By Rick Shapiro, Railroad Accident/FELA Lawyer
Why did railroad companies fail to remove asbestos insulation from diesel locomotive engines? It’s a question with no definitive answer, but I believe it’s simply because removing all of the toxic material cost a lot of money. Many of the railroads knowingly chose to remove asbestos only when other major repairs were being done on the engines. Other railroads delayed removal of asbestos from diesel engines. These actions fail to seriously follow the advice of the railroad’s prominent medical doctors who argued that all asbestos should be removed from engines and other places by the late 1970s. By this time, railroads – including the Chessie System (later became CSX) had employees struggling with mesothelioma. Shockingly, these workers did not even have extensive asbestos exposure.
In delaying any action to remove asbestos from diesel locomotive engines, the railroads played russian roulette with its own employees knowing full well that even a microscopic amount of tiny asbestos fibers can cause lung cancer or mesothelioma, even decades after the minimal exposure. In addition, the railroads were knowledgeable by the 1960s and 1970s that railroad workers who smoke cigarettes were facing especially high risks of cancers.
Medical researchers learned, for reasons that are not completely understood, that workers exposed to asbestos who also smoked cigarettes, had about 83 fold relative risk increase whereas there was only a 10 percent relative risk increase in workers who were not smokers!
In other words, the relative risk for smokers of over a pack a day compared to non-smoking asbestos workers was a difference of about 73 fold relative risk increase. This is called the synergistic effect of combining asbestos fiber exposure and cigarette smoking and sadly the railroads never notified railroad workers who smoke about this increased relative risk, but let’s remember the railroads never told workers about the asbestos being in the engines either.
All of this points to a complete disregard by the railroad companies for the health and safety of their employees. It’s outrageous and railroad workers who contract mesothelioma and suspect it was due to asbestos exposure should contact an attorney immediately to discuss filing a claim against the company.
About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is an injury law firm with a long history of representing hundreds of railroad workers in FELA/ railroad injury cases. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Our offices are in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA) and Elizabeth City, North Carolina (NC). Our lawyers hold licenses in VA, NC, SC, WV, KY and DC and have handled railroad injury and FELA cases throughout the eastern U.S. We would like to send you one of our FREE reports about railroad injury and FELA cases, including Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad – The Railroad Worker’s FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). We are ready to talk to you by phone right now—we provide free initial confidential injury case consultations, so call us toll free at 1-800-752-0042 before giving any statement or talking to a railroad claims agent. Our injury attorneys also host an extensive injury law video library on Youtube . Furthermore, our lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.
