Shipyard workers and members of the Canadian Coast Guard have been exposed to lead paint for months, without any protective equipment, even as their employers had strong reasons to believe the vessels they worked on were contaminated with the heavy metal. The ships are a set of icebreakers, Jean Goodwill and Vincent Massey. The vessels were acquired, along with a third vessel, the Captain Molly Kool, from Sweden in 2018 as part of a $610-million icebreaker procurement. 400 workers have undergone testing to measure the lead content in their blood at a private clinic, in collaboration with the public health department and it has been reported that none of them had abnormally high levels of the metal.
