Cancer in railroad electricians

According to O*NET, these workers put in, look after, and fix electrical wiring, equipment, and fixtures, or they supervise the people doing that work. Day to day, they test and adjust equipment, fix machines with moving components, keep an eye on gauges and dials, and figure out why equipment has failed.

There is also an emergency side to the job. An electrician might set up floodlights or run a generator, put out flares, or operate a forklift or similar vehicle. When O*NET surveyed them, 69 percent described their responsibility for coworkers' safety as very high.

PCBs are chemicals people made to cool and lubricate transformers, capacitors, and similar gear. Per the CDC, many American PCB mixtures carried the trade name Aroclor, and production in this country ended in 1977.

Anything built before 1977 can still hold PCBs. That covers aging fluorescent fixtures, PCB capacitors, and hydraulic oils. Exposure happens when workers service and fix PCB transformers, or when an old device catches fire, leaks, or is damaged in an accident.

Leaking transformers from decades ago remain a problem right now. PCBs resist breaking down, so once they escape they can stay in the environment for a very long time.

The CDC notes that a few studies of workers connect PCBs with cancers of the liver and the biliary tract, the passage that moves bile out of the liver.

Asbestos exposure ran heavy for some railroad employees before the industry swapped steam engines for diesel in the 1950s. One survey of 514 employees at a single U.S. railroad showed the heaviest exposure among the older workers who had fixed steam locomotives.

A lot of these exposures lasted only a short time, with a middle value of three years, though they stretched anywhere from six months up to 15 years. Among the older exposed group, 30 percent held a job title at survey time that gave no sign of earlier asbestos contact. A person can leave the shop floor for another role and still bring that exposure history along.

The Federal Railroad Administration receives reports of on-duty injuries and illnesses from railroads. The FRA data from 2021 to 2025 for electrical workers at the 17 railroads this site tracks looks like this.

The numbers span two FRA job categories: Electrical Workers (A) account for 490 reports, and Electrical Workers (B) for 21. Cancer almost never shows up in this data, since it tends to surface years after the exposure, frequently once the person no longer works for the railroad. Most work-related cancers never show up in those reports, so a missing report does not mean there is no claim.

The Federal Employers' Liability Act, known as FELA, holds a railroad liable when an employee is hurt or killed in whole or in part through the railroad's negligence. Negligence means the railroad, its officers, or its workers did not use reasonable care. State workers' compensation does not apply to railroad employees, so FELA is their route to recovering losses, as a GAO report lays out.

In Urie v. Thompson, the Supreme Court ruled that FELA reaches work-related diseases, not just accidents. And the railroad's negligence needs only to contribute, no matter how small that contribution is.

Sharing some of the blame does not block recovery. Per 45 U.S.C. § 53, a jury reduces the payment to match the worker's portion of fault. Nor is a worker considered to have accepted the risks of the job where railroad negligence contributed.

The deadline for filing a FELA case is three years, and the case can go to federal or state court. With slow-developing diseases, the clock begins once the exposure's effects become apparent.

Deadlines can make or break a claim. A New Jersey appeals court in 2026 affirmed the dismissal of a car inspector's bladder cancer case. In May 2014 his physician told him the cancer was connected to what he breathed at work, yet he waited until April 2019 to sue, according to the appeals court's decision.