State Finds No Cancer Link to Abandoned Defense Plant : Santa Clarita: Neighbors blamed pollution from Space Ordnance Systems’ Sand Canyon site for illnesses in the area. A study says the cases are below average.

A new state health study concludes that the area near a former Santa Clarita Valley defense plant has had fewer cancer cases than average, contrary to some residents’ fears that pollution from the plant has triggered a rash of illnesses and even deaths.

The study is the second to find no patterns of illness linked to the explosives plant once operated by Space Ordnance Systems in the Sand Canyon area east of the Antelope Valley Freeway.

From 1972-88, according to the study, there were 42 confirmed cases of cancer among about 1,850 residents of Sand Canyon--whereas 119 cases would be the Los Angeles County average for a population that size.

Moreover, the study found, cancer cases were more or less evenly distributed in the Sand Canyon area, rather than being clustered near SOS, once convicted of illegal disposal of hazardous wastes.

“There is no evidence incriminating an environmental exposure” in the cancers that occurred, according to the study by Dr. Richard Kreutzer, a state medical epidemiologist, for the California Environmental Protection Agency.

But in an interview Wednesday, Kreutzer said the results do not prove that no one was harmed by SOS, which closed its doors last year.

“While the cancer number doesn’t appear to be excessive, and while the cancers themselves don’t seem to cluster closer to the site, we’re still not able to say anything about individual cases,” Kreutzer said.

“It still remains conceivable that an individual or some individuals might have had an exposure from the SOS facility that would have played a role in causing their cancer,” he said.

However, officials with TransTechnology Corp. of Sherman Oaks, former corporate parent of SOS, said the study affirms their view that the firm’s waste disposal practices never posed a risk to health.

“It merely confirms what TransTechnology’s belief has been during this entire process--that any contamination of the ground water to which SOS might have contributed had no health effects on anyone,” said company Vice President Valentina Doss.

SOS came to the Santa Clarita Valley in 1967 to manufacture flares and explosive devices for the military. In addition to the Sand Canyon site, commonly known as the Placerita Canyon plant, SOS operated a second plant at Mint Canyon near Agua Dulce, which was not covered by the study.

Over the years, the plants were rocked by several explosions that killed or maimed workers. Then the firm was engulfed in controversy following a March, 1984, raid on both plants by an army of environmental and law enforcement officers.

They uncovered evidence that SOS was illegally storing hundreds of drums of hazardous waste, and had disposed of chemically tainted water by dumping it along creek beds and spraying it into the air.

In the aftermath of the raid, two executives served brief jail terms and the company paid $300,000 for misdemeanor violations of waste disposal laws. Under orders from the state, the company also performed costly cleanups at both sites.

The Mint Canyon plant shut down two years ago for lack of business. Last year, the Placerita plant was closed and SOS was acquired by an Arizona firm.

Although it appeared there had never been large exposures to neighbors of SOS, health concerns remained. State health officials contracted with Dr. Thomas Mack of the USC medical school to investigate cancer prevalence in the Sand Canyon area. His report, completed in 1988, found no link between the plant and the occurrence of cancer.

But the next year, fresh fears erupted with news of the cancer deaths of five members of a single family who lived less than a mile from SOS. From 1983 to 1989, four members of the family died of leukemia, three while in their early 20s. The fifth, Robert Hercules, died of kidney cancer in 1989.

At the same time, an informal canvass of Sand Canyon households, led by canyon resident Margi Colette, turned up 72 cancers in the area. The residents challenged the state to investigate their findings.

Kreutzer said his study began with an effort to verify Colette’s 72 cases and check with the Los Angeles County Tumor Registry, part of a statewide cancer census, for cases she might have missed. Had all 72 cases been verified, the total still would have been lower than average for a Los Angeles County area of similar size.

However, only 42 cases were confirmed. Of the other 30 cases, two involved a highly treatable type of skin cancer that is not reported to tumor registries and so was not counted. Three others weren’t counted because they were diagnosed before 1972, the starting point of the study.

Seven more were not counted because they were diagnosed after people moved out of the area. In the remaining 18 cases, investigators could not trace the people or confirm the diagnosis.

“I’m glad the state finally did something we asked them to for a long time,” Colette said Wednesday.

“I don’t know how they arrived at their figures,” she said. “I’m glad of the apparent results.”