Rocketdyne Ruckus
22 August 2003
Ventura County Reporter

A team of UCLA scientists studying the chemical contamination surrounding the Santa Susana Field Laboratory presented their work-in-progress to the public in Simi Valley on Tuesday. They were met with cheers, skeptical inquiries and verbal attacks.

We came in expecting the worst, and we were not disappointed, Dr. Yoram Cohen said of audience reaction to his team's presentation.

The UCLA research group was funded by the ATSD, a federal subsidiary of the Center for Disease Control. Under a $340,000 budget, four scientists drew from Rocketdyne, U.S. Census Tracts, International Agency for Research on Cancer and dozens of other national and community sources to study the chemical and radiation content of the air, water and soil in and around the SSFL site. Graduate student scientist Adrienne Katner placed the chemicals found in and around the site in priority of danger.

This is a small list, Katner said, when she presented a slide listing dozens of found toxic chemicals, including arsenic, benzene, hydrazine and cyanide. Toward the top of the list was trichloroethylene (TCE), a chemical which, in large doses, can cause liver damage, impaired heart function, nausea and, eventually, death. The group calculated that over 1 million gallons of TCE was spilled at the site over 50 years.

TCE is clearly the most widespread contamination, said Dr. Tom Harmon, who studied chemical findings of SSFL area groundwater.

Yet even with the findings presented, citizens were particularly concerned about potential gaps in information. From 1960 to 1982, for instance, Rocketdyne kept no records of open-pit burning on the SSFL site; scientist Lyle Chenkin calculated air emissions by maintaining open-pit burning activity at its pre-1960 levels. Dr. Cohen admitted that Boeing had not provided documents about chemical air emissions at the site, though the committee had requested them. Dr. Tom Harmon said it was uncertain whether TCE-contaminated groundwater was dormant beneath the ground, or spread farther and deeper throughout the fractured groundwater system.

We really don't know where all that TCE is, said Dr. Cohen.

Reactions to the presentation, then, were intensely mixed. While some Thousand Oaks residents like Suzanne Duckett thanked the scientists for a job well done, others attacked the group for not providing more concrete findings.

Dan Hirsch, president of the environmental watchdog group Committee to Bridge the Gap, was particularly skeptical of the presentation. While he called Adrienne Katner's work on chemical rankings balanced, he found Chinkin's and Harmon's air dispersion and groundwater analysis presentations inadequate and misleading. He asked repeatedly if the UCLA scientists had any background on nuclear research, to which Cohen replied that it was not in the group's charter to investigate the nuclear meltdowns and accidents which occurred on the site in 1959 and 1964.

"You have done very little to dispel the fears of this community, which I find tragic," said Hirsch. He was met with applause.

Dr. Yoram Cohen replied, citing his experience working with unbiased, independent environmental groups. He concluded, UCLA hoped to do something for the community. There is no other motive. He was also met with applause.

Along with concerned citizens and other scientists, Rocketdyne employees also attended the meeting. Simi Valley resident Donna Blocksage's 18-year-old son, Mark, suffers from multiple tumors, and is currently being monitored for Hodgkin's disease. She sat in front of two Rocketdyne employees: Division Director for Safety, Health and Environmental Affairs Steve Lafflam and former Communications Director Lori Circle.

"They were just sniggering at everything the people asked [the scientists]," she said. "Just laughing away." Blocksage noted that Lafflam and Circle were silent, however, when former site-worker Linwood Sibley publicly described rocket testing at SSFL that occurred regardless of whether wind carried chemicals in the direction of local ranches.

Several longtime residents of a Simi Valley neighborhood suffer from lung cancer or the thyroid condition Graves' disease. And they think they might know why: contamination from a nearby rocket-testing site.

Resident Stanford Lovett met some of his ill neighbors for the first time Dec. 11 at a public hearing on the cleanup of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, where missiles were often tested during the Cold War.

As they traded stories, Lovett realized his neighbors' symptoms sounded uncomfortably familiar: rapid weight loss, lack of muscle control, heart palpitations, throbbing headaches, irritability and severe night sweats.

"I couldn't believe what I was hearing," said Lovett, 42, who has lived in the Orangewood tract of Simi Valley for nearly two decades. The neighborhood near Erringer Road and Cochran Street is about three miles from the lab.

Since that meeting at the Grand Vista Hotel in Simi Valley, Lovett and his new friends have talked on the telephone several times to figure out what to do next, if anything. They think the rocket-testing site operated by Rocketdyne, a division of aerospace giant Boeing, is to blame for producing soil and air pollutants that have attacked their thyroid glands. The gland serves as a sort of thermostat for the body.

