DD Form 2493-2 occupies a particular place in Defense recordkeeping. Its title is DD Form 2493-2, Asbestos Exposure Part II - Periodic Medical Questionnaire, January 2000, and it exists to Asbestos Exposure Part II - Periodic Medical Questionnaire. What the DD prefix records is an administrative judgment made long before your copy was printed: this transaction was determined to be common to the whole Department rather than peculiar to one service, and so the documentation of it was standardized at Department level.
This is why the arrangement matters to you rather than only to the archivists. not stated governs the form throughout the Department, with not stated as the responsible office, so the record you create is legible outside your own component. Joint assignments, agency details and cross-service transactions all depend on that: the paperwork does not have to be reconstructed each time it crosses a boundary.
The edition in force is not stated, carried by the publisher as not stated, and edition discipline is stricter on a Department form than most people expect, precisely because supersession happens everywhere at once. There is no interval during which one service still works from the previous layout while another has moved on.
Work down the page in the printed order, and understand why the order exists. The identifying block establishes whose record this is and under what circumstances it arises. The body of the form then answers questions that are only meaningful once that context is fixed. The signature block comes last because a certification signed before the entries are complete certifies nothing.
Before the first entry, compare the date printed on the form face with not stated. This is not bureaucratic fussiness. Editions change field numbering, and a receiving office working from the current layout may look for information where your copy does not put it. On a Department form the exposure is wider than usual: your record may be reviewed by an office in another service entirely, one with no reason to remember what the previous edition looked like.
Every field takes an entry, N/A included. The reason is evidentiary rather than clerical: a completed record is supposed to show what was asked and what was answered, and blank space records neither. On dates, follow the format printed beside the field. Conventions vary between components, and a joint document is read by people who do not share your habits.
The Privacy Act Statement is not boilerplate appended for legal cover; it is the mechanism by which a statutory obligation is discharged at the moment of collection. When the government asks an individual for personal information, it must state the authority under which it asks, the principal purpose, the routine uses to which the data may be put, and whether answering is voluntary or mandatory. Those four disclosures are placed ahead of the data fields deliberately, because the point of telling you is to inform a choice you have not yet made.
Signature is the point at which a completed form becomes a certification, and the requirement follows from that. On paper it means ink in the designated block; electronically it means a credentialed digital signature, ordinarily applied with a Common Access Card in software that supports it. A name typed into the signature field is data, not an act — it demonstrates nothing about who entered it. The date beside the signature fixes when the certification was made, which is why a signed but undated block is treated as incomplete.
Recurring defects have a pattern to them, and it is mostly the pattern of a record that cannot be relied on: an edition that does not match, gaps that cannot be interpreted, entries that cannot be read after scanning, dates that could mean two things, and a certification nobody executed. For an ambiguous field, read the form's own instruction, then not stated, which controls.
Download the form
What you can download: PDF. The form runs 1 pages and asks for approximately 53 entries. The plurality of formats is deliberate: Defense distribution has never been able to assume one operating environment across the whole force.
Fillable and printable are not two presentations of one file but two different objects. One holds your entries as structured data within the document; the other is a static picture meant to meet a pen. Since a DD form frequently moves outside the organization that created it, the durability of the entry matters more here than on a record that stays in one drawer. Typed text reproduces indefinitely; handwriting degrades at every copy.
Xfdl appears in the set for reasons of institutional inertia rather than preference. It is the IBM Lotus Forms format, once the Department's electronic forms standard and deployed widely enough that it outlived the decision to move on. IBM Lotus Forms Viewer or an equivalent client opens it; a pdf application will not.
Nothing here is charged for. Published Defense forms are public documents and distribution carries no fee, in any format. One caution about software: fill the form in a desktop pdf application rather than a browser tab. Browser-embedded viewers implement field behaviour inconsistently, and the failure mode is silent loss of everything you entered.
What the form asks for
- Identification section. 1. Name (last, first, middle initial).
- 2. Social security number. Do not include dashes.
- 3. Clock number. Enter 5 digit number.
- 4. Present occupation.
- 5. Name of plant.
- 6. Street address of plant.
- 7. Plant city, state and zip code.
- 8. Telephone number, include area code.
- 9. Name of interviewer.
- 10. Date of interview (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 11. Marital status. Press space bar to mark X in first box if single, second box if married, third box if widowed, or fourth box if divorced/separated.
- 12. Occupational history. a. In the past year, did you work full time (30 hours per week or more) for six months or more? X first box if yes, second box if no.
- b. Did you work at any dusty job during the past year? X first box if yes, second box if no.
- c. If yes, was exposure: X first box if mild, second box if moderate, third box if severe, or fourth box if not applicable.
- d. In the past year, were you exposed to gas or chemical funes in your work? X first box if yes, second box if no.
- e. If yes, was exposure: X first box if mild, second box if moderate, third box if severe, or fourth box if not applicable.
- f. In the past year, what was your (1) Job or occupation.
- (2) Position or job title.
- 13. Medical history. a. Do you consider yourself to be in good health? X first box if yes, second box if no.
- If no, state reason.
- b. In the past year, have you developed: (1) Epilepsy (or seizures, fits or convulsions). X first box if yes, second box if no.
- (2) Rheumatic fever. X first box if yes, second box if no.
- (3) Kidney disease. X first box if yes, second box if no.
- (4) Bladder disease. X first box if yes, second box if no.
The completed form goes to the office named in not stated or in local implementing procedure, and it is worth keeping a copy before it goes. On a Department form the destination is frequently outside your own chain — another service, a defense agency, a joint staff — and recovering a document that has crossed an organizational boundary is a slower business than retrieving one from a file down the hall.
Forms referenced inside this one are located by number alone, and that simplicity is a direct product of Department-level numbering. Because the DD sequence is maintained centrally and not duplicated by service, a number is a complete address: one number, one document, throughout the Defense establishment.
Where a service form is cited in the same instruction, the two numbering systems should not be read across. DA numbering belongs to the Army and is administered by an Army proponent; DD numbering belongs to the Department and is administered by not stated or an equivalent Department office. The systems developed separately and were never harmonized, so identical digits in each identify two documents with nothing in common. The prefix, not the number, tells you which system you are in.
Editions change for reasons that originate above the form itself. The prescribing directive is reissued and the form follows; the information the Department needs to collect changes and the fields change with it; the statutory notice language is amended and every form carrying that notice is republished. None of these events announces itself to the person who downloaded a copy last year, which is why confirming not stated at the moment of download is the only reliable check available to you.
What you have here is the document and a description of it, which is a different thing from guidance. This page is not an organ of the Department, gives no legal or procedural advice, and makes no representation about the outcome of any filing; the offices that administer the requirement are the only ones positioned to answer that. Applicability, eligibility and procedural questions belong to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office designated in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2493-2?
- DD Form 2493-2, Asbestos Exposure Part II - Periodic Medical Questionnaire, January 2000
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?