THE SINS OF ROCKETDYNE
“It’s still up to the federal government to grant that compensation,” says Hirsch. “Nonetheless, it was a very important admission by the U.S. government that radiation exposures at its DOE nuclear facilities killed employees and, likely as well, numerous members of the surrounding population.”
What a long, strange trip it’s been
Betty Reo’s Chatsworth-based family continues to suffer under the shadow of the Hill in the western edge of the San Fernando Valley. Her daughter had a double mastectomy due to cancer. Two of the family’s German shepherds were afflicted with tumors on their necks, and its cat died from cancer. Reo relates tales her late husband told her of other odd instances concerning animals up on Rocketdyne’s SSFL property. Cosmo conveyed seeing two-headed snakes and animals that “just didn’t look right,” according to his widowed wife.
Cosmo Reo wasn’t alone in experiencing bizarre wildlife sightings at Rocketdyne. Jim Economopoulos worked at SSFL as a test stand technician from 1975 to 1978. “We used to have 50-gallon containers of stuff [at SSFL] that had ‘skull and crossbones’ [symbols] on it,” says Economopoulos. “This stuff used to break down and leach into the environment. My lead man and I used to catch two-headed snakes all the time, and he’d skin them and put them on his cowboy hat. We used to have a reclaimed water system, and we could follow it, and there would be some pretty heavy areas of water. There were polliwogs that never matured into frogs. They were half and half – half polliwog and half frog – but never completely made the change. I saw some deer from about 50 feet away, and they looked like they were out of a Stephen King movie. They looked like they were deformed and had open sores all over their bodies. They didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen. It was like something you’d see out of a horror film.”
Economopoulos’s own life could be fairly described as being out of a horror film, though one would never know it by talking with him. He has a wicked wit and an infectious laugh even though, at the age of 54, his body is wracked with ¸ illness. “What I have is multiple myeloma, or bone cancer,” Economopoulos says. “I was working there from 1975 to 1978. I was working there for two months when we had a pump let go in this pump house, and a valve broke.”
Economopoulos was sprayed with trichloroethylene (TCE), soaking his pants up to his knees. Shortly afterward, he lost 40 pounds from sickness. Economopoulos applied for workers’ compensation, was found to have 35 percent permanent disability, and was awarded future medical costs for the diabetes he contracted soon after the accident. TCE is a nonflammable, colorless liquid with a somewhat sweet odor and a sweet, burning taste. Inhaling it can cause impaired heart function and even death. Drinking small amounts of TCE for long periods may cause impaired immune system function, liver and kidney damage, and impaired fetal development during pregnancy. Drinking larger doses may cause liver damage, impaired heart function, and death.
“Two months later, I was a diabetic,” says Economopoulos. “It blew my pancreas up, and I’ve been a Type 1 diabetic since 1975, which [Rocketdyne] took responsibility for. But now they aren’t taking responsibility for anything else.
“The toxins and everything we’d dump down the Hill and the stuff they used to vent everyday was unbelievable,” Economopoulos continues. “There wasn’t a day gone by when we weren’t venting something into the air. We used to test the directional rockets for the Space Shuttle. There were two types of fuels: hydrazine and hydrogen tetroxide [an oxidizer]. We’d fire the rockets, and they’d just vent thousands of gallons of this stuff up into the air. We didn’t have hazardous- materials outfits – just hard hats and overalls. We used to walk through clouds of this crap all the time.
“I thought I was doing something for the country, but I didn’t know I was killing myself. If I had known that…,” Economopoulos says, and then breaks off in a painful silence. Economopoulos is suing Boeing but knows that won’t be easy. He’s employed Moorpark-based workers’compensation attorney Kirby Thomas of the law offices of Thomas and Cognata to represent his case. “We’re trying to connect all this stuff, but they are fighting us tooth and nail,” Economopoulos says. “They’re not going to take any liability for anything.”
The TCE problem seems to be more localized to the Boeing facility than possibly-migrating perchlorate, according to the company and government. But, unlike perchlorate, TCE is a volatile organic compound, which means it can vaporize and concentrate in structures above potentially tainted groundwater. According to one recent estimate, TCE soil vapors at one SSFL site registered over 195 million times California’s preliminary remediation goal for public safety if inhaled. More than 1.73 million gallons of TCE slopped onto Rocketdyne’s ground, and some 500,000 gallons have made it into the substrata and groundwater.
Shouts amid the silence
Environmentalists claim that perchlorate is a “fingerprint” of Rocketdyne toxins yet to spread. TCE, however, as scientists and environmentalists agree, migrates much more slowly. In 1998, Rocketdyne spokesman Steve Lafflam admitted in a Los Angeles magazine article that TCE had migrated off its SSFL site 800 feet away from the northern perimeter boundary. Lafflam would not comment for this article.
Dan Beck, a senior Boeing press officer, also made it very clear that Boeing did not want to respond to questions regarding this investigation. In a June 21 email, Beck wrote, “Don’t bother calling us for comment.”
