Residents Tell Officials About Field Lab Concerns

Nearly 80 residents met with federal investigators Wednesday night to voice long-standing concerns on possible health and environmental damage from years of rocket-engine testing and nuclear energy research at a nearby Rocketdyne laboratory.

Some, such as Barbara Bonner, were longtime area residents who now wonder if their proximity to the Santa Susana Field Laboratory contributed to their health problems.

Bonner’s husband died of pancreatic cancer in 1994, the same year Bonner was diagnosed with breast cancer, which is now in remission. She has lived within walking distance of the facility since 1981.

At the time, “I didn’t even think about it,” she said. “It’s just now registering that maybe it had something to do with it. I don’t know.”

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry began its three-hour session at the Clarion Posada Royale Hotel with a brief introduction to explain its mission to the audience. The agency’s 11-person team then disbursed to about half a dozen tables for one-on-one consultations with residents.

The public gathering is part of preliminary research by the agency, a division of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, which is deciding whether to launch a broader public health assessment. A broader study could prove costly and complex, and a decision is expected next month.

Such an assessment could better determine whether the eastern Ventura County site poses risks to the community, as several unresolved lawsuits contend.

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Public hearings were arranged by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), and came after years of pressure from area residents.

Rocketdyne, a division of Boeing Co., has publicly supported the government’s inquiry--a fact that has led some skeptics, including Los Angeles engineer and activist Sheldon C. Plotkin, to conclude the current inquiry is nothing more than “a dog-and-pony show.” He predicted investigators ultimately will not go forward with a health assessment.

Meanwhile, Harry Pearlman, who worked as a Rocketdyne chemist and manager from 1946 to 1982, said he believes the site has been unfairly blamed because of a national campaign of fear against nuclear power.

“One in a million might be affected, or two in a million. But to have a wide effect on thousands of people is ludicrous,” said the 84-year-old retiree, who lives in Camarillo.

In addition to taking public comment, agency investigators--in Simi Valley Wednesday and a day earlier in Chatsworth--reviewed local statistics from cancer registries, environmental data gathered by other state and federal agencies and by Rocketdyne itself, agency spokeswoman Kathy Skipper said.

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While the agency typically investigates complaints around Superfund sites, Skipper said it was “not unusual to go in and look at any site where there’s heavy industry, be it defense or manufacturing.”

For instance, she said, the agency is now involved in a case in which residents near a Louisiana manufacturing site have been exposed to dioxins. But such cases are complex.

Investigators who find higher-than-normal rates of disease or environmental contamination must then try to establish a cause-effect relationship, and must seek to identify any contributing factors.

The 2,700-acre Santa Susana lab stopped handling nuclear fuel a decade ago, and the federal government has spent at least $55 million to remove radioactive soil and other materials from a portion of the site.

Still, some nearby residents have contended the toxic waste from Cold War research contributed to illnesses they developed, or to contamination of the area’s air, soil and water.

Former Rocketdyne employee Dean Erickson, 65, has lived near the field lab since 1961. His job included handling chemicals used to clean rockets being tested. He has been fighting skin cancer for the past 12 years.

Erickson said he doesn’t know if there is any connection between his seven-year stint at Rocketdyne and his illness or the cancer developed by his adult daughter, who was born while he worked for the company.

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A physician with the federal investigating team could not give him any answers Wednesday night, but said she could put him in touch with specialists who might be able to help.

UCLA researchers earlier this decade found an increased rate of cancer among certain Rocketdyne workers.

The latest wave of federal scrutiny has brought with it some predictable concerns that the area’s real estate market could suffer. While Rocketdyne also has facilities in Canoga Park and West Hills in the San Fernando Valley, those sites are not expected to be targets of this federal review.