Science
An L.A. AIDS trailblazer has advice on how to stay hopeful in dark times for public health
The year was 1987. Phill Wilson was 31, a recent transplant to L.A. from his hometown of Chicago. A mysterious infection that weakened its hosts’ immune systems was killing people at a terrifying rate, while the Reagan administration downplayed and openly joked about the disease. Some major news outlets initially wrote off the emerging epidemic as a “gay plague,” insinuating that other Americans didn’t need to worry about it.
Wilson’s doctor told him that he was HIV-positive, had six months to live and that he should get his affairs in order.
Instead, Wilson decided to “focus on the living.”
“Let’s use the time I have to do something,” he recalls thinking.
“My life,” Wilson says now, at age 69, “is that something.”
Wilson went on to found L.A.’s Black AIDS Institute, using the nonprofit think tank to draw attention to the lack of outreach, prevention and treatment programs tailored to Black Americans — despite the disproportionate toll that AIDS had taken on them.
Wilson not only defied his doctor’s orders. He also defied the odds, surviving one of the world’s deadliest epidemics, along the way preaching the message of prevention and care, from demonstrations in the nation’s capital to the sanctified realm of the Black church.
A participant holds a sign referring to Rock Hudson during a three-hour walkathon through Hollywood on July 28, 1985, in a fundraiser sponsored by AIDS Project Los Angeles.
(Jim Ruymen / Associated Press)
It’s been 40 years since Angelenos took to the streets for the first time to raise money for research in the wake of screen legend Rock Hudson’s stunning announcement that he had AIDS in 1985. That’s why it’s so hard for Wilson to accept that today, as L.A. is set to hold its annual AIDS Walk on Oct. 12 in West Hollywood, a new era of death and grief could be on the horizon.
Just as success appears within reach to end fatalities from HIV/AIDS worldwide, the U.S. — the global leader in that battle — seems to be in retreat.
In recent months, Republicans in Congress have followed up on moves by the Trump administration by calling for deep cuts to federal funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and home treatment, leaving public health officials and LGBTQ+ nonprofits in L.A. and elsewhere with few options besides cutting staff and suspending programs. AIDS organizations worldwide are also alarmed over the administration’s gutting of foreign aid initiatives for nations in Africa and elsewhere that cannot afford to fight infectious diseases on their own.
Wilson worries that 40 years of work that he and other activists, public health experts and providers, and members of the LGBTQ+ community have done to mobilize will be reversed in the space of a presidential term.
Phill Wilson reflects on the friends who lost their lives to AIDS while standing next to what he calls “My Wall of Dead People.”
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“I never imagined that I would be 69; I never imagined that I would still be alive and healthy,” Wilson said. “And I also never imagined that the trajectory of the AIDS pandemic would take us from malicious neglect, during the Reagan years, to a powerful movement that changed the trajectory of treatment and care and prevention not just for HIV and AIDS but for chronic diseases and infectious diseases in general, to … a day when in fact our government was actively engaged in dismantling institutions and systems that … were actually saving lives.”
Wilson, who also sits on the board of trustees at amfAr, one of the top AIDS research foundations, has been lauded by Republican and Democratic presidents. He has also attended the funerals of too many friends killed by the disease to count — giving him both a global and a painfully personal perspective on a disease that has infected more than 88 million people and claimed more than 42 million lives worldwide, according to the 2024 L.A. Annual AIDS Surveillance Report.
AIDS-related illnesses have killed at least 30,000 people in Los Angeles County alone, according to a report from the county’s Commission on HIV.
There is still no cure for AIDS. But since the introduction of powerful antiretroviral drugs in the 1990s that allow those infected to continue living healthy lives — and more recent preventative treatments such as PrEP — fatalities have plunged. In 2020, the U.S. government set a goal of reducing AIDS fatalities by 90% over the following decade.
But a team of researchers from UCLA and other institutions recently concluded that the Trump administration’s plan to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development, a foreign aid program, and rescind already-appropriated funding to it could lead to millions of people dying of HIV/AIDS over the next five years who could have been protected through HIV outreach, testing and lifesaving drugs.
