Features Health & Safety
Free handbook addresses impact of climate change on the workforce

A free handbook aimed to help workplaces prepare for potential challenges and impacts climate change can have on their workers and the work they do is available from the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS).

The handbook – titled Climate Change: Workplace Impacts – offers workplaces guidance on how to:

• take action to identify, assess, control and monitor climate-related hazards,
• take climate-related events into account when establishing policies and programs to address their impact on occupational health and safety,
• consider the impacts of climate change when completing workplace hazard identification and risk assessments, and
• approach and address climate-related workplace hazards.

The handbook may be helpful to anyone involved in the development and implementation of workplace policies and programs, including employers, managers and supervisors, human resources professionals, and health and safety committee members and representatives. Anyone interested in learning about climate change from a workplace perspective may also find it useful.

Climate Change: Workplace Impacts is available as a free PDF download from the CCOHS website: www.ccohs.ca/products/publications/climate-change/.

Each publication produced by CCOHS undergoes several stages of review. As part of this review, representatives from government, employers, and labour are requested to comment on draft copies of CCOHS documents for technical accuracy and readability.

Associated links

• Climate Change: Preparing for Climate Related Emergencies
• Climate Change, Extreme Weather and the Workplace
• A Climate for Health and Safety Change