Rocketdyne and CDC Study

Re “Follow Through on Rocketdyne,” editorial, July 5.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have too many “real” public health problems to deal with. They should not waste valuable resources on every claim of “possible health effects” due to relatively minor, isolated contamination sites.

I have absolutely no doubt that should anyone in the CDC read the cited UCLA study, they would not find any basis for further investigation. The conclusions reached by the study were simply not supported by the data presented. Other than Rocketdyne’s workers being healthier than either the general population or the aerospace industry in general, no statistically significant conclusions were possible.

Exposures to the general population have been so few and so infrequent as to make any resulting health effects virtually nonexistent.

People today feel the need to blame someone, anyone, for any “unexplained” health problems. Primarily they want someone to pay for their problems. No, life is not fair. Perhaps a CDC-sponsored study of the health effects due to the use of hazardous inks in printing the Los Angeles Times over the past 50 years should be considered.

ROGER MARSHALL, Moorpark