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sites -- addresses that we’ve established for each
of these documents. There are individual e-mail
addresses that a person could mail into and
provide written comments. We're also encouraging
input prior to the release, when possible. Of
course we're moving these things fast and furious
because we're trying to get claims processed in a
timely manner. But where possible, we're
encouraging input before the release. And of
course after the release we -- in cases now we’re
going around the sites and having meetings with
union representatives.

Public briefings are planned when necessary.
There are some sites that may not have organized
labor representatives, some of these AWEs for
example, or stakeholders, survivors may require
some briefing, so we are open to having public
briefings as necessary.

DR. ZIEMER: Jim, could I interrupt here?

DR. NETON: Sure,

DR. ZIEMER: It’s safe to assume that the SRS
meeting was last November rather than scheduled?

DR. NETON: Sorry, yes.

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you.

DR. NETON: Yeah, my mistake. Appreciate the

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no matter when it came in. So whatever quarter --

DR. ZIEMER: So the completed processing --

MR. TURCIC: It's -- yeah --
DR. ZIEMER: -- so far this --
MR. TURCIC: Yeah, sa -- so -- and all the

claims, you know, on the average, the claims that
reach that -- that level of processing started, on
the average, 99 days prior to that.

DR. ZIEMER: Gotcha. So it really is
comparing completed claims to completed claims.

MR. TURCIC: Yeah, and that has been the
trend really for about the last three quarters.
It was the beginning -- the beginning of FY 2003
we had a effort to work off our backlog, and so we
came up with a plan for our district offices to
focus on those claims. We worked off that
backlog, which -- you know, ‘cause we started out
with something like, you know, 20,000 claims on
day one. And when those got worked off, then that
added to the average time in the beginning of that
year.

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Pete, for the very
informative presentation.

The Chair is going to declare a 10-minute

comfort break before our next speaker, and so

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addresses Atomic Weapons Employers.

Okay, this little graph just displays where
we are. I£ you notice, there's sections 2 through
6 labeled here. I didn’t include section one.
Those are typically executive summary type
sections. They’re not really subject to delays
based on availability of data and that sort of
thing. They kind of naturally come along for the
ride after these five major sections are
completed. But the important thing to point out
on this slide are the green dots. The green dots
indicate that the -- that chapter is either
approved and out there on our web site or
currently in the hands of OCAS undergoing comment
resolution -- review and comment resolution. So
you can see three, four, five -- six of them --
all but six -- nine of those sections are in our
hands or out there and approved. And of the ones
that are -- the ones that are green, 24 of those
sections actually are already out there on our web
site, so about a third of them are actually
already out there and published -- or soon to be
published. They may have just been released in
the last couple of days.

The blue squares represent the ones that are

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call complex-wide technical basis documents. I
think this came up at the Board meeting in Las
Vegas, and I thought -- I think the Board was
interested in hearing a presentation -- an example
of one of those dose reconstructions, so I’m
prepared to discuss that in some detail this
morning, as well.

Just as a reminder -- you've seen this slide
I think a couple of times, but I just want to
reiterate that -- what a site profile is. They‘re
a limited-scope document specific for a site.
They are essentially a road map to be used by dose
reconstructors that contain site-specific
information -- TLD measurement detection limits,
exchange frequencies, that sort of stuff. And
what it does is help standardize interpretation of
data. As Dr. Toohey mentioned earlier this
morning, we have a number of dose reconstructors
working on this project in various parts of the
country, so they need some sort of standardized
documentation to refer to when they are doing
these dose reconstructions so that we have some
consistency in our approach. Again, basically
used as a handbook. And as important, they are

dynamic documents. We do our best effort to

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let’s recess till five after 11:00.

(Whereupon, a recess was taken.)

SITE PROFILE STATUS

DR. ZIEMER: We will come back to order.
We’re going to have a session now dealing with
site profile status. Jim Neton will be the
presenter from NIOSH. Jim, you have the floor.

DR. NETON: Thank you, Dr, Ziemer. Good
morning. It's my pleasure to present to you an
update on the status of our site profiles. It’s
an area I think we've made some fairly significant
progress in a number of efforts, and I've just
outlined here the three subtopics that I'd like to
discuss during my presentation. That is, one,
where are we with the site profiles, progress-
wise. What have we done since the last Board
meeting.

Also to talk a little bit about the status of
the worker input effort. At the October meeting
in St. Louis the Board requested that NIOSH draft
a plan related to developing worker input or
obtaining worker input on the site profiles.

