glass just because it's easier to have one set of stuff ultimately. >> [inaudible]. >> obviously i'm not leaving it in there for months but i might leave a case in there, i might have that for a couple of weeks. >> studies they've done have usually been 72 to 108 hours, so relatively short-term, but also somewhat higher heat exposure than what we probably get most of the time in san francisco, so conditions are really variable and then it's usually controlled rather than kind of normal. yeah? >> so, in general where possible, staying away from plastic water bottles is not only making your life a little bit healthier, it's decreasing our dependence on plastic which is more important as a broader

environmental issue, but even water bottles, even if you leave them in a cold environment, you don't know where they've come from or they've been in ship holds which is really hot, just as a number one rule, if you smell something plastic don't drink out of it. >> that's good advice. >> i have two questions, they're a little bit unrelated but the first one goes on the scheme of plastic, so plastic wrap, plastic bags, you know, it's great to say we should all use glass but we know what's used out there is plastic, and it's reusable, you can come up with all these ways to avoid it but there's plastic everywhere and it's accessible and cheap, so plastic wrap gets used a lot, there aren't that many alternatives that can do what plastic wrap does, i don't use a lot of it and it's harder to store things long-term and same question applies for the freezer, it's easier to put

things in a freezer bag. >> so, a little tip for that is i do admit to using plastic bags, i reuse them and if something is not -- i don't use them for liquids and if something isn't somehow already kind of like a solid or whatever, parchment paper around that and then use the plastic just as the thing that keeps it from leak-proof or if i'm taking soup to work, i have my soup in a glass jar but i will throw it in plastic because i don't want it all over my backpack and there's also more stainless steel options which are a little more expensive but that's a one-time investment, just don't lose it, so a box of plastic bags, it

lasts me like three year, parchment paper, it's the layer that touches your food and then aluminum foil isn't really bad, but parchment paper is a good thing. >> plastics in kids toys and kids products, they're not really labeled, i don't find the same symbol on them and i do a lot of the reuse and recycle, but mostly reusing things so we have hand-me-downs and all kinds of toys that have been through many generations and i sometimes think about it, i can only worry so much about what my son puts in his mouth, but when you talk about chemicals, where do you start, besides i know wooden toys are best and that was the plan originally, only wood in our house and glass and ceramics,

that's all lovely in theory, it's not what happens unless you're a waldorf parent and you're strict and it's really your principle, so good will has a lot of plastic, so you know, anymore words on that, i realize it's a matter of what you can do, but -- >> i have not encountered some of those challenges because i'm not a parent but i have been around a lot of kids, important note is that in 2008, a law was passed that mra*s sites could not longer be used in kids toys , for right now, if you're buying new toys off the shelf, they're not going to have that particular compound, plus skish

shi ones, they're not going to have that, i know you have a small child, is when they're at that mouthing stage of putting everything in their mouth, that maybe be the time to be most concerned about the specifics when they get to the older stage where, you know, there's some pretty nifty plastic toys out there, let's get real, and i like that i had legos as a kid and those were plastic, you know, maybe that's when you loosen it up a little bit and make, you know, judicious decisions, but when they're putting everything in their mouths, you want to be the most careful about what that is, parents may have other added tips. >> [inaudible] because most of the toys for kids, we don't really check sometimes where they're made. >> it's for toys sold in the united states, so regardless of where the manufacturer is, if they're sold in the u.s., they

have to comply with those standards, other countries could well have different laws on their shelves and my guess would be vary from laws that would be more health protective to less fighters to join us. >> i have two questions, i'll keep them brief. we can't control where our fire houses are and our fire house is a block off the freeway, we do replace our h fact filters every five mother and is they're jet black when we replace them every three months, it is a big concern, how do we reduce our exposure when we're a block right off the freeway, we're bumper to bump traffic, and there are some fire houses that are literally underneath the freeway so how do we reduce that exposure, air filters, if so, what kind of air filters? >> you're getting beyond our

technical knowledge of our filtration, but you know, it might be somebody to consult with somebody with expertise in air filtration for indoor air of course, maybe replacing those filters more often, you know, some very basic things and again, i'm not an engineer, but wiping down surfaces with moistures rather than a rag captures that better, otherwise you're containing it better, thinking about some of the basic things you do in the home, i would consult someone who has experience in air filters. >> [inaudible].