“With the current policies in place, there is a very good chance that we’re going to see a huge spike in new infections and we’re going to return to the days of people dying of HIV and AIDS when that’s preventable,” Wilson said.
Closer to home in L.A., the successes have been uneven.
The racial disparities that sparked Wilson’s activism at the dawn of the pandemic have narrowed but still exist.
Black Angelenos make up just 8% of the county’s population but represented roughly 18% of HIV cases recorded between January 2023 and December 2024, the most recent period for which sufficient data were available on the county’s public health dashboard. Latinos made up about 60% of cases, though this group constitutes 49% of the county’s population.
Wilson doesn’t need these grim statistics to remind him of the stakes involved if HIV/AIDS funding gets cut.
His partner, Chris Brownlie, was diagnosed with AIDS in1985, and after four years of suffering, died of the illness. That wrenching experience prompted Wilson to become an activist full time.
Wilson survived his own near-death illness stemming from AIDS in 1995, thanks to a new treatment that kept the virus from replicating. By then he had grown used to attending AIDS vigils and delivering eulogies for others who died too soon. Eventually he became AIDS coordinator for the city of Los Angeles and director of policy and planning at AIDS Project Los Angeles, now called APLA Health.
Phill Wilson, founder and former head of the Black AIDS Institute, meets President Obama.
(Courtesy of Phill Wilson)
Today, Wilson’s home radiates with colorful artworks from his private collection and vibrant African wood carvings climbing toward the loft ceiling. There are pictures of him shaking hands with Presidents George W. Bush, Clinton and Obama.
Facing Wilson as he speaks is a Kwaku Alston portrait of late South African President Nelson Mandela, commissioned when Wilson persuaded that nation’s first Black president to sit for a portrait session to celebrate him being honored by the Black AIDS Institute.
Situated among these bursts of color and patterns and Afrocentric pride, though, are photos of unspeakable losses.
It’s chilling to see the many images of fallen Black gay men — among them the poet and activist Essex Hemphill; Marlon Riggs, maker of a seminal 1989 film on the Black queer experience “Tongues Untied,” and the South African anti-apartheid and AIDS activist Simon Nkoli, who helped organize Africa’s first Pride march in 1990 — and realize how many of Wilson’s brothers in spirit and in struggle were cut down by the disease in their prime.
“My nephews call this wall my ‘Wall of Dead People,’” Wilson said, “because so many of the photographs are of people who are no longer with us, or photographs where I’m the only one alive.
“My motivation is to keep the memories of all of my friends who we lost during the AIDS pandemic alive,” he said, “to remind people that they were here, and they meant something and did work and they had lives and they had loves.”
Standing in front of a piece by artist Woodrow Nash, Phill Wilson describes the art that fills his home in Los Feliz.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Wilson remembers how hard it was at first to promote HIV/AIDS awareness in L.A.’s Black community.
He had grown frustrated with the limited breadth of AIDS outreach in the 1980s and ‘90s. The whole model seemed too “white centric,” conspicuously lacking in outreach that took into account the obstacles that queer people of color faced. It was daunting enough to come out as gay in some Black and brown households, let alone speak openly about a deadly epidemic whose uncertain origins had fueled wild, often-racist conspiracy theories suggesting that Black people were chiefly responsible for its spread.
The idea of inviting LGBTQ+ advocates into your home to talk about prevention may have worked in settings where gay men were affluent (and mostly white), but many lower-income queer Angelenos (many of whom where nonwhite) still lived with their families.
He knew he needed an “unapologetically Black” game plan, which included co-founding the National Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum, an organization whose meetings allowed Black AIDS activists in L.A. and other cities to network and exchange best practices with peers who looked like them and could relate to their life experiences.
Wilson, who grew up in the projects of Chicago’s South Side and attended a Black church, also tried to enlist L.A.’s Black pastors to help spread the word about AIDS in their neighborhoods. It was slow going at first.
