‘I don’t want to be leaving my children because of cancer.’ : Cancer Fear Stalking Pac Bell Employees : Medical inquiry: Remaining workers will be moved out of the basement. Since the late 1970s, 13 colleagues have fallen ill. Tests are inconclusive.

Two days after a co-worker had surgery for breast cancer, Pacific Bell facilities technician Kathy Reina wasn’t ready to quit her job--but she was scared.

“It’s very frightening to work in a building that seems to have a concentration of cancer cases,” Reina said Friday during a break from repairing dial-tone equipment. “I’m frightened for my two children. They’re 7 and 8. I don’t want to be leaving my children because of cancer.”

Reina’s co-worker was the latest victim in an apparent cluster of cancer cases at the drab, windowless, 36-year-old Pac Bell building that houses clerical workers and phone-switching gear.

Since the late 1970s, 13 of 65 employees who have worked in the building’s basement have contracted breast, lung, thyroid and several other types of cancer. Three have died. By contrast, only two of the more than 230 workers on the building’s upper two floors have contracted the disease.

Because of the latest cancer case--and rising fear among employees throughout the building--company officials announced on Thursday that they will move their remaining 15 basement workers to upper floors during the next two weeks even though repeated tests have shown no known cancer-causing agents in the basement area.

And on Friday, Pacific Bell officials held a press conference in the basement to release new results of tests on the building’s electromagnetic fields--the latest suspect in the search for a carcinogen there.

Preliminary findings from tests on Thursday showed “very low” levels of background radiation-- “comparable to what you would find in your home,” said David Rainer, an expert with Bellcore, a phone company environmental safety firm that is testing phone company sites nationwide.

Similarly, phone company officials are at a loss to explain the number of cancer cases clustered in the basement. They said Friday that although they have looked at air, water and asbestos pollution, so far they have no explanation for the high incidence of the disease.

“Yes, I’m baffled,” said Pacific Bell medical director Jacob T. Moll “There is no relationship to the time workers spent in the basement or the kind of cancer cases. And yes, we have no known cause.”

Mike Jungers, building operations services manager, added: “We don’t know what’s going on.”

Meanwhile, workers are increasingly scared and “stressed” by the situation, company officials said. Lately, holistic healers have called the office, offering aid and suggestions. Reporters have besieged them with requests for interviews and told their story on national news.

“They live with this idea of cancer when they’re at work and now they read about it when they’re home and see it on TV,” Jungers said.

A new blow came July 1 when employee Nora Vest became the 13th basement worker diagnosed with cancer and the fourth to have breast cancer.

Employee opinion is divided on whether the basement environment triggers cancer, but concern has deepened since July 1, Jungers said, adding:

“They look at (Vest’s) seat and the person’s not there.”

Most of the basement employees handle calling-card functions and assign new phone listings in a carpeted office located down the hall from the “power room,” an off-limits area housing gray banks of switching equipment.

Acknowledging their fears, Jungers asked basement workers to vote Thursday on whether they wished to stay there. When most said they wanted to move, Jungers agreed and said the moves will start immediately.

Company officials also acknowledged Friday that the remodeled basement had once been polluted.

On one occasion, a truck had parked near an air vent, filling the basement with carbon monoxide, Moll said. On another, a plumbing malfunction during remodeling filled ceiling tiles above the basement with sewage. And in earlier years, workers had been allowed to smoke at their desks in the enclosed basement.

Still, Moll and other company officials said, there was no clear indication that environmental factors had caused the cancers.

The question of possible hazard from low levels of radiation is a new question, one that Moll called “an emerging health issue.” Some studies have linked electromagnetic fields to a high rate of childhood leukemias and other cancers--but other scientists say they pose no health risk.

In March, a UC Berkeley researcher measured low levels of radiation at the Pac Bell building. And Thursday, as part of a national study, Bellcore asked five workers to wear detection devices called dosimeters around their waists, and another eight to wear the meters at home. The small, black, mini-computers--about the size of a Sony Walkman--collected radiation readings every few seconds throughout the day.

First results indicated low levels of electromagnetic radiation--about three tenths of a milligaus of background radiation, said Bellcore’s Rainer. By comparison, a small electrical appliance like a hair dryer typically emits hundreds of milligausses, he said.

Though some workers blame the basement for their cancer, none has filed a workers’ compensation claim nor has any worker filed for stress disability from fears about cancer, Jungers said. Still, he emphasized, Pac Bell was concerned.

Crossing two fingers and holding them high, he promised to continue to look for a cause.

“We’re going to lick this,” he vowed.