X-Rays, Mammograms to Be Safe, State Says

State officials assured the Board of Supervisors Tuesday that public health in Orange County will be protected in spite of the abrupt transfer to Sacramento in June of the county’s long-standing program of inspecting local X-ray and mammography machines.

Supervisors agreed to let the state take over inspections but asked for updates every 30 days for the next six months. The county has 93 mammography centers and about 5,200 X-ray machines to be inspected, as well as other locations with radioactive materials and the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

“I’m pretty disappointed in the way [the program closure] was handled,” said Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who asked for the monthly reports. “I don’t think anyone questions the integrity of the state.”

Local public-health and cancer-screening advocates immediately protested when the program was closed without public notice June 17, giving the state just two weeks to assume responsibility.

County health officials said the action was taken because it couldn’t find a supervisor for the unit, whose productivity had dropped in X-ray inspections. The state contracted with the county in 1963 to provide inspections and paid the program’s $500,000 annual cost.

Several mammography technologists and breast-cancer survivors urged supervisors at the close of Tuesday evening’s board meeting to reinstate the local program, which they said gave them more confidence that problems would be investigated swiftly and completely than dealing with state inspectors responsible for several counties.

Kim Watts, supervisor at a Newport Beach mammography center, said a state inspector visited her facility a week after the county’s program was closed. A follow-up inspection report that she said would have come the same day from the local office--and was required within five days--was mailed by the state inspector 26 days later.

“Thankfully, my facility was up to standards,” she said.

Ed Bailey, head of the state Department of Health Services’ radiologic health division, said the state has had to “pick up the slack” from the county and plans to hire inspectors to help. He said a mammography inspector will be transferred to handle all Orange County inspections.

Within a year, the state plans to open another Southern California office that may be located in Orange County, he said.

“Women’s health is of primary importance to us,” Bailey said. “The tragedy would be if women were unduly prevented from getting proper health care because of fears that changes in the personnel inspecting Orange County mammography facilities have impacted the quality of the examinations.”

State Health Director Kim Belshe issued a statement Tuesday assuring county women that mammography inspections will continue with the same high quality provided by county inspectors. The state provides inspections for most California counties, she said, except Los Angeles and San Diego. All inspections require compliance with the same standards.

Spitzer said he was concerned because the number of X-ray inspections had fallen in the past 18 months--a downturn local inspectors attributed to two unfilled positions. Trudy Papson, one of the fired inspectors, said the staff wasn’t informed by county health officials that there was a problem.

“For the unit to close because there was an inspection shortage problem and never come to the staff to ask why smacks of dishonesty,” she said in an interview.

Despite the three state health officials who traveled to Orange County this week, their assurances didn’t completely satisfy Trudy Grossman, chair of the Orange County Breast Cancer Coalition and a supporter of the local program. She continued to question why county officials closed a program that received accolades nationally.

“The way it was done was just very poor,” she said. “It sends the public a very bad message.”