He recalls breaking with protocol at one Black house of worship by taking to the raised lectern — traditionally the exclusive domain of the preacher — to warn worshipers about the risks of ignoring the deadly disease killing their sons, brothers, nephews and nieces.
His stern address was mainly met with silence. But as Wilson walked toward the exit, minister after minister held out a hand to take one of the educational fliers he’d brought to hand out.
“They already knew that AIDS had visited their churches,” Wilson said.
In July, Wilson was struck again by memories of days gone by when Jewel Thais-Williams, the founder of the legendary Black queer club Jewel’s Catch One on Pico Boulevard, died at age 86.
Wilson remembers when the club, now a mixed venue, was known as a sanctuary for the city’s Black and brown queer community. Williams presided as a surrogate mother and life coach for Black gays and lesbians, transgender Angelenos of color, people living with HIV who felt stigmatized because of their status, and those who didn’t necessarily feel at home in mostly white venues. Williams had also established the first housing complex in the U.S. for Black women living with HIV and their children and started a holistic wellness clinic for members of the city’s Black and brown communities.
Wilson attended Williams’ public memorial at “The Catch” in August, alongside hundreds of friends, loved ones, politicians, former drag performers and club staffers. Some older club patrons strode in with the aid of walking sticks, less agile than they used to be but determined to pay their respects to “Mama Jewel.”
Everyone dressed as if for Sunday morning service — but the event morphed midway into a Sunday afternoon tea dance, with the crowd grooving under the disco balls to gospel-inflected house music, evoking the roof-raising atmosphere that made the club famous back in the day.
Wilson took to the stage to pose with L.A. Mayor Karen Bass as she presented a proclamation declaring the club a historical landmark.
In some ways, that moment of light seems like a long time ago. The current situation for public health in L.A. and across the country feels much darker.
That said, Wilson has learned to find solace in times of sadness and dread by taking the long view.
Having weathered the Reagan administration’s negligence, twice outlived his own death sentence in the AIDS crisis and recovered from a stroke two years ago, he has no patience for those who wallow in hopelessness about the federal cuts.
What people must do now, Wilson says, is the same thing that catalyzed him and local leaders such as Williams in the initial war against AIDS: Find ways to help, refuse to be silent and heed a piece of advice that may not sound satisfying in the moment but has sustained him through bouts of indignation and grief: “This too shall pass.”
Wilson realizes that, much like in the ‘80s, not everyone in the queer community or society at large feels personally invested in the fight against HIV/AIDS. For them, he has another bit of wisdom: Just because a government engaged in upending practices and slashing programs has yet to attack you or those you love doesn’t mean you should be a bystander to the damage done to others.
Wilson recites a James Baldwin line from his “Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis”: “For if they come for you in the morning, they will be coming for us at night.”
“We may not know it,” Wilson says, “but we all have skin in the game.”
Soft batteries and water-walking robots are among the many creations made possible by studying animals and plants.
For centuries, engineers have turned to nature for inspiration. Leonardo da Vinci dreamed of gliding machines that would mimic birds. Today, the close study of animals and plants is leading to inventions such as soft batteries and water-walking robots.
Cassandra Donatelli, a biologist at the University of Washington, Tacoma and an author of a recent review of the burgeoning field of “bioinspiration,” credits the trend to sophisticated new tools as well as a new spirit of collaboration.
“It’s huge,” she said. “We have a biomechanics lab here where we have six or seven engineers and 10 biologists. We’re all physically in the same building, together doing work.”
Despite its promise, the future of bioinspiration is cloudy. The Trump administration has proposed cutting the research budget of the National Science Foundation by 55 percent, directing remaining funds to a few fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. Bioinspiration, which has thrived on this funding, may lose out.
“That work will suffer with N.S.F.’s new priorities,” said Duncan Irschick, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts. “I sincerely worry about handing the mantle of bioinspired research to China.”
Here are some inventions, both new and historical, that have drawn inspiration from nature’s creativity.
In 1941, the Swiss inventor George de Mestral went on a hunting trip. Along the way, burdock burrs stuck to his pants and to the fur of his dog. Curious about their power to cling, de Mestral put the burrs under a microscope. He saw thousands of tiny hooks. The sight led him to imagine a new kind of fastener, one that wouldn’t rely on knots or glue.
