EDITORIAL : ROCKETDYNE'S LESSONS; FURTHER STUDIES ARE NEEDED TO DETERMINE THE POTENTIAL HEALTH RISKS TO RESIDENTS.

AS disturbing as it is to learn that a long-term study of 4,600 Rocketdyne workers found higher than expected cancer death rates, the fact that the study was done at all is a victory for the community.

Until the Daily News first reported May 14, 1989, that there was radioactive and chemical soil contamination at Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the hills between Chatsworth and Simi Valley, the company and the government kept secret all potential risks at the facility.

Workers were never informed of the potential danger in the radioactive material they were handling. Area residents were never informed of the work that went on at the facility - not even that there was a potentially catastrophic partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor.

That sanctioned secrecy exposed workers to potentially greater risks than might have been necessary. That secrecy allowed the company to cut corners and not fully protect its workers and others.

Not until the aggressive reporting started getting at the truth did the wall of secrecy begin to crumble.

At the time of the 1989 disclosure, there was no evidence of a health threat to workers or the public - a statement made over and over in dozens of articles published over the next two years.

The community took up the cry, fighting for and winning more testing and a comprehensive cleanup effort.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stepped in and assumed oversight of cleaning up the 2,600-acre facility where nuclear research was conducted for four decades under Department of Energy contracts. A $55 million cleanup is under way.

Community leaders didn't stop there. They forced the epidemiological study.

The findings of that long-awaited study were disclosed in the Daily News on Thursday and the full report was made public later in the day. Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, and state health officials found the cancer risk to workers exposed to low doses of radiation at the Simi Hills facility is at least six to eight times higher than previous studies suggested.

A key recommendation of the report is that a second study be done to determine whether there were any impacts on the health of people living in the vicinity of the Santa Susana lab.

There is no reason to panic. It is noteworthy that this study by itself does not signal an imminent danger to area residents. Officials emphasized that the findings of the workers study have no bearing on residents living near the facility.

But what this report does stress is the need for expanded research.

We trust that study will be conducted in a thorough and expeditious manner.

Why? Because once the fortress of secrecy was penetrated, scientists, the government and the company realized the need to work together and provide complete answers to residents.

The process is now in place that allows that cooperation to continue and grow. But it still requires vigilance. Members of the community need to express their concern and support for additional information and further government testing to determine whether the community is at a greater risk.

The lesson here reaches beyond the necessity of corporations to be open and honest with its workers and residents so those groups can make fully informed decisions about their health and welfare.

This should be a warning to all corporations and to government: Allowing business that risks the health and safety of employees and residents to be conducted in secret is not only a potentially deadly mistake, it is enormously costly as well.