STEVEN RAY GREEN AND ASSOCIATES 

NATIONALLY CERTIFIED COURT REPORTERS 

404/733-6070 

THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 

convenes the 

WORKING GROUP MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

FERNALD

 

The verbatim transcript of the Working 

Group Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

Worker Health held in Hebron, Kentucky, on 

March 26, 2008. 
2

C O N T E N T S

March 26, 2008 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 6 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO 

INTRODUCTION BY CHAIR 12 

MR. BRAD CLAWSON 

“Briefing on the Use of Daily Weighted Exposure 

Reports for the Estimation of Chronic Intake Rates” 

MR. MARK ROLFES 17 

RAFFINATE ISSUE 141 

“Comparison of FMPC Hardcopy Bioassay Records 

to the HIS-20 Database” 200 

MR. MARK ROLFES 

MATRIX DISCUSSION 217 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 313 
3

TRANSCRIPT LEGEND

The following transcript contains quoted material. Such 

material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

In the following transcript: a dash (--) indicates 

an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 

sentence. An ellipsis (. . .) indicates halting speech 

or an unfinished sentence in dialogue or omission(s) of 

word(s) when reading written material. 

-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 

of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 

reported. 

-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 

the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 

available. 

-- "uh-huh" represents an affirmative response, and 

"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 

 -- "*" denotes a spelling based on phonetics, 

without reference available. 

-- “^”/(inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies 

speaker failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 
4

 P A R T I C I P A N T S 

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D. 

Senior Science Advisor 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Washington, DC 

MEMBERSHIP

BEACH, Josie 

Nuclear Chemical Operator 

Hanford Reservation 

Richland, Washington 

1 CLAWSON, Bradley 

2 Senior Operator, Nuclear Fuel Handling 

3 Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory 

GRIFFON, Mark A. 

President 

Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc. 

Salem, New Hampshire 

SCHOFIELD, Phillip 

Los Alamos Project on Worker Safety 

Los Alamos, New Mexico 

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D. 

Professor Emeritus 

School of Health Sciences 

Purdue University 

Lafayette, Indiana 

 
5

IDENTIFIED PARTICIPANTS

BALDRIDGE, SANDRA, PETITIONER 

BEATTY, RAY, FORMER WORKER 

BEHLING, HANS, SC&A 

BEHLING, KATHY, SC&A 

CHEW, MELTON, CAI 

FAUST, LEO, ORAU 

HILL, BROOK, SEN. SHERROD BROWN 

HILL, STEPHEN, CONG. CHABOT 

HOFF, JENNIFER, ORAU 

HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS 

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 

KENT, KAREN, ORAU 

KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL 

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A 

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 

MORRIS, ROBERT, ORAU 

NETON, JIM, NIOSH 

RICH, BRYCE, ORAU 

ROLFES, MARK, NIOSH 

SHARFI, MUTTY, ORAU 
6

P R O C E E D I N G S

1 (9:00 a.m.) 

2 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS

DR. LEW WADE, DFO

3 DR. WADE: Good morning. This is the work 

4 group conference room. This is a meeting of 

5 the work group on Fernald’s site profile and 

6 SEC petition. My name is Lew Wade, and I’m 

7 filling in for Christine Branche who’s the 

8 Designated Federal Official for the Advisory 

9 Board, and Christine is away on other 

10 business. In fact, yesterday she was visiting 

11 the Nevada Test Site to broaden her experience 

12 in that issue related to the program. 

13 This is a work group that’s ably 

14 chaired by Brad Clawson, members Griffon, 

15 Ziemer, Presley and Schofield. In the room 

16 here are Clawson, Griffon, Ziemer and 

17 Schofield. Is Mr. Presley on the line? 

18 (no response) 

19 DR. WADE: Is Robert Presley on the line? 

20 (no response) 

21 DR. WADE: Are there any other Board members 

22 who are participating by telephone? 
7

1 (no response) 

2 DR. WADE: Any other Board members 

3 participating by telephone? 

4 (no response) 

5 DR. WADE: Well, the good news is we don’t 

6 have a quorum of the Board, so the work group 

7 can continue with its deliberations. 

8 Let’s do some introductions, and we’ll 

9 go around the table here. We’ll start with 

10 members of the NIOSH/ORAU team, then members 

11 of the SC&A team. Then we’ll look at 

12 petitioners, claimants, workers who are 

13 involved in the call and would like to be 

14 identified. We’ll look for members of 

15 Congress or their representatives, other 

16 federal government employees, and then anyone 

17 who wants to be on the record. 

18 Around the table here we’ll just go 

19 around the room, and then when we go out into 

20 the telephone we’ll go by those categories. I 

21 would ask that ORAU/NIOSH folks, SC&A folks, 

22 Board members would identify whether or not 

23 they have conflicts relative to this 

24 particular site. That’s the Fernald site. So 

25 we’ll begin. 
8

1 Again, I’m Lew Wade. I work for 

2 NIOSH. 

3 DR. NETON: I’m Jim Neton. I’m with NIOSH, 

4 and I’m conflicted at Fernald. 

5 MR. CHEW: Mel Chew, I work for O-R-A-U 

6 team. I am not conflicted. 

7 MR. ROLFES: Mark Rolfes with NIOSH. I have 

8 no conflicts. 

9 MR. SHARFI: Mutty Sharfi, the ORAU team, no 

10 conflicts. 

11 MR. RICH: Bryce Rich, O-R-A-U team, no 

12 conflict. 

13 DR. BEHLING: Hans Behling, SC&A, no 

14 conflict. 

15 DR. MAURO: John Mauro, SC&A, no conflict. 

16 MR. GRIFFON: Mark Griffon with the Advisory 

17 Board, no conflict. 

18 MR. CLAWSON: Brad Clawson from the Advisory 

19 Board, no conflict. 

20 MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS. 

21 MR. SCHOFIELD: Phillip Schofield from the 

22 Board, no conflict. 

23 DR. ZIEMER: Paul Ziemer from the Board, no 

24 conflict. 

25 DR. WADE: And then in the room if you could 
9

1 shout out for the microphone. 

2 MR. HILL: Stephen Hill from Congressman 

3 Chabot’s office. 

4 MS. BALDRIDGE: Sandra Baldridge, 

5 petitioner. 

6 MR. BEATTY: Ray Beatty, former worker, 

7 assisting Sandra. 

8 MS. HOFF: Jennifer Hoff, ORAU team, no 

9 conflicts. 

10 MS. KENT: Karen Kent, ORAU team, no 

11 conflicts. 

12 DR. WADE: Let’s go out onto the telephone 

13 then and ask for other members of the 

14 NIOSH/ORAU team to identify themselves. 

15 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): Leo Faust, ORAU 

16 team. 

17 DR. WADE: Leo, could you tell us if 

18 conflicts? 

19 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): No conflicts. 

20 DR. WADE: Thank you. 

21 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Robert Morris, 

22 ORAU team, no conflict. 

23 DR. WADE: Other members of the NIOSH/ORAU 

24 team? 

25 (no response) 
10

1 DR. WADE: How about SC&A folks? 

2 MS. BEHLING (by Telephone): This is Kathy 

3 Behling, SC&A, no conflict. 

4 DR. WADE: Always a pleasure to have you 

5 with us, Kathy. 

6 MS. BEHLING (by Telephone): Thank you. 

7 DR. WADE: Others of the SC&A team? 

8 (no response) 

9 DR. WADE: How about other federal employees 

10 who are working on this call? 

11 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): Liz 

12 Homoki-Titus with HHS. 

13 MR. KOTSCH (by Telephone): Jeff Kotsch with 

14 Labor. 

15 DR. WADE: Thank you, Jeff, for being with 

16 us. 

17 Other feds? 

18 (no response) 

19 DR. WADE: How about other workers, 

20 petitioners, claimants, their representatives? 

21 (no response) 

22 DR. WADE: Members of Congress or their 

23 representatives? 

24 MS. HILL: This is Brook Hill with Senator 

25 Sherrod Brown’s office. 
11

1 DR. WADE: Thank you for being with us. Can 

2 you hear us okay? 

3 MS. HILL: Yes. 

4 DR. WADE: Other members of Congress or 

5 their representatives? 

6 (no response) 

7 DR. WADE: Is there anyone else on the call 

8 who would like to be identified for the 

9 record? 

10 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Yes, this is 

11 Arjun Makhijani of SC&A, no conflicts. 

12 DR. WADE: Good morning, Arjun. 

13 MS. BEACH (by Telephone): And this is Josie 

14 Beach -- 

15 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): I’m sorry, I 

16 have a conflict. 

17 DR. WADE: We still are glad to have you 

18 with us. 

19 Josie Beach, you with us? 

20 MS. BEACH (by Telephone): And Josie Beach, 

21 no conflicts. 

22 DR. WADE: We’re glad to have you, Josie. 

23 We worry about quorum on work groups, but you 

24 do not bring us to a quorum, so please 

25 participate as you would like. 
12

1 Anyone else who would like to be 

2 identified for the record? 

3 (no response) 

4 DR. WADE: A little thing about phone 

5 etiquette, you know, if you are not actively 

6 engaged, then mute the phone. If you are 

7 speaking, speak into a handset if at all 

8 possible and disdain the use of speaker 

9 phones. They collect all kinds of background 

10 noise. Be mindful of the noise in your 

11 environment that might be not disturbing to 

12 you, it could be awfully disturbing to people 

13 on the call. 

14 We do have examples of people typing 

15 and all manner of things, and dogs barking and 

16 we did have one fellow snoring. So it would 

17 be good to be mindful of those situations. 

18 Dr. Branche has pointed out that if you don’t 

19 have the ability to mute your phone, you can 

20 hit star six which will mute the phone. And 

21 then to get it unmuted you hit star six again 

22 and apparently that works. 

23 So with that, Brad, it’s yours. 

24 INTRODUCTION BY CHAIR

25 MR. CLAWSON: The last time that we met was 
13

1 11/13, and we had numerous, we made it through 

2 the matrix, and we had a kind of a layover for 

3 a little while. So we’re going to start back 

4 into the responses that SC&A requested from 

5 NIOSH. And I guess we’ll just start from the 

6 front of the matrix and proceed forward. 

7 Hans, where would you like to start on 

8 this one? 

9 DR. BEHLING: I’m not sure this is my call. 

10 I guess you have a presentation that has some 

11 structure to it and rather than second guess 

12 you, what’s on your computer, I will defer to 

13 Mark. 

14 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, Mark. You know, that 

15 brings up something else. Has everybody got a 

16 copy of the matrix that Mark brought, and is 

17 there any other papers you need to hand out? 

18 MS. HOWELL: Does that contain Privacy Act -

19 - 

20 MR. ROLFES: It may contain Privacy Act so, 

21 Privacy Act information, so that’s -- 

22 MS. HOWELL: We shouldn’t. 

23 MR. CLAWSON: Should we share it or not? 

24 MR. ROLFES: We shouldn’t. 

25 MS. HOWELL: No. 
14

1 MR. ROLFES: I apologize, Mr. Hill. We 

2 can’t share that with you because of Privacy 

3 Act information. 

4 MR. CLAWSON: It contains Privacy Act 

5 information. 

6 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, we’ve got a couple of 

7 presentations just to -- 

8 MR. GRIFFON: But we’ll get that cleared and 

9 make sure he gets a copy, right? 

10 MR. ROLFES: Sure. 

11 MR. GRIFFON: And I think we should try to 

12 clearly define what we’re talking about in the 

13 matrix that some people can’t see the matrix. 

14 So when we get to that point, you know. 

15 MR. ROLFES: I was going to say I can 

16 project it on the screen, but if there’s 

17 Privacy Act information in there I probably 

18 shouldn’t do that sort of thing. Well, we do 

19 have a matrix. We made some updates. We also 

20 put together several presentations just to 

21 bring everyone up to speed on the work that 

22 NIOSH has completed. 

23 A couple of the outstanding things, 

24 the main couple of issues that were 

25 outstanding were the thorium coworker model or 
15

1 the thorium intake model that we would be 

2 using for reconstructing historical intakes of 

3 thorium at Fernald. And the other was the 

4 reconstruction of recycled uranium and 

5 raffinates. So we do have a couple of 

6 presentations, and I also have a small, brief 

7 presentation on the comparison of bioassay 

8 data to the HIS-20 database. So we can go 

9 through those presentations, and I guess we 

10 can discuss additional details from the white 

11 paper following the presentation. That’s 

12 probably the easiest way. 

13 MR. GRIFFON: Do you have copies of the 

14 presentation? 

15 MR. ROLFES: I did hand out copies of the 

16 presentations as well. If you didn’t get one, 

17 I do have -- 

18 DR. WADE: This is Lew Wade. I’d like to 

19 say something for the record about the 

20 deliberation. Again, this is a work group 

21 meeting of the Federal Advisory Committee. 

22 Under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, work 

23 group meetings are normally not open to the 

24 public and transcripts are not kept of those 

25 meetings. This is to allow for boards and 
16

1 members of boards to do the everyday work that 

2 needs to be done as they prepare for publicly 

3 attended board meetings. 

4 This board, I think much to their 

5 credit, has allowed for work group meetings to 

6 be open to the public, transcripts are kept 

7 and shared and made public. It creates a 

8 problem though in that material is being 

9 prepared in near realtime for these 

10 deliberations, and the deliberations are 

11 happening in public. We can’t share Privacy 

12 Act information with the public until it’s 

13 cleared. 

14 It takes time for a document to be 

15 cleared, and that creates the dilemma we face. 

16 We don’t want to limit these meetings. We 

17 want to make them open to the public, but at 

18 times these deliberations discuss Privacy Act 

19 information that can’t be shared with the 

20 public. The record of this meeting will be 

21 posted on the website. All documents 

22 discussed will eventually be cleared, but 

23 sometimes things are brought before this body 

24 that haven’t been cleared, and therefore, 

25 can’t be shared with the public. 
17

1 “Briefing on the Use of Daily Weighted Exposure Reports 

2 for the Estimation of Chronic Intake Rates”

3 MR. ROLFES: Okay, so I believe we can get 

4 into our presentation here. And the first one 

5 that will start will be the “Briefing on the 

6 Use of Daily Weighted Exposure Reports for the 

7 Estimation of Chronic Intake Rates.” And if 

8 you excuse me for just a second, we’ll get 

9 this projected up here. 

10 This is the “Fernald Working Group 

11 Briefing on the Use of Daily Weighted Exposure 

12 Reports for the Estimation of Chronic Daily 

13 Intake Rates.” 

14 MR. GRIFFON: Just one more second. I 

15 didn’t get copies. Can someone make a couple 

16 of extra copies? And I think we can give out 

17 these copies, right, of the presentation? 

18 MS. HOWELL: No, I’m sorry. I have to 

19 interrupt. We have not seen this. We have 

20 not seen the matrix. 

21 MR. GRIFFON: But it’s being projected. 

22 MS. HOWELL: I’m going to have to tell you 

23 to please block the projector. We can’t do 

24 this. You’ve got to get us stuff ahead of 

25 time. 
18

1 DR. WADE: Then give me copies and I’ll copy 

2 it for the work group members. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: And just for the record, Mark, 

4 this presentation will follow the white paper 

5 that was on the O drive. Is that correct? 

6 MR. ROLFES: Correct. This is just a 

7 summarization of the white paper that was 

8 produced. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: I just want to make sure it 

10 matches up with what we’ve got. 

11 DR. WADE: I’m going to go make copies. How 

12 many copies are needed for people around the 

13 table? 

14 DR. ZIEMER: One other comment, Mr. 

15 Chairman. On the hard copy that’s 

16 distributed, the tables aren’t readable, so 

17 you may need to go to your O drive to see 

18 them, since they’re not going to be projected. 

19 We can’t -- 

20 MR. ROLFES: I apologize. On the handouts 

21 some of the bottom slides are cut off. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: No, I’m not talking about the 

23 cut off. They’re not readable anyway; the 

24 tables are not readable. 

25 MR. ROLFES: We’ll do our best to explain 
19

1 that. I apologize for any inconvenience. 

2 DR. ZIEMER: But if you can access the O 

3 drive here, which you can, you can pull them 

4 up. 

5 MR. CLAWSON: Where do you want to go from 

6 there, Mark? 

7 MR. ROLFES: I guess we can wait a couple 

8 minutes. 

9 Would you like for us to wait, Lew? 

10 DR. WADE: No, you can continue. 

11 MR. ROLFES: We will go ahead and go 

12 through, I will go through the slides, and I 

13 apologize for not having it projected up on 

14 the screen. 

15 MR. GRIFFON: Can you tell the name of the 

16 file? I’m looking for that presentation. 

17 MR. ROLFES: This presentation is not -- 

18 DR. ZIEMER: White paper on FMPC. 

19 MR. GRIFFON: Oh, it’s not on there. So the 

20 white paper’s -- 

21 DR. ZIEMER: The white paper is. 

22 MR. ROLFES: That’s why I was giving a 

23 presentation. I apologize. This was a late, 

24 last minute presentation. 

25 DR. ZIEMER: It’s like the last thing in the 
20

1 Fernald file. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: I got the white paper. 

3 MR. ROLFES: The white papers are available. 

4 We initiated a data capture for 

5 Fernald to go back and re-review some of the 

6 information on air sampling, on bioassay data. 

7 We had requested about 110 boxes of records, 

8 both for additional thorium air monitoring 

9 data, bioassay information. We went up to the 

10 Mountain View Federal Records Center and 

11 reviewed those boxes and probably ended up 

12 copying about 25 boxes of records at that 

13 time. We focused on a lot of the daily 

14 weighted exposure reports that were produced 

15 historically. 

16 Anyway, the January 2008 data capture 

17 yielded hundreds of documents which included 

18 daily weighted exposure reports. We used 

19 these to define thorium inhalation and 

20 ingestion intakes prior to the use of chest 

21 counting in 1968. We also can use these to 

22 support our raffinate and recycled uranium 

23 exposure assumptions. 

24 The daily weighted exposure reports, 

25 the initial one at Fernald was put together by 
21

1 the New York Operations Health and Safety Lab, 

2 HASL. They established the daily weighted 

3 exposure process in the 1940s and imprinted it 

4 on the AEC complex. HASL staff did the first 

5 daily weighted exposure assessment in 1953 at 

6 Fernald. The method was proceduralized and 

7 applied by Fernald staff and formal reports 

8 were prepared for use by facility management. 

9 Daily weighted exposure reports are 

10 similar in concept to the modern time-weighted 

11 averages used by industrial hygiene personnel. 

12 Every daily weighted exposure report was 

13 similar. It was typewritten. It included 

14 data sheets. I do have a couple of documents 

15 as well that I can pass around. These are a 

16 couple of examples of the daily weighted 

17 exposure reports. They do contain Privacy Act 

18 information, however. 

19 I will get to a couple of tables that 

20 we’ve extracted from these reports, but in 

21 Table 1, the average daily weighted exposure 

22 for each job description in the facility is 

23 documented, the number of workers employed in 

24 each job description, and an average daily 

25 weighted exposure for the entire facility. 
22

1 Table 2 includes the average of the air dust 

2 sample concentrations for a specific operation 

3 or area. There’s also recommendations listed, 

4 discussed and tracked. 

5 MR. CLAWSON: Mark. 

6 MR. ROLFES: Yes, Paul. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: Your Table 1 that you’re 

8 referring to is not the Table 1 in the report. 

9 It’s in the slides. 

10 MR. ROLFES: It should be in the slides. 

11 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I see it now. 

12 MR. ROLFES: It should be in the slides that 

13 you have, and it’s towards the end of the 

14 presentation. 

15 Also, the appendices to the Daily 

16 Weighted Exposure Reports show each job 

17 evaluation report. The job evaluation 

18 reports, the industrial hygiene personnel 

19 created time and test diaries for each job. A 

20 full eight and a half hours per day was 

21 assessed for exposures. Each task is sampled 

22 using both breathing zone and general area air 

23 sampling. High exposure tasks were sampled on 

24 several different days. Common areas were 

25 sampled often. 
23

1 The average concentration was 

2 established for each task. The time times 

3 concentration for each task is summed and then 

4 divided by the total time to give an average 

5 exposure in multiples of the maximum allowable 

6 concentration, the MAC. This is an example of 

7 Table 1 which just has various job 

8 descriptions and the number of employees that 

9 were working in that job description, and also 

10 a daily weighted exposure in multiples of the 

11 MAC. 

12 The next slide is another job exposure 

13 -- 

14 Yes, Paul. 

15 DR. ZIEMER: Is it okay to ask questions as 

16 we go? 

17 MR. ROLFES: I’m sure. We can go through 

18 more detail as well after. 

19 DR. ZIEMER: The eight and a half hour 

20 issue, did you determine that that’s the 

21 actual time in the workplace versus the length 

22 of the workday? Was there, what I’m getting 

23 at is some places have an eight and a half 

24 hour day, but they work eight hours and 

25 there’s a lunch break. 
24

1 MR. ROLFES: Correct, and if you take a look 

2 at this next slide here for the job exposure 

3 evaluation for the chemical area process, if 

4 you take a look, there’s some breathing zone 

5 air sampling results for the dumping of 

6 thorium nitrate tetrahydrate into dissolving 

7 tanks. These are breathing zone samples that 

8 were taken for, let’s see, there were three 

9 samples that were taken, and it took 60 

10 minutes to complete this task per shift. 

11 But also, if you take a look down 

12 towards the bottom of this slide, there are 

13 some general area air monitoring data 

14 following this individual to the washroom, to 

15 the smoking area, to the locker room, to the 

16 cafeteria, and also traveling between plants. 

17 So it’s almost like a time and motion study 

18 what is being done here. 

19 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, you’re including for that 

20 period that they’re in the lunchroom, that 

21 value. 

22 MR. ROLFES: Correct. That was recorded. 

23 DR. ZIEMER: That’s part of the eight and a 

24 half hour -- 

25 MR. ROLFES: Correct. 
25

1 DR. MAURO: And the MAC is 70 dpm per minute 

2 per cubic meter, and it’s a gross alpha count 

3 on an air sample presumed to be thorium that 

4 you’re looking at. 

5 MR. ROLFES: Correct. And if you take a 

6 look at those two, the two Plant 9, the daily 

7 weighted exposure reports, it does describe a 

8 little bit of a process information that’s 

9 going on during the air sampling. That is 

10 correct. It’s 70 dpm in the earlier days, but 

11 it did change to 100 dpm in the more recent 

12 time periods. 

13 DR. MAURO: I don’t know whether everyone 

14 else might, this might be helpful or not, but 

15 in a way what we’re doing now is that there 

16 are certain concerns that we expressed in our 

17 review that went toward thorium issues. And 

18 obviously, to a certain degree the work, the 

19 original work that you folks did that was in 

20 your site profile, the original site profile, 

21 and perhaps in the evaluation report, and we 

22 commented on that certain areas were 

23 deficient. In effect what I’m hearing now is 

24 that the material you’re covering now is 

25 additional material that has come in, as I 
26

1 understand it now, after those discussions 

2 that in effect attempt to fill those holes. 

3 MR. ROLFES: Correct. 

4 DR. MAURO: I guess in a way it might be 

5 helpful to point out that, let’s say this is 

6 what we had before, and these were the issues. 

7 And this is what we have now and why we 

8 believe what we have now helps to resolve 

9 those issues. If everyone agrees with that 

10 strategy, certainly we ^. 

11 MR. ROLFES: Because usually we have enough 

12 information based on uranium bioassay data, 

13 that’s usually a pretty good indicator of an 

14 individual’s exposure. When the Technical 

15 Basis Document was initially developed, we 

16 were under a timeline so that we could provide 

17 claimant favorable, scientifically defensible 

18 answers to claimants in a reasonable amount of 

19 time. We had put a default exposure per year 

20 1,050 MAC hours of exposure to thorium for any 

21 individual who had indicated that they had 

22 worked with thorium. 

23 However, we also did say if we do have 

24 additional bioassay data for thorium for that 

25 individual, we would use that as well. So we 
27

1 certainly realized that there could have been 

2 higher concentrations of thorium that the 

3 individual was exposed to and lower 

4 concentrations. However, in the interest of 

5 time so that we could produce dose 

6 reconstructions that were defensible at the 

7 time, that we felt we had defaulted to that 

8 1,050 MAC hours. 

9 Now we certainly acknowledge that 

10 there could have been higher exposures, could 

11 have been lower exposures. So we went back 

12 and revisited our living document, our site 

13 profile, to make sure that if we did have 

14 higher exposures or lower exposures, that we 

15 properly accounted for those. So that’s 

16 essentially what we’ve done with these daily 

17 weighted exposure reports now. 

18 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Mark, this is 

19 Arjun. These are uranium exposures, right? 

20 MR. ROLFES: No, that’s incorrect. These 

21 are for thorium. 

22 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): But the Plant 

23 9 table that I’m looking at is a thorium 

24 exposure table? 

25 MR. ROLFES: That’s correct. It’s extracted 
28

1 from, I believe, the one that we’re on right 

2 now is from -- well, actually, if you take a 

3 look, it says dumping TNT into the dissolving 

4 tank. That is thorium nitrate tetrahydrate. 

5 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Okay, I guess 

6 I’m looking at your white paper. 

7 MR. ROLFES: Okay, I’m going through a 

8 presentation right now that’s approximately 17 

9 slides. 

10 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Okay. 

11 DR. BEHLING: Mark, let me ask you. A few 

12 minutes ago you made mention of the fact that 

13 some of the air samples were general air, 

14 others were BZA. Which one are you referring 

15 to here, Mark? 

16 MR. ROLFES: I’m sorry. What’s that, Hans? 

17 DR. BEHLING: What slide are you referring 

18 to? 

19 MR. ROLFES: I apologize. I am -- 

20 DR. BEHLING: And I’m looking at your white 

21 paper. Am I looking at Table 2? 

22 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Can somebody 

23 e-mail me that presentation, please? 

24 MR. ROLFES: I don’t have e-mail access, and 

25 I don’t know if we have anyone else that has 
29

1 it on their computer at the moment, Arjun. 

2 MR. CLAWSON: The slide presentation? 

3 MR. ROLFES: Uh-huh. 

4 MR. RICH: I can get that. 

5 MR. ROLFES: Okay, we can take care of that, 

6 Arjun. 

7 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Thank you. 

8 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): This is 

9 Liz Homoki-Titus. While you’re taking care of 

10 that for Arjun, would you mind putting me on 

11 that e-mail as well, please? 

12 MR. RICH: Who is that? 

13 DR. WADE: Liz Homoki-Titus. 

14 MR. RICH: Do you want to get all those e15 mail addresses? 

16 DR. WADE: Do we have an e-mail address for 

17 Liz? 

18 MS. HOWELL: zah6 -- is that right, Liz, 

19 zah6? 

20 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): zah9. 

21 MS. HOWELL: Nine. 

22 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): Yeah, 

23 thank you. 

24 MR. ROLFES: Could we get yours as well? 

25 MS. HOWELL: E-P-H-2 @ C-D-C.G-O-V for 
30

1 myself and Liz. 

2 DR. WADE: Do you have something from Arjun 

3 or do you need Arjun’s? 

4 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): My e-mail 

5 address is Arjun, A-R-J-U-N, @ I-E-E-R.O-R-G. 

6 MR. ROLFES: We’re going to have Mel send 

7 out the copies of the presentations and also 

8 at this point a comparison as well and then a 

9 copy of the matrix if you’d send that for me 

10 as well, please, Mel. 

11 DR. BEHLING: You didn’t answer my question. 

12 MR. ROLFES: Yes, Hans. 

13 DR. BEHLING: Table 2, in your white paper 

14 you make mention of the fact that some of 

15 these assessments of air concentration 

16 evaluations were done based on GA air sampling 

17 versus BZA. I don’t see that differentiation 

18 in my table here, or am I looking at the wrong 

19 table? You mentioned that certain areas like 

20 the cafeteria would have been GA samples? 

21 MR. ROLFES: Correct. If you take a look at 

22 slide number seven -- 

23 DR. BEHLING: Okay, I’m sorry, I see here. 

24 I see it. 

25 MR. ROLFES: Just for the record, the top 
31

1 three were breathing zone samples and the 

2 bottom seven were general area air monitoring 

3 samples. 

4 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Mark, this is 

5 Bob Morris. 

6 MR. ROLFES: Yes, Bob. 

7 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): I think Paul and 

8 Hans may be confused by that first or second 

9 slide where you showed that, where we 

10 mentioned Table 1 and Table 2 for the first 

11 time. Those are, Table 1 and Table 2 are 

12 common through every year and every facility, 

13 and across the AEC complex as far as HASL was 

14 concerned. You could go to a 1955 DWE report 

15 and Table 1 meant the same thing as it did in 

16 1967 in a DWE report, similarly with Table 2. 

17 So don’t get those confused. That is a common 

18 trait of every DWE report is the Table 1 and 

19 Table 2 notations. 

20 MR. ROLFES: Thank you, Bob. 

21 Okay, I’ll move on to slide eight. 

22 The Daily Weighted Exposure reports were done 

23 in many plants for many years. Sometimes 

24 hundreds of job descriptions were evaluated 

25 year after year. The dates for these Daily 
32

1 Weighted Exposure reports range from 1953 

2 through 1969. 

3 DR. NETON: Mark, when you say plants, 

4 you’re strictly referring to Fernald plants? 

5 MR. ROLFES: Fernald plants, correct. That 

6 is correct. There’s at least 160 Daily 

7 Weighted Exposure reports that have been 

8 recovered. 

9 If you take a look on slide number 

10 nine, that will give you an idea of the time 

11 period for which a Daily Weighted Exposure 

12 report was found and the corresponding plant 

13 at Fernald. We have Daily Weighted Exposure 

14 reports for various portions of Plant 6. We 

15 have the pilot plant, Plant 1, Plant 2, Plant 

16 3, Plant 4, Plant 5, Plant 7 for the time that 

17 it was operating, Plant 8, Plant 9. 

18 We also have exposure studies that 

19 were done in the laundry, the technical 

20 laboratory. We also have non-productions of 

21 areas in buildings, general maintenance and 

22 storage areas, the decontamination building 

23 and the scrap plant. 

24 There are a range of exposures in a 

25 facility. We are in the process of 
33

1 transforming each average daily weighted 

2 exposure to the geometric mean of a lognormal 

3 distribution representing each employee. 

4 We’re combining all those daily weighted 

5 exposure results and fitting a lognormal 

6 distribution. We can assign an employee to a 

7 low, medium or high exposure potential group. 

8 The low exposure potential group would 

be the 16th 9 percentile assigned as a constant 

10 or a point estimate. The medium exposure 

class we would assign the 50th 11 percentile with 

12 a geometric standard deviation. In the high 

exposure class we would use the 95th 13 percentile 

14 as a constant. 

15 For guidance on exposure potential 

16 grouping, individuals that would have had low 

17 exposure potential were typically clerks, 

18 secretaries and administrators. Individuals 

19 in medium exposure classes are typically 

20 laborers, construction trades workers, 

21 maintenance individuals, drivers, foremen and 

22 anyone who is not in either the low or the 

23 high exposure class. The high exposure class 

24 would be chemical operators, operator helpers, 

25 machine operators and helpers, loaders and 
34

1 helpers. 

2 To calculate the chronic daily 

3 inhalation rate, the inhalation rate is equal 

4 to the daily weighted exposure times the MAC 

5 times the breathing rate times the time times 

6 the fraction of five divided by seven. The 

7 daily weighted exposure corresponds to low, 

8 medium or high values for the years and for 

9 the facility at Fernald. The breathing rate 

10 is the ICRP light worker breathing rate of 1.2 

11 cubic meters per hour. The time is eight and 

12 a half hours per day, and the five divided by 

13 seven adjusts for a five day work week 

14 scenario out of 365 days for a chronic intake 

15 scenario. 

16 The calculation of a chronic ingestion 

17 rate would be based on information from OCAS 

18 OTIB-0009. Mode one would be the respiratory 

19 tract clearance built into the biokinetic 

20 model. Mode two is based on the airborne dust 

21 falling into a drinking cup, and Mode three is 

22 based on airborne dust falling onto surfaces 

23 and then transferred to the hand and the 

24 subsequent, inadvertent ingestion. This 

25 ingestion intake rate simplifies to the daily 
35

1 weighted exposure times the MAC times the time 

2 times a constant times the five divided by 

3 seven. 

4 In summary, the daily weighted 

5 exposure data refines the intake rates that 

6 would be calculated solely from air sampling 

7 data. The time weighted task information was 

8 reported during the work. High exposure tasks 

9 were monitored and assessed. So we believe 

10 that dose reconstruction is possible for 

11 thorium work at Fernald. 

12 I’ve also included a, I believe I 

13 included this in the handouts as well. It’s a 

14 thorium processing at Fernald timetable. Does 

15 everyone have that in their notes or anyone? 

16 There’s a thorium processing at Fernald slide, 

17 slide 15. I do see it on Jim’s copy here. 

18 Okay, it is in there. 

19 I apologize. We do have this on the O 

20 drive. This is a little bit larger. You’ll 

21 be able to see it there, but this basically 

22 indicates the various plants and time periods 

23 at Fernald that thorium was processed. And it 

24 also shows the quantities, when available, of 

25 how much thorium was processed in that given 
36

1 plant in that given year. 

2 An alternate method that could be used 

3 as well for assessing thorium intakes, the 

4 employee and job description, if they are well 

5 matched, we could use the daily weighted 

6 exposure or the job description as the best 

7 estimate. We would assume a geometric 

8 standard deviation of three and could 

9 calculate a chronic daily inhalation and 

10 ingestion rate from that information. 

11 The GSD of three is based upon an 

12 Adams and Strom Health Physics Journal article 

13 from 2008 which studied uncertainties with 

14 daily weighted exposure data from Atomic 

15 Weapons Employer sites. They found that 89 

16 percent of the geometric standard deviations 

17 were between 1.25 and 3.0. 

18 Eight percent had a GSD greater than 

19 three but less than four, and only three 

20 percent had a GSD greater than four. This 

21 came up with an average GSD of 2.1. So we 

22 feel that the GSD of 3.0 is claimant 

23 favorable. A GSD of three is also specified 

24 in the construction trades worker Technical 

25 Information Bulletin and also in the internal 
37

1 dose reconstruction Technical Information 

2 Bulletin-0060. 

3 And that is the end of the slideshow, 

4 and if there are questions within the white 

5 paper that was produced, we can certainly 

6 discuss those at this time. 

7 DR. BEHLING: Let me ask you a few questions 

8 with regard to Table 1 in your white paper. 

9 Am I correct in assuming that the Figure 1 is 

10 data for a number of people who have various 

11 job functions that in Figure 2 you have an 

12 expansion of Figure 1? And the question is 

13 the wet area helper. So we have a wet area 

14 helper as a job description, and in Figure 1 

15 we see that he has a daily weighted exposure 

16 of 46.9 MAC. And on the next Figure 2 we have 

17 a delineation of how that number came to be. 

18 Now we also realize that there were 

19 three BZ samples, and were also seven GA 

20 samples. We talked about obviously the 

21 problem with GA samples. I think we went 

22 through a lot of data involving an analysis 

23 that is ^ that showed that as many as, you 

24 could have as much as seventy-fold difference 

25 lower value in general air sample as opposed 
38

1 to BZA sample. And to what extent can you -- 

2 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER (by Telephone): Could 

3 you speak up? None of this is coming through 

4 on the phone. 

5 DR. BEHLING: I’m going to have to speak 

6 toward the speaker rather than -- 

7 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER (by Telephone): Good, 

8 I hope you -- 

9 DR. BEHLING: -- the person’s that 

10 presenting this. 

11 My question concerns a number of 

12 issues that were raised in our previous 

13 discussion, namely, the reliability of general 

14 air samples. And in the case that is being 

15 demonstrated here in the white paper in Figure 

16 2, if you have that white paper, we derive a 

17 daily weighted exposure value of 46.9 MAC and 

18 realize that was derived on the basis of three 

19 breathing zone air samples and seven general 

20 air samples. 

21 And we do know that general air 

22 samples are far from reliable as a general 

23 rule goes. And we’ve shown data that relates 

24 to a study at one of the DOE facilities back 

25 in the 1960s that the general air samples, 
39

1 especially at a location where it’s very 

2 critical near the maximum permissible air 

3 concentration, can be low on average by a 

4 factor of 70. And we do know that, for 

5 instance, in this particular example that’s 

6 being shown here that a good portion of his 

7 daily weighted exposure is based on general 

8 air sample. 

9 And recognizing the fact that these 

10 general air samples are statistically speaking 

11 always going to come up on the low side, what 

12 do we do to accommodate that particular issue? 

13 MR. ROLFES: If you take a look at the three 

14 BZ samples, it is the BZ samples where the 

15 high air concentrations are documented. The 

16 lower air concentrations are typically 

17 associated with the general area air 

18 monitoring data. 

19 The impact that the difference if 

20 there was any uncertainty associated with the 

21 general area air monitoring data, it would not 

22 have as much of an influence as would the BZ 

23 data. The BZ data are certainly more 

24 representative of the higher exposures 

25 associated with the process that is going on 
40

1 where high exposures would, in fact, occur. 

2 DR. BEHLING: Not true. If you look at the 

3 chemical area upper deck and you look at your 

4 right-hand column of time times concentration, 

5 you see obviously a significant, and it’s 

6 basically 50-50. If you look at the dumping 

7 recycle oxide, you realize that the two are 

8 virtually identical, 82,404 -- no, 824,400 

9 versus 778 ^. So in essence the two are split 

10 nearly equal. 

11 MR. ROLFES: There may be uncertainties 

12 associated with general area air monitoring 

13 data; however, you do need to remember that we 

14 are assuming that the individual was not 

15 wearing respiratory protection. So by wearing 

16 a respirator, a protection factor of a 

17 thousand could certainly be applied for an 

18 individual who was wearing a respirator. 

19 We’re not correcting for any intakes based on 

20 non-respirable-type particles as well. So 

21 there are uncertainties -- 

22 DR. BEHLING: Well, I have to disagree with 

23 you. A thousand is usually reserved for a 

24 very special respirator. Fifty is probably a 

25 common -- 
41

1 MR. ROLFES: A factor of 50 as well, sure. 

2 DR. BEHLING: -- protection factor, and we 

3 do know on the documentation I’ve seen, that 

4 respirators were either most of the time 

5 disregarded. And when they were used, they 

6 were filthy dirty and contaminated. So I 

7 don’t believe that we should even consider the 

8 buffer of a respirator. 

9 DR. NETON: And we’re not. 

10 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, I’m just commenting -- 

11 DR. NETON: I think, Hans, you’re pointing 

12 out some good observations that general area 

13 samples are fraught with some uncertainty. 

14 But I think the fact is there are a large 

15 number of samples there, and whether or not 

16 they can be tweaked, if necessary, to come up 

17 with a bounding estimate is really the issue. 

18 I’m not going to quibble with you that 

19 there are some areas maybe where -- I think 

20 cafeteria samples are pretty low 

21 representative. The further away you get away 

22 from generation, the source generator, it’s a 

23 general area. But if there are issues where 

24 they use general area samples in fairly close 

25 proximity to the source, we can certainly work 
42

1 to accommodate those differences. 

2 MR. RICH: Let me just say just one thing 

3 about these time-weighted averages, Hans. 

