- Location
- Webinars will be held via Zoom. Webinar details will be sent to all registered participants via EventBrite.
- Series/Type
- DLSPH Event
- Dates
- March 4, 2022 from 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Links
Title: Investigating Neurologic Disease from McIntyre Powder in Ontario Miners
McIntyre Powder (MP), an aluminum and aluminum oxide powder, was developed by the McIntyre Research Foundation and administered to Ontario miners from 1943 to 1979 as a purported prophylaxis against the development of silicosis. Workers were required to inhale MP, which was dispersed in the air in sealed change rooms, prior to their underground work shifts. The practice was ended when it was determined that it offered no protective effect against silicosis. Concerns were also raised regarding potential neurological health effects among MP-exposed miners, due to the aluminum content. In this talk Dr. Demers and Ms. Zeng will describe their work evaluating the neurological disease risk among miners working in Ontario, a project funded by Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).
Presenters: Paul Demers and Xiaoke Zeng
Paul Demers is the Director of the OCRC, as well as a Senior Scientist with Ontario Health and a Professor with the Occupational and Environmental Health Division of the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He has a PhD in Epidemiology and an MSc in Industrial Hygiene, both from the University of Washington in Seattle. Paul is internationally recognized for his expertise on the health effects of workplace exposures and has sat on many expert panels, including the International Agency for Research on Cancer working groups that evaluated carcinogens such as dusts and fibres, firefighting and formaldehyde. He has extensive research experience and accomplishments, including his past leadership of “CAREX Canada,” a national workplace and environmental exposure program. Over his academic career he has held numerous research grants, supervised many graduate students and has published extensively.
Xiaoke Zeng is a Ph.D. Public Health Science student at the University of Toronto. She holds a Master of Science degree and studied whole-body vibration exposure among Canadian Prairie farmers in Saskatchewan. At OCRC, she works on examining different mining exposures as potential risk factors of neurodegenerative diseases using two linked cohorts in Ontario.