Asbestos Exposure at the Brooklyn Navy Yard

By David Meldofsky, California-licensed attorney · Founder, Lawsuit Informer

Last updated: September 7, 2026

If your father or grandfather worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, he almost certainly worked around asbestos. So did everyone else there. Building and repairing warships meant handling insulation, gaskets, and packing that were made of it, and for most of the yard's history nobody told the workforce what that meant. This page covers where the exposure happened, who it reached, the illnesses tied to it, and why the yard's history still matters to a claim today.

About the Brooklyn Navy Yard

Established in 1801 on Wallabout Bay in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Navy Yard — formally the New York Naval Shipyard — operated as a U.S. Navy shipbuilding and repair facility for about 165 years, until it was decommissioned in 1966 and sold to the City of New York. At its peak during World War II it employed roughly 70,000 people working around the clock, making it one of New York City's largest single industrial employers.

The yard built warships for more than a century. The battleship USS Arizona went down the ways there in 1915, and USS Missouri followed in 1944, the ship on whose deck Japan surrendered the following year. Through every decade the yard was busy, asbestos was ordinary shipbuilding material. That is why so many people who worked there were exposed.

One correction worth making, because it appears on a lot of sites. USS Monitor was not built here. The Civil War ironclad was built at Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint, a private yard a few miles up the East River, with its engines and turret made by two other New York firms. Monitor only left from the Navy Yard, in February 1862.

Why Asbestos Was Present

Brooklyn built big ships, and building a big ship from the keel up used more asbestos than almost any other work in the country. One battleship held several boiler rooms and miles of high-pressure steam pipe, and all of it had to be insulated. There was more asbestos in the gaskets, in the packing around valve stems, in block and cement insulation, and in the lining of closed compartments. During the wartime rush that produced Missouri, insulation crews worked around the clock next to every other trade in the yard. For why ships were built this way, see asbestos exposure in shipyards and naval service.

Where Exposure May Have Happened

On a new-construction yard, exposure followed the ship through its stages of completion:

• The building ways and construction berths, where hulls took shape and insulation work began early
• Fitting-out, when boilers, turbines, and steam lines were installed and lagged while dozens of trades worked the same compartments
• The yard's dry docks, where repair and conversion work disturbed insulation already in place
• Wartime battle-damage repair, which meant tearing out and replacing asbestos materials on ships returning from sea
• Below-deck spaces during construction, where ventilation systems were not yet operating and dust had nowhere to go
• Yard shops, where insulated components and contaminated equipment were fabricated and rebuilt

A ship being built is a sealed steel box with every trade working in it at once. A welder two compartments away from an insulation crew still breathed the same air that crew was making.

Who May Have Been Exposed

At its WWII peak the yard employed roughly 70,000 people, including the large wartime workforce of women who took up shipyard trades. Those most directly exposed included:

• Insulators applying lagging to new boilers, turbines, and piping
• Boilermakers and pipefitters and steamfitters building the propulsion plants
• Shipfitters, welders, machinists, and electricians sharing compartments with insulation work
• Laborers and sweepers who cleaned up the debris

Navy crews who came aboard during fitting-out and sea trials encountered the same materials, and family members were sometimes exposed to fibers carried home on work clothes, the pattern known as take-home or secondary exposure.

Illnesses Linked to the Exposure

Asbestos disease runs on a decades-long delay. People who built ships at the yard in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s have been diagnosed with mesothelioma (both pleural and peritoneal), asbestos-related lung cancer, and asbestosis many years after the yard itself closed.

Why This History Can Matter in a Claim

The Brooklyn Navy Yard is one of the best-documented exposure sites in the country. Decades of cases have already established what materials were used there, which companies supplied them, and what conditions were like in the shops and on the ways. A claim brought today starts from that record instead of from nothing, which is a real practical advantage.

The yard closed in 1966, so every exposure there is now more than half a century old. That is exactly the span over which these diseases appear. Deadlines to file generally run from the date of diagnosis rather than from the exposure, and they vary by state. Whether any particular situation fits depends on the facts. If you are looking into this for yourself or a family member, our companion directory can connect you with New York asbestos lawyers who handle these matters, and you can also see who may qualify for an asbestos claim.

Where a Brooklyn Navy Yard Claim Is Heard

New York City has a court docket that exists only for asbestos cases. It is called NYCAL, short for New York City Asbestos Litigation, and it gathers asbestos claims from the five boroughs before judges who handle nothing else. Very few places in the country have anything like it.

That matters for a yard claim in a practical way. The same defendants, the same products, and the same yard conditions have come up in front of the same court for decades. Testimony about what was used in Brooklyn's boiler rooms and on its building ways already exists in the record. A family starting now is not explaining the yard to a court that has never heard of it.

Where a case is actually filed still depends on the facts, including where the person lived and worked and which companies are named. A lawyer sorts that out. The point here is that a Brooklyn yard history connects to a court with unusually deep experience of exactly this kind of claim.

Records That Can Help

Records from a yard that closed in 1966 take some reconstructing, and that is normal rather than a problem. Federal civilian employment records from the yard era sit with the National Archives. Navy service records can place a sailor aboard a ship built or repaired there. New York union locals kept their own membership and dispatch books. Job titles, dates, the ships or shops someone worked, and coworkers who remember the conditions all help. For more, see records that help support an asbestos claim.

Common Questions

The yard closed in 1966. Can exposure that old still support a claim?

Often yes. Asbestos disease commonly appears 30 to 60 years after exposure, so diagnoses tracing to the yard's final working decades are still surfacing. The filing clock generally starts at diagnosis, not exposure.

My father worked there and we may have been exposed at home. Does that count?

Take-home exposure claims, based on fibers carried home on work clothing, are a recognized category in asbestos litigation. Household members who later developed asbestos disease have brought them.

I served aboard a ship built at Brooklyn but never worked at the yard. Is this page relevant?

Yes. Ships carried their asbestos with them, and Navy personnel who served aboard yard-built vessels, especially in engineering spaces, encountered the same materials for years afterward.

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About the Author

David Meldofsky is a California-licensed attorney and the founder of Lawsuit Informer, an educational platform focused on helping people understand lawsuits, consumer safety issues, and legal rights related to defective products and toxic exposures.

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Last Updated: September 7, 2026

Educational information only. Not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is formed.