‘Miners are dying’: WSIB to examine McIntyre Powder exposure in new study
Researchers from the Occupational Cancer Research Centre will study mining records for the board.
Ken Kasunich was 18 when he first tasted McIntyre Powder in a northern Ontario gold mine.
He said he cannot forget what it was like to be forced to inhale the thick, black dust that was pumped into his change room before shifts.
“There was no getting out of it. We had to take the dust,” Kasunich said.
“You could hardly see the person changing next to you.”
Kasunich was one of tens of thousands of workers who were told to breathe in aluminum dust between the 1930s and 1970s in Canada to protect their lungs from silicosis.
