What's Making These BC Miners Sick?

Graham Gardner says that in 44 years he has seldom missed a day of work due to illness, but at a recent job on the Endako Mines expansion near Fraser Lake he got ill several times, the last time severely. All his co-workers were sick also and one died unexpectedly in January, leaving colleagues wondering whether it was conditions at the work camp that led to his death.

That the camp is on First Nations land has complicated getting the problem investigated, and so has his union's reluctance to raise concerns, said Gardner.

"I've never, ever in my life missed work because of being sick," said the 63-year-old welder based in Kamloops. He'd had the occasional camp flu working in Fort McMurray, but never anything like he experienced on the Endako project, he said.

Workers are assigned to the project, which will expand processing at the molybdenum mine, on a rotation where they go into the camp just west of Fraser Lake for 21 days at a time, with seven days off in between.

By the end of his first stay at the camp, he had flu-like symptoms that made him weak and tired, Gardner said. It took him his whole week off to get back to normal. "I couldn't go downtown, I couldn't do nothing," he said.

During his second stay, he didn't get as sick, but had what seemed to be a cold, he said. But on his third stay at the camp, which ended in early May, he got so sick that paramedics were called and he left the job early in an ambulance.

"Scared the hell out of me," he said, recounting a night where he had so much trouble breathing that he was scared to go to sleep.

His doctor told him he was showing signs of heart failure, he said, but test results that came back on June 9 showed his heart was fine. With drugs and rest he got better, he said, adding that his doctor's still trying to figure out what caused the illness. "It feels wonderful to breathe normal again."

Coughing up blood, missed work

Illness at the camp was rampant, with many having similar symptoms, Gardner said. "All this time everyone's getting sick," he said, noting many of the guys were coughing up blood and missing lots of days of work.

Gardner and others working on the project are members of Ironworkers Local 97, out of Vancouver. At a meeting with union officials in the camp kitchen, a millwright asked how many of the 150 or so members in attendance had been sick during their stay at the camp, said Gardner.

Everyone put up their hand, he said.

When the question was how many had been sick more than once, all the hands stayed up. "You're looking at the whole camp," Gardner said. The superintendent has been sick at least twice, he added. "It hasn't left anybody out."

Around 400 people live at the camp at any given time.

An unexpected death

"There's something definitely going on there," said another person who got sick during each of three stays at the camp but asked not to be publicly identified. His symptoms included a dry throat, a thick-feeling head and frequent urination, he said.

"There's definitely something wrong with that camp. Everyone knows about it, but nobody's doing anything about it," he said.

He and Gardner both mentioned Lonnie Popoff, who died in January after a stay at the camp. There's a memorial for him on the Ironworkers website that notes, "Lonnie has many freinds who will miss listening to him talk like only he did."

An obituary on the Grand Forks Gazette's website said the 58-year-old "passed away peacefully with his family by his side at the Trail Regional Hospital."

Word among ironworkers was that Popoff got pneumonia, and for some reason was too unhealthy to get better. But Gardner said he remembers working with Popoff two years ago and didn't think he seemed in any way unwell or unfit. He wonders, he said, whether conditions at the camp made Popoff sick

Despite workers raising concerns about the camp, nothing seems to be happening, said Gardner. "The company itself wasn't doing anything about it," he said. "The union doesn't seem to want to do nothing."

Unions have been shut out of mine work in the north for the last 15 years, he added. Now that they're back in with this project, they don't want to be seen as troublesome, he said. "They want to get the work and they don't care what happens."

Outside provincial jurisdiction

There's some $28 billion worth of work on mines expected in northern B.C. over the next decade, and unions want to be a part of that, a couple sources said.

The Endako operation mines molybdenum oxide, and its production is expected to rise from 10 million pounds to 16 million pounds annually.

Reached by phone, Ironworkers Local 97 business manager James Leland said he would not comment on the situation at the Endako expansion camp.

A call Friday to the Vancouver office of Lockerbie and Hole Contracting Ltd., the company doing the work, was automatically forwarded to a Toronto area office where the person who answered the phone said everyone in the office who could answer questions had stopped work at 9:15 to start the weekend early. Try back Monday morning, she said.

Nor was a call to Hatch, the company managing the Endako expansion project, returned by posting time.

Adding to the difficulty of drawing attention to the problem, the camp is on land owned by the Nadleh Whut'en First Nation. It's unclear whether the First Nation owns the camp itself or just the land. A call to the band office was not returned. *

The provincial authorities that investigate working conditions and public health -- WorkSafeBC, Employment Standards and the Northern Health Authority -- each say the location on a First Nation's land means they don't have jurisdiction. The Ministry of Labour, which is responsible for employment standards, and the Northern Health Authority, which has some responsibilities for health inspections under the Industrial Camps Health Act, each say they can't investigate on a First Nation's land. And WorkSafeBC's responsibilities do not include either housing or mines.

Various theories about sickness

Instead, regulation of the site belongs to First Nations and Inuit Health, a branch of the federal Health ministry. A call to the FNIH office in Prince George was not returned by posting time. A spokesperson for Health Canada in Ottawa took questions Friday morning but said not to expect any answers until Monday.

In the absence of a thorough investigation into the problems, those who've gotten sick at the camp have developed various theories about what's causing the illnesses.

Gardner noted that of the people working in the kitchen, only one has a Foodsafe certificate for having completed a course on how to handle and prepare food safely. There's also a large garbage bin right by the kitchen door, instead of at a distance from the area as it would be at other camps, he said.

Another worker wondered if the problems were caused by black mould, perhaps in the ventilation system. Or maybe it's airborne viruses from rodents or another source, he said. Radon gas and methane were also on his list of suspects.

The buildings are old, and are believed to have been used in the Olympics last year and somewhere up north before that, he said.

Gardner, who said he's considering filing a complaint with the Labour Relations Board against his union, said he realizes he's taking a risk talking publicly about the camp conditions, but something needs to be done. "I'm not concerned about myself," he said. "I'm more concerned about the people who are working at the camp."

* Paragraph corrected on June 15, 2011.