The Smoke You Never Chose to Breathe
When someone lights a cigarette, the smoke doesn’t just go into their lungs. It fills the air around them that others nearby also breathe — whether they want to or not. Scientists call this secondhand smoke, and it contains the same cancer-causing chemicals as the smoke going into the smoker’s lungs.
Health researchers have identified dozens of cancer-causing substances in tobacco smoke. When a non-smoker shares an enclosed space, such as a locomotive cab, with someone who is smoking, they breathe in many of the same cancer-causing substances. The U.S. Surgeon General has said it plainly: there is no safe level of secondhand smoke exposure.
The Railroads Had This Information Decades Ago
This is not a situation where the science appeared suddenly. The connection between cigarette smoke and cancer was being discussed in medical and scientific circles as far back as the 1950s. By the early 1960s, the U.S. Surgeon General had published a major report confirming that smoking causes lung cancer. By the 1980s, published research had established that non-smokers — people who had never touched a cigarette — were developing lung cancer simply from breathing other people’s smoke in enclosed spaces.
In 1986, the Surgeon General made the danger clear: secondhand smoke causes lung cancer in non-smokers.
The railroads were not operating in a vacuum. They had medical departments, safety departments, and access to the same scientific literature everyone else did. There is evidence that railroad industry medical personnel were hearing about the dangers of cigarette smoke going back to the 1950s — at their own industry gatherings.
By the time most of today’s retired railroad workers were in the middle of their careers, the science was settled. Secondhand smoke causes cancer, and the railroads knew it.
Sealed Cabs. No Fresh Air. No Choice.
Here is the reality of what railroad workers faced. A locomotive cab is a small, enclosed space. If your coworker was a smoker and you were not, you had nowhere to go. You could not step outside at 60 miles per hour. You could not transfer to a different cab. In many cases, no ventilation system came close to clearing the air.
For many workers, secondhand smoke in railroad workspaces was not just unpleasant. It was a preventable exposure to dangerous toxins.
Many railroads had no smoking policy for years after the science was clear. Others had policies on paper that were never enforced. Railroads banned smoking in their corporate offices and on their corporate jets years, even decades, before they banned smoking inside locomotives and shops. Workers who complained about smoke exposure often got nowhere. Meanwhile, they continued breathing cancer-causing chemicals shift after shift, year after year.
Diesel Exhaust Made It Worse
Secondhand smoke was not the only hazard in those locomotive cabs. Most railroad workers were also breathing diesel exhaust — another substance linked to serious illness, including lung cancer and bladder cancer. Research shows that the combination of diesel exhaust and secondhand smoke is more dangerous than either one alone. Workers exposed to both may face compounded health risks, not just the separate risks of each exposure added together.
For a non-smoking railroad worker who spent a career in a locomotive cab, that combination was a real and serious threat — one that the railroads understood and often failed to address.
What This Means for You
For non-smoking railroad workers, lung cancer from secondhand smoke may be connected to years of exposure in locomotive cabs, yard offices, or other enclosed railroad workspaces.
Under the Federal Employers Liability Act (FELA), the railroad does not need to be entirely responsible for your illness for you to have a valid claim. If the railroad’s negligence played any role at all in causing your diagnosis, even a small one, you may be entitled to compensation.
A railroad may have been negligent if it:
- Allowed smoking in enclosed workspaces without any restriction
- Had a no-smoking policy that existed on paper but was not enforced
- Never warned workers about the health risks of secondhand smoke
- Failed to provide workers with a safe place to work, free from substances it knew were dangerous
You Deserve Answers
If you worked for a railroad, never smoked, and have been diagnosed with lung cancer, bladder cancer, or another serious illness, you owe it to yourself to find out whether the railroad may bear responsibility.
FELA cases are different from ordinary workers’ compensation claims. The railroads have experienced legal teams defending these cases. That is why it is important to work with an attorney who understands FELA toxic tort claims and has handled railroad exposure cases before.
Call Hughes Law Offices at 312-877-5588 for a free consultation. There is no cost or obligation to talk to us.
