The occupational healthcare program embodied in the recently enacted legislation has the potential for being the most extensive, effective and innovated system ever enacted for delivering medical care to injured workers.

The issues facing the present economic downturn are not necessarily the same that existed during the great depression and therefore the outcome may not be the same.

 HOT TOPICS IN WORKERS COMPENSATION LAW ANNOUNCED  3rd Annual THIS YEAR IN WORKERS’ COMP: TOP ISSUES & CASES Wed. May 10, 2005 - Edison, NJ

OWENS CORNING'S ASBESTOS LIABILITIES SET AT $7 BILLION BY FEDERAL JUDGE
OC's asbestos liability put at $7 billion by U.S. Judge. Choosing a midpoint between estimates of opposing creditor groups, a federal judge has ruled that Owens Corning is exposed to $7 billion in potential claims by people who were made sick by exposure to asbestos insulation produced by the firm until the early 1970s. 

W.R. Grace and Executives, in Asbestos Concealment Action. Charged With Fraud, Obstruction of Justice, and Endangering Libby Montana Community 

NIOSH has prepared the Worker Health Chartbook 2004 as a resource for agencies, organizations, employers, researchers, workers, and others who need to know about occupational injuries and illnesses. This concise, chart-based document consolidates information from the network of tracking systems that forms the cornerstone of injury and illness surveillance in the United States.

 Work in Department of Energy (DOE) facilities has exposed workers to multiple toxic agents leading to acute and chronic diseases. Many exposures...

For the last few decades, the most compelling issue in an occupational disease case has been the manner in which the workers’ compensation court shoul...

Occupational exposures to respirable crystalline silica occur in a variety of industries and occupations because of its extremely common natural occurrence and the wide uses of materials and products that contain it. At least 1.7 million U.S. workers are potentially exposed to respirable crystalline silica [NIOSH 1991], and many are exposed to concentrations that exceed limits defined by current regulations and standards.

The concept of a compensable industrial disease has developed only recently and its acceptance has lagged far behind that of industrial accidents.   The original Workers' Compensation Acts, as promulgated from the year 1911 forward by many of the states, did not provide for the recognition of occupational illness and disease as compensable events.

Barbara Morris, appellee, v. Nebraska Health System,  appellant, & Sedgwick Claims Management Services, Inc., and University of Nebraska Medical Center, appellees. Morris v. Nebraska Health System,  266 Neb. 285 

Work-Related Lung Disease Surveillance Report 2002, the latest edition of a widely used compendium of information on the occurrences of and trends in occupational respiratory diseases and exposures, is available from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention=s (CDC) National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). 

 The Burden of Occupational Illness and Injury in New Jersey In New Jersey, there are approximately 4.0 million individuals employed in the work...

I thank Chairman Hatch for calling this hearing on the asbestos litigation crisis, the third that the Committee has had since I convened the first one last September. Last fall, I hoped to begin a bipartisan dialogue about the best means for providing fair and efficient compensation to the current victims and those yet to come. My message today is simple: To end this crisis we need to re-start negotiations among the stakeholders and interested Senators to finish hammering out the details of an effective national trust fund for victims of asbestos-related disease. 

 In 1929, thirty-five contractors bid on a privately built hydro-electric dam project in West Virginia that required a three-mile-long tunnel dri...

Asbestos-related disease was reported in industry more than 70 years ago. Dr. H. Montague Murray in 1906 at the Charing Cross Hospital in London testified before a governmental commission inquiry about occupational disability that he had seen a man in 1898 who was very short of breath and who had worked in an asbestos factory. The man's lungs at autopsy were badly scarred. It was Dr. Murray's prediction that since the hazards of this exposure were now known, very few similar cases would occur in the future, and there was no need to provide compensation benefits.

The statutory formula for compensability for occupational disease is similar to that for accidental injuries, that is, “compensation for personal injuries to or for death of such employee by any “compensable” occupational disease arising out of and in the course of the employment” Section 30. There appears to me to be three essential elements of Section 30. There must be an injury or death – due to a “compensable” occupational disease – which must arise out of and in the course of the employment. There is an exception for willful self-exposure but that exception has never been established, to my knowledge, so it is not that important.  

The rules governing when a claim must be filed as a result of an occupational exposure to asbestos have been changed by the New Jersey Supreme Court. A signed and sworn workers’ compensation claim petition, even though unsupported by medical diagnosis, is sufficient to impute discovery of the existence of a claim and toll the statute of limitations.

The concept of a compensable industrial disease has developed only recently and its acceptance has lagged far behind that of industrial accidents. The original Workers' Compensation Acts, as promulgated from the year 1911 forward by many of the states, did not provide for the recognition of occupational illness and disease as compensable events. As demands have been placed upon the medical system to treat and to prevent occupational illness, the legal system, under social, economic, and political pressure, has sought to provide a remedy for the thousands of injured workers who have suffered and who are continuing to suffer from occupational illness and disease.