TOXIC ALERT DELAYED INVESTIGATORS SAY ROCKETDYNE'S SECRECY ON BERYLLIUM ENDANGERS EX-WORKERS.

Byline: Beth Barrett Staff Writer

Rocketdyne's failure to disclose the longtime use of beryllium at its Canoga Park plant delayed for years the study of whether workers - and possibly some community residents - developed or are at risk of developing a potentially fatal lung disease, health investigators said Tuesday.

Officials with Boeing, the company that bought Rockwell International's Rocketdyne Division, confirmed for the first time last week that a ``beryllium shop'' was operated for decades at its 6633 Canoga Ave. facility.

The acknowledgment came when the Daily News questioned the company about former beryllium worker Sylvester Long, who described working with the metal on machine tools for 30 years without specific training and protected only by goggles.

`It's certainly unfortunate this information wasn't revealed earlier and the workers exposed didn't have the opportunity to be screened for the disease,'' said Dr. David Michaels, who co-chaired the advisory panel dealing with health issues at Rocketdyne prior to serving as an assistant secretary in the Department of Energy in the Clinton administration.

He said the company should have detailed the extent of the beryllium work years earlier so that workers could have been tested for beryllium sensitivity, an indicator of auto-immune beryllium disease. The disease results in scars forming around beryllium particles lodged in the lungs, which can limit respiratory function and lead to death.

Beryllium, widely used in nuclear research and many other industrial operations, has come under increasing scrutiny as a cause of serious lung disease and Rocketdyne was listed among eight former Department of Energy beryllium vendors in the June 11 federal register.

Officials at Boeing, which took over Rocketdyne after the beryllium operations ceased, disputed they had kept beryllium information from health investigators.

Steve Lafflam, Rocketdyne's longtime director of safety, health and environmental affairs, said the company did offer beryllium data to epidemiologists but that it was rejected as out of date.

``We thought it was a very good set of industrial hygiene (data), but they pooh-poohed it,'' Lafflam said.

The company has cooperated in the past when asked to produce records for health studies and is participating in an ongoing study with the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Lafflam said. The ATSDR study's scope does not include the Canoga Park beryllium shop workers.

Boeing officials said they are in the process of notifying the former beryllium workers and offering testing.

Beryllium was used at the Canoga Park facility for a variety of reasons, including Department of Defense work, Lafflam said. Some beryllium also was used for DOE projects at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the hills between Chatsworth and Simi Valley.

Hal Morgenstern, professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who headed an extensive Rocketdyne workers' study that found elevated cancer death rates among nuclear and some chemical workers, said he was shocked by Boeing's acknowledgment it could document 80 beryllium workers. He said Rocketdyne's proffer of beryllium worker information previously was scanty, and untraceable.

``I was told (in 1993) that they only had 20 workers and that they couldn't locate them,'' Morgenstern said.

Dan Hirsch, co-chair of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Advisory Panel that oversaw the workers' epidemiological study and is continuing to evaluate possible health impacts on the community, said records will be sought to determine whether beryllium should be added to the review.

``First we want to see if there was sufficient release of beryllium into the community that there would be the potential for community exposure. Then, we would consider whether we can construct a health study to study those impacts.''

Boeing's Lafflam said the chances of beryllium getting off the Canoga Park lot were ``zero to none. I think we handled our beryllium operations with the best practices even under today's standard, having totally controlled environments and doing everything we could to minimize exposures to employees.''

Early detection of sensitivity to beryllium is important to treatment, said Dr. Christine Schuler, an epidemiologist with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in West Virginia. Those who have the disease can get some relief with steroid treatments.

Boeing officials on July 10 told the Daily News the company's beryllium work was limited in scope. They did not disclose the Canoga Park beryllium shop, but only the beryllium work done for the DOE at the Santa Susana lab until former machinist Long came forward.

Long said that from the early 1960s until 1992 he milled beryllium from bar stock at the Canoga Park shop.

``We ran the beryllium bar stock on a lathe,'' said Long, 76, of Reseda. ``We made the parts that the blueprints called for. There was no safety gear, except glasses. We had no training on beryllium danger.''

Darlene Long said her husband routinely carried metal chips and dust home in his work clothes. ``He'd come home with his cuffs full of chips.''

Hirsch, the advisory panel co-chair, said if beryllium dust was getting off-site in workers' clothes, it could create a potential for exposure.

Rocketdyne officials said the beryllium shop had a filtration system, air exchanges and tacky floor tape to trap particles.

``They all went through beryllium training,'' said the company's Lafflam. ``There was special monitoring and surveillance. It was a well controlled, highly permitted area.''

The California Occupational Safety and Health Administration had records for the Canoga Park facility, but not the beryllium shop specifically. The South Coast Air Quality Management District could not immediately identify any beryllium shop records.

The standard for exposure to beryllium dust - the byproduct of a metal that's lighter than aluminum and stiffer than steel with many uses in nuclear reactor components, rocket fuel additives and ceramics - is 2 micrograms per cubic meter over an eight-hour period. That's about the equivalent of spreading the amount of beryllium that would fit on the tip of a pencil throughout a football-sized room, 6-feet deep.

``OSHA is attempting to redo the standards, but they're waiting for the results (of research),'' Schuler said.

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Sylvester Long of Reseda says he was exposed to beryllium while working as a machinist for Rocketdyne in Canoga Park.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer