadian workers sent to work at U.S.  Air force base.
• One Canadian was injured at PCB plant in New York.

New York-based Trans Cycle Industries (TCI) are waiting to hear from Ontario's Ministry ofEnvironment about expanding its PCB operation in Kirkland Lake, Ontario.  The expansion plans come just a year after TCI touched off an international incident by trying to ship PCB-contaminated metals from a U.S.  naval base in Japan to its newly-opened Kirkland Lake plant (see Paying the PCB Piper, HighGrader March 2001).

When word leaked out that TCI didn't have a license to accept international imports, the shipment was frozen out before it hit the docks in Vancouver.  The resulting furor brought TCI under the guns of international environmental groups in Japan, Seattle, B.C.  and Ontario.

Now TCI is looking to move into the soil decontamination business.  TCI staff have been very proactive in meeting with local environmental groups and other potential opponents of the expansion.  The company is looking to avoid a repeat of last year's publicity debacle.

The selling job has fallen on the shoulders of plant manager Dan MacCormick.  A straight-forward talker, MacCormick has worked hard to reach out to TCI's critics.  But with the expansion plans now being weighed by the MOE, disturbing allegations have arisen about health and safety issues inside the Kirkland Lake plant.

System Failures

It's called "puking" - when a system failure in the PCB boil and clean system causes concentrated levels of PCBs, dioxins, trichlorobenzine and perchloroetheylene (known as Perc) to "puke" back into the tanks where contaminated metals have been cleaned.

Todd Carriere, former production supervisor with TCI, says puking was a regular occurrence in the TCI operation.  When the puke happened in the main degreaser unit, the only way to clean out the mess was to get into the toxic mixture of solvents and PCBs with a baling bucket.

"We had to climb into the degreaser to bale out the overflow.  It would be made up of a mixture of Perc, PCBs and trichlorobenzines.  This was the concentrated sediment that was leftover from the cleaning process.  It was the real cream of the cream."

The Perc and trichlorobenzines were powerful solvents which washed the PCBs and dioxins off the metals.  When the system was running well, the refuse from the cleaning process would be pumped into a series of stills where the Perc was boiled off and recycled for another round of cleaning.  The remaining sludge of concentrated PCBs and dioxins would then be gathered into barrels for destruction.

Carriere, a former contract miner in the area's gold operations, wasn't a stranger to hard and sometimes dangerous work.  He took the nature of these chemicals as a matter of course.  "One time I was in there (baling out the degreaser) with a company supervisor and he turned to me and said, 'Are your balls burning?' I replied, 'Sure.  That's the nature of the job.'"

Carriere may have been more right than he realized when he accepted a burning scrotum as part of the "nature of the job." A recent study of the health effects of trichlorobenzines on Chinese workers (Health Effects of Phenoxy Herbicides and Contaminants, April 1999) found that workers absorbed trichlorobenzines through their scrotums and eyes.  The chemical is known to cause liver problems and organ failure.  

An even greater risk, however, is posed by perchloroetheylene.  The chemical, better known for its use in dry cleaning businesses (it's the slightly nauseating smell you notice in any dry cleaning operation), is associated with a whole array of health problems.  

"Perc is now on a growing list of Legislative Public Enemy Number One lists," writes Stuart Lieberman in the July 22, 1999 issue of Realty Times.  Lieberman, a former Deputy Attorney General with the state of New Jersey, says the concern over Perc is so great that some health officials advise people to leave their dry cleaned clothes outside until the smell ofthe Perc has evaporated.

So what was its effect on TCI employees? Rob Buford, former chief engineer at the TCI operation, says vapours caused by Perc andtrichlorobenzine were a regular problem.  "The solvent odour filled the plant on a daily basis.  When you breathe in trichlorobenzine it causes you to get lightheaded.  I got 'buzzed' a number of times.  It makes you feel nauseated.It's pretty bad stuff."

Marco Labreque, another former employee, says he knows of one worker who was overcomeby the vapours and had to be taken outside to recover.  Dan MacCormick maintains that the air is regularly monitored."We run a totally closed system.  Our sampling has shown that there are insignificant levels of Perc and PCB in the air."

Todd Carriere alleges, however, that when solvent levels were particularly high, the doors would have to be opened to lower the levels.

Team Player Todd Carriere believes that it was exposure to these chemicals that have caused a number of his health problems including high PCB levels in the blood and liver problems.  According to Carriere, "We got a blood test done and the levels were high.  The company questioned the results and said that lab hadn't done it properly.  So they sent the tests out to another lab and the results came back rosy - no abnormalities, no detection."

Marco Labreque believes he also had high PCB blood levels.  "I got a blood test back that said I had levels as high as 133 ppb.  And yet I was sent back to work the very next day.  I was then given another blood test that was sent to another place and suddenly the levels dropped to almost nothing.  I don't know how that can be because I was doing the same job as before."

Dan MacCormick, however, contests the term "high" levels.  "We're talking about 'non-detect' levels.  This is not a health risk.  We do our own medical monitoring.  We don't have to do it but we do it as protection for our employees andourselves."

And what about the choice for lab testing?  MacCormick maintains that the main blood tests are done right in Kirkland Lake.  "We did send it (samples) to one lab," he says, "but found they couldn't do it."

MacCormick says he hasn't heard of any liver problems amongst his employees.  Another former worker, who did not want to be identified, also expressed concern to HighGrader about high PCB blood levels and liver problems.

Rob Buford says that, although he wasn't exposed to the same levels of chemicals as some of the other workers, he had serious concerns about the effects of the chemicals in the plant.  But he says his decision to quit was based on the over all corporate atmosphere.  "There was a lot of tension in the place.  I felt like there was a lot of bullying going on.  I just didn't feel people were treated with enough respect."

