San Francisco opened a new clinic this month to test Bayview-Hunters Point residents for health issues caused by exposure to environmental factors, such as airborne pollution and exposure to hazardous chemicals.
Neighborhood residents have long demanded the attention of the city. The Hunters Point Shipyard, a former Naval base and during the 1970s, a dumping site for toxic waste, has been undergoing cleanup for over 30 years.
Bayview residents have a disproportionately high number of asthma rates in addition to cases of lung and breast cancer compared to the rest of San Francisco, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Nine to ten percent of Bayview residents are asthmatic, compared to seven percent citywide. The California Environmental Health Screening Tool lists the neighborhood as one of the most polluted geographic areas in the city.
The opening of the clinic comes months after the Department of Public Health in October blasted the Navy for failing to report findings of airborne plutonium at the shipyard at twice the recommended “action level,” the threshold that requires mandatory remediation. The Navy had neglected to tell the city for 11 months. Residents were furious.
It is unclear if the clinic would test for radiation poisoning. The city did not say what tests or treatment would be provided to residents. The program is still “in its infancy,” said a department source, and will likely be developed over time.
The clinic, located at the Southeast Family Health Center at 2403 Keith St., is a partnership between the Department of Public Health, UCSF and the health center. It will provide tests and programs to “evaluate, diagnose, and treat patients whose health problems may be caused or worsened by exposures to environmental factors, such as chemicals, pollutants, or physical hazards,” according to a presentation shared by the Department of Public Health.
Dr. Susan Philip, the department’s director of population health, confirmed the clinic plans to the Board of Supervisors in December. She will likely lead the clinic.
Residents say they have asked for doctors to address health concerns for years.
Arieann Harrison, a member of the Southeast Family Health Center community advisory board and the founder of the Marie Harrison Foundation, an environmental nonprofit named after her late mother, said residents have had to fight “to prove we are sick for decades.”
Harrison’s mother died of lung disease at age 71 in 2019. Arieann Harrison said she has urged the department to address residents’ health concerns for nearly three years.
The industrial neighborhood, though largely populated with residential homes, is heavily impacted by truck traffic and other industrial activities — and as recently as 2006, home to the Hunters Point Power Plant. The fossil-fuel powered plant was operated by PG&E for over 70 years, and according to the Environmental Protection Agency, was the neighborhood’s main source of pollution.
UCSF’s Occupational and Environmental Medicine Clinic offers a similar clinic that treats work-related environmental health concerns, including chemical exposure, at its Mount Zion Medical Center in lower Pacific Heights.
But that is about six miles away from Bayview. The new clinic will be the first in the city’s southeast.
Harrison said that while she is unsure what treatments will be offered at the clinic, the opening is “a great first step towards getting our needs met.”
“Especially,” she said, for “those of use who fall in the margins.”