People ask whether their job and their condition “count.” The honest answer is that it depends less on the job than on the proof — and the clearest way to show that is to look at real cases decided in New York, including the ones that lost.
The legal test is whether there is a recognizable link between your condition and a distinctive feature of your work. Our page on occupational disease claims explains that standard. What follows is that standard applied, grouped by the kind of condition.
Respiratory disease
Asbestosis and mesothelioma from asbestos. Silicosis from silica dust. Occupational asthma and chronic bronchitis from fumes, dust and chemical exposure.
Established — a flight attendant and a uniform. Her symptoms began shortly after she started wearing an employer-provided uniform, worsened while she kept wearing it, improved when she was away from work, and resolved once she stopped. An occupational medicine specialist tied that pattern together and the Board credited it over conflicting opinions. If your exposure is not obviously industrial, this is the case to remember — clothing, cleaning products, air quality and equipment are all distinctive features of a job.
Established — baker’s asthma. Among the most common occupational asthmas in the world, it comes from breathing flour dust: the wheat and rye proteins themselves, and the enzymes added to modern flour, particularly alpha-amylase. It is a sensitization illness, developing after a period of exposure rather than on first contact. A baker can work comfortably for years and then become allergic to the room, which is exactly why these claims get doubted. New York has established flour dust asthma claims on this reasoning — in one Appellate Division case a pizza chef’s bronchial asthma and bronchitis were found compensable on “substantial medical testimony that the claimant developed this condition and that it was causally related to the work he did and his exposure to flour dust.” Bakeries, pizzerias, bagel shops, commercial kitchens.
Established — asbestos at a utility. A Consolidated Edison worker’s asbestos-related pleural disease and asbestosis were established as an occupational disease. When he later died, his widow’s death benefits claim went forward as what the court called “a separate and distinct legal proceeding” from his own disability claim, accruing at the time of death. Families should know that: the death claim is its own case, not a continuation of his.
Denied — the terrazzo worker and the epoxy. A construction worker for a flooring company claimed chemical tracheobronchitis and reactive airway dysfunction from epoxy and chemical resins. He testified he worked extensively with epoxy. His employer’s witness said he mostly cleaned the shop. The Board believed the employer, and because the medical opinions were “based entirely upon the employment history provided by claimant,” the medicine collapsed with the history.
Repetitive strain and musculoskeletal conditions
Carpal tunnel syndrome from continuous keyboard or tool use, tendinitis, and back and joint disorders from heavy repetitive lifting.
Established — 26 years of vibrating tools. A highway repairer spent 26 years on roadway work with jackhammers, chop saws, sledgehammers, pick axes and vibrating equipment, and claimed bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome, forearm tendinitis and epicondylitis. His physician’s history recorded prolonged, regular exposure to forceful motion, repeated motion, awkward positions and vibrating tools. The Board found the doctor “sufficiently informed of the claimant’s work activities to give an opinion on causal relationship” and the worker’s testimony “unrefuted.” Note that the employer had waived its own examination and cross-examination and called no witnesses, then argued the record was thin — and that the worker had not lost a single day of work.
Denied — the warehouse worker. Lifting up to fifty pounds, reaching, scanning, squatting, bending, picking from shelves; a claim covering neck, back, shoulders, hands, wrists, hips, knees and ankles. Read that description again — it is exactly what an occupational disease claim is supposed to look like. It failed because “neither the medical reports nor the medical testimony contain any information as to the methods, frequency or repetitiveness” of the tasks. The work qualified. The proof did not.
Denied — the administrative assistant. Computer work four to five hours a day, handwritten meeting minutes, transcription, filing, overhead cabinets about six times daily, claiming repetitive strain to the right arm and neck. The treating physician was inconsistent about when symptoms began and did not know the actual work history. Office work can support one of these claims — it just has to be documented as carefully as heavy labor, arguably more so, because nobody assumes a desk is dangerous.
Denied — the doctor who never made the connection. An asbestos laborer since 1992 claimed back, knee, hip and shoulder conditions from repetitive use. His physician was familiar with the work duties and still “failed to correlate any of claimant’s conditions with the performance of any specific repetitive work duties.” Knowing the job is necessary. Saying which duty caused which condition is what wins.
Hearing loss
Sustained loud machinery noise in manufacturing, construction and industrial work.