A few years later, de Mestral discovered a substance that could make that idea real: nylon. The synthetic fiber could be permanently bent into a hook. De Mestral found that nylon hooks readily attached to fabric and could be peeled away. In 1955, he filed a patent for his invention, which he called Velcro, a combination of the French words “velour” (“velvet”) and “crochet” (“hooks”).
When engineers in Japan created a fleet of high-speed trains in the 1980s and 1990s, they also created some unexpected problems. A train traveling through a tunnel faster than 220 miles an hour compressed the air ahead of it. When the pressure wave reached the tunnel exit, it created a sonic boom.
An engineer named Eiji Nakatsu cast about for a way to make the trains quiet. “The question then occurred to me — is there some living thing that manages sudden changes in air resistance as a part of daily life?” Mr. Nakatsu recalled in a 2005 interview.
Mr. Nakatsu was not just an engineer, but also an avid birder. As he pondered the question, the kingfisher came to mind. When the bird dives at high speed to catch fish, its beak slips into the water without a splash.
So Mr. Nakatsu and his colleagues built train engines with rounded, tapered front ends. Their kingfisher-beak shape reduced the air pressure in tunnels by 30 percent, making the trains quieter and more efficient, even as they traveled more rapidly through tunnels.
In the 1990s, Frank Fish took a close look at the massive knobs that stud the leading edge of humpback whale fins. Dr. Fish, a biologist at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, and his colleagues discovered that these tubercles significantly improve the whales’ performance by keeping water flowing smoothly over their fins, generating extra lift.
Dr. Fish and his colleagues patented their discovery, which has since been adopted by engineers to improve a long list of devices. Tubercles extend the life span of wind turbine blades, for example, and make industrial ceiling fans more efficient. They can even be found on surfboard fins and truck mirrors.
A gecko’s foot is covered by a half-million tiny hairs, each of which splits into hundreds of branches. When a gecko slaps its foot on a wall, many of the branches push tightly against the surface. Each branch creates a weak molecular attraction to the wall, and together they generate a powerful force, yet the gecko can easily pull its foot away in a millisecond.
Dr. Irschick and his colleagues created a fabric that mimics these forces, which they called Geckskin. A piece the size of an index card can hold 700 pounds to a glass surface and be moved without leaving a trace behind.
Pitcher plants are carnivorous, feeding on insects that crawl onto the rim of their pitcher-shaped leaves. The rim is exquisitely slippery, causing prey to lose their footing and fall into a pool of digestive enzymes.
Researchers discovered that when rain and dew collect on the plant, microscopic bumps and ridges pull the water into a film that sticks to the legs of insects. The bugs struggle for traction and end up swimming — and falling.
In 2011, Joanna Aizenberg, an engineer at Harvard, and her colleagues created materials with pitcher-plant patterns on their surface, and these turned out to be slippery as well. A company co-founded by Dr. Aizenberg sells coatings that keep sticky fluids from clogging pipes and paints that repel barnacles from ship hulls.
The mantis shrimp has a pair of odd limbs called dactyl clubs that look a bit like boxing gloves. It uses the clubs to deliver staggering punches with a force equal to that of a .22 caliber bullet — enough to crack open shells. Scientists have long wondered why those impacts don’t crack the dactyl club itself.
Through evolution, the mantis shrimp gained an exoskeleton of astonishing complexity. Its dactyl clubs are composed of layers of fibers; some form herringbone patterns, while others are made of corkscrew-like bundles. These layers deflect the energy from a punch, preventing it from spreading and causing damage.
In May, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology reported the creation of an artificial version of these shock-absorbing layers. When microscopic beads of silica were fired at the material at 1,000 miles an hour, it dented but did not crack. The researchers foresee using the material to make lightweight shields for spacecraft, to protect them from tiny meteoroids.
