Top Health and Safety Questions of 2025

Ashley: Hello and welcome to Health and Safety to Go, a podcast from the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety. I'm here with Emma Ashurst from Inquiries and Technical Services to discuss the most asked health and safety questions of the year. Emma, thanks for joining us.

Emma: Oh, thank you for the opportunity to chat today.

Ashley: You've joined us on the podcast before but for the benefit of our newer listeners, please tell us a little about the Inquiries service here at CCOHS and what you do.

Emma:Yeah, sounds good. So, at CCOHS, we have two products that are completely free and also bilingual. We have our Safety InfoLine and our OSH Answers Fact Sheets. And our Safety InfoLine is our free person-to-person service where people can contact us through the website with their health and safety questions, and we prepare a written response for them. And anybody can reach out and send in their question – workers, committee members, employers. And each year, we receive over 7,000 inquiries. We're able to share legislative requirements and resources not only from your own province and territory, but also from other jurisdictions to help you really build a robust health and safety program that goes beyond just the basics and just compliance.

Ashley: That's amazing. Seven thousand questions and counting, and folks can access that service on our website. And we'll talk a little bit more about that at the end. Why don't you tell us more about OSH Answers and what's new there?

Emma: Yeah, for sure. OSH Answers is, dare I say, the cornerstone of the website. It is the house of over 740 fact sheets, all again, like I said, available in English and French on many, many different topics. We have things on ergonomics, we have things on safety programs, committees, WHMIS chemicals, diseases, occupational profiles. And we are continually updating the materials – everything's current within five years. And then we're also adding new content every year. And this past year, we've added over 19 new Fact Sheets. And some of the topics are quite interesting and reflect the current needs of workers and organizations. So, we added an important fact sheet on the impacts of climate change and mental health. And that's an important one to reference because every worker is going to be feeling different about the subject of climate change and will be impacted differently. We were able to add new content around construction-related topics, so things like working with hazardous materials and how to abate that. We do have one coming up, it's not published yet, so sneak peek of next year, but demolition and safe work practices around that, working safely and residential roofing, and working safely around rebar. Infectious diseases are common as we're seeing more spikes in flu cases and whatnot. But we added new sheets and on pneumonia, RSV and dealing with long COVID after our recent pandemic

Ashley: What pandemic?

Emma: Right? We're all blocking that out. Sheets to help with your other health and safety program needs and specifically ones for small and micro-sized businesses, and another one to help design a safety talk program because safety talks are great way to deliver short, quick, bursts of information to workers on many different topics. And then, we also created a couple of fact sheets and occupational profiles on profiles that you might not think of, and we added one for personal trainers and the hazards that they are faced with in their work. And also athletes, whether it be a community athlete or a professional athlete, but we touch on things like concussions and ergonomics and the scheduling related to that and the impact of that and fatigue and mental capacity and cognitive load. So, just a little bit different for our collection but there are certainly connections that are coming out with mental health and athletes and it's drawing a bit of a spotlight on that topic.

Ashley: Yeah, I would echo your sentiment that it's the cornerstone of our website and really something for every kind of workplace in that library of information. So, let's get to the heart of the matter. What questions did you get asked the most this year?

Emma: Yeah, so for our Safety InfoLine, like I said we get over seven thousand questions, we did get a lot of questions this summer about working in hot environments. We did have a very warm summer. And also back in January and February, we had a few cold snaps, so we had some working in cold environments questions. And, again we're answering questions here in Hamilton, but we're answering questions from coast to coast and up in the north as well, so we keep that in mind with our inquiries. Unfortunately, we do continue to still see questions about bullying and harassment in the workplace, but we do have a lot of really good resources that are either on our websiteor we can pull from other sources that we share and hopefully workers and employers can help navigate that situation. And we've also received quite a few WHMIS questions, particularly ahead of the end of this transition period with the new legislation that's coming up later this month. And WHMIS 2015 will be – we're back to just WHMIS again. So, starting in 2026, it'll be just WHMIS.

Ashley: Yep, this is hot goss in the occupational health and safety world. WHMIS is always a very hot topic and yeah, really popular. What were some of the other health and safety topics that came up? Anything new and interesting, what surprised you?

Emma: Again, I think I mentioned it last year when I had the opportunity to chat with you, just when you think you've seen everything, there is always a couple that come through that you're like, “Oh, that's neat. And that's an interesting one.” So, we did get a question from a library. They'd had a flood and they were concerned about the mould that was in their books and how to deal with that. Did they have to do air sampling? So, that was a neat one. We did have quite a few wildfires, so we did receive some questions – more on the interesting side, not on the fun side, when it comes to this topic. But exposure to smoke, PPE requirements, and whatnot. Same thing, an interesting question about gas detectors. An organization had an alarm go off, and they were concerned, was it working? And what to do with that. So, a question around gas detection. And then, this one is a little bit more fun, we did get a question from someone who does vintage toy restoration, and they had a concern in this work – in particular dolls that might have had heavy metals back in the day. It was a different time. And while it is a confidential service, I will confirm it wasn't Santa writing in so your toys should be safe.

Ashley: We are recording this in December so that's a relief for the parents out there. No need to worry about your dolls. Were there any specific themes emerging from the questions that your team fielded this year?

Emma: I would say, it's again, like a continuation of building their health and safety program. So supporting their health and safety committee. So how do you run an effective meeting? How do you do a good inspection? What should you be looking for? And so, again, pulling information together to help the make sure those committees are effective and efficient. There are foundational piece to a health and safety program because they're the ones that are going to be out there. They're representing our workers and our employers and making recommendations to the employer for change, and they're really important. So, we do have a lot of information that can help them. Again, helping workers navigate unsafe work conditions. Addressing concerns that might be impacting, their mental health, and again, by sharing resources that we have and then other resources that we are aware of from other credible, unbiased factual sources. And again, like I said, WHMIS we still get those questions about when do I need training? What do I do with a consumer product in the workplace? And when do you need a safety data sheet? All that great stuff, so we can prepare responses for those.

Ashley: Amazing. Is there anything else you'd like our audience to know?

Emma: Yeah, I think the one thing I'd like to leave the year on, as we go into the new year, is that we really need to remember that to have a truly healthy and safe workplace, it means that we're prioritizing the psychological safety right alongside physical safety. So, making sure that workers and employers, they feel safe. They can show up and, I don't know about you, but 2025 continued to be a year that brought quite a bit of change, and change can be challenging for many people, right? Like, I'll put my hand up. I had change in my life, and as an employer, or manager, or supervisor or co-worker, you might not know what is going on in someone else's life, or in their place with their family, and that kind of ripple piece, right? So, it's important to approach situations with curiosity and kindness, just grant grace to people, wherever you can and know that they may be facing challenges outside of the workplace. And your little bit of kindness can go a long way. So, yeah, strive to have psychologically and physically safe workplaces so workers can show up, they can do their job, and not only feel safe, but they actually are safe. And they might ideally, maybe, even leave work a little bit better than when they arrived.

Ashley: Well, that'd be a happy bonus for sure. And I think that speaks to, you know, civility and respect in the workplace, acknowledging your colleagues. It really goes a long way not towards just, you know, making them feel seen and acknowledged, but to making them feel truly healthy and safe in the workplace. Emma Ashurst, thanks so much for joining us today. It's always interesting to learn about which topics are top of mind for our audience.

Emma: Thank you very much Ashley for having me and happy to share.

Ashley: You can access the OSH Answers library to learn more about the most popular health and safety topics, or you can submit your health and safety questions for the Inquiries team by visiting, our website ccohs.ca. Thanks for listening and all the best for a safe and happy new year.