WSIB to wrap up GE reviews by month’s end

The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) has nearly finished reviewing 250 previously rejected claims from former workers at the General Electric plant in Peterborough who later developed cancer.

Although WSIB was planning to have the review done by the end of June, a spokesperson for Minister of Labour Laurie Scott said they are now expected done by the end of July.

Scott, who is also the MPP for Haliburton-Kawartha LakesBrock, wasn’t available for comment.

But ministry spokesman William Lin stated in an email to The Examiner that the review would be complete by the end of this month.

Christine Arnott, a spokesperson for WSIB, stated in an email that they are down to the last few claims.

“Sometimes we are reliant on getting medical files and the time it takes for responses, but we anticipate being done very soon,” she wrote.

At last count in mid-April, 60 former workers who contracted cancer or other illnesses from exposure to toxic chemicals at General Electric in Peterborough

were getting compensation from WSIB even though their claims were previously turned down.

Meanwhile, a further 66 claims had their original rejections upheld.

The process began in September: that's when WSIB reopened 250 claims from sick GE employees that had been rejected for lack of scientific evidence linking cancer to workplace chemicals.

In light of new scientific studies, the WSIB began to review the claims all over again.

A rash of cancer diagnoses among former GE workers in Peterborough was first noted in the 1990s. Yet over the last 12 years, many workers who made claims to WSIB were turned down.

New studies have emerged lately to link cancers to industrial toxins once used in the plant.

One was produced locally by retired occupational health researchers Bob and Dale DeMatteo, with help from several GE retirees and sponsorship from Unifor (the union representing workers at the plant).

It says that more than 3,000 toxic chemicals were used at GE in the city between 1945 and 2000, before the plant was scrubbed clean.