Study Finds No Cancer Clues in PacBell Office

A study released Friday about a basement Pacific Bell office found no environmental evidence to tie the office to cancers that 13 employees have contracted while working in it, but it said such a link cannot be ruled out.

“I can’t say that there is nothing there, but I can’t tell how to intervene, said Dr. Hoda Anton-Culver of the UC Irvine Cancer Surveillance Center, author of the study.

“It is really premature to judge. But I think it is a good idea to move out” of the basement, she said.

The basement office at 13062 Euclid Ave. has been vacant since July, when clerical employees voted to move upstairs. It also houses the building’s power machinery.

Anton-Culver’s statistical study determined that the cancer rate among basement employees was greater than the rate generally in Orange County. But when each strain of cancer is taken separately, the study concluded, the number of cases does not exceed the general population’s rate of occurrence.

“The fact is that there is an increase in the overall cancer rate” among the employees, she said. The study termed that “statistically significant.”

The company acknowledges that 13 cancer cases have been reported among 100 employees who have worked in that office since the late 1970s. “Those people are still at risk if there is something there,” Anton-Culver said about those who have worked in the basement in the past. “But the problem with this one is that we don’t have an idea of what is the cause.”

Anton-Culver said that because employees there contracted varying strains of “common cancers,” further study is the only way to resolve the question. Had the employees all developed the same type of cancer, a common cause would have been simpler to find.

Linda Bonnicksen, Pacific Bell spokeswoman, said office drinking water, ventilation and electromagnetic fields have been tested.

“We may never know” what caused the mysterious string of cancer cases, she said. “There have been many, many studies done on that building, and we have not been able to establish a link between the building’s environment and the employees’ sickness.”

An employee who worked in the basement for six years and underwent surgery for breast cancer in 1988 said she believes that the office is “unhealthful.”