By Madeleine F. Hearns, Legal Counsel, Workers' Compensation Board of Nova Scotia
From its inception in 1917, The Workers’ Compensation Board of Nova Scotia has had claims for exposure to chemicals in the workplace. These claims generally involved a one-time exposure to a known substance, at a level above acceptable limits, and the resulting injury is consistent with the exposure.
 In the late 1980’s different sorts of workplace-exposure claims began being filed with the WCB. These claims were categorized as “Multiple Chemical Sensitivity”, involved reported exposures to substances which were not always known and if known, the exposure level was generally below the level considered by the scientific/medical literature to be unsafe. Further, the symptoms of the workers could not be linked directly to exposure to substances in the workplace.
Initially, these claims were accepted, it was assumed that there were workplace exposures that caused illness. WCB benefits were eventually discontinued when it became clear that there was weak evidence of workplace exposure and there was no objective medical evidence to support ongoing disability.
What is Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS)?
MCS is controversial in the medical community. Essentially there are two main opposing views: (1) majority/conventional medical/scientific community and (2) clinical ecologists.
To date, the medical/scientific community has not been able to establish objective diagnostic physical findings required for a definition of the illness. There are no existing tests to confirm the presence of MCS.
Clinical ecologists report that MCS represents intolerance of certain individuals to exposure to low levels of chemicals in the environment.
A number of theories have been presented to describe the cause of this illness. Clinical ecologists first presented immunologic explanations for symptoms and more recently considered central nervous system mechanisms as the most likely explanation of the symptoms of patients who report low-level exposures to environmental chemicals.
Conventional scientists believe the cause of MCS is psychogenic/iatrogenic. None of the theories to date has scientifically confirmed a cause for MCS or a mechanism by which environmental exposures produce symptoms but the evidence favours a behavioral and psychogenic explanation for symptoms. Furthermore, there is no proven therapy to assist these individuals and there is no scientifically confirmed causal connection between environmental chemicals and the patients’ symptoms.
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