Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, in Bremerton, Washington, has operated continuously as a U.S. Navy shipyard since 1891, one of the few yards in this roster that has never closed. It remains active today, including a current multibillion-dollar dry dock expansion, and it was never placed on a base closure list. For most of the twentieth century, its work, from World War II combat-damage repair to nuclear submarine overhaul, routinely used asbestos-containing insulation, gaskets, and fireproofing materials that were standard across the Navy at the time. Two peer-reviewed occupational health studies focused specifically on conditions at this yard are cited below.
What work happened at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard
This yard has gone through several distinct missions since it was founded as Puget Sound Naval Station in September 1891, and each mission changed what kind of asbestos exposure was possible.
During World War I, the yard built new vessels, including 25 submarine chasers, 6 submarines, 2 minesweepers, 7 seagoing tugs, 2 ammunition ships, and roughly 1,700 small boats. During World War II, it built 53 new vessels, including 5 aircraft carriers, 13 destroyers, and 8 destroyer escorts, while also repairing 26 battleships, 18 aircraft carriers, 13 cruisers, and 79 destroyers damaged in the Pacific. Five of the six U.S. Navy battleships that survived the attack on Pearl Harbor, the USS Tennessee, Maryland, Nevada, California, and West Virginia, were sent here for repair and modification, and yard workers nicknamed them the “Pearl Harbor Ghosts” because Japan had declared them sunk (HistoryLink.org).
The yard’s mission changed overnight on November 30, 1945, the same day it was renamed from Navy Yard Puget Sound to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Instead of repairing combat-damaged ships, the work shifted to deactivating the wartime fleet, stripping vessels of guns and equipment, then scrapping them or sealing them into the mothball fleet. The wartime peak workforce of 32,500 civilian workers in 1945 fell to under 9,000 by the end of 1946 (HistoryLink.org).
Between 1948 and 1962, the yard converted nine straight-deck aircraft carriers to the angled flight deck design needed for jet aircraft, including USS Essex, Kearsarge, Yorktown, Hancock, Lexington, Shangri-La, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Coral Sea. The largest of these, the conversion of USS Coral Sea, took nearly three years, from April 1957 to March 1960 (HistoryLink.org).
The yard was designated a submarine repair facility in 1961 and a nuclear-capable repair facility in 1965, and it overhauled its first ballistic missile submarine, USS John Adams, in August 1968. Today it is the U.S. Navy’s only site for the Ship-Submarine Recycling Program, the sole facility that decommissions and recycles nuclear-powered submarines and surface ships. By 2002, roughly a fifth of the yard’s workload involved deactivation, ship recycling, and related work (HistoryLink.org).
This range of work matters for exposure history. New construction, overhaul, and ship-breaking each involved different trades working in different conditions, often in the confined, poorly ventilated spaces below deck where asbestos insulation and fireproofing were applied and later removed.
Ships in our roster built at this yard
Our roster covers only fourteen Navy ship classes, not every vessel ever built or overhauled at every yard. Within that limited roster, 8 ships from a single class, the Fletcher-class destroyers, were commissioned at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard between 1943 and 1945. This is a partial count from a research dataset, not a claim about the yard’s full output, which also included aircraft carriers, cruisers, and submarines across other classes not tracked here.
| Ship name | Hull number | Commissioned | Class |
|---|---|---|---|
| USS Halford | DD-480 | 1943 | Fletcher-class Destroyer |
| USS Leutze | DD-481 | 1944 | Fletcher-class Destroyer |
| USS Howorth | DD-592 | 1944 | Fletcher-class Destroyer |
| USS Killen | DD-593 | 1944 | Fletcher-class Destroyer |
| USS Hart | DD-594 | 1944 | Fletcher-class Destroyer |
| USS Metcalf | DD-595 | 1944 | Fletcher-class Destroyer |
| USS Shields | DD-596 | 1945 | Fletcher-class Destroyer |
| USS Wiley | DD-597 | 1945 | Fletcher-class Destroyer |
Documented asbestos use at this yard
Two peer-reviewed studies examine asbestos conditions specifically at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, rather than the Navy fleet generally.