4 These were done by the Health and Safety group 

5 in cooperation with management, and they did 

6 look at where the individual was spending 

7 their time. 

8 And a good number of these operations 

9 or the job assignments, they were working in 

10 general areas as opposed to working on a piece 

11 of equipment where the source of the activity 

12 was being generated. And so as a consequence, 

13 the general area air samples constituted a 

14 breathing zone sample, if you will, for people 

15 working in certain areas in a general area. 

16 MR. ROLFES: I have a picture here as well 

17 that shows a general area air sampler to the 

18 individual’s -- 

19 MR. RICH: That’s a breathing zone sample. 

20 MR. ROLFES: Well, there’s also a general 

21 area air sample off to the side of the machine 

22 as well. 

23 MR. RICH: Yes, yes. 

24 MR. ROLFES: But that’s an example of both 

25 breathing zone and general area air sampling. 
43

1 You can see a general area air sample right at 

2 the station the individual is working at, and 

3 you can also see a breathing zone air sampler 

4 as well. 

5 And the breathing zone sample was 

6 taken, an individual, an industrial hygienist, 

7 would have collected a breathing zone sample 

8 as close as possible to the individual’s 

9 breathing area, to his face, without 

10 interfering with the operations that were 

11 done. If you take a look, there is also a 

12 general area air sample result that is 

13 running. 

14 DR. BEHLING: Let me get some understanding 

15 of how strong these statistics are here. In 

16 Figure 2 we realize that this was done in 1955 

17 in Plant 9, and I’m looking at Table 1 which 

18 verifies that there’s a dot in that slot and 

19 none in 1955. Now, is this an air sample that 

20 was essentially done on a single day? Were 

21 these assessments done -- when we talk about 

22 daily-weighted average exposures for any given 

23 year, is this an effort that was done on a 

24 certain day where people come through for this 

25 area, and they do this? Obviously, it’s a 
44

1 very time consuming -- 

2 MR. RICH: Yes, it is. It represented a 

3 number -- 

4 DR. BEHLING: -- and I would assume, I mean, 

5 someone has to stand there with a stopwatch. 

6 Someone has to stand there with an air 

7 sampler. And so I would imagine that when we 

8 talk about daily weighted average exposures, 

9 we’re dealing with a single day for this 

10 particular class of workers. Is that a 

11 reasonable assumption? 

12 MR. ROLFES: I’d have to take a look back in 

13 the source report to determine that. Maybe 

14 Bob Morris on the line would also be able to -

15 - 

16 MR. GRIFFON: There are some interesting 

17 things in the details. When you look, for 

18 instance, at the furnace operator, one of the 

19 higher exposed jobs, I mean, a lot of the 

20 tasks they do, like Hans said, they have it 

21 down to the minute. So they’re drawing BZAs 

22 by the minute which are very time consuming 

23 I’m sure. 

24 The other thing interesting to me in 

25 that particular job is you have the age-old 
45

1 problem of -- I mean, you’re talking general 

2 area versus BZA, you have the BZA question and 

3 the worker making their own exposure 

4 environment. 

5 And I think it’s pointed out pretty 

6 well in here, you’ve got two samples for one 

7 of the particular tasks range from 130 dpm per 

8 meter cubed to 7,250. And you’re getting an 

9 average of, in the middle. So if you’re the 

10 dirty worker, this average, you know -- well 

11 anyway, it points that issue out. I’m not 

12 saying there’s not data there. 

13 MR. RICH: And the BZs do not represent a 

14 single set of samples. 

15 MR. GRIFFON: Excuse me? 

16 MR. RICH: These individual studies do not 

17 represent a single set of samples. There were 

18 a number of studies that they did to define a 

19 specific job. 

20 MR. GRIFFON: But this worksheet looks like 

21 it says two-member shift, one shift per day, 

22 two men per day is the details of that. 

23 MR. RICH: That’s the job supervisor’s 

24 assignment of how, what the typical employee 

25 spends in those jobs. 
46

1 MR. GRIFFON: So when this says a low and a 

2 high, and it says number of samples, two, I 

3 can’t assume the low was one person and the 

4 high is the other? Or it could have just been 

5 -- 

6 MR. RICH: That could be so, yes. 

7 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, I’d assume it would. I 

8 don’t know any other way to interpret it. 

9 DR. BEHLING: Well, I think most of these 

10 are of very, very short duration. I think the 

11 average duration was a three-minute sample on 

12 average. And I think that in most instances 

13 we’re talking about successive samples. 

14 You’re at a location. You’ve got a 

15 worker, and he’s doing something. And you 

16 take a three-minute sample. You may wait a 

17 few minutes, and then you take a second one. 

18 And we do know from looking at the data, which 

19 I’ve shown throughout the report, that there’s 

20 a tremendous variability in both location and 

21 time. 

22 And we’ve shown that to a certain -- 

23 and I include this on the datasheets in my 

24 report -- that shows, as you show here, two 

25 samples. One is 100-and-some-odd, and the 
47

1 other one is 7,000, and then from that you try 

2 to establish an average value. And most are 

3 oftentimes likely samples drawn within minutes 

4 of each other. 

5 MR. GRIFFON: You’re getting this average on 

6 two people on one day. 

7 DR. BEHLING: Or maybe just one person at 

8 two different locations. 

9 MR. GRIFFON: The one thing you glean from 

10 this is I think they were trying to find the 

11 dirtiest operations and clean up things. 

12 That’s good. And then you can certainly see 

13 which, were the dirtier jobs relatively. 

DR. NETON: We’re applying the 95th 14 

15 percentile, the distribution of all -- 

16 MR. GRIFFON: How we use the data is the 

17 question. 

DR. NETON: The 95th 18 percentile is being 

applied and a GSD is assigned at the 50th 19 

20 percentile, and I’m assuming it’s a GSD of the 

21 distribution. So there is some -- 

22 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, right now I’m just 

23 reacting to the study. I haven’t seen how 

24 you’re applying it. 

25 DR. BEHLING: And then I also wondered to 
48

1 what extent when you have an industrial 

2 hygienist standing next to a worker, and you 

3 know very well that there’s the issue of, 

4 well, I’m being monitored; I’m being watched. 

5 And there’s clearly an attempt on the part of 

6 all workers to minimize the exposure at least 

7 when they’re observed so that again the 

8 question is to what extent -- 

9 DR. NETON: I don’t know how much you can 

10 minimize their exposure. They’re standing 

11 there grinding a piece of uranium metal, Hans. 

12 I mean, I don’t buy that. 

13 DR. BEHLING: If you look at the report that 

14 I wrote, and there was a description in one 

15 instance where I believe it was a forklift 

16 operator. And again, there was a world of 

17 difference between one person being monitored 

18 and watched and being very careful about 

19 dumping things into a 55-gallon drum as 

20 opposed to another. And of course, the level 

21 of effort that would potentially minimize that 

22 exposure will potentially change the air 

23 concentrations by orders of magnitude 

24 depending on how careful that one person as 

25 opposed to somebody else. So again, we’re 
49

1 talking about a moment in time, a day and a 

2 year, and again, over a brief period of time 

3 that multiple samples may be taken during a 

4 given operation. And drawing conclusions -- 

DR. NETON: Again, the 95th 5 percentile for 

6 every single day the guy performed that job in 

7 the plant I think is pretty valid. 

8 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Mark, can I 

9 chime in for a minute? This is Bob. 

10 MR. ROLFES: Yes, Bob, go ahead, please. 

11 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): I’ve got a few 

12 issues that I wasn’t able to jump in on the 

13 conversation because it moves without a break 

14 there, so a few things I’ll add. First of 

15 all, we have a procedure on file that I can 

16 provide if you’d like me to that shows that 

17 most of the air sampling was not three minutes 

18 but 30 minutes. That was the typical 

19 procedure that they had that they followed. 

20 Secondly, if you recall, we’re not 

21 using the average value for setting the 

22 facility distribution data. We’re using that 

23 data with a GSD, we’re fitting it to get the 

24 lognormal of a distribution that that would 

25 fit with a GSD of three. So we’re already 
50

1 taking account a large spread of data into 

2 that, into the individual task analysis. And 

3 that gets propagated then further into the 

4 facility GSDs. 

5 In fact, when we’ve done some test 

6 cases it looks like the facility GSDs end up 

7 being about a five and a half or five to five 

8 and a half GSD. So these are not small 

9 uncertainties that we’re taking account of. 

10 They’re big uncertainties, and it shows up in 

11 the final numbers. 

12 The third thing I’d like to point out 

13 is that since some of the DWE reports -- I 

14 couldn’t tell you which ones at this moment 

15 because I’ve never actually tried to look at 

16 this as a study topic -- but in some of the 

17 DWE reports, there are contemporary 

18 assessments of the average uranium 

19 concentrations that people in uranium areas -- 

20 when the DWE report was concerning a uranium 

21 area, they’ve also tabulated the contemporary 

22 uranium samples for the people that were in 

23 the facility in the same document. 

24 And my recollection is -- I certainly 

25 wouldn’t want to be held to this -- but my 
51

1 recollection is that the uranium bioassay 

2 results always, always were much lower than 

3 what would have been predicted by the daily 

4 weighted exposures. 

5 MR. RICH: That’s true. 

6 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): So there are 

7 some empirical reasons to believe that without 

8 regard to what you think about how dirty 

9 respirators were or that people never wore 

10 them. In fact, they were cleaned. There was 

11 a cleaning program for respirators, and people 

12 did wear them, and there were airline 

13 respirators in use. And that probably 

14 accounts for a lot of the fact that we can get 

15 an empirical observation of protection. 

16 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): May I ask a 

17 question? This is Arjun. How are you 

18 accounting for the inter-day variability since 

19 even on the same day in the same location the 

20 variation in air samples is so huge? 

21 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): This is still 

22 under discussion inside OCAS, but let me tell 

23 you what the Oak Ridge team proposed to OCAS. 

24 And that is that that lognormal distribution 

25 that I described to you for each, 
52

1 representing, for example, the wet area helper 

2 that’s in this dataset. It’s assigned as a 

3 GSD of three with a lognormal that correlates 

4 to the average for that person. And then that 

5 is sampled with a Monte Carlo code so it 

6 represents the uncertainty, that factor of 

7 three. 

8 So in theory then, if you sample 365 

9 days, you get 365 different values for this 

10 worker. Our Monte Carlo analysis actually 

11 tries to simulate that. The uncertainty then 

12 gets propagated into the whole group of data 

13 that represents the whole facility, and that’s 

14 what we then end up with GSDs in five, five15 and-a-half range for. 

16 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): So, Bob, a 

17 Monte Carlo analysis cannot substitute for 

18 data. It can only represent the data that you 

19 have, and if you don’t have an idea about 

20 inter-day variability relative to the same day 

21 variability, a Monte Carlo analysis is not 

22 going to help you. It’s just going to give 

23 you a sampling from the data that you have. 

24 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): I don’t think 

25 you understand. 
53

1 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Let me finish 

2 my -- 

3 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): ^ these were 

4 multiple day air sampling events. For example 

5 -- 

6 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): We were 

7 talking over each other so if you can start 

8 over. 

9 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): These are 

10 multiple day air sampling events. Their 

11 dumping TNT into a dissolving tank was 

12 probably done on three different days. The 

13 dumping of recycled oxide into a pre-dryer was 

14 probably done on eight different days. 

15 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): But my 

16 question does not relate to the period of the 

17 set over which the air sampling was carried 

18 out. My question relates to the relationship 

19 of the air samples that were taken to the air 

20 samples that would have been present on the 

21 days when no samples were taken. 

22 And the reason for worrying about that 

23 is within one sampling period you have 

24 enormous orders of magnitude of variation in 

25 the same location and the same job at the same 
54

1 time or in the same sampling period. How are 

2 you going to establish the relationship of 

3 that to the times when no samples were taken? 

4 And how do you know the sampling was done on 

5 representative days? I guess that’s a short 

6 way of asking that question. 

7 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Well, I think 

8 you could ask that question to the American 

9 Congress of Government Industrial Hygienists. 

10 Why do they think that that sampling method is 

11 an appropriate approach for contemporary 

12 today? There’s an industrial hygienist going 

13 out today using that sampling method. And the 

14 answer would be because we think this is a 

15 representative snapshot. 

16 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): It has been 

17 my understanding of this program from the time 

18 I looked at these years ago is that this was 

19 being done to improve industrial hygiene 

20 conditions and not for the purpose to which it 

21 is being applied. Now, it’s possible the data 

22 is collected for one purpose, and it could be 

23 applied to some other purpose, but you have to 

24 establish that applicability. It doesn’t mean 

25 when you have data that says air 
55

1 concentrations that you can automatically 

2 apply it to individual dose calculations 

3 whatever percentile you’re using. You have to 

4 establish the relevance of that data. 

5 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Well, back to my 

6 point is that that’s why they fit data to 

7 lognormal distributions, is to incorporate the 

8 top end of those tails. Your point precisely 

9 was that this was a program intended for 

10 industrial hygiene improvement. That means 

11 they went after the worst part of the plant 

12 with more vigor than others, and, in fact -- 

13 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): You don’t 

14 know that. That’s completely incorrect. This 

15 is a misrepresentation of a documented Fernald 

16 history. They did these for the purpose, but 

17 there’s no evidence. You have to establish 

18 that the industrial hygiene measures were 

19 actually implemented, and this was a problem 

20 that Fernald management confronted with the 

21 AEC repeatedly. When they asked for these 

22 things, they were often told there was no 

23 money. That’s why you see, you know, you see 

24 very high air concentrations appearing and 

25 disappearing from time to time, varying from 
56

1 one job to another well into the production 

2 period, not just in the mid-‘50s. This went 

3 on in the ‘60s also, for example, and -- 

4 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Hold on. Let me 

5 respond to that point. 

6 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): -- if I 

7 remember correctly, 1970s. 

8 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Let me respond 

9 to that, please. Don’t keep -- 

10 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Well, you 

11 have to let me finish my statement. I’m not 

12 done yet. 

13 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Well, you ^ you 

14 need to stop after that question. You’ve 

15 raised the question. You need to stop and 

16 answer it. 

17 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Okay, go 

18 ahead. 

19 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): At this point 

20 whether or not the ^ funded the improvement 

21 that was requested or not is really not 

22 relevant to the issue. The point is data was 

23 still collected, and it still represented 

24 obviously bad situations. 

25 MR. ROLFES: Bob, this is Mark Rolfes, and 
57

1 I’d like to add if you do take a look at the 

2 source documents, the Daily Weighted Exposure 

3 reports themselves, it is documented within 

4 the report for the purpose of the studies that 

5 were conducted. I’ll just read from this. 

6 Let’s see, this is the Feed Materials 

7 Processing Center thorium Plant 9, 

8 occupational exposure to airborne 

9 contaminants. It’s HASL FMPC-9. The purpose 

10 of this document, the purpose, the survey was 

11 made with the following objectives in mind: 

12 to evaluate the average daily weighted 

13 exposure of FMPC Plant 9 personnel to 

14 radioactive dust; two, to provide data for the 

15 dust exposure history of personnel; three, to 

16 evaluate the effectiveness of plant dust 

17 control equipment; and four, to provide a 

18 basis for recommending additional controls or 

19 procedures. 

20 DR. MAURO: May I jump in and ask what I 

21 always like to think of as a commonsense 

question because I heard your 95th 22 percentile 

23 argument. That always is very compelling to 

24 me. What I’m hearing, and correct me if I’m 

25 wrong, is that daily time-weighted averages 
58

1 were estimated, given day -- let’s say we’re 

2 in 1959, and there’s an interest that says, 

3 okay, here we are in 1959, and there are 

4 certain types of operations going on in a 

5 given building. 

6 And let’s say you say, well, we have a 

7 category of work going on in the building. 

8 Now, I’m going to go in there, and I’m going 

9 to collect these samples and come up with a 

10 daily time-weighted average which reflects 

11 exposures that a given category of worker 

12 experienced on that day in that room. 

13 And everyone says, and if it’s done 

14 correctly according to standard practice, 

15 you’ve got a pretty good idea of what the 

16 intake, uranium or thorium intake experienced 

17 by the worker was that day in that room. And 

18 I would say, yeah, if they did it the correct 

19 way, and these folks know how to do that, I’d 

20 say we’ve got that day down pretty good. 

21 What I’m also hearing is that, but 

22 wait a minute. Let’s say we’ve got that day 

23 down pretty good, but we realize from day to 

24 day and even if we did that day over again, 

25 let’s say we went right back in and froze time 
59

1 and went back in, actually could go back and 

2 do it again. It’ll be somewhat different just 

3 because you picked a different two minutes 

4 when you took that, or three minutes or 30 

5 minutes. 

6 Now what I’m hearing is though, no, 

7 but we have a lot of those days. In other 

8 words during that year, there may be five, 

9 six, seven, eight times where we randomly went 

10 in and did this. So now all of a sudden, no, 

11 it’s not just one day. We’ve got n days. 

12 Now we have those n days, and we take 

13 a look at it, and we say, well, gee, on this 

14 day the daily time-weighted averaged a certain 

15 amount of intake. Let’s just talk about how 

16 many atoms of thorium this person would, we 

17 estimate, took into his body on this day. How 

18 many atoms on this day and keep it really 

19 simple. And now we have five estimates, five 

20 separate estimates that if it was really 

21 randomly, this is what we get. 

22 And let’s say it turns out as the 

23 concern is expressed, they’re all over the 

24 place. Let’s say they varied those different 

25 daily estimates. I don’t know how much they 
60

1 varied by, but let’s say they varied by a 

2 factor of, okay, let’s say those five 

3 different estimates varied by a factor of 100. 

4 I’m making this number up. 

5 And we sit around the room and say, 

6 hmm, what do we do in a circumstance where on 

7 the five different days where we made our best 

8 estimates of what we believe were the real 

9 intakes, the number of atoms this person took 

10 in, depending on, you know, differed by a 

11 factor of 100. 

12 And Jim’s saying, well, you know, what 

13 we’re going to do, we’re going to take those 

14 numbers, and we’re going to fit them to a 

15 lognormal distribution. And we’re going to 

pluck off the upper 95th 16 percentile, and we’re 

17 going to say that every single day that guy 

18 worked there, we’re going to assign to him the 

19 number that came off that distribution at the 

upper 95th 20 percentile. 

21 MR. GRIFFON: I don’t think you’re assigning 

the 95th 22 all the time, are you? 

23 DR. NETON: The highest exposed worker. I 

24 mean, for a worker who was likely to be -- 

25 DR. MAURO: Right, right, I understand. 
61

1 There are certain worker categories that 

2 that’s unreasonable. 

3 DR. NETON: And that’s also in the 

4 discussion, right? 

5 DR. MAURO: But if he’s in the, we’re 

6 saying, no, this is the worker that worked in 

7 this room every day doing this job in that 

8 building, and he’s that worker. And we do 

9 have data for five days out of the year. And 

10 what I’m hearing is that to make sure, because 

11 we recognize the variability is so great -- 

12 and the data will tell us how variable that 

13 data is. 

14 Now, if that’s what I’m hearing, and 

you pick the upper 95th 15 percentile, and we’re 

16 going to give it to him every day, I would 

17 have to say that, well, gee, that sounds like 

18 it’s a pretty reasonable thing, but I’m 

19 willing to hear Arjun or Hans say why that 

20 might not be, and if that’s, in fact, what 

21 you’re saying you did. 

22 DR. BEHLING: Let me just give you some 

23 numbers here because we’re just talking about 

24 the variability. I’m looking on page 59 of my 

25 report, and it’s Attachment 4.3-1e. And it 
62

1 talks about comparable weighted exposures of 

2 Plant 9 personnel, and the dates in question 

are May 17th through October 31st 3 as one period 

4 of this assessment. And it’s followed by a 

second set on November 4th 5 through November 

23rd 6 . So we’re talking about a one month 

7 difference. And it’s given by location. 

8 And John just said what are the 

9 potential variabilities for a daily weighted 

10 average. For the wet area here for the 

11 earlier period in May to October the daily 

12 weighted average was 215.1 MAC and a couple 

13 months later it was down to 2.74. We’re 

14 talking in there a hundred-fold difference. 

15 DR. MAURO: I guessed it. 

16 DR. BEHLING: And the same thing for the 

17 reduction area, 233 versus 3.49, for the arc 

18 furnace 473 versus 23. So we’re talking 

19 monumental differences over a very short 

20 period of time. 

21 DR. ZIEMER: Can I make an observation, Mr. 

22 Chairman? First of all the reason for 

23 sampling is exactly to find out what you’re 

24 describing. The fact that there’s variability 

25 says nothing about that sampling is not 
63

1 representative or is poor or anything else. 

2 It says, in fact, the operations may 

3 lead to very variable concentrations which it 

4 may include some sampling error, may include 

5 some differences in operation. All of those 

6 things come into play, but that’s precisely 

7 what you want to know. If you’re going to do 

8 bounding, you want to know what that spread 

9 is. 

10 DR. BEHLING: I agree, but that was my 

11 initial questions of how much of these numbers 

12 that, for instance, for the wet area, the 46.9 

13 MAC hours for the helper, for the three 

14 helpers defined in Figure 2, how many datasets 

15 represent that number? That’s the question. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: Now, unless you only did this 

17 once. 

18 DR. BEHLING: Exactly. 

19 DR. ZIEMER: Unless you only did it once out 

20 of a hundred times, that’s like you’re bagging 

21 marbles where you’re drawing one and 

22 describing, so obviously, it’s a statistical 

23 issue. 

24 DR. BEHLING: I understand that. 

25 DR. ZIEMER: But as long as you’ve done, and 
64

1 if you didn’t do that well, then you’re 

2 uncertainty gets greater, and you spread that 

3 out and pick from the upper end, it sort of, 

4 in the way we know, it sort of helps, it gives 

5 you a worse answer than if you know that very 

6 tightly. 

7 If you got the same results every time 

8 and squeezed it down, you’d know that number 

9 very well. You’d have a tight distribution. 

10 But, in fact, you want to know about that 

11 variability. That’s an important thing. 

12 And, Arjun, I’m not sure unless 

13 there’s some indication that people have 

14 selectively chosen days to get particular 

15 results, and I don’t think they have evidence 

16 of that, you have to assume statistically that 

17 there’s some kind of a representation of the 

18 distribution regardless of which days you 

19 chose. 

20 They may not be, I think you can 

21 always argue there are some day in there 

22 that’s different, but that’s the whole reason 

23 we do, we don’t do 100 percent sampling. It’s 

24 like our dose reconstruction sampling. I 

25 think someone could argue that we’ve missed 
65

1 the right doses, or we’re not representative. 

2 But you statistically say, well, I’m sampling 

3 at least enough to get a picture of this to 

4 bound something. 

5 But maybe I missed the point you were 

6 making on that, Arjun. Could you clarify 

7 that? 

8 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Dr. Ziemer, I 

9 agree with what you are saying, that you don’t 

10 have to sample a hundred percent. You don’t 

11 have to sample anything close to a hundred 

12 percent in order to have a good picture. But 

13 what you do have to know is what the days that 

14 you sample, how representative are they of the 

15 whole picture -- 

16 DR. ZIEMER: And I don’t think you always 

17 know that. 

18 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): -- it relates 

19 to the representativeness question. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: You only know that by doing the 

21 sampling, right? 

22 DR. MAURO: I would argue that. In other 

23 words let’s say we’re all sitting around a 

24 table. We’re about to design this program. 

25 And we say, listen, we all recognize from day 
66

1 to day things really change a lot. And we 

2 know that. We’ve been living with it. And we 

3 want to go in there and get an idea of how 

4 different is it. 

5 So what I’m hearing is that there were 

6 some n number of days that they went in, and 

7 they went ahead and took the sample to say how 

8 often is it really high, how often is it low. 

9 In the end you’ve got a set of data. As far 

10 as I’m concerned, I look at it real simple. 

11 I’ve got n days over 365 days where I have an 

12 estimate of the number of atoms of thorium 

13 this person inhaled. And it goes from a low 

14 to a high. 

15 And let’s say it’s, I’m just picking 

16 five days. I don’t know how many days you’ve 

17 got. And I would say, listen, what do I do 

18 with that now? We’re sitting around the 

19 table. What do we do with this? Can we 

20 somehow use that information to predict with a 

21 degree of confidence that we can estimate what 

22 the intake was for that worker or people like 

23 him who did a similar job during that year? 

24 And what I’m hearing is that we’re 

25 going to pick the high end. We could pick the 
67

1 highest number. Now, in my mind if we pick 

2 the highest number out of five numbers, I’m 

3 not quite sure statistically what that means, 

4 but it probably pushes you up pretty high up 

5 the distribution. 

6 In other words to say, well, we only 

7 have five numbers, and we want to make sure 

8 we’re being claimant favorable. Maybe we’re 

9 going to pick the highest number or it may be 

10 based on the spread, you know, you can pick a 

11 number that’s higher than the highest number. 

12 There’s only five measurements, and we are 

13 talking about 200 days. 

14 So I guess if I’m thinking about this 

15 correctly, if people were listening to what 

16 I’m saying and say, yeah, I hear what you’re 

17 saying, how many days of these kinds of 

18 estimates do you have for a given category of 

19 worker for a given year? And when you have 

20 those number of days, out of those numbers, in 

21 fact it would be nice to have them in front of 

22 me. Here they are. What did you pick? What 

23 are you going to pick? Are you going to pick 

24 the highest number? Are you going to pick a 

25 number that’s higher than the highest number? 
68

1 That’s where, you know, how I’m looking at 

2 this. 

3 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, let me pose a question 

4 here -- 

5 MR. ROLFES: Just a second, I want to answer 

6 Dr. Mauro’s question. 

7 For thorium we have approximately 

8 3,000 air samples for thorium over the 

9 operating history of Fernald during this SEC 

10 evaluation. So that data has been provided to 

11 the Advisory Board. It’s on the O drive and 

12 also the source documents that all of those 

13 air samples were pulled from are also on the O 

14 drive. So they are available for review. 

15 MR. GRIFFON: I mean, that didn’t answer his 

16 question. I’m looking for an answer to the 

17 question. 

18 DR. BEHLING: What’s the question? I am a 

19 wet area helper. I worked at Fernald in 1955. 

20 Am I recently going to assume that what you’re 

21 going to do is to go to this table that you 

22 have here in Figure 1 and say, yeah, you’re a 

23 wet area operator, wet area helper, and we’re 

24 going to assign you 46.9 MACs? 

25 DR. NETON: There’s no point to this 
69

1 discussion. 

2 DR. BEHLING: This is the point because on 

3 the next page I have one daily weighted 

4 average for that number. 

5 DR. NETON: It’s going to be the daily 

6 weight, the distribution of the daily weighted 

7 averages for the facility. And he would be 

8 assigned, I don’t know whether it would be the 

50th percentile or the 95th 9 percentile of the 

10 daily weighted average of the distribution for 

11 that entire facility. 

12 MR. GRIFFON: Can I get back to, there’s a 

13 couple detailed questions. I’d like the 

14 answers to John’s questions first of all. But 

15 also in the details of this when you say the 

16 distribution, does that include these daily 

17 weighted averages from these reports, these 

18 daily weighted estimates? 

19 DR. NETON: Yes. 

20 MR. GRIFFON: Or does it include each 

21 worker’s estimate? Because, I mean, that’s 

22 the point I was making with the furnace 

23 operator. It looked like -- and we know this 

24 from field experience -- we have one worker 

25 that was getting a lot less exposure. You 
70

1 make your own exposure in that kind of 

2 environment. One worker was getting a lot 

3 lower levels in the BZA than the other person. 

4 And then you have an average that, you know, 

5 you’ve got 107,000 and you have an average of 

6 3,000, this is now, is the 3,000 point going 

7 into your distribution or is the 7,000? You 

8 know, is the other worker -- 

9 MR. ROLFES: I don’t know, good point. 

10 MR. GRIFFON: That could drastically change 

11 that upper bound of your distribution. 

12 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): What we do, 

13 Mark, in this case is we take the, there is an 

14 identity for a lognormal distribution that you 

15 can use to take an average in a GSD and 

16 convert to a geometric mean. We are assuming 

17 based on Strom and David’s data of Health 

18 Physics Journal, 2008, that the GSD is three 

19 in all cases. 

20 DR. NETON: Bob, this is Jim. I think you 

21 might have missed the question. The question 

22 really was did we use the individual data for 

23 each worker or did we use the average for the 

24 class of workers? 

25 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Individual, that 
71

1 wet area helper is represented as, so since 

2 there’s three wet area helpers, then that 

3 represents three points on the facility curve. 

4 DR. NETON: Every individual worker that was 

5 sampled is in the distribution. 

6 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, I’d like to crosswalk 

7 that because I’m still a little unclear that I 

8 think the study that I looked at -- I didn’t 

9 look at both those in detail, but the one 

10 mentioned, 19, I think it said 19 job 

11 categories, were looked at. And the only DWE 

12 that’s recorded is the DWE average. So the 

13 only breakdown you see is like high and low, 

14 and then they have average. And then the sum 

15 at the bottom is the only DWE recorded. In 

16 other words, they didn’t tally for each 

17 person. I was wondering where did you get 

18 those numbers from. 

19 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): It would be 

20 remarkably labor intensive to try to figure 

21 out a fitted distribution for each individual 

22 path. 

23 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, so you didn’t do that. 

24 That’s what I’m asking. 

25 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): That’s right. 
72

1 So we’re rolling it up at the bottom of that 

2 Figure 2 which is the job exposure evaluation 

3 form. 

4 MR. GRIFFON: Which is based on job, not on 

5 individual worker. I’m not criticizing, I’m -

6 - 

7 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): That’s correct, 

8 Mark. You got it right. 

9 DR. NETON: I think we’re kind of getting 

10 into the weeds of the analysis here trying to 

11 -- 

12 MR. GRIFFON: I mean, my point there is that 

13 when you have two workers that range in one 

14 task -- I’ll admit it. It was like a five15 minute task or a three-minute task or 

16 whatever, but the ranges are drastic -- 

17 DR. NETON: I agree. We have a wide range 

18 here, and I think that’s -- 

19 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): As long as you 

20 identify the distribution even if it contains 

21 multiple workers, you can still compile a 

22 facility -- 

23 MR. GRIFFON: I just want to understand what 

24 the data is. That’s all I’m trying to 

25 understand. 
73

1 DR. NETON: I think what needs to happen 

2 here though is that we need to, if we haven’t 

3 already, present this exact analysis that 

4 we’ve done for SC&A to react to. I mean, 

5 right now we’re here trying to flesh out this 

6 in some scientific detail, and all we’re 

7 saying right now I think is we have 3,000 data 

8 points of thorium at Fernald, we believe 

9 there’s sufficient information here to 

10 generate bounding analyses for thorium 

11 exposures. 

12 DR. MAURO: Notwithstanding the ^ samples. 

13 MS. BALDRIDGE: Can I say something about 

14 the percentage that’s used to find class 

15 whether it’s 16, 50 or 95. Is it based on the 

16 facilities that they were working in? 

17 DR. NETON: No, the job category, type of 

18 job. 

19 MS. BALDRIDGE: Are the records available to 

20 show who was performing each task and the 

21 different times? When you go from 50 percent 

22 to 95 percent, how do you classify someone who 

23 would fall into the realm of other possibly... 

24 My father did inspections at times during the 

25 12 years he was at Fernald, but he also was 
74

1 classified technical, and he did chemical 

2 testing. So does that put him in the 50 

3 percent range, or does that put him in the 95 

4 percent range? 

5 DR. NETON: I can’t respond to that specific 

6 example. But what I can say is when we do 

7 those groupings, if there is any ambiguity at 

8 all, the person will be put in the higher 

9 group. 

10 MS. BALDRIDGE: And the same for 

11 maintenance. Were they doing general 

12 maintenance? Were they doing repair on a 

13 specific piece of equipment that would have 

14 involved clearing dust to get to what they 

15 were working on? Does that put them in the 50 

16 or does that put them in the 95? 

17 DR. NETON: That’s a very good question, and 

18 we do struggle with that. And like I said, in 

19 the instance where there’s some doubt as to 

20 where the person fits, it would be given the 

21 higher exposure category. 

22 MS. BALDRIDGE: Okay, and also at the point 

23 of at a given time. You know, this petition 

24 covers 38 years. There were a lot of 

25 generalities put out there. Well, we did 
75

1 this. Well, what is the window for that 

2 particular safety implementation period? Was 

3 that only done after 1980? You know, if 

4 that’s the case, there are 28 years of workers 

5 prior to 1980 who weren’t protected under that 

6 particular procedure. How are these things? 

7 And my final question or statement is 

8 why did it take the SEC filing to motivate 

9 NIOSH to go to the Mount and go through those 

10 12 boxes to find the thorium data that had 

11 been stored there since who knows when? 

12 DR. NETON: In answer to your third 

13 question, I think Mark sort of addressed it at 

14 the very beginning. 

15 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, the Mountain View data 

16 weren’t actually at Mountain View. They were 

17 stored at a separate federal records center, 

18 the Dayton Federal Records Center, and were 

19 brought to Mountain View for review. 

20 We were essentially using, I had 

21 previously given an introduction that we had 

22 defaulted to what we believed was a claimant 

23 favorable and scientifically defensible 

24 thorium intake model. If an individual had 

25 indicated that they were exposed to thorium, 
76

1 in our initial site profile we had said we 

2 would use a default of 1,050 MAC hours or 

3 consider individual bioassay data for thorium. 

4 We wanted to make sure that we were 

5 able to get timely decisions out but also 

6 committed to reinvestigating any issues based 

7 upon new data that came in. This isn’t the 

8 only time that we have gone back and done a 

9 data capture for Fernald. We’ve done several 

10 data captures both prior to the SEC and 

11 throughout the SEC discussions that have been 

12 going on. 

13 Also, with review of individuals’ 

14 bioassay data, we do sometimes find records 

15 that indicate another process that was 

16 ongoing. That triggers an internal look for 

17 us to go back and say, well, there’s something 

18 else that we didn’t know about. We need to go 

19 find out more information so that we can 

20 properly account for it. 

21 MS. BALDRIDGE: So the point is when this 

22 whole process started back in 2001 with the 

23 enactment of the EEOICPA, and people were 

24 about gathering their information and 

25 submitting their claims, we are now in 2008 
77

1 and the decisions that were made at NIOSH to 

2 use default information rather than even -- 

3 I’ll use my father’s case. I was looking 

4 through his old records. I asked and I 

5 provided some that I brought today. Who was 

6 doing the correlating? 

7 You know, my father was hired in 

8 December of ’51. He worked the entire year of 

9 1952 before Plant 6 ever opened. That’s where 

10 he was exposed in 1952 to the UF-6 which puts 

11 him in the pilot plant, but that exposure was 

12 not considered in his dose reconstruction. So 

13 right now our claim is locked up in the 

14 Department of Labor. 

15 They won’t move forward. They won’t 

16 move backward until the site profile is 

17 revised and all this information can be 

18 resubmitted and NIOSH requesting cases back so 

19 that the information that was available but 

20 not applied because defaults were chosen 

21 rather than calculations have not only my 

22 father’s claim tied up now here, what, six 

23 years, but a lot of other people who this data 

24 could apply to. 

25 MR. ROLFES: Sure, I certainly understand, 
78

1 and that was done as an efficiency method 

2 early on so that we could provide a claimant 

3 favorable response. 

4 MS. BALDRIDGE: The intent was not what 

5 happened. 

6 MR. ROLFES: I certainly understand. That 

7 is one of the issues that we’ve dealt with, 

8 and it’s certainly one of the things that I 

9 hear from workers when I go to public 

10 meetings. That is one of the concerns that 

11 I’ve heard from workers. So it’s not just a 

12 concern that you’ve expressed. Other workers 

13 have, in fact, expressed. 

14 We certainly have committed to taking 

15 a look back at any claims that were previously 

16 turned down. We continue to do investigations 

17 and reviews on every site profile. We are 

18 committed to re-evaluating any previously 

19 denied claims when new information does become 

20 available. 

21 MS. BALDRIDGE: But it’s conditional subject 

22 to the revision of the site profile. 

23 DR. NETON: But keep in mind on the claims 

24 that we rework, the vast majority do not 

25 change their compensation decision, 
79

1 overwhelmingly. 

2 MS. BALDRIDGE: Well, it would depend on the 

3 basis for the request to review. 

4 DR. WADE: But see, the program has always 

5 struggled between two competing values. In 

6 time, we’re giving people timely answers and 

7 being complete, and those values sometimes 

8 butt against each other. In retrospect I’m 

9 sure it can be found that errors in judgment 

10 might have been made. But you have to 

11 understand the times that those decisions were 

12 made and the purpose. And certainly the 

13 agency commiserates with anyone who’s been 

14 adversely affected, but we’d like you to try 

15 and understand why that was done. 

16 MS. BALDRIDGE: In hindsight I would have 

17 chosen accuracy over timeliness. 

18 DR. WADE: And in some other cases when we 

19 did that it might have been shown to be wrong 

20 as well. So we do understand. 

21 I’d like to offer an observation as 

22 sort of an interested listener of all the 

23 discussions we had so maybe NIOSH can address 

24 some of the issues because there was lots of 

25 discussion and lots of important issues 
80

1 raised, and then we moved on. I think there 

2 are four fundamental questions that need to be 

3 raised and answered relative to what we’ve 

4 talked about. 

5 First of all, you’ve got to spend some 

6 time sort of scoping out the process that’s 

7 being investigated, how many years, what was 

8 going on, what the geographical extent was. 

9 Once you do that then you start to look at the 

10 makeup of the dataset, the size of the sample 

11 that’s being taken to try and represent that 

12 process. And statistics will guide you as to 

13 whether or not your sample size is adequate. 

14 And if it is, then what you do with that 

15 sample size in terms of its inherent 

16 variability. 

17 The other thing that I heard raised 

18 was we need to be sure that the purpose the 

19 data is being put to is coincident with the 

20 purpose that the data was collected for. And 

21 if not, then you have to create a reason, a 

22 bridge, why any deviation there is acceptable. 

23 And the last thing you have to 

24 struggle with is this question of was the 

25 sampling biased in any way. You have these 
81

1 issues of were people shutting down the 

2 process that was being evaluated on sampling 

3 days. You have to look for bias, and if 

4 there’s reason for bias, you have to consider 

5 that statistically if you can. But you have 

6 to consider this. 

7 But I think all of those points were 

8 raised. I think all those points are valid. 

9 I think those points really need to be 

10 addressed back to the assemblage at some 

11 point. 

12 MR. ROLFES: Certainly a lot of those issues 

13 may be addressed in some of the source 

14 documents in the exposure study reports 

15 themselves. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: I just want to make an 

17 observation, Lew, as kind of react to your 

18 fourth point. And that is that none of the 

19 data we used was collected for the purpose for 

20 which it’s being used today. None of it. 

21 DR. WADE: But then you need to 

22 intellectually look at that and decide it’s 

23 acceptable to use the data. 

24 DR. ZIEMER: But that’s exactly what NIOSH 

25 has been working on and their contractors, and 
82

1 what we struggle with. And what the Board is 

2 saying are we doing that right. All of this 

3 data was collected for workplace control. Now 

4 it is being used to establish eligibility for 

5 compensation, two very different objectives. 

