No Cancer Link Found in Tests of 22 Sites at Rosamond

State health officials announced here Monday that 22 of 35 potentially contaminated sites in the area have been ruled out as a possible cause of the state’s highest rate of childhood cancer.

Beyond narrowing down their list of contaminated sites, officials of the state Department of Health Services were still not sure why children in this Kern County desert community of more than 3,500 people were contracting cancer at six times the rate expected in a town of its size.

“The truth of the matter is, we are not likely to pinpoint something as being the cause of the cancers,” Lynn Goldman, chief of the state’s Environmental, Epidemiological and Toxicology Division, told a press conference. “But that doesn’t mean we will stop looking.”

Goldman said she expects an ongoing state investigation into the unusually high rate of childhood cancer here--nine children stricken in a 10-year period--”to be done by the end of the year, possibly June or July.”

At a town meeting Monday night at the Rosamond High School gymnasium, Goldman told 1,000 residents that the cancers “could have occurred by chance alone.”

State health officials called the meeting to report preliminary findings of a year-long, $500,000 study to determine if any connection is possible between environmental pollution and the cancers.

“Out of the 35 sites we looked at, there is no more than a handful that will require more than minor enforcement action,” said Val Siebal, spokesman for the state Department of Health’s Toxic Substances Control Division.

At least six sites harbored dangerous levels of toxic chemicals and required enforcement actions, including excavation and removal operations, Siebal said.

In an interview later, Siebal said that two businesses in the Rosamond area would be fined in the next few weeks for violations related to storage and production of hazardous materials.

Many residents stalked out of the meeting early, saying that they learned little they did not already know, or were confused by the scientific jargon in the reports.

“Expected levels. No unusual amounts. Semi-volatiles. What does that mean?” asked Rosamond resident Deana Ginn, 35. “They’re not telling us anything.”

But another resident, Sherry Fisher, 27, said she felt relieved when state health officials reported that local water sources had been declared free of carcinogens and toxic chemicals.

“I was concerned about the water,” said Fisher, a mother of two small children. “But I’ll still worry until they are done with their investigation.”

Of the nine children in this Antelope Valley town who were stricken with cancer between 1975 and 1985, only three have survived, officials said. A remarkable feature of the Rosamond cancer cluster is that most of the cases were a rare form of brain cancer, medullablastoma.

Another Area of Concern

The childhood cancer rate in Rosamond between 1975 and 1985 was twice as high as that in the agricultural community of McFarland, which has received more media attention. McFarland, about 100 miles to the north in the San Joaquin Valley, statistically had a childhood cancer rate of 36.7 cases per 100,000 children, compared with 72 cases per 100,000 children in Rosamond.

In fact, Rosamond’s childhood cancer cluster was discovered in April, 1986, when state health investigators were searching through records for additional cases of cancer in McFarland.

Kern County health officials said Rosamond’s pollution problems are the result of years of unregulated burning, burying and dumping of waste products ranging from car batteries to copper wire.

Rosamond lies just across the border from Los Angeles County, which for years has had far stricter regulations on disposal of waste materials than neighboring Kern County. As a result, Rosamond became a convenient dumping ground for hazardous waste generated in Los Angeles County, health officials said.

Even though the state’s investigation is far from complete, some residents have decided to move.

Seeking Safer Ground

“We moved a month ago to a home 20 miles away from Rosamond in Los Angeles County,” said Debra Sas, whose 10-year-old daughter, Lauren, contracted Wilm’s tumor, a form of kidney cancer, when she was 3 1/2 years old.

“In Rosamond I was paranoid all the time,” said Sas, who helped organize Southern Kern Residents Against Pollution, which has complained about illegal burning and dumping here. “Now, I’m fighting from a safe distance.”

Rosamond sits 14 miles north of Lancaster and Palmdale, one of the fastest-growing areas in the nation.