>> [inaudible] and my husband tells me they mop the apparatus floors every day because it's a diesel dust, i'm not sure if it's a common practice in fire houses, i was told someone in the fire department had developed cancer and they thought it was partly due to the diesel dust so they mop down every day, i know they probably sweep it but i don't know if mopping down is what 9 does, i don't know if this is company policy because i haven't been there. it is? okay. >> i have a question. my question is unrelated, talking about -- going back to the radiation and how bad it is for your body, so why do they recommend it as a treatment if someone has had cancer of various sorts? >> kind of because it can be

toxic to cells and -- so, if you target it, right, and then you're directing it to those very cancer cells that are growing very rapidly and are in a very focal area, then you are, you know, -- and it's at a higher dose than you're exposed to when you're screening, you're killing those cells and you're stopping their growth, so they're leveraging that particular feature of the radiation just as they do with chemotherapy which is drugs that we won't have to take unless we're needing to kill those cancer cells. >> [inaudible] radiation? >> it is very focused >> even though the [inaudible] i was talking about, if it's focused, why does everybody leave the room? >> they're spending their 8 hour work day, and even if it's

focused and there's a little bit of spread, radiation, as i understand, i'm not a physicist either, does reduce in its power the further away you get from it, right, that there's still, you know, if you're spending 8, 9 hours a day, you don't want that little bit added, they're getting better and better at in medical radiation when they're using it as a treatment, directing that ray to a more specific and localized area, but, you know, we do see in kids who are treated with radiation early -- for earlier childhood cancers that they can develop later life cancers as a result, now what's your trade-off there, the 20, 30 years of life they may have and maybe it's a treatable cancer they might get later, but if you're an adult

and getting na, you're weighing the costs and benefits. >> i just wanted to say one thing about the -- a couple of things about the diesel fuel, christine brings a great thing about where your fire house is located but what are our practices in the fire house, and are your extractors plugged in when the rigs are on or they're plugged in and blowing into the apparatus floor and with some of our standing orders with the ambulances, i know for sure they're supposed to stay on all the time at a scene, you're at a house in an hour and your rig is supposed to be on outside, that's addressing some of those policies within our department, it's like, well, we're told you have to leave the rig running to keep the power up or something, well, come on now, you know, can't that not be changed a little bit, so i think that that is, you know,

it's the diesel fuel we know is something cancer-causing, the other thing that came up with me is not a question but a comment with fire houses that i know and just starting to look and there's been some talk in our department, why do we have cell towers on our fire houses and there are some fire houses that have them and they're in places where it's exposing right where we sleep, why do -- why do we have that and is it a cost benefit thing, and just to start to ask some of those questions of our administration really, so that was it. >> so, i think that we are out of time, but this was wonderful, thank you for the rich questions and your attention and for bringing so many of you in here. >> i would like to thank bonnie and the breast cancer fund for coming and all of the local co-op that uses local ingredients, we practice what

we preach. (applause) >> good morning, everyone. we're going to get started now. thank you for attending today's announcement. my name is adrian, i'm with immigrant affairs. let me first start by introducing the other partners for today's initiative lunch. first of all, the san francisco

foundation, dr. sandra hernandez and tessa rivera, [speaker not understood], senior program officer for immigrant rights and integration, walter and alise fund, also known as the haase senior fund. pam david, the wallace alexander gabode foundation, stacey ma and thomas, concerned with immigrants and refugees represented today by felicia barto, deputy director. also present today are commissioner canali vice-chair of the san francisco immigrant rights commission, city librarian, luis herrera, [speaker not understood], and clementine of the african advocacy network. so, let me provide first of all just a little bit of background on the initiative. in 2008 while serving as city

administrator, mayor ed lee created the office of civic engagement and immigrant affairs, one of the first such offices in the nation. the intention was to better communicate with and engage our city residents while providing opportunities for meaningful participation and particularly for under served and vulnerable communities. in 2009 the city had the pleasure of collaborating with business community and philanthropic partners for the 2010 census count. we learned a lot about applying relevant street wise, street smart approaches to outreach and supporting community stewardship. this successful outreach effort and ongoing relationship evolved into a new model of engagement and collaboration. last year under the leadther ship of mayor ed lee and dr. sandra hernandez of the san francisco foundation, ~ planning began on a city-wide citizenship initiative, a total

of five philanthropic foundations, a national grant makers organization, and trusted community partners are working together with the city on this effort. we will be starting the pilot phase of the initiative after today's announcement. we hope to include more partners as the initiatives progresses into full implementation over the next three years. so, mayor lee will now announce the initiative. and as a long-time civil rights champion and leader, mayor lee has infused san francisco's city government with a new sense of inclusive collaborative leadership effectiveness and boundless energy, creative innovation and energy. so, mayor lee. (applause) >> thank you, adrian. i don't know about boundless energy. [laughter] >> but i do -- i am inspired by our immigrant community.

