Even with chain smokers, lung cancer can be an occupational disease

BSG: At high chromium load on other causes does not matter
Kassel (jur). The Federal Social Court (BSG) has significantly facilitated access to occupational disease compensation for smokers with lung cancer. If the level of exposure to chromium was so high that this alone could be considered as a "major cause" for the disease, further causes such as tobacco consumption no longer matter, the BSG ruled on Thursday, March 30, 2017, in Kassel (Az .: B 2 U 6/15 R).

Thus it recognized the bronchial carcinoma of a former welder as an occupational disease. This was from 1977 to 1985 at ThyssenKrupp in Hillen Dillenburg exposed to heavy loads of chromium, nickel and asbestos. However, he was also a heavy smoker: For 30 years he had smoked 20 cigarettes a day.

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According to the Occupational Diseases Ordinance, various toxic substances are believed to trigger certain diseases. In some cases, there are fixed limits, from which the burden at the workplace - regardless of other possible causes - as a major cause of a disease applies, such as asbestos and lung cancer. This threshold was not reached here, however.

For other substances, the scientific data do not provide such a clear limit. Instead, there are "orientation values" from which at least one co-causation is to be assumed. For certain chromium compounds, the orientation value has been reduced several times in recent years. The currently assumed value was exceeded here.

Nonetheless, the employers' liability insurance association did not think that such causal research was involved. Given the years of heavy tobacco consumption, the main cause of lung cancer is clear.

The BSG did not follow that. Thereafter, the cause research is to be separated into two clearly separated steps. Only at the "first stage" should it be examined which of the known causes may have led to the disease with what probability.

Which cause is considered to be the "essential cause" can only then be clarified in the "second stage". It should be noted that just cancer always have several causes. Which cause of the statutory accident insurance is considered "essential" is therefore no longer a matter of statistics, but "a pure legal question," emphasized the Kassel judges.

Here, the Hessian State Social Court (LSG) has found binding that the chromium load of the welder would have caused lung cancer in itself with high probability. In this situation, "the presence of further effects is no longer legally relevant," the BSG ruled.

The LSG is therefore now to clarify how high was the reduction in earning caused by the lung cancer of the welder. This will then result in possible earlier claims for a survivor's pension and, in addition, possible widow's entitlement to a survivor's pension. mwo / fle