Release of Health Data to Rocketdyne Stirs Anger

Five years after an exhaustive health study was launched, a draft report on workers’ radiation exposure at Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Lab has been leaked to the company, a citizens oversight committee charged Friday.

Members of the Epidemiological Advisory Panel said Rocketdyne could use the early data from UCLA’s study of 5,000 past and present field lab workers to tweak the report into a final draft form that makes the company look more favorable to its proposed buyer, Boeing Co.

The panel--set up specifically to provide an initial, independent review of the findings--has not yet received copies of the draft.

“What’s happened is exactly why we didn’t want Rocketdyne to have it,” said Barbara Johnson, who lives downhill from the rugged 2,700-acre field lab and sits on the panel.

“I mean, does it make sense that if a report is being done on you that you get to see it before it goes public so you can make changes and dress it up the way you want before it goes out to the public? Reasonably, rationally, Rocketdyne should not be seeing any of this until it has been finalized.”

Rocketdyne’s response was immediate. “It’s not our intent in any way whatsoever to influence the outcome of the study,” said Lori Circle, a spokeswoman for the Canoga Park-based defense contractor.

Rocketdyne has given copies of the report to eight scientists for independent review but will not try to groom the report to boost its own image, she said.

“We would never do that; that would be wrong. That kind of hits us where it really hurts.”

The administrator of the radiation study also bristled at the charge.

“I am puzzled,” said Dr. Robert Harrison, an occupational health physician for the California Department of Health Services, which is overseeing the study by a team of UCLA researchers.

Harrison said he properly gave Rocketdyne a single copy of the confidential draft report earlier this week--despite objections he heard during a July 16 conference call with several panel members.

“Our department still maintains a process of conducting occupational health studies that shares information equally and promotes review by all the stakeholders,” he said. “There is no way that Rocketdyne can alter the results of that study without--one--the knowledge of all the advisory panel members and--two--consent by the UCLA investigator who has done the report.”

After World War II ended, Rocketdyne held contracts with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and its successor, the Department of Energy, to operate experimental nuclear reactors at the site southeast of Simi Valley. One reactor suffered a partial core meltdown in 1959.

A study was launched in 1991 to help determine how workers might have been affected by radiation leakage after the accident and during the resulting cleanup.

The UCLA researchers are due to release a final version of their study in the next two to three months, after hearing comments on the confidential draft report.

But Rocketdyne was meant to receive a draft report on only the researchers’ methods, not their raw data, said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), who helped launch the health study.

“This was the exact thing we were afraid of when we set up the oversight panel,” Katz said. “If it’s much ado about nothing, as Rocketdyne says, why wasn’t the public given a copy? How does this all fit in with the sale to Boeing?”

Katz added: “This is the kind of thing that makes the public suspicious of big government and big corporations. It gives the impression of collusion and the impression that public interest is not foremost.”

Katz said he will press to see a copy of the draft report to ensure that Rocketdyne has not tried to sanitize it for the final version.

Members of the advisory panel complained that Harrison’s office has failed to mail them their confidential copies of the draft report while Rocketdyne has already farmed out its copy to eight scientific consultants for review.

And panel members charged that the leak to Rocketdyne negates the very purpose of their group, which was to give an unbiased critical review of the report to the UCLA research team so it can publish a balanced final report without Rocketdyne’s influence.