Study Backs Us, Say Field Lab Neighbors, Foes

Rocketdyne critics and neighbors said they feel vindicated after a new UCLA study released Thursday concluded that there is a link between nuclear testing at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory and cancer among Rocketdyne employees.

“I knew it,” exclaimed West Hills resident Bonnie Klea, a cancer survivor. “I had bladder cancer, which was found to be 50% higher in the census tract where I live, which is adjacent to Rocketdyne. On my street alone, we have two bladder cancers, two pancreatic cancers, brain tumors, birth defects. On one street with 15 houses.”

Also a former Rocketdyne secretary, Klea is among the many neighbors seeking compensation from the aerospace firm, claiming personal injury or devaluation of their property.

She was responding to a study, released Thursday, of 4,563 past and present Rocketdyne workers. It offers the most convincing proof yet of a link between decades of nuclear research, and cancers and deaths suffered by workers at the facility.

The study also finds that low-level radiation is more carcinogenic than previously believed and that radiation-exposed Rocketdyne workers have a heightened risk of dying from cancer.

An oversight panel of doctors, radiation experts, Rocketdyne neighbors and anti-nuclear activists monitored the study.

Long suspicious of Rocketdyne, neighbors such as Klea say the study lends credence to what their intuition has told them: Nearby residents are also at increased risk of cancer. The study’s authors, however, say their science does not support that hunch.

Despite the findings, some Rocketdyne employees defended the firm. They questioned the methodology used by the UCLA team, saying the scientists blamed the firm for radiation that workers might have picked up on other jobs.

Mechanic Neal Smith, who is among the Rocketdyne workers with the highest total exposure to radiation, said he feels safe at work. He estimates that 75% of his exposure came from sites other than the Santa Susana field lab.

“I don’t feel any risk working up there,” said Smith, who now works on Rocketdyne’s $55-million cleanup project. “I don’t feel any risk living in Simi Valley; I’m raising a family here. I’ve lived here for 35 years.”

Like many of his co-workers, Smith said his cancer worries involve smoking, smog and a poor diet--not work.

“Sure, I think a lot about cancer,” he said. “My father passed away from cancer. My mother is in remission. I do think about cancer, but not from a workplace standpoint.”

Health physicist Bob Tuttle, whose license plate holder reads “Gone Fission,” said the UCLA study was flawed. The increased cancer rates described are statistically random, he said, “like scattering pennies on the ground.”

“They worked so hard to find something bad, wrong, negative, that they made technical errors,” said Tuttle, who has worked for Rocketdyne in its many incarnations for more than 40 years.

A Thursday evening community meeting about the findings drew about 150 edgy people to a Simi Valley hotel. Among them were neighbors and residents, young and old.

Some came equipped with pens and legal pads to take notes.

Nearly all had questions: Why does my father, a former Rocketdyne employee, have inexplicable shakes? Why do I have cancer? Am I growing my vegetables in contaminated soil?

The researchers stressed again and again that they have not studied residents and agreed that research into the surrounding community is necessary.

Government officials in nearby Simi Valley urged caution.

“Absent any hard data about residents, I would not want to suggest to anyone that there is not a risk [of cancer] or that there is a risk,” Councilman Paul Miller said. “That would be conjecture.”

Mayor Greg Stratton struck a similar chord.

“The question of whether [radiation] has an impact on the community is one of distance,” he said. “The Rocketdyne site is pretty far from most of the inhabited areas. . . . It’s not like we have houses backing up to the Rocketdyne plant.”

That logic does not sway Freddi Gerard, a former Chatsworth resident whose 18-year-old son, Jason Erik Hudlett, died of leukemia in 1990.

“I hate to say this, but [the report] doesn’t surprise me,” said Gerard, who has since moved to Seal Beach. “I knew they were doing nuclear testing at that facility. It was kept quite secret. This saddens me, but it also gives a reason as to why. That’s the question we all have, ‘Why?’ ”

There are other questions too, Stratton said: Does the facility pose any danger now? If so, how far-reaching is the risk? And how effectively can the site be cleaned?

“The problem has always been that Rocketdyne has said that there’s no problem at all--that it’s spotless,” he said. “It’s pretty clear that [the site] is not spotless. A lot of the things the world did in the ‘50s and ‘60s, we’ve found out now, were very dangerous.”

Pressing a class-action suit against Rocketdyne, Pasadena lawyers Hector Gancedo and Tina Nieves argue that the field lab poisoned the land, water and ground in nearby areas. They represent more than 100 Rocketdyne neighbors, but both were reluctant to discuss their case with a reporter.

There is an absolute link between workers’ and residents’ cancers and the tests performed in the field lab, Nieves said, adding that she had not yet read the report.

“This is exactly what we’ve been asserting,” she said. The report’s findings make sense “given the fact that you have radiation-sensitive cancers that are just beginning to come to light--just beginning to be diagnosed over the last year--from residents at the base of the [Santa Susana] Pass.”

“We’re anxious to see the report, that’s for sure,” Gancedo said. “Although we don’t want to create a panic in the surrounding areas, this report is a cause for concern for people living nearby.”

* MAIN STORY: A1

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rocketdyne Worker Health Study

These are among the key findings from study of past and present workers at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory near Simi Valley:

* Rocketdyne workers’ exposure to radiation increased their risk of dying from cancers of the blood and lymph systems.

* Workers exposed to such external radiation as X-rays and gamma rays have a greater risk of dying from lung cancer.

* Workers at the lab who inhaled or ingested such radioactive elements as uranium, plutonium, strontium or cesium run a greater risk of dying from throat or stomach cancer.

* The risk of cancer from low-level radiation is 6 to 8 times greater than previously believed.

* The effect of low-level radiation varies according to a person’s age at the time of exposure. Cancers of the lung and other organs were highest for workers age 50 or older, while blood and lymph cancers were more prevalent among those exposed at 49 or younger.

An oversight panel of doctors, radiation experts, activists and field lab neighbors--chosen by state legislators and health officials--prepared their own analysis of the UCLA report. Among their recommendations:

* The panel itself should study the feasibility of doing similar research of the field lab’s effects on the health of people living in communities around it.

* As quickly as possible, the UCLA team should finish its study of whether chemicals at Rocketdyne caused worker deaths.

* Rocketdyne workers should continue to be studied so that researchers can follow long-term effects of radiation exposure.

* Regulatory agencies should use the UCLA report--which shows that low-level radiation is more dangerous than previously thought--to reexamine protective standards for workers and the public.

* In light of the study’s findings about age, such agencies should also reexamine the current belief that risk is uniform throughout adulthood.