Sophie Zavaglia: Veterans of the armed forces make up approximately 30 percent of all mesothelioma diagnoses in the United States, and that high rate of incidence in the veteran population is not a coincidence. Asbestos was used throughout the military, especially in the Navy and on naval ships, but also in the Army, in the Air Force, in the Marine Corps. Asbestos was a lot of places, and we’re going to be talking about that in today’s episode, about why it is that veterans are so much at a higher risk of developing asbestos-related diseases. So if you or someone you’re related to is a veteran and they’re struggling with breathing problems, this episode is for you.
Welcome to The Asbestos Files, where we expose corporate greed, cut through the confusion, and fight for people who deserve answers. My name is Sophie Zavaglia. I’m a trial attorney at SWMW Law, where we believe that when corporations put profits over safety, people deserve a fighter in their corner who’s willing to stand up to corporate greed. Today’s episode is about the military and about our service men and women who have a higher risk of developing asbestos-related diseases.
First, we have to understand why it is that veterans are at a higher risk of developing mesothelioma, lung cancer, or a whole number of asbestos-related diseases. Asbestos was used in a number of different ways throughout the military. If you’ve watched one of our earlier episodes, you’ll recall that one of the properties that made asbestos so useful, and one of the reasons it was used so frequently, not only in the United States but globally, is because asbestos is great at doing several things. The primary thing asbestos is great at is preventing people from getting burned; it’s a very excellent insulating material, and it also prevents fires from breaking out.
Because of the heat-resistant properties of asbestos, and also because asbestos was very cheap in the 1960s and the 1970s, and because it was everywhere and very easily accessible, the US government used asbestos-containing materials throughout the military. One of the highest-risk environments that used a lot of asbestos was in the Navy and in shipbuilding. Consider the nature of a naval ship: it’s essentially a fully functional city in one place that’s going out on the ocean. Naval ships had boilers, piping running throughout, and a lot of equipment that needed and generated heat in order to power the ship. Anytime you’re dealing with a boiler or equipment that generates heat, you need some sort of insulating material to prevent the people on the ship from getting burned, and that’s where asbestos comes in.
Asbestos was used in a number of different applications: not only insulation on boilers, but also insulation on pipes throughout the ship, and insulating materials like gaskets and packing that went into equipment like pumps and valves, of which there are hundreds on any given ship. In addition to boilers, there’s also the heat associated with engine rooms and all the other equipment that made the ship run.
Because ships were so heavily loaded with asbestos, there’s a risk not only to the service members who served aboard them, we’ve heard from many different clients who say that even in their sleeping quarters, their bunks were underneath a lot of piping that was insulated throughout the entirety of the ship. So it’s not just the servicemen and women working down in the engine rooms, tending the boilers, or working on pumps and valves; it’s also just from being in a closed environment and serving aboard those ships. Maybe you accidentally bump some insulated piping, and if you know anything about asbestos insulation, after a while it can start to crumble if you even so much as bump it a little.
Even people who did not serve in the military but worked in industries that served the military, shipbuilding facilities and shipyards, the people actually building the boats that would eventually become these naval ships, are at risk as well, because they’re the ones installing that equipment, manipulating materials, cutting into insulation, cutting gaskets to size, and packing valves with asbestos-containing packing material. Anytime those ships get repaired or overhauled, those are all exposure points.
The Navy was not the only branch that puts a veteran at higher risk of developing an asbestos-related disease. In the Army, for example, one of the highest exposure points for asbestos is in motor pools. If you’ve listened to any of these episodes in the past, you might recall that one of the main industries that used asbestos was the automotive industry, and that’s true for military motor pools as well. In a civilian context, a person might be exposed to brakes and clutches that contained asbestos in passenger vehicles and trucks, and that’s a meaningful exposure point on its own. But in the military, we need to put it on a much bigger scale, brakes and clutches in things like tanks and military vehicles, and much larger military-grade friction materials. Anytime those materials are removed, there’s deterioration of that asbestos-containing material, generating fibers and dust, whether or not it’s visible to the human eye.
