Horizon accused of asbestos infractions
WorkSafeNB charges allege health authority failed to follow workplace-safety guidelines on managing risk to employees at Chalmers hospital for five years
The province’s anglophone health authority is facing workplace safety charges alleging it put workers at risk of exposure to asbestos at Fredericton’s hospital for five years.
WorkSafeNB laid four charges in Fredericton provincial court Aug. 28 against Regional Health Authority B, better known as the Horizon Health Network, all alleging violations of the provincial Occupational Health and Safety Act’s provisions governing asbestos exposure.
The four counts allege as follows:
that Horizon failed to adopt the code of practice entitled "A Code of Practice for Working with Materials Containing Asbestos in New Brunswick;”
that it failed to acquaint an employee with the hazard inherent in handling asbestos;
that if failed to provide the information needed to ensure health and safety by failing to inform workers of the presence of asbestos in a workplace;
and that it didn’t take reasonable precautions to protect employees’ health and safety by failing to identify the presence of asbestos in the workplace.
The charges allege infractions over a period of almost five years - from Nov. 7, 2017, to June 30, 2022.
While the information filed with the court doesn’t refer to the specific facility at which the violations are alleged to have occurred, Laragh Dooley, WorkSafeNB’s executive director of corporate communications, told the Fredericton Independent the charges stem from conditions at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital.
“Patients, visitors and health-care workers need not worry as it was contained in an area inaccessible to the general public and most employees,” she wrote in an email.
“The investigation uncovered that potential exposure to asbestos occurred with employees working in the interstitial space (area between floors).”
Dooley said the maximum penalty for such a violation under the Occupational Health and Safety Act is a fine of $250,000, adding that the biggest such fine levied to date in New Brunswick was $200,000.
The Fredericton Independent inquired with Horizon if it had retained legal counsel, how it planned to plead to the charges, if any employees had fallen ill due to the alleged asbestos exposure, and if steps had been taken to remove the material or mitigate the risk.
“We’ll be declining comment where this is now before the courts,” Horizon spokesperson Kris McDavid wrote in an email Monday.
The health authority is slated to make its first appearance on the charges in Fredericton provincial court Sept. 18.
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.