Radar and Communications Technician: Toxic Exposure and VA Claims

Cleaning was constant bench work in electronics shops. Technicians degreased chassis, relays, contacts, and antenna assemblies with chlorinated solvents, often in small, poorly ventilated repair spaces aboard ships or in transmitter buildings. The National Cancer Institute describes trichloroethylene (TCE) as a degreasing solvent for metal equipment, and the military used it widely before safer substitutes replaced it. Exposure occurred through inhaling vapors and through direct skin contact, since gloves were rarely worn for quick contact-cleaning jobs.

Older radar sets, radio transmitters, and power supplies relied on transformers and capacitors that used polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) as insulating and cooling fluid. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry confirms PCBs were used in electrical equipment, transformers, and capacitors because they were chemically stable and did not burn easily. Technicians who replaced leaking capacitors, handled transformer oil, or cleaned up after component failures could get PCB fluid on their skin or breathe fumes when overloaded components overheated. U.S. production of PCBs stopped in 1977 and the EPA ban followed in 1979, but equipment built before then stayed in military service for decades afterward.

Radar and communications work meant time near energized antennas, waveguides, and transmitters emitting radiofrequency energy. VA classifies RF energy from radar as non-ionizing radiation and states that most radiation of this type poses very minimal health risk. The National Cancer Institute likewise reports that no mechanism by which RF radiation could cause cancer has been identified, and studies of exposed workers have not shown consistent increases in cancer. RF exposure is not an established cause of cancer. The documented hazard was tissue heating and burns from standing in front of a transmitting antenna or an open waveguide.

Unlike the RF beam itself, the high voltage vacuum tubes inside older transmitters could emit low levels of ionizing X-ray radiation. VA documents this hazard at Coast Guard LORAN stations, where technicians who worked between 1942 and 2010 may have been exposed to X-ray radiation from high voltage vacuum tubes. Similar tubes powered radar and communications transmitters across the services. Meaningful doses generally required removing protective shielding and working close to an energized tube for extended periods, a situation most common during troubleshooting and alignment work.

Shipboard electronics technicians worked in equipment rooms surrounded by asbestos lagging on pipes, bulkhead insulation, and asbestos-containing panels and cable materials, and shore-based technicians often worked in transmitter buildings constructed with asbestos products. VA recognizes shipyard work, construction, and insulation among the military settings and products where asbestos exposure occurred. Drilling into bulkheads to mount equipment or pulling cable through insulated spaces could release fibers into the air of confined compartments.