On November 14, 2000 Todd Carriere showed up for work and within an hour had been struck by a heart attack.  At age 38 Carriere says he had been in excellent physical shape and hadno history of heart problems.  Carriere returned to work a month later.  Within a day, however, he suffered another attack -once again, while on the job.

Were the solvents particularly bad that day?  "The solvents were bad every day," Carriere replies.
Twenty days after this second heart attack, Carriere was called back to work but was let go a short time later.  "They said I wasn't a team player," he says.  Carriere has hired a lawyer and has taken his case to the Human Rights Commission.

Working Stateside

If, at the time of his firing, Carriere was no longer a "team player" he certainly appeared to be one in the period when TCI was looking for Canadian workers to head down to its plants in Alabama and New York.
Carriere was involved in four trips to the States; two trips to TCI's New York facility, one three week trip to the Alabama plant and one stint at the United States Air Force base in Dayton,Ohio.

Carriere's work at the U.S.  air force facility was as part of a two man team charged with tearing apart a PCB-contaminated Mach 20 wind tunnel.  Michael Zarin, lawyer for TCI in Westchester, New York, says the purpose of these trips was for training.  

"The whole idea of bringing workers to New York was seen as a positive.  We wanted them to have the benefit of seeing the New York operation, which has 20 years of experience and regulatory scrutiny, so that the Kirkland Lake plant would have the same high level of standards as our New York operation."

Carriere, however, believes the Canadians were sent to augment the American work crews.
"We basically did the same work we did up here."  He also says the Canadians weren't impressed by the status of the American mother operations.  "It was really dirty.  We wouldn't use any of the washrooms.  You could smell the plant inAlabama and New York before you ever reached them."

Marco Labreque was involved in one trip to the New York operation.  As the "pan" man at the Kirkland plant, it was Labreque's job to rip apart the massive transformers and extract the contaminated guts - copper coils along with thousands of L-shaped metal sheets (known as laminates) that were stuck together with PCB oil.  Labreque's hard hat proclaimed, in mining slang, his position as a top production worker -"Number One Highballer."

Says Labreque, "They (TCI) pushed us hard.  They wanted lots of metal.  I was a money maker for them."
He went at the transformers, some of which were 20 tonnes in weight, with a sawzall - the kind you'd buy in any hardware store.

"I had to hang on to the side of the transformer, which could be ten feet tall, holding it and cutting with the sawzall.  We used overhead cranes and a fork lift to hold it while we were cutting.  Then I had to get in among all the guts and clean it out.  We did all kinds of crazy stuff there."

Labreque says he was doing this kind of work when he was injured on the job at the New York facility. "I got a piece of PCB-contaminated steel stuck in my leg and there was blood everywhere.  When I got to the hospital the nurse asked me how I was paying for this, I said that since I got injured at work, it would be paid by compensation."

Labreque maintains that the company was less than pleased by having the injury noted as awork-related accident.  Michael Zarin says he is unaware of an incident where a Canadian worker was injured at the New York facility.  Dan MacCormick says that a full report was made about the injury both in Canada and in New York state.  Labreque, however, alleges that when he returned to the American plant with a doctor's note advising three days of recuperation, a company official ripped up the note.

"They said they hadn't brought me down here to sit in a hotel room.  They said it was 'fucking bullshit.' I went back to work in my jeans, with a paper suit that ripped easily and gardening gloves.  I had fresh stitches and PCB oil all over me.  We weren't even given respirators to use."

On May 30, 2001, the Ministry of Labour carried out an inspection of the Kirkland Lake operation which resulted in a stop work order being issued.  Marc Cousineau, the Ministryof Labour inspector who issued the shutdown notices, refused to discuss the issue with HighGrader.  He suggested we look the matter up under Freedom of Information.

FOE requests can take months to process.  To save our readers the aggravation of having to wait we'll cut to the chase: Cousineau issued a stop work order over the the fact that trichlorobenzine levels in the baghouse (the plant air cleaning system) were as high as 41.5 ppm even though the allowable CEV (ceiling exposure value) is set at 5 ppm.

Dan MacCormick admits that the stop work orders were issued and says that TCI is working with the Ministry to rectify the problem.  "I want to stress that we have taken action every time there is a potential problem.  Anytime we have been concerned, the Ministry of Labour has come in."

The Ministry of Labour visit followed up a previous inspection on December 19, 2000.  The visit occurred on the same day that Todd Carriere was taken out of the plant after suffering a heart attack.

Todd Carriere remembers the situation that morning.  "The vapour fumes were bad because they'd been built up overnight.  It was usually bad until we could get the doors open and get some fresh air in.  I had both my heart attacks shortly after starting work."

Cousineau's inspection found that TCI's air sampling, which was carried out hourly, wasn't sufficient for giving accurate levels of the trichlorobenzine levels.  He pointed out in his report that "The tests had been conducted over a period of almost an hour; however this chemical agent has a CEV which is an almost instantaneous reading, or at the most, a 15 minute sampling period...tests conducted by TCI in this manner showed that concentrations exceeded the CEV by up to 8 times."

As well, Cousineau noted that the filters in the plant did not remove the solvent vapour in the air.  Orders were issued stopping the use of the baghouse until it could be assured that the CEV levels would not be exceeded.

Six months later, Cousineau's follow-up visit found that the vapour levels were still a problem.  "The baghouse used to removed particulates from the granulation operation does not have the ability to remove vapours.  These vapours are returned to the workplace exceeding the CEV..."

Once again, the levels were up to eight times higher than the allowable CEV.  Todd Carriere says he had no idea the Ministry of Labour were visiting the plant on the day he suffered a heart attack.

"I'm shocked to learn this.  I worked day after day with these chemicals because I didn't know what I was dealing with.  I know now."