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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

 CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL 

+ + + + + 

 NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY 

 AND HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

 ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND 

 WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

 60th MEETING 

 + + + + + 

 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2008 

 The meeting came to order at 9:00 a.m. 

in the Oglethorpe Room of the Augusta Marriott 

Hotel and Suites, 2 Tenth Street, Augusta, 

Georgia, Dr. Paul L. Ziemer, Chair, presiding. 
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PRESENT: 

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Chair 

JOSIE M. BEACH, Member 

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member 

MICHAEL H. GIBSON, Member 

MARK A. GRIFFON, Member 

WANDA I. MUNN, Member 

ROBERT W. PRESLEY, Member 

JOHN W. POSTON, Member 

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member (via telephone) 

PHILLIP M. SCHOFIELD, Member 

TED KATZ, Acting Designated Federal Official
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REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS 

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH CONTRACTOR 

BRADFORD, SHANNON, NIOSH 

BROEHM, JASON, CDC 

CHEW, MEL, ORAU 

DEGARMO, DENISE, SIUE/DOW 

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A 

HANSON, JOHN, SIUE 

HINNEFELD, STU, NIOSH 

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 

KOTSCH, JEFF, US DOL 

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A 

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 

MILLER, RELADA, OCAS 

MCFEE, MATT, ORAU 

MORGAN, THOMAS 

PARADISE, CAROLYN 

SCOGGS, WILLIAM, DEPOT 

SIMPSON, CHARLES, Retired DOE 

VOLSCH, JOE, SIUE 

WALK, JOHN, BNL 

WREN, JERRY 

ZIEMER, MARILYN 
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

AGENDA ITEM PAGE 

Welcome..................................... 3 

Board Working Time 

 Review of SEC Petition Write-Ups ...... 4 

 Tracking of Board Actions ............ 43 

Subcommittee, Work Group Reports 

 100 Case Roll-Ups .................... 63 

 Next Set of Reviews .................. 89 

 Work Group Reports ................... 95 

Future Plans and Meetings 

 Status of IT Arrangements ........... 127 

 Location for October Meeting ........ 132 

Adjourn
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P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

 9:05 a.m. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Good morning, 

everyone. We're going to begin Day 3 of our 

deliberations for the Advisory Board on 

Radiation and Worker Health. I must begin 

with my usual comment to remind you to 

register and in doing so, I remember that I 

forgot to do that myself, so be sure to sign 

the registration book before you leave today. 

 There is no public comment period today. 

 Mr. Katz, do you have any opening 

remarks for the group? 

 MR. KATZ: Nothing, just for the 

folks on the telephone, if someone could let 

us know, can you hear this well? Gen, are you 

there? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: I'm here and I 

can hear you well, it's very good. 

 MR. KATZ: Great, and otherwise, 

everyone who is on the phone, please mute your 

phones, *6, if you don't have a mute button, 
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thanks. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And for the record, 

again, Dr. Lockey is not with us today and Dr. 

Melius is not able to be with us today. Dr. 

Roessler is here by phone. 

 Today is devoted mainly to working 

sessions of the Board and a variety of Board 

reports, internal reports. It's the Chair's 

intention that we try to get ahead of 

schedule. In fact, normally, we allow about 

15 minutes at the front end of each day's 

agenda, something called welcome, which is 

where you mingle and greet each other and 

catch up on activities of the evening before 

such as how many times you went on the 

treadmill or whatever turned you on last 

night. But in any event, we'll be a little 

ahead of schedule to start and I hope we gain 

on the agenda as we move along. 

 We'll try to be efficient. Many 

folks are flying out yet today and we want to 

make sure we get all our work done before 
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people start leaving for the airport. First 

of all, we have three SEC petitions whose 

final wording needs to be examined. It's the 

Chair's intention to sign those yet today and 

submit them to the -- to NIOSH and in turn 

they are transmitted to the Secretary. 

 Normally, we allow about a threeweek time period for all the odds and ends to 

be taken care of but because there's a 

transition going on and we'd like to come to 

closure on these three items before Secretary 

Leavitt leaves office, I'm hopeful that we can 

get these out today. So if you would take the 

drafts that were given to you yesterday 

evening, and I don't know -- I believe that 

counsel -- did counsel get copies of these and 

also NIOSH and Labor because we always want to 

make sure everybody agrees to what the wording 

is; NIOSH to define the class and Labor to 

understand if it's a class that they can 

administer. Sometimes we have fine details in 

the wording that can cause snags. 
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 But let's begin with -- we'll take 

them in the order that we acted on them. 

Let's begin with the Metallurgy Collaboratory 

draft. Now, the part of the boilerplate that 

you have before you, the first paragraph, is 

not part of the letter that goes to the 

Secretary. This is the normal instruction to 

the Chair to submit the letter within 21 days. 

 I'm not going to ask you to examine that. 

That's the same first paragraph we have every 

time when we make these motions. 

 The second paragraph describes the 

class. And it states in the usual way that 

we've evaluated the petition, it numbers the 

petition. It names the laboratory or the 

facility, the Metallurgical Laboratory in 

Chicago, Illinois. It refers to the statutes. 

 These are all standard wordings and then it 

gives the statement that we recommend that 

special exposure cohort status be accorded to 

the -- to all AWE employees who work at the 

lab between those specified dates, so here's 
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the class. 

 It's all the employees and it's 

August 13th, `42 to June 30th, `46 and the usual 

statement about the number of work days 

aggregating 250 either solely or in 

combination with other eligible employment. 

So that's all standard wording, but I want to 

ask, are there any questions, Board members, 

NIOSH, counsel or Labor on the description of 

the class as given in that paragraph? If 

there are none, I'd want to look at the last 

sentence of that paragraph which -- where we 

always describe what can be done for those for 

whom partial dose reconstructions may be 

needed if they have non-specified cancers. In 

this case, the statement is that NIOSH 

believes they are able to reconstruct portions 

of the external and internal doses and the 

occupational medical dose. 

 And I believe this is the 

description that grows out of the evaluation 

report that was presented to the Board. I 
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want to make sure again, that NIOSH and Labor 

and counsel are all in agreement with that 

description. Okay. Then we always provide 

several bullet points to describe or explain 

the basis on which the findings were made. 

And let us enumerate them here in case you 

hadn't had a chance to look at them in detail. 

 One, the Metallurgical Laboratory 

was involved in the earliest research and 

development work for the manufacture of atomic 

weapons. The second bullet point, NIOSH was 

unable to locate sufficient monitoring data or 

information on radiological operations at 

these laboratories in order to be able to 

complete accurate individual dose 

reconstructions for the potential internal and 

external exposures to plutonium, radium, 

fission products, uranium and uranium progeny 

to which these workers may have been 

subjected. The Board concurs with this 

conclusion. 

