Located at Joint Base Cape Cod in Bourne, Massachusetts, Air Station Cape Cod formed when the Coast Guard consolidated Air Station Salem and Air Detachment Quonset Point into a single facility on August 29, 1970. It remains the only Coast Guard aviation unit in the Northeast, currently operating MH-60T Jayhawk helicopters and HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircraft. Sustaining that mission required aircraft hangars, maintenance facilities, fire stations, and steam and utility systems, much of it built between the 1940s and 1970s.
AFFF exposure at Air Station Cape Cod
Air Station Cape Cod sits within Joint Base Cape Cod, where firefighters trained for decades at a site designated Fire Training Area-1. Official Army and Air National Guard environmental records document that training exercises ran at this location from 1958 through 1985, with crews igniting waste fuels and extinguishing them under realistic emergency conditions. Starting around 1970, AFFF became part of those live-fire exercises and remained in use until approximately 1985, a 15-year window of documented, repeated foam exposure.
Training at Fire Training Area-1 involved:
- aircraft crash rescue exercises
- aviation fuel fire suppression
- live-fire firefighter certification
- foam application drills
- emergency response exercises
- fire suppression equipment testing
Firefighters handled AFFF directly through:
- conducting aircraft crash rescue training
- extinguishing aviation fuel fires
- mixing foam concentrate before drills
- testing foam proportioning equipment
- cleaning firefighting vehicles afterward
- maintaining foam storage systems between exercises
Coast Guard firefighters and Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting personnel were most exposed, joined by fire instructors, firefighter trainees, fire apparatus operators, and the personnel responsible for maintaining foam systems and firefighting vehicles.
Kidney cancer and testicular cancer have been linked to PFAS chemicals found in AFFF among firefighters with this kind of repeated occupational exposure. If you trained at Fire Training Area-1 or otherwise served as a firefighter at Air Station Cape Cod between 1970 and 1985 and were later diagnosed with one of these cancers, our team can help you find out whether you're eligible to file an AFFF claim.
Asbestos exposure at Air Station Cape Cod
Much of Air Station Cape Cod's infrastructure dates to the World War II and Cold War eras, when asbestos-containing construction materials were standard throughout military aviation facilities. Materials commonly used across its hangars, fire stations, and support buildings included:
The trades most likely to have disturbed these materials while maintaining Air Station Cape Cod's aircraft and support facilities include:
- aviation ordnanceman
- electrician's mate
- pipefitter/utilitiesman
- boiler technician/watertender
- machinist's mate/machinery repairman
- hull maintenance technician
Personnel responsible for maintaining hangars, mechanical systems, steam utilities, and older buildings faced the greatest opportunity for exposure across the installation's operational history. Mesothelioma and lung cancer are the two conditions most strongly tied to asbestos exposure, and both can take 20 to 50 years to surface after the fibers are first inhaled, which means a diagnosis today may connect back to maintenance work performed decades earlier without any obvious link at the time. If your service included that kind of maintenance work at Air Station Cape Cod and you've since received one of these diagnoses, contact our team to find out whether you're eligible to file a claim.