Veterans willingly accepted many risks when they joined the service. But they didn’t willingly accept the risks associated with asbestos in the military. In fact, just like the Marine Corps hid the risk of poisoned water at Camp Lejeune, the military hid the risks of asbestos exposure from the people who bore nearly all that risk.

Camp Lejeune water poisoning victims may be entitled to a share of what could be a very large settlement. Likewise, an asbestos exposure lawyer can obtain compensation for veterans who worked with deadly asbestos. This compensation gives veterans the resources they need to fight their illnesses. This compensation also holds the military accountable after it neglected veterans’ health and safety for so many years.

The VA Disability System: A Primer

Just weeks before his assassination, in his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln committed “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.” This statement of purpose was the seed out of which the VA disability system grew.

Compensation, mostly cash benefits and free medical care at any VA medical facility, is available if a service-related injury or illness caused the veteran’s disability. Let’s briefly break down these three elements.

A service-related injury or illness could be a combat or non-combat wound. An asbestos exposure lawyer typically uses service records to establish this point. Sometimes, lawyers supplement these records with buddy statements from fellow veterans who testify about the applicant’s day-to-day activities (e.g. did s/he handle asbestos-laced products)..

Understanding VA Wording and Practice

“Cause” means “substantial cause.” A disease like mesothelioma lung cancer might have several contributing causes, but one substantial cause. Assume Bill loses control of his car on a rain-slicked road. That accident might have several contributing causes, such as the weather. But the accident had one substantial cause, which was probably Bill’s excessive speed.

The VA awards cash benefits based on the percentage of disability (20 percent, 90 percent, and so on). Serious asbestos exposure illnesses are nearly always 100 percent disabling or fatal. More on that below.

Usually, these benefits are retroactive to the date of disability, not the date of filing. Since many asbestos exposure illnesses have such long latency periods and victims feel the effects so gradually, the date of disability could be several years, or even several decades, prior to the filing date.

Military Asbestos Risks

Like all other organizations, the Defense Department must ensure that programs and projects are completed on time and under budget. So, like all other organizations, the Army, Navy, and other service branches often take shortcuts. These shortcuts hurt people.

At-Risk Veterans

Navy veterans, especially those who served between about 1970 and 1990, were regularly exposed to asbestos.

Officials constantly worried about fires aboard ships, and in 1966, their worst nightmare came true. The aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, which was servicing in Vietnam, caught fire, killing or seriously injuring about two hundred sailors. The Navy stopped using asbestos insulation in 1980, but many asbestos-laced ships remained in service for many years thereafter.

Additionally, even many Navy service members who hardly ever left port were exposed to asbestos.

These microscopic fibers float for at least three days. That’s plenty of time for toxic particles to drift into parking lots and other common areas.

Exposure risk didn’t end there. Many workers carried fibers and dust particles home on their clothes or hair, or in their vehicles. These fibers then infected friends and family members.

In 2021, the asbestos-related cancer mesothelioma rate among women increased sharply. Furthermore, researchers believe the figure is still under-reported. Caregivers who hardly, if ever, set foot on a Navy or other military base had no reason to believe their cancer is related to asbestos exposure.

Asbestos Exposure Illnesses

Toxic particles, like asbestos fibers, cause a host of problems inside the body. Making matters worse, since the body cannot eject these particles, they accumulate and cause even greater harm. These harms include serious diseases like:

Mesothelioma (Lung Cancer): The latency period for this rare and aggressive form of lung cancer, which is at least fifty years, makes this disease very hard to diagnose and treat. Since physical symptoms don’t appear for about a half-century, unless the veteran gets regular testing, the tumor is almost impossible to detect. By the time doctors find it, the cancer is usually in Stage III or IV.
Cholangiocarcinoma (Liver Cancer): Inhaled or absorbed asbestos fibers often migrate through the body and settle in the liver, mostly because this organ has very thin blood vessels. The embedded particles then cause inflammation, which is one of the first phases of development for most asbestos-related diseases.
Colon Cancer: A 1995 study found male heavy smokers who were exposed to asbestos were 1.3 times more likely to develop colorectal cancer. Another study from 1994 found asbestos workers exposed to amphibole asbestos were 1.4 times more likely to develop colorectal cancer.

Other asbestos exposure illnesses among veterans, which are usually completely disabling, include lung diseases, like asbestosis and pleural thickening.

Sometimes, the aforementioned inflammation closes tiny airways inside the lungs. A few risky and radical asbestosis treatments are available, but most asbestos exposure victims are too old and frail to tolerate them.

Asbestos particles could also inflame (thicken) the pleural layer that surrounds the lungs. The heavy pleural layer almost literally squeezes the lungs like an accordion.

Why Cancer Compensation for Veterans is Important

Traditional cancer treatments, like the chemotherapy/radiation/surgery combination, could cost more than $100,000 per year. Cutting-edge treatments, like gene therapy, could cost ten times that much.

Without compensation, most families couldn’t possibly afford to pay these costs. Group health insurance companies almost always exclude injury-related costs, like asbestos exposure treatment expenses.

VA Policies for determining compensation

Compensation for medical bills, or in this case free medical care at a VA hospital, opens a whole new world for victims. The survival rate goes up and the pain they must endure goes down.

An asbestos exposure lawyer does more than obtain this compensation. We have professional relationships with VA doctors. If the local VA is not the best place to receive cancer treatments, we help victims find the medical treatment they need within the VA system.

Veteran Mesothelioma Support

A few final words about other financial support that’s available to veterans and their families. Caregivers and other take-home asbestos exposure victims may be ineligible for VA benefits.

These victims usually have other legal options, such as a civil action against the company which sold asbestos-laced material to the military. In addition to compensation for economic and noneconomic losses, substantial punitive damages are usually available in these cases as well.