Official Accepts Lesser Role in Rockwell Study : Health: Federal epidemiologist bows to complaints, will take non-voting position on panel looking into exposure of workers.

Bowing to complaints, a high-ranking Energy Department official Thursday accepted a non-voting role on a panel involved in a health study of workers at Rockwell International’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory west of Chatsworth.

Robert Goldsmith, director of epidemiology and health surveillance for the federal agency, also asked Rockwell in a letter to retain all records pertinent to the study--a letter he had been refusing to send due to the dispute on his voting status.

The dispute--evidently a small bump in the road for the 18-month study--nonetheless sparked a bitter exchange between Rockwell and community representatives at a meeting Wednesday of a task force monitoring cleanup at Santa Susana, where Rockwell for three decades performed nuclear research for the federal government.

“Bob Goldsmith today told me that he was no longer interested in having a vote on the panel,” said Larry Bilick of the California Occupational Health Foundation, which is acting for the state Department of Health Services as the study coordinator.

“I’m very pleased,” Bilick said. This “will expedite the carrying-out of the study.”

The Department of Energy has pledged up to $840,000 for the study, which is aimed to determine if workers have experienced any unusual patterns of illness due to toxic or radioactive exposures. Bilick said the advisory panel is negotiating with the contractor who submitted the best proposal and hopes to announce its selection next month.

The committee of health experts, government officials and community activists was appointed last summer to pick a contractor and oversee the study. Other panelists and lawmakers involved in creating the panel understood that Goldsmith would have no vote, since his agency has a huge stake in the study results.

But when the panel met in September, Goldsmith argued that he should have voting status, according to other panelists and Bilick. When the others disagreed, Goldsmith backed off a pledge to ask Rockwell to preserve all pertinent records.

The spat was disclosed at Wednesday’s meeting in Simi Valley, where another Energy Department official, Roger Liddle, said he agreed that Goldsmith shouldn’t have a vote.

Goldsmith did not return phone calls Thursday. But Mary Freeman, an Energy Department spokeswoman, said he has sent the letter to Rockwell.

“There’s no supposition here that things are being destroyed,” Freeman said, referring to Rockwell’s records. “It’s merely a precaution that’s come out of these public meetings.”

Freeman said Goldsmith’s intentions must have been misunderstood. “I can tell you he’s not a voting member, and was never intended to be.”