Workers’ Fight for Justice: A Retrospective Exposure Profile Study of the GE Factory in Peterborough, Ontario

Abstract

Occupational disease recognition is often hampered by lack of historical exposure data. This paper describes research documenting major chemical exposures of Canadian General Electric workers in a plant in Peterborough between 1945 and 2000. Workers’ experiences with diseases over forty years, and their frustration with the continual denial that these were work-related, drove this study. Researchers used qualitative methods, participatory action research, hazard mapping, and risk assessment. A report that incorporates this study’s findings documents extremely toxic exposures that placed Canadian General Electric workers at a disproportionate risk of occupational diseases. Since the report’s release, the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board reconsidered 233 previously denied claims in the light of “new evidence” and overturned one half of those it reviewed. The retrospective exposure profile methods used in this study may serve as a useful model for workers and their organization when plants close.