 I'm going to stop here just for a 
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moment because there's one item in here that I 

think may need clarification. It says 

radiological operations at these laboratories. 

 This is collectively called the Metallurgical 

Laboratory. I know it includes more than one 

facility but that is not delineated in this 

letter and I'm wondering and again, I ask 

NIOSH and counsel as well as the Board, would 

we not be better to say this laboratory 

referring to the Metallurgical Laboratory and 

it could be capitalized even? 

 Wanda Munn, you're one of our 

experts on the king's English, not the 

president's English, the king's English. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Regardless, in 

current use. It would appear -- unless it 

continues to be confusing for all concerned, 

it would appear that we should either say 

these laboratories -- these facilities rather 

than laboratories or that we do as you have 

suggested and use the name, Metallurgical 

Laboratory. 
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 CHAIR ZIEMER: Or we could say this 

facility I suppose. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, we could say 

this facility. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Counsel can help us 

here. 

 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: I just want to 

clarify, facility is a term of art in this 

law, so you shouldn't say these facilities 

because we only do SECs for one facility. So 

I would -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: No, I was going to 

use it as a singular, this facility. 

 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Yes, or use it 

as a singular. Right, this facility is fine. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Which may leave a 

question in minds somewhere with respect to 

whether or not there is more than one physical 

location for this facility but -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, I believe the 

quote facility is described both in the 

petition and in the evaluation report and it 
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lists a number of laboratories. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Laboratories and 

several -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Perhaps the word 

facility would be preferable. Would there by 

any objection to changing that to facility or 

did someone have a better suggestion? Josie? 

 MEMBER BEACH: If you look at the 

next one under Vitro, it does say this 

facility, under the same description. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes, so perhaps if 

no one objects, let's change that. I think 

I'm looking for -- we have to -- we're going 

to have to change something else anyway, so 

let's change that. So it will say 

radiological operations at this facility 

rather than at these laboratories. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I'm still not sure 

that's exactly what we want to do. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, I think 

counsel told us that under the regulation -- 

 MEMBER MUNN: We can't say -- 
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 CHAIR ZIEMER: -- this item is a 

facility. Yes. It's one facility. All the 

buildings constitute a facility and that's the 

wording that's used in the law itself. Is 

that not correct, counsel? 

Are you okay on that? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Right, my only 

concern was a casual reader not grasping that 

or the potential claimants not grasping it, 

but that's fine. I have no objection. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And then we 

referred -- well, let's see, did I read the 

third bullet then? No, the third bullet says, 

NIOSH determined that health may have been 

endangered for the workers exposed to 

radiation at this facility during the time 

period in question. The Board concurs with 

this determination. And then we have the 

normal sentence referring to supporting 

documentation which in this case includes the 

transcripts of the meeting at which the 

discussion took place as well as, I believe 
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the petition and related documents. 

 Okay, any questions on this? We've 

already approved the motion, so if there are 

no other changes, that will be the document as 

it goes forward. Any other changes or 

questions? And again, as I understand it 

then, NIOSH and Labor and counsel are all okay 

on this. Thank you. 

 Let's to on to Vitro, the standard 

starting paragraph instructing the Chairman, 

and then the second paragraph describing this 

facility, it says, Petition 00134 concerning 

workers at Vitro Manufacturing Facility in 

Canonsburg, Pennsylvania under the statutory 

requirements, et cetera. Our recommendation 

for providing SEC status and then the 

description of the class. All AWE employees 

who worked at Vitro Manufacturing, I think it 

should say at the Vitro, shouldn't it, 

Manufacturing Facility in Canonsburg, 

Pennsylvania from August 13 1942 through 

December 31st, 1957 for a number of work days 
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aggregating at least 250, et cetera. 

 And then -- are we okay on that 

class description, everybody? Okay. 

 MEMBER MUNN: You have verified 

those dates, I wouldn't be that person, but 

I'm assuming -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I believe that was 

double -checked, yes. And then the sentence 

dealing with partial dose reconstructions, the 

Board notes that although NIOSH found that 

they were unable to completely reconstruct 

doses, radiation doses for these employees, 

they believe they are able to reconstruct 

portions of the external and internal 

radiation doses and the occupation of medical 

dose. Everything okay there? 

 And then the three bullets, The 

Vitro Manufacturing Facility was involved 

early uranium processing work for the 

manufacture of atomic weapons. The second 

bullet, NIOSH was unable to locate sufficient 

monitoring data or information on radiological 
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operations at this facility in order to be 

able to complete accurate individual dose 

reconstructions for the potential internal 

exposures to uranium and uranium progeny to 

which these workers may have been subjected. 

The Board concurs with this conclusion. 

 The third bullet, NIOSH determined 

that health may have been endangered for the 

workers exposed to radiation at this facility 

during the time period in question. The Board 

concurs with this determination. Any 

questions on Vitro? 

 If not, that will be the document 

that goes forward, or the wording that goes 

forward together with the supplementary 

material. 

 Mallinckrodt -- Emily, you have a 

comment on Vitro? 

 MS. HOWELL: No, Mallinckrodt. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: On Mallinckrodt, 

okay, thank you. 

 MS. HOWELL: The facility name is 
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misspelled throughout the document. There's a 

c, M-a-l-l-i-n-c-k-r-o-d-t. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes. And that 

occurs several times, actually. The second 

line of the second paragraph, line 7, and then 

the first bullet. Yes, we'll globally correct 

it, but I want to make sure that we -- those 

corrections are going to be made here shortly. 

 Make sure out copy is marked up. Thank you, 

Emily. 

 So the second paragraph identifies 

Petition 00133 and the Mallinckrodt Chemical 

Company, Destrehan Plant, St. Louis, Missouri 

and the description of the class is, all 

employees of DOE, its predecessor agencies and 

their contractors and subcontractors who 

worked in the Uranium Division at the 

Mallinckrodt Chemical Company, Destrehan 

Plant, in St. Louis, Missouri from January 1st, 

1958 through December 31st, 1958 for a number 

of work days aggregating at least 250, et 

cetera. 
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 Any question or comment on that 

class? We're okay, all agencies, counsel, 

thank you. 

 The statement on partial dose 

reconstruction, the last statement or sentence 

of the paragraph, the Board notes that 

although NIOSH found that they were unable to 

completely reconstruct radiation doses for 

these employees, they believe that they are 

able to reconstruct the external and 

occupational medical doses and portions of the 

internal radiation dose. I'm looking at that. 

 The wording is a little different, but I 

think the reason that was changed and Dr. 

Melius did the editing for us on this, is that 

the external and the medical were fully 

covered and the internal is partial. I guess 

that was the reason, yes. Are we okay on that 

in NIOSH and Labor? Okay. 

