Category Archives: Human Rights

The Canadian Human Rights Commission

Policy on Environmental Sensitivities

Individuals with environmental sensitivities experience a variety of adverse reactions to environmental agents at concentrations well below those that might affect the “average person”. This medical condition is a disability and those living with environmental sensitivities  are entitled to the protection of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability. …

UPDATE 2013: see Canadian Human Rights Documents Archived

Ontario’s Human Rights Code

What is disability?

“Disability” covers a broad range and degree of conditions, some visible and some not visible. A disability may have been present from birth, caused by an accident, or developed over time. There are physical, mental and learning disabilities, mental disorders, hearing or vision disabilities, epilepsy, drug and alcohol dependencies, environmental sensitivities, and other conditions.

The Code protects people from discrimination because of past, present and perceived disabilities. For example, the Code protects a person who faces discrimination because she is a recovered alcoholic. So is a person whose condition does not limit their workplace abilities, but who is believed to be at greater risk of being able to do less in the future.

http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/disability-and-human-rights

CERA the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation

…While environmental sensitivities are not well understood by the general public, they are recognized by Health Canada, the Canadian Health Network, the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the Canadian and Ontario Human Rights Commissions, the Ontario Medical Association and the Environmental Health Committee of the Ontario College of Family Physicians – among others….

http://www.equalityrights.org/cera/?page_id=674

Environmental Health Clinic

The Environmental Health Clinic is a unique multidisciplinary clinic, and the only one of its kind in Ontario. It was established in 1996 by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to be a provincial resource in promoting environmental health, and to improve health care for people with environment-linked conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and multiple chemical sensitivities.

The Environmental Health Clinic is the clinical part of a joint clinical and research program of Women’s College Hospital and the University of Toronto.

http://www.womenscollegehospital.ca/programs-and-services/environmental-health-clinic469/

This post is in response to a request.

If anyone can provide other links, including the sources mentioned by CERA, I will add them.  Thanks in advance.