By John Cooper, Railroad Injury Attorney

Six years after a Norfolk Southern chemical tanker train car derailed and released a deadly cloud of chlorine gas in Graniteville, South Carolina (SC), the railroad has been ordered to reimburse its insurer for $58 million paid out to the survivors of the nine town residents who lost their lives and to the more than 250 rail employees and others injured by the spill. NS had fought against paying that bill because it claimed it had already incurred hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses for compensating victims of the toxic chemical accident.

This derailed Norfolk Southern train released chlorine gas that killed nine and injured more than 250 in Graniteville, South Carolina.

From a strictly business perspective, it makes sense that NS would not want to continue paying for its mistake, even though the rail operator has been consistently reporting strong to record quarterly profits over the past few years. I’ve written more than once about the railroad’s preference for profits over people’s safety.

What bears particular mention in regards to the South Carolina chemical spill is the risks rail workers and people living and working close to train tracks face from poisonous and harmful fumes. Some of this risk is inherent in transporting ingredients required for everything from fertilizing farm fields and treating drinking water to producing plastics and other consumer goods. Because of that, however, rail operators must take every precaution against accidentally spilling or releasing chemicals. The companies should be even more protective of their employees who often cannot avoid exposure to chemicals that can damage their lungs, eyes and skin.

Norfolk Southern continues to learn an expensive lesson in how failing to haul chemicals safely can impact the bottom line. Too many people in South Carolina learned the more important lesson about the human cost of chemical spills. In a better world, NS would convert its dollars into sense, willingly pay fair compensation to the families they harmed, and spend whatever time and money it needed to in order to prevent future tragedies.

EJL

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is an injury law firm with a long history of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Our offices are in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA), and Elizabeth City, North Carolina (NC). Our lawyers hold licenses in VA, NC, SC, WV, KY and DC and have handled hundreds of railroad injury and FELA cases throughout the eastern United States. We would like to send you one of our FREE reports about railroad injury and FELA cases, including Dos and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). We provide free initial confidential injury case consultations, so call us toll free at (800) 752-0042 before giving any statement or talking to a railroad claims agent. Our injury attorneys also host an extensive injury law video library on Youtube. Furthermore, our lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Richard N. Shapiro, FELA Attorney

BNSF employees, firefighters and other emergency response personnel spent Monday, February 28, 2011, cleaning up lye spilled from one of the railroad’s freight trains that had derailed on the shores of the Puget Sound in Washington (WA) over the weekend. No immediate injuries or deaths from the derailment or toxic chemical release were reported, and rail service has resumed on the tracks outside the city of University Place near Tacoma.

The BNSF train derailed after sideswiping another train. No cause for that collision has been determined.

Officials estimate that 50 gallons of lye leaked out of one of 15,000-gallon tanker cars that overturned when it went off the rails. Lye, which is also known as caustic soda and has the chemical name sodium hydroxide, is used to soften water by removing dissolved minerals and as an active ingredient in industrial cleaning compounds. The chemical can also cause severe burns to people’s skin, eyes, mouth, throat and lungs when they get it on themselves or breathe in fumes. Putting lye in water sends up large clouds of harmful gas. The damage done by lye burns can be permanent, especially if the chemical gets into a person’s esophagus or lungs.

The accident in Washington was at least the second dangerous spill of toxic chemicals from a freight train in the United States during the month of February. On the 20th, three Norfolk Southern contract workers needed hospital treatment for inhalation and contact injuries caused by exposure to molten sulfur. Those NS employees were not wearing protective suits when they got hurt in Roanoke, Virginia (VA).

Freight train tankers are an efficient and economical way to transport potentially deadly chemicals, ranging from sulfuric acid to chlorine gas. But as the two recent chemical accidents show, engineers, conductors, trackmen, switchmen and other rail workers face significant risks to their lives and health when they haul or work on and around tank cars filled with such volatile cargo. Railroad operators such as BNSF, CSX, NS and Union Pacific must do everything they can to protect their employees from chemical poisoning and burns, as well as long-term health problems such as respiratory failure caused by damaged or cancer-riddled lungs.