6 Now, we know that in a sense the data is 

7 there, and the question we struggle with is 

8 are we using it properly and correctly and 

9 making the proper inferences. That’s the real 

10 struggle. 

11 DR. WADE: Or at least not using it 

12 improperly. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: We’re not using it improperly. 

14 I just wanted to clarify it because none of it 

15 was originally collected for this purpose. 

16 DR. WADE: But Mark read a fairly compelling 

17 list as to the purpose of the analysis that 

18 sort of gave me comfort in terms of the use of 

19 the data. But those things need to be 

20 explored. 

21 MR. GRIFFON: Back to John’s questions. I’d 

22 love to have an answer to those, like how many 

23 days, when we were talking about this earlier, 

24 how many days was it sampled over. 

25 MR. ROLFES: That was why I was pointing out 
83

1 on the ^ report. 

2 DR. MAURO: Would you indulge me for a 

3 minute? If someone showed up and handed me a 

4 truckload of data and said, listen, we’re 

5 trying to get a handle on the intake these 

6 people might have gotten ^. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: Talk loud enough so the people 

8 can hear you. 

9 DR. MAURO: I’ll speak from here. What I 

10 was saying, all right, I’ve got this data. 

11 What I would do is I would create a table. 

12 I’d say, okay, I’ve got data that captures a 

13 certain number, n years, one through ten, ten 

14 years of data I have. And I also have data 

15 that says, well, we can sort the data into 

16 different categories of workers or maybe 

17 buildings. 

18 I’d say this is what I want to know. 

19 For year number one, worker category or 

20 building number one, how many days do I have 

21 an estimate of a time-weighted average? Is it 

22 one day in that year for that worker? Fifty? 

23 So what I’m really saying is if you tell me 

24 that -- and you could fill in this table. 

25 This is what I would do. I would say, 
84

1 well, I’ve got 50 days’ worth of data in year 

2 one for category worker one, 50 days of the 

3 data. I’d say not bad, or ten or four. And 

4 then I’d go to my statistician. I’d say, 

5 listen, assuming that this is what we have, 

6 what do you do with that? And if I saw those 

7 numbers, and I would say they’re all filled 

8 out, and some are ten, some are 12, some are 

9 30. 

10 I would say I’ve got a rich database 

11 from which I could build distributions for 

12 each one and then make judgments for people 

13 who were in this category in that year what 

14 intake I would assign to that worker. Now I 

15 don’t know if that’s what you did, and I can’t 

16 tell from the conversation we had. Because 

17 that would be what I would be shooting for. 

18 Now, it may turn out that the data is 

19 such that it won’t allow me to do that because 

20 I think that maybe you can’t, and maybe all 

21 you can do is work with a rollup because in 

22 the end maybe you just have a rollup of data. 

23 In other words you have a number of dates. 

24 You’ve got 500 days, but you can’t sort them 

25 this way. You can’t sort them. 
85

1 All I know is I’ve got a list of 500 

2 numbers that capture what the concentration, 

3 the intake, was in each day. And we really 

4 can’t sort them by year, and we can’t sort 

5 them by worker category. Now, the question 

6 becomes, but we do know we now have a sampling 

7 of what the intake was for a certain number of 

8 days that in theory can we go from there to 

9 now we have a real person who worked in a real 

10 year at a real location can somehow we take 

11 that big collection of data and somehow assign 

12 a claimant favorable, scientifically valid 

13 intake to that worker. 

14 I guess my first question is does that 

15 exist? Can that be built? Or am I thinking 

16 right about this? In other words, that’s how 

17 I’m thinking right now. 

18 DR. NETON: I probably shouldn’t speak 

19 because I haven’t read the report, but I don’t 

20 think we have this level of granularity built 

21 into the process. I think we’re hitting this 

22 with a bigger sledgehammer which is you have a 

23 lognormal distribution generator of all these 

24 worker categories, not even categories, just 

25 worker job types I guess or whatever they are. 
86

1 And so you generate from low to high the 

2 possible exposure scenario for all of the 

3 daily weighted exposure averages that were 

4 generated. 

5 MR. GRIFFON: By how many days? I mean, I 

6 saw one study that looked like two days of 

7 sampling. How many days? 

8 MR. RICH: Could I make just a couple of 

9 statements? Number one, the DWE reports which 

10 are a time-weighted study that was religiously 

11 done pretty much from the start of the 

12 operations and carried on for a number of 

13 years, so they carry a wealth of study 

14 information directed specifically at defining 

15 the worker exposure in the plant. 

16 In the case of thorium operations, the 

17 sheer volume, the sheer mass, that went 

18 through the plant was orders of magnitude less 

19 than the uranium so it was more campaign 

20 oriented. They averaged about a metric ton of 

21 thorium per day, and that’s just a big can of 

22 it. Sometimes it was a little more than that, 

23 but sometimes less, but for this reason then, 

24 you would expect the sampling to be done to 

25 define the thorium exposure to be not 
87

1 continuous as it would be in a uranium 

2 operation. 

3 So the granularity of your results are 

4 going to be different in a thorium operation 

5 than it would be in a uranium operation 

6 because they were running metric tons per day 

7 after day after day. Now the other point is -

8 - 

9 MR. GRIFFON: Well, given that I assume 

10 you’re going to tell me a low number of days 

11 or else you wouldn’t have set it up this way. 

12 MR. RICH: And the DWEs were done on the 

13 days that they were processing to define the 

14 exposure to people in those thorium 

15 operations. So it would be directed to the 

16 times when the maximum exposure would be 

17 expected. 

18 Now the other thing is that the DWE 

19 reports that is a wealth of data that defines 

20 not only thorium but uranium exposures. And 

21 with the uranium we have a confirmatory 

22 bioassay analysis in uranium data which, as 

23 Bob indicated, demonstrates that the analysis 

24 based on air sampling data is always higher 

25 than you would get through bioassay. 
88

1 So we have confidence that the 

2 analysis that we would use with the thorium 

3 data will provide a higher dose, and 

4 particularly since we are applying the levels 

5 that we get in average exposure levels for the 

6 whole year as opposed to knowing that they 

7 were not exposed for the whole year. So 

8 there’s a conservatism built in that alone so 

9 we should keep these in mind. 

10 We’ve attempted every way we can to 

11 maximize, make sure, that we did not 

12 underestimate the exposure to individuals and 

13 particularly in the thorium. Because in the 

14 early days we were limited, they were limited, 

15 the industry was limited in what they could 

16 determine from a bioassay data. And by the 

17 way, we did recover some information related 

18 to the effort that they went to to develop 

19 urinalysis for thorium at Fernald and 

20 stimulating at the University of Rochester and 

21 elsewhere. As a matter of fact, they did some 

22 thermoneutron analysis of thorium and uranium 

23 in an attempt to develop a new technique. 

24 MR. CHEW: Bryce, I think we have a couple 

25 of slides which we can show John. I think 
89

1 John -- 

2 MR. GRIFFON: Wait, wait, just one second, 

3 just one second, Mel. 

4 I agree with all, I mean, I don’t 

5 disagree with anything you said, Bryce. I 

6 still haven’t heard -- I just wanted a simple 

7 answer. How many days and what years were 

8 these studies done? Because then we can kind 

9 of compare it with the thorium history at the 

10 site if it hit the peak times, if it hit the, 

11 you know. I mean, that’s important. 

12 MR. ROLFES: I did point out -- 

13 MR. GRIFFON: Just the facts. I’m not 

14 judging them. I’m just, you know. 

15 MR. ROLFES: I did point out that roughly 

16 3,000 thorium air sample results have been 

17 catalogued in a MicroSoft Excel spreadsheet. 

18 Those have been provided to the Advisory Board 

19 on the O drive. 

20 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I have those, and one 

21 question -- 

22 DR. MAURO: ^ is TWA. 

23 MR. ROLFES: ^ 

24 MR. GRIFFON: But those aren’t DWE samples, 

25 are they? 
90

1 MR. ROLFES: These are supporting samples 

2 for the daily weighted exposure results. 

3 MR. GRIFFON: Are they used in this 

4 lognormal distribution that Jim’s talking 

5 about? It sounds like you’re not using that. 

6 MR. ROLFES: The daily weighted exposure 

7 result reports were the basis for the 

8 distribution. 

9 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, so how many days of 

10 daily weighted exposure, I mean, a simple 

11 question really. 

12 MR. ROLFES: I’m sorry? 

13 MR. GRIFFON: How many days were these 

14 studies done on? 

15 MR. ROLFES: I would have to go back to the 

16 document and count all 3,000 sample results, 

17 but there’s samples -- 

18 DR. MAURO: So you didn’t come at it that 

19 way. 

20 MR. GRIFFON: Those 3,000 samples were only 

21 associated with the time-weighted studies? I 

22 don’t think so. 

23 MR. ROLFES: No, not necessarily. No, there 

24 are certainly samples in this Excel 

25 spreadsheet that would have been supporting 
91

1 the daily weighted exposure reports and also 

2 other air sample results likely. I haven’t 

3 done any -- 

4 MR. GRIFFON: Is it more than just these two 

5 reports that were circulated? Are those just 

6 examples or are they -- 

7 MR. ROLFES: These are examples. And if you 

8 recall, on pages nine and 15 of our slides, 

9 we’ve identified -- 

10 MR. CLAWSON: What page is it? 

11 MR. ROLFES: This is page nine. This spans 

12 from 1952 through 1969. Every time there’s a 

13 dot in that table, there’s a daily weighted 

14 exposure report from all the plants that are 

15 listed there. And this is what I went through 

16 for Plant 1, Plant 2, Plant 3, Plant 4, Plant 

17 5, Plant 6 -- 

18 DR. MAURO: The dot is. Could you give us 

19 number of days where you have daily weighted 

20 average? 

21 MR. RICH: The data is available. 

22 DR. MAURO: And when we have that, we’re 

23 done. 

24 MR. CLAWSON: Excuse me. Everybody’s 

25 talking over each other, and we need to be 
92

1 able to be a little bit correct and polite to 

2 each other, so please... 

3 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, this is also the other 

4 slide. Now you can cross-compare this slide 

5 to the one that Mark has there. That’s the 

6 slide that has the daily weighted exposure 

7 results documented on it for each plant by 

8 year. This slide has the thorium process that 

9 was conducted by each plant by year. 

10 Look at the two together, John. I 

11 think -- 

12 MR. GRIFFON: And then the last question and 

13 then I’ll be quiet. What -- I think I just 

14 lost my question. I was looking at this data. 

15 DR. ZIEMER: Well, this is partially to 

16 respond to John. It’s not the number of days 

17 per year compared to 365 days. It’s the 

18 number compared to the -- 

19 DR. MAURO: Operations, operation dates. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: But they did those like five 

21 times and sampled three -- 

22 MR. GRIFFON: I’ve got my question now. 

23 This DWE data which you’re using for the 

24 coworker model, I believe, is that in a 

25 spreadsheet anywhere? I don’t know where that 
93

1 is. 

2 MR. ROLFES: It probably has not been 

3 entered yet. 

4 MR. GRIFFON: Because that could easily be 

5 sorted, and you can look at these, how many -- 

6 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: ^ 

7 MR. GRIFFON: -- the concept, right? 

8 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Mark, this is 

9 Bob. 

10 MR. CLAWSON: Excuse me. We’ve got somebody 

11 on the phone. 

12 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Mark, this is 

13 Bob. 

14 MR. ROLFES: Yes, Bob. 

15 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): I’d like to go 

16 directly to this current, the idea that John 

17 raised about trying to make this an exercise 

18 and define the uncertainty. 

19 I think that’s what your point was, 

20 wasn’t it, John? 

21 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

22 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Well, let me 

23 just tell you, maybe you missed when I was 

24 talking about the Adams and Strom report of 

25 2008 in Health Physics Journal. The title of 
94

1 that peer reviewed report is “Uncertainty and 

2 Variability in Historical Time-Weighted 

3 Average Exposure Data”. I think they really 

4 went to the heart of exactly the question that 

5 you’re trying to ask. 

6 DR. MAURO: Okay, but, I mean, you see, the 

7 currency in my mind, the currency, is these 

8 daily time-weighted average. There’s our 

9 currency. And do we have a rich currency here 

10 that would allow us to do the wonderful things 

11 we’d like to be able to do? And right now I’m 

12 hearing that, well, I don’t think you have the 

13 numbers. In other words I see the dots. I 

14 see the dots. 

15 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Do you have in 

16 your hand an example of the Plant 9, 1955 

17 report? 

18 MR. CLAWSON: Yes, we do. 

19 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): That’s what, 50 

20 or 60 pages? I don’t remember exactly any 

21 more. But every one of those dots represents 

22 a report that’s between 30 and a hundred pages 

23 long, all typed. 

24 DR. MAURO: From which we could fill a table 

25 and that’s ^. 
95

1 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: ^ DWE report. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: It’s a DWE report. 

3 MR. RICH: ^ the report is not this single 

4 page. It’s a 30-page report in which 

5 summaries have the information on it. 

6 DR. MAURO: So has that been processed and 

7 the numbers where the dots are, is that what 

8 you’re going toward? 

9 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): That’s right. 

10 We don’t want to invest a large effort into 

11 that until we understand that this is going to 

12 be an acceptable technique. 

13 DR. MAURO: Well, I guess, I’m just one 

14 person offering my perspective. It seems to 

15 me you fill those numbers in, and it’s not one 

16 that’s in each one of those little boxes, but 

17 it’s -- 

18 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): It’s one report 

19 in each box, John. 

20 DR. MAURO: -- a substantial number. You’ve 

21 got something. 

22 MR. RICH: And then bearing in mind again if 

23 you have -- 

24 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): This is 

25 Arjun. Could I ask a question about these 
96

1 samples to follow up on what Mark Griffon was 

2 saying? How do we establish the relationship 

3 of the air samples and the daily weighted 

4 average process with the other air samples 

5 that were not taken for the same purposes or 

6 with the same method? 

7 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Arjun, this is 

8 Bob. I think we lost that line. 

9 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Sorry? 

10 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): I think we’ve 

11 lost the line. Nobody’s talking in the 

12 background. 

13 MR. GRIFFON: No, we’re here. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: We’re pondering. 

15 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): It’s you and 

16 me. 

17 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): You and I can 

18 talk, but I think they’re going to have to 

19 dial us in again. 

20 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS (by Telephone): Let’s get 

21 a message to somebody in the room to tell them 

22 it sounds like they -- 

23 DR. WADE: We are here. 

24 DR. ZIEMER: We heard you. 

25 DR. WADE: The question is being pondered. 
97

1 MR. CLAWSON: And who’s going to answer that 

2 one? 

3 MR. ROLFES: There could be a mix of both 

4 air samples from the daily weighted exposure 

5 reports and from time periods when a daily 

6 exposure report was not prepared. We feel 

7 that the daily weighted exposure reports would 

8 certainly have a much better idea of the true 

9 exposures that were incurred by the employees 

10 in that time period. 

11 MR. SHARFI: I think he wants to walk 

12 through those 3,000 samples in the 

13 spreadsheet. How can you separate those out? 

14 MR. ROLFES: Well, there are dates on the 

15 air samples, so it would take a little bit to 

16 compare the exposure studies to the 3,000 

17 roughly air samples that are documented. 

18 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): No, no, I 

19 wasn’t asking about a comparison. And I 

20 understand what these daily weighted average 

21 exposure studies were. It’s reasonably clear 

22 how they’re done. They’re quite well 

23 documented. The other air samples which 

24 appear in various kinds of Fernald documents, 

25 it’s not very clear why those samples were 
98

1 done, when they were done, what their 

2 relationship was to these daily weighted 

3 averages. 

4 So my question is not how you sort 

5 them into two bins, daily weighted average 

6 samples versus other samples, but whether 

7 these two sets of data belong in the same 

8 distribution or not. We’ve confronted this 

9 problem before as to how do you put data 

10 points in the same distribution or are they 

11 two different distributions? And what’s the 

12 technical process of doing that? 

13 DR. WADE: Arjun, this is Lew. You’re 

14 question was understood. Now we’ll have 

15 someone answer your question. 

16 MR. ROLFES: I don’t believe we would be 

17 doing that, Arjun. These would be two 

18 separate datasets. There may be some repeated 

19 information in this Excel spreadsheet, but we 

20 are going to be using the daily weighted 

21 exposure results for the distribution that 

22 we’re referring to. 

23 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Mark, the only 

24 other data, air sample data, that I’m aware 

25 of, there were three kinds of air samples 
99

1 taken, breathing zone, general area. I think 

2 the third was called process. I’m not sure if 

3 that’s the right term they used. But the 

4 point of the third air sample was to get not 

5 something that represented an exposure to a 

6 worker but to represent what was inside a fume 

7 hood, or what was coming right off of a 

8 grinder. 

9 And those are not used in daily 

10 weighted exposure calculations. They were 

11 really focused on process improvements. So 

12 except for those process controls, the process 

13 samples, I think every sample that was either 

14 breathing zone or general area in my 

15 experience with this data from Fernald is 

16 represented in a DWE report. 

17 DR. WADE: Did you understand that, Arjun? 

18 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Yeah. 

19 DR. WADE: Okay, thank you. 

20 MR. CLAWSON: Could I just add one question 

21 then? I know this may be real simple, but one 

22 of the things that I’m not understanding is, 

23 as this says in this paper and what I’m going 

24 from is the occupational exposure paper that 

25 you had there. It says, “During the period of 
100

May 12th and 13th 1 ,” so that’s telling me right 

there that only on May 12th and 13th 2 of 1954 

3 these daily weighted averages were performed. 

4 Is that -- 

5 MR. ROLFES: I’d have to take a look at the 

6 document. 

7 MR. CLAWSON: One of my things is, is 1954, 

8 and this is in Plant 4, you get down here to 

9 the bottom part, and they’re only sampling 19 

10 employees. 

11 MR. ROLFES: Correct. 

12 MR. CLAWSON: And of the 19 employees 

13 studied four, 21 percent, of exposure 

14 concentration greater than the acceptable 

15 maximum level of concentration was over. And 

16 that goes to the furnace operator and to the 

17 grinder. 

18 But then I go back here to the papers 

19 that I pull up, and it says a survey was 

20 actually done in 1953. 

21 MR. ROLFES: Okay, I have to pull that up 

22 once again. 

23 MR. CLAWSON: I’ll have you look at this, 

24 but something that’s interesting to me is 

25 we’re saying that we’ve got 3,000 samples, and 
101

1 we’ve got basically about 14 places that we’re 

2 pulling samples from. To me it’s looking like 

3 we’ve got two days a year that we may pull a 

4 sample. 

5 And my issue is, as we’ve already 

6 said, thorium wasn’t being produced every day. 

7 We need to really look at what we’re getting 

8 into on that because also there’s, it also 

9 calls out there many different facilities. 

10 Ingots were rolled and fabricated in Plant 6. 

11 However, countless grinding inspection slugs 

12 were completed in Plant 9. 

13 My synopsis on this is basically we 

14 need to sit down and really look at these 

15 processes of how it was done and how we’re 

16 trying implement it. Because, as it was 

17 already put out to us, we’re using this for 

18 something totally different than it was 

19 designed for. And we’re going to have to sit 

20 down and really study this, and SC&A’s going 

21 to have to be able to have the opportunity to 

22 be able to look at that. 

23 DR. WADE: Can I offer you just a process 

24 consideration? At some point the work group 

25 will say to NIOSH we would like to see certain 
102

1 things done or certain data prepared and 

2 presented. And then NIOSH can decide whether 

3 it’s going to do that or not. SC&A is 

4 advising the work group. 

5 It’s happening in real time. You have 

6 to consider that. And at some point the work 

7 group has to offer its suggestion to NIOSH as 

8 to what the work group wants to see. It 

9 doesn’t have to happen right now, but you need 

10 to keep that in mind. 

11 MR. CLAWSON: And we need to do that. 

12 MR. BEATTY: If I could just make a comment. 

13 This is Ray Beatty, former worker. As a 

14 former worker I’d like to reiterate something 

15 that Brad said there. And I heard the word 

16 campaign a little earlier in someone else’s 

17 comments. And it sounds like data was 

18 collected like during thorium processing, but 

19 keep something else in mind. 

20 Just because their campaign had ended, 

21 residual effects were still around. There was 

22 still the potential for exposure even in mixed 

23 waste, even in the latter years in 

24 remediation. There was no campaign per se 

25 except in the silos, Number 3 Silo, when it 
103

1 was decommissioned and dismantled thorium2 based product there, a campaign. 

3 So they had more specific maybe 

4 monitoring for the campaign. Bear in mind 

5 though when all the building products and the 

6 silo products came together in gross 

7 contamination, mixed contamination, the 

8 thorium residual was still there. So we’ve 

9 got to take that into consideration. 

10 MR. ROLFES: I did want to clarify a little 

11 bit. Silo 3 contents were really not very 

12 much Thorium-232. That was more Thorium-230 

13 which was a by-product of uranium or one of 

14 the progeny in the chain, decay chain, of U15 238. That’s a little bit different. We can 

16 address that in a recycled uranium and 

17 raffinate white paper. 

18 MR. RICH: It would be accommodated in the 

19 fact that we’re assuming a ^. 

20 MR. SHARFI: I mean, those campaigns are 

21 short, and we’re assigning DWEs for these 

22 shorter campaigns, but we’re assigning them 

23 365 days a year assuming the campaign occurred 

24 every day of the year. 

25 MR. RICH: It’s an overestimate. 
104

1 DR. WADE: But the campaign, maybe try and 

2 put some specificity to Brad’s point. Again, 

3 you’re looking at a physical process. Maybe 

4 it involved the processing of thorium. There 

5 are various parameters that define the extent 

6 of that. It might be time. It might be the 

7 number of buildings. It might be the type of 

8 workers. It might be variability within that 

9 process. So you can define this physical 

10 process through n dimensions. 

11 And then you’re going to offer a 

12 representative sampling of that. Your job is 

13 to show that the sampling is indeed 

14 representative as it deals with each of those 

15 n dimensions. And those are the kinds of 

16 numbers you need to bring to this group and 

17 say here it is. And they can then judge 

18 whether it’s adequate. 

19 You have these wild cards that I tried 

20 to introduce before which are purpose and 

21 bias. You need to consider them as 

22 appropriate. And so that’s what Brad is 

23 asking for. He hasn’t put parameters on it 

24 yet, but that’s what you’re kind of asking. 

25 MR. CLAWSON: That’s what I’m kind of 
105

1 getting -- 

2 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): I think we have 

3 done that, and I think it’s in the detail of 

4 the white paper. 

5 DR. WADE: That’s fine. 

6 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): I think we’ve 

7 already done what you’ve asked, Lew, and I 

8 think it’s in the detail of the white paper. 

9 MR. CLAWSON: Then we’ll take that under 

10 advisement. 

11 Go ahead, Sandra. 

12 MS. BALDRIDGE: Quick question, so how are 

13 you addressing the exposure to thorium that 

14 occurred because Fernald was the national 

15 repository, and there was a document submitted 

16 in the petition which suggested they had been 

17 asked to be that repository back in 1959 even 

18 though it may not have been made or announced 

19 as the official repository until 1970, ’72, 

20 whatever the site profile said. I mean, you 

21 had deterioration of containers, air 

22 distribution, were any of these monitoring 

23 sites, I think somebody said there were 14 at 

24 locations where thorium was being stored. 

25 MR. ROLFES: Well, as far as contained 
106

1 thorium in a can that’s coming in and stored 

2 onsite, unless that can’s opened up, there 

3 really isn’t a significant potential for 

4 internal exposures. 

5 MS. BALDRIDGE: But it was continuing -- 

6 MR. ROLFES: The exposure scenario that 

7 would be of importance there would be external 

8 exposures, penetrating radiation that escapes 

9 through the seal. That would be recorded by 

10 an individual’s whole-body badge or dosimeter 

11 that was used. 

12 MS. BALDRIDGE: But they were talking about 

13 having to re-drum and re-drum in some cases up 

14 to four times because of the deterioration 

15 factor in the container. So there may have 

16 been exposure externally, thorium dust in the 

17 air, before the damage to the container was 

18 ever recognized. 

19 DR. WADE: Okay, so let’s talk about the re20 drumming and the potential contamination -- 

21 MR. SHARFI: The thorium has two separate 

22 kind of white papers. One covered post-’68 

23 which at that point then you start having 

24 chest count data and other forms. I know in 

25 the ‘90s they started doing some thorium DAC-
107

1 hour tracking and stuff like that, but it is 

2 reported in people’s files. And this DWE’s 

3 really only covering the pre-’70 work prior to 

4 the chest counts and stuff like that. 

5 So we do have two separate issues here 

6 and two separate time periods and two separate 

7 types of monitoring that we are discussing. 

8 And I don’t know if we want to be jumping back 

9 and forth between these two issues. The re10 drumming I don’t believe occurred until after 

11 the chest count data I think occurred, and 

12 that’s a separate type of coworker analysis 

13 versus -- 

14 MR. RICH: There was re-drumming done 

15 periodically throughout the history of the 

16 storage operation, but that is covered through 

17 individual sampling and -- 

18 MR. CHEW: Plant 166 and -- 

19 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Plant 1 had a 

20 lot of that data. Plant 1 was sort of the 

21 more sampled -- 

22 MR. SHARFI: The group that we’d be 

23 assigning so it would be covered under the DWE 

24 for Plant 1. We’d assume they’re thorium 

25 workers, and then we’d be assigning thorium 
108

1 intakes based off the building-specific -- 

2 DR. BEHLING: Let me raise another issue on 

3 the issue of special issues, but this goes 

4 beyond normal activities of processes, but 

5 activity levels that you normally associate 

6 with discrete events such as fires, 

7 explosions, ^ will raise air concentrations by 

8 orders of magnitude. And with rare exceptions 

9 were these incidences documented or reported 

10 within an individual file. 

11 Obviously, the daily weighted exposure 

12 tables that you have shown do not account for 

13 any radiological incidents. And again, there 

14 could be significant high exposures that are 

15 poorly documented in behalf of individual 

16 workers who would have been affected. What 

17 would we do in -- 

18 MR. ROLFES: I did want to call your 

19 attention on the O drive. One of the 

20 documents that was provided to the Advisory 

21 Board is an investigation of the thorium 

22 blender incident. It was an incident that 

23 occurred in 1954. 

24 DR. BEHLING: I’m familiar with all that 

25 because I used that for another purpose, but 
109

1 that was one incident. There were many, many 

2 incidents, and I talk about those in my report 

3 where you, where in some instances there was 

4 the fortunate presence of a hygienist who took 

5 air samples. And he took air samples just 

6 before the event, and then during the event. 

7 And we see this monumental increase in air 

8 concentrations. 

9 And, of course, those are rare 

10 instances where someone was there to monitor 

11 the rise in air concentration. And it’s 

12 transient, but the fact is they’re not really 

13 reported in the individual files. They’re not 

14 necessarily part of a person’s exposure 

15 record, et cetera, and yet are potentially 

16 significant in terms of an exposure that is 

17 not captured by the daily weighted exposure 

18 data. 

19 MR. ROLFES: That’s true. There could be a 

20 separate report associated with that incident 

21 as I pointed out. It’s very possible that it 

22 was an acute exposure for one day, but I feel 

23 that we have a pretty strong basis that our 

24 chronic exposure model and all the 

25 overestimating assumptions, any uncertainties 
110

1 that we have regarding air sampling data, 

2 exposure time, particle size, respiratory use, 

3 all those compounded uncertainties are to the 

4 benefit of the claimant. 

5 And I strongly believe that the 

6 chronic exposures that we’re applying based on 

7 the daily weighted exposure results are going 

8 to result in claimant favorable overestimates 

9 of the actual internal exposures that were 

10 incurred by employees at the site. 

11 DR. BEHLING: Let me just be sure I 

12 understand. If you’re a person, let’s just 

13 say you’re assigned to Plant 1 in any one 

14 year. You’re not going to, you’re going to 

15 look at that person’s file and say what is 

16 your job description. But then rather than 

17 use the job description, you’re going to 

18 simply assign him to either a high, medium or 

19 low category. Is that correct? And then for 

20 that year you’re going to look at the 

21 lognormal distribution in daily weighted 

exposures, and then you will assign the 95th 22 

23 percentile value for the individual. Am I 

24 correct? 

25 DR. NETON: That was one of the proposals. 
111

1 DR. BEHLING: So you have a lognormal 

2 distribution for the entire Plant 1. You 

3 categorize the worker based on job -- 

4 DR. NETON: For the year. 

5 DR. BEHLING: For the year. 

6 DR. NETON: For the entire facility or just 

7 -- 

8 DR. BEHLING: For the entire plant. 

9 MR. ROLFES: By plant. 

10 DR. BEHLING: By plant. Plant by year. And 

11 then you will take that job description and 

12 determine whether or not he’s high, medium or 

13 low. And then assign him that value at the 

95th 14 percentile with no uncertainty if he turns 

15 out to be an H classification. 

16 DR. NETON: For the entire year. 

17 DR. BEHLING: For the entire year. So 

18 that’s pretty much, and then for the next year 

19 you get another lognormal distribution. And 

20 if he keeps that same job, he’s also H, and we 

21 do the same thing. So that’s basically the 

22 sum total. 

23 DR. NETON: That’s an approach that was 

24 described. 

25 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, that’s an approach that 
112

1 was described. 

2 DR. NETON: There’s other approaches 

3 discussed here, but -- 

4 MR. GRIFFON: I guess I’ve got a couple 

5 questions about the white paper. I don’t know 

6 that our answers, Bob said to look, it’s all 

7 in the white paper. I don’t see descriptive 

8 statistics. Sort of the thing I’ve been 

9 looking for in the white paper. 

10 DR. NETON: I think we need to produce some 

11 -- 

12 MR. GRIFFON: Anyway, I mean, I agree 

13 there’s good detail in there, but the other 

14 thing in the white paper it says on page five 

15 I think it is, when job matching is possible, 

16 a more accurate dose reconstruction with less 

17 uncertainty is likely to result. What is 

18 that, because that strays from the concept 

19 that we’ve been talking about. Is that just 

20 another option? 

21 DR. NETON: In my opinion that’s another 

22 option that was put on the table. But I 

23 suspect at the end of the day we’ll, that 

24 would be difficult to do. 

25 MR. GRIFFON: It makes me a little more ^ 
113

1 and ^ job variability is what I was talking 

2 about. 

3 DR. NETON: I don’t want to speak with a 

4 definitive product here, but I would suspect 

5 based on past history that we would end up 

6 with a distribution as Hans -- 

7 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, and then we had raised 

8 recently issues regarding roving maintenance 

9 people, labor pool people and their 

10 classification in terms of high, medium or low 

11 for people who have a highly variable exposure 

12 for not only in one plant but multiple plants. 

13 DR. NETON: That’s another variable detail. 

14 DR. WADE: Let the chairman speak. 

15 MR. CLAWSON: This is rousing, but I think 

16 everybody needs to have a comfort break. If I 

17 could call for a comfort break and we’ll come 

18 back in 15 minutes. 

19 DR. WADE: We’re going to break for 15 

20 minutes. We’re not going to break the phone 

21 line. So we’re just going to put the phone on 

22 mute. Enjoy your break. 

23 (Whereupon, the working group took a break 

24 from 11:00 a.m. until 11:20 a.m.) 

25 DR. WADE: This is the work group conference 
114

1 room. Let me use Kathy as a barometer. 

2 Kathy, are you with us? 

3 MS. BEHLING (by Telephone): With you. 

4 DR. WADE: Very good. We’ll begin. I’d 

5 like to just make a general comment on 

6 procedure. A very productive discussion, but 

7 we were getting a little sloppy in terms of 

8 talking over each other and sidebars, and Brad 

9 has asked if I would police that a little bit 

10 so I will do that ruthlessly. 

11 So it is important that we understand 

12 people’s question, and that we answer the 

13 question. We give them the ability to react 

14 once. And I know all of the rest of the stuff 

15 is built upon just exuberance over the 

16 discussion and the desire to participate in 

17 it. And I think that’s wonderful, but a 

18 little bit of discipline would be in order, 

19 and I’d like to do that. 

20 Mel had mentioned to me that he wanted 

21 to say something. 

22 MR. CHEW: Thanks, Lew. Mark and John, I 

23 think during the break we all were quite 

24 excited about the amount of data we have now 

25 seen on thorium for the first time as much as 
115

1 just the kind of information that’s very 

2 valuable. I’d just like to publicly 

3 acknowledge a team of people who spent their 

4 effort and their time and the tenacity to go 

5 after the information at the centers. And 

6 Bill Canal*, Mark Ross* was part of that team, 

7 Karen Kent behind me here, Cheryl Kirkwood, 

8 Carla Fletcher. Cheryl was the one from the 

9 Task 8 that set it up. Gail Jewett* and 

10 Laurie Kuykendahl*. We’d just like to 

11 publicly acknowledge and thank them for 

12 spending the time and the effort to go after 

13 the information. Thank you very much. 

14 DR. WADE: Saying thank you is good for the 

15 soul, so thank you for doing that. 

16 And, Brad, you wanted to begin with 

17 some charges. 

18 MR. CLAWSON: Yes, Mark has written up some 

19 charges, and I’d like him to go forth with 

20 that. 

21 MR. GRIFFON: I may have some additional 

22 tasks for the group. I don’t want to truncate 

23 the conversation completely, but I think we do 

24 want to move through our matrix. And I think 

25 we’re at a point where we’ve kind of beat this 
116

1 one around from all sides. I’d just propose 

2 that we have, the first action would be for 

3 NIOSH to develop and post the spreadsheet with 

4 the DWE data on it, and also along with the 

5 proposed coworker model. 

6 MR. ROLFES: The coworker model is available 

7 already. 

8 MR. GRIFFON: The coworker model using that 

9 data? I mean, how do you -- 

10 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): You’re talking 

11 about the chest count data. 

12 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, the chest count data, 

13 yeah. 

14 MR. GRIFFON: So I’m talking about the 

15 proposed approach for using -- 

16 MR. ROLFES: Okay, my apologies. 

17 MR. GRIFFON: -- so the spreadsheet with the 

18 data. And I think some of those, this will 

19 help. I don’t think we need to make a 

20 secondary task of filling in that table 

21 although it might be useful in summary fashion 

22 to see how many days or samples, you know, 

23 John wants that table filled in badly. But, I 

24 mean, I think if we have a spreadsheet with 

25 all the data, we can sort by plant by date and 
117

1 it sort of falls out for us. So that’s one 

2 action item is the spreadsheet and the 

3 coworker models posted or developed and 

4 posted. I guess you’d still have to get the -

5 - 

6 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Can we talk 

7 about that for a second? 

8 MR. GRIFFON: Sure. 

9 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): That’s a 

10 significant amount of work and, I mean, it’s a 

11 lot of work to handle all these hundred or 

12 more DWE reports each with a hundred or more 

13 samples, job descriptions in them. And so I 

14 think that we need to know that that’s going 

15 to be a useful tool before we really invest a 

16 great deal of effort into populating every one 

17 of them. 

18 DR. BEHLING: Could I make a suggestion here 

19 in terms of maybe compromising? And that is 

20 to identify each of the plants where thorium 

21 was processed and then perhaps provide some 

22 measure of the lognormal distribution that 

23 would define what is for each year. So you 

24 have Plant 1 and for the four years where you 

25 have thorium processed, you would have a value 
118

1 that would be assigned to the H, to the M, to 

2 the L worker. 

3 And then perhaps what I would like to 

4 do is go back to the 3,000 air samples myself 

5 and see to what extent do these numbers that 

6 we are looking at in terms of DWE, how do they 

7 match up to some of the air sampling data. It 

8 would be nice for me to know what an H worker 

9 in the pilot plant would be getting for a 

10 given year. And then perhaps go through some 

11 of the documents that are on the O drive that 

12 identify air monitoring data and sort of say 

is this reasonably the 95th 13 percentile value 

14 for a worker in that facility for that year. 

15 Is that something that could be done? Simply 

16 each plant by year and give values that would 

17 define the air concentration for H, M and L. 

18 MR. SHARFI: Well, I think our concern is 

19 doing every plant every year in a timely 

20 manner. And if we then choose not to do it, 

21 we’ve shifted a lot of resources to something 

22 we’re not going to use. So maybe doing one 

23 plant right now for you to look at, and if we 

24 agree in this process, we can continue to work 

25 the rest but if you want all plants all years, 
119

1 we’re not talking about a two week process. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: Are you, I mean, this sounds 

3 like a proposal. Are you proposing a plant4 specific distribution, year specific, plant 

5 specific? 

6 DR. BEHLING: Well, that’s what they’re 

7 doing. 

8 MR. GRIFFON: You are? 

9 MR. SHARFI: Every, yes. 

10 MR. GRIFFON: Well, that might be very 

11 telling, but then how do I know if you’re, I 

12 think the plant you choose then should have 

13 the least data. Then we can say, you know. I 

14 mean, you have to pick the plant -- 

15 MR. RICH: Mark, just one question. 

16 MR. GRIFFON: I guess one of the questions 

17 is, is there enough data by year to sort of -- 

18 MR. RICH: There’s a wide range of total 

19 quantities processed by individual plants. So 

20 I would suggest that we look at the plant that 

21 processed more materials as opposed to the 

22 least materials. 

23 MR. GRIFFON: So if we look at the plant 

24 that, so then for us to evaluate it, I have to 

25 say, okay, this looks like a lot of sampling 
120

1 by year by this plant. This looks great. And 

2 then I see all the full dataset come in, and I 

3 realize Plant 1 has one sample in ’52, none in 

4 ’53, you know. I mean, I can’t answer my 

5 question though. 

6 MR. SHARFI: We continue on the process, but 

7 to get you something to work with in a timely 

8 manner -- 

9 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, but if you just present 

10 the best picture, how do we judge whether all 

11 workers in the plant can be bounded? That’s 

12 the problem. 

13 MR. SHARFI: I’m not saying there’s any 

14 plants the better picture than the other. 

15 MR. GRIFFON: A picture in terms of more 

16 data, data robustness. 

17 MR. RICH: And it could very well be 

18 processed ^, too. For example, 1954 to ’56, 

19 Plant 9 daily campaign. And they had a bunch 

20 of scrap left over which they then processed 

21 in a muffle furnace in Plant 6 in ’60, no, 

22 ’56. And that Plant 6 process was ^ they 

23 didn’t burn the material in that plant. So 

24 Plant 6 will show up. That’s for a very brief 

25 time, and it’s in a process that was 
121

1 relatively well contained. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: I guess we’re still not right 

3 at actions, but I mean, one of the problems I 

4 have with this entire, you know, I’m going 

5 back to sort of Jim’s, some of the overarching 

comments about the 95th 6 and if you had certain 

7 types of jobs you would probably be assigned 

the 95th 8 , other types of jobs probably just the 

9 full distribution -- 

DR. BEHLING: No, 50th 10 . 

MR. GRIFFON: -- 50th 11 percentile, right, 

12 right. But now you’re talking about plant 

13 specific. And then you go down this path of 

14 how do you know who was in and out of those, 

15 you know there is, you have workers assigned 

16 to one plant but they went in the other, you 

17 know. It’s up to you I guess. 

18 MR. RICH: See, that’s a default saying 

19 we’re going to use 365 day a year exposure 

20 based on the maximum exposure that we see in 

21 the distribution appears to be very 

22 conservative in my mind. 

23 MR. GRIFFON: But the overall distribution, 

24 not just one plant. 

25 DR. WADE: Paul has a comment. 
122

1 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I just have a thought 

2 here because it appears that in a sense this 

3 is also preliminary for NIOSH and the 

4 contractor. I kind of like the suggestion of 

5 taking maybe the plant that did a lot of 

6 stuff, had a lot of campaigns or whatever, and 

7 looking at that. Because I think you’re 

8 saying let’s not do the whole thing as a 

9 proposal and then throw it out at the end 

10 after we’ve done all this work. Let’s start 

11 with one and look at that and see if this is 

12 an approach that will work. If we say, yeah, 

13 it looks like it’ll work, it seems to me at 

14 some point, and then you’re going to go 

15 through other plants over a period of time. 

16 But if you get to one where you yourself say 

17 we can’t use this. There’s not enough data or 

18 whatever, that will show up, and you will have 

19 to do a different approach anyway. You’ll say 

20 it’s either not representative or we do not 

21 have enough samples to, or whatever it may be. 

22 But you’re saying let’s -- 

23 MR. GRIFFON: Well, people have already 

24 weighed in. That’s the problem. We’re 

25 supposed to be evaluating whether all members 
123

1 of the class can be bounded. 

2 DR. ZIEMER: But we won’t really in a sense 

3 know the real answer to that until it’s 

4 already, until you get it all done. 

5 MR. GRIFFON: But there is a proof of 

6 principle component to our review. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, yeah. 

8 MR. GRIFFON: If you’re saying by building 

9 to us now but then six months, you know, as 

10 you’re looking at this does it shift? So 

11 okay, we’re just going to include everyone 

12 because we couldn’t, really our data in Plant 

13 1 or whatever was insufficient. So we decided 

14 to roll it all together and go to the full 

15 distribution now or -- 

16 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): This is Leo. 

17 MR. GRIFFON: -- going to be evaluating I 

18 guess. 

19 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): This is Leo. 

20 Can’t you do that by job category and pick the 

21 one or two highest exposures by job category? 

22 And then you’d have it maximized anyway. 

23 MR. GRIFFON: You’re proposing. I’m not. 

24 MR. SHARFI: I think we need to send the 

25 Board something more timely. I mean, if you 
124

1 want the entire thing processed, and we can do 

2 that. It’s obvious it takes more time to 

3 provide you a full-blown report for every 

4 building every year, the annual statistical 

5 analysis, and the NBR data -- 

6 MR. GRIFFON: When I offered the action, I 

7 didn’t understand. I thought it was going to 

8 be one distribution, not multiple 

9 distributions by plant. 

10 DR. WADE: Let me ask you a question. That 

11 work will eventually be done? 

12 MR. SHARFI: Yes, yes, it’s not going to 

13 stop the process. 

14 DR. WADE: So let’s talk a little bit about 

15 -- 

16 MR. GRIFFON: Let’s do -- I can compromise 

17 to that I guess. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: Well, for example, if they do 

19 the first plant, and we say this still 

20 doesn’t, this is not the direction you want to 

21 go anyway, then you can stop it early on. 

22 DR. WADE: But if you say I like that, we 

23 need the rest, are you proposing, Mark, that 

24 the work group wouldn’t be able to offer its 

25 final position on the SEC until it saw the 
125

1 rest? 

2 MR. GRIFFON: Well, that would be, I mean, I 

3 don’t know until I see the first. 

4 DR. WADE: So let’s say Mark’s -- 

5 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: ^ 

6 MR. GRIFFON: Well, it’s a catch-22. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: I think you need to see one and 

8 then say, okay, shall we keep going in this 

9 direction. You may want to see second and 

10 third -- 

11 MR. GRIFFON: If you present the plant with 

12 the most data and stuff, which I think is 

13 where you’re heading, then that sort of could 

14 by some be perceived as presenting a rosy 

15 picture on this. But I can -- 

16 DR. ZIEMER: I’m not sure we even know -- 

17 MR. SHARFI: I’m just trying to provide you 

18 a smaller snapshot as we work so we’re not 

19 giving you, you’re not waiting on us to 

20 provide everything in a -- 

21 MR. GRIFFON: Here’s maybe a compromise is 

22 that we do, I could agree with that. Select a 

23 plant and do that, what you proposed, you 

24 know, by year, the model, and along with that 

25 -- and you may have this already done, Mark. 
126

1 I don’t know, but if you can post all those 

2 DWE reports. Are they already up there? In 

3 one location. Maybe they’re up there 

4 somewhere, but somewhere we can find them. 

5 MR. ROLFES: When we scan things, those were 

6 all scanned and uploaded onto an O drive to be 

7 sorted out. Every one of those documents has 

8 to be reviewed by a health physicist and 

9 characterized correctly and renamed so that is 

10 put into the site research database with a 

11 reference ID number. 

12 MR. GRIFFON: But can that be an action that 

13 -- 

14 MR. SHARFI: They’re in temporary files 

15 right now. 

16 MR. ROLFES: Correct, they’re temporary 

17 files on the ORAU server. 

18 MR. GRIFFON: I’d like to propose that as an 

19 action. 

20 MR. ROLFES: Now if we find when we post, 

21 we’re going to have a mirror image of the site 

22 research database essentially for Fernald 

23 because you know the volume of records that 

24 we’ve already got on the O drive for the 

25 Advisory Board. Ultimately, we’re going to 
127

1 have every document from the site research 

2 database on the O drive. So I’ll put 

3 everything that -- 

4 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I understand, but I also 

5 think we can always eliminate those at the end 

6 of the SEC review process. You know, you can 

7 move them. I understand. The only thing I 

8 would ask is if they can be put in, you know, 

9 in the AB document under the Fernald section 

10 maybe with some, in a separate folder so we 

11 can easily find them. 

12 MR. ROLFES: We can do that. I think 

13 there’s around 160 of those reports. 

14 MR. GRIFFON: One hundred and sixty of them? 

15 Okay. So nobody’s going to read through all 

16 of them, but we’ll look at a sampling of 

17 others maybe. 

18 DR. WADE: Any more action items? We should 

19 talk time a little bit. 

20 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, the only other action on 

21 that I think would be for SC&A to review, once 

22 this is posted, to review these, you know, for 

23 SC&A to review what’s posted as far as the 

24 spreadsheet and proposed coworker model. And 

25 I understand, for one plant at this point it 
128

1 would be for one selected plant, but have SC&A 

2 review that before we meet again. 

3 DR. WADE: So let’s put a timeline on when 

4 we might expect you to deliver to the Board 

5 that one plant representation. 

6 MR. SHARFI: Can I get back to you on that? 

7 DR. WADE: That’s fine. 

8 MR. GRIFFON: All right, so posting the 

9 spreadsheet for one selected plant, the DWE 

10 data and along with the coworker data, right? 

11 And when I say that I mean the annual 

12 distributions that you’re going to use for 

13 that. 

DR. BEHLING: And understand what the 95th 14 , 

the 50th and the 16th 15 percentile is. 

16 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, how they’ll be assigned. 

17 How they’ll be used, right. And then post the 

18 DWE reports on -- 

19 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): Do you also want 

20 an example dose reconstruction based on that 

21 data? 

22 DR. BEHLING: No, not -- 

23 MULTIPLE SPEAKERS: ^ 

24 DR. WADE: So after lunch you’ll come back 

25 with a timeline. If after lunch you want to 
129

1 come back and say I think it would be more 

2 representative for you to look at something, 

3 then say that, and then they can consider. 

4 Right now it’s one plant all year. You could 

5 think about that and... 

6 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): We’re instructed 

7 to do one year, all plants. 

8 DR. WADE: Sense of the work group, one 

9 plant, one year? 

10 MR. GRIFFON: No, one year all plants. 

11 DR. WADE: And you’ll come back with a sense 

12 of how long it will take you to do that. 

13 MR. SHARFI: Do you want to look at the 

14 process history and then give us a year? 

15 MR. GRIFFON: Maybe we can come back after 

16 lunch and do that. 

17 MR. SHARFI: We’ll talk about what kind of 

18 resources we need to do this, but we’ll let 

19 you guys choose what year, that way -- 

20 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, one year all plants 

21 sounds like a good idea. 

22 DR. WADE: One year, all plants. Mark will 

23 speak to you about the year. You’ll speak 

24 about when we might expect those results, and 

25 the world will be a better place. 
130

1 MR. CLAWSON: Did we also cover how this is 

2 going to be implemented? 

3 DR. WADE: Someone’s got to pick -- 

4 DR. ZIEMER: Well, NIOSH would have the ball 

5 on the first tasking and then SC&A would not 

6 be able to do anything until it got that, 

7 right? 

8 MR. CLAWSON: Well, I was wondering if we 

9 were going to cover how they were going to 

10 implement that because it still wasn’t clear 

11 to me after our discussion what process that 

12 they were going to use to be able to implement 

13 this information. 

14 MR. GRIFFON: Mutty, I’m not sure if I -- 

15 MR. SHARFI: How you assign it? 

16 MR. CLAWSON: How you assign, yeah, the dose 

17 to the 95 percentile or the 50 percentile. 

18 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, we asked for a 

19 description of that, Hans did. 

20 DR. BEHLING: Well, it’s pretty much spelled 

21 out because back here in the appendix you have 

22 all different buildings and -- 

23 MR. GRIFFON: Well, it’s not spelled out; 

24 it’s contradicted in the white paper that I 

25 just read from -- 
131

1 MR. CLAWSON: That’s my problem. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: -- I mean, a final statement 

3 on that. 

4 DR. WADE: Some final statement. 

5 MR. SHARFI: Attachment A was kind of a 

6 rough, quick categorization. The process or 

7 data I think you’ll be able to better look at, 

8 because I think these were just out of one 

9 report that we picked, high, medium, low. 

Even like the 16th 10 percentile, that will be 

11 processed. That number may move to the low. 

12 We may have to shift that up. 

13 MR. GRIFFON: Because it think it’s 

14 important for us to know if you’re going to 

15 still keep that position that if we have more 

16 data in the individual’s file, we may try to 

17 do job-specific analysis. 

 MR. SHARFI: Yeah, the 16th 18 and the little 

19 limited data that we have looked at so far was 

20 bounding for what we call low positions. Now 

21 as we look at more data that might not be 

22 true. We might find people in certain 

23 buildings, certain areas that we may need to 

push up to the 20th 24 or something like that. 

25 So we need to analyze the data right 
132

1 now. This was our first, given the limited 

2 data we had looked at, the first good, 

3 basically our first good shot at this. And as 

4 we compile all the data, then it gives you a 

5 much better, make final numbers at where the 

6 low will be. The medium will always be the 

50th, and usually the high is always the 95th 7 . 

8 DR. WADE: When you submit the one year all 

9 plants, then give us your statement at that 

10 point. 

11 MR. GRIFFON: Right, right, that’s fine. 

12 Yeah, we’ll leave it at that. I mean, I’m 

13 just going back to this. The white paper, the 

14 statement I read out before it said, “when job 

15 matching is possible, a more accurate dose 

16 reconstruction with less uncertainty is likely 

17 to result.” What does that mean in terms of -

18 - 

19 MR. SHARFI: If you truly can say someone 

20 was a wet worker the entire time, you would go 

21 to that specific -- 

22 MR. GRIFFON: See, that’s what I want to 

23 know. If you’re proposing that, that’s fine, 

24 but put that down. 

25 MR. SHARFI: -- but I don’t think that 
133

1 that’s something that we could, I don’t think 

2 you ever have that kind of detailed data that 

3 someone was always a wet worker. They didn’t 

4 go around, didn’t change jobs, didn’t move 

5 around. It would be very hard to get into the 

6 very job-specific, title time that they’re -- 

7 MR. GRIFFON: I mean, let us know if it’s 

8 even on the table. That’s what I want to 

9 know. 

10 DR. NETON: We want to re-think that. We’ll 

11 come back to you with more -- 

12 MR. GRIFFON: Make that in the statement. 

13 That’s fine. 

14 DR. WADE: Talk about that amongst 

15 yourselves. 

16 MR. GRIFFON: Yes. 

17 MR. CLAWSON: Do you want them to talk about 

18 this over lunch and so forth like that and 

19 come down to definitive -- 

20 MR. GRIFFON: I think the only question is 

21 if we want to pick a certain year or 

22 something, right? We can get back to you 

23 after lunch, but otherwise it’s all plants for 

24 one year. 

25 MR. SHARFI: Yes, the year’s up to you, 
134

1 whichever year you prefer to see. 

2 DR. MAURO: The benefit of doing all plants 

3 in one year is one of the questions is the 

4 richness of the granularity of the data. Now 

5 by doing all plants we may very well find out, 

6 you may very well find out there are certain 

7 buildings or plants where we really don’t have 

8 lots of time-weighted average numbers. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: At least for that year. 

10 DR. MAURO: For that year. Which means that 

11 you’re going to have to go to a fallback 

12 position for people that worked in that plant. 

13 And I think that that’s why it’s valuable. 

14 MR. SHARFI: We’re talking about thorium 

15 processing, right? We’re not looking for a 

16 uranium -- 

17 MR. GRIFFON: No, just thorium. 

18 DR. MAURO: That’s why I think because 

19 there’s no doubt in my mind you’re going to 

20 find that there are certain buildings you’re 

21 just not going to have the richness of data 

22 that you have for other buildings. And you 

23 will need a fallback position on how to deal 

24 with that circumstance. 

25 DR. WADE: You’ve got some thorium 
135

1 processing ^. You can look at that and you 

2 can make your recommendations. 

3 MR. GRIFFON: Obviously, there’s a doubt in 

4 someone’s mind because they’re proposing to do 

5 it by building by year. So there’s no doubt 

6 in your mind, but there must, you know, they 

7 must believe -- 

8 DR. MAURO: And it goes the other way, too. 

9 MR. GRIFFON: Anyway, we’ve talked this -- 

10 DR. WADE: We’ve got this covered. 

11 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, we’ve got it. 

12 DR. WADE: Mr. Chairman, what would you have 

13 us do now? 

14 MR. CLAWSON: Lunch. Why don’t we break for 

15 that? We will be able to come back with the 

16 information. That will give us a chance to 

17 sit down and discuss with SC&A and be able to 

18 -- 

19 MR. GRIFFON: And maybe try to get back to 

20 our matrix and see where we are. 

21 MR. CLAWSON: Where we’re at on that. 

22 DR. WADE: Paul? 

23 DR. ZIEMER: Brad, can you just give us some 

24 indication of what will be on the agenda after 

25 lunch besides finishing up this task? Are we 
136

1 going to have a presentation on the recycled 

2 uranium? 

3 MR. CLAWSON: We’ve actually got to get back 

4 -- 

5 DR. ZIEMER: Is that on the -- 

6 MR. ROLFES: I guess how we’d like to 

7 proceed -- 

8 MR. CLAWSON: Well, what I have planned kind 

9 of on the agenda was to be able to go through 

10 the matrix. I didn’t know about the recycled 

11 uranium. But -- 

12 MR. GRIFFON: If we go back to the matrix, 

13 the first item is the R-U so we can probably 

14 start there. 

15 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, at the last Board meeting 

16 that we had I believe that the two outstanding 

17 issues that we really had in discussion were 

18 the thorium coworker model white paper and the 

19 recycled uranium raffinates white paper. 

20 MR. GRIFFON: I know and the data integrity 

21 stuff. And I think you got on that, too. 

22 MR. ROLFES: I also have a presentation on 

23 that as well. 

24 MR. GRIFFON: So start from the matrix, the 

25 first item is R-U. 
137

1 MR. MORRIS (by Telephone): This is Bob. 

2 With regard to our fallback position when we 

3 don’t have data specifically good enough for a 

4 plant. We already covered that in our white 

5 paper. It’s at the end of Section Five. And 

6 it says just briefly, “in some instances it 

7 may be expedient to us a facility-specific 

8 exposure potential and intake rate as a site9 wide default value.” That is an acceptable 

10 practice if the default value can be 

11 reasonably judged to bound exposures from 

12 other facilities. 

13 DR. WADE: Brad, about how long do you want 

14 to let these people go to lunch? 

15 MR. CLAWSON: Let’s meet back here at one. 

16 DR. WADE: Okay, we’re going to now break 

17 the phone line until one. That gives you an 

18 hour and 15 minutes to eat and recharge your 

19 batteries, and we’ll be back at one. Thank 

20 you. 

21 (Whereupon, the work group recessed for 

22 lunch from 11:45 a.m. until 1:00 p.m.) 

23 DR. WADE: We’re going to start again. I 

24 would ask if there are any Board members who 

25 are on the call, if you’d please identify 
138

1 yourself. 

2 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): Leo Faust. 

3 DR. WADE: Okay, Leo, I’m asking for members 

4 of the Advisory Board specifically. 

5 DR. ZIEMER: Josie. Josie was on earlier. 

6 DR. WADE: Josie Beach? 

7 (no response) 

8 DR. WADE: Robert Presley? 

9 (no response) 

10 DR. WADE: Josie, are you with us? 

11 (no response) 

12 DR. WADE: Robert? 

13 (no response) 

14 DR. WADE: Okay, I’ll assume there’s no 

15 members of the Board on the phone so we’re 

16 good with quorum. 

17 Brad, it’s all yours. 

18 MR. CLAWSON: Before we left for lunch we 

19 were going to come back with a time period to 

20 be able to have the information processed 

21 through. And one of the things we wanted to 

22 come across with -- and if I say this right, 

23 please help me out -- but one of the things 

24 you’ve got this paper in front of you, one of 

25 the issues is, is if we’re going into the 
139

1 later years, in ’66, we lost some of the 

2 facilities. 

3 So what we’re requesting is two years, 

4 all plants, but it really would equate to what 

5 we previously said, but you look down here in 

6 ’55, you got this information here and none of 

7 the other plants down there. So if we wanted 

8 to fill out to be able to do ’55 and ’66, all 

9 plants all year for those two years. 

10 MS. BALDRIDGE: Brad, that eliminates that 

11 pocket for thorium in six. It’s ’60 to July 

12 of ’63. 

13 MR. CLAWSON: What pocket would that be? 

14 MS. BALDRIDGE: The raffinates. 

15 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER (by Telephone): Speak 

16 into the mikes. 

17 DR. WADE: Okay, I will caution people. 

18 We’re having a slight offline discussion at 

19 the moment. We’ll be back, the Chairman will 

20 be back at the table in a moment. A 

21 petitioner had raised a question, and the 

22 Chairman is dealing with that question one-on23 one. 

24 DR. ZIEMER: While they’re dealing with that 

25 can I ask, Mark, this table is not in the 
140

1 white paper, is it? 

2 MR. ROLFES: There’s a separate thorium 

3 processing. Let me point it out on the O 

4 drive. It’s out on the O drive. Let me get 

5 the document title for you. 

6 DR. ZIEMER: Was it in the list of documents 

7 you sent us? I may have -- 

8 MR. ROLFES: It was identified in an e-mail. 

9 DR. WADE: You have to watch the 

10 discussions. I realize you need to have 

11 discussions but maybe you can back away a 

12 little bit here. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Is it the thorium timeline 

14 paper? 

15 MR. ROLFES: Yes, thorium timeline with A-A, 

16 and it’s dated 2/29/08. 

17 DR. WADE: I believe the time the Chairman 

18 is consulting with John Mauro, we’ll allow 

19 that to happen. 

20 MR. CLAWSON: I apologize for that side 

21 conversation, but Sandra brought up a very 

22 interesting point and part of the thing is 

23 that we’re going to miss Plant 6 for its 

24 residue process in the sludge furnace if we -- 

25 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER (by Telephone): We 
141

1 really can’t hear you. Could you speak up, 

2 please? 

3 MR. CLAWSON: Yes. One of the issues is, is 

4 that if we go with the ’55 and ’66, we’re 

5 going to miss the thorium residue process in 

6 the sludge furnaces. But that’s also part of 

7 the raffinate issue that we’re going to talk 

8 about now. 

9 RAFFINATE ISSUE

10 Basically, for what we’re trying to do 

11 for get to the information of the thorium, 

12 SC&A still feels that this would be the best 

13 approach we’d be able to have because the 

14 issue that you brought up in the Plant 6 is 

15 going to probably be brought up in the 

16 raffinate issues. 

17 MS. BALDRIDGE: That’s okay. 

18 MR. CLAWSON: And if that’s okay. You guys 

19 -- 

20 MR. RICH: That would not be a recycled 

21 uranium raffinate. 

22 MS. BALDRIDGE: No, it’s thorium residues. 

23 DR. MAURO: I guess that’s the question on 

24 the table. The approach that we just outlined 

25 by picking those two years, one of its 
142

1 limitations is it misses Plant 6 because there 

2 was -- 

3 DR. ZIEMER: Plant 5 I think misses. 

4 DR. MAURO: I’m sorry. It’s Plant 5. So 

5 now the question becomes what do you want to 

6 do about it? 

7 MR. CLAWSON: That’s a point for you guys 

8 that would end up doing this process. I 

9 don’t, you know, we’ve already gone to two 

10 years, if we did a third year for just that 

11 plant, that’s an option. But if we change any 

12 of the other years I don’t think it’s going to 

13 give us the better overall usage of this 

14 information. 

15 DR. WADE: I know, but this is just the 

16 first step in a longer journey. 

17 MR. CLAWSON: Right. So I guess the people 

18 that are having to do this -- 

19 Go ahead, John. 

20 DR. MAURO: All I’m saying is we right now 

21 have -- think of it this way -- we have ten 

22 plant years. The question is should we make 

23 it 11 plant years so we can pick up Plant 5 

24 for one particular year. I mean, that’s the 

25 question. 
143

1 MR. SHARFI: Whatever you want. 

2 DR. NETON: That’s not how we looked at the 

3 data. It doesn’t seem to me to be an 

4 inordinate extra amount of work for ten plant 

5 years, ten percent difference approximately. 

6 MS. BALDRIDGE: The point I would like to 

7 bring up is part of the reason I filed the SEC 

8 was because of the missed thorium processing 

9 in Plant 6 from ’60 through July of ’63. That 

10 was not included in the site profile. 

11 DR. WADE: Point well made. Why don’t you 

12 take that modification, and Brad I would 

13 suggest -- 

14 DR. ZIEMER: This is Plant 5 though. 

15 DR. MAURO: There’s one of our dilemmas. In 

16 the table there is nothing in that, in this 

17 Table 4. 

18 MR. ROLFES: Well, there’s Plant 6 does the 

19 sludge. The thorium sludge furnace is in 

20 Plant 6. It was uranium -- 

21 DR. MAURO: You do. You pick up Plant 6 and 

22 only for 1966. Is that a problem? That’s the 

23 question. We do pick up Plant 6 here in 1966. 

24 Does that -- 

25 DR. BEHLING: It’s outside the realm of the 
144

1 report. 

2 DR. MAURO: It’s outside, oh. 

3 DR. WADE: I would suggest, so we can move 

4 on, that we take the suggestion of the 

petitioner and add the 11th 5 year. 

6 DR. ZIEMER: It doesn’t cover Plant 6. 

7 That’s the point. 

8 DR. WADE: Can’t we add Plant 6 for those 

9 particular years in question? 

10 DR. BEHLING: Nineteen sixty-two or three or 

11 something. 

12 MR. CLAWSON: I guess here would be my 

13 suggestion. I’ve already put out on the table 

14 that we do 1955 and ’66, and my further 

15 suggestion would be that we do Plant 6 for 

16 1960. And that would cover your issue if I’m 

17 not mistaken. 

18 MS. BALDRIDGE: All right. 

19 MR. CLAWSON: And on the 1960 it’d be just 

20 that Plant. 

21 DR. WADE: Now how does that track with the 

22 fact that there’s no entry in the matrix for 

23 Plant 6 for 1960? 

24 DR. ZIEMER: No. 

25 DR. NETON: There’s none. 
145

1 DR. ZIEMER: There’s no entry for Plant 6. 

2 That’s the point I was making. 

3 MR. ROLFES: We have no entry for Plant 6 -- 

4 DR. NETON: In 1960. 

5 MR. ROLFES: -- in 1960. If there’s a daily 

6 weighted exposure -- 

7 MR. SHARFI: There’s a dot in 1960. 

8 DR. WADE: Oh, there is, okay. 

9 MR. ROLFES: There’s a dot in 1960. 

10 DR. ZIEMER: But there isn’t on the other 

11 chart. There’s nothing in -- 

12 MR. ROLFES: For 1960 in Plant 6 of the 

13 thorium residues processed in the sludge 

14 furnace we do have in this slide, it’s right 

15 in this area here from 1959 through 1963. It 

16 shows thorium residues processed in sludge 

17 furnace. It’s right here. 

18 DR. BEHLING: It’s also available in Table 1 

19 of the white paper. 

20 MR. CLAWSON: Right on this one, Paul. 

21 MR. ROLFES: And there is a dot also on the 

22 daily weighted exposure reports. It’s on this 

23 other side as well. 

24 DR. ZIEMER: That’s Plant 5, Brad. 

25 MR. CLAWSON: It is? 
146

1 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, that’s Plant 5. 

2 DR. WADE: In the matrix anyway that we have 

3 that’s Plant 5. 

4 MR. ROLFES: There’s an ANA on the side. 

5 That might be -- 

6 MR. GRIFFON: Where we get off, yeah. 

7 That’s Plant 6. 

8 MR. ROLFES: Let me take a look. I think 

9 you’re looking at the ANA. 

10 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re right. 

11 MR. GRIFFON: Plant 6, it is, we’ve got it 

12 here. 

13 DR. WADE: Okay, so Brad, if you could 

14 formulate your proposal then we can -- 

15 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, my proposal would be 

16 that we do years 1955 and ’66 and 19 -- 

17 DR. WADE: For all facilities. 

18 MR. CLAWSON: -- all facilities, and 1960 

19 for only Plant 6. 

20 DR. NETON: Are we clear on what we’re doing 

21 in those years? 

22 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I think that was my 

23 proposal before, right? All the data in the 

24 coworker models by year, right? 

25 MR. CLAWSON: I just want to make sure -- 
147

1 DR. NETON: It’s implemented. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: Well, when I say coworker 

3 model, yeah, including how it’s implemented. 

4 DR. WADE: And then a response of sense of 

5 time or do you want to wait to do that? 

6 DR. NETON: Well, we’re a little reluctant 

7 for us to sign up for a time because there’s 

8 many computing and conflicting issues out 

9 there tasking ORAU. So I would propose that 

10 we could get back to you within the next day 

11 or two through Mark or ^ to the Chair as to 

12 our proposed timeline. My gut feeling is -- I 

13 don’t want to say -- but we do need to check 

14 it because there’s a lot of things on the 

15 table right now, and I don’t want to preempt 

16 somebody else -- 

17 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, they’ll get back to -- 

18 DR. NETON: Mark, I’ll work with Mark, and 

19 he can get back to you, the Chair, as to our 

20 proposed timeline. 

21 DR. WADE: I’ll accept it. It might be a 

22 month with an R in it for example? 

23 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, we’re going to proceed 

24 on with the raffinates. 

25 I believe that you’ve got a 
148

1 presentation, Mark, that you want to do. 

2 MR. ROLFES: Yes. Everyone should have a 

3 copy of the handouts for the Advisory Board 

4 working group. This is a briefing on the 

5 reconstruction of dose from recycled uranium 

6 contaminants, FMPC Recycled Uranium. That was 

7 uranium that was recovered and purified from 

8 spent fuel and targets in a chemical 

9 processing plant. 

10 They were returned to uranium 

11 processes within the Atomic Energy Commission 

12 and Department of Energy system. The recycled 

13 uranium contained trace amounts of 

14 transuranics such as plutonium, neptunium and 

15 fission products including strontium, yttrium, 

16 technesium, cesium and ruthenium. Also, 

17 activation products such as U-236. 

18 So the bottom line is, are 

19 contaminants a concern for dose 

20 reconstruction? The presence of contaminants 

21 were well known from the start and were 

22 present in very low activities compared to 

23 uranium. We’re referring to trace quantities 

24 of impurities. The limits for contaminants 

25 were set for the primary production sites, for 
149

1 chemical processing plants. Some uranium 

2 processes did concentrate the contaminants 

3 though. Bioassay for the contaminants was 

4 typically not performed. 

5 The history of recycled uranium at 

6 Fernald. Fernald received the first major 

7 shipment of transuranic containing material. 

It was UF-6, which was delivered on the 13th 8 of 

9 February, 1961. This signaled the major 

10 recycled uranium ramp-up. There were small 

11 receipts from Hanford and some of the gaseous 

12 diffusion plants as early as 1955. 

13 The primary concern was plutonium 

14 which was contained, and it was the plutonium 

15 which was the focus of the recycled uranium 

16 limits and analyses at the chemical processing 

17 plants. More routine chemical analyses to 

18 determine neptunium and technesium were done 

19 in the 1980s. Routine gross beta and gamma 

20 count limits followed by gamma spectrometry 

21 was done in the early 1960s. 

22 Comprehensive studies done by the 

23 Department of Energy in 2000 and 2003 provided 

24 the documentation of the recycled uranium mass 

25 flows and contaminant levels. The Ohio Field 
150

1 Office report, the “Recycled Uranium Project 

2 Report,” included a specific study for the 

3 Fernald site. The reported mass flow 

4 discrepancies among the nine major reports, 

5 which covered 18 facilities, resulted in a 

6 three-year study by the Department of Energy 

7 Office of Security clarifying the primary mass 

8 and contaminant flows. 

9 This next slide is just to show an 

10 example of the mass balance inconsistencies 

11 for Fernald receipts. Some of the comments on 

12 the right-hand side show that total uranium 

13 was reported rather than just the recycled 

14 uranium quantities. And I think maybe Bryce 

15 might -- 

16 I don’t know if you would like to add 

17 anything. 

18 Or if anyone has any questions or 

19 would like to add anything, please stop me. 

20 MR. RICH: Inconsistencies in mass flows 

21 were a consequence of the fact that within the 

22 DOE system and the accountability system there 

23 was not a category for recycled uranium. And 

24 as a consequence, the designation of recycled 

25 uranium was a little bit different at each 
151

1 site. 

2 At Fernald, for example, the second 

3 category there, taken from the mass balance 

4 report for Fernald, they functionally counted 

5 all of their existing inventories as recycled 

6 uranium once they started receiving recycled 

7 uranium from Hanford. And this was 

8 fundamentally because the process involved 

9 blending recycled uranium with the existing 

10 inventories for a variety of reasons. It 

11 blended up to a higher enrichment and for 

12 other reasons. 

13 In the third row in the same report, 

14 they did a complex-wide RU definition rollup, 

15 which was a difference in, discountability, 

16 and accountability designation. And you can 

17 see the difference there, 55,000 metric tons 

18 as opposed to 247,000. The DOE 2003 

19 definition and rollup for all of the recycled 

20 uranium that came from the primary shipping 

21 sites to Fernald was 18,000. As Mark goes 

22 along, we’ll show you how this is accommodated 

23 and what we’ve done with these differences. 

24 But functionally, the amount of 

25 recycled uranium that came from the primary 
152

1 sites was significantly lower by a factor of 

2 five or more, and what was being reported as 

3 recycled uranium. But again, functionally 

4 everything at Fernald was being treated as 

5 recycled uranium. That’s point number one. 

6 MR. ROLFES: Other recycled uranium 

7 contaminants. Controls and dose impact were 

8 concerned primarily on plutonium and neptunium 

9 with technesium being the primary fission 

10 product that was bounded in recycled uranium. 

11 Other isotopes were known to be present and 

12 controlled by gross gamma counting and later 

13 by gamma spectroscopy. 

14 Other isotopes that were associated 

15 with gross counting limits just from DOE’s 

16 report in 2000, this goes through the various 

17 isotopes the beta emitting radionuclides, 

18 gamma emitting radionuclides. We’ve got 

19 zirconium and niobium. As you can see there’s 

20 a limit of 15 microcuries per pound of uranium 

21 which translates to 0.033 picocuries per 

22 microgram of uranium. The contamination 

23 levels were documented and controlled below 

24 these levels. 

25 Some of the radioactive contaminants 
153

1 in recycled uranium at Hanford, we have 

2 examples of the elements and isotopes that 

3 were encountered and also the observed range 

4 on a parts per billion or parts per million 

5 basis in comparison to uranium. 

6 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Mark, this is 

7 Arjun. Now, when we looked at Hanford, we 

8 didn’t find ‘50s data on the details of 

9 neptunium and fission product content. Do we 

10 have ‘50s data from Hanford in terms of 

11 contamination controls? 

12 MR. ROLFES: This is from a 2000 report from 

13 the Department of Energy. 

14 MR. RICH: This is the Hanford Mass Balance 

15 Report. 

16 MR. ROLFES: Okay, it’s from the Hanford 

17 Mass Balance Report. And as far as I haven’t 

18 been, I haven’t reviewed some of the Hanford 

19 data. I’ve been focusing on the Fernald data. 

20 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): But that 

21 would be derivative. I think the Fernald data 

22 were also from the ‘80s. It’s my impression 

23 that the mass balance data are based primarily 

24 on sampling that was done in the ‘80s. And if 

25 that’s wrong, I certainly would like that 
154

1 impression corrected so we can get the actual 

2 data from the ‘50s which I have not seen. 

3 MR. ROLFES: Bryce, could you reiterate -- 

4 MR. RICH: The mass balance report was put 

5 together by the Hanford study which the 

6 Hanford Mass Balance Report is part of the 

7 2000 report. It used data from, they’ve used 

8 historical data. 

9 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Only for 

10 plutonium, not for neptunium and technesium 

11 and the other things. That’s what I was 

12 asking about. 

13 MR. RICH: They had some data, not as much 

14 data. The fundamental, primary transuranic 

15 results were based on plutonium. But they 

16 also did, right from the start they did gross 

17 beta and gross alpha in comparison with the 

18 gross beta and gamma, I should have said gross 

19 beta and gross alpha survey. That’s 

20 associated with a comparison of that from aged 

21 natural uranium. But you’re right. The 

22 neptunium data was not rigorously analyzed or 

23 documented as the plutonium. 

24 MR. ROLFES: The next slide just shows some 

25 of the processes and activities that could 
155

1 have potentially concentrated some of the 

2 recycled uranium constituents. This is just 

3 to point out we don’t need to go through each 

4 of the processes and steps at this time. 

5 The following slide is recycled 

6 uranium summary values by process subgroups. 

7 Once again, I don’t think we need to go 

8 through the detail, but this is just to show 

9 some of the levels that were encountered in 

10 comparison to the uranium. 

11 MR. RICH: Could I say just a word or two of 

12 additional description or information? Well, 

13 actually 13 subgroups, process subgroups of 14 

14 -- no, more than that. If you count them up, 

15 there’s probably 15 or 20 I guess -- process 

16 subgroups that they collected data for and did 

17 a statistical analysis of the plutonium and 

18 neptunium from historical data of these three 

19 primary isotopes of Plutonium-239, neptunium 

20 and technesium. 

21 And this is in the Ohio, the Fernald 

22 Mass Balance Report. And these were the 

23 descriptions of processes bearing in mind the 

24 category subgroup number 11, the bottom one, 

25 of waste residues below the economic disposal 
156

1 limit. 

2 DR. MAURO: Mark, would it be correct to say 

3 that this represents where you stand on the 

4 characteristics of the various types of 

5 raffinates, residues -- 

6 MR. RICH: This is not just raffinates. 

7 DR. MAURO: It’s more than that though. Out 

8 of this which ones would you call a raffinate? 

9 MR. RICH: Number 11. 

10 DR. MAURO: The last one, so waste residue 

11 is what you refer to as raffinates? 

12 MR. RICH: Yes. 

13 MR. ROLFES: On to the next slide, under 

14 considerations for dose reconstruction we have 

15 extensive uranium bioassay data for 

16 essentially all workers at Fernald. As a 

17 result of the reconstruction of bounding 

18 levels of recycled uranium contaminants both 

19 in receipts and in concentration processes, it 

20 is possible to add a ratio of trace level 

21 contaminants to the intake of uranium which is 

22 determined from uranium bioassay. Thus, it is 

23 possible to account for internal exposures 

24 from unmonitored sources or unmonitored 

25 exposures to raffinates and recycled uranium 
157

1 contaminants. 

2 To get more specifically into the 

3 raffinates, the raffinates by design were low 

4 in uranium and the trace contaminant ratios 

5 were obviously elevated. Hot raffinates came 

6 from higher grade pitchblende ores which 

7 contained more uranium mass than the other 

8 lower grade ores. But these did not contain 

9 recycled uranium contaminants. 

10 For this scenario dose reconstructions 

11 will be performed with radon breath analyses. 

12 From processed uranium oxide from uranium 

13 mills -- processed uranium oxide from mills 

14 was further processed at Fernald. Raffinates 

15 from this source also had no recycled uranium 

16 contaminants and were low in uranium daughters 

17 such as radium. 

18 Recycled uranium was from typically --

19 kept with typically chemically pure and was 

20 blended directly with the plant feed stock 

21 with a few exceptions. Recycled uranium 

22 contaminated plant process scrap, materials 

23 processed prior to reinsertion into plant 

24 streams and represented a small percentage of 

25 total recycled uranium plant flows in the 
158

1 range of ten percent. 

2 Even with the reduced uranium and 

3 raffinates, the majority of activity on air 

4 samples was due to uranium. That was 

5 approximately 82 percent of the observed 

6 activity. Plutonium accounted for 

7 approximately 12 percent, and neptunium was 

8 about three percent. 

9 Daily weighted exposure sampling 

10 indicated air activities in raffinate areas at 

11 least a factor of ten lower than in other 

12 plant areas. Workers were rotated in various 

13 process areas. No workers were assigned 

14 exclusively to the raffinate areas. 

15 Documented urine sampling results indicate 

16 results identified as raffinate locations 

17 equivalent to other areas. Default ratios to 

18 uranium bound the raffinate areas. 

19 The default recycled uranium 

20 contaminant values that we are currently 

21 using, if you look and compare those to those 

22 documented on the previous slide where Bryce 

23 had pointed out the waste residues in subgroup 

24 11, you’ll see that our mass concentration of 

25 Plutonium-239 were defaulting higher to 100 
159

1 parts per billion, 100 parts per billion for 

2 plutonium on a mass concentration -- excuse 

3 me, I said that wrong. 

4 Let’s see here. We are defaulting to 

5 a 100 parts per billion plutonium 

6 concentration for every -- I just want to make 

7 sure I say this right -- 

8 Bryce? 

9 MR. RICH: One hundred parts per billion. 

10 MR. ROLFES: Correct. So basically, what we 

11 are doing here, we are using a higher recycled 

12 uranium contaminant default value for 

13 plutonium than what was documented in subgroup 

14 11 from the waste residues. 

15 MR. RICH: Other than the one category which 

16 would be the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant 

17 ^. 

18 MR. ROLFES: The default assumptions that 

19 NIOSH is using to maximize doses. We have 

20 maximized the mass flow of recycled uranium. 

21 We have maximized the contaminant quantities. 

22 Our default bounds all bootstrap mean process 

23 values with the exception of the short-term 

24 Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant tower 

25 shipment. Contaminant levels in most of the 
160

1 uranium exposures were two orders of magnitude 

2 lower than that which NIOSH is defaulting to 

3 for dose reconstructions. 

