Ramona Tascoe MD: I grew up beside a Superfund landfill with only a chain link fence for protection

Letter of support

As 2019 cofounder and medical consultant for the Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program, please accept my support for the Round 2 project proposal, “View From a Playground in Hunters Point: Superfund Community Exposure Research Science,” building on the work of the 2021 CalEPA EJ Small Grant project “Community Window on Environmental Exposures in Bayview Hunters Point.” 

Bayview Hunters Point is home to 35,000 residents and workers within the one mile perimeter of a system of federal Superfund sites. The EPA ECHO Enforcement tool identifies an additional 14 properties meeting Superfund criteria for chemical contamination.

My father was one of those loyal workers. Earnest Hamilton Tascoe Jr. served his career as a trusted HVAC technician and engineer who drove his family from Louisiana to San Francisco to work for the prestigious United States Naval Radiological Defense Laboratories, headquartered in Building 815 on the southern shoreline of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. He died of mesothelioma, a cancer induced by exposure to asbestos – following the 1969 disestablishment of the NRDL.

“View From a Playground in Hunters Point” offers transferrable deliverables designed to protect public health, heighten emergency preparedness and strengthen enforcement of environmental regulations in EJ overburdened communities throughout the state: 

As medical consultant, I will assume principal responsibility for Task 1: Biomonitoring testing and interval retesting of high risk heavily exposed residents and workers within the half mile perimeter of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Federal Superfund Site. In 2024 I joined Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai in testing homeless RV dwellers sited on the shoreline of the Superfund system in a region the Navy documents to be heavily contaminated with radioactive and carcinogenic heavy metals.

Biomonitoring retesting of high risk residents and workers within feet of landfills and repositories known to harbor nuclear waste was first conducted in 2022 by the Hunters Point Biomonitoring Foundation. The findings document measurable worsening of detections of dangerous chemicals of concern and declines in health measures. 

James Dahlgren Medical, associate of the Hunters Point Biomonitoring Foundation, conducted advanced speciated 24-hour urinary testing that detected products of nuclear fission and decay in 11 current and childhood residents, including a family of four with a 12-year-old disabled son. All were referred for expert follow-up.

The Hunters Point Community Toxic Registry converts six years of environmental health assessments and human biomonitoring into the digital creation of a secure HIPAA compliant registry of BVHP residents with risk, evidence and proof of exposure to environmental toxicants.

Protect … Detect … Prevent! The project design and feasibility of “View From a Playground in Hunters Point” is rooted in environmental justice advocacy, citizen science and a model for community exposure science transferrable to overburdened communities throughout the state … and throughout the nation.

Controversial cleanup

In “Controversial Cleanup: Superfund and the Implementation of U.S. Hazardous Waste Policy,” Dianne Rahm transports us back in time to the 1970s when residents of Niagara Falls, New York’s Love Canal, alerted the American public to the “ticking time bomb” of hazardous waste disposal with images of chemical slime oozing into basements of homes. Hooker Chemical Co. dumped 21,800 tons of industrial waste into Love Canal in the 1950s, covered it with clay and sold the land to the Niagara Falls Board of Education for $1. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA or Superfund) became the governmental response. 

Bayview Hunters Point is a heavily industrialized, heavily polluted community located in southeastern San Francisco. Decades of public health research and epidemiological surveys offer evidence of exposure to environmental toxicants. The EPA EJScreen and CalEnviroScreen rank the majority of environmental justice impacts in the 90th to 100th percentile.

The Hunters Point Naval Shipyard is the site of the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratories, a radiation contaminated industrial landfill and shoreline located feet away from homes, playgrounds, churches and transit stations. I grew up on Thomas Street within feet of the unfortified chain metal fence separating a Superfund landfill from our home. 

The 2022 Report of the Civil Grand Jury offers a clarion call to the risks of rising groundwater and sea level, extreme weather events like the 2023 atmospheric storms that shuttered the Biomonitoring offices for three months, and the regional dissemination of toxins emanating from Superfund properties.

An enormous amount of collaborative work has gone into the creation of a proposal that offers a model for Superfund community exposure research science customizable for the estimated 94 federal Superfund sites in California.

“Our Nation has an abiding commitment to empower our workers and communities; promote and protect our public health and the environment; and conserve our national treasures and monuments, places that secure our national memory. Where the Federal Government has failed to meet that commitment in the past, it must advance environmental justice.” – Executive Order 13990 on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis, issued by the White House Jan. 20, 2021

To learn more, visit hunterspointcommunitybiomonitoring.net/ or, to reach Dr. Tascoe and the staff, contact Hunters Point Biomonitoring Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, 150 Executive Park Boulevard, Suite 1000, San Francisco, CA 94134-3303, 415-349-4424. 

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Source: https://sfbayview.com/2025/03/ramona-tascoe-md-i-grew-up-beside-a-superfund-landfill-with-only-a-chain-link-fence-for-protection/