People who worked in motor pools, on army vehicles, pickup trucks, and tanks, have a higher risk of exposure through that work, especially if they were serving in the military in the 1960s, the 1970s, and even through the 1980s. One thing I think a lot of people don’t realize is that many brake manufacturers in the United States continued using asbestos in their brake materials through the end of the 1980s. Some companies even continued using asbestos in their brake materials up through the 2000s. So we’re not just talking about the 1960s or the seventies. If you’re doing work on military vehicles up through the 1980s, maybe even into the nineties or early 2000s, there’s still potential exposure to this cancerous material.
The same is true of airplanes: a different type of vehicle, but one that needs very heavy equipment to help it stop, which is where brake materials come in, and those widely contained asbestos through the 1980s and, in certain cases, the 1990s. When we have a client who served in the military, one of the exposure points we look at is how often they were doing this kind of work; basically, any time a person is working on friction materials, insulation, or component parts that either protected against heat or stopped equipment in motion, those are relevant exposure points. This is also true in the Marine Corps, involving similar equipment and exposure points through ships and other vehicles.
People often ask which type of rating or role is most likely to have been exposed. Some of the ratings we’ve seen through our practice include boiler technicians, machinist mates, hull maintenance technicians, anybody working in the motor pool for the Army or Marines, anybody working in construction directly for the military or as part of a military base being constructed, and any service members doing maintenance on vehicles or planes, including aviation mechanics.
If you’re a veteran who has recently become sick and it comes out that you’ve been exposed to asbestos or you suspect you have been, you might wonder what your options are for compensation. My own belief, and our firm’s belief, is that you should seek whatever compensation you’re entitled to. The two main ways we’ve seen veterans compensated for an asbestos-related illness, and these usually aren’t either-or, people are usually getting both, are civil litigation, which is what my firm does by filing a lawsuit, and going through the VA to file a claim.
Let’s talk about those two ways for a moment. First, the VA does an amazing job for our service men and women who need medical help, and there’s a way for veterans to seek disability benefits through the VA for service-connected diseases like mesothelioma. There’s no other recognized cause of mesothelioma in the United States other than exposure to asbestos, but there are paperwork requirements and procedural hurdles to get those benefits. That’s one option available to our veterans who have gotten sick.
The other is civil litigation: hiring an attorney who’s going to be in your corner, not to sue the military, that’s not something we’re able to do, but to sue the companies that actually made the products. The same companies making piping insulation, boilers, pumps, and valves for civilian use also made that equipment for military use. So if you ever do file a lawsuit as a service member, your attorney very well may sue the exact same companies they’d sue if you hadn’t served in the military, because those companies made products for both civilian and military use.
One of the main things we want our clients to know is that these two avenues, going through the VA for a disability benefit, or hiring a lawyer, are not an either-or choice, even though a lot of people are, understandably, worried that they are. We get calls from people who are currently receiving VA disability benefits, who depend on those benefits, and who fear that if they hire a law firm like mine, they’ll lose those benefits, or that the VA will somehow take them away. That’s simply not the case. Normally, when our law firm gets involved, our clients receive both, and we make sure their disability benefits are protected at all costs.
Veterans also don’t necessarily have to file a lawsuit. There’s a whole range of administrative trusts, asbestos bankruptcy trusts, which we talked about briefly in a previous episode. If a lawsuit isn’t right for your particular circumstances, but we think we can get you compensation through an administrative path, we pursue all avenues, and any asbestos attorney worth your time is going to do the same.
One other important thing to know when it comes to getting compensation for veterans specifically: there is a clock that starts at the time of diagnosis. One of the main ways we look at whether we can file a lawsuit, or do anything for any client who comes through our door, is by looking at the statute of limitations, a legal term meaning that if you know you’ve been injured, you have a certain amount of time, depending on what state you live in, to file a claim. If you don’t file by the end of that time clock, you’re out of luck.
