M3.4 Air Pollution

Using the website, http://www.scorecard.org/, I was able to input my zip code and it provided me with environmental details of the neighborhood. The zip code I entered, 94134, pulled up the scorecard for the whole San Francisco County. The county ranked among the dirtier 30% of all US counties. The top 3 polluters are: SF Drydock Inc, Chevron Co., and PG&E Power Plant. SF Drydock is the highest polluter; it has a low cancer risk score but a 70% non cancer risk score. The top 3 pollutants in the county are: Xylene (mixed isomers), N-Butyl alcohol, and N-Hexane. In San Francisco County, 7% of houses have a high risk of lead hazards. There are approximately 210,000 housing units built before 1950. 

The county was ranked among the top 10% of counties in the US in terms of number of Superfund sites. A Superfund site is any land in the US that has been contaminated by hazardous waste and has been identified by the EPA as a candidate for cleanup due to it's potential risk to health and/or environment. There appears to be one Superfund site in San Francisco County, Treasure Island Naval Air Station -Hunters Point Annex.

This site is located in a predominately African American community and have had trouble cleaning up the site to meet EPA's standards. An article reported earlier this year that the site needs to be retested due to possibly falsification of data (https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/01/31/san-francisco-hunters-point-superfund-site-false-data/). There were plans set in place to build an additional 12,000 housing units including commercial and retail space. The plans are now delayed at least for several more years until the testing can be completed. If this site was located near a more affluent white neighborhood like Seacliff - would the site have been cleaned up properly by now? I unfortunately believe it would.

In regards to the air quality, 88% of our days in 2003 were good air quality days and 12% were moderate air quality days. I imagine that there would be an increase in moderate and unhealthful air quality days for 2017-2018 due to the wildfires up in Sonoma County. The percentage of surface waters with impaired or threatened uses is among the highest of all counties at 80-90%.

In San Francisco County, low income communities and communities of color are suffering from environmental injustice; these communities are seeing greater impacts from environmental degradation than other communities in the county. This is not surprising as we see that Hunter Point's shipyard is located in a predominately African American neighborhood and still facing several more years for clean up.