Under Labor Code 3208.3, injuries can be described as which two categories?

• A. Acute and chronic
• B. Cumulative and specific
• C. Temporary and permanent
• D. Local and systemic

Answer: (B)

Under California workers’ compensation law, injuries are described in two ways: cumulative injuries and specific injuries. A cumulative injury comes from repeated exposure or repetitive trauma over time—think conditions that develop gradually from ongoing work activities, such as carpal tunnel from repetitive keyboarding or noise-induced hearing loss from long-term exposure. These injuries don’t have a single moment of onset but rather a gradual build-up.

A specific injury, on the other hand, results from a distinct incident or event, where the injury occurs at a particular time due to a definite cause, like a fall, a lifting mishap, or a single traumatic blow.

Labor Code 3208.3 embraces these two categories to classify injuries for purposes of workers’ compensation. The other options don’t fit this statutory framework: acute/chronic are general medical descriptors, temporary/permanent describe disability duration, and local/systemic describe distribution rather than the category used in the statute.