Naval Station Great Lakes

Base Background

Naval Station Great Lakes was established in 1911 near North Chicago, in Lake County, Illinois, along the shore of Lake Michigan. It is home to Recruit Training Command, the U.S. Navy’s only enlisted boot camp, which trains roughly 40,000 recruits a year, and it remains a fully active Navy installation today.

Toxic Exposure at Naval Station Great Lakes

Recruits, sailors, and civilian employees who trained or worked at Great Lakes over the past century have encountered a wide range of toxins, tracked across dozens of locations under the Navy’s own environmental restoration program: polychlorinated biphenyls, chlorinated solvents, petroleum byproducts, heavy metals, asbestos (identified in the topsoil cover at a former on-base landfill in 2004), and legacy radiological material. Anyone diagnosed with a serious illness after spending time on this base may want to look into whether one of these substances played a role.

PFAS Contamination

Naval Station Great Lakes falls under the Department of Defense’s nationwide push to investigate PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) contamination, a legacy of firefighting foam sprayed for decades at fire and crash-rescue training sites across the military. DOD’s own records, reviewed by the Environmental Working Group in 2021, name Naval Station Great Lakes among a small group of Great Lakes-region defense sites where PFAS may be present in groundwater but where DOD has not yet tested to confirm it, distinct from several nearby bases (including Wurtsmith Air Force Base and Selfridge Air National Guard Base) where DOD’s own testing has already confirmed PFAS levels in the tens or hundreds of thousands of parts per trillion.

If you were stationed at Naval Station Great Lakes and have a medical condition associated with exposure to PFAS, you could be eligible for VA disability and other disabled veterans benefits. Get in touch for a free case evaluation.

Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs)

Several sites on base show confirmed PCB contamination. A former landfill received materials contaminated with PCBs, and a nearby transformer storage area and building spilled roughly 132 gallons of PCB oil to the ground from PCB-containing transformers. Soil at another former building tested positive for PCBs along with dioxins and furans, and sediment in an on-base creek tested positive for Aroclor 1254, a PCB mixture.

Volatile Organic Compounds and Chlorinated Solvents

At a former landfill site, Navy records document disposal of chemical cleaners, solvents, oils, and trichloroethane. A former on-base dry-cleaning facility separately stored spent tetrachloroethene (PCE) until 1987.

Petroleum Hydrocarbons and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons

The base’s Fire Fighter Training Unit, used from 1942 to 1989 to train recruits in firefighting, contaminated subsurface soil and groundwater with diesel fuel and gasoline, along with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in soil, and metals, PAHs, and VOCs in groundwater. Long-term groundwater monitoring continues at the site today.

Heavy Metal Contamination

A former rifle range on base has a documented high potential for lead contamination, and a 1983 spill of roughly 3,000 gallons of leaded gasoline occurred at a former exchange service station. Separately, shipboard gyro-compass training rooms on base each held 10 to 15 pounds of elemental mercury, and a large mercury puddle was found on-site during a later investigation.

Getting Compensation

Sailors, recruits, and civilian employees who spent time at Naval Station Great Lakes could be entitled to compensation if a health condition they developed later is linked to one of these exposures. The chart below lists which health conditions are associated with the toxins documented at the base. Hill & Ponton’s VA-accredited lawyers represent both veterans and their survivors, and work on a contingency basis, so there’s nothing to pay unless we win.