 And then the factors, Mallinckrodt 

Chemical Company, Destrehan Plant was involved 

in early uranium processing work for the 
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manufacture of atomic weapons. The Board had 

already recommended that special exposure 

cohort status be granted to employees in the 

Uranium Division who worked there between 1949 

and 1957 be added to the special exposure 

cohort. Something is wrong with that 

sentence. I'm going to return to that in a 

minute. 

 NIOSH reported that there were no 

substantial differences in site operations or 

workplace monitoring practices at this 

facility for 1958 as compared to the earlier 

time period. NIOSH reported, the third 

bullet, reported they were unable to locate 

sufficient monitoring data or information on 

radiological operations at this facility in 

order to be able to complete accurate 

individual dose reconstructions for the 

potential internal exposures to uranium 

progeny to which these workers may have been 

subjected. The Board concurs with this 

conclusion. 
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 The last bullet, NIOSH determined 

that health may have been endangered for the 

workers exposed to radiation at this facility 

during the time period in question. The Board 

concurs with this determination. We're okay, 

I guess, on the content of those. I believe 

the first sentence of the second bullet is 

grammatically wrong. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I think a line has 

been left out. It seems that first sentence 

should read, he Board had already recommended 

that special exposure status be granted to 

employees in the Uranium Division who worked 

there between 1949 and `57, period. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I think the rest of 

that sentence can probably be deleted because 

it, in a sense, is redundant and it's dangling 

in there by itself, be added to the -- 

 MEMBER MUNN: That's why I think a 

sentence -- a line of type has been -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Shouldn't the 

sentence end after `57? Am I understanding 
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that? 

 MEMBER MUNN: I suspect if you -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: If we recommended 

that special exposure status be granted to 

those workers. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Period, after `57. 

And then it appears a new sentence should be -

- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Or maybe it's -- and 

they have been added to this -- well, I think 

we can just leave the rest of that sentence 

off. It just doesn't need to be there, does 

it? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Well, I -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Does it add 

anything? It's repetitious from the earlier 

part of the sentence and it doesn't fit 

grammatically into that sentence. Unless 

somebody can convince me otherwise, I think we 

should leave that out. It's grammatically 

wrong and it doesn't tell us anything that the 

first part of the sentence doesn't already 
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tell us. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I still think that 

part of the second sentence was left out. I 

suspect that it should have read, as it does, 

to 1957, period. And then I suspect a second 

sentence was intended that says, this current 

SEC is a recommendation that and additional 

year be included or be added to the -- the 

words need to be tweaked a little, but I think 

it's trying to clarify that the SEC already 

exists up to 1957. This simply adds -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes, but the 

recommendation has already been given. This 

is an explanation of why we are recommending 

it, not that we recommend it. So again, I -- 

 MEMBER MUNN: That can easily be 

deleted. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Unless it was 

intended to say that that recommendation had 

already been acted on and the group had been 

added, but I think that's immaterial at this 

point. I want to ask NIOSH and counsel; do 
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you see any reason for that phrase to be in 

there? It's clearly grammatically wrong. If 

we leave it out, does anything -- no, okay. 

 I'm striking it. Any other 

comments on this one? Okay, that's how it 

will appear. Is Nancy Adams still in the 

assembly? 

 MS. ADAMS: Yes. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, Nancy, did you 

get all of those? Nancy is helping us get 

the final drafts ready for the Secretary's 

office. So I want to make sure that she got 

all of those. I think that then, completes 

the actions on the SEC Petitions and their 

write-ups. Yes, Mark. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Paul, can I ask 

one? I was catching up on my reading, I'm 

sorry, but on the Met Lab, I know yesterday 

during our discussion it was raised about the 

incident, you know, or the experiments, I 

guess, not really incidents, that were 

criticality experiments and whether there 
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could be something constituting a less than 

250 day clause in this. And I know in the 

past letters that we've written we've left an 

opening that the Board would look into whether 

a shorter time span is warranted for special 

cases at this site and I wonder if we 

shouldn't leave that place holder for the Met 

Lab as well. 

 I don't have -- I was looking 

through old letters where we've put that line 

in and I think it might be warranted in this 

case. It won't change the class or anything 

at this point, but it would leave a 

placeholder for us to consider that in the 250 

day work group. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes, I think you're 

saying if there was someone in that original 

group during those weeks of the initial 

experiments where we had the unshielded 

critical facility -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Whether or not they 
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would be included if they didn't accumulate 

the -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: If they didn't 

accumulate, and likely, as we discussed 

yesterday, likely most of those people 

probably did accumulate, but I mean, we can't 

be sure of that, I guess. So -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I don't think we 

know that a priori. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, right. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: It's fairly likely 

that most of them continued in the project at 

one of the succeeding facilities but -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, yes, right. 

But I know we've left that placeholder before 

and I think it would be wise for us to do 

that, that same sentence in. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: So you're asking 

about the wording that -- but, that still is 

covered, whether we state it or not, I 

believe, right? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I wish we could 
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pull up a letter where we've done that. I 

don't know if you have past letters. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I do have some of 

them. Liz? 

 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: You certainly 

could leave that information in. I just want 

to clarify for you that you need to be careful 

about saying you are leaving it open for a 

shorter time frame. The regulation says 

presence or 250 days. So if you want to use 

language that says we're leaving open the 

option of considering an SEC presence, that's 

fine. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, that's why I 

was asking for the specific because we labored 

over those words and I think we should be 

consistent with the way we phrased it in other 

reports. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Do you remember 

which facility we referenced that to before? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Somebody help me 

out. Was Ames, what's the status on Ames? 
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of the ones we're considering in the 250-day 

work group. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: You're talking about 

the blowouts at Ames, I guess. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. I mean, I 

think in the language on that one, we -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: It was Ames? You're 

thinking that the letter on Ames may have 

stated that? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, or put 

something in there. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, I have the 

Ames letter here. Let me pull it up. 

Where's the speed when you need it, right? 

Okay, I'm looking at the Ames letter from 

August 2007. There is no statement in the 

Ames letter to this effect. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I know I'm not 

dreaming this. I know we put it in something. 

 The monitor should have been monitored. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Maybe it was 
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it might have been Nevada. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Actually, we had a 

couple of Ames. 

 MEMBER BEACH: There was two. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I wonder if it was 

an earlier one. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: It might have been 

the earlier one. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I think August 2007, 

was that the last Ames facility? Let's see, 

I'm looking at the Wilhelm Hall Metallurgy 

Building. Let's see. There's nothing in that 

letter referring to the presence. It's the 

usual statement about aggregating 250 days 

either solely or under this appointment or in 

combination. I'm looking at the end; I'm 

looking at the bullets. Maintenance 

activities, NIOSH reviewed all available 

monitoring data and lacked adequate 

information, determined health may have been 

endangered. There's nothing that -- no, 
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that's what I say, this is probably the wrong 

one. This is the Wilhelm Hall Old Metallurgy 

Building. Was it the other Ames petition? 