Thankfully this doesn’t happen too often, but a lot of times we get people, or more likely the children of people who have passed away, who come to us and say something like, “I just put two and two together. I know my dad served in the Navy for 15 or 20 years and worked with asbestos-containing materials, and he died of mesothelioma ten years ago. Can I do anything about that?” And the answer, unfortunately, is probably not, because most states have a time limit anywhere from one year to, in Missouri for example, a five-year injury statute of limitations. If a person dies, the statute of limitations is sometimes shorter after death, so it might be two years after death.
That’s why it’s so important, when you have any suspicion at all, and especially with a condition like mesothelioma, where there’s frankly no other recognized cause in the United States, that you call somebody experienced in these matters to determine whether or not you have a case at all. In another episode we’ll be talking about what a case is worth and how you know whether it’s worth pursuing. The bottom line is that every state has a different time limit and different laws, which is why you need to contact somebody who knows how these things work in this industry, because even for seasoned attorneys, the rules, regulations, and the ins and outs of asbestos land are incredibly confusing. If I’m being perfectly honest, even for somebody who’s been doing this over a decade, sometimes it can be confusing. That’s why you need a great fighter in your corner.
Next, we’re going to shift gears and answer some more of your questions in the Ask Sophie segment. The first question today is: I was in the Navy 40 years ago, is it too late for me to file a claim? The answer is not necessarily. Like we talked about earlier, it all depends on when you’re diagnosed with a compensable disease, meaning some sort of injury we can relate to asbestos exposure. Mesothelioma is one of the classic diseases related to asbestos in the US; lung cancers, esophageal cancers, and laryngeal cancers are also caused by exposure to asbestos, and then there’s also asbestosis, which is just a medical term for lung scarring that affects the way you can breathe.
So if somebody comes into our office and says, “I was in the Navy 40 years ago, is it too late for me to file?” my first answer is not necessarily, because it depends on when they were diagnosed. Once we figure out, say, that this person was diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease within the last year, or maybe two months before they came in, that’s at least the start of the analysis of whether or not we can file a claim on their behalf. It certainly wouldn’t be too late. It all depends on your particular set of circumstances, and you need somebody knowledgeable about this litigation to ask you the right questions. But just on its face, serving in the Navy 40 years ago is not a bar to recovery. What’s really going to matter is when you were diagnosed with a disease, and then what you can remember about the types of products you worked with.
I’ll add that the good thing about exposure in the military, to the extent you could call it good, is that there are a lot of records. All that equipment had to be approved by the military to be put on any type of naval ship or used as a military vehicle, so even if you don’t remember all the equipment off the bat, if you know what ship you served aboard, we can look up the records of that particular ship and see what specific brands of boilers, pumps, valves, and air compressors were approved for use on that ship.
Next question: my father was a shipyard worker but was not in the military, does any of this apply to him? Yes. Just because you weren’t actually in the military doesn’t mean you can’t get compensated for work done with asbestos in service of the military. There are plenty of companies that worked as government contractors, building bases and using insulating materials for buildings or building the military vehicles themselves. Just because someone wasn’t in the military, even if they were working around it and exposed to asbestos, that can be enough to file a claim, it just requires a little additional legwork to figure out where they worked and what equipment they remember.
Finally: can I pursue both VA benefits and a lawsuit? The short answer is yes. There are a lot of different processes to pursue compensation for people exposed to asbestos, and pursuing one doesn’t affect the other. We know that a lot of veterans depend on the disability benefits they’ve earned through their service, and filing a lawsuit is not going to affect those benefits or get them taken away.
I appreciate the questions people send in. If you have others, please send them in, and I’ll put our contact information in the show notes so you can let us know what you want covered in our next Ask Sophie segment. That’s it for today’s episode. One of the most rewarding parts of doing this work is serving our clients, especially when they’re people who have sacrificed so much so the rest of us can live free in this country. It makes it that much more meaningful for us to do this work when we’re serving people who have given everything to their country and unfortunately gotten sick as a result of that service.
That’s it for today’s Asbestos Files. If you or someone you know has been diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease and you want to talk to somebody who knows how this litigation works, check out our contact information in the show notes or visit our website at swmwlaw.com. At my law firm, SWMW, we believe that people matter and that people deserve an advocate on their behalf. I’m Sophie Zavaglia, and I appreciate you listening.
