Radioactive objects at Hunters Point shipyard prompt calls for cancer screening
SAN FRANCISCO -- Residents of Bayview Hunters Point say radioactive objects recently found and acknowledged by the Navy have put a renewed spotlight on their decades-long fight.
They say rates of cancer and other health problems are higher for those living closer to the former Naval shipyard.
Arieann Harrison grew up a stone's throw away from the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.
"Our backyard was the shipyard. As kids we didn't have to jump the fence. There were no signs," Harrison said.
Harrison says her mother wasn't a smoker but died prematurely after suffering lung disease.
The lifelong Hunters Point resident believes her mother's health ailments and hers are the direct result of exposure to toxicants found near the shipyard, which is a superfund site, designated one of the nation's most contaminated places.
Harrison underwent a screening to see what toxic chemicals are in her body.
"Elevated levels of lead, manganese, asbestos and strontium. I'm having to learn a whole new language of what these chemicals are that I'm exposed to," she explained.
One doctor is pushing for toxic screening of residents to eventually present a stronger case to government agencies.
"We're seeing shipyard dirt and toxic concentrations. It doesn't get more complicated than that from a scientific perspective," said Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, who is leading the effort to get more residents tested.
She is the founder and medical director of the Hunters Point Biomonitoring Foundation.
"We're just mapping detections above what is allowable," Porter Sumchai said.
The UCSF and Stanford-trained physician is creating a registry where she is documenting and mapping people who may have been exposed to toxic waste.
"This is crime scene evidence. These are all the yellow pins. Most of these are brain and nervous system cancers. The red pins are breast cancer," Porter Sumchai explained.
"We have to prove what we're saying first and that's why the science is so incredibly important," Harrison said.
Sumchai's foundation has received grants but testing requires out-of-pocket payments since insurance does not cover it. Only 120 residents have undergone screenings since 2019 when she opened the clinic.
She's hoping increased funding will change that so more residents can become part of the growing registry.
"You look at the cancer risk for people living here adjacent to the landfill; the cancer risk is one in 500. That's astronomical," Porter Sumchai said.
Dr. James Dahlgren is a medical toxicology expert who testified in the PG&E contaminated water case made famous in the movie Erin Brockovich.
He has studied plutonium found in urine samples of some 1500 workers who cleaned up radioactive soil after a military plane crash in the 60s.
"The levels that they found in those people were the same as we're finding in the few people in Hunters Point. That to me is very alarming. That means that there's exposure going on," Dalhgren said.
But Dalhgren acknowledges there's a funding issue and gaping holes with the way the biomonitoring foundation is screening people.
"There's no consistency to the data so we don't really know how sick the people are. We know that they have cancers. That's something she collects but we don't have any other health data on these people she's tested," Dalhgren said.
Sumchai's father worked as a longshoreman at the shipyard. He died at the age of 58. She wants the Navy to ramp up its cleanup and testing efforts so future generations aren't exposed to toxic waste.
"You can be pretty sure they're going to have health effects early in their life and you can be pretty sure they'll have a reduced life expectancy," Porter Sumchai said.
"What I hope is for them to finally say that there has been damage here, not just to the land but to the people," Harrison said.
The Navy says the site is partially cleaned up as it continues to prepare it for development.
Last week, residents represented by the Berkeley Environmental Law Clinic announced a plan to sue the Navy and the Environmental Protection Agency, demanding 100 percent retesting of the shipyard.
A UCLA / UC Berkeley environmental health science analysis determined communities of color are five times more likely than the general population to live within a half mile of polluted places in California.