Cancer in railroad carmen

When rail cars roll into the yard, carmen look them over inside and out for defects, wear, and damage, and then fix what they find. The federal job description at O*NET lays out this work. That description also covers removing locomotive and car mechanical units and other parts using equipment like hoists, jacks, pinch bars, ordinary hand tools, and torches for cutting metal.

Carmen also repair, build and install steel or wood fittings, working from blueprints and shop sketches. Rail car welder and rail car sandblaster are two job titles reported under this occupation.

Welding makes visible smoke that contains harmful metal fume and gas by-products. In its welding fact sheet, the federal workplace safety agency warns that breathing welding fume over a long period can lead to cancers of the lung, larynx, and urinary tract.

Those fumes may include metals such as arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, and nickel. The heat of welding turns chromium into hexavalent chromium, a highly toxic fume that can harm the eyes, skin, nose, throat, and lungs, and it can lead to cancer. OSHA caps the amount workers may breathe, measured as an average across a full eight-hour workday.

In March 2017, the International Agency for Research on Cancer brought together 17 scientists from 10 countries to weigh the evidence on whether welding and two related chemicals cause cancer. Their findings were summarized in the medical journal The Lancet Oncology, and the full review is to be published as IARC Monographs Volume 118.

Before diesel power replaced steam in the 1950s, some railroad workers had heavy asbestos exposure. In this study, researchers mailed questions to 514 people working for an active U.S. railroad and found likely past asbestos exposure in 21% of workers age 50 or older, versus three percent of younger workers.

Among the older workers with likely past asbestos exposure, exposure lasted from six months to 15 years; half reported three years or less, and half reported three years or more. People who put in time in railroad shops years ago may still carry that asbestos history with them. The study also pointed to earlier research on mesothelioma among railroad machinists.

Cancer often shows up years after exposure, often after a worker has left the railroad, so it seldom makes it into railroad injury files. Most work-related cancers never show up in those FRA injury reports, so a missing report does not mean there is no claim.

Those records still show how often carmen were hurt or made ill on duty from 2021 to 2025.

The totals combine two FRA job categories: 403 reports under Carmen (Other) and 356 under Carmen (Freight). These reports cannot tell us how many carmen went on to develop cancer.

FELA, the federal law that covers railroad workers, says a railroad is responsible when carelessness by its people played any part in a worker's injury or death (45 U.S.C. § 51). In 1949, the Court made clear that this covers slow-developing illnesses from the job, not only accidents (the opinion).

The railroad's negligence need only contribute, even in a small way. The Supreme Court made that point in Rogers v. Missouri Pacific back in 1957, then said it again in CSX v. McBride in 2011.

Even a worker who shares some of the blame is not shut out; instead, the jury trims the award to match that share, under 45 U.S.C. § 53. Nor is a worker treated as having accepted job dangers when railroad negligence caused the injury, under 45 U.S.C. § 54. When the worker has died, the personal representative brings the claim on behalf of the surviving spouse and children.

You have three years to file a FELA case, in either federal or state court (45 U.S.C. § 56). For an illness like cancer that takes years to appear, the Supreme Court has said the three years start when the illness shows itself, not when the exposure happened.

One case shows why timing matters. A railroad car inspector was diagnosed with bladder cancer in May 2014, when his doctor also linked it to what he had breathed at work. He filed in April 2019. In an unpublished January 2026 opinion, a New Jersey appeals court upheld the dismissal of claims for the cancer as it existed in 2014 because the three-year deadline had passed (the court's opinion). Because the clock matters, it helps to gather your work history early, and former coworkers are free to share what they remember: federal law makes void any railroad rule or contract that tries to keep employees from sharing information about a worker's injury or death (45 U.S.C. § 60).