ROLLER COASTERS' SAFETY SUPPORTED BY UNIVERSITY STUDY RESEARCHERS SAY RIDES DON'T RAISE RISK OF BRAIN INJURIES.

Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

SANTA CLARITA - Officials at Magic Mountain said Wednesday they felt vindicated by study results that claim roller coasters do not cause brain injury or trauma, refuting previous studies.

According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania who studied data from rides at three parks, roller coasters simply do not produce enough ``head rotational acceleration'' to cause either bleeding or swelling of the brain.

``This isn't news to us; it's what we've known all along,'' said Andy Gallardo, spokesman for the Valencia theme park. ``There's no medical evidence linking brain injuries to roller coasters.''

Six Flags California's Magic Mountain is named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed in May by the family of Pearl Santos, a 28-year-old woman who died in June 2001 shortly after riding the Goliath coaster.

An investigation of the incident later that year by the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration found that Goliath was operating properly and blamed Santos' fatal aneurysm burst on a pre-existing brain condition.

The matter of a pre-existing condition is an important one for those who believe that the high acceleration rates and G-forces - what coaster riders feel during sudden up-and-down movements and when they are whipped around corners - pose a genuine threat to riders.

While the study found that the coasters produced accelerations to the head nine times less than what would be required to cause torn blood vessels in the brain, and 18 times less than the force required to cause brain swelling, critics allege the recent study ignores the estimated five percent of the population living with an undiagnosed aneurysm.

``Certain blood vessels are weak enough that when (the person) goes out on a coaster it allows that vessel to balloon out and bleed,'' said Barry Novack, an attorney representing the Santos family and others who are suing theme parks after losing a loved one on a ride.

``It's not really the G-forces; the key is the rate of change of acceleration, or the jerk rate, like you have with shaken baby syndrome,'' Novack said. ``By ignoring the people who do have pre-existing conditions, they're trying to skew the jury pool.''

Politicians and consumer advocates have long questioned the safety of coasters, citing more than a dozen reports of brain injuries since 1979, most of them since 1990.

Reports of theme park fatalities in recent years have led to state and federal legislation. On Oct. 1, New Jersey became the first state to limit the gravitational forces, or G-forces, of amusement park rides. And U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., has proposed legislation that would subject roller coasters to federal oversight.

Dr. Douglas H. Smith, co-author of the study appearing in Wednesday's edition of the Journal of Neurotrauma, said such measures are the result of misleading information.

``Looking at the absolute maximum head acceleration, we found that (roller coaster) numbers were nowhere near known thresholds for brain injuries,'' said the Penn neuroscientist, who, with Penn colleague David F. Meaney, examined data from three coasters across the country with high G-forces.

The researchers also said that too much has been made of the effect of G-forces on riders' brains, claiming that while a coaster such as Face/Off, at Paramount's Kings Island near Cincinnati, can produce a G-force of 5, simply plopping into an easy chair can produce a G-force of eight to 10. But Robert J. Braksiek, an Iowa physician who co-wrote a study of roller coaster injuries in the January issue of Annals of Emergency Medicine, said the new research fails to account for injuries reported in the medical literature.

``Roller coasters do cause brain injury, and that fact can't be debated,'' he said. ``Although rare, it does happen.''

Dr. Toshio Fukutake, co-author of a study contending that roller coasters were responsible for four cases of otherwise healthy patients developing bleeding on the brain, also disagreed with the findings. He noted that there are much faster coasters than the ones in the current study.

``We need more research using a real human model on the bigger and faster machines,'' he said via e-mail.

But Smith, whose research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said there hasn't been a single study showing definitively that amusement park rides cause brain injuries. He called reports to the contrary ``anecdotal.''

Gallardo, spokesman for Magic Mountain, agreed with Smith.

``We've been open since 1971; we've given 300 million safe coaster rides,'' he said. ``We're not aware of any brain injuries caused by our rides.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Riders enjoy a spin on X, one of the roller coasters at Magic Mountain. Coasters were vindicated on Wednesday, Magic Mountain officials said, by a report clearing the rides of blame in brain injuries.

David R. Crane/Staff Photographer

(2 -- color) Coaster fans ride the Phantom's Revenge at Kennywood Park in West Mifflin, Pa.

Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press