4 The most hazardous isotopes are 

5 assumed for the other radionuclides. And the 

6 recycled uranium time period assumed, was 

7 assumed to have begun in 1955 although 

8 significant quantities did not start until 

9 1961. 

10 And that is a summarization of the 

11 recycled uranium and raffinates white paper 

12 that was put together. The entire white paper 

13 was provided to the Advisory Board. It’s on 

14 the O drive as well so there’s additional 

15 detailed information there. 

16 DR. BEHLING: Can you clarify, you said an 

17 awful lot and I’m not sure I understood. You 

18 said that raffinate workers were rotated 

19 routinely, meaning that they were not always 

20 there on a full-time job for any length of 

21 time. And yet you say that you’re going to 

22 link somehow the uranium excretion data with 

23 raffinates’ contaminants. 

24 And also you mentioned the use of 

25 radon exhalation. I guess I’m somewhat 
161

1 uncertain as to how these different things 

2 will blend. When you obviously take a urine 

3 sample for uranium for a worker who’s been 

4 rotated, you may end up with a fairly high 

5 uranium excretion rate that may have limited 

6 relationship to the raffinates if, in fact, 

7 we’re talking about a rotation of workers. 

8 Also, where do we separate radium from 

9 radon exhalation from uranium excretion, urine 

10 excretion, as a way of trying to get a handle 

11 on contaminant raffinates? 

12 MR. RICH: There are raffinates, and then 

13 there are raffinates and other raffinates, and 

14 you ^ different kind of raffinates. Hot 

15 raffinates, for example, as we’ve indicated, 

16 came from the pitchblende ores which were 60 

17 or 70 percent uranium, and as a consequence, 

18 very high in radium and daughters. We got 

19 raffinates from Harshaw and available at two 

20 or three hundred millirem per hour. Nothing 

21 was done with them except slurried and 

22 transferred to Silo 1. However, the -– those 

23 were raffinates that came from the processing 

24 plant at Harshaw. 

25 Fernald did process ore, and as a 
162

1 consequence it had hot raffinates. And as a 

2 consequence they built a hot raffinate system 

3 behind a cement wall shielded for external 

4 radiation. None of that raffinate was 

5 recycled uranium. There was no transuranics 

6 in that raffinate stream. And in addition, 

7 there’s another raffinate stream that came 

8 from processing yellowcake from uranium mills, 

9 and those barrels of uranium from the mills 

10 were not all uranium, 70 percent or so. And 

11 so they processed that again through a liquid 

12 extraction system in Plant 2 and 3. 

13 And they were low in, they had no 

14 recycled uranium contaminants in that stream 

15 either. Now, the only recycled uranium 

16 raffinate stream that came through waste 

17 products that came from, for example, when 

18 they brought the recycled uranium in from 

19 Hanford, they blended it immediately because 

20 it was from a uranium standpoint pure. The 

21 trace quantities didn’t provide any problem, 

22 but they did have some metals and other, well, 

23 they were ready to be blended. 

24 So they ran them through the process 

25 to convert the metal, but that wound up about 
163

1 ten percent of that process local streams and 

2 needed to be reprocessed. That went in and 

3 blended and then was processed through the 

4 liquid extraction system. And that produced a 

5 raffinate stream that had some enhanced 

6 recycled uranium in it, relatively low in 

7 contaminants other than the fact that the 

8 ratio of contaminants to uranium were elevated 

9 to what, as indicated, to about 80 parts per 

10 million plutonium, using plutonium -- pardon 

11 me, or parts per billion. But we’re 

12 defaulting at a hundred. 

13 So any time you get people working 

14 with raffinates even in this stream would be, 

15 especially if they got any exposure to the 

16 raffinates, they would have a uranium burden 

17 that went with it. So the ratioing system 

18 still holds. 

19 DR. BEHLING: I guess I just want to be sure 

20 that when you get a uranium bioassay, will it 

21 be earmarked that’s a person who was working 

22 with the raffinates where you end up applying 

23 the default values? 

24 MR. RICH: No, the only thing it would very 

25 conservatively applying in saying any time you 
164

1 get a uranium update, you’re simply going to 

2 apply a hundred parts per billion for thorium 

3 and another part per billion neptunium and 

4 another part per billion technesium and 

5 strontium and all of these other recycled 

6 uranium contaminants. 

7 DR. BEHLING: And that’s regardless of where 

8 you worked? 

9 MR. RICH: Regardless of where you worked. 

10 DR. BEHLING: Okay, I missed that. 

11 MR. RICH: That’s every uranium -- and 

12 that’s coming from the assumption that any 

13 uranium in the plant after 1955, and very 

14 conservative, that it gets blended and mixed, 

15 and as a consequence if you didn’t know that 

16 any uranium exposure did not contain recycled 

17 uranium contaminants. So we’re simply 

18 assigning a default, and a very conservative 

19 default by the way, that says anytime you get 

20 a uranium update, it’s associated with 

21 recycled uranium contaminants, and the whole 

22 list of them. 

23 DR. BEHLING: Is it going to be confined to, 

24 is there any specific time period? 

25 MR. RICH: Nineteen fifty-five on. The 
165

1 entire operational period of the plant from 

2 the time that they began to get any recycled 

3 uranium in the plant. 

4 DR. MAURO: What about that tower ash which 

5 was off the charts? 

6 MR. RICH: That’s another issue. The AEC 

7 said that -- and uranium was in short supply -

8 - and so they simply said this tower ash has 

9 significant amounts of uranium, and we need to 

10 recover it. Now, they knew that it had high 

11 levels, you know, the concentrating mechanism 

12 at the gaseous diffusion plant is severe 

13 because of the fact when you convert to a 

14 fluoride, most of the recycled uranium is not 

15 volatile in the fluoride form. So it fell out 

16 of the tower ash or whatever. 

17 And so that material came to the site, 

18 and you’ll notice the category number 10A is 

19 412, is a mean calculation which is over a 

20 hundred parts per billion. However, they 

21 didn’t want it. They knew it was high, and it 

22 was processed as a short-term project. And 

23 it’s documented that they, in this case they 

24 wore airline respirators and the whole thing. 

25 And it did not stay that way. 
166

1 Category number 10B is the uranium U2 03 from the tower ash, and that is again down 

3 to 20 parts per billion plutonium. So this is 

4 the only time I would suggest taking credit 

5 for respiratory use because it was a special 

6 short-term project, and documented such as 

7 they did use respiratory protection because 

8 they are mindful of it. 

9 And now I add quickly that they did 

10 set aside some containers in a storage 

11 configuration that they discovered some years 

12 later, and that became an incident report, but 

13 that was not available in the operating system 

14 at that time. 

15 What we’re suggesting is that this 

16 default analysis covers all of the processed 

17 material and is conservative probably for 99-

18 plus percent of the time or any uranium 

19 exposures by an order of magnitude or more 

20 conservative. 

21 DR. MAURO: And this tower is well 

22 contained. 

23 MR. RICH: It is so well contained and 

24 handled with so much awareness and concern 

25 that we’re saying and it was such a short-term 
167

1 project that it went into the process and was 

2 diluted and processed down to 20 parts per 

3 billion. 

4 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Could I ask a 

5 question about the tower ash concentration, 

6 please? This is Arjun. 

7 MR. RICH: Yes. 

8 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): In our review 

9 of the Fernald site profile on page 51, we had 

10 noted that the 412 ppb value is not, does not 

11 jive with the National Lead of Ohio highest 

12 plutonium contamination in ash. 

13 MR. RICH: It’s not the highest, Arjun. 

14 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Sorry? 

15 MR. RICH: That’s not the highest. The 

16 range for the ash that came into the plant was 

17 over 4,000 and the low was something in the 

18 range of less than one. 

19 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): For ash. 

20 MR. RICH: For ash. 

21 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): Oh, okay. I 

22 missed that. I’m sorry about that. 

23 MR. RICH: And see, this gives just the 

24 bootstrap mean calculations. This does not, 

25 the range for the analyses for the ash that 
168

1 came had a wide range. And but for all of 

2 that material the bootstrap mean was at 400, 

3 but there were some at 3,000 or more. 

4 DR. MAKHIJANI (by Telephone): That’s not 

5 how I recall the site profile, but yeah, 

6 that’s fine. 

7 MR. RICH: But that bootstrap mean is the 

8 data taken when it does not fall into either a 

9 normal or a lognormal distribution. In other 

10 words it’s more random and it doesn’t fit any 

11 of those curves. Then there is a, well, it’s 

12 a fairly, it’s a statistical analysis where 

13 you can just simply randomly sample that 

14 database and eventually it will give you a 

15 bootstrap mean and take the place of a normal 

16 distribution or a lognormal distribution. I’m 

17 not a statistician and can’t vouch for it, but 

18 it is a legitimate analytical -- 

19 DR. BEHLING: From your information would 

20 you say, for instance, the waste residue 

21 bootstrap value of 84 parts per billion for 

22 the plutonium, is that more close to, let’s 

23 say, from the data close to a geometric mean 

24 or an arithmetic mean as a way of gauging what 

25 this bootstrap value really means? 
169

1 MR. RICH: I think I can probably, I have 

2 that report here. It’s in an Appendix F.1 is 

3 the complete statistical analysis. Be glad to 

4 show that to you. But functionally, it’s 

5 higher than a geometric mean. 

6 DR. BEHLING: It was less than an arithmetic 

7 mean? 

8 MR. RICH: No, it’s higher. And because 

9 these are, again, these samples don’t fit a 

10 standard distribution so it’s kind of hard to 

11 do a different parity. 

12 MR. CHEW: John, I think when Mark was 

13 mentioned, we also have plutonium bioassays. 

14 MR. ROLFES: We do have plutonium bioassay 

15 from Fernald. Two hundred and forty samples 

16 associated with the higher, the ^ projection 

17 came higher -- 

18 MR. RICH: Those were done in 1986. And 

19 those samples do not, they do not indicate 

20 that, they just indicate that people that were 

21 operating at that time, at least they were not 

22 excreting or indicate an in vivo lung count in 

23 the detectable range or just barely in the 

24 statistically detectable range. 

25 DR. MAURO: Let’s say the bootstrap mean, 
170

1 it’s a measure of central tendency. And what 

2 I’m hearing is that’s a reasonable thing to do 

3 because you would not expect any one person 

4 for a prolonged period of time to continually 

5 and repeatedly be exposed to raffinates that 

6 would be at the upper end. The reality is the 

7 nature of the job was that that just won’t 

8 happen. This is a recurring theme there when 

9 you work with the central tendency. It’s 

10 reasonable to do that when it’s unreasonable 

11 to assume, well, it’s always worked with the 

12 high end ^ tail. That just wouldn’t happen, 

13 and that’s what I’m hearing. 

14 MR. RICH: There are a couple of other 

15 places, for example, the magnesium fluoride 

16 during the conversion to, from UF-4 to metal 

17 in the magnesium fluoride ^. Then the 

18 magnesium fluoride does tend to concentrate, 

19 that is a concentrating mechanism. Enriched 

20 magnesium fluoride was recycled. And so as a 

21 consequence, they broke it up and reprocessed 

22 it to recover the enriched uranium. For the 

23 lower enriched stuff they just simply disposed 

24 of it. And that runs about 96, 97 parts per 

25 billion -- 
171

1 DR. MAURO: It’s no longer at 100. 

2 MR. RICH: -- uranium. It’s still below, 

3 plus the fact that, again, the people that 

4 handled the magnesium fluoride did not work 

5 that job all the time. 

6 Yes. 

7 MS. BALDRIDGE: With the petition there was 

8 a document on the bookkeeping practices, and 

9 there was a survey that the Department of 

10 Energy sent to Fernald to be filled out about 

11 how many records they had, bioassay. And the 

12 result was 2.6 per worker per year. Now, Mark 

13 indicated that he had extensive bioassay, so 

14 does that mean that there were a lot of people 

15 who didn’t have any? 

16 MR. RICH: Pardon me, but do you mind if I 

17 answer? What Mark -- 

18 MS. BALDRIDGE: That you had extensive 

19 bioassay data. 

20 MR. RICH: Starting as the contracts 

21 changed, when Westinghouse took over in 1986, 

22 they decided to take a look to see if they 

23 could detect anything in the bioassay, either 

24 in vitro or in vivo, either urine sampling or 

25 lung counting. And so they took something, or 
172

1 several hundred samples -- 

2 MS. BALDRIDGE: So the majority of the 

3 bioassay that you have would be post-1984? 

4 MR. RICH: Yes. There were very little for 

5 a variety of reasons. Number one, they did 

6 not anticipate that the analytical 

7 capabilities to detect the trace levels that 

8 were there plus the fact that they had 

9 calculated that the maximum impact to the 

10 workers would be less than a ten percent 

11 increase in the exposure due to uranium. 

12 That’s the reason they did not take the -- 

13 MS. BALDRIDGE: That answers my question. 

14 MR. RICH: And for that reason we’re 

15 defaulting to a maximum that would have been 

16 calculated based on the modern uranium that 

17 can be demonstrated they received. 

18 DR. BEHLING: Could, question just from 

19 methodological point of view, will there be a 

20 workbook developed that will address all these 

21 default values for uranium bioassay data that 

22 will -- 

23 MR. RICH: It will be in the technical basis 

24 document, yes. 

25 DR. BEHLING: And will there be a PER that 
173

1 may go back with some times to assess what was 

2 formerly not addressed? 

3 MR. ROLFES: Yes, that’s already defaulted 

4 in the site profile, the current revision. 

5 MR. SHARFI: The only difference is 

6 currently we default from 1961 forward. This 

7 will draw back to ’55 so any claims that were 

8 processed in pre-’61, will then have to be 

9 reprocessed to account for the, obviously, the 

10 raffinates that weren’t included in those 

11 claims. Those are to be reprocessed. But the 

12 mixture is no different than what’s currently 

13 inside the technical basis document. So for 

14 ’61 on this doesn’t change how we’ve been 

15 currently assessing recycled uranium. 

16 MR. RICH: What this white paper has done is 

17 simply gone back with a greater description 

18 and basis for that that was for volumes basis 

19 was not in the technical basis document. 

20 MR. CHEW: Recycled didn’t really show up at 

21 Fernald until ’61. 

22 MR. SHARFI: And now we’ll push it back to 

23 ’55 ^. 

24 MR. RICH: Because there was a little bit 

25 that came in starting in ’55. I’m going to 
174

1 say it’s all ^. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: Now you mentioned the tower 

3 ash. This was the one instance where you 

4 would advocate applying the protection factor 

5 -- 

6 MR. RICH: Yes, yes. 

7 MR. GRIFFON: -- as being -- 

8 MR. RICH: -- protection factor. 

9 MR. GRIFFON: -- but are you applying that 

10 or -- 

11 MR. RICH: -- primarily because it was a 

12 special case, and because it was a short-term 

13 process. And as a consequence, there is no 

14 protection factor applied. We just simply 

15 will say that the uranium ratios will apply 

16 because there would have been no exposure to 

17 that particular uranium. 

18 MR. GRIFFON: So you’re saying the default 

19 still holds. 

20 MR. RICH: The default still holds. 

21 MR. SHARFI: It’s part of the defensible 

22 default ^. 

23 MR. GRIFFON: Because they were wearing 

24 respirators when they were dealing with this 

25 stuff that was a little too high. 
175

1 In the processing at Fernald, I mean, 

2 the question we always come back to in the RU 

3 issue is does it concentrate out anywhere? Is 

4 it any kind of dry operation where it might be 

5 more than these levels you’ve talked about, 

6 more than these average values. 

7 MR. RICH: We’ve identified all of the areas 

8 where there could be increased ratios between 

9 the contaminant and the uranium, and those are 

10 listed in the 15 or so as processed category. 

11 MR. GRIFFON: You’ve showed in there -- I 

12 haven’t reviewed, I mean, I’m just trying to 

13 keep up -- but the 100 you’re presenting is 

14 the bounding case for all those scenarios. 

15 DR. BEHLING: For plutonium. 

16 MR. RICH: There are 19 process categories 

17 that are listed here, and they’ve done a 

18 fairly complete analysis of sampling in those 

19 process categories, listing the statistical 

20 limits on each of them. Most of them are, 

21 they’re very, very low. 

22 MR. CLAWSON: I just have a question of how 

23 this was going to be implemented. I’m trying 

24 to figure, so you’re telling me that if the 

25 claimant has showed any kind of uranium that 
176

1 we are going to tack on all these other -- 

2 MR. RICH: Yes. 

3 MR. CLAWSON: -- isotopes? 

4 MR. RICH: Yes. 

5 MR. SHARFI: And that’s already currently in 

6 the process. 

7 MR. CLAWSON: For ’55 and on. So basically 

8 they’re going to -- now, is this by urinalysis 

9 that they’re doing this? 

10 MR. ROLFES: The uranium is, yes. 

11 MR. CLAWSON: I’m just trying to clarify 

12 because I know earlier there were some 

13 questions of not everybody had urinalysis, 

14 correct? 

15 MR. ROLFES: Yes. In excess of 90 percent 

16 of the persons that were on site had at least 

17 one urine sample. 

18 MR. CLAWSON: Per year? 

19 MR. ROLFES: Per year? I’m sorry. 

20 MR. CLAWSON: Per year? 

21 MR. ROLFES: Yes, an annual urine sample was 

22 taken from all employees, well, it was greater 

23 than 90 percent of the employees onsite. And 

24 if there’s an individual, for example, that 

25 didn’t have a urine sample, if they were only 
177

1 onsite for a short amount of time, coworker 

2 uranium urinalysis results could be used to 

3 assign an intake and then the ratios would be 

4 added on top of the coworker uranium intake. 

5 MR. CLAWSON: Now this urinalysis was for 

6 uranium. It wasn’t a medical one, right? 

7 MR. ROLFES: No, it was for uranium. 

8 MR. CLAWSON: It was for uranium, okay. 

9 DR. NETON: The annual sample was taken 

10 during the medical, annual physical, but it 

11 was collected separately and analyzed for 

12 uranium. 

13 MR. CLAWSON: The reason I was wondering was 

14 because if I remember right, we had some 

15 clothing tech people or whatever like that 

16 that all of a sudden came up with a urinalysis 

17 of uranium which they weren’t exposed to. 

18 DR. BEHLING: Just to clarify, there were 

19 four individuals, and I included that in my 

20 report that, and there was a memorandum, that 

21 identified four individuals. Some had as high 

22 as 547 micrograms for a 24-hour urine sample. 

23 And in each of those cases there was a 

24 statement of where did this come from. And we 

25 were questioning who they were, and why they 
178

1 were even assessed since apparently they were 

2 not production workers and possibly may not 

3 have been sampled for bioassay. 

4 But you’re saying as a minimum, as a 

5 bear minimum regardless of your job 

6 classification, every person onsite who was 

7 employed at National Lead would have had at 

8 least one urinalysis done per year as part of 

9 their overall medical examination. 

10 MR. RICH: That’s true. 

11 DR. BEHLING: Because we were talking about 

12 that yesterday, and we were saying every 

13 medical examination usually takes a urine 

14 sample, but it’s not necessarily linked to 

15 anything that involves uranium. And I just 

16 want to be sure that as a bear minimum every 

17 full-time employee had at least one bioassay 

18 done on an annual basis. 

19 MR. RICH: Anyone associated with the 

20 uranium operations themselves had many samples 

21 done. 

22 DR. BEHLING: Yes, but because Mark was just 

23 saying over 90 percent, we were just wondering 

24 if there are any people who were perhaps 

25 excluded from even this annual medical, 
179

1 therefore, for whom we have no data. Would 

2 you also answer that by saying we’ll go to the 

3 coworker model and apply also those values so 

4 -- 

5 MR. RICH: Yes. 

6 DR. BEHLING: -- no one will be exempt from 

7 being assigned some intake for uranium? 

8 MR. CLAWSON: That’s the point I was trying 

9 to get to because the 90 percent -- and I 

10 understand why you were saying about that -- 

11 but I didn’t want to have a group of people 

12 excluded because like these clothing techs 

13 that weren’t supposed to be even a part of the 

14 process or anything else, but they were 

15 showing up with uranium bioassays. And I just 

16 wanted to make sure we were looking at that 

17 process. 

18 DR. NETON: It was also a fairly rigorous 

19 process drummed into workers’ heads that 

20 anytime there was a suspected incident, you 

21 were encouraged and required to leave urine 

22 samples at the bioassay station at the end of 

23 your shift. So oftentimes you’d get samples 

24 from people who hit their thumb with a hammer. 

25 I mean, it’s an incident, and they go give a 
180

1 urine sample. So you will see many urine 

2 samples where people would not normally think 

3 of having potential exposure to uranium. But 

4 it was considered an incident and they 

5 followed the law. 

6 MR. CLAWSON: Is that all? Is that 

7 finished? 

8 MR. ROLFES: Yes, that was all that we had. 

9 If there’s any other questions, we’d be happy 

10 to discuss anything. 

11 MR. RICH: There’s further details in the 

12 white paper. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Does this require any action? 

14 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I mean, I think the only 

15 action that I can see is I think NIOSH has 

16 provided this. I’m not sure if SC&A’s 

17 reviewed. I mean, we’ve listened. 

18 DR. BEHLING: I’ve read the white paper, 

19 obviously. 

20 MR. GRIFFON: So do you have comments at 

21 this point? 

22 DR. BEHLING: No, as I said, it’s basically 

23 an explanation for what already existed with 

24 the exception of advancing the timeframe from 

25 ’61 back to ’55. And if everyone is going to 
181

1 be the beneficiary of this assigning of RU 

2 contaminants, I think that’s pretty much an 

3 all encompassing approach and inclusive the 

4 tower ash would be assumed a 50-fold 

5 protection factor in assuming 412, that would 

6 reduce your ^ load a hundred that’s a default 

7 factor. So I have no comments. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: Have you started to implement 

9 this already? 

10 MR. ROLFES: This is already in our current 

11 site profile minus, we currently are assigning 

12 recycled uranium intakes using the default 

13 ratios that were on the second-to-last slide. 

14 What we have committed to do is go, rather 

15 than only use ’61 forward, we’re also going to 

16 start now, rather than in ’61, we’re going to 

17 start in 1955. So that would be the change 

18 that would come out of this analysis and this 

19 white paper. We’d be going back to 1955 and 

20 extending or assigning any intakes of recycled 

21 uranium contaminants based on the documented 

22 ratios to any uranium intakes that were 

23 assigned. 

24 MR. RICH: I might add for the Board that 

25 there is more detail in the white paper and 
182

1 will be in the technical basis document 

2 specifically in relationship to other isotopes 

3 such as the fission products like Ruthenium4 103 and -106, zirconium ^ and even though 

5 those are considered, they were analyzed as 

6 fresh product as they left the plant and 

7 because all except cesium and strontium of any 

8 significance had 30-year half-lives. The rest 

9 of them had shorter half-lives. And so again, 

10 we’re defaulting on a fresh fission product 

11 basis, and so that won’t contribute much at 

12 all. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: It seems to me that just to 

14 formalize things that perhaps the work group 

15 should acknowledge that they’ve been briefed 

16 on this and perhaps recommend to the Board or 

17 at least indicate that some level of 

18 concurrence with this approach or if we want 

19 any further review. It sounds like, I’m not 

20 hearing objections from SC&A. I think it -- 

21 MR. CLAWSON: My question was is if you 

22 have, you feel that you’ve reviewed this 

23 enough and that you feel confident it’s in the 

24 approach or do you need time to be able to -- 

25 DR. BEHLING: As I said, I spent a 
183

1 significant amount of time reviewing the white 

2 papers. We received them several days ago, 

3 and I can certainly go through it again and 

4 raise additional questions. But right now I 

5 don’t have any. To me it looks claimant 

6 favorable with the assumptions that are being 

7 applied here. 

8 MR. CLAWSON: So I guess I’m kind of 

9 wondering which way to go on the direction of 

10 this. 

11 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I think clearly there’s 

12 no further action. I’m not -- me, as a work 

13 group member -- I’m not ready to sign off only 

14 because I’m a little, I want to look at some 

15 of the values, and I didn’t look and spend as 

16 much time on the white paper. This question 

17 about, I just want to review that question 

18 about concentrating and whether, convincing 

19 myself that this is a bounding approach. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: I think that’s appropriate. 

21 I’m just -- 

22 MR. GRIFFON: But I don’t think there’s any 

23 further action. 

24 DR. ZIEMER: -- I don’t think we need any 

25 more assignments to the contractor. And at 
184

1 some point, it may be at the next meeting or 

2 whenever, I’m just saying I think we should 

3 acknowledge and formalize this has occurred at 

4 some appropriate point whether it’s today or 

5 down the road. 

6 MR. CLAWSON: And I did have one question on 

7 this. You say this is going to go into the 

8 site profile and stuff. And we’re going to 

9 have to go back, and we’re going to have, 

10 we’re actually going to be updating the site 

11 profile, correct? 

12 MR. ROLFES: Uh-huh. 

13 MR. CLAWSON: And we’re also going to have 

14 to be going back and reevaluating several of 

15 the claims. 

16 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, right, Jim did mention 

17 that we would do a program evaluation report 

18 on any previously completed dose 

19 reconstructions. When we receive additional 

20 information, we do go back and reevaluate any 

21 previously denied claims, any dose 

22 reconstructions that did not meet the at least 

23 as likely as not criteria. Those would be 

24 reevaluated to determine if the dose 

25 reconstruction findings would change. 
185

1 DR. BEHLING: The only thing I would ask, 

2 just again because the concept of bootstrap 

3 methodology is something of a concept that’s 

4 not clear in my mind, it would be nice to look 

5 at the data that corresponds to the bootstrap 

6 of 84.8 parts per billion for plutonium and 

7 just look at the data and say how did the raw 

8 data translate into this particular value 

9 that’s applied here, 84.8 and then you would 

10 default it to 100 parts per billion. It would 

11 just be, I’m sure you already know where that 

12 data exists, just for only personal insight 

13 into the bootstrap methodology, and what it 

14 really represents. 

15 MR. GRIFFON: Maybe all of our insight, 

16 yeah, not your own personal. 

17 DR. NETON: Were these values listed in the 

18 site profile at the time that SC&A had 

19 reviewed the Fernald site profile originally? 

20 Because I think we’ve already gone through 

21 this. 

22 DR. BEHLING: Arjun may be the one that -- 

23 DR. NETON: I’m having déjà vu here, but I 

24 thought that this concept had been clear. The 

25 only difference here is going back six years 
186

1 or so in time to apply the same issue that I 

2 thought was already reviewed in the site 

3 profile. 

4 DR. BEHLING: Arjun, are you on the line? 

5 (no response) 

6 DR. BEHLING: Because he was the person who 

7 really reviewed the -- 

8 MR. GRIFFON: It was reviewed, but it was 

9 left open as a finding. Wasn’t that the basis 

10 for -- 

11 DR. NETON: Oh, was it? Maybe that’s -- 

12 MR. GRIFFON: -- I’m just guessing there. 

13 DR. NETON: I remember. That’s okay. 

14 MR. CHEW: What does it say in the matrix? 

15 DR. NETON: I guess it wouldn’t have 

16 appeared on the SEC matrix if it wasn’t left 

17 open at the time. 

18 MR. ROLFES: Mrs. Baldridge has a question. 

19 MS. BALDRIDGE: When you referred to the 

20 site profile, is this the external exposure 

21 part? 

22 MR. ROLFES: This would be internal 

23 exposure. 

24 MS. BALDRIDGE: Internal exposure. I do 

25 have a question concerning the external 
187

1 exposure. When I was reviewing my father’s 

2 dose reconstruction, I saw where ambient doses 

3 were assigned for external exposure, and that 

4 those ambient doses were based on the stack 

5 releases. 

6 Now, at some point meetings back I was 

7 under the impression that it was mentioned 

8 that those stack releases would no longer be a 

9 consideration because of the questionable 

10 validity of the data that was presented. So 

11 my question is how are you going to address 

12 the issue of external exposure based on 

13 ambient data when you get to that part of the 

14 -- 

15 MR. ROLFES: I understand what you’re 

16 saying. Some of the dose reconstructions that 

17 we have completed early on we were assigning, 

18 in addition to any dose that was received by 

19 the individual’s dosimeter, we thought it was 

20 possible that background radiation exposure to 

21 that badge might have been subtracted from the 

22 individual’s whole body dosimeter. 

23 So we were adding that back in to dose 

24 reconstructions. However, there were, I 

25 believe we have changed that now. I don’t 
188

1 believe we are adding ambient external doses 

2 any more into our dose reconstructions because 

3 we did not have -- 

4 Is that correct? 

5 MR. RICH: I think so. 

6 MR. ROLFES: Okay, I think we’ve implemented 

7 that change already. 

8 MR. RICH: Prior to ’85. 

9 MR. SHARFI: After ’85 we still add it back 

10 in. 

11 MR. ROLFES: Okay, so after ’85 we are 

12 adding ambient external doses back in. 

13 MR. CHEW: Brad, just to make sure, Arjun 

14 wasn’t here, but I think his Finding 4.1-5 in 

15 the matrix, and I’ll read it. And there are 

16 several radionuclides, contaminants and RU 

17 that were not adequately considered for 

18 internal dose estimates. And most relevant to 

19 this concern are the impacts of these 

20 contaminants in the RU raffinate waste stream. 

21 I think that’s what the paper is targeting. I 

22 think that’s what Arjun’s issue is. 

23 MR. GRIFFON: The paper’s out there, but I 

24 don’t know if we ever considered the 

25 underlying, how the numbers were averaged and 
189

1 all that, that the bootstrap analysis. I 

2 don’t know. 

3 MR. CLAWSON: I guess kind of what I would 

4 ask -- and correct me if I’m wrong -- but I 

5 guess what I would suggest is that SC&A 

6 evaluate this, look into the bootstrap method, 

7 but also I guess I’m just kind of, I’d like to 

8 kind of look at these urine samples to make 

9 sure how we’re going to implement that, make 

10 sure we’re doing that right. But I guess I’d 

11 like to task SC&A to be able to look at this 

12 and make sure that we’re all on the same page 

13 of how we’re going into this. 

14 This shouldn’t be too much, Hans? 

15 DR. BEHLING: No, I’m going to have to rely 

16 on them to identify the documents which 

17 contain the original data on which the 

18 bootstrap methodology was based. 

19 MR. GRIFFON: Or was that compiled -- 

20 DR. BEHLING: I said I’d like to look at the 

21 data that gave rise to the 82.4 parts per 

22 billion that ultimately would move it up to a 

23 hundred parts per billion and as a default 

24 value. But just look at the background data 

25 to say what do those data look like that 
190

1 represents this particular bootstrap value 

2 that is now a default value to be added to the 

3 urinalysis as a contaminant for uranium. It 

4 may be a very simple thing to have to 

5 document, but -- 

6 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I wonder if, do you have 

7 it compiled in a analytical, like a 

8 spreadsheet or something or is it, I mean, is 

9 it something easy to -- 

10 MR. RICH: This analysis was done by the 

11 work group that did the mass balance report, 

12 and it’s reported in that document. 

13 MR. CLAWSON: In this white paper? 

14 MR. RICH: Pardon me? No, it’s in the mass 

15 balance report, but it was done by the DOE. 

16 And that was reviewed. It’s in Appendix F, 

17 and in fact, I have a copy on my hard drive if 

18 you’d like to see it. It’s lengthy. 

19 DR. MAURO: Just as a sense of the range, 

20 the 100 number for parts per billion of 

21 plutonium, that is a measure of central 

22 tendency toward the high end, and that’s what 

23 -- 

24 DR. BEHLING: I mean, we looked at the tower 

25 ash because it’s in the white paper, and it’s 
191

1 0.6 parts per billion up to 3,500. And the 

2 bootstrap value, 412, is something that almost 

3 looks like a geometric value, mean. No, 

4 actually not. It would possibly be, it’s 

5 certainly well below the center value between 

6 those two extremes, between 0.6 and 3,500. 

7 DR. NETON: Well, you don’t know unless you 

8 look at the data. 

9 DR. BEHLING: No, those are just the two 

10 values that -- 

11 DR. NETON: I know, there are two values. 

12 You have no idea -- 

13 DR. MAURO: Let me finish my statements. 

14 DR. BEHLING: No, I didn’t -- 

15 DR. MAURO: Tower ash is some place else. 

16 In other words tower ash is something you’re 

17 dealing with differently because it’s well 

18 contained. So your default value that you’re 

19 using for all of these dose calculations for 

20 plutonium I understand is 100 parts per 

21 billion. That’s what, so whenever you see 

22 anything in uranium in urine, you can figure 

23 out what the intake was for plutonium. Now my 

24 question is in that number, that 100, 

25 represents some number within some 
192

1 distributional values. How wide is that 

2 distribution? Is it some numbers that are up 

3 to 10,000 or are we talking about a relatively 

4 tight distribution around that 100? 

5 MR. RICH: It’s not a tight distribution. 

6 DR. MAURO: It’s not a tight distribution. 

7 DR. NETON: They can go pretty high. 

8 DR. MAURO: But it can go pretty high. Then 

9 again, the extent to which, one of the things 

10 I would like to do, and I think is worth 

11 doing, is that are there scenarios -- I said 

12 this before, but I think it’s important to say 

13 again in light of the answer to your questions 

14 -- are there scenarios where it seems 

15 plausible that a person could have been 

16 exposed for a protracted period of time 

17 because of where he worked and when he worked. 

18 Or he might have been exposed to something 

19 well above the 100 parts per billion or is 

20 that something that you really could rule out. 

21 It just doesn’t seem to be something that 

22 could have happened. And the extent to which 

23 we could look into that I think it would 

24 benefit everyone. 

25 DR. NETON: I think remember though that 
193

1 you’re applying this value to every urine 

2 sample in ^ intakes for the entire work 

3 history. 

4 DR. MAURO: Oh, that. Do you remember 

5 though, see, I keep going back. The recurring 

6 theme in my mind is that every worker needs to 

7 be treated and given the benefit of the doubt. 

8 And when you’re in a situation where you don’t 

9 know, there might be a worker, we’re dealing 

10 with a real person now. 

11 DR. NETON: I understand what you’re saying. 

12 DR. MAURO: And so do we know that he did 

13 not have this job where he was exposed for two 

14 years continuously to a thousand parts per 

15 billion of plutonium. Now, you could say, no, 

16 that can’t happen for the following reasons. 

17 DR. NETON: I think you not only need to 

18 look at the range of the values but the 

19 distribution of the masses associated with 

20 those values. 

21 DR. MAURO: Yeah, that’s true. 

22 DR. NETON: It’s very important. 

23 DR. MAURO: If it’s only a very small 

24 fraction, then the averaging works. It’s all 

25 commonsense, you know? 
194

1 DR. NETON: We’ll take a look at it. 

2 MR. CLAWSON: There’s a, people were sampled 

3 usually on their birthday, wasn’t it? Wasn’t 

4 that when they did their medical or their 

5 bioassay or, I’m trying to think. The reason 

6 I say that is because -- 

7 DR. NETON: It might be more associated with 

8 your start date at the plant. 

9 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, something like that. 

10 They had a process that every year you -- 

11 DR. NETON: An annual physical once a year. 

12 MR. CLAWSON: Once a year, and you come 

13 forth. Out to our place it’s on our birthday, 

14 and that’s why I’m bringing that up. If 

15 somebody came up with a uranium uptake, that 

16 would stay in their systems for a year, 

17 wouldn’t it? Or would it -- 

18 DR. NETON: It may be below the detection 

19 limit by that point. But remember, our 

20 program assigns a missed dose, a missed intake 

21 based on what the urine could have been and 

22 not been detected. In other words we’ll give 

23 you credit for the fact that you may have had 

24 a chronic intake, but your urine cleared just 

25 below a detectable level which in itself is a 
195

1 fairly claimant-favorable approach. 

2 MS. BALDRIDGE: I have a comment on that. I 

3 got my father’s urinalysis and bioassay 

4 information, and it seems to me that the 

5 frequency of the testing leaves a lot of 

6 questions about what exposures were received 

7 when, especially in regard to the discovery of 

8 the renal damage, the chronic glomular (sic) 

9 nephritis or whatever that was diagnosed in 

10 December that had gone, I mean, his exposure 

11 to that level hadn’t even been discovered 

12 until they did the urinalysis. 

13 And what was brought up before is what 

14 effect does that, the development of a renal 

15 condition have on the possible excretion rate 

16 of the urine. Now, there’s some reports that 

17 say there’s no such thing, but it doesn’t 

18 identify the conditions that they were 

19 examining either. And that some conditions 

20 are reversible. Well, if the condition only 

21 involved inflammation of the certain aspects 

22 in the kidneys, then that could clear. 

23 But there were other conditions, the 

24 chronic glomular (sic) nephritis which 

25 involves scarring of certain portions of the 
196

1 glomular (sic) whatever in the kidney that 

2 would affect the ability to excrete and the 

3 fact that salts, which are your soluble forms, 

4 are retained in the kidney. So -- 

5 DR. NETON: I’d like to answer your 

6 question, but I think that’s subject of a 

7 whole additional discussion in this working 

8 group that it might be best taken up at that 

9 time if that’s okay with you because this 

10 could go on for another -- 

11 MS. BALDRIDGE: Well, it kind of came up 

12 before but -- 

13 MR. GRIFFON: Well, we still have it on, 

14 yeah. 

15 DR. NETON: It’s going to be discussed. 

16 MS. BALDRIDGE: Well, see, I don’t have any 

17 paperwork so I don’t know what’s on there. 

18 MR. RICH: I just looked at some of this 

19 data again. The bootstrap mean comes up 

20 fairly close to the average -- 

21 DR. BEHLING: Arithmetic average? 

22 DR. MAURO: The geometric mean, or the 

23 geometric mean? 

24 MR. RICH: Geometric, let me give you the 

25 simply looking at the -- 
197

1 MR. GRIFFON: Can you sort of -- 

2 MR. RICH: -- this is the category for the -

3 - 

4 DR. ZIEMER: Why don’t we just have -- 

5 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, an action to follow up. 

6 DR. ZIEMER: -- NIOSH to supply that to SC&A 

7 and let them look at it. We can’t resolve 

8 that. 

9 DR. WADE: We need to get back to business. 

10 There’s a proposal for how to proceed. 

11 MR. CLAWSON: Well, let’s make sure we’ve 

12 got the action -- 

13 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I just have an action on 

14 that just so we can all see that maybe, Bryce, 

15 maybe we -- 

16 MR. RICH: I think so. This is just a, this 

17 is an appendix. We can take a look at it 

18 afterwards. 

19 MR. GRIFFON: I have, and maybe this is a 

20 bad idea, but NIOSH to provide data -- 

21 DR. WADE: Okay, we need to stay with the -- 

22 hey, guys. 

23 MR. GRIFFON: I have an action for NIOSH to 

24 provide data used to devise the average values 

25 presented in the white paper -parentheses- DOE 
198

1 Mass Balance Report with appropriate 

2 appendices. And then SC&A will review this 

3 data. And I think that’s some of what we’re 

4 doing on the sideline here, but I think we 

5 need to do it that way. 

6 MR. CLAWSON: Do you understand what you’re 

7 being tasked with, both sides? 