And thirdly, I'd like to go off in a little
bit of a different direction, talk about examples

of dose reconstructions using what‘s -- what we

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recall, a site profile for the major DOE sites is
a six-section document. They’re called Technical
Basis Documents, so six Technical Basis Documents
make up a site profile. ORAU has completed 85
percent of the individual secLlions, or they’re
under review. So essentially what I’m saying is
they're either in draft form or approved and
completed. So the major work has been done on 85
percent of these chapters. I think that's a
pretty good start T've got a slide after this
that’il show it a little more graphically.

On the complex-wide documents we've actually
developed a few documents to help us move some
Claims through the process, even if we don’t have
a site profile. I believe the Department of
Energy complex-wide profile or -- profile was
discussed at the Las Vegas meeting, and I’11l get
into that a little later. It’s a little hit of a
@ifferent flavor document. It's not specific to
the site, but they use certain maximizing
assumptions that we can use for specific blocks of
claimants. There are two complex-wide documents
eut there now. One is the complex-wide document
that addresses Department of Energy facilities,

and we also have a complex-wide document that

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construction and other tradespeople do move after
retirement and --

MR. TURCIC: Yeah, we -- we welcome that.
Sometimes it’s hard because of privacy issues to
get, you know, the administrators of those funds
to allow us -- I mean we don’t -- we don’t need
the names. You know, we'll give them the material
that they could stuff the envelope. Yeah, that is
in fact one of -- direct mailings have been our
most successful method of outreach. And if
anybody has any contacts or ideas, you know, we --
we appreciate them all

DR. ZIEMER: Charles Owens.

MR. OWENS: I'm aware of the efforts that the
Department is making at Hanford. De you have a --
do you have a phased approach that you’re going to
do in regard to the outreach, and if you do, could

you provide that approach to us, too?

MR. TURCIC: Yeah, we -- I sure will. What
we -- what we’re trying to do is we have a long-
range plan and I‘ll get a copy -- you know, I’11l

get that to Larry and he can get it to the Board,

and then we're -- you know, we have a quarterly
plan. We try to stay -- you know, focusing in
certain areas. Like I said, we just completed our

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have completed at least some of them -- Bethiehem
Steel, Blockson Chemical, Huntington Pilot Plant,
Mallinckrodt. We have out en our web site,
although I will say that some of these have
sections that aré marked "reserved", and by
reserved, that means that there is some issue that
is preventing us from completing that particular
section. It could -- that could come from a num--
for a number of different reasons, but we still
publish them with the idea that claims that can be
done, even though those sections are still
reserved, we'll move them out. And in fact we
have done that for a number of these facilities.

The AWE -- I mentioned that we have this
complex-wide TBD for uranium facilities, and I'll
discuss that after I’m done with this part of this
presentation. We have two new ones that just came
in, Aliquippa Forge and the Tennessee Valley
Authority, and they are in our hands right now and
currently being reviewed.

There’s a large number of AWE profiles that
are currently being worked on by ORAU. I believe
there's somewhere in the vicinity of 24 different
ones that are being looked at right now. There’s

about 24 that are being looked at and have actual

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actually drafted and in ORAU review. So we've got
a number of them that are just about ready to come
ever to OCAS for review. But the important thing
is the data capture efforts, the collection, the
writing has been done. They are in the process of
being refined.

And the red triangles represent that the
draft is not complete yet, not in ORAU internal
review. However, since I developed this slide a
couple of days ago, two of the red dots have now
become biue. This one is now internal ORAU
review, that one is the Los Alamos environmental
dose chapter, and the X-10 internal dose chapter
is in ORAU review. So the only ones remaining
with a red triangle right now is the X-10 external
dosimetry chapter.

So a lot of progress has been made. I think
you recall -- you know, we were hoping to get
these all completed by the end of the calendar
year this last year. We‘re pretty close. We're a
little bit off and there’s been some reasons for
delays, but we're not too far off the mark.

Okay, what’s the site profile status for the
AWEs. There are of course a lot more of those.

There are several hundred plus AWEs out there. We

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obtain and retrieve all possible sources of
information that we can. However, we cannot
predict that something won't come out of the
woodwork in one of these data capture efforts or a
claimant might provide something, so we are
committed to reviewing these things on an as-
needed basis and updating them as new information
becomes available that may change the dose
reconstruction effort for a particular site.

As you recall, Lhere were 15 DOE facilities
being worked on in parallel by ORAU. This is a
fairly huge effort, a large number of people
working on this, a number of good HPs out there.
The 15 were -- represent a combination of the
biggest sites -- you know, the ones where we have
a lot of claims, also, but also some of the sites
where we have information that was readily
available and we could move forward with them. Tf
we complete these 15 DOE facilities, we'll have
documents that address about 77 percent of the
claimants. So you know, with 15 DOE site profiles
done, that will allow us -- at least theoretically
-- to move forward on processing claims for almost
80 percent of the claims.

