Santa Susana-Area Health Study Delayed

A proposed health study of neighbors of the Rockwell’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory west of Chatsworth could remain on hold until next year, while officials investigate whether to conduct the study, a state health officer said Monday.

Dr. Robert L. Holtzer, a physician and epidemiologist with the state Department of Health Services, said state health officials will go ahead with the health investigation only if a preliminary study concludes there have been “potentially credible exposures” to the public from the nuclear research and rocket test site, owned by Rockwell International’s Rocketdyne division.

A full-scale epidemiological study of Santa Susana’s neighbors “might cost in the neighborhood of $2 million,” Holtzer said. Faced with competing demands for health studies elsewhere, Holtzer said, it must be established that people near the plant may have been exposed to airborne radioactivity or chemicals.

“Just being there geographically is not significant,” he said.

Holtzer, who appeared at a meeting in Simi Valley of agencies involved in the cleanup of the Santa Susana lab, said state health officials have hired a contractor to review the history of the site in eastern Ventura County. But he said the work may require extensive analysis of Rockwell operating records, the cost of which may exceed the contract’s ceiling of $50,000.

In addition, Holtzer said, health officials have begun to assemble cancer incidence and birth defect data from census tracts in Los Angeles and Ventura counties within a six-mile radius of the plant. He called such incidence data “a crude type of information” that rarely provides clues about causes of disease--particularly in an area full of people who lived most of their lives somewhere else.

A full-blown epidemiological study would require taking detailed health histories from individual residents and considering such factors as age and time of residence.

What the state has done so far is but the “first steps of a relatively long journey,” Holtzer said.

Funding is uncertain, even to complete the preliminary phase, Holtzer said. He said the health department is seeking a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to finish the initial study. A bill by Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) to authorize the study is on hold pending negotiations between the state and Energy Department.

With the future of the study uncertain, officials have not considered if it should be limited to Santa Susana. Rockwell’s Canoga Park plants have been involved with nuclear work on a smaller scale than Santa Susana, but in more densely populated areas.

Holtzer said Monday he was unaware of the other plants. His boss, Dr. Lynn Goldman, state chief of environmental epidemiology and toxicology, said later that she knew of the other plants but that most concern has focused on Santa Susana.

“We don’t have the means to go out and look at every site systematically,” Goldman said. “We’re looking” at Santa Susana “because we were asked to look.”

Since the late 1940s when it was established in what was then a remote area of the Simi Hills, the Santa Susana lab has been used to test rockets for NASA and the Air Force. This has involved heavy use of chemical solvents to clean rocket engines, which has caused ground-water pollution.

Since the 1950s, a 290-acre portion of the site has been devoted to development of nuclear and other energy technologies for the Department of Energy and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission. All nuclear work has ceased at the site, except for cleanup of mostly low-level contamination.

The nuclear activity has generated the most public concern.

Several accidents occurred in the past, including the partial melting of nuclear fuel in a test reactor in 1959. But Rockwell has said there is no evidence that air or water pollution has ever spread beyond its boundaries.

Santa Susana’s last big nuclear project involved dismantling and recycling clear fuel elements, but that ended in 1986 for lack of government contracts.

For a while in the 1950s, Rockwell’s Canoga plant on Canoga Avenue housed a small test reactor. Its DeSoto plant on DeSoto Avenue had a small reactor and fabricated nuclear fuel from 1959 until the early 1980s.