by Asé Mora
Black women in Bayview Hunters Point have been more likely to develop breast cancer than any other group of women in the city for decades. Compelling data blames the Hunters Point Shipyard.
Since the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was first declared a superfund cleanup site in 1989 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the abandoned shipyard has been a symbol of the marginalization of the Bayview Hunters Point and its residents, according to Bradley Angel, executive director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice. Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice is a nonprofit organization in the Bayview Hunters Point currently suing the U.S. Navy and the Environmental Protection Agency.
“You would never see this type of contamination and reckless behavior and attempts to cover up crimes in rich white neighborhoods. … The government sees [Bayview Hunters Point] residents as expendable,” Angel said.
Contamination history
During its operation between 1945 to 1963, the Navy used the Hunters Point Shipyard as a decontamination site after war ships had been exposed to nuclear bombs.
According to the findings of an investigative series done by the San Francisco Public Press, the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory had exposed at least 1,073 dockworkers, military personnel, lab employees and others to radiation during technical exercises and medical experiments early in the cold war.
At least 24 studies between 1946 to 1963 exposed humans to radiation, nearly three times more than what the federal inquiry has previously acknowledged. Decades later, the shipyard is still a radioactive hazard, poisoning the residents of Bayview Hunters Point.
Physician Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, director of Hunters Point Biomonitoring, an organization that conducts research on the disproportionate rates of breast cancer found in Bayview Hunters Point, proposed the scientific “Breast Cancer Necklace” theory. It is a radiogenic cluster, a six block radius of the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory and Parcel E-2 Industrial landfill, spanning the radius of Quesada Street and Jennings Street, that harbors the most cases of breast cancer in the neighborhood.
Breast cancer in the Bayview disproportionately impacts Black women
These findings support initial research conducted by Francis Taylor MD, MPH, director of the Bureau of Epidemiology and Disease Control. In 1995 Dr. Taylor discovered disproportionate rates of breast cancer experienced by Black women in Bayview Hunters Point compared to non-Black women in other San Francisco neighborhoods.
Dr. Taylor found that the population of Black women with breast cancer in Bayview Hunters Point exceeded the expected number of cases based on census data of other women with breast cancer in other neighborhoods. The expected, proportional number of cases in Black women in Bayview Hunters Point was 83 cases; however the actual number of cases detected was 107. Additionally, the number of breast cancer cases in Black women under the age of 50 exceeded the number of projected cases by more than double. The number of actual cases detected in Black women under the age of 50 was 13, while the actual number totalled 28 cases.
In an article published in 2023 by Dr. Sumchai, women who are exposed to ionized radiation during the first four decades of life are more likely to develop radiogenic breast cancer.
A 1982 study that compared breast cancer cases data in Japan, China and San Francisco found that rates of breast cancer in San Francisco not only surpassed those in Japan and China, but also found that Black women in Bayview Hunters Point experience the greatest disparity of breast cancer. They developed terminal breast cancer such as Stage IIB and triple-negative breast cancer.
Generational Impact
Potrero Hill resident, 67-year-old breast cancer survivor Joevelyn Senigar-Young was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer in 2011. The Potrero Hill neighborhood also experiences high rates of breast cancer cases and illness that have been linked to environmental injustice such as asthma.
Senigar-Young underwent a surgery in 2012 that left her right breast disfigured and the following year received three separate forms of cancer treatment – chemotherapy, radiation therapy and hair reception. The radiation left burn scars on parts of her body where the cancer had spread, in addition to skin discoloration.
“The treatment is worse than the diagnosis,” she stated.
Although Senigar-Young has lived in Potrero Hill for the past 36 years, her family had been in Bayview Hunters Point for the past three generations.
According to a book published by the National Research Council in 1990 the type of radiation exposure commonly found in Bayview Hunters Point, “ionizing” radiation, damages the genetic material in reproductive cells resulting in mutations that are transmitted from generation to generation.
A significant portion of her family and friends have developed some form of cancer or live with some form of chronic asthma according to Senigar-Young.
‘We all sick’: a problem ignored
According to the San Francisco Public Press, the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood has experienced numerous environmental injustices: a gas-fired Pacific Gas & Electric Co. power plant that operated until 2006, also in the neighborhood, the city’s only open-air sewage treatment plant, a concrete factory, scrap metal yards and a fat-rendering facility. The neighborhood also has two major freeways contributing to poor air quality.
Residents of Bayview Hunters Point like Troy Moore, a construction worker hired to help clean up the shipyard 30 years ago, stated that the toxic waste from the shipyard was knowingly never cleaned properly. He recalls how the toxic dirt was transported off the Superfund site to a landfill a few miles from the shipyard and covered with “gorilla glue” to keep the contaminated dirt from becoming wind-blown toxic dust.
“Every time the dust blows, you got to run that water. I just hosed it down. You know we got to make some money to feed our grandbabies out here. … Everybody got cancer, they got asthma and whatever. They can’t breathe,” said Moore.
The owner of long-established convenience store Surfside Liquor, a Bayview Hunters Point resident, said, “A lot of people I know have cancer. I’m a survivor of cancer. My wife is a survivor of cancer and a lot of customers of mine are survivors of cancer.”
Jackie York, another Bayview Hunters Point resident, also attested to the generational impact on residents of Bayview Hunters Point, particularly on the youth, saying, “We all sick.”
Asé Mora is an aspiring journalist, studying at San Francisco State University, and an intern for the SF Bay View National Black Newspaper. She can be reached at asemora81@gmail.com.