Where we're at right now is over -- if you'll

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a lot of the people.

MR. TURCIC: We've found that what works the
best is the local unions and -- ‘cause a lot of
times they’1l have, you know -- they'll have the

contact list that, you know, the internationals

don't. So we -- we try whenever we can to also
get the -- and we've done a number of direct
mailings, you know, with the local unions -- and

are willing to do that any time we can,

DR. ZIEMER: Pete, I was impressed by the
remarkable reduction in initial claims processing
time for this fiscal year. But it also at the
Same time raised a question. For example, on the
AWEs you've gone from 183 days to 99, but since
we’re only four months or so into the fiscal year,
how -- how do you account -- there can be no
claims 180 days old this year anyway, so --

MR. TURCIC: Yeah -- yeah, there can.

DR. ZIEMER: How --

MR. TURCIC: Let me explain what the num--
where the number --

DR. ZIEMER: So I’m really asking how you
count them.

MR. TURCIC: Yeah, I’m sorry. That’s a good

point. It’s -- we count it when it is processed,

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input.

And we have adopted a format of taking
minutes at these meetings and -- with the sign-in
sheets at the meetings, making them available to
participants so that they can review what the
salient points were discussed at these meetings
and have a record for them. And also we hope to
develop a list from these sign-in sheets of
contacts for future -- future discussions, as
necessary.

As Dr. Ziemer pointed out, the meetings are
ongoing. We met at SRS in late November -- or
early November. And Hanford, we were at the --
there on January 13th and 14th with -- had two
meetings, one with the metal trades and one with
the construction trades. Both of those meetings I
will say I think were very productive for us. At
the SRS briefing we had a -- some very good verbal
input from the workers. We heard some interesting
things, and as a result of that, we are committed
to looking at the site profile for Savannah River
to address the unique needs and exposure
conditions of the construction workers.

At Hanford we also had some verbal feedback

that was useful to us, and we are looking at

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MR. PRESLEY: -- the fairness of the people
that she worked with en your program, and she was
very complimentary and she wanted me to pass on
thanks.

MR. TURCIC: Thank you.

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Larry has a comment,
then we’ll go to Rich.

MR. ELLIOTT: Pete, on your slide on the
Special Exposure Cohort, this is the slide that
appears right before your outreach set of slides,
you talk about the total number of cases denied.
I just wanted to make sure that everybody’s aware
here that in the total approved cases there's a
couple of cases that we have done dose
reconstructions on and sent back that were
approved.

MR. TURCIC: Absolutely.

MR. ELLIOTT: These are skin cancer cases.

MR. TURCIC: Exactly.

DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Richard?

MR. ESPINOSA: Yeah, as far as outreach, I
know pretty much all the local unions have
newsletters that go out on a monthly basis, and I
would imagine that all the internationals have

magazines that go out on a monthly basis to reach

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plan for the Cleveland office and where we’re
going to focus in Cleveland is Fernald and Mound
because they are sites that are closing. And then
the beryllium vendors, so that's where we’re
focusing in, you know, this -- this upcoming
quarter. But we'll get that -- we’ll get that
plan to Larry and he can share it with the Board.

MR. OWENS: Yeah, I think that -- you know,
we've been very involved -- PACE has --

MR. TURCIC: Yeah.

MR. OWENS: -- in ensuring that workers
who've been under-represented from a number
standpoint are contacted, And I know there are
some very good folks out at Hanford, and I’m
hopeful that your efforts will be successful.

MR. TURCIC: Yeah. We'll be out there next
week.

DR. ZIEMER: Robert Presley.

MR. PRESLEY: Pete, I know that we get a lot
of complaints. I want to pass on a good comment.
A person at Oak Ridge came to me last week that
had gone through the beryllium program. She was
very complimentary about how well she was treated

MR. TURCIC: Good.

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scheduled completion dates.

There is a point of diminishing returns,
though, when you work on these AWE site profiles.
Many of these sites have small numbers of people,
so we are currently undergoing deliberation as to
how best to handle a lot of the remainder of small
sites. It may well be that we end up having
addenda placed on the back of some of the ones
that are already completed because the processes
were very similar. Just with some minor
modifications we could accommodate the other
facilities.

I just briefly want to talk about the status
of the site profile rollouts with the worker input
effort that we’ve put in place since the October
Board meeting. We have a worker input plan
drafted. It’s currently undergoing review, but it
does establish a worker outreach group. We‘ve
tasked ORAU with heading up the effort for us.
Some of you know Bill Murray that works for ORAU
now is heading up that effort in their shop, along
with Vern McDougal, who’s a subcontractor to ORAU.
So we have the plan drafted, and it provides a
framework for obtaining worker input. We are

encouraging workers to provide input to the e-mail

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