 DR. NETON: That one was for 

cleaning up the thorium docks? 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I think that's 

probably true. 

 DR. NETON: That's the second Ames. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Let me see if I have 

another Ames one? Just a second. 

 MEMBER BEACH: There's a July 5, 

2006. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Do you have that? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I think the earlier 

one was on my old computer. Do you have that, 

Josie? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Okay, so on this one 

it does say, the Board will still evaluate 

issues related to people who may have been 
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exposed to radiation during the discrete 

incidents that could have involved 

exceptionally high exposures to radiation 

while working at the Ames Laboratory. Those 

who were present during explosions and fires 

and some of the buildings and who may not meet 

the 250-day requirement described above. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: So those are the 

presence of the -- 

 MEMBER BEACH: That's July 2006. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Those are actually 

incidents. The controlled chain reaction is 

not really an incident, an unplanned event, so 

I'm not sure how it fits into that description 

in the reg. 

 DR. NETON: My recollection was 

that at Ames there were some assertions that 

these type of incidents may have occurred and 

the Board allowed for an additional 

investigation. In fact, those are still 

ongoing with Dr. Melius' working group. In 

this case, I think there's nothing been put 
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forward that is sort of credible at this 

point, I guess, but being silent on it doesn't 

close the book on adding another class based 

on presence down the line. 

 I mean, it would have to be an 

additional class of workers at any rate. So, 

you know, if you're silent on the presence for 

this particular class does not mean another 

class couldn't be added based on presence. So 

I think this first two, the NTS and Ames had 

some inkling that there may have been 

something behind the scenes and the Board 

reserved the right to go back and review 

further for further examples of possible 

presence. So I think it's a little different 

in this case. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And even if we're 

silent on the issue, it doesn't exclude us -- 

 DR. NETON: No, it would have to be 

-- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: -- adding a class at 

some later time if that -- 
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 DR. NETON: Exactly. It would have 

to be a separate class anyways. You'd have to 

identify those workers who were in a presence 

at some event that occurred, you know, a 

discrete event. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Right. This kind of 

event looks a little more like the group in 

one of the existing cohorts that, you know, 

and it wasn't an accident, went into the 

shafts after a weapons test in the sense that 

you know, that was not an incident. That was 

a planned event. But you know, if the Board 

wishes to add wording, we can do that or again 

-- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, an incident 

versus a planned event, I guess is one 

question, and the other question is could -- 

you know, was it of the magnitude to receive a 

significant dose in less than 250 -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Right, I think the 

real issue is could there be significant dose. 

 I was raising that because I wasn't sure if 
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the wording of the law specifically was 

intended to refer to unplanned incidents 

versus -- I mean, this was clearly a planned 

event. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, I agree. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: But nonetheless, 

those who planned it had no idea what the 

exposure rates were going to be. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I guess by 

including it in the letter, it keeps us -- it 

keeps it on our agenda as well, on the Board's 

agenda, that we would task the 250-day work 

group to look into this one as well or 

whatever. I guess that's the one thing it 

does, it keeps us -- keeps it on our, you 

know, agenda. 

 MEMBER MUNN: If we have no 

claimants, no, it's a moot point, unless 

claimants come forward with those 

circumstances. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, but we're 

not sure in any of these ones that we've added 
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on that we would have any claimants. I mean, 

I think at Ames it was shown pretty clearly 

that there was most of all the claimants they 

had met the 250 anyway. So -- but we were 

still investigating that one. So -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, we can 

certainly add a sentence or two. I'm 

concerned about trying to wordsmith a sentence 

here in the group, but I guess we could do it 

easily. 

 DR. NETON: My concern is what Mark 

just said, though. This would add this to the 

-- effectively add this to the Board's working 

group on the 250-day requirement. Right now, 

their task is looking at NTS and Ames and I 

think that language was in both of those 

write-ups. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. NETON: So if you add to this 

one, it would effectively continue -- initiate 

some sort of ongoing investigation into this 

possibility and frankly, I'm not sure there's 
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anything to investigate there. I mean, we 

don't have any information one way or the 

other, but it's certainly your call. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Since the absence of 

language does not preclude any further action, 

it would seem a gilding of the lily to try to 

craft language that would meet the concern and 

still make sense to people who are reading it. 

 We have nothing that would bar us from 

considering new classifications. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right. Well, I 

don't think it would confuse the reader. I 

think it just says we're going to look into 

these, you know, known events that were less 

than 250 days and like you said, for most 

claimants, it's probably not going to be an 

issue because they qualify on the 250 anyway. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Well, we try not to 

second-guess what's coming down the pike at 

us. It seems that if we say, and in the case 

that anything else comes along, we're going to 

look at that, too, or, no, we're going to keep 
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what we might find out, it seems redundant. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I don't 

necessarily see it as second-guessing. We're 

just -- we're not second-guessing the science 

here, we're -- 

 MEMBER MUNN: No, but secondguessing what might transpire with respect to 

the claimants. We're not barring any 

possibility. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, right. 

 MEMBER MUNN: That's just the way 

it is. We're not barring anything at all. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, right now 

you're not including people that would be -- 

you know, that could have been in there for 50 

days and they just happened to be there at the 

right time, you know. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, you're not 

suggesting that we put a statement in they be 

included in this. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: No, no, no. 
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 CHAIR ZIEMER: No, no, you're only 

-- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: It's a placeholder, really. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: It would be a placeholder, and it wouldn't even require 

necessarily following up unless we had cases. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, right, 

right. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Emily, did you have 

an additional comment? 

 MS. HOWELL: I guess I would just 

kind of second what Wanda has said. I mean, 

what -- your concerns earlier Dr. Ziemer, 

about whether or not the description of the 

CP1 event would even qualify as it is free 

incident as defined in the Act. That's 

something that we can't offer an opinion on 

right now and we would have to look into. 

Since it doesn't foreclose you looking into 

this anyways, if you don't leave it and if you 

don't insert such language, you know, a new 
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class could always be brought out. There's no 

reason why you couldn't decide as a Board to 

have that work group examine this. You don't 

have to have it in this letter in order to 

task your working group to do that. 

 So I'm just concerned that it might 

muddy the waters because, you know, again, you 

have to have presence or a discrete incident. 