we've done so much that i think the city is -- its dna is really about our diversity. let me thank adrian. she's been a wonderful leader at the office of civic engagement and immigrant affairs, leading an effort not just with the immigrant rights commission, but a good strong relationship with our community-based organizations that do all of the great on the groundwork with our immigrant families, people who are coming here as refugees, adjusting, people who come here, permanent residents, people who have come here seeking their future, their hopes for themselves and their families. also people who often came here by different ways and stayed, and maybe overstayed their status, or are escaping from

war-torn or impoverished countries. we will be a sanctuary city for many years for people who want to be here. having said that, i am glad to be here this morning with adrian, dr. hernandez, and also, again, teaming up with board president and supervisor david chiu who i got a chance to work with very early as we prepared back in 2010 with all the community groups and with the board of supervisors. and then i was the city administrator tasked by the mayor and the board with this big challenge of how do we go about of the census, knowing that every census in past history and those brief partial census efforts that go on in between the 10 years always under counted our folks and people who have been here. all the groups that i just described and the folks that we have tried to serve and knew that they were living sometimes in the shadow, sometimes

without a lot of help and support. how do we count them in as residents of this city? and, so, we began on a very strong outreach program that depended upon service providers, to be quite candid. not just government agencies, but providers that sacrifice much of their time in the nonprofit world, surviving on very, very much foundational grants, foundational leaders who oftentimes were the only ones that heard the voices that we need help to really identify these folks because if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have people coming out and telling us what diseases were causing them problems, what was spreading, what were the fears in our immigrant communities that were preventing them from participating, from not getting licenses, not accessing themselves to job opportunities, being perhaps

caught up in underground economy. and you know what that leads to oftentimes is many problems that also may have challenges in our criminal justice system as well as our economics. but we wanted all of that to change. we for many years kids of immigrants, we always felt it was our duty to take up what maybe our parents and our friends were not able to out of fear or out of the lack of government action or accountability, or even a safety net for people to be able to speak freely. taking all of that immigrant life lessons and now placing them in effect i have culturally competent programs was our task. and, so, back in 2010 we tried to do that, and i think we did very well in the census count by bringing forth so many groups to be counted and not to be afraid and not to be experiencing consequences.

but the census was only the beginning. we knew that. and in our follow-up conversations with dr. hernandez who helped lead a lot of the community-based efforts as well as conversations with foundations and grants, with people like annie chung and others who are community leader, with different ethnicities, and i mean all ethnicities. not just ones that dominate, immigrants in san francisco like asians and latinos, but our african community, our eastern europe committee, our middle eastern communities are all engaged in this effort. and our goal was always beyondv just being counted, how do you participate fully in american society? ~ how do you get to a david chiu as the supervisor or ed lee as the mayor and register your heart felt viewpoints on how your park should look like? what kind of education level

your schools should be in? what kind of community safety plans would make you and your family feel safe? what kind of level of health care, which is a big, big challenge for us these days, that you need in order to keep healthy? all of these kinds of issues, including input in the government, we've always wanted to improve. well, today there is over 100,000 permanent residents in san francisco who are not fully engaged yet in everything that they can be doing in registering their voice. and, so, we want to announce today a new initiative, it's the san francisco pathways to citizenship initiative. its job, its focus is to work with all the community-based organizations in the public-private way, work with the foundations with historically supported these efforts to bring voice and communication to hidden communities and unannounced

communities, and to bring them to a path of citizenship, and to talk in culturally competent ways what the benefits of full citizen participation are, and there are many. if you are becoming a citizen or if you become a citizen, you're going to have a lot more fuller rights. for one thing, you get to vote in san francisco. you get to vote in america. and that voting right is so precious. and we saw just a month ago or less than a month ago how we revisited how valuable that voting rights is, and all the sacrifices that heroes of this country had to protect that right for everybody. we want everybody to enjoy that because that gets you a voice and all the things we initially talked about. we want citizens to have a proper rich orientation and training classes that will conduct -- that will be conducted through this

