Lab Linked to Cancer Risk

SIMI VALLEY — Rocketdyne workers who were exposed to radiation during decades of nuclear testing at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory near Simi Valley have an increased risk of dying of cancer, according to a UCLA report released Thursday.

Rocketdyne immediately criticized the report through a panel of scientists who reviewed it and called its conclusions overly broad.

“Their data doesn’t support their conclusions,” said Michael Ginevan, a biostatistician who reviewed the study for Rocketdyne.

But a state-appointed oversight panel of scientists and community members endorsed the report without dissent, saying that the UCLA conclusions are grounds for a similar study of cancer deaths in the neighborhoods surrounding the 2,668-acre field lab.

“The results stand, and they’re very strong,” said David Michaels, a professor of epidemiology at the City University of New York Medical School who serves on the oversight panel.

The UCLA study of 4,563 past and present Rocketdyne employees was launched nearly five years ago after concern about radiation work at the lab prompted neighbors and environmentalists to push for a study.

“All available evidence from this study indicates that occupational exposure to ionizing radiation among nuclear workers at Rocketdyne . . . has increased the risk of dying from cancers of the blood and lymph system,” the UCLA study concluded, also citing increased risk of mouth, throat and stomach cancer.

The study, headed by epidemiologist Hal Morgenstern and other staff scientists at UCLA’s School of Public Health, found nine more cancer deaths than the expected 91 among workers who were exposed to high levels of radiation from sources outside the body.

And they found 15 more than the expected 40 among those who received any internal radiation exposure. This group included primarily people who were exposed to dust and shavings when they machined uranium to make fuel elements.

The researchers found that the overall cancer death rate at Rocketdyne was lower than that of the general population, a phenomenon known as the “healthy worker” effect, because people who have jobs are generally healthier than those who do not.

But the study also concluded that cumulative low-level radiation exposure is more dangerous than currently believed under U.S. and international regulatory standards.

The UCLA team estimates that cumulative exposure to low-level radiation is six to eight times more dangerous than allowed under current standards, which were extrapolated from studies of atomic bomb survivors.

The panel recommended that agencies such as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission revamp their limits for allowable radiation exposure in light of the report.

But Rocketdyne’s own epidemiological experts voiced doubts about that conclusion and many others in the report--moments after it was released at a Simi Valley news conference--saying that the UCLA researchers reached conclusions that were too broad for the limited amount of data gleaned from worker health records.

“There is a continuing review of international standards” for radiation exposure, said David G. Hoel, associate director for Epidemiology of the Hollings Cancer Center at the University of South Carolina. “One study is not going to change it, but that will become part of that analysis.”

Dr. Susan J. Knox, a Stanford professor of radiation oncology hired by Rocketdyne to review the UCLA study, said the work is “a well-done study within the limitations of the data. But the numbers were very small, and some of the conclusions were questionable, particularly in the area of solid tumors and . . . of workers who had internal exposure.”

However, the oversight panel--made up of doctors, radiation experts, antinuclear activists and Rocketdyne neighbors chosen by legislators and state health officials--drafted its own report backing the study.

The panel recommended continuing to study the Rocketdyne workers, considering a similar study of cancer rates in neighborhoods surrounding the field lab and revising exposure standards.

“I’m concerned about the health and safety of the residents of Simi Valley,” said Dr. Caesar Julian, a panel member and longtime Simi Valley physician. “I think we have to do more studies now.”

Julian said he is also anxious to see the second phase of the UCLA study--due out several months from now--on the cancer mortality risk suffered by workers exposed to dangerous chemicals at the Rocketdyne lab.

Barbara Johnson, another panel member and longtime Rocketdyne neighbor, said: “I think the report will wake people up to the fact that we need more oversight, that we can’t just let [Rocketdyne] run themselves the way they want to.”

Workers at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory said Thursday that nothing in the report startled them. But they did criticize some of the UCLA methodology and said that the study essentially blamed Rocketdyne for radiation that workers picked up at previous jobs.

“I don’t think my work is any more hazardous than two-thirds of the jobs out there,” said Boeing manufacturing engineer Jon MacCulloch, who has worked on “the Hill” for 16 years. “My wife, who works in downtown Los Angeles, probably runs a greater risk driving through some neighborhoods to get to work, given the gangs and crime.”

