A two-and-a-half-year study has shown a connection between McIntyre Powder and neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s in miners.
A long-time advocate for miners who were forced to ingest the powder as a job requirement, Janice Martell says she feels vindicated.
She says ingesting McIntyre Powder was required at various Northern Ontario mines between 1943 and 1980.
Having lost her father, Jim Hobbs a former mine, Martell says it was supposed to prevent lung disease silicosis, but after studies showed it didn’t have any health benefit, the mining companies stopped forcing it on miners.
She says the study carried out for the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board by the Occupational Cancer Research Centre was released earlier this month and now the work begins to provide possible compensations to some miners and their families.