What Do ‘Injury’ and ‘Occupational Disease’ Mean in Kentucky?

Glossary Check

Elizabethtown, KY (WorkersCompensation.com) -- Let's say you find yourself in the Bluegrass State and someone needs to know, for workers' compensation purposes, what an injury is and what an occupational disease is.

If you had a Simply Research subscription, you'd have definitions from every U.S. jurisdiction at your fingertips, but in case you haven't signed up yet, you can tell them:

Injury. Any work-related traumatic event or series of traumatic events, including cumulative trauma, arising out of and in the course of employment that is the proximate cause producing a harmful change in the human organism evidenced by objective medical findings.

"Injury" does not include the effects of the natural aging process, and does not include any communicable disease unless the risk of contracting the disease is increased by the nature of the employment.

"Injury," when used generally, includes an occupational disease and damage to a prosthetic appliance, but it does not include a psychological, psychiatric, or stress-related change in the human organism, unless it is a direct result of a physical injury.

Occupational disease. A disease arising out of and in the course of employment.

An occupational disease is deemed to arise out of the employment if there is apparent to the rational mind, upon consideration of all the circumstances, a causal connection between the conditions under which the work is performed and the occupational disease, and which can be seen to have followed as a natural incident to the work as a result of the exposure occasioned by the nature of the employment and that can be fairly traced to the employment as the proximate cause.

The occupational disease must be incidental to the character of the business and not independent of the relationship of the employer and employee. An occupational disease doesn't need to have been foreseen or expected, but after its contraction, it must appear to be related to a risk connected with the employment and to have flowed from that source as a rational consequence.

Injurious Exposure. An exposure to an occupational hazard that would independently of any other cause whatsoever, produce or cause the disease for which the claim is made.

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