A 1976 study published in Environmental Research, “Asbestos exposure control at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard,” documents a program at this yard to reduce airborne asbestos fiber counts ahead of the federal 2 fibers per cubic centimeter standard that took effect July 1, 1976. That a control program was needed to meet the new standard indicates fiber levels above that threshold had been measured in yard workspaces beforehand (Beckett, Environmental Research, 1976, via PubMed).
A second study, published in 2009 in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, “A Visual Historical Review of Exposure to Asbestos at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard (1962-1972),” compiles photographic documentation of asbestos-related work practices at this yard. The authors describe the images as depicting practices from roughly 1940 to 1965, and note that conditions at this yard were representative of other military shipyards of the same period (Hollins et al., J Toxicol Environ Health B, 2009, via PubMed).
A separate 1983 federal health investigation at this yard, a NIOSH Health Hazard Evaluation, looked into nasal and rectal bleeding reported by seven painters. Investigators considered the paint solvent 2-ethoxyethanol as a possible cause but ultimately ruled it out. This evaluation was about a solvent exposure, not asbestos, but it documents that the yard’s painters were a monitored trade subject to federal workplace health review (NIOSH HETA 83-227-1466).
Trades and ratings with documented exposure
The federal environmental record for this yard, the ATSDR Public Health Assessment covering the Bremerton Naval Complex, names several industrial shops that operated here, generating more than 100 gallons of waste per month in the early 1970s. The trades tied to those shops are the ones with the clearest documented presence at this yard:
- Machinists, tied to the yard’s machine shop
- Boilermakers, tied to the yard’s boilermaker shop
- Electricians, tied to the yard’s electrical shop
- Electronics technicians, tied to the yard’s electronics shop
- Painters, tied to the yard’s paint shop and specifically studied in the 1983 NIOSH health hazard evaluation described above
(ATSDR Public Health Assessment, Bremerton Naval Complex, 2005)
Environmental record
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard sits within a site the Environmental Protection Agency added to the National Priorities List, the federal Superfund list, on May 31, 1994. The listing, under EPA facility ID WA2170023418, covers the combined site known as the Bremerton Naval Complex, which includes both the shipyard and the adjoining naval station, together comprising 409 acres of upland plus roughly 1,000 acres of off-site and submerged land (ATSDR Public Health Assessment, 2005; EPA Superfund site profile).
It is worth stating plainly what this listing is, and is not, about. The federal health assessment for this site evaluates exactly two exposure pathways, and neither one is asbestos. The first is eating fish or shellfish caught in adjacent Sinclair Inlet, where decades of industrial discharge left PCBs, mercury, arsenic, and lead in sediment, and where commercial and recreational shellfish harvesting has been banned since 1982. The second is soil contact at a 5.3-acre parcel undergoing transfer to the City of Bremerton for use as a park, where old sandblast grit fill left arsenic, lead, and other contaminants. Asbestos does not appear anywhere in the full text of the governing Public Health Assessment, and it is not listed as a contaminant on the EPA’s own Superfund site profile for this facility.
This is a meaningful gap between the environmental record and some marketing claims found elsewhere online about this site’s Superfund ranking. This page relies only on what the primary federal documents state.
If you worked at this yard
If you or a family member worked at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, whether in construction, overhaul, or ship-breaking work, records that place you at a specific trade, shop, or ship during a specific period can matter later. Useful documentation includes military service records and a DD-214, civilian employment records from the yard or Navy, and union or trade local records if the work was done through an organized trade.
You do not need to reconstruct this on your own. The shipyards directory covers other yards where similar work took place, and the trust overview explains, in general terms, how asbestos trusts are organized. If you are a veteran, the VA forms guide walks through what paperwork is typically involved. A case review can help sort out which records, if any, apply to your specific work history. None of this requires a decision today.