Tag: asthma

Betty McGee, PhD, serves as the Bayview Hunters Point Health and Environmental Resource Center’s (HERC) executive director, working to create a more environmentally just San Francisco.

In a victory for Bayview Hunters Point community and environmental justice groups, a Superior Court judge ruled today that the City of San Francisco’s redevelopment plan for the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard failed to properly evaluate the environmental and health risks by allowing the Navy to transfer ownership of the contaminated Superfund site before the cleanup of the area was complete.

Washington (Bob) Burnsis a retired pathologist. Unlike most retired doctors, he has spent the past 15 years trying to aid those who have been dealt a hand of poverty and desperation.

Two big Texas oil companies are spending piles of money to kill California’s fast-growing clean energy economy and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that economy has already created. Big Oil is claiming to want to protect us and save jobs in our communities.

With this campaign we have to fight to plug the mass leak of people systemically pressed into nearly abject poverty. It is like watching the death of the spirit of a city that the world depends upon to be the one place where right is right and fair is fair.

In the holiday season, it is important to remember that a grandparent’s love and support have a positive impact on children, particularly in the early years of a child’s life. When children develop a strong bond with their grandparents, they feel more stable and even do better in school. Grandparents, share family stories with your grandchildren. Remember, children love to hear what their parents and grandparents were like as kids!

Dear Lisa Jackson, your immediate attention is needed to help our community combat horrific toxic exposure from the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Your immediate attention is desired by a community historically under environmentally racist assault perpetrated by the United States Navy, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the Mayor’s Office, the Redevelopment Agency and the developer, Lennar.

To this day, no testing of children living and learning near the Shipyard has occurred. Bayview Hunters Point deserves better. Children, elderly, working class and low income residents shouldn’t have to suffer from a neighbor who cares more about profit than people. As a community, we demand that our children be tested for exposure to toxics present in the dirt at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, and for a temporary stoppage of work until the damage done to the community can be assessed.

Thirty-seven percent of the adults and 20 percent of the kids living in West Oakland have asthma and children living in this community are seven times more likely to be hospitalized for breathing related illness than any other children in California.

"Biomonitoring is the next logical, critical step for us to take in addressing threats to public health." - Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, author of the California Biomonitoring Program, SB689

Grading and construction activities by the Florida-based megadeveloper Lennar enter a third year ... with asbestos and particulate levels at air monitor HV9 - located adjacent to a residential complex - skyrocketing to over 296,000 structures per cubic meter Dec. 28-30.

In San Francisco the average infant will exceed the EPA's lifetime exposure to toxic air pollutants in 19 days. In LA, it takes only 12 days.

At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisor’s meeting, the 253 seats of City Hall’s main chamber were not enough – so many people attended that people had to sit in separate rooms on the first floor and watch the proceedings on television screens. And throughout the meeting, people stood outside the main chamber’s doors, waiting their turns to speak to the Board.