March 2026 Update - Petition to the Mayor
- MSNASF
- Mar 1
- 4 min read
Dear Neighbor,
We are most concerned that the PCE, a carcinogen and neurotoxin found in the
vicinity of 2550 Irving,, as well as on that site be cleaned up, removed, eliminated.
This is feasible and Supervisor Wong, whom we have met with, has said he will
support our efforts. However, he wants to see that the entire community is
interested in the clean-up. We know that no one wants toxins in the air we
breathe. Attached you will find a letter written by one of our neighbors, whose
home and family have been affected by the PCE (tetrachloroethylene) in the
neighborhood. Please take a minute to read the letter, which will be published in
local papers this next week.
At the end of the letter is a link to a petition requesting that the toxin be
eliminated and our health protected. Please take 30 seconds to sign the petition
and another 30 to send it to someone you know in the Sunset. Your efforts will
be appreciated and recognized.
Please do sign the petition today. If you want to talk further about the problem,
feel free to contact me.
Thanks for being a part of the community.
Sincerely,
Flo Kimmerling, MSNA
Petition link: https://form.jotform.com/260531968939068
How would you feel if San Francisco told you that you need to “live with a little bit more cancer” in your neighborhood?
By Yi-Kuan Lee
Thirty years ago, I immigrated from Taiwan to San Francisco’s Sunset
District. My husband and I bought a home on 26th Avenue and Irving Street near Sunset Super and raised our two children there. We are both public school teachers and have always believed that settling in the Sunset was a wise decision — close to retail and the park, relatively quiet, somewhat affordable, and surrounded by families.
But that sense of security was destroyed in 2021 when some of my neighbors came upon a public environmental report that was issued when The Police Credit Union sold the land at 2550 Irving (a house away from my house) to TNDC, a non-profit developer of affordable housing.
The report said that this site at 2550 Irving Street had unsafe and harmful levels of PCE vapors that employees in the building were breathing.
To our horror we learned the whole neighborhood—over 50 houses and businesses--was on top of an underground cloud of toxic PCE. PCE is an industrial solvent used by dry cleaners before it was banned. It causes cancer and is strongly linked to Parkinson’s disease.
Multiple air tests in my home and some of my neighbors' confirmed that PCE vapor was seeping into our houses. The poison gas was seeping into my home through our downstairs shower drain. For decades my family had been breathing at least four times over the health risk level set by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC).
Although the neighborhood demanded that the toxic plume be fully removed before any construction on the site, no government agency or politician took any meaningful action toward removing the contamination.
Desperate, we called on the San Francisco Board of Appeals. All five members said the city and the state needed to remove the toxins but ultimately decided that it was out of their jurisdiction to require the necessary clean up. The President of the Board lamented that the city, the state and TNDC were telling the Sunset residents that we are expected “to live with a little bit more cancer.”
Five years later, the building at 2550 Irving Street is complete, but the contamination remains.
These new apartments will provide 300 people (many of them Chinese speaking) with much needed affordable housing. But the city and the developer, TNDC, have no plans to let these residents know they will be living over a toxic site. The only thing that will separate these new neighbors from the PCE vapors is a tarp. But even DTSC calls this a “temporary” solution that should only be used after the contamination has been cleaned up.
Meanwhile the surrounding homes and businesses remain fully exposed with no plans for our protection.
Across the street the Police Credit Union is now preparing to break ground on market-rate housing where the PCE levels are the highest in the neighborhood. If the contamination beneath this site is not removed before construction, our neighborhood may well be forced to live with this health threat permanently. This should be unacceptable to everyone in San Francisco.
Our Mid-Sunset neighborhood has a greater than expected number of rare cancer and Parkinson’s cases. This trend suggests a public health warning that has alerted a prominent UCSF epidemiologist to consider further investigation.
How would you feel if your entire family, like mine, must continue to breathe the same poisonous air every day? We all should be outraged and demand more from our elected officials. My father died of cancer in Taiwan, in part because the government failed to effectively stop the harms of secondhand smoke. I never imagined facing a similar betrayal in San Francisco’s Sunset District.
My husband and I still believe institutions can work and that public policy must prioritize protecting residents. I sincerely ask you to join me and my neighbors in demanding that our elected officials, especially Mayor Lurie and D4 Supervisor Wong, lead an effort to remove the toxins in the Sunset.
If our elected leaders can continue to ignore the health of our Sunset neighborhood, no other neighborhood in San Francisco should feel safe.
Please contact the following public officials immediately:
Mayor’s Office – Amar Bhardwaj
415-554-6141
Supervisor Alan Wong’s Office – Derek Lee
415-554-7460
Petition link: https://form.jotform.com/260531968939068
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