Asbestos to be removed from museum
GNWT says precautions are being taken so workers are not exposed to the carcinogen
John McFadden
Northern News Services
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The territorial government is going to oversee another asbestos removal project at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre and is confident it will go better than the last time it had to remove the toxic material from the museum.
In June of last year, the GNWT was fined $100,000 for violating its own occupational health and safety regulations over possible asbestos exposure during work at the centre. Judge Robert Gorin convicted the government for failing to take the proper steps to ensure workers were not exposed to cancer-causing asbestos during renovation work in the boiler room. The government faced 11 charges in total laid by the Workers' Safety and Compensation Commission.
According to Olin Lovely, assistant deputy minister of corporate services for the Department of Education Culture and Employment, which oversees the museum, the last project dealt with damage done during a fire in the kitchen area of the museum - and added this work in the boiler room and the basement is not related to the fire.
"There is a basement area in the museum and there is some piping with asbestos covering that we are looking at removing and replacing," Lovely said. "It's a second project altogether."
Lovely said they are looking for a specialized hazardous materials (HAZMAT) contractor and will be retaining a hazmat consultant who will be monitoring the work as it progresses.
"Once we get the remediation plan from the contractor, the Workers Safety and Compensation (WSCC) will be involved in approving that as well," Lovely said.
He said he was not sure if any Yellowknife companies have the capability to do the asbestos removal work. Lovely said unlike the previous project, this time they know for sure there is asbestos in the area where the work is to be done, and workers will be prepared to work with it.
During the previous project, asbestos was detected while drying and clean-up work was being done on the water damage that resulted from the fire. At that time, it was also determined there was asbestos in some of the piping in the affected area. Asbestos sampling was conducted in some areas but not in others. That became relevant when employees of Yellowknife-based Central Mechanical Systems began work to remove the old chimney.
Workers used grinders to remove parts of the chimney and that's when the asbestos containing material was released into the boiler room. The employees involved were not wearing protective clothing or using safety equipment associated with asbestos removal. The workers were wearing dust masks but not full respirators as they should have been.
A meeting was then held in the boiler room with the project manager and several other officials involved in the work. At that meeting, a manager with Commercial NDS Limited was asked to clean up the boiler room but he refused until WSCC was notified of the incident. The manager then asked for the meeting to move outside the boiler room. The government admitted the employee overseeing the project had no experience in asbestos removal training nor training on how to do it properly. In its report, WSCC stated any workers inside the boiler room during and after the chimney work were probably exposed to hazardous levels of asbestos.
The risks cannot be evaluated for up to 40 years because that is how long it takes in some cases before the effects of asbestos exposure can be detected, the report concluded.
Asbestos, an insulation material well-known for its carcinogenic effects, is reportedly the largest on-the-job killer in Canada, accounting for 368 deaths in 2013 alone.
Lovely said the work should begin sometime this month and last until September and should not impact the public areas of the museum.
