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Researcher to present McIntyre Powder findings at toxicology summit

Two-day event hosted by the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology
Janice Martell 2
Janice Martell, McIntyre Powder Project

A researcher and advocate for the health of Northern Ontario miners will co-present her findings on McIntyre Powder during a toxicology conference this week.

Janice Martell will speak about her work during the North American Congress of Clinical Toxicology being held in Chicago Oct. 25-29.

She'll be presenting alongside Dr. Connie Mackenzie, a researcher and physician based out of London's Western University whose areas of interest are occupational lung diseases, asthma, and medical toxicology, along with pharmacogenetics of inhaled steroids in asthma.

Since 2014, Martell has been investigating the potential toxic effects of a finely ground aluminum dust called McIntyre Powder on underground miners who ingested the substance between 1943 and 1980 as a condition of work.

Her efforts originated with a database of miners who experienced inhaling the dust, and she’s now working with the Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers (OHCOW) to catalogue the miners’ health issues – everything from respiratory problems to neurological disease – and find a decisive link between inhalation of the dust and those health conditions.

Her database is just shy of 500 miners.

Martell’s goals are to get compensation for miners who were impacted by inhaling the dust and push the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) to make changes to how it handles compensation claims.

Her presentation this week will find a global audience.

Hosted by the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology, the North American Congress of Clinical Toxicology (NACCT) is the largest clinical toxicology meeting in the world. The event provides ongoing education in clinical toxicology for more than 700 of the world’s leading clinicians, scientists, poison centre staff, and executives. Attendees include clinicians and research scientists from poison centres, industry, academia, and regulatory agencies.