Richmond, CA has been an industrial city for over 100 years. Many of these industries dumped toxic wastes into the water and soil and left future generations to suffer health impacts and clean-up costs. This toxic tour of Richmond features over 100 sites, listing the companies that caused the damage and the chemicals that they left behind.

2. A Toxic Tour
A Toxic Tour is a trip through time as well as space. You travel back through time from what’s now an
empty lot through a series of companies that have each dumped a layer of toxics on top of the
others. Some of these sites are still occupied by the same businesses they have been for decades.
Other sites have been cleaned up to various degrees, but many have just been confined inside a
cyclone fence or under a dirt or blacktop cap. The assumption is that nobody will ever go there to
dig up the soil or come in contact with it at the surface. The effectiveness of protecting future
visitors to the sites depends on so-called institutional controls, ranging from prohibitions on
building schools to bans on digging or on eating whatever is able to grow in the dirt fill. Some
institutional controls include barriers or signs, but most descriptions of the institutional controls
are tucked away only in some paperwork somewhere. Those descriptions are usually supposed to
be reviewed every 5 years to make sure they are still in place and still effective. Yet how can
anybody really tell, short of a long term health study, how effective they are at keeping the
community and the environment safe?
The government sets standards for how clean is clean at these sites based on the chances of somebody
getting cancer or some other serious health problem from exposure to the site. Our understanding
of how cancer or other health problems develop from the contaminants, though, can change as we
learn more over the years. Already the old understandings of what is a safe level for lead or for TCE
(Trichloroethylene—see glossary at the end of this presentation) have become stricter after a
number of former sites had been cleaned up to the older, less protective standards. Are we going
back to those old sites and cleaning them up to our newer standards? And we are only aware of
the tip of the iceberg about how toxic substances interact with each other to make a chemical
mixture worse than the sum of its individual chemicals. In other words, what was considered a
protective cleanup from yesterday may no longer be understood as a safe cleanup tomorrow.

3. But in the meanwhile, the site could have been assumed to be cleaned up forever and forgotten
about. The job of following up on all these old sites in perpetuity is simply going to get lost in
the shuffle, if it has not already. So all institutional controls depend on citizen vigilance and
institutional memory.
I’m passing along my institutional memory to you with this guidebook, hoping you’ll take it up
with vigilance to clean up the land better in your generation than others have done when they
hand the chance but didn’t’ take it. That’s the legacy we need to pass along, not a legacy of
hazardous waste left behind for future community members to suffer from and be stuck with
cleaning up.
Get creative. At the suggestion of Mary Nelson, in 1990 I began leading and co-leading Toxic
Tours in Richmond with various organizations and partners. I once even led boat tours of toxic
sites on the South Richmond shoreline with the Baykeeper at the helm. Using this presentation
you can put together your own Toxic Tour of Richmond.
--Steve Linsley, 2013

4. Site 1—350 Carlson Ave.
Railroad shop. TCE, PCE, lead in soil and groundwater
Note: See Glossary at the end of this presentation for definitions of all
chemical terms

5. Site 2: Pullman Property—Carlson Blvd & Pullman Ave.
From the 1900s through the 1950s the Pullman Company sandblasted layers
of lead-based paint prior to repainting railcars. Lead-contaminated soil from
the site was removed, but arsenic remained in all 18 samples collected after
initial cleanup.

6. Site 3 . . .Miraflores Nursery, S. 47th
St at Wall
Ave.
PCE, chlorinated pesticides, lead in soil and groundwater; the 45th
Street
plume from the nurseries put PCE and TCE in residential groundwater

7. Miraflores Nursery slide 2

8. Site 4—Veolia/CAETC/Onyx—1125 Hensley Ave.
Bay Area environmental/California Advanced Environmental Technology
Corp./ONYX. Hazardous waste transfer facility

9. Site 5: Blair Landfill for Stauffer Chemical—foot of S.
51st
St
850 parts per million (ppm) DDT in the soil as well as dieldrin, arsenic,
cadmium, and lead in excess of clean up standards

10. Blair Landfill for Stauffer Chemical—slide 2
This site also includes the Stege Property Pistol Range; lead slugs in soil
over 200,000 parts per million

11. Site 6—Summer (del Caribe) Chemical—2020 Wright
Ave.
Fireproofing material manufacturer: workers wore lead-contaminated
clothing home to their children; high lead (solder), plus zinc (flux) and
VOCs in groundwater from on-site burial. Some ran off property and
concentrated in a ditch on the N. side of the 2100 block of Meeker Ave.

