The USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) is a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier laid down on November 29, 1993, and launched on September 7, 1996. It was commissioned on July 25, 1998, under Capt. Thomas Otterbein’s command with the hull number CVN-75 and it is still serving in the U.S. Navy. During its activities, the ship carried a complement of 3,200 people on board and 90 aircraft and had its main missions in Maiden, Marseilles, Crete, Dubai, Afghanistan, Norfolk, the Suez Canal, and Manama.
Because shipyards sold scrap pieces of asbestos-containing ships that were no longer in use, exposure to asbestos continued throughout the 1990s. Asbestos causes cancer in a dose-dependent manner, meaning that the greater the exposure, and the longer the time of exposure, the greater the risk of developing an asbestos-related disease. No "safe" lower limit of exposure has been identified with certainty - all exposure is thought to add to the overall risk of developing an asbestos-related disease.