Officials Try to Calm Cancer Fears : Data Shows Disease Rate Average Near Toxic Waste Dump

Health experts sought Thursday night to calm fears of Santa Clarita Valley residents caused by claims that four members of a Sand Canyon family died from the effects of hazardous waste illegally dumped near their homes.

Cancer rates in census tracts closest to where a defense contractor illegally dumped toxic chemicals were average or below average for Los Angeles County during the most recent years for which data is available, a county health expert said.

Dr. Paul Papanek, chief of the county’s Toxic Epidemiology Program, said an examination of records for 1982 to 1986 showed that incidence of cancer in census tracts near the Placerita Canyon dump site appeared to be normal.

Papanek and other county, state and federal health officials spoke at a meeting attended by about 175 people at Santa Clarita City Hall. The meeting was the second of two since June, when a Santa Clarita Valley newspaper published allegations that Space Ordnance Systems, a Sand Canyon defense contractor, was responsible for the deaths.

Study Updated

Dr. Thomas Mack, the co-author of a 1988 health assessment in the area, reviewed and updated his study and concluded: “I can find no evidence to suggest a relationship” between the illegal dumping and the deaths in the Robert Hercules family. Whatever the cause of the deaths, Papanek said, ‘We are extremely confident that . . . it can’t be extending very far into the census tract.”

Mack and other health officials said no link had been established between the family’s health problems and the waste.

In 1986, SOS pleaded no contest to 10 misdemeanor charges of improperly storing, disposing and transporting hazardous waste and was fined $300,000. The company, which makes explosives and flares, was charged with dumping benzene, trichloroethylene and other chemicals into the ground.

The company also agreed to pay for a cleanup of the remote canyon site near Placerita Canyon Road south of the Antelope Valley Freeway. During the nearly completed $1.5-million cleanup, monitoring wells were installed and contaminated soil and water were removed.

Health officials have said they would re-evaluate Mack’s study of the heightened cancer risk posed by the illegally dumped chemical waste in light of the deaths of the Hercules family members, who lived about half a mile from the plant between 1978 and 1985. In addition, the county health department’s Toxic Epidemiology Program is studying cancer rates in the area since 1982. That study is incomplete.

Toxic Chemicals

Relatives of the Hercules family claim that tests had found toxic chemicals in the family’s water. But officials of the Santa Clarita Water Co., which supplies water to the area, said no such contamination had been found.

Dennis Dickerson, a state toxic control specialist, said the series of articles published in the Newhall Signal in June had caused a “highly unfortunate and unfounded . . . toxic fear in the community.”

Mack reached a similar conclusion last year after a study of cancer rates in the area found no increase in adults and an insignificant increase in the cancer rate among children. Mack said that concern about the health effects of the dumping were “not warranted.” The study acknowledged, however, that a link between SOS and area cancer rates could have been overlooked.