Bayview-Hunters Point has the highest rate of asthma-related hospitalizations in San Francisco, with one in six children in the community suffering from the disease.  Residents’ hospitalization rates for emphysema, congestive heart failure and hypertension are three times the statewide average.  And infant mortality rates are the highest in California
Marie Harrison, a long-time Bayview-Hunters Point resident, has two grandsons who have been chronically ill as a result of respiratory ailments.  “Sometimes my grandson would come home from school and could barely breathe,” Harrison said.  After numerous nights at the hospital for her grandsons’ asthma attacks and mornings changing nosebleed-soaked pillows, she noticed that she wasn’t alone.  Many of her neighbors were suffering from serious respiratory ailments too. 
Harrison believes that poor air quality in Bayview-Hunters Point is an example of environmental racism.  She has found that many City officials are condescending about the illnesses residents face, often pushing the problem back on them, as if it were a result of residents’ personal decisions.  “San Francisco is a racist city,” said Harrison.  “What makes it that way is that people don’t recognize it within themselves.  People here think that they wouldn’t dare be prejudiced against any group of people.  But when I attend these meetings and bring up the problems we are facing I always hear, ‘Well, that’s their problem, that’s on their side of town.’”
BAAQMD is taking steps to address localized air quality problems.  In 2004 the District established the Community Air Risk Evaluation (CARE) program, the goal of which is to identify Bay Area communities that are subject to high levels of toxic air emissions.  The first program phase, which was completed in October, was to develop a preliminary emissions inventory of toxic air contaminants, as well as demographic and health data.  Over the next three years BAAQMD will work to further refine this information and use it as the basis to develop policies to reduce toxic air contaminant emissions in areas with high exposures and sensitive populations.
James Fine, a professor of environmental science at the University of San Francisco, believes that BAAQMD is moving in the right direction.  “This is a very ambitious and admirable effort that they’re undertaking, because what it’s doing is assessing the emissions burden with regards to toxic air contaminants at the community scale.  And this presumably will give them the technical evidence they need to focus emissions reduction programs on the communities where the emissions burden is greatest.” 
Despite the adversity she’s faced, Harrison remains optimistic about the City’s future.  “I still think San Franciscans are the most beautiful, progressive people in the world.  Because once you talk to people here and they acknowledge that these problems exist, they become powerful forces for change.