Evidencia científica y responsabilidad legal en salud laboralrecargo de prestaciones por falta de medidas de seguridad e higiene tras la muerte por mesotelioma de un trabajador
- Benavides, Fernando G.
- Menéndez Navarro, Alfredo
- Delclòs, Jordi
- Luque Parra, Manuel
ISSN: 1138-9672, 1578-2549
Year of publication: 2012
Volume: 15
Issue: 2
Pages: 86-89
Type: Article
More publications in: Archivos de prevención de riesgos laborales
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to reflect, under the precautionary principle, on the relationship between scientific causation and legal liability in connection with a lawsuit regarding compensation for lack of occupational safety and hygiene controls following the death of a worker with mesothelioma that had been previously accepted as an occupational disease. The worker had spent 28 years as a shipyard welder, with a diagnosis of occupationally-related mesothelioma in 2007, and who died in 2009. After reviewing the advances in a) scientific knowledge on the health effects of asbestos exposure, which were consolidated between 1955 and 1976, and b) the development of a regulatory framework for the protection of workers in Spain that began generically in 1940 and became more specific in 1982, we conclude that our case probably would have benefited from application of the precautionary principle, which is now widely accepted.