ANSON COUNTY — American industry branches and military installations have long leaned on the labor of communities across the country. One of them is Anson County, North Carolina, where residents have built careers in manufacturing, construction, transportation, and military service for generations. However, that work came with a hidden cost: widespread asbestos exposure.
Once prized for its heat resistance and durability, this naturally occurring mineral put many workers and veterans at risk of exposure-related diseases that often surface only after 30 or 40 years, such as lung cancer. Often, by the time those diagnoses appear, the records needed to prove where and when exposure occurred may already be incomplete or lost entirely.
The enduring health toll of asbestos
Workplace asbestos exposure doesn’t end when the shift does: inhaled fibers remain lodged in the lungs for decades, causing inflammation and cellular damage that can eventually lead to lung cancer or pleural mesothelioma over time. Nationwide, an estimated 27 million workers were exposed between the 1940s and the 1970s, and even if the material’s phaseout began, asbestos-related mortality still increased by 20.2% between 1990 and 2019. North Carolina has felt this, too. From 1999 to 2017, the state recorded 6,577 asbestos-related deaths, including 1,159 from mesothelioma. Anson County recorded 18 asbestos-related deaths of its own— a reminder that even a county without a major asbestos industry still carries a burden, through the manufacturing and industrial work common across the area. Anson’s approximately 1,328 veterans face similar risks, including those who served at installations such as Fort Bragg (also known as Fort Liberty), about 90 miles northeast, or Camp Lejeune, roughly 220 miles east. Service members and civilian contractors were exposed in older barracks, boiler rooms, and maintenance shops, where deteriorating insulation, pipe lagging, and floor tiles were common. And even today, that historical exposure continues to surface in current diagnostic patterns, with around 230,000 new lung cancer cases diagnosed in the country.
Preserving exposure histories before they disappear
Acknowledging the dangers of asbestos isn’t enough on its own. The way exposure histories are documented has to change as well. Existing employment records were mostly built for payroll and administrative purposes, not to track a lifetime of hazardous exposure across different jobs. Once someone changes employers or a company shuts down, that exposure history is rarely consolidated or retained. It is why, when asbestos-related lung cancer is diagnosed decades later, workers and families are often left piecing together incomplete employment histories and fragmented records that may no longer reflect the full extent of exposure.
This gap falls hardest on veterans, whose exposure may have spanned across both military and civilian careers. While measures such as the Honoring Our PACT Act expanded the list of recognized conditions linked to toxic military exposures, it doesn’t cover the civilian exposures that often follow service. Moreover, notwithstanding this serious risk, there is no comprehensive system in place to document cumulative exposure throughout both military and civilian occupations. Without a full picture of where and when asbestos exposure happened, research, prevention, and accountability all suffer due to limited data.Therefore, preserving occupational exposure histories as long-term public health records is one way to make sure Anson County’s workers and veterans aren’t left without answers when diseases from decades-old exposures show up.