LAB CREWS `DIDN'T KNOW TO BE SCARED'; ROCKETYDYNE SAFETY ISSUE RAISED.

Byline: David R. Baker Daily News Staff Writer

The space race was just taking off when Jim Moran went to work at Rocketdyne near Simi Valley, testing the engines that would heave America into orbit.

The job was exciting, the technology new and the possible dangers largely unknown.

Moran and his buddies thought nothing of watching - from a few hundred feet away - as workers clad in protective suits tossed chunks of sodium from a nuclear reactor into a pond, sparking explosions as the chemical hit the water.

``We thought that was a neat show,'' said Moran, who worked there in the mid-1950s. ``We didn't know enough to be scared.''

And yet Moran doesn't blame the company for exposing workers to danger. ``I think they were taking every precaution they knew to take at the time,'' he said.

Another worker, Stan Schechter, tells a vastly different story about safety at Rocketdyne.

Schechter tended the machines that turned uranium into reactor fuel at Atomics International, which merged with Rocketdyne in 1984. He said workers, including he, sometimes became contaminated with the radioactive material, and he worried about how easily specks of it might hitch a ride home on his clothes.

``Most of the people who worked there never even really knew what radioactive materials were,'' he said. ``We never got instruction from the company.''

Concerns about how well Rocketdyne and Atomics International protected workers like Moran and Schechter have taken on new currency. A landmark study released in September has linked radiation exposure at the Canoga Park and Santa Susana Field Laboratory operations to higher-than-normal rates of some cancer.

Yet among former employees of Rocketdyne and Atomics International, the UCLA study has provoked doubt in some and certainty in others.

Some now-retired workers say the study, which will be discussed in two community meetings this week in Simi Valley, confirms what they always suspected - that safety procedures were lax.

Others insist the risks are being overblown. And many alumni greet the news with a shrug, saying it's far too late to worry about possible dangers of a job they left long ago.

Nuclear workers studied

The study, conducted by UCLA scientists and released in September, found that exposure to radiation among nuclear workers at Rocketdyne and Atomics International increased their risk of dying from cancers of the blood and lymph systems. The study examined the health records of 4,607 employees who worked between 1950 and 1993. Researchers drew their conclusions from the death certificates of the 20 percent of the workers who had died by the time of the study.

But those conclusions have drawn fire from representatives of Boeing Co., which now owns Rocketdyne. They argue that the study's results actually show that, overall, nuclear workers at Rocketdyne are healthier than the general population and have less chance of dying from cancer.

``There's no widespread health effects on radiation workers,'' health and safety director Steve Lafflam told a community meeting last week in Simi Valley. ``UCLA took too much license with the data.''

Critics reply that people with steady jobs tend to be healthier than the general population, a phenomenon known as the ``healthy worker effect.'' And they dismiss the company's argument that the incidence of cancer in Rocketdyne nuclear workers is little different than in a group of other workers included in the study.

Some of those other workers handled pesticides, lead, formaldehyde or uranium. ``These are people exposed to toxins, different kinds of toxins, and you'd expect them to be dying of cancer,'' said Joe Lyou, executive director of the Committee to Bridge the Gap and a Rocketdyne critic.

In addition to new concerns about radiation exposure, Boeing is the subject of several lawsuits alleging chemical contamination of neighborhoods surrounding the Santa Susana Field Lab.

Renewed doubts

Long before the study, Schechter had doubts about the safety of his job.

The facility where workers fashioned fuel from uranium had precautions against contamination. The radioactive mineral was usually handled inside sealed compartments, with gloves built into the compartment wall to give workers access from the outside.

When the uranium, or the machines that crushed it, had to be handled up close, workers wore breathing masks and protective clothing from head to toe, Schechter said. Gloves were even taped to the arms of the suits, to make sure radioactive dust couldn't get inside.

And yet, for all those precautions, Schechter said the possibility for contamination remained. Protective clothing was removed in a room divided by a red line on the floor: workers entered on one side, and as they stripped off their suits, they stepped over the line into the other, ``clean,'' side of the room. But they were still breathing the same air, air that could be carrying dust from the clothes they had just removed, he said.

``I honestly believe people were walking out with uranium on their shoes,'' he said.

Boeing spokesman Dan Beck said workers changing out of protective suits were monitored for contamination. And, disputing Schechter's account, he said the changing room was divided by a physical barrier, separating those changing out of protective suits from the area safe for street clothes.

Once, Schechter's protective suit split open down the front, allowing uranium dust inside. The company took away his contaminated clothes.

``They sent me home in paper pants,'' he said.

Other former workers at the same facility, called the ``Powder Room,'' said the company never trained them how to handle such a potentially dangerous substance. Hal Compton, now a mortgage broker in Long Beach, said he had been working in the machine shop and was simply told the company needed someone for the Powder Room.

Like other employees, he was young and had little idea of what radiation could do.

``It was totally irresponsible on their part that they didn't give you any real training or tell you about the health hazards,'' Compton said. ``There really should have been a serious training program, more than taking a 20-year-old and saying, `Here's a job, and here's how you do it.' ''

Spokesman Beck said the company has always thoroughly trained its radiation workers.

``They spend a lot of time talking about the theory of radiation, a lot of time in the classroom receiving information on the use of it and the safe handling of it,'' he said.

Unknown causes

Some former workers wonder whether their time at the company could have caused or contributed to health problems plaguing them in later life. And, yet, many Rockwell alumni are hesitant to blame their former employer. Often, their reasons have nothing to do with company loyalty.

For Ronald Brewer, there is no ignoring the recent studies, but he and many other former Rocketdyne workers view the reports with a engineer's pragmatism. Maybe there's a link between the job and cancer, and maybe there isn't. And even if there is, what's the point of worrying about it now, so long after the fact?

Brewer, who used to work in the Powder Room, has a doctor check his lungs occasionally, but doesn't have cancer. Although the findings of the recent health study don't surprise him, he said he doesn't dwell on his old job's possible dangers.

``I don't think about it,'' he said. ``It don't pay to worry.''

Witness to safety

Mick Tolford worked in Atomics International's ``quality'' department, making sure equipment worked and was properly calibrated. To his dismay, it often wasn't, he said.

Tolford ran afoul of the company after complaining about an equipment test, part of the Apollo space program, that he said was poorly designed.

But the safety department was another matter. If Safety found something wrong, Tolford said, it got fixed.

``It was state-of-the-art at the time,'' he said. ``They were doing everything possible that they were knowledgeable of.''

Tolford has lung cancer. But as he takes another drag on a Camel cigarette, hours after a doctor's appointment, he said it's pretty clear the cancer didn't come from work. He has been smoking for about 50 years.

Possible health risks to former Rocketdyne and Atomics International employees, he said, have been exaggerated.

``The thing's been blown way out of proportion,'' he said. ``I think a lot of it's blowing smoke.''

Some alumni, like Tolford, think part of the concern comes from an overblown public fear of nuclear energy. Milton Garland, president of the California Society of Professional Engineers' local branch and a former Rocketdyne employee, said he knew people who had worked around the reactors and later contracted cancer. But the two aren't necessarily connected.

``It's always been my contention that flying airplanes is more dangerous than living next to a nuclear power plant,'' he said.

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PHOTO Former employees Jim Moran and Bonnie Klea stand outside the Rocketdyne nuclear testing facility in the hills above Simi Valley.

Michael Owen Baker/Daily News