 So this concern about people who are there 

for 50 days, the only way that's going to be 

resolved is with an additional class. So I'm 

just not sure if you're actually gaining 

anything. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: The only thing we 

clearly gain is that you said we can certainly 

task this to a work group, but you know, et 

cetera. The reality is we won't. I mean, 

once it's voted on, it's done. It's off our 

table. We've got so many work groups, we're 

not going to go back to the Met Lab, you know. 

 So, I guess that's the reason I'm saying as a 

place-holder it might be worth it. It's not a 
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big item that I’m going to, you know, fight 

long on here, but I think we've done it in the 

past and -- 

 MS. HOWELL: I guess my question 

is, though, if putting it in this letter 

basically tasks it to that work group but you 

have less information than you did at NTS, 

names which have been tasked to that work 

group. It's not clear to me how the Board 

then resolves that issue. Once it's tasked to 

the work group, this doesn't seem to be quite 

the same as those cases. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, I don't 

believe it automatically tasks the work group. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, it doesn't 

necessarily automatically task it to them. It 

just keeps it on the agenda for the Board, I 

think, says that the Board will look into it. 

 It could be a separate effort. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I think the reality 

-- I think what might happen, let's suppose 

such a case actually came to NIOSH and you had 
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an individual and you knew that they were 

present in that -- at that first event and 

that they didn't have the 250 days, would a 

dose reconstructor -- no, would it even get -- 

it would not even get to NIOSH because it 

wouldn't pass the bar at Labor. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: That's DOL's 

decision. It wouldn't be -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: So if it wouldn't 

pass the bar at Labor, we're not going to see 

it in any event unless it's a class. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: No, we would get the 

case because it's an eligible claim as a dose 

reconstruction. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Oh, as a dose 

reconstruction case, okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: It does not fit into 

the class and needs a partial dose 

reconstruction. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, so you would 

get it under those conditions. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: We would get it under 
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 CHAIR ZIEMER: Right, right, okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Now, what we would do 

with it, you know, I guess is another question 

and in that instance, there would, I suppose, 

be an attempt to do a partial dose 

reconstruction with whatever information we 

had at hand. So it doesn't appear back on the 

Board's radar screen, per se, in a situation 

where the person wasn't eligible for the class 

because they didn't have enough days. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I guess what 

I'm hearing is that if we don't put it in this 

letter, if we just say if NIOSH gets some 

unlikely case, I agree, where an individual 

was, you know, less than 250 days but happened 

to be present at this event we're talking 

about, then you know, I would expect they 

might investigate that further to see if that 

event could constitute a -- under the clause 

of a present at an incident kind of language. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, you would try 
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to determine first if you could bound in it 

because there would be no dosimetry. And if 

you couldn't bound it, then what would happen? 

 Right, so it would -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, yes. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Any claimant that 

would indicate presence at CP1, CP2, SO1, you 

know, that’s a red flag that would go up to 

any individual who had anything to do with 

this program ever. You immediately recognize 

that as requiring much further investigation 

and probably an immediate class. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I'm wondering, in 

the interest of making sure this moves 

forward, if we perhaps, should leave it as it 

is for now. Would you be comfortable with 

that, Mark? I want to make sure that -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I mean, I 

guess -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: It would be somewhat 

uncomfortable at that. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Somewhat 
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uncomfortable, but I'm not going to -- you 

know, I think its fine. I think that if these 

claims -- I believe that NIOSH would identify 

these if such a rare case came through and I 

think at least if that did happen, it would be 

nice that we get a report back from NIOSH that 

we had a few of these cases and we are -- you 

know, and this is what we did and maybe it -- 

you know, maybe the result is they don't 

believe it constitutes an 8314, you know, but 

I think we'd like to see a follow-up on that. 

 That's all. Otherwise, I guess I would drop 

the issue of adding the language in. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, other comments 

then? Okay, thank you. And actually, this 

discussion will be in the record, even the 

record that goes with this, because that 

transcript will go forward. So it will be 

part of the content. Even if it doesn't 

appear in the letter, it will be part of the 

package that goes forward. So it will be, in 

that sense, captured. 
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 Thank you for that discussion. 

Then this will be the document as previously 

approved to go forward. 

 Next item, if you have -- some of 

the Board members have what's called an 

annotated version of the agenda, where we give 

some breakdowns of what will be under the main 

topics. The next one is called Tracking Board 

Actions, and awhile back I asked Nancy Adams 

to take some early drafts that Lou and I had 

developed to try to track all of the various 

site profile work, the SEC work, and the 

various activities of this Board into kind of 

a master tracking list. Nancy has done that 

and we have kind of a draft version of what 

that looks like and Nancy, I guess I said I 

would pass my flash stick around here and let 

Board members look at it, but let me ask you 

if you could describe for us what you have on 

that and then I'm going to try to pull this up 

quickly and pass it around so people can 

download it. 
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somebody knows how to make the connection 

between -- 

 MS. ADAMS: Do you want to do that? 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Shall we do that? 

 MS. ADAMS: It would probably make 

it easier, since nobody has seen this. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Hang on just a 

second here. Let me make sure I have it here. 

 Okay, Status Report on Board 

Actions is what it's called. Okay. I do have 

it on my flash stick, so do I need to hook my 

computer to that or you just need the flash 

stick up there? My computer? Okay. Let's 

make it a little bigger and you can scroll 

back and forth. Would that be readable? 

Somewhat, just to give you an idea of what's 

on there and then what we'll try to do at 

future meetings is provide a current copy of 

this for everybody at the front end of the 

meeting which will just give you a summary of 

where we are on every site profile, every SEC, 
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who's done what, what SC&A has done, what 

NIOSH has done, what the Board has done and so 

on. So Nancy, can you give us a quick 

overview? 

 There's two parts to this. One is 

a site profile part and the other is an SEC 

part. And I think they are two different 

pages as I recall. 

 MS. ADAMS: Right. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: It's an Excel 

spreadsheet. 

 MS. ADAMS: As Dr. Ziemer said, 

this was a spreadsheet that he and Lou started 

working on a long -- quite awhile ago and what 

I did was to go back and take the last version 

of the spreadsheet that he and Lou had put 

together and update it. They -- their headers 

include this SEC petition number, and then the 

next column is actually the DOE or AUA site, 

AUE site, excuse me, the date the petition was 

submitted, the date it qualified, the date the 

evaluation report was completed, the date the 
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evaluation report was presented to the Board, 

okay, whether or not there was SC&A review, 

which is this one, the date it was -- if there 

was SC&A review, the date it was assigned, 

dates of SC&A reports, Board meeting petition, 

how many Board meetings petitions were 

considered by the Board, date of the vote, the 

final recommendation date and then the final 

Secretary's date. 

 Actually John Mauro was also 

instrumental in helping me get this all pulled 

together here. And so this is the latest 

version of it which all this is historical 

information and then we get down to Petition 

Number 43, which is Chapman Valve and what 

I've done. And for this type of use, this is 

not a good color choice. All the light blue 

petitions, Chapman Valve, Blockson, Feed 

Materials, Bethlehem Steel, are all petitions 

that have been presented to the Board and are 

sitting and waiting for final action. 

 And then as you go across, it gives 
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you dates. There are a few fields on here 

clearly that some more research needs to be 

done. But this is the status of the 

spreadsheet now. You go down further and you 

get down to the bottom and we've got in the 

darker green, petitions that are in progress 

and then at the very bottom, 33, 34, and 35, 

are the petitions that were presented to the 

Board during this meeting. 

 So we will have some new 

information to add to this part of the 

spreadsheet before the next meeting in 

February. So this is the page that just deals 

with the SECs. 

 The other part of this spreadsheet 

deals with site profile information. And here 

it talks about the site profile when it was 

assigned to SC&A for review, the year that it 

was assigned or, I'm sorry, the first one is 

actually the site for which a profile was 

assigned to SC&A, the year it was assigned, 

the date of the report, the response, was as 
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matrix prepared? Was there a work group 

established? The meeting dates of the work 

groups, number of meetings, whether or not the 

matrix is opened or closed, whether NIOSH 

responses were included, dates of revisions, 

and dates things were closed. And there's a 

notes and a comments field here. This 

spreadsheet was a little bit more difficult to 

research and get some information in some of 

the other columns and Dr. Ziemer and I haven't 

had a chance to really sit down and talk about 

how much of this we still need to update but 

this is -- these are the two spreadsheets that 

he thought would be beneficial for quick looks 

to see where things stand with both the Board 

and reports that are prepared for the Board's 

consideration. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, thank you, 

Nancy. Now, what I'd like to get in terms of 

feedback and it doesn't have to be today, but 

particularly work group chairs, if there's 

information in here that would be of help to 
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you or if you can help fill in spaces, that 

would be good. For example, is there some 

information you'd like to see on a regular 

basis that we've overlooked here? Again, this 

is just to help us keep track of what we're 

doing, kind of an overview big picture, 

because you know what happens, we say, "Now, 

let's see what did we do so far on Hanford? 

Let's see, we have a work group? Have they 

met? Where are they on things", so this will 

help us all keep track. Some of us know, 

because of our work groups, exactly what's 

going on and we lose track of sort of each 

other. So it's kind of an overview thing. 

Josie. 

 MEMBER BEACH: How soon can we 

expect a copy of it so we can look at it a 

little closer? 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: You can have a copy 

right away? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Today? 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I can give you the 
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flash stick, if you want to take this version 

with you. And then, as I say, I think we can 

have Zaida include it maybe each month with a 

new flash stick when we come here or in 

advance or something like that, or we can just 

distribute it by e-mail before every meeting. 

 MEMBER BEACH: It would be great to 

have it on our flash sticks at every meeting. 

 MS. ADAMS: Zaida and I can arrange 

for that to happen. The other thing that I 

would really appreciate if there's information 

on here that's either incorrect or that you 

have additional information that's not 

included, you know, please type it in and then 

e-mail it back to me and then I'll update it 

so that it becomes a living document and it's 

as current as we can possibly keep it. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And one of the 

things we wanted to do also and this was for 

the website, because Chris Ellison asked if we 

could include the dates when all the work 

groups started and I said, you know, I 
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couldn't tell her that on all of them. We had 

to go back into our records, but that will 

emerge through this eventually. We have most 

of them now, I think. 

 MS. ADAMS: Well, there's some. I 

mean, it's really interesting. This allowed 

me time to go back and read some of the 

original transcripts of the Board and it's not 

real clear from the transcripts because from 

what I can surmise from reading them, is at 

the beginning, the Board really was the work 

group, too. And so sites were discussed and 

things were done at the beginning, so there 

really wasn't a definitive establishment of 

some work groups. So it's difficult in the 

early days to delineate that. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes, it was after we 

got underway and realized we couldn't deal 

with many of these issues in a big meeting 

setting that we moved to the work group mode, 

but in any event -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Even then, I think 
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early on there was one work group that was 

dealing with like Mallinckrodt and Y12 and we 

had a couple overlapping things. So it wasn't 

each site specified. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: But in any event, 

the intent is just to help us all keep track 

of things and if there's other -- you know, if 

you say you know we ought to have a column 

that tells us this, let us know and we'll just 

make this available. I think it will just be 

helpful. This doesn't require any action. 

The work in putting it together is pretty much 

done and then it will just be a matter of 

updating it after every meeting as we proceed. 

 MS. ADAMS: Right. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: As a work group 

meets, that will go on the record and show up 

and it will just be a living document. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: But you know what 

they said about having to put on which site on 

the flash drive, I think that's very 

beneficial because I still catch myself going 
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back two, three meetings because I download 

everything because I have questions on certain 

things. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And trying to 

remember when something was done and -- 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, and if we had 

this on the flash drive when we download it, 

it would be very beneficial. 

 MEMBER MUNN: There's no reason why 

it can't be transmitted by e-mail. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MEMBER MUNN: It could come with 

the agenda when -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Sure. 

 MEMBER MUNN: -- we get our agenda. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: If you'd like to 

have it in advance, then it might be helpful 

to work group people or whatever, we can do 

that as well. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I would think it 

would be helpful. It would be helpful to me 

to have it in advance of the meeting. 
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 MS. ADAMS: Well, actually, we can 

do both. We can e-mail it ahead of time and 

then put it on the flash drive. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes, in case you 

forget to bring it, we can have it on the 

flash drive. 

 MS. ADAMS: Lord knows, with 

technology, you're not always successful at 

one. 

 MEMBER MUNN: No. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: It doesn't take that 

much memory, so we can easily do both. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Right, that's good. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, any other 

questions on this? Okay, thank you very much. 

 I appreciate all the time that Nancy has 

taken to put this in shape. We had the rough 

outline for it but the real work is filling in 

the spaces. So that's been great. 

 Another item that I had and it 

probably isn't on your annotated agenda and 

that is something we kind of talked about 
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before when we dealt with the discussion 

yesterday about SC&A interacting with NIOSH on 

issues where the Board has not yet had a work 

group and so on. And we talked about the fact 

that perhaps -- I think this was an open 

discussion. I sometimes lose track of whether 

I had a sidebar with the designated federal 

official or if we talked about it openly, but 

I think we talked about having the Chair at 

times appoint an ad hoc work group if 

necessary. 

