Full Health Study Urged at Rockwell : Chemicals: Panel says the inquiry should look at the risks to all workers at the Santa Susana lab, not just Department of Energy employees.

By MARY F. POLS

June 3, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

A health study of employees at Rockwell’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory should look at chemical hazards faced by all the company’s employees, not just risks to workers under contract to the Department of Energy, an advisory panel overseeing the study said Thursday.

The panel’s two-day meeting in Simi Valley erupted in confusion and dismay when panel members learned that a research team from UCLA--under direction from the DOE and Rockwell--was planning to limit its study to effects of chemicals encountered by energy department workers.

Rockwell employees who worked under DOE contracts represent only a quarter of the estimated 40,000 people who have worked at the Santa Susana site since the early 1950s, Rockwell officials said.

The panel ordered Rockwell to release to UCLA records pertaining to all employees and chemical exposures.

The study, which began last fall, is trying to determine if there have been an unusually high incidence of cancer and other illnesses among Rockwell workers over the years due to exposure to chemicals and low levels of radiation.

The study was commissioned in 1991, and DOE is paying its estimated $840,000 cost. The study is being conducted by a team of scientists headed by Hal Morgenstern, a UCLA professor of public health.

Although health records and death certificates for all employees, former and current, are being examined by the UCLA scientists, in-depth epidemiologic studies were to be conducted on the effects of radiation and on chemicals that DOE workers came into contact.

Heather Stockwell, acting director of DOE’s office of epidemiology, said the scope of the study was limited because other agencies that contracted with Rockwell, including NASA, refused to take part.

“I think we have to include other workers,” she said. “But we don’t have the jurisdiction to make other workers participate. DOE is funding a study that has to do with DOE workers.”

Morgenstern said he agreed to the restrictions in negotiations with Rockwell and DOE last fall.

“I would like to look at everything,” Morgenstern said. “But out of necessity, we can’t. There is no way we would have the resources to cover every chemical used at the facility.”

Dan Hirsch, a panel member who also belongs to the community-based group Rocketdyne Clean-up Coalition, said the meeting increased his skepticism of the study.

“I was particularly distressed that the UCLA team on its own would negotiate restrictions with Rockwell and DOE,” Hirsch said.

Several panel members said they believed DOE workers were not exposed to a number of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals--such as hydrazine, trichloroethane and beryllium--that employees in the rocket-testing area came into contact with regularly.

“Hydrazines were used only in the Rocketdyne rocket-testing area,” community representative Sheldon Plotkin said. “We in the community want to know about the hydrazine effects on those workers. What I want to know, is UCLA going to include that in this study?”

John Rozas, director of health and safety at Rocketdyne, the division of Rockwell that operates the Santa Susana site, said he believed the company has cooperated fully with the UCLA team.

“Every bit of data we have has been available,” Rozas said. “We’ve not said, ‘You can’t look at this.’ We’ve only said, ‘Remember the focus is on DOE-funded areas.’ ”

Rozas called the confusion a misunderstanding, and told panel members that Rockwell’s only concern--under advisement from its legal council--was that the research team not be allowed to look at salary and income records of former employees.

Morgenstern, however, said salary records are key to completing a thorough epidemiologic study. He told the panel he would return with recommendations on which chemicals the study should focus on once preliminary research is complete in September.