TWO MILE ISLAND
One of the other SSFL contaminants now the focus of nationwide concern is perchlorate. The rocket fuel oxidizer made headlines June 22 after the Environmental Working Group released its report which found perchlorate in 31 out of 32 milk samples purchased from grocery stores in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The group also discovered that the California Department of Food and Agriculture had found perchlorate in all 32 milk samples collected in Alameda, Sacramento, and San Joaquin counties. Half of those samples exceeded the amount that the state considers safe for drinking water, 6 ppb.
Perchlorate is especially threatening to fetuses, infants, and children because it can affect the thyroid’s ability to make hormones. This can result in lowered IQ, mental retardation, diminution of motor skills, and loss of hearing and speech. Perchlorate in SSFL soil registers as high as 71,290 ppb or over nine times the chemical’s PRG for dirt.
In 2003, perchlorate was detected in 17 groundwater wells in Simi Valley with the highest reading being 19.2 ppb. Hits of 140 ppb and 150 ppb were also found in an artesian well on the Brandeis-Bardin property hard on Rocketdyne’s northern border. A reading of 28 ppb was detected in a well adjacent Ahmanson Ranch about two miles south of SSFL in 2002.
Dioxins are among the most toxic chemicals known to science and are dangerous at any level. Before the latest DTSC report, Rocketdyne dioxin measurements had been comparatively small. The agency reported that one type of dioxin registered 0.1 parts per trillion (ppt) from May to August 2001. But more recent measurements are simply staggering, with readings as high as 22,000 ppt at the so-called “fuel farm and pond dredge.”
The most poisonous dioxin, called TCDD, is found at SSFL in the Old Conservation Yard next to the melted SRE reactor site. It ticks in at 7.80 ppt. The “field action level” for this chemical, which means that some kind of remediation is mandatory, is 1.05 ppt.
Working Woman’s Blues
The DTSC numbers are also news to Bonnie Klea, who hadn’t a clue how polluted SSFL was when she worked there. “Here I am, just a little girl right out of Minnesota, moved here when I was 19 with a one-way ticket,” she said. Klea went to work for Rocketdyne because the pay was good and the opportunities ample. She ended up in Building 59, where Rocketdyne operated a Space Nuclear Auxiliary Power (SNAP) reactor. One of these reactors, though not the one she worked in, also had a near-complete meltdown in 1964 – SSFL’s second. With two other women, Klea ran the copy machines, answered telephones, delivered paychecks across SSFL, and made coffee. Nuclear workers used to access the reactor room through a small door in her basement office, yet Klea wasn’t trained in radiation safety and didn’t wear a badge to gauge how much radiation she was exposed to.
“I didn’t know anything at the time,” said Klea. “That building is where they worked on the SNAP reactor. It’s still there. Some of the reports I’ve read said the ground and the groundwater all around Building 59 are contaminated with radiation. The groundwater comes up and soaks that building and that building is totally contaminated.”
Klea was diagnosed with cancer in 1995. Her doctor immediately became suspicious when he saw what type of tumor she had. “As soon as he saw bladder cancer, he said, ‘Where do you work?’ and I said I had worked up at Santa Susana Rocketdyne. And he said ‘That’s it; I’ve treated many people who worked there from the scientists to the janitors to the secretaries.’ All my doctors made the same relationship of my cancer to my work. Bladder cancer is either considered smoking-related or occupational. Considering I was not a smoker, and I worked at Rocketdyne, well, that pretty much answered my question why I got that.”
Money Talks
Concerns over the myriad chemical and radiological poisons at SSFL led State Senator Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) to recently attempt to enact legislation that would prohibit developing the 290-acre radiological area of lab property for housing unless it is cleaned up to federal EPA standards. Kuehl’s bill was partially in response to the EPA’s determination last December that SSFL is barely tolerable for public day hiking, and that restricted picnicking to not last longer than two hours per visit.
