occupational disease

A disease (as black lung disease incurred by miners) resulting from exposure during employment to conditions or substances detrimental to health. Impairment of health not caused by accident but by exposure to conditions incidental to and arising out of or in the course of one's employment. Such disease may be found if there is substantial evidence that either employment conditions specifically affected the employee in a matter resulting in contraction of disease, or employment conditions generally tend, to a reasonable medical probability, to cause a particular disease or condition in a given class of workers. Dealers Transport Co. v. Thompson, Ky.App., 593 S.W.2d 84, 88.

A disease is compensable under workers' compensation statute as being an "occupational" disease where:

(1) the disease is contracted in the course of employment;

(2) the disease is peculiar to the claimant's employment by its causes and the characteristics of its manifestation or the conditions of employment result in a hazard which distinguishes the employment in character from employment generally; and

(3) the employment creates a risk of contracting the disease in a greater degree and in a different manner than in the public generally. State ex rel. Ohio Bell Tel. Co. v. Krise, 42 Ohio St.2d 247, 327 N.E.2d 756, 758, 71 O.O.2d 226.

Compensation for such is provided by state workers' compensation acts and such federal acts as the Black Lung Benefits Act