No Rocketdyne Link to Cancer Found by Study
In a finding hailed by Rocketdyne, federal health officials released a preliminary report Tuesday that found no evidence to substantiate claims that decades of rocket-testing at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory harmed the health of neighbors.
Investigators from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry cautioned that more research is needed before exonerating Rocketdyne. But analysis of available data failed to produce any link between Rocketdyne’s Cold War-era operations and cancers reported by neighbors.
“Based upon our initial review . . . we have not seen that people in local communities have been exposed to substances from the site at levels that would result in adverse health effects,” agency scientists said in a one-page memo presented Tuesday to congressional staffers.
An index of the data used in the review is not expected to be made public until a full report is issued next month. But agency officials earlier said material from Rocketdyne would be reviewed, as well as data from federal and state agencies, citizen interviews and a cancer registry.
The agency, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, was brought in to assess health threats at the site at the request of Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) and U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).
Rocketdyne spokesman Dan Beck said the agency’s preliminary report “offers further reassurance to residents that there doesn’t appear to be a health threat.”
“We will do whatever is necessary for the appropriate agencies to fill any data gaps,” he said.
The memo was presented during a two-hour briefing in Washington with congressional staffers, who have been seeking $300,000 in federal funding for an ambitious health study in the area. Such a study has long been sought by environmentalists and residents.
The memo appears to indicate that the agency would support some type of study by an independent panel of scientists known as the Epidemiological Oversight Panel. But it gives no explicit promise to support or fund it.
Representatives of Boxer, Feinstein and Gallegly called the agency’s preliminary findings positive, and said they believe that the agency is committed to research that could definitively address public concerns.
“It’s a positive development,” said Feinstein spokesman Howard Gantman. “They didn’t come in and say ‘There’s not a health problem.’ ”
But Dan Hirsch, co-chairman of the Epidemiological Oversight Panel, was not satisfied with the agency’s response. Hirsch, a nuclear energy expert and longtime Rocketdyne critic, has been among those pushing for further studies on health effects for more than a decade.
He said the primary question before the agency was whether it would approve a request for $300,000 to supplement $150,000 offered by the state to support a full-blown health study in the area. Instead, he said, the agency has spent two months and an undisclosed amount of money merely to conclude what he already knew: that without more research health dangers cannot adequately be assessed.