Rocketdyne officials say they are not responsible for residents' maladies and maintain that any chemicals and toxins generated by the hilltop site have been contained within its 2,668 acres. State investigators say they cannot prove the 54-year-old site was the source of perchlorate discovered this year in 18 wells in or near Simi Valley. Perchlorate is a highly toxic chemical used in rocket fuel.

Five years ago, 315 people from Simi Valley and the west San Fernando Valley filed lawsuits against Rocketdyne for allegedly causing them to become sick or their loved ones to die.

Lovett and his neighbors are not party to those complaints and said they had not been aware they existed. The cases remain tied up in federal court in Los Angeles.

Orangewood is not the closest neighborhood in Simi Valley to the lab site. That distinction goes to Santa Susana Knolls in the foothills below Rocketdyne.

Lovett's neighbor, David Plunkett, said he is compiling a database of everyone he meets in Simi Valley who has cancer or a thyroid-related illness, such as Graves' disease. His wife, Christina, 38, was diagnosed early this year with hyperthyroidism -- a condition that causes her metabolism to speed up.

"People are popping up all over the place with Graves' disease and thyroid problems," said Christina Plunkett, who is tall and rail thin.

The Plunketts have lived in the area for 10 years. David is healthy, but their 7-year-old son has cystic fibrosis.

Christina said her symptoms appeared more than a year ago, when she started experiencing heart palpitations, her hair fell out and she lost 55 pounds in two months. Her condition deteriorated to the point that she had to quit her job as a waitress. She remains in constant pain and shakes all the time, she said.

Another neighbor, Ralph Lopez, lived in the neighborhood for eight years before moving to Moorpark two years ago. The 54-year-old real estate agent was diagnosed with Graves' disease nearly two years ago after his weight plunged.

"People said I looked good, but I was having other problems," Lopez said. He finally saw his doctor after waking up in the middle of the night covered in sweat.

Lovett said he went from hyperthyroidism two years ago to hypothyroidism, which produces symptoms associated with a slowed-down metabolism. Now his doctor suspects he may have Sjogren's syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that attacks the saliva glands.

With stiffness in his legs, arms, fingers and feet, his condition makes it difficult for him to walk. His wife helps him up and down the stairs of their home and into his pajamas at night.

At one point, his perplexed doctor sent him to the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, where he underwent tests for a rare disorder called Stiff Man's syndrome. He is awaiting the results.

"So many things are so out of whack, the doctors don't understand what's going on," Lovett said.

Another neighbor, Quynh Tran, 52, was diagnosed with lung cancer in July 2001. A resident of Simi Valley for nearly 20 years, he lives around the corner from the Plunketts. Tran, a software engineer for Columbia Pictures, said one of his brothers-in-law, who lived nearby, died of lung cancer 10 years ago. Neither he nor his brother-in-law smoked, Tran said.

His mother and another brother-in-law, both residents in the same neighborhood, also suffered from thyroid-related conditions, which have since stabilized, he said.

Researchers at UCLA are conducting a health study of residents living near the Rocketdyne site under a federal initiative sponsored by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. But the study involves only cancer rates, not thyroid disorders, said Bert Cooper, who is overseeing the project.

The study was launched in 1999 at the request of U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, both California Democrats, and Congressman Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) after residents began coming down with cancer and other diseases. The study should be completed in another year, Cooper said.

Lovett said any information will make residents feel better.

"This is something that is killing people, " Lovett said. "My wife is scared right now, living in Simi Valley."

If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives. For information about reprinting this article, go to www.lats.com/rights. Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times

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Felkins ANTHOLOGY and HOTSHEETS *Copyright Madeline L. Felkins 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
Madeline Felkins Hotsheets: Rocketdyne/ Boeing Contamination News


Rocketdyne/Boeing Contamination/ Personal Injury/Wrongful Death Information
A. Barry Cappello Litigator
The Law Offices of Cappello & Noel
1-800-700-1195
E-Mail the Offices of Cappello & Noel



Rocket Fuel Contaminant Perchlorate Discovered at Ahmanson Ranch Well at Seven Times Federal Limit for California Drinking Water During September 2002: Perchlorate Interferes with Thyroid Function and Causes Thyroid Disease/Disorders/Cancers. Perchlorate Contamination in Simi Groundwater: See Map; Includes area spanning Santa Susana Field Laboratory, Stearns Street, and sites West to 1st Street.

Dr. Ali Tabidian, (CSUN), Links Rocketdyne to Simi Perchlorate Contamination, 11 December 2002: Report Rules out Fireworks and Fertilizers as Cause of Contamination.

Groundwater Contamination: University of Michigan Report.

RADIATION POISONING

BENZENE is Toxic to Bone Marrow and is Linked to Rare Leukemias: Please Scroll to BENZENE at Rocketdyne
(Solid Rocket Fuel Known Carcinogens)


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