 Ted thought that it might be worth 

further this issue in terms of getting at 

least a preliminary Board policy on how to 

proceed on cases such as the one described by 

John Mauro where NIOSH needed additional 

information on the references and resources 

that SC&A had used and Joe Fitzgerald 

described some of the early efforts to do that 

and then the concerns being raised about how 

much time would be devoted to these kind of 

efforts and billing. 
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 The question is, does the Board 

wish to sort of officially bless a policy 

where if such an arrangement occurred, that 

the Chair would be empowered to, on a 

temporary or ad hoc basis, appoint a working 

group to facilitate that exchange between our 

contractor and NIOSH at least until the full 

Board met and could consider it as an 

assembly, so that there would not be a delay 

of three or four weeks that, in some case 

where perhaps there was a level of urgency to 

proceed on some issue. 

 And Ted, do you have any additional 

comments? Did I describe that sufficiently? 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, the only, I guess 

point to make is that, I mean, it would be 

expected this would be a fairly rare case as 

it is. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And, in fact, we 

would not want this to be a regular thing. We 

don't want to be appointing ad hoc committees 

every other week and in fact, one might be 
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concerned that if a lot of this was occurring 

that the activities of this Board would 

suddenly be more driven by NIOSH's agenda 

rather than our own agenda, not that they are 

different, but sometimes we have separate 

priorities. But in any event, what is your 

pleasure on this? 

 I think for the record, the Chair 

would want some direction on whether the Board 

is comfortable with such an action occurring 

between meetings. I an authorized to appoint 

working groups but this would be a case where 

a working group would be appointed and there 

would be -- the federal official, in essence, 

would do some early tasking, at least for a 

brief period before the Board in full assembly 

could act. Wanda or Ted? 

 MR. KATZ: I was just going to say, 

under the direction of the ad hoc committee of 

course. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes. Wanda? 

 MEMBER MUNN: We, for a couple of 
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years, operated very smoothly before we got 

cluttered up with so many different sites to 

be dealing with, with the assumption that the 

Chair would always be our point of contact for 

activities associated with the Board's 

concerns and that worked very smoothly from my 

perspective. It doesn't appear to be 

reasonable for us to approach this any other 

way. You certainly don't want to hold up the 

process of investigations and evaluations that 

are ongoing to wait until we have a formal 

meeting. 

 I certainly consider the process of 

bringing the matter to the attention of the 

Chair, having the Chair deal with it by 

notifying the Board and identifying 

individuals on the Board to thoroughly review 

it in a matter of hours or days rather than in 

a matter of weeks, and suggest the appropriate 

action to take until the full Board meets, it 

seems reasonable to do that and I can't see 

any other reasonable course of action, 
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actually. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Other comments? 

Brad? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I see no problem 

with that either. It's a way of keeping the 

Board advised and we know what's going on and 

it's no question of the Chair or anything else 

like that. It's just so we know what's going 

on, too. So I see no problem with it 

personally. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, if an ad hoc 

committee is appointed, the full Board would 

be apprised of that and both the membership of 

the committee and its charge or the ad hoc 

working group, I should not call it a 

committee, a work group. Any other comments? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Does this require a 

vote or can we just agree? 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: It doesn't require a 

vote if I sense there's consensus. I'm really 

-- if anyone thinks this is not a good idea 

and it may not be but and if you believe it 
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isn't, say so as well, but otherwise I would 

proceed as I've described. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I think I'm 

fine with it as long -- and you just clarified 

that you would notify all Board members when 

you appoint -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Oh, yes, yes. Any 

time a session -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think like you 

said, we should keep track though, because if 

this becomes a frequent thing, then something 

is wrong. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: If this becomes a 

frequent thing, then we have to address it in 

a different way. I'm thinking of this as an 

infrequent, perhaps, rare occasion where we 

need -- for some reason we have to do 

something before an actual Board meeting, and 

I don't know why there would necessarily be 

such an urgency but one can -- sort of the 

idea came up after our discussion yesterday 

should we have the authority, if needed, to 
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move in that direction. 

 So I will take it by consent that 

that is what the Board wishes and certainly 

will monitor it and the Board will have every 

opportunity to modify that if it looked like 

for some reason it was being abused in some 

way. 

 Ted, did we have another item under 

this -- we're going to continue with the work 

group issues, but did you have another item 

under this current category that I'm not aware 

of? 

 MR. KATZ: No. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay. I'm looking 

to see if I did. I always have this uneasy 

feeling that I've forgotten something. 

 MR. KATZ: We have the issue of 

possible new assignments for the contractor. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: No, that's later, 

okay. 

I think what we'll do is we'll move into our 

subcommittee and work group reports. It's 
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just a little bit after 10:00 and we'll start 

with the Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee. 

Mark, can we have a -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Can I ask one 

thing? I'll report on the subcommittee stuff 

and this letter. Could we take a short break 

before the work groups because I just have to 

clarify some things before my work group 

reports? 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes, you want to 

take a break, okay. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: No, no, no, not 

now. I mean, I could -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Oh, before the 

other, oh, yes. Oh, yes. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: All right. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: So if you want to go 

ahead with your subcommittee report. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Sure. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And everybody should 

have the document that Mark distributed plus 

the attachments, right, tables? 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, this is a 

letter. It's a summary report of the first 

100 cases that we reviewed and it wasn't 

provided to everyone because it has not been 

privacy reviewed, although I don't anticipate 

anything in there, but nonetheless, just the 

Board members have it at this point. This 

document -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Do all Board members 

have a copy? And I'm wondering if Gen 

Roessler has a copy of this? Was this 

transmitted to Gen? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Zaida sent me 

some attachments. Can you tell me what the 

attachments say? 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, the main 

document is called "Draft Summary Report of 

the First 100 Cases", and then there are five 

attachments called "Tables". The first table 

is the breakdown of the 100 cases reviewed by 

site. The second one is the 100 cases by 

decade of employment. These are different 
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sorts, in other words. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, they're just 

statistics of the first 100 cases. 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay, they're not 

in the list that Zaida sent. Would I have 

gotten an e-mail of the -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: They were only 

distributed to the Board members yesterday, so 

-- 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay, I don't 

have them. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: We might not have 

got them to -- maybe -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Maybe we can -- do 

we have them in the electronic form that Zaida 

could e-mail them right away to Dr. Roessler? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: They have them 

actually. Zaida has them, so if they could email them to Gen, that would be great. 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay, I'll look 

for them. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: All right, anyway 
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 CHAIR ZIEMER: Appreciate having 

them sent right away. Okay, go ahead. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Anyway, I was 

going to say, this letter comes as a 

recommendation from the subcommittee. We went 

through, I think this is Revision 3, so we 

spent a couple meetings going through this and 

at this point, it has the summary report and 

as Paul just described, the other set of 

documents are the attachments or the tables 

that are referenced in -- went in the third 

paragraph of the report. 

