July 20, 2005

Linking Human Health with Environmental Health

By Alison Fromme
Special to the Neighborhood Newswire

“Do you experience chronic nausea?”

“Have you been diagnosed with asthma?”

“Do you notice a substantial improvement of your [health] after leaving the area for a couple or more days?”

These are just a few of the questions asked in a survey of Bayview-Hunters Point residents published in the San Francisco Bay View newspaper and posted online at http://freeonlinesurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?id=101695.

Mesha Monge-Irizarry, director of the Idriss Stelley Foundation and the project’s lead investigator, hopes that survey results will raise awareness about the link between pollution and residents’ illnesses. Monge-Irizarry has a personal interest in the issue. Her son (now deceased) experienced such severe asthma in Bayview that he had to filter the air in his apartment and the water he used for drinking, cooking, and bathing. All of the difficult issues affecting the community, such as crime, unemployment, and disenfranchisement, are connected with poor health and the environment, according to Monge-Irizarry.

Environmental health problems in the community were documented in the late-1980s, when the San Francisco Department of Public Health found high rates of environmentally-linked diseases. According to Trust for America’s Health, a national nonprofit organization, the area has four times the state rate of hospitalization for chronic diseases compared with other city neighborhoods. And one out of every six children in the community has asthma.

Bayview Hunters Point Health and Environmental Resource Center (HERC) workers Mary Higgins, Vannie Phan, and Elizabeth Smith are on the frontlines of solving residents’ health problems. HERC provides free asthma screening, information, and many other asthma-related services for community members. “A lot of families just think their kids have colds all the time, when it’s really asthma,” Smith said.

The probability of developing asthma is heightened when people are exposed to dust, mold, and pollution in their homes, at school, and in the general environment, according to Higgins. Chronic asthma can lead to missed school and work days, ambulance rides and emergency room visits.

“There are hundreds of sources of pollution,” said Dr. Ahimsa Sumchai, an environmental health specialist who’s worked in the area for years. Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s (PG&E) Hunters Point (HP) power plant, which is scheduled to be closed next year, the Southeast sewage treatment plant, which handles the vast majority of the city’s effluent, the former HP naval shipyard, and car and truck exhaust are a few of the local pollution sources.

But legally making the link between environmental problems and disease is extremely difficult. “You have to find the toxin in human tissue,” according to Sumchai. “This is why so little has been done legally to fight the sources of pollution.”

Despite difficulties, the environmental justice community has been successful in delaying construction of homes on shipyard land and in promoting the closure of PG&E’s power plant. “A recent decision by the city not to allow a polluting cement manufacturer to move into Bayview- Hunters Point is proof that the environmental justice movement [here] is a potent one,” Sumchai said.

Monge-Irizarry wants her survey to highlight pollution’s impact on health, to convince residents they can pressure the government for solutions, and to let officials know that community members are paying attention. “At first I was leery to do the survey,” Monge-Irizarry said, “because there are so many groups that are experts about environmental issues.” But involving the general community is critical, she believes.

“I think the key for all of us here is to really seek collaborations,” Monge-Irizarry said. “Everything is intertwined. We cannot separate one issue from the other.” Once the survey results are known, Monge-Irizarry plans to petition the city government to immediately and thoroughly clean up all toxic sites in the area and provide justice to ailing families.