But the study’s findings alarmed neighbors of Rocketdyne, who for years have worried that traces of radiation that trickled into their water and soil from top-secret lab testing could make them ill.

“If [the workers] received contamination, then how do we know we haven’t received contamination by [Rocketdyne’s] releases?” said Marie Mason, a Black Canyon resident and member of the Rocketdyne Cleanup Coalition.

If the allowable levels of radiation exposure for nuclear workers are too high, as the oversight panel suggests, Mason said: “I also read that to mean they are too high for the community. That’s kind of scary.”

Meanwhile, more than 100 Rocketdyne neighbors in the Simi and San Fernando valleys--many of them cancer patients--are pressing a class-action suit against parent company Boeing North American, accusing Rocketdyne of tainting their land, water and air with chemicals and radionuclides.

UCLA researchers and oversight panel members plan to hold a meeting for neighbors of the field lab at 7 tonight at the Radisson Hotel in Simi Valley.

Officials from the UCLA team and the state Department of Health Services held huge informational meetings for Rocketdyne workers at the field lab Thursday.

More meetings are planned for retired Rocketdyne workers at 10 a.m. today and Saturday at the Rocketdyne Recreation Center in Canoga Park.

Rocketdyne engineers designed, built and tested early rocket engines for nuclear missiles and went on to produce nearly every rocket engine used in the U.S. space missions, from Mercury to the space shuttle.

Rocketdyne also did nuclear research at the rugged mountaintop lab on a contract basis for the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Energy between the 1950s and the 1980s.

In 1956, a Rocketdyne division called Atomics International began running a series of nuclear test reactors, a fuel-handling facility, and other radiation experiments. The work continued--through a series of nuclear spills, mishaps and even a partial fuel meltdown in 1959--until the firm’s “hot lab” for handling fuel was closed in 1989.

About that time, activists began calling for health studies of workers and people who lived nearby.

The UCLA scientists studied the records of all individuals employed by Rocketdyne and predecessor North American Aviation between 1950 and the end of 1994. That included 4,563 who had worn photographic badges to monitor their exposure to external radiation. Of that group, 2,297 employees had also been monitored to determine how much radiation they had breathed, ingested or absorbed through the skin.

The team did not examine anyone or study any workers who developed cancer but survived.

Instead, they looked only at medical records, radiation exposure records and death certificates.

Over the 44 years of the lab’s operations, 258 employees died of cancer, a lower death rate from cancer than the population at large, and comparable to other industries that do not involve radiation exposure.

Among those exposed to external radiation, the increases were primarily in leukemias, lymphomas and lung cancer--all types that have frequently been associated with exposure to radiation. The nine excess deaths in this group represented 11.1% of the total deaths among those who received similar exposure.

Among those exposed to internal radiation, the increases were in the same cancers, as well as cancers of the oral cavity, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, bladder and kidneys. Many of those had not been previously linked to radiation exposure. The 15 excess deaths in this group represented 27.3% of the deaths among those who ingested or breathed radioactive materials.

Times staff writer Kate Folmar contributed to this story.

* IN VENTURA COUNTY: Study conclusions no surprise to neighbors. B1

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rocketdyne Health Study

Epidemiologists from UCLA’s School of Public Health spent two years researching cancer deaths and radiation exposure among past and present workers at Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory. They concluded that:

Workers exposed to gamma rays and X-rays had an increased risk of death from:

leukemia

lymphoma

lung cancer

****

Those who ingested or absorbed radioactive material ran a higher risk of death from cancers of the:

mouth

throat

stomach

bladder

kidneys

****

Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory

Areas I-III: Used for rocket testing by NASA and other agencies.

Area IV: 230-acre site now leased by the U.S. Department of Energy, which contracts with Rocketdyne to operate its Energy Technology Engineering Center.

****

Plant profile

Size: 2,668

Test site history: Established in 1947. Atlas and Delta engines for Apollo missions and the space shuttle were built and tested there.

Nuclear research: Rocketdyne used to operate test reactors and manufactured and recycled nuclear fuel for the Atomic Energy Commission and DOE. It halted such operations in 1989, although cleanup continues today.

Source: UCLA School of Public Health