In 2009 a “rag-tag” group of scientists who grew up in Bayview Hunters Point - located in heavily industrialized southeast San Francisco - pioneered a quest to implement the new science of human biomonitoring in one of the nation's most vulnerable environmental justice-impacted neighborhoods.

Approximately 23,000 people live or work in the one-mile ring around the western perimeter of a system of Federal Superfund sites undergoing dirty development at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. The Shipyard was the site of the Post World War II US Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory. Its radiation-contaminated industrial landfill is located within 50 feet of a “naked” broken chain metal fence separating homes, churches, playgrounds, and community centers from deep soil excavations and heavy equipment operations conducted by the Navy and Master Developer Lennar.

The neighborhood transit center at 3rd & Palou is half a mile downwind from Superfund toxic emissions.

By March 1, 2009, the Community First Coalition movement to establish a biomonitoring program in Hunters Point gained steam to include academic researchers, medical scientists, community leaders, clergy, UC Berkeley laboratory scientists, and pioneering leaders of the California Biomonitoring Program.

On that day a proposal submitted to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences requested $2 million in community exposure research funds to implement a program cross-referencing room air and outdoor air monitoring with biomonitoring for heavy metals toward the goal of establishing the Hunters Point Community Toxic Registry.

While the NIEHS proposal wasn’t funded, the coalition persisted bolstered by key leadership roles on the Hunters Point Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board.

On January 1, 2019, the Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program launched - the first in the nation to offer residents and workers low-cost, reliable, fast, and accurate urinary toxic exposure screenings capable of detecting up to 35 chemicals of concern present in the soil, air, laboratory drains, groundwater, and surface water at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Federal Superfund System.

On October 15, 2019, the Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program was awarded a start-up grant by the prestigious David & Lucile Packard Foundation. On December 12, 2019, the Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program Medical Screening Clinic held its Grand Opening attended by members of the UCSF School of Medicine incoming Class of 2023 and UCSF Medical Alumni Association President and HP Biomonitoring Founder Ramona Tascoe MD.