ABOUT

Ahimsa Porter Sumchai MD, PD (Stanford Postdoctoral Fellow)

George Donald Porter…and daughter Circa 1965…my father was a masterful source of crazy dad jokes and often referred to me in public as Dr. Sumchai.

Founder, medical director and principal investigator of the Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program, Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai’s leadership in the environmental health and justice movement began on the morning of February 19, 1992 after signing the death certificate of her father — George Donald Porter — a career longshore walking boss and shipping clerk who died prematurely from pulmonary asbestosis.

“We can’t breath” 2007 — Black Lives Matter Founder Alicia Garza cut her teeth mounting over five thousand signatures opposing the impacts of toxic dust emissions generated by the corrupt development activities at a federal Superfund site where Dr. Sumchai’s father spent his career.

Protege of Carlton Benjamin Goodlett, PhD MD, graduate of the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine and Stanford University Department of Surgery Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Sumchai was appointed to head the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Toxic Environmental Registry in 1997, and simultaneously returned home to the neighborhood of her childhood to establish children’s clinics as a physician specialist with the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

Medical Volunteers International/Airlift for Africa Red Sea Province Sudan January 1985