8 MR. GRIFFON: Is that okay, Mark? 

9 MR. ROLFES: Yes, the DOE reports that were 

10 used in our white paper and the appendices 

11 that will allow you to review the 

12 bootstrapping and arithmetic mean, et cetera. 

13 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, sounds great. 

14 MR. RICH: I think it’s on the O drive. We 

15 can give them reference to -- 

16 MR. CHEW: I think you ought to mention 

17 where I find it. There was an error actually 

18 in the 2000 report that we actually discovered 

19 because it was not peer reviewed before it was 

20 published. Remember Bryce, when we did the 

21 background on that, and remember it was a 

22 factor of a thousand off ^. 

23 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I’ve seen that actually. 

24 MR. CHEW: I just wanted to make sure don’t 

25 get ^. 
199

1 DR. MAURO: One of the things we talked 

2 about that’s related to that, and I would 

3 suggest, is that this business we talked about 

4 why measure a central tendency for it’s 

5 reasonable given the nature of the work at the 

6 site. In other words you folks have probably 

7 a pretty good idea of who handled these 

8 materials and under what conditions and what 

9 times and why you believe over the time period 

10 any given worker might have been involved. 

11 The overwhelming argument can be made 

12 that he’s going to experience something close 

13 to the geometric mean or central tendency as 

14 opposed to being chronically exposed to a 

15 high-end number. I mean, I don’t know the 

16 degree to which that is a tractable question 

17 that could be answered, but in my mind it was 

18 an important question. 

19 MR. GRIFFON: First silence we’ve heard in 

20 the room. 

21 DR. ZIEMER: These deep questions bring us 

22 to a halt, John. 

23 MR. CLAWSON: We’ve discussed the 

24 raffinates. To tell you the truth I really 

25 don’t understand where we’re at in the -- 
200

1 DR. WADE: Do you have a third? 

2 “Comparison of FMPC Hardcopy Bioassay Records to the HIS3 20 Database”

4 MR. ROLFES: The HIS-20 comparison, that’s 

5 five slides, so you can just go through that. 

6 MR. GRIFFON: It gets to the question of the 

7 data integrity question we raised, right? 

8 DR. WADE: Just one little page. 

9 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, one single sheet for 

10 everyone. I believe I had five slides. This 

11 was just a summarization of the comparison of 

12 the Fernald hard copy bioassay records to the 

13 HIS-20 Database. The purpose and background 

14 was to compare the available hard copy 

15 bioassay records to the HIS-20 database. This 

was discussed at the October 24th 16 , 2007, 

17 working group meeting. The paper contained 

18 details about HIS-20 and its predecessor 

19 databases. Actual comparison was to data 

20 extracted by DOE and imported into MicroSoft 

21 ACCESS. Comparison assumed that all results 

22 in hard copy were intended to be in HIS-20. 

23 I don’t know if we have Gene Potter on 

24 the phone, no, we don’t have him on the phone. 

25 Gene Potter was the individual who had done 
201

1 quite a bit of the cross-comparison work for 

2 us. 

3 The method of comparison, we used 33 

4 PDF files which were acquired for comparison. 

5 There were a few already in the site research 

6 database that allowed us to get a head start 

7 on this. We used the method a military 

8 standard 105A. It was sampling by attributes. 

9 And in this method the user specifies the 

10 acceptable quality level, the batch size, the 

11 type of inspection, whether it’s a normal or 

12 reduced or a tightened analysis. 

13 The standard gives the sample size, 

14 the number of unacceptable results permitted 

15 to meet an acceptable quality level of one 

16 percent. Attachment A of the white paper has 

17 the procedure in it, and this is also 

18 documented in the Fernald HIS-20 Comparisons19 dot-X-L-S, a spreadsheet. It’s an Excel 

20 spreadsheet that’s been put out on the O drive 

21 in the AB-doc-^ view folder. 

22 The results of the comparison are 

23 listed here in this next slide for the decade. 

24 We were asked to review a sampling of results 

25 from the ‘50s, the ‘60s, the ‘70s and the 
202

1 ‘80s. In all, we reviewed a total of 33 PDF 

2 documents. 

3 MR. GRIFFON: What does that mean, Mark? 

4 What are PDF documents? What’s in them? 

5 MR. ROLFES: That would have been a series 

6 of scanned hard copy urinalysis results. We 

7 would have captured those in data. For 

8 example, like the handwritten data cards that 

9 contained the raw data, the uranium bioassay 

10 data. 

11 Let’s see, and this gives our results 

12 here. Let’s see, the number of files less the 

13 subcontractors and alpha/beta results. I 

14 would have to default hopefully to Mel maybe 

15 to explain this. And also we’ve got the 

16 number of files that met an acceptable quality 

17 level of one percent. Out of the 33 PDF files 

18 minus the ones that, let’s see, we had 25 

19 files after removing subcontractors and 

20 alpha/beta results. Out of those 25, 20 files 

21 met an acceptable quality level of one 

22 percent. 

23 So the conclusions, eight files were 

24 primarily subcontractor urinalysis data for 

25 alpha/beta urinalysis results that were not in 
203

1 HIS-20. Twenty of the 25 remaining met an 

2 acceptable quality level of one percent. The 

3 five files that did not meet the acceptable 

4 quality level were unlikely to result in any 

5 significant change to the coworker study. 

6 Overall, 90 percent of the results 

7 were matched, and this was 1,627 results out 

8 of 1,800 total. And I said I’d like to 

9 reiterate that the white paper and the files 

10 are on the O drive for any more detailed 

11 review. 

12 MR. GRIFFON: You said the white paper and 

13 the PDF files are on the -- 

14 MR. ROLFES: The PDF files and the Excel 

15 spreadsheet as well. 

16 MR. GRIFFON: Can you tell us anything about 

17 the last item, and I guess 90 percent of the 

18 results were matched, and 80 percent of the 

19 files were an acceptable quality level, right? 

20 Is that what you’re kind of saying? 

21 MR. ROLFES: Correct, 90 percent of the 

22 results were matched and 20 out of 25 met an 

23 acceptable quality level of one percent. 

24 MR. GRIFFON: I mean, did you -- I didn’t 

25 look at this detailed white paper, so I don’t 
204

1 know if you, anything on the ten percent, I 

2 mean, was there any kind of bias in the ones 

3 that weren’t published? Were they high or low 

4 or there’s no trend at all. I don’t know if 

5 you looked at that kind of detail. 

6 MR. ROLFES: I apologize. I have not looked 

7 at this. 

8 MR. GRIFFON: And I don’t know if it’s in 

9 the paper. I’m catching up, too. 

10 MR. ROLFES: I do have some notes here on 

11 the description of the five files that did not 

12 meet the acceptable quality level. And I can 

13 go ahead and read those. 

14 For Reference ID 31-69, this file 

15 consisted of 1952 to 1953 fluorometric 

16 analyses for uranium which were conducted by 

17 the New York Operations Office Health and 

18 Safety Division. After failing to meet the 

19 acceptable quality level, the file was given a 

20 100 percent inspection. The results showed 

21 that 84.2 percent of the results in the file 

were in HIS-20. The 50th and 95th 22 percentile 

23 results for these data were identical with and 

24 without the missing data. 

25 MR. GRIFFON: So that speaks to the -- 
205

1 MR. ROLFES: So we went to a more detailed 

2 focus. We went to a more detailed inspection 

3 when they didn’t meet the acceptable quality 

4 level for the 100 percent. 

5 Then I have additional details as well 

6 for the Reference ID 40-322. This was a file 

7 from 1961 through 1963 bioassay analytical 

8 datasheets. Since it was obvious, based on a 

9 spot check, that the acceptable quality level 

10 would not be met, the file was given a 100 

11 percent inspection. Only 69 percent of the 

12 results were in HIS-20. Since it was a 

13 relatively small file, this amounts to only 70 

14 missing results. 

15 Some of the results in this file seem 

16 to be samples collected to monitor the 

17 effectiveness of workplace controls rather 

18 than as the bioassay of record for the 

19 employees. Most site employees in this file 

20 have other 1961 through 1963 results in HIS20. The 50th and 95th 21 percentile results for 

22 these data were very close with and without 

23 the missing data. And it refers back to the 

24 table within the paper in the main paper. 

25 I can go through the additional next 
206

1 two reference ID numbers that were inspected. 

2 Excuse me just a second. 

3 Reference ID 40-389 and Reference ID 

4 40-390, these files were for the first and 

5 second quarter of 1957. Neither file met an 

6 acceptable quality level of one percent but 

7 would have met an acceptable quality level of 

8 four percent. Since the files contained 

9 nearly 900 pages of results, 100 percent 

10 inspection was ruled out. Instead queries of 

11 the HIS-20 database for the same time periods 

were performed. From these queries the 50th 12 , 

84th and 95th 13 percentiles were calculated. The 

14 eight missing or incorrect results in the two 

15 files were distributed around the respective 

50th 16 percentiles although one result was above 

the 84th 17 percentile. The problem with missing 

18 data seems to be confined to the first two 

19 quarters of 1957. 

20 The third, Reference ID 40-391, and 

21 fourth, Reference ID 40-392, quarters of 1957 

22 met the acceptable quality level. And the 

23 fifth Reference ID, 40-399, this file was only 

24 six pages long and consisted of August through 

25 September of 1958 in-house uranium urine 
207

1 samples. This file contained multiple samples 

2 on only two individuals. HIS sampling is 

3 typical of that following an incident. 

4 The first individual had 36 samples 

5 collected over a three-day period which are 

6 not included in HIS-20. To determine a 

7 possible effect on a coworker study a query of 

8 all uranium fluorometric results in HIS-20 for 

9 the same time period was performed. Of the 36 

missing results, 11 were above the 50th 10 

11 percentile of the data in HIS-20. Four were 

equal to the 50th 12 percentile, and 21 were below 

the 50th 13 percentile. One of the results was 

equal to the 84th 14 percentile. 

15 The second individual had five samples 

16 collected over a two-day period which were not 

17 included in HIS-20. However, there is an 

18 entry in HIS-20 for the first of the two days 

19 that is very close to the weighted average of 

20 the five results. 

21 DR. BEHLING: May I ask you some questions 

22 about, I guess I’m looking at the white paper 

23 and I looked at it very carefully. Somewhat 

24 at a loss to understand what an acceptable 

25 quality level is. When you talk about a one 
208

1 percent, you define here as AQL of one percent 

2 consisting of ^ results and a hard copy to the 

3 results of HIS-20. An AQL of one was 

4 selected. 

5 And I guess what constitutes something 

6 that exceeds that limit? Is it the absence of 

7 that particular file being incorporated into 

8 the HIS-20 database? Is it an error in the 

9 transcription when it is actually there? What 

10 constitutes something that is a deficiency 

11 because I can see the whole file not being 

12 there. 

13 And you already mentioned in a couple 

14 instances there were files missing. In other 

15 instances there is a slip in a decimal point 

16 or the transcription. What constitutes this 

17 value of one percent? 

18 MR. ROLFES: Well, let’s see. I don’t know 

19 if I’ll be able to answer that. We do have 

20 the procedure documented, and I might not be 

21 able to provide a response to you today. So 

22 in that case I can simply get back to you via 

23 e-mail or a phone call. 

24 DR. BEHLING: I mean, you can certainly 

25 understand if a file is missing in its 
209

1 entirety. That’s a lot worse than having a 

2 mistake of 0.01 microgram per liter having 

3 some smaller value on either side of that. 

4 They might both be construed as an error, but 

5 one is considerably more significant than the 

6 other. 

7 MR. ROLFES: Sure, I certainly understand. 

8 Let me see if I can find, I do have a 

9 procedure somewhere here. 

10 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, it’s in the appendix, 

11 Attachment A gives you the procedure. 

12 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: ^ 

13 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, maybe that’d be the best 

14 way to resolve this is to have a discussion on 

15 this specifically. 

16 DR. BEHLING: In fact, here they seem to 

17 suggest that even a misrepresentation of a 

18 name on a file could constitute, but that 

19 really would have no impact in your coworker 

model which attempts to assess the 50th 20 

21 percentile, et cetera, so while some errors 

22 may have no impact, others may have 

23 significant impact. 

24 MR. CHEW: I think we’re suggesting a call 

25 with Gene -- 
210

1 MR. GRIFFON: Why don’t we have a technical 

2 call? It won’t be a work group call, but 

3 we’ve done this in the past meetings. I think 

4 it works well to just have a technical call 

5 with maybe a Board representative on it. We 

6 can work that out, but set up a technical 

7 call. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: It was my impression that 

9 they’re not assessing the impact. It’s 

10 whether or not the data match. 

11 DR. BEHLING: Yes. 

12 DR. ZIEMER: Within certain rules because 

13 one dataset was rounded or truncated I think 

14 in so many places and the other was carried 

15 out but they didn’t match because of that, 

16 that was not an error. It wasn’t my 

17 impression that they were assessing the impact 

18 of -- what you’re saying is exactly true. 

19 DR. BEHLING: But it really does. It does, 

20 for instance, in Table 3 in the white paper 

21 under Reference ID 43-22. You get comparisons 

22 for all the results minus the ones that are in 

23 the HIS database, and you see the differences 

between the 50th percentile and the 95th 24 

25 percentile. They’re very close, and obviously 
211

1 if they were to match even though there are 

2 files missing it wouldn’t matter because, in 

3 essence, the numbers are identical. 

4 DR. ZIEMER: But that’s done after the fact, 

5 right? I mean the one percent is just a match 

6 versus a mismatch, I believe. A mismatch 

7 could be a wrong number or a missing number. 

8 DR. BEHLING: Or a name is misspelled in 

9 which case it has no impact. 

10 MR. CLAWSON: So I guess as an action item 

11 do we want to set up between SC&A and NIOSH a 

12 technical call then? 

13 DR. BEHLING: Well, you know, I have to 

14 admit. I looked at this very carefully. I 

15 took notes, but I did not really go to 

16 Attachment A which provides you with the 

17 procedure. And before we invest a lot of 

18 time, let me at least look through this and 

19 see if I can answer my own question. 

20 MR. GRIFFON: Well, not only that go 

21 through, but maybe SC&A can provide a written 

22 review with any outstanding questions. And 

23 then if we need a technical call beyond that, 

24 then we do it. 

25 MR. CLAWSON: We can do that. Would that be 
212

1 fine by everybody? 

2 (Whereupon, there was general agreement.) 

3 MR. GRIFFON: Where was that? Oh, I’ll find 

4 the matrix. 

5 MR. CLAWSON: Mark, I’ve got a question. 

6 I’m looking at your white paper, and I’m 

7 trying to understand something under the 

8 exposure study. I’ve just got Plant 2 and 3, 

9 1967, but part of my thing is I’ve got 

10 information down, and it says that it’s an 

11 average for, and I’ve got a lot of blanks in 

12 the process. And something that I find 

13 interesting is the denitration (ph) operator, 

14 all of a sudden I’ve got the 1962 is blank. 

15 Nineteen sixty-five is 0.3. ‘Sixty-six is 

16 0.2. ‘Sixty-seven’s 0.5. 

17 DR. ZIEMER: What table are we looking at? 

18 MR. CLAWSON: We’re looking at -- 

19 MR. ROLFES: -- white paper. 

20 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, we’re looking at that 

21 white paper. It’s on page 23. I just picked 

22 one of those. I was just wondering why 

23 there’d be blanks. Because if this was an 

24 average of all the operators, I didn’t know 

25 how they’d end up with zeros I guess. It’s 
213

1 Exposure Study for Plant 2 and 3, 1967. 

2 MR. ROLFES: Okay, this is back to the 

3 recycled uranium. We were discussing the HIS4 20 -- 

5 MR. CLAWSON: Right, I apologize. Let me -- 

6 and I apologize. I shouldn’t have jumped back 

7 like that. I was just wondering about the 

8 zeros in there. They’re not zeros. They’re 

9 just dashes. There’s nothing there. And if 

10 this was an average over everybody, everybody 

11 got zero or? 

12 MR. SHARFI: What page? 

13 MR. CLAWSON: Page 23. I just, it’s 

14 throughout all these, and I was just wondering 

15 how this implements into the -- because when 

16 it comes down to the bottom, it has an average 

17 for each one of these years. I’ve got a lot 

18 of blank spots in numerous ones of these. 

19 MR. CHEW: You’re on page? 

20 MR. CLAWSON: Twenty-three. 

21 MR. ROLFES: Exposure Study for Plant 2 and 

22 3. 

23 MR. CLAWSON: Right, I’m just wondering if -

24 - 

25 MR. ROLFES: This might be because was that 
214

1 the time period when that operation might not 

2 have been operating? Is that it? 

3 MR. RICH: No, I think, they don’t have a 

4 measurement in 1962. For example, for the ^ 

5 operators, and your question is how did they 

6 get an average? 

7 MR. CLAWSON: Well, yeah, they’re getting 

8 average, and they’ve got one for ’62 but not 

9 for ’65. 

10 MR. ROLFES: Brad, the footnote down at the 

11 bottom it says denotes classification did not 

12 exist or was included in another job 

13 classification, so that’s -- 

14 MR. CLAWSON: Oh, so they -- 

15 MR. ROLFES: Job title. 

16 MR. RICH: So it’s a job title change. 

17 MR. ROLFES: The job title didn’t exist. A 

18 combined raffinate operator was not the job 

19 title at the time. They might have been 

20 included in the digestion operator category. 

21 That’s simply what it is. 

22 MR. CLAWSON: I kind of looked at that, but 

23 I thought you’d always have an area foreman. 

24 I’ve got one for ’62 and one for ’67, but ’65 

25 and ’66 it’s not there. That’s why that kind 
215

1 of threw me off a little bit. Of I guess, a 

2 foreman went to a -- 

3 MR. ROLFES: I’m not seeing where you’re 

4 referring to. I see above the foremen there’s 

5 a denitration operator, and there’s some 

6 dashes in ’60, ’61 and ’62. 

7 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, so what I’ve got is area 

8 foreman, one man -- 

9 MR. ROLFES: Are we on page -- 

10 MR. CLAWSON: Twenty-three. 

11 MR. ROLFES: Twenty-three, okay. 

12 MR. CLAWSON: I was just, it didn’t quite 

13 make sense to me. It’s, so it could have been 

14 combined back into another. 

15 MR. RICH: Yes. 

16 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, let’s see. I see. Area 

17 foreman, there’s a couple of dashes, but it 

18 could have been the digestion foremen or the 

19 denitration foremen. 

20 MR. CLAWSON: They could have been put into 

21 that category. Okay, I was trying to -- 

22 MR. ROLFES: Just a change, a change in job 

23 classification. It says it denotes 

24 classification did not exist or was included 

25 in another job classification. 
216

1 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, I just, I know there’s 

2 always got to be foremen around. I was 

3 wondering what it got into. 

4 Do we have any other presentations, 

5 Mark, that -- 

6 MR. ROLFES: I don’t think we have any 

7 presentations so I don’t know if you’d like to 

8 go back to the matrix to see if there’s, I 

9 mean, whatever you would like to do. 

10 MR. CLAWSON: Well, I’d like to go back to 

11 the matrix to make sure that we’ve captured 

12 everything. 

13 MR. ROLFES: Would we like to take a comfort 

14 break before we do that? 

15 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think that’s a good 

16 idea. 

17 MR. CLAWSON: Sounds like a marvelous idea. 

18 DR. WADE: We’re going to take a break. 

19 Would you think maybe ten, 15 minutes? 

20 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

21 DR. WADE: We’ll just mute the phone. We’ll 

22 be back with you. 

23 (Whereupon, the working group took a break 

24 from 2:40 p.m. until 2:55 p.m.) 

25 DR. WADE: We’re back in session. 
217

1 Brad? 

2 MATRIX DISCUSSION

3 MR. CLAWSON: We’re going to start from the 

4 matrix. I want to make sure that we haven’t 

5 missed anything in Finding 4.1.1, we’ve gone 

6 over the RU white paper in quite detail. Next 

7 thing that we need to go over is this chemical 

8 toxicity of the uranium. And I believe Sandra 

9 brought this up a little bit sooner. 

10 So which one of you would like start 

11 on that one? 

12 MR. ROLFES: I guess I can give a brief 

13 update. I posted a couple of additional 

14 documents that Jim Neton had come across. One 

15 was a reevaluation of a case study that was 

16 done in 1990 by Zau* and Zau*. 

17 DR. NETON: This is a reference for Hans -- 

18 MR. ROLFES: Yes, correct. Hans had 

19 assembled a white paper to evaluate the 

20 potential for kidney toxicity from large 

21 uranium exposures, and he had cited a 1990 Zau 

22 and Zau Health Physics Journal article. That 

23 case study was actually just recently 

24 reevaluated and was documented in the Health 

25 Physics Journal from 2008, February of 2008. 
218

1 That document and another supporting reference 

2 were provided to the Advisory Board. We 

3 haven’t done any additional work on this, but 

4 we’re prepared to have any discussions that 

5 you’d like to have on it. 

6 DR. NETON: I’d just like to have a few 

7 comments. I missed the last meeting where 

8 this was discussed. And it’s a very important 

9 issue, and I think it’s a significant issue. 

10 The uranium toxicity rating which, of course, 

11 has been well established for decades. 

12 Toxicity effects known of uranium. 

13 But the two papers that Hans did cite 

14 I looked at in some detail and neither of 

15 them, at least in the eyes of the reviewers 

16 that I read, consider those to be evidence of 

17 acute chemical toxicity for uranium of the 

18 kidney. The Zau and Zau exposure was 

19 considered, at least by Ron Katherine to be 

20 more related to an overwhelming of the lungs 

21 with about a gram or more of exposure which is 

22 what they feel the intake would have been. 

23 And you see that in the beginning 

24 there was a low exposure, and the excretion 

25 started to increase over time. And I think 
219

1 that was the lung just sort recouping from 

2 this tremendous insult of a massive amount of 

3 uranium and then reaching into the stream and 

4 the kidney taking over. 

5 The other paper where the person had 

6 extremely low urinary outputs was considered 

7 to be mostly the result of dehydration. They 

8 had complete burns over a large portion of the 

9 body, and the person just desiccated from 

10 oozing out of the pores. It’s kind of a gory 

11 situation, but that was not necessarily the 

12 result of kidney toxicity. 

13 DR. BEHLING: No, and it wasn’t intended to 

14 even imply that. When I identified the Zau 

15 and Zau paper, it was really the first case 

16 that I wanted to draw attention to. And I 

17 think if I can elaborate a little bit, what 

18 struck me was that if you apply the ICRP 

19 model, excretion model, you would expect that 

20 the maximum excretion rates for any intake -- 

21 and they usually obviously model it on the 

22 basis of a very modest intake, respiratory 

23 intake. 

24 And if you ^ the ICRP data, you would 

25 expect the maximum excretion rate in the first 
220

1 day or two and then exponentially with a count 

2 that exponential gradually coming down. In 

3 the case of the Zau and Zau this was a massive 

4 intake. It did really result in some changes 

5 in urinary excretion patterns or urine 

6 constituency that would suggest some renal 

7 damage. And what you saw from day one through 

8 day 65 there was an almost a 30-fold increase 

9 from something like 100 and some, whatever 

10 units were, to over 3,000. Thereafter, it 

11 peaked and then came back down again. And 

12 that totally conflicts with the ICRP model 

13 which is based on a non-damaging intake, 

14 respiratory intake. 

15 DR. NETON: But again, at least Ron 

16 Katherine’s take on this, I believe this is 

17 borne out by the other paper, which I believe 

18 was the Royal Academy or Royal Society in 

19 Britain. I think they had similar conclusions 

20 that this was a large intake that affected the 

21 ability of the lungs to clear material. This 

22 is more reflective of that than kidney damage 

23 that occurred. I mean, at least the one in 

24 the peer review journal article, and I tend to 

25 agree with it that it really is not a 
221

1 nephrotoxicity issue. 

2 DR. MAURO: So there were no measures that 

3 indicated that it was some type of kidney 

4 dysfunction? 

5 DR. NETON: There was, but that was later 

6 on. That was way, way down the line. But 

7 that did not necessarily affect the kidney. 

8 That’s what I want to get to. That did not 

9 necessarily affect the ability of uranium to 

10 be excreted and follow the normal clearance 

11 path. Kidney toxicity in and of itself does 

12 not necessarily invalidate the metabolic model 

13 for uranium being excreted. 

14 There are, I think as Mrs. Baldridge 

15 pointed out, irritation, glomerulus nephritis, 

16 those kind of things, plugging of the ^ 

17 tubule, those kind of things that we all know. 

18 But they don’t necessarily in themselves 

19 invalidate the excretion as long as the 

20 urine’s coming out, being filtered at a 

21 regular rate. 

22 That being said though, there are 

23 several things to discuss. One is how would 

24 NIOSH handle a situation in which a person had 

25 abnormal kidney function irrespective of their 
222

1 exposure to uranium. They just had an 

2 abnormal process or something. And that, of 

3 course, would have to be handled, you’d have 

4 to treat that person essentially as an 

5 unmonitored worker at that point and rely on 

6 coworker data or something of that effect to 

7 reconstruct a dose. 

8 If you have a situation though where a 

9 person is exposed massively, I’d say a fairly 

10 large exposure in the workplace, then one 

11 would need to evaluate what possible effect it 

12 could have had on the kidneys and treat it 

13 that way at that point. Of course, you also 

14 treat that as unmonitored. You’d have to go 

15 to other means to assess exposure which would 

16 either be some air sampling data that might be 

17 available, source term, that sort of thing, to 

18 flesh out the rest of the story. 

19 I guess the crux of the question then 

20 is at what point is it decided that kidney 

21 damage is possible. It’s mostly considered to 

22 be possible only with soluble forms of 

23 uranium, UF-6s and that sort of thing. And 

24 that would have to be taken, you know, that 

25 would be one of the triage cut points. But 
223

1 it’s pretty well documented in like the health 

2 physics manual, good practice at the uranium 

3 facilities what these no effect levels might 

4 be. 

5 Correct me -- I know, Bryce, you were 

6 the author of that document. Is it one 

7 microgram per gram was considered at one point 

8 to be the no effect threshold level which 

9 would be any time you had above -- a kidney 

10 weighs about 300 grams, somewhere on the order 

11 of three-tenths of a milligram of one kidney, 

12 one might want to be looking for those 

13 effects. 

14 I’ve modeled this before in the past 

15 and for moderately soluble, insoluble form, 

16 you have to have some pretty massive intakes 

17 to get to that level in the kidney even under 

18 acute exposure scenario. So I’m not aware of 

19 any situation documented in the literature 

20 where under a routine occupational exposure 

21 scenario, kidney damage has occurred to the 

22 extent that it is invalidated or made not 

23 useful the standard metabolic model. 

24 And we see a lot of this in 

25 reconstructions going on in the past, and I’m 
224

1 not aware of any incidents under normal 

2 conditions. We wouldn’t have to account under 

3 these acute, you know, massive, acute exposure 

4 incidents. We’d have to look at this on a 

5 case-by-case basis. 

6 DR. BEHLING: And admittedly I looked 

7 through the literature extensively, and this 

8 was the only instance I found. But also, I 

9 should mention the fact that you don’t have a 

10 lot of data, human data, where a single acute 

11 exposure’s followed up by daily excretion 

12 rates either. So there isn’t a wealth of 

13 information that would suggest that this is an 

14 artifact, and this is abnormal. 

15 DR. NETON: I think Darryl Fisher* followed 

16 up a lot of people that worked at the Kerr17 McGee facility that had a massive release at 

18 one point. And I thought -- 

19 MR. ROLFES: First Fernald in 1966 with the 

20 big UF-6 release from the pilot plant. That 

21 was, I think we discussed that a little bit, 

22 and I believe we provided that to the Advisory 

23 Board as well on the O drive. I don’t recall 

24 the numbers off the top of my head, but there 

25 were several hundred bioassays following that 
225

incident on February 14th 1 , 1966. I think we 

2 did discuss some of the individuals had in 

3 excess of ten or 15 bioassays following that 

4 exposure. But that was pretty well documented 

5 and tracked. 

6 DR. BEHLING: And that study is where? 

7 MR. ROLFES: It’s on the O drive. It’s the 

8 1966 release of UF-6 from the pilot plant. 

9 And if I can get into my documents here, I 

10 will give you the exact title here. 

11 MR. RICH: There’ve been a number of studies 

12 associated with change in solubility from the 

13 lungs giving you markedly different 

14 elimination patterns ^. 

15 DR. NETON: We just published a ^ on uranium 

16 aluminide which looks very much like the 

17 excretion pattern that you observed for the 

18 Zau and Zau case, not quite maybe as 

19 pronounced, but the urine excretion continued 

20 to climb over time. 

21 MR. SHARFI: This was at Rocketdyne. 

22 DR. NETON: Uranium aluminide is kind of a 

23 strange composite material, but it behaves 

24 similar that way, and that’s really a function 

25 of the lung, the way the lung clears its 
226

1 materials. 

2 MR. RICH: It’s a solubility issue. 

3 MR. BEATTY: I think Sandy’s got some very 

4 important news you might want to hear on this. 

5 MS. BALDRIDGE: When I got a copy of the 

6 article, “Acute Chemical Toxicity of Uranium,” 

7 there was something in it that I didn’t 

8 particularly like. Near one of the back pages 

9 it said, “There are also no known long-term 

10 chemical injuries from uranium intake that are 

11 sub-lethal...,” end of quote. 

12 And then it goes on to say, “which 

13 would seem to imply that intakes of uranium no 

14 matter how large that did not cause death 

15 would not result in permanent kidney damage 

16 and further notes that permanent renal damage 

17 has never been observed in humans according to 

18 Athey*, 2007.” 

19 So I went online, and I called Mr. 

20 Athey, and I talked to him about it. And he 

21 felt that the person who wrote the paper had 

22 misrepresented the intent of the quote. And 

23 he further directed me to Mr. McGuire who also 

24 co-authored that paper, and he gave me the 

25 resource material. And it seems that the 
227

1 determinations were based on two individual 

2 cases in China and that all the research that 

3 had been done was based on acute exposure and 

4 not chronic exposure. 

5 So I’m sure that there are some 

6 aspects of this that have not ever been 

7 discovered. And when I went on to tell him 

8 about the 17 men in pilot plant in 1952, he 

9 was very interested because he didn’t know 

10 that there had ever been an incident where 

11 more than one or two individuals had been 

12 exposed at a single time. And I said, well, 

13 you said that it never caused death. 

14 I realize uranium poisoning hasn’t 

15 caused death, I said, but do you, you know, 

16 what would make it permanent, a permanent 

17 condition? My father was still being tested 

18 12 years later. His urinalysis was still 

19 showing casts, levels of protein, so forth, to 

20 the point that right before he retired, he was 

21 being checked every week, every two weeks to 

22 monitor the renal condition. You know, maybe 

23 21 uranium urinalysis out of 60 urinalysis 

24 results over a timeframe. They were looking, 

25 they were watching something. So the fact 
228

1 that when he died he still had it made it 

2 permanent as far as I was concerned. 

3 DR. NETON: I guess I don’t want to get into 

4 too many specifics here, but was there an 

5 incident, a large exposure incident associated 

6 with your father’s condition? 

7 MS. BALDRIDGE: Well, there were 17 men who 

8 were exposed in the pilot plant in 1972, 100 

9 percent of whom were determined to have renal 

10 damage. The document is in the petition. My 

11 father was not one of those 17. 

12 DR. NETON: He was not one of the exposed. 

13 MS. BALDRIDGE: He was not one that was 

14 recognized to be exposed. 

15 DR. NETON: So I guess the question is then 

16 was there any evidence of, in the urine -- 

17 your father was presumably monitored for 

18 uranium in urine over time. 

19 MS. BALDRIDGE: Right. 

20 DR. NETON: Was there any evidence in his 

21 urine samples of increased excretion of 

22 uranium in urine? 

23 MS. BALDRIDGE: Not necessarily uranium. 

24 DR. NETON: I guess the question is then how 

25 does one know whether the kidney damage was 
229

1 caused by uranium exposure or some natural -- 

2 MS. BALDRIDGE: Because he didn’t have it 

3 and he had it within the first year of his 

4 employment. 

5 DR. NETON: But again, I guess it’s an open 

6 question. 

7 MS. BALDRIDGE: And it was diagnosed by the 

8 plant -- 

9 DR. NETON: I’m not questioning if the 

10 uranium and kidney damage was there, but if it 

11 was -- 

12 MS. BALDRIDGE: -- and they attributed it to 

13 exposure. 

14 DR. NETON: That’s been documented in the 

15 file? 

16 MS. BALDRIDGE: Yes. 

17 DR. NETON: I’d like to see that. 

18 MR. ROLFES: Did you bring those medical -- 

19 MS. BALDRIDGE: Yes, I did. 

20 MR. ROLFES: To address what you had asked 

21 about the exposure studies for individuals who 

22 were chronically exposed, at the last working 

23 group meeting we did discuss a little bit of 

24 some of the autopsy data and some of the 

25 studies that were done for individuals. 
230

1 They had not found any indication that 

2 individuals who were exposed to large 

3 quantities of uranium had any observable 

4 effects on kidney function or the physiology 

5 of the kidney. The case study that was quoted 

6 by SC&A in their review was, in fact, an acute 

7 exposure scenario, and it’s been reevaluated 

8 in this current journal. 

9 MS. BALDRIDGE: There’s also a document that 

10 talks about the effect that the uranium has on 

11 the proteins and the glucose and how the cell 

12 damage causes, when the cell ruptures, it 

13 releases the proteins and so forth from the 

14 cytoplasm which all are evidenced in the 

15 urine. 

16 DR. NETON: That’s fairly well established. 

17 I understand that. But as I mentioned before, 

18 there are at least reference studies that 

19 demonstrate or at least indicate that it takes 

20 a certain amount of uranium exposure to 

21 initiate any observable damage, and those 

22 levels have been fairly well documented. And 

23 they would be fairly large exposures that 

24 would result in urinary excretion of uranium. 

25 I don’t know where to go other than one can 
231

1 calculate the level of exposure necessary to 

2 start to have these changes in the kidney. 

3 And I think it would have to have some fairly 

4 high level of exposure to result in those -- 

5 MS. BALDRIDGE: And if that’s the case, he 

6 was not, you know that wasn’t documented for 

7 him, the exposure rate -- 

8 DR. NETON: Well, if there was uranium in 

9 the urine samples, but -- 

10 MS. BALDRIDGE: --especially since the 

11 exposure, the incident that involved the 17 

12 men was estimated to be in August. His 

13 urinalysis was done the end of December. 

14 MR. ROLFES: The 17 individuals, I did look 

15 back in the HIS-20 database and took a look 

16 through some of the urinalyses that were 

17 documented in there for the 17 individuals 

18 that were involved in the pilot plant work. I 

19 don’t believe it was one small release that 

20 occurred in the pilot plant in 1952. It was a 

21 series of chronic exposures that occurred in 

22 August and September of 1952. The individuals 

23 that were working in the pilot plant, there 

24 are some high exposures that certainly are, 

25 there are a couple of exposures that were in 
232

1 excess of one milligram per liter, but there 

2 are data there. 

3 Getting back to what we were referring 

4 to before, I had mentioned the urinalysis 

5 results for the individuals who were involved 

6 in the 1966 release of UF-6. We have a 

7 National Lead of Ohio document indicating 

8 urinalysis results for the AEC employees who 

9 were involved. And there are individuals who 

10 had, let’s see, for one of the AEC employees 

following the 1966 release on February 14th 11 , 

12 he’d provided four separate urine samples on 

that, on the 14th 13 , three urine samples on the 

15th, a urine sample on the 16th 14 , another on 

the 17th, another on the 18th 15 , and his final 

16 one that’s documented in this report was on 

the 21st 17 , so one week after. But I haven’t 

18 gone into HIS-20 to see if they were monitored 

19 beyond this time period. But there were some 

20 pretty close, if there was an incident that 

21 occurred, they did track these urine samples 

22 to make sure that -- 

23 DR. ZIEMER: What about the excretion 

24 patterns on this group of 17? Do they look 

25 like the normal models or do they -- 
233

1 MR. ROLFES: Yes, they, all of them start 

2 off from UF-6 which is fairly soluble, gets 

3 into the bloodstream pretty quickly. It’s 

4 excreted pretty rapidly. And all these 

5 individuals, I think all of them listed on 

6 this page, their highest results appear to be 

on the first day, on the 14th 7 , so on the day of 

8 the release. 

9 DR. NETON: One of the issues with exposure 

10 to UF-6 is it’s also usually accompanied by 

11 exposure to hydrochloric acid because UF-6 

12 oxidizes in air immediately and forms UO2F2 

13 and hydrochloric acid. And that definitely 

14 can influence your lung clearance and make 

15 patterns look somewhat different, but it’s not 

16 related to chemical issues with the kidney; 

17 it’s lung clearance issues. 

18 MS. BALDRIDGE: Since you bring up lung 

19 clearance, another, you know, looking through 

20 my father’s case, another thing he was exposed 

21 to is nitric oxide. And they didn’t discover 

22 until 1986 that it causes vasodilation in the 

23 lung and increases the capacity of the lung. 

24 Now it seems to me that it’s a possibility 

25 that if the lung tissue is dilated, it allows 
234

1 a greater absorption. But when the exposure 

2 to NO is diminished, it would present a 

3 situation where there could be folds in which 

4 particulates could have been captured because 

5 those portions of the lung aren’t normally 

6 expanded. 

7 MR. ROLFES: That’s an interesting, there 

8 are some agents that are given, it almost 

9 sounds as if you’re saying that this could be 

10 like a kelating agent. If you have uranium 

11 that’s deposited in your lung tissues, if 

12 vasodilation occurred, that would seem that it 

13 would expedite the clearance of uranium from 

14 the lung tissue and speed up the amount of -- 

15 excuse me, speed up the amount excreted. So 

16 by doing that it would impart less dose to the 

17 organs because the uranium wasn’t residing in 

18 the tissues quite as long. 

19 DR. BEHLING: Well, it would be the 

20 opposite. You would transfer much more 

21 rapidly the uranium from the ^ to the blood 

22 meaning that it’s more likely to ^ in the 

23 kidney, and therefore, do the damage in the 

24 kidneys. 

25 DR. NETON: But you’d also get a much higher 
235

1 uranium output which would overestimate your 

2 intake. 

3 DR. BEHLING: Well, but the kidney damage 

4 only occurs when you have blood-borne uranium 

5 that is now either ^ the kidney or goes to -- 

6 DR. NETON: I understand, but you do need to 

7 have a certain level of uranium where you 

8 start to see kidney damage. And we can do 

9 those calculations if you want to go through 

10 this in a working group. But it takes a 

11 considerable amount of intake to get the 

12 kidney damage. 

13 DR. BEHLING: But for a given, let’s say a 

14 large intake, you have an intake, the addition 

15 of bronchodilation and increase of blood flow 

16 would obviously imply one thing. There is a 

17 much more rapid clearance by transfer -- 

18 DR. NETON: That’s all speculation, Hans, 

19 and I don’t know. I mean, we’re speculating 

20 in biology and none of us can prove theory. 

21 MS. BALDRIDGE: But what it does present is 

22 an unknown factor. 