Ripple bugs are about the size of a grain of rice. They float on the surface of streams by spreading out their legs across the water — but they can also move with astonishing speed, roughly 120 body lengths each second. At a human scale, that would translate to 400 miles an hour.
The secret lies at the end of the middle pair of legs. When a ripple bug dips them into the water, surface tension causes stiff fronds at the ends to fan out in just 10 milliseconds, and the fans become oars. At the end of each stroke, when the insect lifts these oars from the water, the fans snap shut.
In August, Victor Ortega-Jiménez, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and his team announced that, following these principles, it had built tiny robots that walk on water, make rapid turns and brake sharply. And because the water forces the fans open and closed, the Rhagabots — after Rhagovelia, the Latin name for ripple bugs — require little energy from their onboard batteries.
The paralyzing blasts of electricity that an electric eel delivers arise from a sleeve of tissue that wraps around the animal’s body. The tissue contains thousands of layers of cells, which are sandwiched in turn between layers of fluid. The cells pump charged atoms into the fluid, creating a biological battery.
Michael Mayer, a biophysicist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, and his colleagues are working to mimic the electric organs in electric eels and other fish. A biologically inspired battery could offer big advantages over conventional ones. They could be safer sources of power for medical implants, for instance, because they would run on organic compounds rather than toxic chemicals.
The team has built contact-lens-shaped prototypes from soft, bendable gels. Dr. Mayer hopes one day to implant the batteries with the same proteins that electric eels use to move charged atoms around.
“Building all this so that it really does the same thing as in the fish is right now beyond our reach,” Dr. Mayer said. “I think this is far in the future, but the project has already gone much further I thought it would.”
Health officials are warning parents to avoid an infant formula linked to a nationwide botulism outbreak.
As of Nov. 10, 13 babies across 10 states — including one in Los Angeles County — have been sickened by the bacterial spore after consuming ByHeart Whole Nutrition Infant Formula.
The cases were first identified by the California Department of Public Health.
The state operates the Infant Botulism Treatment and Prevention Program, the only manufacturer and provider of an FDA-approved anti-toxin for infant botulism. Officials were tipped off to the outbreak when they noticed an increase in requests for BabyBIG, the anti-toxin, this August, according to Robert Barsanti, a health department spokesman.
The state alerted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and sparked a nationwide investigation, which is ongoing.
Health officials are asking major retail stores such as Amazon, Target, Walmart and Whole Foods to remove the product from their shelves. They are also asking parents and caregivers to check their infant formula and throw away any cans manufactured by ByHeart Inc.
If a parent or caregiver thinks they may have a child with botulism who has ingested baby formula, take photos of the can and lot number, said Jemma Alarcon, medical director of the Los Angeles County health department’s Food and Water Safety unit.
“We’re recommending they either return it to where they got it, so they can get a reimbursement, or they can just throw it away,” she said. “It is very important that if you do see symptoms, like sleepiness, lethargy, constipation, or the baby is not acting like itself, just go to the emergency room, go to your primary care doctor and let them know that the baby was consuming this formula.”
In a press release, county health officials also mentioned symptoms such as difficulty feeding, sucking or swallowing; weak cry or diminished facial expression; poor head control; and muscle weakness or trouble breathing.
On Saturday, ByHeart voluntarily recalled two lots of the contaminated infant formula: Lot 206VABP/251261P2 (Use by 01 Dec 2026) and Lot 206VABP/251131P2 (Use by 01 Dec 2026).
There have been no deaths associated with the outbreak.
According to the FDA, the product accounts for less than 1% of all U.S. infant formula sales.
Nine of the 13 cases in the outbreak so far have been confirmed; four are pending. All are associated with the same formula and the same strain of bacteria.
The company said in a statement on its website that it has voluntarily recalled the lots, but noted that the powdered formula tested by the California Department of Public Health came from a can that had previously been opened.
“We know that Clostridium botulinum is a bacteria that exists naturally in the environment — in places like soil, dust, and even vegetables — meaning that an opened can can be contaminated in multiple ways,” the company said on its website.
