Located in Bedford, Massachusetts, about 20 miles northwest of Boston, Hanscom Air Force Base shares Hanscom Field with a civilian airport operated by Massport. Rather than functioning as a fighter or bomber base, the installation has focused on research, acquisition, and lifecycle management of avionics, surveillance systems, and communications equipment, housing organizations like the Electronic Systems Division and the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center. Decades of that mission required research laboratories, electronics testing facilities, boiler plants, and steam distribution systems, much of it built between the 1940s and 1970s.
AFFF exposure at Hanscom Air Force Base
Most research-focused installations end up with thin documentation on firefighting history, but Hanscom Air Force Base has direct evidence instead. Restoration Advisory Board meeting minutes lay out something specific: after reviewing historical records and interviewing former firefighting personnel, investigators concluded that Hanscom Air Force Base's Fire Training Area was the only site where AFFF training took place before 1974. Air Force environmental records back this up, identifying AFFF release locations tied to that same training area.
Training at the site involved:
- igniting fuel to simulate aircraft crashes
- extinguishing the fires with AFFF
- mixing foam concentrate before drills
- running hoses through live-fire exercises
- testing foam proportioning systems
- cleaning trucks and gear afterward
- maintaining foam storage tanks between sessions
- repeating certification exercises throughout a career
Fire Protection Specialists and ARFF crew members were closest to this exposure, joined by fire instructors, firefighter trainees, civilian firefighters on staff, and the technicians who kept trucks and foam systems running. The chemicals in that foam have a documented connection to kidney and testicular cancer. Anyone who trained or worked as a firefighter at Hanscom Air Force Base's Fire Training Area before 1974 and has since faced one of those diagnoses has grounds to have that history looked at by our team.
Asbestos exposure at Hanscom Air Force Base
Hanscom Air Force Base's buildings went up during the exact stretch of decades, the 1940s through the 1970s, when asbestos was simply what you built with if you wanted something fireproof and well-insulated, and Air Force environmental documents list it among the hazardous materials the installation has had to manage over the years. Materials commonly used throughout the base's labs, boiler plants, and administrative buildings included:
- duct insulation
- calcium silicate
- acoustical panels
- cement siding
- joint compound
- roof coating
- furnace cement
- packing material
The people most likely to have disturbed these materials weren't the scientists in the labs, they were the ones keeping the buildings running:
What makes asbestos different from most workplace hazards is the delay it causes between exposure and diagnosis. Mesothelioma and lung cancer are the two diseases tied most directly to this exposure, and both can take 20 to 50 years to show up, which means a diagnosis today doesn't rule out a cause from decades earlier. If your time at Hanscom Air Force Base involved that kind of maintenance work and you're now facing either diagnosis, our team can help you figure out where you stand on filing a claim.