Erin Meetoos is apprenticing to be a welder because she thinks it's a fun, exciting, challenging and well-paid occupation, but she knows it will put her health at risk. "I know I'm probably going to lose some of my hearing, and my sight, I suppose. And all the fumes I'm inhaling does worry me about how my breathing will be in a few years," the 22-year-old NAIT student says, citing job-related hazards she's been told about.
But she doesn't know what other health issues await her as a female welder or what, if any, impact her job might have on the health of a baby, if she were to get pregnant again, or on her ability to become pregnant. "It concerns me because I would like to have more children in the future," says Meetoos, who has a two-year-old daughter.
"If I was pregnant, would I (weld) for maybe four months and then stop until the baby is born? Maybe I shouldn't work at all if I'm pregnant."No one, not even Alberta Workplace Health and Safety, knows what to do with a pregnant welder, because the studies that are available deal only with male welders, and many of those date back to the 1960s, says David Hisey, chairman of the Canadian Standards Association's safety committee.
A study from Finland in 2008 suggested babies of women and their male partners, if either were welders, were born small for the gestation period or premature, Hisey says. But the findings weren't definitive because the study was based on the birth of only 13 babies.
That's why the CSA has asked two University of Alberta professors in occupational medicine to do the research. Their project is called the WHAT-ME (Women's Health in Alberta Trades-Metalworking and Electricians) study. Metal- working jobs include welders, pipefitters, steamfitters and boilermakers.
About 1,800 women work in these untraditional trades in Alberta, and lead researchers Nicola Cherry, who heads the occupational medicine program at the U of A, and Jeremy Beach want as many of them as possible to sign up for the study.
The study will follow the women for at least two years, keeping tabs on their health and looking for any effects possibly related to their work, including pregnancy problems, Cherry says. Cherry was first approached to do the study seven or eight years ago, "but I was not enthusiastic at the time, because I'm always worried with these studies of women that it will backfire, and the easiest thing for an employer to do is say, 'We won't employ any women'."
The women who have so far signed up for the study, ranging in age from 18 to 60, have expressed concern about what their trades jobs are doing to their health. For example, welders of both sexes can develop respiratory problems and metal-fume fever (similar to the flu), and arc welders can have problems with their eyes and skin.
"It is a hazardous trade," Cherry says. With Alberta on the verge of another boom in the energy industry, and qualified trades workers already scarce, Hisey expects even more women to apprentice in these jobs in the next couple of years, making it more important than ever for them to know what health hazards come with the work.
When Hisey worked for Syncrude Canada in Fort McMurray, "we had an unwritten policy that we just took (pregnant welders) out of the workplace," he says. "The downside is, if the person is an apprentice, they lose their trade hours, and unless the company provides alternative employment, they're going to lay the individual off.
"Generally, the women decide to go back to work," Hisey says. Quebec has a policy that takes pregnant workers out of the workplace when they work in trades where there might be some harm to the unborn child, even though there may be no documented proof, Hisey says. But they are the only jurisdiction in Canada that does, he adds.
"In Scandinavian countries, if you are allowed 1.0 of some substances as a normal worker, you're allowed 0.5 if you're pregnant, whether it affects you or not," Hisey says. "In North America, we like to say, 'How many babies died because of that?' It's a numbers game here."
The U of A study won't be the final word on the issue. It will provide another source of information that, when all are pulled together, will allow better decisions about what, if any, health hazards are related to the jobs women are doing in metalworking and electrical trades.
"I know there are lots of welders pregnant in Alberta, and they need to have the information currently available, and Dr. Cherry needs the data that their bodies will provide," Hisey says. "If there are problems with those pregnancies, if there are problems with child birth, if there are problems with the child after they're born, that needs to be documented so we can prevent it from happening to others."