Norfolk Naval Shipyard, in Portsmouth, Virginia, is one of the oldest continuously operated shipyards in the United States. The U.S. Navy has owned it since 1801, and today it is one of only four public naval shipyards still running in the country. For most of its history, the yard’s work has been the repair and overhaul of Navy ships rather than the construction of new ones, and that repair work is the setting for what documented asbestos and environmental records exist for this yard.
What work happened at Norfolk Naval Shipyard
Norfolk Naval Shipyard began in 1767 as a private colonial shipyard on the Elizabeth River. The Commonwealth of Virginia held the property starting in 1775 and leased it to the new federal government in 1794. The United States purchased the yard outright from Virginia on June 15, 1801. Confederate forces held it from April 1861 to May 1862, during which the scuttled USS Merrimack was rebuilt into the ironclad CSS Virginia in Drydock Number One, a dry dock built between 1827 and 1834 that is now a National Historic Landmark. Union forces recaptured the yard in 1862, and it has operated under U.S. Navy ownership since. It was renamed Norfolk Naval Shipyard in 1945, a name it still carries even though it sits in Portsmouth, Virginia, not the city of Norfolk across the river.
According to the Navy’s own history, the yard’s work at Norfolk has been overwhelmingly overhaul, alteration, and repair, not new construction. During World War II, 6,850 ships were repaired, altered, overhauled, or converted here, and 2,238 vessels passed through its dry docks, against roughly 101 new vessels built and 85 commissioned or outfitted over the same period. That ratio is the core of the yard’s exposure history: far more ships passed through for repair work than were ever built here new. The yard’s civilian workforce peaked at 42,893 employees on February 15, 1943, up from 7,625 at the start of the war, with a women’s workforce that began in March 1942 and grew past 3,500.
The yard entered the nuclear submarine era on April 28, 1965, when USS Skate (SSN-578) arrived for what became the shipyard’s first nuclear submarine overhaul. Norfolk Naval Shipyard still performs this kind of depot work today, on Ford-class aircraft carriers and on Ohio-, Virginia-, and Columbia-class submarines. The Navy is currently spending roughly $520 million to modernize the yard’s infrastructure, including a rebuild of Dry Dock 8 to fit the wider hulls of Ford-class carriers, targeted for completion by 2027, and a completed rebuild of Dry Dock 4 for submarine overhauls. A dedicated Submarine Structural Branch continues that work; USS New Hampshire arrived for a depot modernization period here in 2025.
Ships in our roster built at this yard
Our shipyard roster tracks fourteen Navy ship classes: Fletcher, Gearing, Gato, Balao, Allen M. Sumner, Knox, Cleveland, Essex, Charles F. Adams, Baltimore, Forrestal, Iowa, and Midway, plus a small sample of Liberty ships. It is not a full record of everything ever built at any yard. Within those fourteen classes, our roster shows three ships built at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, all Essex-class aircraft carriers commissioned in 1944 and 1945. Given that the yard’s own overhaul and repair volume during World War II alone ran into the thousands of vessels, this table reflects new construction in our tracked classes only, not the yard’s full repair workload.
| Ship name | Hull number | Commissioned | Class |
|---|---|---|---|
| USS Shangri-La | CV-38 | 1944 | Essex-class |
| USS Lake Champlain | CV-39 | 1945 | Essex-class |
| USS Tarawa | CV-40 | 1945 | Essex-class |
Documented asbestos use at this yard
Here is what the public record actually says, stated plainly. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s own Superfund site profile for Norfolk Naval Shipyard does not list asbestos among the site’s named contaminants of concern. The contaminants EPA names are arsenic, barium, cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, pesticides, PCBs, semi-volatile organic compounds, vanadium, and volatile organic compounds at the Paradise Creek Disposal Area, lead at the 1927 Landfill, and PFOA and PFOS, chemicals from firefighting foam, as a currently active investigation. EPA’s health and environment profile for the same site likewise does not mention asbestos.
This does not mean asbestos was never present in shipyard work here. Navy ships and shipboard equipment of the mid-twentieth century widely used asbestos-containing insulation and materials, and this yard’s core function for over two centuries has been hands-on repair and overhaul of those ships. What it means is narrower and more honest: the Superfund cleanup record for this specific site, built from EPA’s own investigation, is driven by other contaminants, not by asbestos. We were not able to locate a NIOSH health hazard evaluation, a peer-reviewed occupational study, or any EPA or Navy document naming a specific asbestos product manufacturer tied to this yard. Where a fact could not be traced to a source we could verify, we left it out rather than guess.
One documented removal action at this site does touch a different hazardous material connected to hull work. Between 2000 and 2001, the Navy, under EPA oversight, excavated roughly 55,000 tons of spent abrasive blast material, the sandblasting grit used to strip ship hulls, along with contaminated soil, from the New Gosport Landfill area of the yard, later restoring the area as 1.9 acres of engineered wetlands, according to EPA’s Technology Innovation News Survey reporting on the action. That is a distinct waste stream from asbestos pipe and boiler insulation, but it points to the same underlying work, surface preparation on ship hulls, that this yard performed at scale for decades.
Trades and ratings documented at this yard
The public record for Norfolk Naval Shipyard does not single out specific trades or Navy ratings as asbestos-exposed. What is documented is the range of work performed here. EPA’s own operational description of the site names metal forming, fabrication, and machining, installation and repair of shipboard mechanical and electrical equipment, and painting operations as functions carried out across the yard. The 2000-2001 removal action ties abrasive blasting and hull surface preparation specifically to the New Gosport Landfill area. And the yard’s current Submarine Structural Branch, documented through 2025 coverage of USS New Hampshire’s arrival for depot work, continues structural repair on submarines today.
If you or a family member worked in any of these functions, in metal trades, in hull preparation, in mechanical or electrical installation, or in submarine structural repair, at this yard, the general historical pattern of asbestos use aboard Navy ships of that era is worth keeping in mind even where this specific site’s environmental record does not name it directly.
Environmental record
Norfolk Naval Shipyard is a final National Priorities List Superfund site. According to EPA’s own site cleanup status page, the site was added to the National Priorities List in May 1999. It is divided into six operable units, and cleanup work is overseen jointly by EPA Region III, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, and the Navy. EPA’s page lists five-year reviews completed in 2011, 2016, and 2021, with the next review scheduled for 2024.
As described above, the named contaminants driving this cleanup are metals (arsenic, barium, cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, vanadium), pesticides, PCBs, volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds, and, as a current focus, PFOA and PFOS from firefighting foam. Asbestos does not appear on EPA’s list of contaminants of concern for this site. The 2000-2001 removal of abrasive blast material at the New Gosport Landfill area, described above, is the cleanup action most directly tied to hull-related work at this yard.
If you worked at this yard
If you or a family member worked at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, in the yard itself, aboard a ship undergoing overhaul, or in one of the trades described above, documentation of where and when you worked can matter later, whether the question is a VA claim, a trust claim, or simply putting together an accurate work history.
Useful records include DD-214 discharge papers and other service records, civilian personnel or employment records if you worked here as a shipyard employee rather than in uniform, union or apprenticeship records, and any documentation naming your specific job, shop, or department. The Navy’s own history of the yard, cited throughout this page, shows how large and how varied the workforce here was across different periods, so specificity about your own role and dates helps.
You can review other shipyards in our records at our shipyard directory, read a general overview of asbestos trust funds at our trust fund overview, find guidance on VA paperwork at VA forms for mesothelioma, and request a review of your specific work history at veteran case review.