initiative, nonpartisan voting, the rights to vote, the right to be educated around every ballot measure that we have, whether it costs you more money or it doesn't cost you anything, or how do we improve muni, whether it costs you more or doesn't cost you anything. how do we do all of that in a much more involved way? education, outreach, more engaging new citizens to mentor and help other eligible immigrants navigate the citizenship application process. we think this is our next big challenge, but opportunity just beyond the work that we did which was groundwork to get people counted. and i said earlier, our diversity is not just to be tolerated. it has to be celebrated in every way, and full participation is the goal. well, i want to thank wonderful historic and new funding partners that through their

leadership and generosity in this initiative, certainly sandra hernandez and the san francisco foundation have been long-time partners. she's been so helpful in many other things and many of you know she's helping me on hope s.f., provide housing opportunities for some of our worst dilapidated housing. now she's also again stepped up with additional partners. and i want to just signal to you some of these historic partners that are working with us. the [speaker not understood] foundation, the haase junior and senior foundations, as well as the asian pacific fund amongst many other foundations that are assisting us. this is a $1.2 million initiative over the next three years with the city providing about half of the funding and the foundations stepping up with the other half. but the real work is going to be done at the community level. the community organizations that are going to be working with us on numerous and they

reflect all the different ethnicities that i just mentioned. but i want to mention a few to give them some special thank you because they're stepping beyond what they've traditionally done and going into the mold of going beyond just the citizenship count and now into services into this new orientation and training, and that is [speaker not understood] for the elderly, one of the lead agency. thank you, annie, for leading that. you've been a wonderful collaborater with us. the asian caucus, asian pacific islander outreach, catholic charities cyo, international institute of the bay area, jewish family and children services, [speaker not understood] community resource center. as well as the african advocacy network, the arab resource organizing center, myob which is the [speaker not understood], the southeast asian community center, [speaker not understood] media, of course san francisco

immigrant rights commission. well, i've often said in many speeches that our immigrant population is important. well, over a third of our population are immigrants and we acknowledge that. but i don't just want to say it as an announcement. everybody knows that. what we want is full participation. we want people to not be afraid or not be meeting as many barriers as they are today, from activating themselves in full participation. and i do want to have people of all languages and all heritages telling us how they want our parks to be managed, how they want community safety, how they want transportation to be had, all these things everybody else gets to do, and they weigh in pretty heavily. but i want full participation of that. and until we get so, we'll always feel we're not representing everybody in this city. and, so, this effort is to get

to the additional 100,000 permanent residents to encourage them to get to the citizenship, enjoy all those benefits. those benefits are numerous. you're going to be able to situate yourself in better jobs. you're going to get qualified for training programs that are only offered sometimes to citizenships. you're going to always obviously we want to improve your language capabilities so that you're able to navigate these employment training programs and all the other engaging programs that we have. san francisco is the innovation capital of the world and in that way all of the different ethnicities that arrive in san francisco of all different backgrounds need to be part of this innovation, because innovation is not about just one particular group of people. it's about everybody participating. and you should hear some of the tech kids that are in the city who want to hear from the

chinese american community, the southeast asian american haunted, the african immigrant community, the latino immigrant community, southeast asian community, all of them, they want to hear how they can innovate technology with everyone else and how they can improve lives ~. technology is there for our use and one of the reasons we support it is it's got to improve our lives for everybody. you cannot improve one's life if you're not communicating with people that speak spanish only. or in the shadows. this is why we're making this announcement. we're also making a timely announcement and adrian is very strategic on this because we are having a national conversation about immigration. we have to pass comprehensive immigration reform in this country. senate has done part of it. (applause) >> we have to get -- we have to get this agenda today rest of

congress, to the house of cogv. it's a big, big challenge. the president, our senators, our leader pelosi, senator feinstein, they're all engaged. we have to push very hard. and i think our voices are going to be that much stronger if we add an additional 100,000 people on our way to citizenship because that's the full circle. and that's why we need immigration reform. we also need to make sure we bring some path of citizenship to all those that are living in the shadows as we have been a sanctuary city. we need everybody to be full participants, and that's what we're doing today. so, again, i want to thank sandra. i want to thank annie, i want to thank all the community groups that are standing behind us, people that we'll work with to help us be the successful city that we always feel we are, but we want to get more out of our citizens than just living and enjoying life here. we have to participate in the fullest way and this is what's going to make our city even more successful. thank you very much for participating here today. (applause)