What about the workers? WSCC has never awarded a time-lost claim related to arsenic at Giant Mine

During most of the time Giant Mine was operating, workers were exposed to extremely toxic arsenic trioxide with little or no protection.

Yet the Workers Safety and Compensation Commission has never paid out a time-lost claim for illness related to arsenic exposure, although it has awarded two pensions related to it.

How is it that ongoing exposure to such carcinogenic chemical can cause no work-related illness?

"I don't know the answer to that," said DaveGrundy, president of the commission. "Over the years the safety acts have improved immensely. That keeps the workers from this point forward safer, they're more aware of their rights.

"Back in the day, I don't think there was a push for safety, I think it was just 'get the job done.'"

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Former Giant Mine worker Steve Peterson has another theory, whichhas more to do with the level of proof the commission requires to link complex illnesses to the workplace.

Peterson was 34 years old when he got a job at the minein 1985. He biked to work in summer and skied there in winter. He had no health problems.

He had been working at the mine for three years when, during his last night shift at the end of a work week in July, he was asked to clean up a toxic sludge that had overflowed a holding tank and was trapped in abermedarea below it.

The mine was testing a process to reclaim gold from tailings that involved transferring a sludge that contained the remnants of gold refining process:crushed rock, arsenic, cyanide and other toxic chemicals.

Peterson spent four or five hours shovelling the sludge into 45 gallon drums. The only protection he had on was steel toed boots. He filled 10 to 15 drums. When his shift ended, he went home to catch a few hours sleep.

Sudden paralysis

"When I got up at around 10 or 11 a.m. to go to the washroom I found I had trouble urinating and my foot was sort of dragging a little bit," said Peterson.

"I called a friend and said, 'There's something strange going on here, I don't know what it is.' So we went out for breakfast and, again, I was very clumsy, tripping over steps and what have you.

"So then we decided I should go to emergency. They stuck a needle in my leg and I didn't feel anything. That's when theymedevacedme to Edmonton."

Peterson could get on the plane without help, but by the time he got to Edmonton two hours later, he needed a wheelchair to get off. It was the beginning of two years of being paralyzed from the chest down.

Doctors were at a loss to explain the cause of his condition, but did note more than two weeks after he left the mine he still had elevated levels of arsenic in his urine.

Arsenic concentrations in urine drop by half every 10 hours. Extrapolating back, they concluded his arsenic levels were extremely high at the time he fell ill.

Peterson recalls what happened when he returned to Yellowknife in late August and filed a claim for compensation.

"To me it seemed like a slam dunk," he said. "I flew up to Yellowknife from Edmonton. I went to the worker's compensation office and, quite frankly, the doctor just looked at me and said, 'I don't think there's any connection.' And that was it."

Thus began a nine-year battle with the Workers Safety and Compensation Commission.

It began while Peterson started undergoing rehabilitation therapy in Edmonton and Ottawa, and ended with a commission tribunal rejecting his claim on the basis that there was no proof his paralysis was related to exposure to toxins at the mine.

Most injuries easy to resolve

WSCCpresidentGrundysays the commission has no difficulty connecting most workplace injuries to workplace accidents.

"In Mr. Peterson's case, because it's neurological ... it's not as cut and dried as a broken arm or broken leg or cut finger or something like that."

The commission has taken a proactive approach to arsenic exposure during the more recent clean up of the mine it's registered 115 claims from people who have registered high concentrations of arsenic in their urine.

The workers have not reported any illness.Grundysays the claims were registered at the commission's urging in case they developillness from the exposure in the future.

At the time Peterson first filed a claim, there was no medical evidence to show that exposure to the chemicals and metals in the sludge he was shovelling could cause the kind of paralysis he had, which is known as transversemyelitis.

"There's no science, there's no medical science, there's no doctor's reports that can say his issues are directly related or related at all to being exposed to any substance in a workplace,"Grundysaid.

New evidence, too late

But in 2011 Peterson thought he had found the evidence to establish that connection, evidence that's never been assessed by the board.

A doctor with the Occupational Health Clinics of Ontarioreviewed Peterson's medical records andWSCCdocumentation. Dr. NoelKerincited research in the previous 10 years that establishes the connection between arsenic exposure andmyelitis.

Dr.Kerinconcluded that it was likely Peterson's paralysis was caused by a combination of his ongoing exposure to contaminants for three years before he fell ill and the extreme exposure he experienced cleaning up the toxic sludge.

But theWSCC'sappeals adjudicator concluded that the report and the research it cites is not new evidence and refused to re-open Peterson's case.

Years later Peterson challenged the decision in court. But the court never weighed in on the evidence in the report.

TheWSCCargued that Peterson had waited too long to challenge the decision and the Court of Appeal agreed.

• Decades-long arsenic workers comp fight comes to unsuccessful end

Both sides claim fairness the goal

Grundysaid theWSCCchallenged the court review because the rules, including the deadlines set for judicial reviews, must be the same for all workers.

Peterson says fairness is all he wants, too.

"People think this is a money grab or something. All I want is what I'm entitled to. If it is a compensable injury I should be compensated for it."

With the decision of the appeals adjudicator and the court loss, the only chance he has of having his claim looked at again, is to find more new evidence.

Reach: richard.gleeson@cbc.ca.