- The U.S. Navy delayed alerting the public to airborne plutonium detection for nearly a year.
- The radioactive plutonium was found at the contaminated Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.
- This failure deepens distrust in a community with a history of environmental injustice.
- Plutonium-239 is extremely lethal, with inhalation almost certain to cause cancer.
- The incident casts doubt on ambitious redevelopment plans for the toxic Superfund site.
(Natural News)—Residents of San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood are confronting a disturbing reality after learning that the U.S. Navy detected dangerous, airborne plutonium at a contaminated shipyard nearly a year before informing the public. The failure to promptly disclose the radioactive threat has ignited outrage and deepened distrust in a community already burdened by a history of environmental injustice and government cover-ups.
The navy found plutonium-239 in air samples at the 866-acre Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in November 2024. City health officials, however, were not alerted until October 2025, an eleven-month delay that the navy has since apologized for. The radioactive material was detected in an area adjacent to a residential neighborhood filled with condominiums and a public park.
This incident marks the latest in a long series of controversies at the Superfund site, a location so polluted it is designated among the nation’s most toxic. The shipyard was used as a staging ground for nuclear weapons testing in the mid-20th century, and an estimated 2,000 grams of plutonium-239, one of the most lethal substances on Earth, is believed to be present at the location.
Secrecy and cover-ups
Public trust is further eroded by the navy’s history with the site. In 2023, the navy and a contractor were accused of falsifying test results for another radioactive substance, strontium-90. This pattern of behavior leads to a critical question, as posed by Steve Castleman, supervising attorney of Berkeley Law’s Environmental Law Clinic: “Can you trust them to report this honestly?”
The navy’s environmental coordinator overseeing the clean-up, Michael Pound, publicly acknowledged the failure. “I’ve spent a fair amount of time up here getting to know the community, getting to know your concerns, transparency and trust, and on this issue we did not do a good job,” Pound told a community meeting.
The health stakes of contamination
The health implications of the discovery are severe. Plutonium-239 is a key component in nuclear weapons. Air exposure can cause cellular damage and radiation sickness, and the inhalation of just one-millionth of an ounce will cause cancer with a virtual 100% statistical certainty.
The navy’s own testing found a sample with plutonium levels two times higher than the federal action threshold. While the navy claims a subsequent test showed a “non-detect” and that exposure levels are safe, it has not yet provided the full data to the public to support this assertion. The Environmental Protection Agency has stated it has “requested all of the data used by the navy so our agency could verify the findings ourselves.”
This discovery throws a dark shadow over ambitious plans to redevelop Hunters Point with up to 10,000 housing units and new commercial districts. One parcel has already been turned over to developers, and residents there have long reported clusters of cancer and other health problems they believe are linked to unremediated contamination.
The decades-long effort to clean Hunters Point has been filled with failures. The navy initially tried to clean irradiated ships with brooms in the 1950s, and later sandblasted them, spreading contaminated grit across the yard. Jeff Ruch, senior counsel with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, notes that “several thousand tons of radioactive grit that have never been accounted for were buried. Where was it buried? The navy doesn’t know and it doesn’t want to look.”
For lifelong residents like Arieann Harrison, who had already tested positive for plutonium exposure through a community biomonitoring foundation, the navy’s latest finding is an unsettling validation. “I feel very validated,” Harrison said. “Now that those naysayers know that this is really a real thing.”
This eleven-month silence on a plutonium threat is more than a bureaucratic misstep. It is a profound breach of the public’s right to know what risks they are facing in their own neighborhoods, reinforcing a painful legacy where the promise of urban renewal is built upon a foundation of concealed contamination and broken trust.
Sources for this article include:
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