23 DR. NETON: True, but this is one of the 

24 reasons we have a GSD, a geometric standard 

25 deviation, associated with our defined dose 
236

1 estimates because we don’t know all these 

factors. It’s also another reason why the 99th 2 

3 percentile is used for a compensation decision 

4 in this program. So there’s a number of 

5 safety nets built into the program to account 

6 for some of this variability in the biology. 

7 (no response) 

8 DR. NETON: Boy, I must have answered 

9 everything. 

10 MR. GRIFFON: I don’t know where to take it. 

11 I’ve actually brought up the HF issue from way 

12 back in Mallinckrodt, and ICRP-66 does a lot 

13 of U-2 to use modifying factors, and I don’t 

14 know if anybody has a sense of what, in 

15 looking at that we could do a couple things. 

16 I mean, I wasn’t clear exactly what it would 

17 do on lung doses or other doses so this could 

18 be another one of those things that fits in 

19 that category. Maybe it’s something should be 

20 deferred to our science issues, that’s your 

21 category, right? 

22 DR. NETON: It’s something that -- 

23 MR. GRIFFON: Have to give you something to 

24 do here. 

25 DR. NETON: --I don’t know if we’re going to 
237

1 address it with the known information as it 

2 stands. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: I’ll just add a comment which 

4 won’t really enlighten us that much more, but 

5 Sandra makes a good point about the fact that 

6 there are many chemicals, in fact, that we 

7 know can alter the metabolism. And the only 

8 way we can currently account for these is the 

9 way Jim described, and that is by assuming a 

10 big enough distribution and going up at the 

11 end of the distribution to in a way take care 

12 of those. But in principle, if we knew the 

13 concentration of the other chemicals and, in 

14 fact, had biological data that we could go to, 

15 which in most cases we don’t with the 

16 chemicals, we might be able to say how much a 

17 model was altered. 

18 MR. GRIFFON: See, that’s, ICRP-66 does have 

19 some -- 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Allows you to do that. But I’m 

21 saying you still need to know what the 

22 exposure to the other chemical was, number 

23 one, and, two, what the effects of that were. 

24 By and large for most chemicals we all know 

25 that. 
238

1 I know that the industrial hygienists 

2 sort of had that information most of which is 

3 based on animal data, like the uranium is 

4 mostly based on animal data, and extrapolated 

5 with usually a factor of ten thrown in to be 

6 on the safe side. So I mean, in principal we 

7 want to be able to do that, but in practice it 

8 is going to become very, very difficult even 

9 in individual cases unless you knew precisely 

10 what the other exposure was. 

11 MR. GRIFFON: And I mean, it’s also -- I 

12 would agree generally, Paul, but I think that 

13 there’s some, the reason I brought up HF was 

14 as Jim said, usually if you get exposure to 

15 UF-6, you, you know, once it’s in there you 

16 get UO2F2, and you’ve got HF. They’re always 

17 together. So that was a unique situation 

18 where you always have the chemical exposure 

19 with the radionuclide exposure. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: But what do you do with that, 

21 see. 

22 MR. GRIFFON: Well, and ICRP does have some 

23 guidance. 

24 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, and in fact, you could 

25 take that group of people, and if you could 
239

1 show that their excretion rate was different 

2 from the ICRP model, you could say, okay, 

3 here’s what you should do if you’ve had that 

4 kind of exposure. 

5 DR. NETON: I suspect in the long-run 

6 though, you’re talking about second, third 

7 order corrections here on something that we 

8 don’t really know that -- 

9 MR. GRIFFON: You may be right -- 

10 DR. NETON: I just made a list here -- 

11 MR. GRIFFON: -- you might do the analysis 

12 and see that your -- 

13 DR. NETON: We don’t know the ventilation 

14 rate for sure. We’re assuming 20 liters per 

15 minute. We don’t know the lung size. We’re 

16 assuming a thousand gram lung. Oronasal 

17 breathing has been brought up before as an 

18 issue. Mucociliar clearance rates that are 

19 affected by cigarette smoking are not 

20 considered. 

21 So there’s a number of factors such as 

22 this that are in there, and I’ll go back to my 

23 initial point what Dr. Ziemer mentioned is, 

24 that’s why we have uncertainties built into 

25 these models because in a program such as 
240

1 this, you just cannot possibly account for all 

2 these factors on an individual basis, I don’t 

3 think. I don’t disagree that it’s not 

4 something that NIOSH shouldn’t be aware of and 

5 consider to the extent we can, but I’m not 

6 real optimistic that we’re going to be able to 

7 do anything in this area although we certainly 

8 want to keep our eyes open for areas where we 

9 -- 

10 MR. GRIFFON: I think at least where there 

11 is -- I mean, we always say current ICRP 

12 guidelines, where there is guidance out there 

13 on certain modifying factors, we should 

14 consider that. 

15 DR. NETON: Yes, and where we have HF 

16 exposure, maybe we ought to take a look at 

17 that. I’m not saying we wouldn’t. At Fernald 

18 in my recollection there were very few HF 

19 exposures. I mean, we pulled out a couple 

20 here, but at least to most of my knowledge and 

21 the operating history of the plant, HF was not 

22 a big player, I mean UF-6 was not a big 

23 player. There’s limited, but unfortunately 

24 what they did do, they had a few unfortunate 

25 encounters with screwing valves on tanks and 
241

1 stuff. 

2 DR. ZIEMER: Could I ask one other question? 

3 And maybe Bryce or maybe Mark can answer this 

4 or Jim, but do any of you recall in the 

5 Uranium Transuranic Registry I know they have 

6 autopsies for some of these where they can 

7 relate to body burdens. What’s in the 

8 registry on those with heavy uranium burdens 

9 as far as the damage to the organ is 

10 concerned? 

11 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, we did have some, let’s 

12 see, I’ve got a paper here in front of me 

13 that’s titled “The Histological Kidney Study 

14 of Uranium and Non-uranium Workers”. And -- 

15 DR. ZIEMER: Is this from the registry? 

16 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, there’s comparison of 

17 case studies from the United States 

18 Transuranium and Uranium registries, and 

19 there’s specific cases in here that are 

20 compared. Their findings essentially said 

21 that there was no observable effects in the 

22 kidneys that were inspected from the exposed 

23 population versus the non-exposed population. 

24 DR. ZIEMER: Even in the heavy uranium 

25 cases? 
242

1 MR. ROLFES: Correct. They had considered -

2 - I will get back to, there’s some specific 

3 USTUR Case Number 10-40. He was a chemical 

4 operator and fuel operator who was employed 

5 for 31 years. He passed away in 1982 and was 

6 71 at the time of death. His estimated 

7 occupational exposure was tens of milligrams 

8 of uranium. 

9 DR. NETON: Just so Emily understands, this 

10 is peer-reviewed literature we’re working 

11 from. 

12 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, yeah. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Open literature. 

14 MR. ROLFES: There was a second chemical 

15 operator who had worked for approximately 26 

16 years, passed away in 1978 and was 49 at the 

17 age of death. He was exposed to hundreds of 

18 milligrams of uranium. A millwright who was 

19 exposed to tens of milligrams, and then on 

20 down to -- and then about seven specific USTUR 

21 cases, and then six individuals who had no 

22 occupational exposure to uranium. 

23 DR. NETON: They were in the USTUR? 

24 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, these were -- 

25 DR. NETON: They were controls. 
243

1 MR. ROLFES: These were controls and there 

2 are discussions of the microscopic kidney 

3 diagnostic scores that were conducted for the 

4 various cases. There were, let’s see, four 

5 abnormal findings in the unexposed population 

6 and three abnormal findings out of the seven 

7 in the exposed population. I believe this has 

8 been provided to -- let me verify that. 

9 I apologize. I’ve got many documents 

10 on my disk here. The title of this, it is a 

11 Health Physics Journal article, and it’s 

12 titled “Histological Kidney Study of Uranium 

13 and Non-Uranium Workers”. And it’s from 

14 Health Physics 70-bracket-4, pages 466 through 

15 472. Let me see if I’ve got it in an 

16 electronic form here. 

17 There were some other studies as well 

18 also that were conducted at Fernald early on. 

19 One of the individuals that was involved in 

20 industrial hygiene and health and safety had 

21 prepared some tissue samples for the Hamilton 

22 County coroner, I believe, for the coroner in 

23 the area to examine also. 

24 And this was certainly one of the 

25 things that they were concerned about is early 
244

1 exposures. They didn’t have human information 

2 to confirm their bioassay results. And so 

3 there were certainly concerns early on and 

4 studies done early on. And I do have 

5 documentation of that. I apologize. I’ve got 

6 a box of records here in front of me, and I 

7 could dig through there and look to see what 

8 we have in there. I don’t have the titles of 

9 those documents. But those are documented on 

10 the site research database as well in addition 

11 to this Health Physics Journal article. I can 

12 certainly -- 

13 DR. NETON: I think this pretty much bears 

14 out what we’ve been saying is that as far as 

15 the routine occupational exposures, we’re not 

16 aware of any permanent damage to the kidneys 

17 that I’m aware of in the open literature. 

18 MR. GRIFFON: I mean, is there any instance 

19 from their annual physical data that you would 

20 say, clearly we’ve got, this person had a 

21 problem identified in their annual physical? 

22 DR. NETON: I think there’s a difference 

23 between a test that has an end point that 

24 determines there’s something awry with the 

25 kidney versus damage that would affect the 
245

1 kidney’s ability to clear uranium. Those are, 

2 because as the tests get more and more 

3 sensitive, some of these enzyme tests and 

4 stuff, you can measure changes of people 

5 drinking uranium in well water. 

6 I mean, you can start to measure 

7 changes in the kidney. What does that mean on 

8 a practical basis? I don’t know. Just 

9 because you can measure an effect doesn’t mean 

10 that it does any, has an impairment to the 

11 person’s function. I’m sure in the medical 

12 files of people there are tests that have 

13 demonstrated protein albumin urea increases 

14 and such based on exposures to uranium. But 

15 I’m not certain that they’ve done anything to 

16 impair the ability of a person to excrete 

17 uranium normally. I guess that’s sort of the 

18 bottom line. 

19 MR. BEATTY: Jim, a question for you there 

20 as far as this is much more problematic or 

21 even legislative in nature, but you’re saying 

22 some cancers are more radiogenic than others. 

23 But why would the certain types of cancers 

24 when you try to do dose reconstruction on them 

25 are so complex but yet they’re on the 22 
246

1 covered cancers under an SEC? This doesn’t 

2 make sense to me. Pancreatic’s another one 

3 that I have trouble with. 

4 DR. NETON: I can only say that NIOSH was 

5 not responsible for establishing that list and 

6 so I couldn’t comment on the rationale behind 

7 those 22 cancers. 

8 MR. BEATTY: Okay, thank you anyway. 

9 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I’m just not sure where 

10 to go with this action item. We’ve got a 

11 response. I don’t know if there’s any follow 

12 up needed. 

13 Hans, have you had your questions 

14 answered? 

15 DR. BEHLING: I mean it’s just an aberration 

16 of sorts that defines in Zau and Zau. It may 

17 very well be to more a damage to the lungs in 

18 transferring the material into the bloodstream 

19 as opposed to kidney damage. We don’t know. 

20 I mean, it’s an open-ended question that can’t 

21 be answered by us. 

22 MR. GRIFFON: Do you want a chance to at 

23 least look at the Katherine paper? 

24 DR. BEHLING: Well, I looked at -- 

25 MR. GRIFFON: I don’t think there’s any 
247

1 further action -- 

2 DR. BEHLING: I looked at the other papers. 

3 I mean, Katherine offers very little other 

4 than this speculation that it might be due to 

5 lung damage in the transfer rate from the 

6 lungs to the bloodstream that is the key 

7 factor for this aberrant excretion. 

8 DR. NETON: We recognize the fact that this 

9 was over a gram of exposure if you believe Ron 

10 Katherine’s dose reconstruction -- 

11 DR. BEHLING: Well, it is a Katherine that 

12 the 82-point-some milligrams excreted total is 

13 only a fraction of the total intake. 

14 DR. NETON: I think that we would agree that 

15 any time we had a situation where a person’s 

16 exposed to a gram of uranium or something, we 

17 would take special precautions to make sure 

18 that our dose reconstruction, that the 

19 person’s excretion patterns follow the normal 

20 metabolic parameter. 

21 So maybe that’s the outcome of this is 

22 we need to document that we would do that. I 

23 think that we would normally do that, but if 

24 we need to put that in writing that we need to 

25 exercise caution for extreme exposure 
248

1 incidents or something. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: Now how do you know? Oh, just 

3 from an incident database or from the personal 

4 records that it’s in there or how do you -- 

5 DR. NETON: See, my feeling is that these 

6 type of incidents would be virtually and 

7 possibly undetected. I mean, they would be 

8 these massive, a person just enveloped in a 

9 cloud and they go to Medical or something like 

10 that. 

11 DR. MAURO: This almost goes to the question 

12 that I have, and maybe it’s more academic, is 

13 that the models we have are the standard man, 

14 reference man, given the uncertainties both 

15 individuals realize no one is a reference man. 

16 Everyone is an individual, variabilities 

17 large. But at some point the variability for 

18 a given person may be due to some pathological 

19 condition, perhaps some kind of kidney 

20 dysfunction unrelated to work. 

21 It brings you to a point where perhaps 

22 these models don’t work for that person. And 

23 I guess the question becomes is there any 

24 provision to deal with that, for example, in 

25 the CATI. When you interview or you find out 
249

1 from a person’s medical records that this 

2 person had a certain type of dysfunction, a 

3 medical condition, which would invalidate our 

4 models and maybe we should deal with them a 

5 little differently or that would be something 

6 that we would look into. 

7 DR. NETON: Well, we’ve done that, and 

8 there’s cases where people had their thyroid 

9 removed and they were exposed to iodine, and 

10 we’re certainly not going to use a standard 

11 metabolic model for iodine. 

12 DR. MAURO: I’m sure. 

13 DR. NETON: But I don’t know how we would do 

14 that. We’re not medical people to begin with, 

15 and so we do get the medical files on these 

16 folks, but unless it was pointed out to us, 

17 I’m not sure what we would do about that. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: But if you had an incident 

19 where you followed the excretion -- I mean, 

20 I’ve had this -- and the individual’s 

21 excretion rate is a little different than the 

22 ICRP model, maybe not a great amount, and you 

23 can calculate using the actual data, the 

24 actual dose to the person. And it will be a 

25 little different than the model. The model, 
250

1 if you just have a couple points, the model 

2 helps you, but if you’ve got a bunch of 

3 points, you can do it. 

4 DR. NETON: I’m certain that we’ve done some 

5 of that, and Super-S is a good example of how 

6 we’ve taken real data and come up with our own 

7 interpretation of uranium aluminide that just 

8 came out of another good example. So to the 

9 extent that we do find these things and can 

10 quantify them, we do. Some of these more 

11 subtle changes that we discuss here though I 

12 think are subtle, subtle. By definition 

13 they’d be difficult for us to deal with except 

14 to say that they’re covered by the uncertainty 

15 in the distribution. 

16 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I guess that’s the 

17 question on the table. Is that the final 

18 answer? Is it covered by uncertainty or are 

19 you going to propose that you’ll -- and I’m 

20 not sure when you say find, that’s the 

21 question I have. How do you find them? 

22 DR. NETON: I hate to offer this up because 

23 we’re swamped, but I do think that this is not 

24 necessarily a Fernald issue, just a Fernald 

25 issue. It is a more overarching issue, and if 
251

1 we want to keep it on the table, we can move 

2 it to the overarching science issues. 

3 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, but we’ve got an SEC at 

4 hand here. 

5 DR. NETON: But I don’t know that this issue 

6 is necessarily, would affect the SEC. 

7 MR. GRIFFON: ^ from bounding an -- 

8 DR. NETON: Yeah, from bounding and -- 

9 DR. MAURO: You basically made your case, 

10 when I say made your case, you’ve presented 

11 your case that says that we don’t believe our 

12 ability to reconstruct doses with sufficient 

13 accuracy could be affected by the fact that 

14 some workers may have had quite high intakes. 

15 And as a result of that we, our models don’t 

16 really work very well for a large portion of 

17 the population to such an extent that it 

18 affects your ability to reconstruct doses. 

19 And that’s what I’m hearing. That’s your 

20 position. And I heard, and you cited the 

21 various papers, and that’s your position. So 

22 your argument is, no, it does not affect our 

23 ability. 

24 DR. NETON: But we do acknowledge that 

25 people with abnormal kidney function or people 
252

1 involved in extremely high-level exposures 

2 from incidents need to be treated special on a 

3 case-by-case basis. 

4 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I guess that’s the 

5 question is how do you find abnormal kidney, 

6 you know, and that’s why I was asking a 

7 medical question. Do you look back at the 

8 annual physicals -- 

9 DR. NETON: I don’t know. There was just no 

10 way that would be -- 

11 MR. GRIFFON: I’m not trying to put you on 

12 the spot. 

13 DR. NETON: No, I understand, but -- 

14 MR. CLAWSON: I’m just wondering how the 

15 dose reconstructor develops, be able to go 

16 through this. 

17 DR. NETON: Right, like I said, we’re not 

18 medical people. I mean, we’re health 

19 physicists. We do have access to medical 

20 personnel, but -- 

21 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: ^ 

22 DR. NETON: Well, it can lead to a massive 

23 intake. I mean, we can certainly deal with 

24 that. 

25 MR. GRIFFON: So one criteria you have is if 
253

1 you can red flag -- 

2 DR. NETON: Yeah, there’s -- 

3 MR. GRIFFON: -- maybe you can just define 

4 that for us. Give us over whatever, whatever 

5 it is. 

6 DR. NETON: An intake that would result in 

7 something over 200, 2000 millirem, something 

8 like that. That would be, we could document 

9 that. But the case where you have abnormal 

10 kidney function, which at least to my 

11 knowledge is not uncommon. High blood 

12 pressure can cause kidney dysfunction, a 

13 number of things can do it other than uranium. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: Coffee does pretty well. 

15 DR. NETON: I don’t know how we would be 

16 able to flag that other than it would have to 

17 come ^. But that’s not just uranium in the 

18 kidney. It has to do with liver function and 

19 cirrhosis of the liver and all the metabolic 

20 parameters. ^ the thyroid. 

21 MR. GRIFFON: I don’t know that there’s any 

22 more actions on that, but let’s go ahead with 

23 the next one. 

24 MR. CLAWSON: The next one we need to come 

25 up to, we kind of covered because we were 
254

1 talking about the thorium model and so forth 

2 of how you guys were going to cover it, but 

3 part of the process is after 1969, how are we 

4 going to, yeah, 1968, how are we going to be 

5 able to deal with the thorium issue. This is 

6 one that portable in vivo came on line. 

7 DR. BEHLING: And let me, I can answer 

8 specific questions because it’s a more focused 

9 response. I guess this morning’s discussion 

10 regarding the coworker model in context with 

11 all the workers who may have been exposed to 

12 thorium prior to 1968. And the use of that 

13 coworker modeling involves identifying the 

14 worker by either being an H, M or L worker, 

15 the years of exposure, the location of the 

16 exposure, and you apply the specific coworker 

17 model I take it. 

18 Now we’re into 1968 where there’s the 

19 beginning of chest counting, in vivo chest 

20 counting using the mobile in vivo radiation 

21 monitoring laboratory that, at least for the 

22 most exposed individuals would perhaps assess 

23 them once a year, sometimes twice a year, et 

24 cetera. And I guess one of the concerns I had 

25 up front is that between ’68 and ’78, the data 
255

1 was recorded as thorium in milligrams. And 

2 I’m not sure we have a firm handle on how the 

3 thorium milligram quantity was obtained. 

4 Obviously, the system relied on 

5 Actinium-228 and Lead-212, and we all know 

6 what the problems are regarding the 

7 disequilibrium between Thorium-232 and 228 and 

8 the surrogate radionuclides used. Obviously, 

9 it’s times zero if you were to assess a person 

10 with a high thorium intake, but you’re looking 

11 at that intake by way of Actinium-228, you’d 

12 end up with zero dose because you wouldn’t see 

13 any Actinium-228 at times zero because you 

14 remove the Radium-228, and therefore, there 

15 wouldn’t be any Actinium-228 to look at. 

16 You would obviously have to rely on an 

17 in-growth of the shorter-lived daughters for 

18 Thorium-228 which turns out to be Lead-212. 

19 But again, as a function of time, Thorium-228 

20 has a 1.9 year half-life and it’s a function 

21 of time after that chemical separation which 

22 you find. And we’ve all seen the curve which 

23 says that the dose ratio between Thorium-232 

24 and Thorium-228 is about 0.42 or 42 percent. 

25 So the question I have is not knowing what the 
256

1 chemical ratio is or the ratio between 

2 Thorium-232 and -228, and the indicator 

3 radionuclides for each of those two 

4 radionuclides, and how do you validate the 

5 milligram thorium quantity? What was the 

6 basis of it? 

7 Because if you relied on Lead-212, you 

8 could be off by approximately a factor of two 

9 and a half if the maximum disequilibrium 

10 between the two radionuclides occurred. In 

11 other words for every microcurie of Thorium12 228, you would expect to have approximately 

13 (telephonic interruption) Thorium-232. 

14 Conversely, if you relied on Actinium-228 

15 because that’s the surrogate for Thorium-232, 

16 you might end up with a very low value based 

17 on the fact that Radium-228 has a 6.7 year 

18 half-life and will take 30 years for in19 growth. 

20 So that could be full equilibrium 

21 again. So that you would have to wait 30 

22 years in order to look at Actinium-228 to give 

23 you a true indication of Thorium-232. So 

24 those are the problems. I know I’ve used an 

25 awful lot of numbers, but you can look at that 
257

1 table and understand the difficulty by which 

2 the milligram of thorium quantities for the 

3 years ’68 through ’78 is translated into real 

4 numbers involving Thorium-232 and Thorium-228. 

5 And I think that’s my principal concern and 

6 question. 

7 MR. ROLFES: I don’t know if Bob Morris is 

8 still on the line. Bob? 

9 MR. MORRIS: I missed the last part because 

10 I was trying to unmute, and I turned myself 

11 off instead. But what I would say based on 

12 what I heard up until 45 seconds ago was we 

13 explained our assumptions pretty clearly in 

14 the coworker paper. Have you seen that paper 

15 yet? 

16 DR. BEHLING: Yes, I have, and I do have 

17 some problems on that. 

18 MR. MORRIS: Well, I think that that’s fair 

19 then. You should provide them in writing, and 

20 we’ll address them. 

21 DR. BEHLING: Well, then I think we can 

22 address them here because somewhere is the 

23 assumptions. It says on your white paper -- 

24 DR. ZIEMER: Which paper are we looking at 

25 now? 
258

1 MR. ROLFES: This is the Fernald Thorium In 

2 Vivo Coworker Study final draft. 

3 MR. GRIFFON: And, Mark, I don’t know if 

4 you’re following this on the matrix. What 

5 finding is this? 

6 DR. NETON: Are you suggesting that radium 

7 precedes actinium in the decay chain of 

8 thorium? I don’t think so. 

9 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, Radium-220, it precedes 

10 Actinium-220. 

11 DR. NETON: Refresh my memory again, the 

12 half-life’s, the half-life of radium is around 

13 six years? 

14 DR. BEHLING: Six years, yes. 

15 DR. NETON: The thorium is, actinium is -- 

16 DR. BEHLING: A few hours -- 

17 DR. NETON: I haven’t looked at -- I used to 

18 have this committed to memory. 

19 DR. BEHLING: In that paper, it’s on page 

20 seven of 19, there are -- 

21 DR. ZIEMER: This is the white paper on -- 

22 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, the white paper and 

23 that’s -- and here’s some of the assumptions. 

24 It obviously makes reference to this potential 

25 problem that says, “for the thorium data 
259

1 reported in milligrams, the master activity 

2 conversion assumed that all of the mass of 

3 natural thorium is associated with Thorium4 232.” And that’s, of course, correct because 

5 of the long half-life of Thorium-232. The 

6 mass is driven by the long half-life of 

7 Thorium-232 as opposed to the shorter one of 

8 Thorium-228 which is only 1.9 year half-life. 

9 And then goes on further, “The 

10 specific activity factor used for this 

11 conversion was 0.11 nanocuries of Thorium-232 

12 per milligram of natural thorium.” And so I 

13 assume what you’re doing is trying to convert 

14 some value that you observed either from 

15 actinium and took a Lead-212 or both into this 

16 conversion of milligrams. 

17 And then I’m not sure I know what 

18 measurements were taken at the time because 

19 it’s clear that they probably -- and I’ve 

20 looked at a host of values that are shown in 

21 one of the documents that are empirical 

22 values, and you realize that the ratio is 

23 hardly ever one where the Lead-212 and the 

24 Actinium-228 are there in concentrations of 

25 activity values that would suggest a second ^ 
260

1 between the two thoriums. And so the question 

2 I have is how was this milligram quantity 

3 reported for the full duration of ten years? 

4 And I might also add that the time 

5 period of ’68 to ’78 is the time period during 

6 which thorium was really processed. It was 

7 only thereafter that we see reporting of 

8 thorium in units of Lead-212 and Actinium-228 

9 but that in 1978 post-dates the processing of 

10 thorium. So I think it’s a critical issue 

11 here to understand how milligrams of thorium 

12 reported in those days are converted into real 

13 values of what do they really represent. 

14 DR. NETON: I think you raise a good point. 

15 I mean, I don’t know off the top of my head 

16 how Fernald -- 

17 MR. RICH: Number one, there’s an assumption 

18 made about the time since separation. 

19 DR. BEHLING: Yes, that’s a critical part. 

20 MR. RICH: And once you know that then, of 

21 course, you can, the Thorium-228 is fairly 

22 easy because that’s a short-lived daughter 

23 build-up which then can give you a fairly good 

24 handle on the Thorium-228. And then with the 

25 knowledge of the time since separation of the 
261

1 daughters either through metallurgical or 

2 chemical separation, so there is a respondent 

3 for some knowledge of the time separation of 

4 the, or the purification of the thorium. 

5 DR. NETON: I think that’s what Hans is 

6 asking. What we’ve used in this calculation. 

7 And I don’t really know what Fernald did at 

8 that point in time. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: Is what’s on page 17 applicable 

10 here? It gives conversion factors there. 

11 DR. NETON: Yeah, the conversion factors, I 

12 have to go through them and calculate and 

13 probably estimate based on the conversion 

14 factor what they used. I don’t know. 

15 MR. RICH: Different ^ materials that ^ to 

16 Fernald’s in the one or so year post initial 

17 separation. And ^ it probably would be in ^. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: They also give the assumed 

19 ratio as the midpoint between the lowest and 

20 the highest value. It’s a 0.711 ratio. 

21 MR. RICH: And that gives you about a 0.7 

22 ratio. 

23 DR. NETON: I mean, the numbers are there. 

24 Clearly, they understood what they were doing. 

25 DR. BEHLING: They understood. 
262

1 DR. NETON: How they actually did that to 

2 come up with those values I really can’t tell. 

3 MR. RICH: Like I say, you start with an 

4 assumption or a knowledge of the time since 

5 separation which gives you a ratio of the 

6 Thorium-228 -- 

7 DR. BEHLING: But that, was that a constant 

8 value? I mean, the thorium was processed over 

9 many, many years, and I don’t think the -- at 

10 times zero, one can reasonably start out in 

11 assuming that the two thoriums are in 

12 equilibrium. That’s not unreasonable because 

13 it’s a natural product, and they ^ . And at 

14 that point you’d say one-on-one, but as a 

15 function of time you will see disequilibrium 

16 which is maximum at about four years, five 

17 years after separation where you have -- 

18 MR. RICH: Hans, Hans, immediately after 

19 purification, you have a ratio of one-to-one. 

20 DR. BEHLING: Yes, uh-huh. 

21 MR. RICH: And then after 30 years, you have 

22 -- 

23 DR. BEHLING: You go back to one-to-one. 

24 MR. RICH: Right. And in the interim 

25 between immediate and zero, you wind up with 
263

1 something in the range of -- 

2 DR. BEHLING: Up to two and a half whole 

3 difference. 

4 MR. RICH: Seventy percent equilibrium. 

5 DR. BEHLING: Well, I think in ^ 40 percent. 

6 The ^ is about 40 percent. 

7 MR. RICH: Nonetheless, I think that’s 

8 right. But typically the material was in the 

9 range where you would get between 60 and 70 

10 percent. And I think that from a knowledge of 

11 the operational history of the material in the 

12 plant, they made an assumption like that to 

13 arrive at a ratio to apply that would allow 

14 you to go the actinium and Lead-212. Those 

15 are the major ones that they made in the in 

16 vivo counter to -- 

17 DR. NETON: Was it either or though? I 

18 mean, did they -- 

19 MR. RICH: They measured both, Actinium-228 

20 and Lead-212, and that gave you an arrangement 

21 that allowed you to fundamentally determine 

22 the mass of Thorium-232. And then you add to 

23 that the equilibrium ratio of the 228. 

24 DR. ZIEMER: Is the concern here the 

25 magnitude of the potential error? I missed 
264

1 that. 

2 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, I mean, it’s a question 

3 of how this conversion was done when you have 

4 milligrams reported. What were they measuring 

5 to arrive at that conclusion? And again, and 

6 I also want to throw in there’s the issue of 

7 the detector itself. I mean, it is not the 

8 most efficient way of doing this analysis when 

9 you’re dealing with fairly low energy photons. 

10 And we’ve commented on this before, and I even 

11 brought in one of the documents that was a DOE 

12 document that criticized the use of the three13 by-three crystal for doing this kind of 

14 analysis. 

15 DR. NETON: What three-by-three crystal? 

16 The whole body count was not a three-by-three 

17 inch crystal. 

18 DR. BEHLING: Yes, it was a large crystal. 

19 DR. NETON: It was a three-by-14 or 

20 something like that. It was a very large -- 

21 DR. BEHLING: Well, a very thick, large 

22 crystal. 

23 DR. NETON: It was bigger than three-by24 three. It covered the whole lung area. As a 

25 matter of fact, it was a sandwich between 
265

1 those two detectors, one on the top and one on 

2 the back. And you laid a sort of a mesh, a 

3 webbed top to -- 

4 DR. BEHLING: It’s a nine inch by four inch 

5 crystal, ^ crystal. 

6 DR. NETON: Yeah, and there are two of them. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: Well, we’ve had this discussion 

8 before. The background is a little higher 

9 because it’s thick, and you do better -- 

10 DR. BEHLING: And it’s ^ sensitive. 

11 DR. ZIEMER: -- well, let’s see. I’ll make 

12 the argument I made before. Usually the 

13 figure of merit is sample squared to 

14 background. So you can atolerate (ph) a high 

15 background if you can run your sample count up 

16 higher. So thin crystals often give you 

17 better sort of resolution because they get rid 

18 of background noise. But -- 

19 MR. RICH: In the area that would give you 

20 ^. 

21 DR. ZIEMER: But generally, you compensate 

22 for that. You end up counting longer or 

23 something, but I mean, I think people can 

24 calibrate for this. You’re right. It 

25 probably wasn’t the optimum. If you had the 
266

1 money and started over, you’d get a different 

2 setup, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do the 

3 counting. 

4 MR. RICH: They didn’t get thin crystal 

5 technology until -- 

6 DR. ZIEMER: At that point, yeah. 

7 But I think Hans is right that that’s 

8 probably not the best way to use for this type 

9 -- 

10 MR. RICH: That’s not how they’re doing it 

11 now. You would use a jelly detector, an array 

12 of jelly detectors. But at that time we were 

13 using sodium iodide and there was stripping 

14 techniques that allowed you to do the analysis 

15 in the range of permissible body burden range. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: The conversion from mass to 

17 activity may be more critical, Hans, in terms 

18 of potential errors I would think. Wouldn’t 

19 you? 

20 MR. RICH: The conversion to mass was only 

21 for Thorium-232 because Thorium-228 

22 contributed to ^ mass. 

23 DR. MAURO: Am I hearing that the concern is 

24 that you could be off by a factor of two if 

25 you don’t -- 
267

1 DR. BEHLING: Up to two and a half depending 

2 upon if they didn’t make some very, very 

3 precise corrections that suggest the ratio 

4 disequilibrium as opposed to final separation. 

5 I mean, if you wanted to be extremely 

6 conservative, you would take the Lead-212 

7 data, derive your Thorium-228 value and then 

8 multiply that times two and a half to get your 

9 Thorium-232. It couldn’t get any worse than 

10 that. 

11 DR. NETON: I’m not really convinced that 

12 they can’t do that knowing Actinium-228 and 

13 Lead-212 separately. 

14 DR. BEHLING: Well, of course, yes. 

15 DR. NETON: It’s like where are you going 

16 equilibrium -- 

17 DR. BEHLING: You don’t know where that is, 

18 if they used that data or not. 

19 MR. RICH: See, the only issue -- yes, they 

20 did. 

21 DR. NETON: See, that’s what I’m thinking, 

22 they did. 

23 MR. RICH: And after about ’70 or so they no 

24 longer recorded in the formal dosimeter files 

25 the amount of, they didn’t make the milligrams 
268

1 version. They just simply gave the Actinium2 228 and the Lead-212, and then the conversion 

3 was made at the specific ^. 

4 DR. ZIEMER: And so they actually did 

5 determine the ratio. Is that what you’re 

6 saying? Can we confirm that? 

7 MR. RICH: The only issue is that 212 is a 

8 little bit better gamma to make a 

9 determination by -- 

10 DR. NETON: Yeah. 

11 MR. RICH: -- your sensitivity for 228 is 

12 not as good, but that was a check to validate 

13 your assumptions ^ the ratio. 

14 DR. NETON: I’m sure the MDA was fairly 

15 large. It wasn’t small. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: What item are we at? 

17 (Whereupon, multiple speakers spoke 

18 simultaneously.) 

19 DR. WADE: Well, you should but we’re 

20 degenerating. 

21 MR. RICH: And six milligram, and that is ^. 

22 DR. BEHLING: Well, I guess the question I 

23 have when we have, let’s say, we all start out 

24 with the assumption that when a milligram 

25 quantity is reported, it’s basically a hundred 
269

1 percent, 99.999 percent Thorium-232. And now 

2 what do we do when we convert that into the 

3 radionuclides? Do we assume that they are in 

4 ^ equilibrium? In other words, if from the 

5 specific activity of Thorium-232 convert the 

6 milligrams that we have available to us as the 

7 only documented data, convert that into what 

8 is the proven activity for Thorium-232, and 

9 now what do we do with regard to Thorium-228? 

10 That’s the question. 

11 MR. RICH: ^. 

12 DR. NETON: Two-twenty’s measured directly 

13 almost via Lead-212. 

14 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, but you don’t have that 

15 data. I’m giving you the data for 1969 for ^. 

16 MR. SHARFI: The earlier ^ report of the 

17 total mass. 

18 DR. BEHLING: The total mass. And let me 

19 give you the milligram data. What are you 

20 going to do with it and -- 

21 DR. NETON: We need to look at that 

22 conversion factor. 

23 MR. GRIFFON: We can talk about this and 

24 speculate for another hour, but -- 

25 MR. RICH: Let me just make one statement. 
270

1 The technology is there, and it’s an accepted 

2 technology. And it does require some 

3 assumptions which is not unusual for any 

4 technology. And it’s just a matter of, it’s 

5 not a matter whether we can or we can’t do it. 

6 We can do it. It’s a matter of deciding do we 

7 need to add some additional, a factor to, for 

8 that purpose. 

9 DR. BEHLING: The problem is not so much how 

10 did they do it. How are we going to translate 

11 milligrams into -- 

12 DR. NETON: And it sounds like we’re in 

13 agreement that we can do something that would 

14 be bounding, correct? 

15 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, I mean the bounding 

16 value would be to -- 

17 DR. NETON: Maybe this issue is that we 

18 should stop here. 

19 DR. BEHLING: The bounding value would 

20 assume that the milligram -- here’s a 

21 bounding, my approach to a bounding value. 

22 Convert the milligram into, from the activity 

23 of 232 into activity and assume that two are 

24 from ^ equilibrium which means the activity’s 

25 twice that. 
271

1 MR. RICH: We can do it. It’s a matter of -

2 - 

3 DR. NETON: Is that reasonable given that 

4 most of the uranium and thorium at Fernald was 

5 more than one year old? 

6 DR. MAURO: This is not an SEC issue. 

7 DR. NETON: No. 

8 DR. BEHLING: But it is an issue that needs 

9 to be resolved because you could have ten 

10 years of data where the only thing you have is 

11 milligrams, and you have to make a decision as 

12 to how you apportion that value into Thorium13 228. 

14 DR. NETON: That’s a site profile issue in 

15 my mind, not an SEC issue. 

16 DR. BEHLING: Well, I’m looking at the white 

17 paper here, and I’m not sure I’m in agreement 

18 with you. 

19 DR. NETON: But you don’t think it’s -- 

20 DR. BEHLING: Well, they use a value of 0.77 

21 as a central value between 0.42 and 1.0. 

22 DR. NETON: Well, whether you agree with 

23 that or not is irrelevant. It’s an SEC issue 

24 or a site profile issue. There you go. Let’s 

25 move on. 
272

1 I do think we need to investigate it. 

2 I do have some academic interest in this area 

3 obviously. I’d like to figure out -- 

4 MR. RICH: There are some published reports. 

5 It is an Oak Ridge technology that was used at 

6 Fernald up until ’80-something. 

7 DR. NETON: I’m conflicted here, of course, 

8 but I was involved in the reprogramming of 

9 that Y-12 counter when I worked at Nuclear 

10 Data, and we wrote the algorithm that did the 

11 calculation. I just don’t remember what was 

12 done. And so I would take it upon myself to -

13 - 

14 MR. GRIFFON: The only other thing before we 

15 dismiss this, I mean, it gets late in the day 

16 and we tend to go through items quicker, but -

17 - not that we’re going through this one quick, 

18 that’s for sure. But the question of that 

19 particular part of the finding, I think you’re 

20 right, is a site profile type issue. I think 

21 the other part of this whole question of the 

22 coworker model for that time period was the 

23 representativeness, did we, are we going to 

24 still bound, were the right people monitored, 

25 that sort of question I think was still on the 
273

1 table. I’m trying to -- 

2 DR. NETON: I wasn’t trying to -- 

3 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, so that piece of it I 

4 agree. But before we dismiss the whole 

5 finding number I just want to make sure it’s -

6 - 

7 DR. MAURO: I have one question, and it was 

8 really related to this thick protector issue 

9 and the sensitivity issues. Now, could a 

10 circumstance arise where you’re doing a ^ 

11 person and you don’t see anything because 

12 there’s not enough, whether it’s Lead-210 or 

13 actinium there to give you a signal that’s 

14 detectable above background. And that’s a 

15 very weak photon that ^ a lot of activity. 

16 What I’m concerned about is that it may be 

17 important. If you’re in a situation where you 

18 can’t really see unless you have lots of Lead19 210 or actinium, is that taken into 

20 consideration when you report what you believe 

21 to be the Thorium-232? The fact that, I mean, 

22 I’m not -- 

23 DR. NETON: There’s an MDA calculation. 

24 DR. MAURO: I mean, it goes toward the very 

25 -- 
274

1 MR. RICH: During this period of time that 

2 we’re talking about in the early days, the MDA 

3 was quoted as six milligrams, and they 

4 reported down to one. So there are values, 

5 nothing below one milligram for Thorium-232. 

