Health
A Black man stands on a hill in Hunters Point with the San Francisco skyline in the background.

A Community of Color Contends With the Navy’s Toxic Legacy

11.25.2024
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In the first of two podcast episodes of “Exposed: The Human Radiation Experiments at Hunters Point,” reporter Rebecca Bowe traces the soil contamination plaguing a Navy shipyard back to its origins — 20th century nuclear bomb tests in the Pacific.

Environmental justice advocates, scholars and military officials describe their experiences battling over land redevelopment, and reckoning with the legacy of a radiation laboratory that sometimes used human subjects.

How a San Francisco Navy Lab Became a Hub for Human Radiation Experiments

11.25.2024
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Our investigative series, “Exposed: The Human Radiation Experiments at Hunters Point,” details how the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, based at a shipyard in San Francisco, exposed at least 1,073 dockworkers, military personnel, lab employees and others to radiation in technical exercises and medical experiments early in the Cold War.

Part 1, the series overview, was co-published by the Guardian. Listen to the two-episode “Exposed” podcast, which will be broadcast on KALW Public Radio. See also: Parts 2-6, laying out the origins, methodologies, ethics, documentation and public health legacy of the lab.

Exposed
a white haired man sits on a couch crying and rubbing his eyes with his fists

Why the Navy Conducted Radiation Experiments on Humans

11.25.2024
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In the second of two podcast episodes of “Exposed: The Human Radiation Experiments at Hunters Point,” reporter Rebecca Bowe lays out what we know from scattered documents and a few remaining eyewitnesses about a Cold War research program that pushed ethical boundaries in the name of national defense.

Bowe speaks with veterans who describe their experiences as guinea pigs in field decontamination exercises that yielded little useful data, and talks with colleague Chris Roberts about what the surviving record say about tests involving injection and ingestion of radioactive substances.

Bay Area

In the Name of Eelgrass

06.24.2024
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We bring you this story from Bay Nature, a newsroom covering the environment:

In the Richardson Bay, between Sausalito and Tiburon, anchors from the people who live on their boats are threatening vital eelgrass habitat. Even though an alternative anchor technology could prevent the damage, authorities are telling the residents to leave, potentially putting some at risk of homelessness.

Aging
A man in his eighties sits on his bed in a small single-room occupancy residence in Chinatown. Behind him is a window where he hangs his clothes. There are assorted items beside him, including a desk fan, a television, newspapers and cardboard boxes.

Protecting Chinatown’s Older Adults From Climate Disasters Requires More Funding, Nonprofits Say

12.08.2023
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Community organizations say the systems in Chinatown to protect older populations during extreme weather are not enough to meet the needs that could arise. Without sufficient financial backing, the health of many older residents in the neighborhood could be threatened during extreme weather disasters. Similar scenarios could transpire in San Francisco’s other climate-vulnerable areas.