It also noted that “global regulatory and scientific authorities do not recommend testing powder infant formula for Clostridium botulinum, and no U.S. or global infant formula company tests for Clostridium botulinum.”
Spores produced by the botulism bacteria are heat-resistant and exist widely in the environment. In the absence of oxygen they germinate, grow and then excrete toxins.
Although the disease is rare, it is associated with improperly processed food that allows the bacteria spores to survive and grow. If left untreated, the toxin can lead to respiratory failure and death..
The disease is acquired differently in infants than in adults. For an adult to get the disease, they must ingest the toxin. Infants, on the other hand, can get sick just from ingesting the bacterium because it will develop into the toxin in their gut, due to their immature immune systems.
Bill Marler, an attorney with Marler Clark, a food safety law firm, said infant botulism cases are exceedingly rare. He said he has a client in Arizona whose infant was hospitalized for two weeks and placed on a feeding tube for four weeks after ingesting allegedly contaminated ByHeart formula.
He said botulism spores are associated with deficiencies in cleanliness on food manufacturing lines. Once they are established in a food source, however, they are hard to get rid of.
“Botulism spores are pretty tough to kill, even with the hot water that you would add to infant formula,” he said. “Those spores are hardy little guys. It could have come in on, you know, somebody shoes or pallet, or, you know, anything like that.”
San Francisco — More than a half century after the U.S. ignited 67 atomic weapons in the the central Pacific Ocean, a former Navy base in the Bay Area continues to carry that nuclear legacy.
Last week, residents were informed by the San Francisco Department of Health that a test taken in November 2024 at the former site of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard showed radiation levels of airborne Plutonium-239 had exceeded the Navy’s “action level,” requiring the military to further investigate.
The city and the residents were not informed until 11 months after that initial reading.
Hunters Point, a 500-acre peninsula jutting out into San Francisco Bay, served as a military laboratory to study the effects of nuclear weapons from 1946-69 following World War II. Although the research largely focused on how to decontaminate U.S. warships and equipment targeted with atomic bombs, the experimentation left much of the shipyard laced with radioactive contaminants and toxic chemicals.
For the last 30 years, the Navy has sought to clean up the area — now a U.S. Superfund site — with the long-term goal of redeveloping it into new housing and parkland.
But some Bay Area community leaders say haphazard remediation work and lackluster public outreach have endangered the health and safety of residents of the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood that sits beside the former shipyard. And they point to the Navy’s nearly year-long delay in informing them of the elevated Plutonium-239 reading, taken in November 2024, as just the latest example.
Plutonium-239 is a radioactive isotope and byproduct of nuclear bomb explosions. The elevated readings from November 2024 came from a 78-acre tract of land on the northeast portion of the shipyard, known as Parcel C.
“The City and County of San Francisco is deeply concerned by both the magnitude of this exceedance and the failure to provide timely notification,” wrote San Francisco Health Officer Susan Philip in an Oct. 30 letter to Navy officials. “Such a delay undermines our ability to safeguard public health and maintain transparency. Immediate notification is a regulatory requirement and is critical for ensuring community trust and safety.”
Navy officials and some health experts insist the radiation levels detected at the site, while above the Navy’s action level, did not pose an imminent or substantial threat to public health. Exposure to this level of Plutonium-239 every day for one year would be less than one-tenth the dose of radiation from a chest X-ray, according to a Navy spokesperson.
“The San Francisco Department of Public Health’s letter references a single outlier air sample that detected Plutonium-239 above the regulatory action level,” a Navy spokesperson said in a statement to The Times. “Regulatory action levels are deliberately and conservatively established below levels of health concern, and a single detection of Pu-239 at this level does not pose a risk to human health or public safety.”
The Navy said it has collected more than 200 ambient air monitoring samples from Parcel C since it began performing fieldwork there in 2023. The November 2024 sample was the only reading with elevated Plutonium-239, the Navy spokesperson told The Times.
