Railroad Injury Attorneys Discuss Asbestos/Mesothelioma …
First, and one of the most commonly known dust hazards of railroad work, was the fact that asbestos was used as insulating material on railroad equipment including diesel locomotives, brakes, and within buildings often occupied by railroad workers. The types of cancers associated with asbestos are the full range of cancers from lung cancer to colon cancer and many other type of cancer. Asbestos is probably the most regulated and most widely known hazardous substance in the United States of America. By 1958, as can bee seen in the graphic, railroad medical doctors became aware that asbestos was causing cancers. By 1977, one of the more active railroad chief medical officers, who was with Chessie System, wrote his colleagues about mesothelioma cancer in a railroad worker, and called for eliminating asbestos from the railroad equipment, as seen in the next graphic. Unfortunately, it took years or decades for railroads to eliminate or substitute asbestos from all equipment, and in the meantime the number of asbestos cancers and asbestosis claims nationwide soared. From an occupational perspective, OSHA studies concluded that there was no safe dose and no safe amount of the fine fibers of asbestos that can get in the air. Serious lung diseases such as asbestosis arise decades after exposure, as do horrible cancers-even 30 to 50 years after exposure. Moreover, medical studies showed that cigarette smokers exposed to asbestos had a multiplied risk of getting cancers due to what is called the synergistic effect of these two substances inhaled together.