EJL

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is an injury law firm with a long history of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Our offices are in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA), and Elizabeth City, North Carolina (NC). Our lawyers hold licenses in VA, NC, SC, WV, KY and DC and have handled hundreds of railroad injury and FELA cases throughout the eastern United States. We would like to send you one of our FREE reports about railroad injury and FELA cases, including Dos and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). We provide free initial confidential injury case consultations, so call us toll free at (800) 752-0042 before giving any statement or talking to a railroad claims agent. Our injury attorneys also host an extensive injury law video library on Youtube. Furthermore, our lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Randy E. Appleton, Attorney

When a railroad injury/accident involves release of toxic or hazardous fumes/smoke, a permanent lung/breathing disease or chemical inhalation injury may result. The cause may be a crash, derailment or even a defect or malfunction on an engine, affecting the engineer or conductor, or even a by-stander.  The Locomotive Inspection Act requires that railroads keep engines in good working order and most defects are violations of the federal regulations.  My colleague Richard N. Shapiro wrote an interesting article fully discussing engine explosions and the release of toxic fumes and smoke, as well as the locomotive inspection act requirements that apply to railroad activities.

By Rick Shapiro, Railroad Accident/FELA Lawyer

Why did railroad companies fail to remove asbestos insulation from diesel locomotive engines? It’s a question with no definitive answer, but I believe it’s simply because removing all of the toxic material cost a lot of money. Many of the railroads knowingly chose to remove asbestos only when other major repairs were being done on the engines. Other railroads delayed removal of asbestos from diesel engines.  These actions fail to seriously follow the advice of the railroad’s prominent medical doctors  who argued that all asbestos should be removed from engines and other places by the late 1970s. By this time, railroads – including the Chessie System (later became CSX) had employees struggling with mesothelioma. Shockingly, these workers did not even have extensive asbestos exposure.

In delaying any action to remove asbestos from diesel locomotive engines, the railroads played russian roulette with its own employees knowing full well that even a microscopic amount of tiny asbestos fibers can cause lung cancer or mesothelioma, even decades after the minimal exposure. In addition, the railroads were knowledgeable by the 1960s and 1970s that railroad workers who smoke cigarettes were facing especially high risks of cancers.

Medical researchers learned, for reasons that are not completely understood, that workers exposed to asbestos who also smoked cigarettes, had about 83 fold relative risk increase whereas there was only a 10 percent relative risk increase in workers who were not smokers!

In other words, the relative risk for smokers of over a pack a day compared to non-smoking asbestos workers was a difference of about 73 fold relative risk increase. This is called the synergistic effect of combining asbestos fiber exposure and cigarette smoking and sadly the railroads never notified railroad workers who smoke about this increased relative risk, but let’s remember the railroads never told workers about the asbestos being in the engines either.

All of this points to a complete disregard by the railroad companies for the health and safety of their employees. It’s outrageous and railroad workers who contract mesothelioma and suspect it was due to asbestos exposure should contact an attorney immediately to discuss filing a claim against the company.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsRBNLE-z2M&rel=0]

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is an injury law firm with a long history of representing hundreds of railroad workers in FELA/ railroad injury cases. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Our offices are in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA) and Elizabeth City, North Carolina (NC). Our lawyers hold licenses in VA, NC, SC, WV, KY and DC and have handled railroad injury and FELA cases throughout the eastern U.S.  We would like to send you one of our FREE reports about railroad injury and FELA cases, including Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad – The Railroad Worker’s FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). We are ready to talk to you by phone right now—we provide free initial confidential injury case consultations, so call us toll free at 1-800-752-0042 before giving any statement or talking to a railroad claims agent. Our injury attorneys also host an extensive injury law video library on Youtube . Furthermore, our lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.