Plutonium isotopes emit alpha radiation that is relatively benign outside the body, because it cannot travel through solid objects. However, if these radioactive particles are inhaled, they can damage the lungs and increase the long-term risk of developing certain cancers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“What we generally are concerned about for alpha emitters is if you get them into your body, and either through inhalation, ingestion, inadvertent injection — like somebody gets a cut and it gets into their body,” said Kathryn Higley, a professor of nuclear science at Oregon State University.
But it’s the lack of transparency and the 11-month delay in reporting the reading that has fomented community mistrust and raised questions regarding the military’s competency to safely clean up the polluted shipyard. In 2000, the EPA admonished naval officials for neglecting to inform residents that a fire had broken out at a hazardous landfill at Hunters Point. In 2017, two employees of the consulting firm Tetra Tech, who were hired by the Navy to assess radiation levels at Hunters Point, pleaded guilty to falsifying data in an effort to avoid having to perform additional cleanup on some areas of the shipyard.
The presence of radioactive air contaminants — at any level — compounds the health risks of the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, which already faces high exposure to toxic diesel particles from big rigs traveling on nearby freeways and cargo ships visiting the Port of San Francisco.
Hunters Point Biomonitoring Foundation, a local nonprofit, has found concerning levels of toxic substances in urine screenings it has provided to several residents of the neighborhood, especially among older individuals and those living closer to the former Naval shipyard.
“Now, you’re talking about adding one of the most devastating radionuclides known to the human cardiopulmonary system to the chemical burden,” said Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai, the foundation’s medical director and principal investigator.
“The particulate load is enough to kill people,” Sumchai added. “But you add … a little Plutonium-239, and it’s a recipe for death.”
Philip, the San Francisco health officer, said in a statement that she met with Navy officials Oct. 31 and received assurances that air and dust monitoring is “ongoing” and that the military agency is “reviewing their duct control methods to ensure they are fully protective of public health.”
As a result, “no immediate action is required from a public health safety standpoint,” she said, adding that her office will continue to closely monitor the situation.
Other experts argued the situation was overblown. Phil Rutherford, a radiological risk expert and corporate consultant, called the delayed notification “unacceptable” but said the San Francisco health department’s letter was “a storm in a teacup” considering the low levels of radioactive material.
Higley, the Oregon State professor, said the site’s long history of delays and scandals likely added to backlash from community members. “I understand [residents’] frustration that they want to see this place cleaned up so that they can safely use it,” Higley said. “And there’s been a lot of reasons for why this process takes so long. But, from a radiological perspective, the actual residual radioactivity at the site is pretty modest.”
In November 2024, a Navy contractor was grinding asphalt on the site — a construction project that, while unrelated to the site’s historical contamination, triggered the Navy to monitor for any air quality issues. One of its air samplers, in Parcel C — collected 8.16 times 10‐15 picocuries per milliliter of Plutonium-239 — twice the established action level — according to a Navy spokesperson.
Navy officials sent the sample to a lab for analysis, and the initial results came back in March 2025, showing high radiation levels. In April, they ordered the lab to reanalyze the sample. In the follow-up analysis, radiation levels of Plutonium-239 were below action levels.
Between May and September, the Navy “further investigated the test results and conducted a methodical review of the laboratory’s procedures and practices to ensure they complied with standards,” according to the Navy spokesperson. “A third party also conducted an analysis of the lab’s performance.”
Later that September, the Navy told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and several California state agencies about the elevated airborne radiation from Plutonium-239, in preparation for an upcoming community meeting. That information later trickled down to the San Francisco health department.
At some point, the Navy published some air quality data for Parcel C gathered between October and December 2024 on a website where it curates several environmental monitoring reports. That report only showed the lower Plutonium-239 radiation levels from the reanalysis were below the action level.
A Navy spokesperson told The Times that it was “mistakenly uploaded.”
“As soon as the Navy realized an incomplete report was uploaded, it was removed from the website,” the spokesperson said, while the Navy worked to verify the results.
All that has contributed to the confusion and concern among locals and advocates alike. Navy officials are expected to attend a Hunters Point Shipyard Citizens Advisory Committee Meeting on Nov. 17.
When fieldwork is occurring at the shipyard, the Navy monitors for Plutonium-239 and several other radioactive elements that may have resulted from historic fallout from atomic weapons testing.
