Study of Rockwell Lab’s Health Effects Sought After DOE Shift : Santa Susana: Officials meet to draft a proposal after an Energy Department reversal. The agency had said it could not fund the research.

State health officials met in Simi Valley on Wednesday to begin putting together a proposal for a worker health study at Rockwell International’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a study the U.S. Department of Energy had previously insisted it would not fund.

DOE officials in San Francisco had maintained that it was not the policy of their agency to fund worker health studies.

They said such studies are the responsibility of other federal agencies.

But they reversed their position last month after Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) called a meeting that took place in his Panorama City office on June 18.

In attendance were DOE representatives, state health officials and members of the community who live near the lab southeast of Simi Valley.

Roger Liddle, a DOE official from the agency’s San Francisco office, said before the meeting Wednesday in Simi Valley that he had apparently misunderstood his agency’s policy regarding worker health studies.

“I was giving the best interpretation of what I thought DOE policies are,” he said. “I have never pretended that I know everything, or that I was the court of last resort. I will make mistakes.”

The DOE has since agreed to provide $341,000, with additional money to be budgeted next year, to investigate the health of past and present Rockwell workers.

The study is to focus on whether workers have experienced unusual rates of disease that may have resulted from exposure to toxic or radioactive releases.

The DOE is involved because Rockwell formerly did nuclear work at Santa Susana and still does energy research there for the agency.

There is an ongoing cleanup of buildings contaminated by radiation at the site.

Rockwell officials said they do not believe that a worker health study is warranted but that they intend to cooperate fully in the investigation.

Health officials in February disclosed “extremely preliminary” data showing a small increase in bladder cancer rates in three Canoga Park and Chatsworth census tracts east of the Santa Susana lab.

However, the statistical report drew no conclusions about the cause of the apparent increase.

Cancer data on residents of Ventura County census tracts near the lab are scheduled to be released in the fall.

Community activists and lawmakers have contended for years that the best way to determine if Rockwell operations pose a health threat would be to study company workers.

State health officials said a number of issues still need to be resolved before they are ready to solicit applications for the study, which they said could begin within the next few months or possibly early next year.

But Katz said Wednesday that he was glad to see that such a study was finally going to be undertaken.

He said it was a combination of political and community pressure--not a misunderstanding of DOE policy--that got energy officials moving on a worker health study.

“It has been very frustrating,” he said. “It took two years to get to this point. But the good news is we’re finally going to get some answers.”