Denied — the incomplete history. An asbestos handler, roughly five years with the employer and more than thirteen in the trade, claimed binaural hearing loss from prolonged machinery noise without hearing protection. His doctor made the connection. The problem was the history he had been given: it omitted substantial noise exposure from the claimant’s later career, including construction sites and loud demonstrations. Once the omission surfaced, the opinion built on it was rejected.
An incomplete history does not merely weaken an opinion. It can destroy it.
Skin conditions
Contact dermatitis and eczema from industrial chemicals, cleaning agents, or prolonged wet work.
Established — another uniform. A second flight attendant, a different claim, the same employer-provided uniform. This time the conditions were contact dermatitis, reactive airway disease and lymphadenopathy, traced to chemically treated textiles. The court upheld the claim because the occupational physician’s testimony demonstrated “a probability as to the requisite causal connection,” supported by the timing, the known chemical sensitivity, and — this part matters — reactions among coworkers.
If people you work beside are getting the same rash, that is evidence. Find out.
Occupational cancers
Cancers linked to workplace carcinogens — radiation, toxic dusts, combustion products.
Denied — the firefighter’s prostate cancer. A firefighter and medical technician with 24 years of service, roughly 577 fire calls and more than a hundred actual fires, exposed to toxic fumes, asbestos, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and diesel exhaust, was diagnosed with prostate cancer at 51. The claim was denied as speculative: prostate cancer is common in the general population, he had no elevated risk factors, and the exposure could not be quantified. As the court put it, “medical proof must signify a probability supported by a rational basis and not be based upon a general expression of possibility.”
That is the hard part of a cancer claim, and it is worth being plain about. A career full of exposure is not the same as proof. What these claims need is exposure that can actually be characterized, and a cancer with a recognized link to it, rather than a dangerous job and a diagnosis.
One note on who this page is for. Uniformed New York City firefighters and police officers are not in the workers’ compensation system. They receive line-of-duty benefits through their own departments, under a separate framework with its own rules and its own presumptions. If that is you, this page is not your answer, and the people to ask are your department and your union.
Mental health conditions
PTSD, acute stress disorder and major depressive disorder tied to high-risk work — emergency responders, health care, public-facing jobs.
These belong on this page because people ask about them, but they do not run as occupational disease claims. Psychological injury has its own statutory track, and the rule governing it changed in 2025. We cover it separately in workers’ comp for psychological injury in New York.
One thing worth carrying over: a psychological condition that develops out of an established physical injury is different again, and generally the more straightforward path.
The pattern
Look at what separated these cases. It was not the industry, the body part, or how physical the work was. A warehouse worker lifting fifty pounds lost. A flight attendant in a uniform won twice.
Every denial failed on the history or the medical opinion, in five different ways:
- The doctors had no information about methods, frequency or repetitiveness.
- The doctor was inconsistent about onset and did not know the work history.
- The history the doctor relied on left out later exposures.
- The doctor knew the work but never tied specific duties to specific conditions.
- The employer contradicted the work history, and the Board believed the employer.
Every one of those is preventable. None required different facts — only a better record.
So does your job qualify?
Probably the wrong question. The better one is whether anyone has put your work in front of a doctor in the detail the standard requires: what you did, how often, with what force, in what position, for how many years, and which duty produced which symptom.
That is ordinary preparation, and it is the difference between the two halves of this page.
Talk to a Staten Island workers’ comp attorney
If your body has worn out from years of the same work, or you have been diagnosed with something your trade is known for, the claim is worth exploring regardless of the industry. What it needs is a record built properly before the hearing.
Call (718) 701-2776. The consultation costs nothing, and you will speak with me.
Cases discussed: Employer: NYC Dept of Transportation, WCB Case No. G367 1544 (Full Board, May 5, 2025); Matter of Molina v Delta Airlines Inc., 3d Dept 2022; Matter of Valdez v Delta Airlines, Inc., 3d Dept 2021; Matter of Kelly v Consolidated Edison Co. of N.Y., 3d Dept 2022; Matter of Urdiales v Durite Concepts Inc., 3d Dept 2021; Matter of Morgan v Kinray, Inc., 3d Dept 2024; Matter of Nicholson v New York City Health & Hosps. Corp., 3d Dept 2019; Matter of Gandurski v Abatech Indus., Inc., 3d Dept 2021; Matter of Glowczynski v Suburban Restoration Co., Inc., 3d Dept 2019; Matter of Tucker v City of Plattsburgh Fire Dept., 3d Dept 2017.
Nothing on this page is legal advice about your own claim. Each of these cases turned on its own record, and so will yours.