Acquired by the Navy in 1940, Hunters Point was initially a base where ships were built, repaired and maintained during World War II. After the war ended, it became home to the Navy Radiological Defense Laboratory, a military research facility dedicated to investigating the effects of nuclear weapons and radiological safety.
The Navy bombarded a fleet of U.S. warships with nuclear weapons as a part of atomic testing in the Marshall Islands. The irradiated vessels were towed to Hunters Point, and used as the material and hardware upon which scientists tested decontamination methods.
In 1974, the shipyard was deactivated. Hazardous chemicals and low-level radiological contamination were identified, prompting the U.S. EPA to place the site on its Superfund list in 1989.
The Navy has led cleanup efforts, excavating contaminated soil and demolishing buildings. A largely residential parcel of the base, Parcel A, was turned over to San Francisco and has been redeveloped with new town houses and condos. A collective of 300 artists live and work in former naval buildings.
But dangers continue to emerge during ongoing remediation work.
In recent years, the Navy has recovered radioactive objects, including dials and deck markers coated with paint containing Radium isotopes to provide a glow-in-the-dark effect. Sumchai, medical director of the biomonitoring foundation, said she has observed large stockpiles of contaminated soil held in areas without any protective fencing to prevent contaminants from spreading off site.
“I view this as a local public health emergency,” Sumchai said. “I think that everything should be done to contain it and to remove people safely, if necessary, from documented areas of exposure.”
But to the casual observer the site looks unremarkable.
Hunters Point juts out into the San Francisco Bay just north of where Candlestick Park, the former home of the San Francisco Giants and 49ers, used to stand. Beyond the abandoned barracks and drydocks, the site is now mostly an empty expanse of grass and reeds, with an unobstructed view of the bay.
The cleanup sites, including Parcel C, are still fenced off, and only those with authorized credentials are allowed onto the property.
On a recent weekday afternoon, ravens flew and cawed over the long-vacant shipyard buildings, while construction crews and trucks ferried building equipment up and down Hill Drive — a steep road leading to brand new homes standing sentinel over the former shipyard.
And beyond waiting for a new batch of Navy reports, there was no way of knowing what’s in the air.
Catholic Charities of Kansas City-St. Joseph expands its veterans program with additional federal funding
KFCA names top players, linemen, coaches for each of state’s 48 football districts
Sunpie Barnes and his Hot Spots will play in Covington
Alex Seitz-Wald left broadcast news for a local Maine paper. The 2026 campaign won’t let him escape the national scene. – The Boston Globe
First snow of season hits western Maryland; flurries possible in DC region Tuesday
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Video: ‘It Didn’t Have to Happen This Way:’ U.Va. Faculty Call for Review of Police Response to Protests
How Every Senator Voted on Passing the Bill to End the Shutdown
Stefanik receives top Jewish award days after announcing New York governor bid at Manhattan gala
US Senate passes bill to end longest ever government shutdown
Families accuse Camp Mystic of ignoring risks in Texas lawsuit over flood deaths
How Each Senator Voted on a Deal to Advance Toward Ending the Shutdown
-
Austin, TX5 days agoHalf-naked woman was allegedly tortured and chained in Texas backyard for months by five ‘friends’ who didn’t ‘like her anymore’
-
Southwest3 days agoTexas launches effort to install TPUSA in every high school and college
-
Seattle, WA1 week agoESPN scoop adds another intriguing name to Seahawks chatter before NFL trade deadline
-
Hawaii2 days agoMissing Kapolei man found in Waipio, attorney says
-
World6 days agoIsrael’s focus on political drama rather than Palestinian rape victim
-
New Jersey2 days agoPolice investigate car collision, shooting in Orange, New Jersey
-
Seattle, WA2 days agoSoundgarden Enlist Jim Carrey and Seattle All-Stars for Rock Hall 2025 Ceremony
-
Southwest7 days agoArmy veteran-turned-MAGA rising star jumps into fiery GOP Senate primary as polls tighten