Pennsylvania: Firefighter Fails to Show Causal Connection Between Cancer and Employment

In order for a Pennsylvania firefighter to recover occupational disease benefits related to cancer, he or she must not only show that the firefighter was exposed to Group 1 IARC carcinogens (“Group 1 carcinogens”) and that the firefighter contracted cancer, the firefighter must also show that the type of cancer contracted is a type of cancer typically associated with such Group 1 carcinogens. Accordingly, the appellate court affirmed a denial of benefits to a firefighter who had contracted squamous cell carcinoma on his right vocal cord. The Board concluded that the firefighter had offered inadequate evidence linking his cancer to Group 1 carcinogens where his medical expert admitted he had not considered the methodologies used by public health experts to determine what exposures cause cancer, including studies published by the EPA, the VA, the National Academy of Science, and the IARC. The court added that only after a firefighter had established that his or her cancer was an occupational disease did the rebuttable presumptions favoring firefighters (and others) come into play.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Capaldi v. Workers’ Comp. Appeal Bd. (City of Philadelphia), 2017 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 3 (Jan. 9, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, §§ 52.07.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law