12. Site 7—Great Western Chemical—860 Wharf Street
Ferric chloride produced from hydrochloric acid on site and in sewer
discharge; TCE in groundwater

13. Site 8—California Oils, PVO—1145 Harbour Way
Vegetable oil refiner; phenols, nickel, and acid contamination on site and
in sewer discharges

14. Site 9: University of California/California Cap Company
1301 S. 46th
Street
Mercury in groundwater and soil from mercury fulminate in explosive cap
manufacturing and arsenic from Wood Products Laboratory; cinders from
Stauffer Chemical, spread all over this property to fill in the Bay and suppress
weeds and dust, contain arsenic, copper, lead , mercury, and PCBs above
hazardous waste levels (cont. next slide)

15. University of California—slide 2
Also in soil are chlordane and DDT/DDE/DDD. Arsenic, beryllium
cadmium, copper, mercury, nickel, carbon tetrachloride, DCE, TCE, PCE,
vinyl chloride, and PCBs were in groundwater above drinking water
Maximum Contaminant Levels.

16. University of California—slide 3

17. Site 10—Liquid Gold—South of I-580, East of Bayview
Exit
Hazardous waste storage site: toluene, nickel in groundwater; PCBs,
phenol, lead, zinc, copper, chromium, nickel, volatile organic compounds
(VOCs)

18. Site 11—Zeneca/ICI Americas/Stauffer—1415 S. 47th
St.
Stauffer’s Elwood Trimpey said their pesticides were “so harmless I could
drink a glass of it right now and it would have no effect.” Uranium and
beryllium metal were melted. John de Benedictus stated they used vinyl
chloride in research . They manufactured carbon disulfide, . . .
(cont. next slide)

19. Stauffer Chemical/ICI Americas/Zeneca—slide 2
Sulfuric (battery) acid, alum, phosphate fertilizer, titanium trichloride, and
pesticides. Proprietary pesticides include captan (thiocarbamate, molinte
(thiocarbamate, bensulide or Phosmet (thio phospate) fonofos (thio phosphate),
metam sodium or Vapam (dithiocarbamate, carbophenothion (thio phosphate),
cycloate (thiocarbamate, butylate (thiocarbamate), EOTC or Eptam
(thiocarbamate, flurochloridone (chloropyrrollidinone), napropamide or Devrinol
(amide, pebulate (thiocarbamate), and vernolate (thiocarbamate). Hi soil
concentration include arsenic (1,660 ppm), mercury (11.6 ppm), zinc (1,470 ppm),
lead (346 ppm), nickel, copper, cadmium, DDD/DDE/DDT, PCBs, PCE, TCE, DCA,
DCE, chlorobenzene, benzene, vinyl chloride, etc., in soil gas and groundwater.

20. Site 12: Chevron Refinery--841 Chevron Way
As of 1990, 115-174 million pounds of toxics stored on site. (2.9 million gal
toluene, 100,000 gal phenol, 1.9 million gal benzene, 230,000 lb asbestos,
1,240 lb lead, 100,000 gal nickel, 10,000 lb zinc, 1,000 lb cadmium, 1,700 gal
mercury. ) 240,000 pounds per year of toxics are released to the air—benzene,
toluene, chloroform, PCE, methylene chloride, nickel. A major fire August 6,
2012 was caused by old corroded pipes; over 15,000 people sought hospital
treatment due to the fire.

21. Site 13—North American Packaging Corp./Rheem
Manufacturing—801 Chesley
Plant: tin plating, zinc release, hydrocarbon thinner, lead

22. Site 14: Bray Oil, 801 Wharf Street
Bulk oil terminal—Solvents in groundwater.

23. Site 15: Reaction Products, 850 Morton Ave.
2008 accidental toluene release; the state ordered a TCE and DCE
removal action

24. Site 15 (cont): Collins Ave & Morton Ave.—three additional locations
Dennison Eastman Corp. paper manufacturing, 3451 Collins Ave.: volatile organic compounds (PCE, TCE), PCP
Koppers polyester resin chemical plant, 3501 Collins Ave.: 0.9 million lb. toxics; 29,000 lb./yr total toxics
released to air
Witco Corporation, 850 Morton Ave., produced polymerization initiators for plastics and benzoyl peroxide
production from 1957 to 1990. Alkaline wastewater from the manufacturing processes was neutralized on site
and held in two unlined surface impoundments. 270 lb./yr. total toxics released to air