Arterial hypertension and the work environment: some considerations affecting its compensability.

Hypertension can be considered work-related and, therefore, compensable when it[occurs] causes cardiac disease in occupational groups for whom cardiac ailments are legislated as being work-incurred and in workers exposed to certain nitrate explosives. In legal circles job related stresses are often invoked as a cause of hypertension and judicial precedent has accepted the medically unproven theory that hypertension develops after an exposure for long hours over a period of several years to the exasperations, frustrations, pressures, strains, and stresses of work. Apportionment of liability between industrial and non-industrial factors is a legal concept with negotiations often open to forensic debate. This could be minimized if epidemiologic information permitting the calculation of attributable risk were available. Also desirable is a better understanding of the possible contributions of common physical hazards e.g., noise and vibration, to sustained hypertension.