Railroads are hazardous places to work. Every day, employees face derailments, being struck by trains, poorly maintained equipment, and slip-and-fall injuries. Workers for major railroads like Union Pacific, CSX, and Norfolk Southern also face a quieter, slower danger: routine exposure to toxic chemicals and substances that can cause permanent harm to their health. Not long ago, asbestos was the chief […]

Railroad workers face a considerably higher risk of developing Parkinson’s disease than the general population. This risk stems from decades of frequent exposure to chemicals linked to the disease, including welding fumes, chlorinated solvents, and herbicides. Like many occupational illnesses, Parkinson’s rarely appears until years after the exposure that caused it, which can make the connection easy to miss. A […]

Since the 1930s, major railroad companies across the United States have periodically come under scrutiny for the toxic hazards found in and around storage facilities, rail yards, and the other buildings railroads rely on. The problem is that railroad workers are often unaware of the diseases and dangers they face while doing their jobs. A hazard that causes no immediate […]

Railroad work exposes employees to hazards that take years, sometimes decades, to reveal their damage. Among the most serious are the toxic fumes that workers breathe day after day on the job. Welders on the railroad have developed permanent lung diseases, cancers, and lasting neurological and memory disorders from long-term inhalation of the harmful particulates in welding smoke. These are […]

Cancer caused by years of on-the-job exposure does not announce itself the way a broken leg does. A railroad worker can breathe diesel fumes, handle asbestos, or absorb radiation for decades before a single symptom appears. That reality creates a hard question for injured railroaders and their families. If the law gives you only a limited window to file a […]

Railroad workers who develop cancer after years around diesel fumes, asbestos, or radiation often ask the same question. How do you prove exposure to a disease-causing amount of something when nobody was measuring it at the time? Railroad defense attorneys ask a version of the same question from the other side, usually hoping the answer is that quantified proof is […]

Railroad work has always been physically demanding, but for generations, the most dangerous part of the job wasn’t the heavy lifting or the moving of equipment. It was the air. Workers spent decades breathing diesel exhaust, handling asbestos-lined components, scraping benzene-based solvents, and walking around creosote-treated ties without knowing what those exposures were doing inside their bodies. The illnesses they […]

When John, a long-time railroad worker, was diagnosed with lung cancer, his world turned upside down. He had spent decades working around trains, rail yards, and railroad equipment—but he’d also smoked for many years. Now, faced with this frightening diagnosis, he couldn’t help but wonder: Was it just the cigarettes? Or could it have been something else, like asbestos? His […]

Note: This information on how personal injury attorneys handle cancer cases involving rail employees is adapted from railroad injury/FELA attorney Rick Shapiro’s July 2011 invited lecture to the American Association for Justice Railroad Law Section. Here, he shares his expertise on how the FELA statute of limitations affects occupational disease and wrongful death lawsuits for rail workers who developed cancers […]

In recent years, a spotlight has been placed on the dangers of asbestos and the health risks many railroad workers like conductors, trainmen, and switchmen (to name a few) were exposed to for decades while working for big railroads like CSX and Norfolk Southern. However, a serious health risk that does not get as much attention but can be just […]