6 But the MDA is recorded as a six. 

7 DR. MAURO: So they took that into 

8 consideration. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: Well, there is another factor, 

10 and that is that there’s attenuation in the 

11 body, and you get different ratios of the two 

12 energies out depending on the size of the 

13 person. But if you calibrate properly, I 

14 think they’re doing a lung scan, and you can 

15 calibrate for that. And if I’ve got a 250-

16 pound guy, and I look at those ratios and this 

17 represents disequilibrium; I got 130-pound 

18 guy/gal, then that same ratio represents 

19 something very different equilibrium-wise, and 

20 you can calibrate for that. 

21 MR. RICH: That was taken into account. 

22 MR. MORRIS: With regard to our question 

23 about did we monitor the right people, were 

24 the right people monitored. That is clearly 

25 addressed in the white paper. There was a 
275

1 memo to all employees at the time when the 

2 lung counter was first introduced in 1968, and 

3 it explained who was going to be monitored, 

4 why they were going to be monitored, and how 

5 often they were going to be monitored. 

6 And we also were able to track back 

7 through the dataset and find that there was a 

8 set of people who were identified as thorium 

9 workers, and they were given priority first 

10 monitoring. So I think that we can answer 

11 that question pretty clearly that the right 

12 people were monitored. 

13 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, I haven’t looked at that 

14 but I just wanted to keep it on the table at 

15 least for us to consider. We’ll look at that 

16 white paper. I would point out in 4.3-4 

17 there’s a -- I know nobody’s looking at the 

18 matrix -- but there’s a sentence here that 

19 caught my eye. It says, “DOE files of 

20 claimants who are known to be thorium 

21 workers,” I think that’s what you’re talking 

22 about. 

23 MR. MORRIS: Right. 

24 MR. GRIFFON: “Based on their in vivo 

25 counting notations will be examined to see if 
276

1 they were given or special bioassays were 

2 taken.” Did you include the details of that 

3 in that white paper? Like you examined some 

4 of the -- 

5 MR. MORRIS: Well, we were able to find that 

6 there was a correlation. 

7 Mark, maybe you can remember that 

8 better than I do right now. 

9 MR. GRIFFON: Have you looked at claimants 

10 files? I mean, do you have that documented -- 

11 MR. ROLFES: I’ve assembled a compilation 

12 from the mobile in vivo data of the 

13 individuals who were flagged as thorium 

14 workers, former thorium workers or current 

15 thorium workers. Interestingly enough, some 

16 of those same individuals were listed by name 

17 in some of the chronic or daily weighted 

18 exposure reports that I passed around. And 

19 they were also some of the individuals that 

20 were sent offsite prior to the mobile in vivo 

21 coming onsite, individuals that had either 

22 participated in an offsite lung count at Y-12 

23 or provided thoron breath samples at the 

24 University of Rochester or had provided urine 

25 samples that were analyzed using neutron 
277

1 activation analysis for thorium 

2 determinations. 

3 MR. GRIFFON: Did you tabulate that anywhere 

4 in, is it in part of that white paper? 

5 Because I’ve got to admit I’m not, you know. 

6 Is it tabulated in any way? I mean this 

7 suggests that you would review claimants’ 

8 files. 

9 MR. ROLFES: Yes, and -- 

10 MR. GRIFFON: On a number of or, you know. 

11 MR. ROLFES: It may not be in a consolidated 

12 place, but all the supporting references and 

13 documents have been provided to the Advisory 

14 Board on the O drive I believe. 

15 MR. GRIFFON: The supporting documents, but 

16 I mean the conclusion. Is the conclusion 

17 anywhere? We reviewed X number of claimants’ 

18 files and -- 

19 MR. ROLFES: There’s no white paper separate 

20 for that. 

21 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I didn’t, okay, but I 

22 mean, it was an action on here. I’m just 

23 going back to some old things I didn’t want to 

24 overlook. 

25 DR. MAURO: Is the time-weighted average 
278

1 going back continuing to ’68, ’69, ’70? In 

2 other words, remember we talked about doing it 

3 pre-’68, we’re going to be basing all the 

4 thorium exposures -- 

5 MR. RICH: I think it ended about the ‘70s. 

6 DR. MAURO: That’s very interesting in 

7 relating, I would predict in using time8 weighted average, and I wasn’t going to use 

9 the chest count. And then, see, this was a 

10 way of validating it. 

11 MR. RICH: We talked about that. 

12 DR. MAURO: We did talk about that, yeah. 

13 MR. RICH: And by the way, a lot of counting 

14 was not done near as frequently as urine, but 

15 for thorium it’s okay because it stays in the 

16 lung a long time. That’s the reason that 

17 bioassay urine sampling was so difficult. It 

18 simply wasn’t eliminated there. 

19 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, I’m looking at a few 

20 datasheets that I have for select individuals 

21 and it tracks them. And this particular 

22 individual I’m looking at here, he was given a 

23 chest count only every other year, ’71, ’72, 

24 four, six, eight and ’80 and ’82. So he was 

25 given every other year, chest counting. 
279

1 MR. GRIFFON: I think that’s still -- just 

2 to get back to the matrix, if you can follow 

3 up on that action. It’s just an outstanding 

4 action. I’m not saying it’s a -- it’s under 

5 4.3-4. The middle comment appears in red 

6 still on your version, Mark, on the bottom 

7 paragraph there. And I don’t think this was 

8 just a way to cross-check whether these people 

9 on the list -- 

10 MR. ROLFES: You said 4.3.4? 

11 MR. GRIFFON: 4.3-4. Whatever, yeah. 

12 DR. BEHLING: What happens to people who 

13 might have been exposed but for whom there’s 

14 no, some how or other they worked there for a 

15 period of time but the mobile lab just left? 

16 They start to work. They quit their job 

17 before the next go around -- 

18 MR. GRIFFON: That’s where the coworker 

19 model comes into play. As long as we can 

20 determine the highest exposed were monitored, 

21 it’s a site profile issue. 

22 MR. ROLFES: And there were employees that 

23 were brought back to the site for follow-up 

24 counting as well. 

25 MR. GRIFFON: So that’s the only action item 
280

1 I have remaining if we can just follow up on 

2 that. 

3 MR. CLAWSON: There’s a few other action 

4 items. We started to lose -- 

5 MR. GRIFFON: I mean on that issue. 

6 MR. CLAWSON: On that issue. We’ve lost 

7 several members, but I’d like to review, Mark 

8 sent out a paper for us, but I’d like to tell 

9 NIOSH how much I appreciate, we’ve got an 

10 awful lot of information on the O drive, and I 

11 have been trying to go through a lot of it and 

12 so forth like that, but there’s a lot there. 

13 But I just want to make sure that we have 

14 covered a lot of these. 

15 In 4.3.1, NIOSH will provide a white 

16 paper detailing approach for thorium, which I 

17 believe that we have covered pretty good. I 

18 want to make sure that’s covered. 

19 SC&A will develop an outline of a 

20 sample plan to SS personnel dosimetry data 

21 composition and regard to internal dosimetry, 

22 and this is a post-1968. 

23 MR. GRIFFON: This is the data integrity and 

24 completeness question. And we asked SC&A -- 

25 if you remember from the last meeting -- to 
281

1 come back with us with a sampling approach. 

2 You know, there was, as there always is, a 

3 question of, you know, how much is enough. So 

4 before we just task them with doing that, we 

5 said give us a sampling plan first on how 

6 you’re going to do that. That kind of got 

7 lost in the fray, I think it’s fair to say. I 

8 didn’t update the matrix until like last week, 

9 so -- 

10 DR. MAURO: Well, it might have been this 

11 conversation where now we have a much better 

12 understanding of the data you’re using and how 

13 you’re using it such as the chest count and 

14 the time-weighted average air sampling because 

15 this is all related now to thorium. Now, 

16 given that, and we’ve covered a lot of 

17 territory here, is there anything about that 

18 sampling plan that changes or -- 

19 MR. GRIFFON: I think it’s still, I mean, 

20 think we might want to discuss some of the 

21 defining parameters like we did in the -- 

22 And you may have talked to others 

23 already, Mark, but I, maybe refresh my memory. 

24 How often do we use the coworker models? I 

25 mean, I think it’s fair to say external dose, 
282

1 there’s no coworker model being considered, 

2 right? They all have their own dosimetry data 

3 that will be relied upon. But then on the 

4 internal dose side you have basically two 

5 different thorium models, right? Post-’68 and 

6 Pre-’68. And then you have the potential of 

7 using a uranium coworker model. 

8 But my sense is that most people have 

9 enough of their own uranium data. So then, I 

10 mean, the path we went down, this is part of 

11 the Board’s procedures. The path we went down 

12 is just to make, to assure that we say that 

13 people have a lot of uranium data. Well, if, 

14 you know, where we ended up at Rocky Flats is 

15 if you had data, especially toward the end of 

16 your tenure there, then certainly you can use 

17 personal data in your file. 

18 If it turns out that we review on data 

19 completeness and find out that actually it’s 

20 pretty -- I don’t have any reason to believe 

21 this -- but if it’s spotty, in other words 

22 some people had some urine samples, but then 

23 they went ten years, and then they left. If 

24 it happens a lot and we see that, then we may 

25 say we better, we have to pay more attention 
283

1 on this coworker model because it’s going to 

2 be applied more often. So I guess that’s in 

3 the context that I bring this in. From the 

4 external standpoint we haven’t cross-checked 

5 any data from the external side I don’t 

6 believe, and I don’t know if we can quite 

7 frankly. I don’t if we have any TLD like raw 

8 data to examine versus HIS-20. 

9 MR. ROLFES: We didn’t go and pursue that. 

10 We hadn’t been asked to. 

11 MR. GRIFFON: Well, that’s kind of the 

12 context this is brought up in. 

13 DR. MAURO: With regard to internal, if in 

14 fact, we’re going to be preparing this time15 weighted average, a number of daily time16 weighted average, you have by category by 

17 year. Then we talked about that sample ^ in 

18 effect -- 

19 MR. GRIFFON: By plant by year. 

20 DR. MAURO: Yeah, by plant by year. In 

21 effect, you’re going to do that. In other 

22 words you’re going to pull out -- 

23 MR. GRIFFON: That’s for one. That’s pre24 ’68 thorium. 

25 DR. MAURO: That’s all I’m talking about. 
284

1 Yeah, I’m trying to just get my mind around 

2 what’s needed here. Now once that -- 

3 MR. GRIFFON: When we say data completeness 

4 for pre-’68 thorium, I can tell you, I’ll do 

5 your job. There’s no data. 

6 DR. MAURO: There was some air sampling 

7 data, but you do -- 

8 MR. GRIFFON: There are some, right. But 

9 you’re probably not going to use that. 

10 Anyway, that’s why we defined it as uranium 

11 post-’68 thorium. 

12 DR. MAURO: Okay, I didn’t understand. 

13 MR. GRIFFON: And then external, so we have, 

14 I have to merge, I updated a matrix, but so 

15 did Mark, and now I’m doing my edits on yours, 

16 but I’ll make sure all those, the ones that 

17 Brad’s reading now get included. But that’s 

18 one that got overlooked. And I think, I mean, 

19 Arjun was at the last meeting when we were 

20 discussing this, and I think the -- 

21 DR. MAKHIJANI: Could I say something? 

22 Mark, could I say something about this? 

23 Sorry, I didn’t pick up the whole conversation 

24 because a lot of the voices are quite faint. 

25 But regarding the uranium piece, there are two 
285

1 different issues that I think need to be 

2 addressed in setting up the completeness 

3 check. 

4 One is how many people were monitored 

5 in different periods. And the second would be 

6 of the people who do have some bioassay data, 

7 how complete or incomplete is that data. How 

8 spotty is it or is it pretty regular? Is it 

9 once in six months and so on? Because my 

10 impression from looking at some of the records 

11 is that it’s quite variable. Some people have 

12 lots and lots of data, and some people have 

13 quite spotty data, and it probably is time 

14 dependent. 

15 MR. GRIFFON: And/or job dependent. It 

16 could be job dependent. 

17 DR. MAKHIJANI: And job dependent, yes, both 

18 period and job dependent. I agree. 

19 MR. GRIFFON: So I’m not asking you to 

20 propose any kind of plan now, Arjun, but 

21 that’s good points. Maybe you can come back 

22 and SC&A can work on that sample strategy, and 

23 we should, you know, before you go anywhere 

24 with it, I think we want to run it by the work 

25 group. That’s what we all committed to. 
286

1 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, I remember the same as 

2 you. I think, you know, I guess a number of 

3 things were put on hold. I have not been 

4 working on this, but I think that we did say 

5 that we would at some point go to Harry, our 

6 statistician, and ask him to come up with a 

7 sampling plan on these various categories so 

8 that we would have an adequate sample for the 

9 various period job categories radionuclides 

10 that we were looking at. 

11 MR. GRIFFON: That’s fine. 

12 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, we’ve got another item 

13 here, and I believe this has been taken care 

14 of. NIOSH to outline approach to address an 

15 ingestion dose for thorium exposure white 

16 paper. Now, the reason I’m running through 

17 this, make sure we covered it. Because we 

18 kind of, we kind of jumped all kind of around. 

19 MR. GRIFFON: That’s 4.3-9. I mean, that 

20 was, we talked about the thorium model. We 

21 didn’t specifically talk about ingestion, but 

22 it was -- 

23 DR. NETON: It was in Mark’s presentation. 

24 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, yeah, oh, okay. 

25 DR. NETON: TIB-0009. 
287

1 MR. GRIFFON: We have some follow-up actions 

2 on that anyway so I think we’re okay with 

3 that. 

4 MR. CLAWSON: And that was done on a white 

5 paper, and I believe we got the follow up on 

6 that. 

7 NIOSH to, conducted interviews with 

8 former industrial hygienists and will post 

9 them on the O drive. Did they make it on 

10 there, the interviews with the -- 

11 MR. ROLFES: Yes, all the interviews that 

12 NIOSH has conducted have been placed on the O 

13 drive for the Advisory Board’s review. 

14 There’s an interview folder. 

15 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah, I just went in, and I 

16 tried finding it earlier. 

17 MR. GRIFFON: I mean, just to put that one 

18 in context, I think to go back -- what finding 

19 number was it? 

20 MR. CLAWSON: 4.3-10. 

21 MR. GRIFFON: I mean, I think it is worth 

22 mentioning. This came because of the air 

23 sampling, right? The concerns that one 

24 industrial hygienist raised about his memory 

25 of air sampling. I’m looking at 4.3-10, yeah, 
288

1 the number two, I think, on previous actions. 

2 And I mean, I noted that you said your 

3 response, Mark, was that some of the DWE 

4 reports cited in the white paper were authored 

5 by the IH in question. And I put below it, 

6 so. I mean, I don’t know, yeah, he authored 

7 some of those. I’m not sure that answers the 

8 root finding, you know, the root concern. 

9 And Hans, step in here, we’re just, 

10 we’re on 4.3-10, this air sampling and 

11 industrial hygienist. 

12 DR. BEHLING: Oh, yeah, yeah, I guess we 

13 still have some concerns about his accusations 

14 about falsifying air monitoring data. And I 

15 think it was stated that given the fact that 

16 he was a hygienist and he had years of 

17 experience, and even with Larry’s testimony 

18 that he was a respectable person, one has to 

19 question to what extent his accusations may 

20 have wider implications about the quality of 

21 air monitoring data. 

22 MR. GRIFFON: And the other thing is this 

23 response, if he authored some of these DWE 

24 reports, and we seem to be willing to accept 

25 those and model those as a coworker model, on 
289

1 one hand you’re accepting his data as 

2 credible, and on the other hand his statements 

3 are being refuted. 

4 MR. ROLFES: The individual wasn’t asked to 

5 falsify data, but it was his impression that 

6 he was being asked to falsify data. He had 

7 indicated that he had collected seven samples 

8 because his supervisor didn’t approve of the 

9 high air sample results. He wanted him to re10 sample because it was a high sample result. 

11 He said go back and sample again, go back and 

12 sample again. 

13 There was no indication that those 

14 data were destroyed. So we don’t have any 

15 indication other than this individual’s 

16 affidavit. That was just an interpretation of 

17 the affidavit. I don’t see any indication 

18 that those data were destroyed and don’t 

19 exist. 

20 MR. GRIFFON: Well, implicit in his 

21 affidavit, I think, was that it was a concern, 

22 right? I mean, otherwise he wouldn’t have 

23 written that kind of statement. 

24 MR. CLAWSON: I believe the concern come 

25 back that he was told to go back and re-sample 
290

1 and re-sample until it was below the limit. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: That may not be in -- 

3 MR. ROLFES: We can go back to the affidavit 

4 and look at it again. But ultimately, we’re 

5 not going to be any further along than what we 

6 have already come to. I mean, we’ve been 

7 discussing this, this issue has been presented 

8 to the Advisory Board since a year ago, since 

9 February. And we presented what we found. 

10 MR. GRIFFON: And I think, so there was an 

11 attempt to recover this IH’s logbooks. Have 

12 there been any progress in any of that? 

13 MR. ROLFES: We do certainly have some of 

14 his air sampling data. That is available, and 

15 I think we referred to at the last Advisory 

16 Board working group meeting. We did indicate 

17 that we had posted some of his air monitoring 

18 data -- 

19 MR. GRIFFON: I’m sorry. Some of this is, 

20 it’s just that I don’t remember. 

21 MR. ROLFES: No problem. I just want to 

22 make sure -- 

23 MR. GRIFFON: So you have some of the 

24 logbook data. And did you crosswalk that in 

25 any way to see if the, I don’t know where that 
291

1 air sampling data would be in terms of in, you 

2 said there’s no indication that it wasn’t 

3 recorded. Where would it have been recorded? 

4 MR. ROLFES: It would have been recorded on 

5 an air sampling datasheet, on an air 

6 monitoring sheet. And we have air monitoring 

7 datasheets. 

8 MR. GRIFFON: You have a spreadsheet with 

9 air monitoring data? 

10 MR. ROLFES: We have lots of air monitoring 

11 data. We did not pull out the individuals’ 

12 air sampling data specifically. There’s 

13 multiple results. I don’t believe we were 

14 asked to go and recover all of his air 

15 sampling data specifically and pull that out. 

16 But we did post some sampling for his or some 

17 of the samples that he had collected we did 

18 post onto the O drive. 

19 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think that’s all we 

20 asked was the logbook stuff first. I’m just 

21 asking follow up. 

22 DR. BEHLING: The implication, however, is 

23 that this may be one person who stepped 

24 forward and was a whistle blower. To what 

25 extent were there other people who did 
292

1 something very similar for whom we have no 

2 documentation, that they may have cooked the 

3 books a bit here in their air sampling 

4 methods. The issue is not necessarily looking 

5 at logbooks; the question is to what extent 

6 was this a prevalent practice that affected 

7 not only this individual but others as well 

8 over periods of time. 

9 And I think we talked about some of 

10 the issues. Obviously, when I look at some of 

11 the documents, they did routine air monitoring 

12 data and then realized that they were either 

13 faced with shutting down the system at a time 

14 when they couldn’t afford to do so. 

15 And they contracted engineering people 

16 to look at modifications of the plant, very 

17 costly, and of course, in this case you can 

18 speculate -- I’m not saying I know -- but you 

19 can speculate that maybe he was asked to look 

20 at a facility that had been subject to 

21 significant modification, engineering 

22 modification, to see what impacts those 

23 modifications may have made. 

24 And the people there said, oh my God, 

25 this didn’t do anything. And now you go back 
293

1 and get the sample we’re looking for so as to 

2 not get in trouble with the boss because we 

3 blew large sums of money. 

4 I mean, it’s one of those situations 

5 where you don’t know what the driving force 

6 was behind this individual’s claim that he was 

7 asked to go back many times or several times 

8 in order to get a lower value that would now 

9 support a boss in saying, well, the 

10 modification worked. I think it’s just all 

11 speculation. 

12 MR. ROLFES: Correct. It is all speculation 

13 and that’s really all we have at the moment. 

14 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): This is Leo 

15 again. Let’s not forget that good health 

16 protection practice, if you got a high air 

17 sample, you probably will go back and re18 sample just because it’s high to verify it. 

19 And that’s common practice. 

20 DR. BEHLING: Well, if you read the 

21 affidavit you’ll come to a different 

22 conclusion. I don’t think he was referring to 

23 multiple samples to get a better statistic. 

24 MR. CLAWSON: So we have put these 

25 interviews though on the O drive, correct? 
294

1 DR. NETON: Correct. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: The question I have, and this 

3 is really a refresher, but the air sampling in 

4 question here, is this air sampling data being 

5 used in any way for dose reconstruction? 

6 MR. ROLFES: The uranium intakes -- 

7 MR. GRIFFON: Is it uranium air sampling 

8 that he was doing? 

9 MR. ROLFES: That’s correct. He was in 

10 Plant 5 is where the supposed data was 

11 collected. And for Plant 5 everything would 

12 be based on uranium, or excuse me, on uranium 

13 urinalyses and uranium intakes would be based 

14 on. 

15 DR. MAURO: Oh, so this doesn’t go toward 

16 thorium daily weighted average. 

17 MR. GRIFFON: I mean, it doesn’t take away 

18 from the concern about -- 

19 DR. BEHLING: No, but this is more a generic 

20 problem. If the issue involved uranium air 

21 monitoring then they’re the same problem. 

22 MR. GRIFFON: Could it also -- 

23 DR. BEHLING: Could it also translate into 

24 thorium air monitoring? It’s a broader issue. 

25 MR. CLAWSON: So we’re kind of still ongoing 
295

1 on that to a point. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: But I’m not sure there’s any 

3 way to track the question of, you know, you 

4 said we had no indication that these were not 

5 recorded, and I don’t know if there’s any way 

6 to check that. I mean, you said we don’t have 

7 any indication, but is there any way to 

8 crosswalk that. You found logbooks, I mean, 

9 you have logbooks from this time period in 

10 question? 

11 MR. ROLFES: The individual was one of the 

12 individuals that took air samplings. We have 

13 air sampling data from him. Ultimately, I 

14 don’t know how far it would get us along to 

15 compare any intakes derived from air 

16 monitoring data versus intakes based on 

17 urinalysis data. 

18 MR. GRIFFON: No, no, no. That’s not the 

19 point. I mean, you’re dismissing the claim, 

20 the claim that he’s making, you’re dismissing 

21 it. But if we can look, and we see it. In 

22 fact, he was asked to go back seven times and 

23 you know this seventh one was recorded from 

24 his logbook into -- 

25 MR. ROLFES: I don’t think there’s enough 
296

1 data. I don’t think he elaborated enough on 

2 what operation he was sampling and time period 

3 -- 

4 MR. GRIFFON: So we couldn’t, that’s my 

5 question. 

6 MR. ROLFES: -- we’d be guessing -- I don’t 

7 know -- a 40-year time period roughly as to 

8 where he had collected the samples. 

9 MR. GRIFFON: Is the individual still 

10 available for -- 

11 MR. ROLFES: No, he’s unfortunately 

12 unavailable to obtain any further information 

13 from. 

14 MR. CLAWSON: Have we come to a conclusion 

15 on that or -- 

16 MR. CHEW: The industrial hygienist? 

17 MR. ROLFES: Correct. 

18 MR. CHEW: Just that thing about it’s not 

19 systemic or not? 

20 MR. ROLFES: That’s correct. We did discuss 

21 this issue, and it’s documented in our 

22 interviews with other industrial hygienists to 

23 see if this was, in fact, a systemic issue or 

24 if it was a widespread issue. And they had no 

25 knowledge that it ever was. They certainly -- 
297

1 and it’s documented in our interview notes 

2 that the purpose of industrial hygiene, the 

3 purpose of the air sampling program was to 

4 find the highest air concentrations to which 

5 an individual -- 

6 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I understand, but you’ve 

7 also, I mean, you’ve just strengthened the 

8 affidavit in my opinion. You note that he’s 

9 an author of these DWE reports. It wasn’t 

10 just someone that showed up at Fernald for a 

11 few years and then was disgruntled and had, so 

12 for him to make these statements I think that, 

13 to me we have to at least try. Maybe we can’t 

14 track it, but try. 

15 DR. NETON: ^ interviewing the other 

16 hygienists or not and getting a feeling if 

17 it’s pervasive. But it certainly looks ^ that 

18 issue. I don’t know what else you can do. 

19 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I know. 

20 DR. NETON: You do what you can do here. 

21 MR. GRIFFON: I think at this point there’s 

22 no action on it. I’d like to look at some of 

23 the logbook data, and you posted it already. 

24 MR. ROLFES: There’s plenty of air sampling 

25 data to review. 
298

1 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, we’ve got two more items 

2 to try to get through real quick. Number five 

3 is, and this is part of 4.4-2. NIOSH will 

4 post a model on underlying assumptions on the 

5 O drive. SC&A will review the model along 

6 with the underlying assumptions. And my 

7 understanding on 4.2, this comes back to the 

8 thorium in vivo model. 

9 MR. GRIFFON: Which we just discussed. 

10 MR. CLAWSON: Which we’ve just discussed. 

11 And we’ve got that so that’s completed. 

12 Okay, and then item six which is 4.5-

13 1. NIOSH will attempt to identify procedures 

14 the quality assurance reports from the early 

15 time periods, 1953 to 1985 and make them 

16 available on the O drive. This goes to 

17 Finding 4.5-1, the Parker Report dated 1945 to 

18 give NIOSH the follow up. The Parker Report 

19 shows that three dosimeters performed were 

20 very well in measurements and exposure to. 

21 This is your follow up on it. That’s page 21. 

22 MR. ROLFES: Oh, I’m sorry. Are you waiting 

23 for me? 

24 MR. CLAWSON: Well, I was just reading the 

25 response. NIOSH will attempt to identify 
299

1 these procedures. Have they been posted onto 

2 the O drive? It says in your response here, 

3 the Parker Report, SRD-433, shows that the 

4 three dosimeters performed very well in the 

5 measurements of exposure to uranium. The OR 

6 dosimeters were used for Fernald for several 

7 years and modified. Modifications were made 

8 to them. 

9 MR. ROLFES: Leo Faust I believe is on the 

10 phone, and could you repeat? It was 4.5-1. 

11 MR. CLAWSON: Dash-two, dash-one. I’m 

12 sorry. It’s the bottom of page 21. 

13 MR. ROLFES: I was looking through and every 

14 time I touched my keyboard the wrong way, it 

15 jumps back up to the top of the matrix. So 

16 just trying to -- 

17 Leo? 

18 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): Yes. 

19 MR. ROLFES: We’re on 4.5-1, and this was in 

20 regards to the Parker Report. I think the 

21 question was, was the Parker Report provided? 

22 Is that the question? Was the Parker Report 

23 provided? 

24 MR. CLAWSON: Well, it says NIOSH will 

25 attempt to identify procedures in quality 
300

1 assurance, reports from the early time period, 

2 1953 to ’85, and make them available on the O 

3 drive. And the response back that I got was 

4 you’d posted the Parker Report to dosimetry. 

5 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): Yeah, this 

6 report, what they did was they took the three 

7 different laboratories’ dosimeters and exposed 

8 them in a round robin, so to speak, and 

9 compared the results. The results all were 

10 recorded as very favorable, and that dosimeter 

11 was the one that was used at the Oak Ridge 

12 dosimeter, was the one that was used at 

13 Fernald for up until the early ‘80s. And, of 

14 course, it had been modified from time to 

15 time, but the workings of it were basically 

16 the same. There were other inter-comparisons 

17 done, but as far as I know, they weren’t 

18 reported per se. 

19 MR. CLAWSON: So was this posted onto the O 

20 drive? 

21 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): The report is on 

22 the O drive, yes. 

23 MR. CLAWSON: Do you know what it’s listed 

24 under? 

25 MR. ROLFES: It’s site research database 
301

1 433. I’m sorry. We had two different, I was 

2 looking at two different versions of the 

3 matrix, I guess, and I had a little bit of 

4 difference. 

5 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): It’s 433. 

6 MR. CHEW: It’s in the matrix I sent you, 

7 Brad. 

8 DR. BEHLING: Now you have to really go back 

9 to the findings. Sometimes I think we lose 

10 track of what the findings try to say. If you 

11 go back to my finding which was identified on 

12 page 112 under 4.5-1, I cite certain things 

13 that come out of the report, that I quote 

14 directly from the report that says, “There 

15 were no procedures available for the 

16 processing evaluation of personal dosimeters 

17 for these various periods of time.” 

18 Also, there was the issue of a person 

19 who was in charge of this program who had no 

20 formal training, no formal qualification and 

21 so forth and so forth. And that fact that you 

22 tested a dosimeter under controlled conditions 

23 in a round robin has very little to do with 

24 the questions that are raised under Finding 

25 4.5-1. 
302

1 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): That’s not 

2 correct, Arjun. 

3 DR. BEHLING: No, it’s Hans. 

4 MR. GRIFFON: Hello? 

5 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): Yes? 

6 DR. BEHLING: Yeah, I’m quoting for instance 

7 in my write up on that particular finding, I’m 

8 quoting from a report, and I’ve done this 

9 routinely here. I’m not making these things 

10 up. These are not opinions. But in one of 

11 the progress reports, a health physics report, 

12 it states that, quote, “Test dosimeters are 

13 not routinely processed; however, five to ten 

14 gamma of six or 11 beta and gamma calibrations 

15 films were processed” -- 

16 Okay, that’s not the issue that I 

17 wanted to talk about, but the qualification 

18 and the failure to provide quality assurance. 

19 Again, I’m scanning through my own write up. 

20 But I had really tried to get in this 

21 particular finding was the limited 

22 qualification of the people in charge of the 

23 program, the limited quality assurance and 

24 programs that were in place to make sure that 

25 the instruments were calibrated properly, et 
303

1 cetera, et cetera. 

2 And as I said, you have to read 

3 through the attachment that I quote from that 

4 raises the issue about the quality of personal 

5 dosimetry. And it has nothing to do with the 

6 dosimeter itself. I’m not questioning that. 

7 There are statements here about people leaving 

8 their film in the car and it heated up and the 

9 dashboard and those kinds of things. And as I 

10 said they have very little to do with what 

11 you’re talking about here about a round robin 

12 test. 

13 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): But there are 

14 several reports from the inspections that were 

15 done by the Oak Ridge Operations Office 

16 personnel. And their results or their 

17 appraisal write ups all indicate that the 

18 external dosimetry program was more than 

19 adequate. 

20 MR. GRIFFON: Do you have, I mean, have 

21 those been provided to us, these several 

22 reports you mentioned? 

23 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): They’re there. 

24 Just one of them that I’m familiar with is the 

25 one that relates to the 1983 inspection and 
304

1 the answers back to it as the corrections that 

2 the Fernald people performed. And I do know 

3 that there is another similar, earlier one, or 

4 two actually. One’s dated for 1961, and I 

5 believe the other one is that I’m aware of is 

6 1963. And those numbers are on the SRDB. 

7 Mark probably has that actual number. 

8 DR. BEHLING: Let me just briefly -- 

9 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): I’m not at home 

10 right now. I’m sitting in Las Vegas so I’m 

11 kind of at a loss for -- 

12 DR. BEHLING: This reference was made as a 

13 snapshot, but I’m quoting directly from a 

14 September 11, 1981, in response to dosimetry 

15 assessment fact sheet, and these are the 

16 statements of -- 

17 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): I understand. I 

18 know what you’re talking about. That was a 

19 fact sheet that was filled out one afternoon 

20 by someone that really wasn’t involved with 

21 the whole program. 

22 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I think one thing that’s 

23 helpful is, because if I remember right, one 

24 of our questions was looking at some of the 

25 quality assurance and/or procedures from the 
305

1 time periods in question, and I think one of 

2 the earlier items we had was only a real 

3 recent report. And this sounds like you have 

4 at least something from the ’61, ’63. Maybe 

5 you should try to find these and look at them 

6 and see, you know. Maybe they don’t get back 

7 to the root finding, but at least that’s a 

8 pathway -- 

9 DR. BEHLING: Well, this was a statement 

10 that caught my attention, statement number 

11 five. There were no specific training 

12 requirements for the film badge technician 

13 when this program began in 1951. The 

14 technician received on-the-job training. The 

15 technician has now -- 

16 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): I have to -- the 

17 early days, the whole external dosimetry 

18 program was actually administered by the HASL 

19 Laboratory for the first 18, at least the 

20 first 18 months of operation. And we have 

21 obtained on an O drive a complete set of their 

22 laboratory procedures including the 

23 calibration and evaluation of the film badges. 

24 Now that is on the O drive. 

25 DR. BEHLING: Well, maybe we should strike 
306

1 this particular evaluation or fact sheet 

2 because he states here no procedures available 

3 for the processing-slash-evaluation of 

4 personal dosimeters. And he talks about this 

5 technician, the same technician has done this 

6 work since 1951 through the present time in 

7 1981 who has no official training, et cetera, 

8 et cetera. 

9 So we’re not talking about a snapshot, 

10 but this particular document seems to imply 

11 that this has been a long-term issue. I’m not 

12 sure if this is an error here on somebody’s 

13 part in filling out the fact sheet or what it 

14 is. But I identified it as a finding. 

15 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): Now the health 

16 protection reviews that I was talking about, 

17 the 1961 has got a number on it of 1-1-1-8 

18 which I think is some kind of a legal review. 

19 The one for 1963 is 1-1-2-1. The one for 1964 

20 is 1-1-2-2. 

21 MR. ROLFES: Leo, I believe you’re referring 

22 to some of the plaintiff’s exhibit files. 

23 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): Right, yeah. 

24 MR. CLAWSON: I don’t see any of these on 

25 the O drive. 
307

1 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): They’re all part 

2 of one large package, Mark. 

3 MR. ROLFES: Yeah, okay. Once again, we can 

4 copy everything that we have on the site 

5 research database to put it onto the O drive 

6 if that’s what you would like to do. I mean, 

7 we’re certainly it’s going to complicate your 

8 ability to find a document. And, you know, 

9 the timeliness -- 

10 MS. BALDRIDGE: I have the cross-reference. 

11 If he tells me the documents, I can tell you 

12 what petition page it’s on. 

13 MR. ROLFES: It is, the document number’s 

14 the plaintiff’s exhibit files were 1-1-1-8 and 

15 1-1-2-2. 

16 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. Could I make 

17 a request regarding site research database 

18 documents being posted on the O drive? It’s a 

19 suggestion I don’t know that others may or may 

20 not like. I find it hard to know what the 

21 document is if it just has the site research 

22 database document number. And when there are 

23 like 50 documents, it’s very difficult to know 

24 without going through every one of them and 

25 find what you’re looking for. 
308

1 MR. FAUST (by Telephone): Correct. I 

2 agree. 

3 DR. MAKHIJANI: And it would be helpful if 

4 the SRDB title were also copied into the O 

5 drive and then the research becomes much 

6 faster and more efficient. 

7 MR. ROLFES: But still you need to open up 

8 every document in order to determine what the 

9 contents of that document are. 

10 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, if the title could be 

11 posted next to the number on the O drive, it’s 

12 very helpful. 

13 MR. ROLFES: The way the files are named 

14 typically in our site research database their 

15 named with the reference ID number followed by 

16 the title of the document. 

17 DR. MAKHIJANI: Right. And in the O drive 

18 the title of the document is not given 

19 usually, and it’s quite hampering. 

20 MR. ROLFES: Okay, there may have been some 

21 documents that were posted on there because as 

22 soon as we got them, we wanted to make them 

23 available to the Advisory Board. So there 

24 could have been an initial data capture series 

25 of documents that were put in an expeditious 
309

1 manner onto the O drive for your review. We 

2 can go back and remove those and replace those 

3 with the appropriate reference ID format 

4 followed by the title of the document. 

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: Oh, thank you so much, Mark. 

6 That would make life very easy. 

7 MR. CLAWSON: I guess once we get this 

8 information I’d like SC&A to be able to bring 

9 closure to this one for them, review. 

10 MR. GRIFFON: And I think it is worth SC&A 

11 at least looking at those reports and seeing 

12 if that’s in any way helpful to resolving the 

13 finding. I guess that’s the, you know. 

14 MR. CLAWSON: That completes this paper. I 

15 don’t think by any means this does everything 

16 but... So now, do we have any questions with 

17 what everybody has been tasked to do? Do we 

18 need to run through that? 

19 MR. GRIFFON: I’m not in a real good 

20 position to do that. But I mean, I have been 

21 taking notes real time so I should be able to 

22 get an updated matrix out fairly quickly, like 

23 early next week is fairly quickly I think 

24 because I have to merge the one I developed 

25 and this one. 
310

1 DR. WADE: More than reasonable. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: Then you’ll have in that last 

3 column that you created, Mark, I added, and 

4 what I might, I’ll probably just keep it in 

5 track changes mode so people can see the new 

6 stuff, right. 

7 DR. WADE: Shall we get that from Mark? If 

8 you have any questions concerning the 

9 assignments, check with what Mark has. If 

10 that doesn’t work, then give Brad a call. 

11 MR. ROLFES: I think it would be a good idea 

12 for the Advisory Board working group to send 

13 what they specifically would like so that 

14 we’re on the same page. That way we’ll have 

15 any outstanding issues that we need to address 

16 documented so that we can address them fully. 

17 I know we’ve been re-discussing some of these 

18 issues over and over, and we’ve just been 

19 going in circles. 

20 And I would like to move forward on 

21 these issues. I would like to resolve them 

22 rather than continue to discuss what has been 

23 done. I mean, a lot of what we’re covering, 

24 you know, we need to provide updates on 

25 things, but much of what we’ve been discussing 
311

1 is just rehashing what’s on the matrix and 

2 what has and hasn’t been done. 

3 And I feel that we have addressed what 

4 the Advisory Board working group has asked us 

5 to address. If there are some things that we 

6 haven’t fully addressed, we’ll be happy to go 

7 back and look into those, but I want to make 

8 sure that we do have a well-defined series of 

9 action items that are outstanding. 

10 MR. GRIFFON: Yes. I mean, I think there’s 

11 a couple large ones. 

12 MR. CLAWSON: I’ll follow up with that, and 

13 I’ll correlate with SC&A and NIOSH and the 

14 rest of the Advisory Board for the Fernald 

15 group and make sure that we’re all on the same 

16 page in where we’re going if that’s all right. 

17 Okay, I think we’re ready to adjourn. 

18 DR. WADE: You ready to be done? 

19 MR. CLAWSON: Yeah. 

20 DR. WADE: Okay, well, we’re done. I think 

21 we’ve reached a point of diminishing returns, 

22 certainly. Those of you on the line we wish 

23 you well in how you spend the rest of your 

24 day. Thank you for spending the time with us, 

25 and we should do this again real soon some 
312

1 time. 

2 (Whereupon, the work group meeting adjourned 

3 at 4:45 p.m.) 

4 

5 

6 
313

1 CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER 

STATE OF GEORGIA 

COUNTY OF FULTON 

 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 

Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 

above and foregoing on the day of March 26, 

2008; and it is a true and accurate transcript 

of the testimony captioned herein. 

 I further certify that I am neither kin 

nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 

have any interest in the cause named herein. 

 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 

30th day of December, 2008. 

___________________________________ 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR, CVR-CM, PNSC 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102