Asbestos Exposure at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard

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

Last updated: September 7, 2026

The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard was one of the largest and most active naval shipyards in the United States, and for generations the people who built and overhauled ships there worked around asbestos every day — often without knowing it. This page explains, in plain terms, how and where exposure happened at the yard, who was affected, the illnesses linked to it, and why that history can still matter today.

About the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard

The yard's roots go back to shipbuilding along the Delaware River, and it became an official U.S. Navy site in 1801. The original Southwark facility was outgrown, and the federal government bought League Island, at the meeting of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, for one dollar in 1868. The larger yard was built out there through the 1870s.

World War II was the peak. Around 40,000 people worked the yard around the clock, building 53 warships and repairing, converting, or overhauling 1,218 more. The last ship built there was USS Blue Ridge, launched in January 1969. Work continued for another quarter century after that, and the yard closed in September 1996 under the federal base closure process. The site is now a commercial complex.

The yard reached its peak during World War II, when roughly 40,000 people worked around the clock — building 53 warships and repairing well over 1,000 more. It continued building and overhauling vessels through the postwar decades before the Navy ended operations there in the 1990s under the federal Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process; the site has since been redeveloped as a commercial complex. Through the decades when the yard was most active, asbestos was a standard shipbuilding material, which is why so many of the people who worked there were exposed.

Why Asbestos Was Present

Wartime construction put asbestos into every boiler, steam line, gasket, and insulated compartment of 53 new warships. That is the part people expect.

The larger chapter came afterward. For decades Philadelphia worked mainly as an overhaul yard, and overhaul means tearing old insulation back out. Material that has sat against hot machinery for twenty years is dry and crumbling, and breaking it apart raises far more dust than installing new lagging ever did. For the general background, see asbestos exposure in shipyards and naval service.

Where Exposure May Have Happened

The overhaul era concentrated exposure in predictable places:

• Dry docks during major overhauls, when machinery spaces were opened up and stripped
• The carrier Service Life Extension Program of the 1980s, which gutted and rebuilt 1950s-era carriers still full of their original asbestos
• Boiler and machinery spaces during rip-out, the dustiest single job in a shipyard
• The yard's pipe, boiler, and machine shops, where contaminated components were rebuilt
• Berths and piers where ships sat through long availabilities with work ongoing
• Wartime building ways during the construction years

Overhaul work also meant ships' crews often remained aboard or nearby while their vessel was torn apart, putting sailors in the dust alongside yard workers.

Your Ship Did Not Have to Be Built Here

Philadelphia is often pictured as a shipbuilding yard. It mostly was not. Across roughly 120 years the yard laid keel and launched only about seventy Navy and Coast Guard vessels. Almost everything else it did was outfitting, repair, overhaul, and storage of ships built somewhere else.

For much of the postwar era Philadelphia was home port to the Reserve Inactive Fleet, the mothball fleet. Ships pulled out of service were sealed up and tied off here by the hundreds. By the early 1960s that fleet was nearly as large as the entire U.S. Navy had been at the time of Pearl Harbor. As late as 1995 the yard still held two battleships, a heavy cruiser, two aircraft carriers, and two amphibious assault ships in storage, and the Navy kept the Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility running after the shipyard itself closed.

Mothballing and reactivation are their own kind of exposure. Sealing a ship meant working through her machinery spaces. Bringing one back, as the Navy did in quantity for Korea, meant opening compartments that had been closed for years and working on insulation that had been left to dry out and crumble.

Then came the carriers. Starting in the late 1970s the yard ran the Service Life Extension Program, gutting and rebuilding 1950s-era carriers that still carried their original asbestos. Saratoga came first, followed by Forrestal, Independence, Kitty Hawk, and Constellation. The final contract was USS John F. Kennedy, which arrived in 1993 and finished in September 1995, a year before the yard closed.

The practical point for anyone reading this is simple. A Philadelphia exposure does not depend on the yard having built your ship. Most of the asbestos work here was done on ships that arrived from elsewhere, and the ship you served on or worked aboard is what ties you to the yard.

Who May Have Been Exposed

Around 40,000 people worked the yard at its wartime peak, and a large workforce stayed on through the overhaul decades until it closed in 1996. Those most exposed included:

• Rip-out and lagging crews, including insulators removing decades-old material
• Boilermakers and pipefitters and steamfitters rebuilding propulsion plants
• Machinists, welders, electricians, and shipfitters working the same opened spaces
• Ships' force sailors aboard during overhauls and SLEP availabilities

Family members exposed through dust carried home on work clothes are also part of the yard's exposure pattern.

Illnesses Linked to the Exposure

Because Philadelphia's exposure window runs so late, into the 1980s and 1990s, its related diagnoses of mesothelioma (pleural and peritoneal), asbestos-related lung cancer, and asbestosis are still working through the latency period today.

Why This History Can Matter in a Claim

Two things help a Philadelphia claimant. The Court of Common Pleas runs one of the country's longest-standing coordinated asbestos programs, and yard claims have moved through it for decades, so the materials and conditions involved are already well established in the record.

The other is the calendar. Heavy overhaul work here ran into the 1990s, which puts the yard's exposure window decades later than most navy yards. Diagnoses from that era are surfacing now. The filing clock starts at the diagnosis rather than the exposure, each state sets its own deadline, and whether any particular situation fits depends on the facts.

If you are looking into this for yourself or a family member of yourself or a family member, our companion directory can connect you with Pennsylvania asbestos lawyers who handle these matters, and you can also see who may qualify for an asbestos claim.

Records That Can Help

For the later decades, records are often better than people expect. Civilian Department of Defense employment files, Navy records showing which ship a sailor was aboard during which availability, and Philadelphia union local books can all place a person in the yard during specific work. The SLEP carriers help most of all, because each one has a documented arrival and departure date. Naming the carrier can fix a work history to a two-year window without any employment paperwork. Job titles, dates, ships, and shops all help. See records that help support an asbestos claim.

Common Questions

I worked SLEP overhauls in the 1980s. Is that recent enough to matter?

It may be the opposite: 1980s exposure is now 40-plus years old, squarely inside the typical latency window, and diagnoses from that work are surfacing now. The filing clock generally starts at diagnosis.

My ship was built at another yard but overhauled at Philadelphia. Does that count?

That is the usual pattern here rather than the exception. Philadelphia built only about seventy ships in 120 years and spent the rest of its working life repairing, overhauling, and storing vessels built elsewhere. What connects a person to the yard is the ship they were aboard or working on while it was there.

Was overhaul work really worse than building ships?

Often, yes. New insulation was installed wet or in finished form, while rip-out meant breaking apart dry, decades-old material in enclosed spaces. Removal work consistently produced the heaviest dust.

I was ship's crew during an overhaul, not a yard employee. Does this apply to me?

Yes. Crews frequently lived and stood watch aboard or beside their ships during availabilities, sharing the same air as the yard workers stripping the machinery spaces.

Sources

• Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, "Philadelphia Navy Yard" — the yard's role as an overhaul and reserve-fleet base rather than a builder, and the September 1996 closure.
• GlobalSecurity.org, Philadelphia Naval Shipyard site record — the SLEP and Kennedy overhaul schedule and the inventory of ships in storage as of 1995.
• Historical Marker Database, "The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard" — wartime construction and repair totals, the SLEP carrier sequence, and the Reserve Inactive Fleet.

Figures and dates above should be confirmed against the original sources.

Related Pages

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.