 And just before the meeting, Wanda 

gave me several edits but I don't think they 

really changed the intent. You know, it was 

minor, mostly grammatical changes. I've made 

all those already in the document but I see 

those as friendly changes, grammatical 

changes, you know. So this -- we're bringing 

this before the Board for the full Board's 

consideration now. 
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 CHAIR ZIEMER: This comes from the 

subcommittee to the Board. It constitutes a 

motion and since it comes from the 

subcommittee, it does not require a second. 

So, it's on the table for discussion. And I 

have a few editorials as well, which I will 

provide you. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. Or you can 

add in before you send -- you know, if we get 

that far, yes. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Right. But I want 

to ask -- and this is more of a main question, 

the first paragraph spells out what the charge 

is to the Board and it's the last sentence, 

"To advise the President on the scientific 

validity and quality of dose estimation and 

reconstruction efforts." And my question to 

the subcommittee is, there are six pointed 

conclusions -- no, eight conclusions, but as 

far as I can tell, unless I missed it, the 

report does not specifically make a statement 

about scientific validity and quality. It 
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indirectly does but what I was looking for was 

kind of what's the bottom line? 

 There are eight issues which raise 

some concerns and I think the fair statement 

is, do these concerns rise to the level where 

we are saying the dose reconstructions lack 

scientific quality or are we saying and this 

is sort of a rhetorical question now, but I 

think the reader would say, or are we saying 

that we have identified some issues which need 

correction but are we still saying that 

there's some quality to what is being done? 

 It seems to me we have an 

obligation to address the main issue of 

scientific quality and validity. Understand 

what I'm saying? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And I don't mean 

that as a criticism of the subcommittee. I 

think the subcommittee has done a terrific job 

of summarizing all this, but I think for the 

Secretary or his staff, the bottom line 
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question is, what does that mean when you give 

me a list of eight issues? What does that 

mean? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. And I think 

perhaps the -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: If you had to 

summarize them in a sentence and then -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, and perhaps, 

we -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I'm the, you know, 

New York Times or the Augusta what is it 

Sentinel or whatever it is here? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Perhaps we, at the 

subcommittee level or maybe I'm guilty of 

this, to get consensus, we might have dodged 

that question because I think lack of what's 

the words, lack of scientific validity is 

pretty subjective language and to get 

consensus on that you know, it might have been 

a little difficult. So I think maybe that's 

something that the Board -- you know, if we 

want to write something in the front 
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overarching, I think that might be for a full 

deliberation here. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: You know, we laid 

out, yes, there's some problems. I think some 

on the subcommittee would characterize them as 

much less significant than others and, you 

know, so that might be something we have to 

debate here. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Right. I'm trying 

to determine whether or not -- I think we have 

to say something about that this means. I 

mean, if you go to the Secretary and he says, 

"This is your charge, what have you told me" -

- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, this is 

really more of -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I mean, the 

subcommittee has not said to NIOSH, "You've 

got to stop doing these dose reconstructions 

because there are all these problems. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, right, 
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right, but this is really also more of a rollup report than a conclusion, you know, and -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I understand, I 

understand that but actually, the individual 

reports didn't really address that either. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I know, I know. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Because they were 

more like incremental reports, "Here's what we 

found in this set, here's what we found in the 

next set", and in each case, we've identified 

issues and what we think the impact is 

individual cases and all cases, sort of the 

significance and the level of impact. And I 

think that's completely fine, but now here's 

the roll-up now. 

 Now, we've done this, well, in this 

case five times 20 cases here. We've done 

this now five times. What can we conclude 

beyond simply saying there's this many 

findings of this sort and it's sort of -- I 

think it's like the auditor who says, "Okay," 

I don't know how many of you have seen 
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they'll list all of the findings, but then 

they will say, "You know, this company's 

records meet some level of requirement". 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, right, but 

also -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: But they need to 

correct this, this and this. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: But also that's 

usually their final report, correct? I mean -

- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes, yes. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: -- we said we want 

to -- this is part of my dilemma is that we've 

-- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, this can be 

interim, though. We can make an interim 

statement. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, yes. But I 

mean, we've -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And I don't know 

what that statement is. I don't have a 
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statement in mind. It may be something -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: We've put all 

these caveats in this report for this reason 

because I think you know, my opinion which 

will probably differ than other Board members, 

but you know, really, the best estimate type 

cases I think we have five out of 100 so we 

looked at a lot of cases that were very high 

and very low and, you know, did we get a good 

-- you know, would we expect you know, to have 

problems that would effect the outcomes of the 

cases, you know -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Right. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: -- on the types of 

cases we reviewed? Now, as we're going on 

with the sets, I think we're getting you know, 

into more of the best estimate cases and they 

might be more reflective of the -- you know, 

of being able to address that question. So 

that was sort of my hesitancy to conclude much 

out of this. The sampling might be a little 

skewed. 
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 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, for example, 

though, let me say and I would ask you as 

Chair and the other members, maybe it's three 

statements. What can we conclude about the 

over-estimates? Is that doing the job? What 

can we conclude about the under-estimates? 

Maybe there's a third statement about the best 

estimates that we haven't seen enough cases 

yet to -- you know, maybe it's not one 

overarching statement. I'm just trying to 

push -- I want to push the subcommittee on 

this because you guys have spent more time on 

it. I think the Board is certainly willing to 

adopt an overarching statement, but you know, 

I'm glad to hear the Chair's view on it. 

 I think the Chair should say what -

- you know, you should tell us your view and 

others as well. They may not be all the same, 

but -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: -- you know, I think 

we can be pointed. For example, if you say, 
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the over-estimate procedure is not useful or 

should be modified or it's good or whatever, 

or they underestimated, whatever it may be. 

So I'm just pushing us to -- because I think 

we have to be able to say that. Somehow as a 

Board, what's the bottom line? Is there 

something we can agree on and maybe there's 

different levels. We think it's really good 

or sort of good or not so good or whatever it 

may be. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Wanda? 

 MEMBER MUNN: I was a little 

concerned at the time that we were working on 

the language and putting this together that 

there did not seem to be in my mind a clear 

conclusion either, but I think Mark's right, 

that we may -- that may be a really difficult 

task given the varying perspectives of the 

members of the subcommittee to come up with a 

statement, but your suggestion is certainly 

well-received here and understood. I agree 
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with it very strongly. I don't believe that 

the statement needs to be long. I don't 

believe that it needs to be a Merrill Lynch, 

Pierce, Fenner and Bean statement, but it 

certainly would be helpful, I think, to the 

administrative reader of this to see that 

there is some sort of conclusion, even if it 

is limited pretty much to a statement that 

this process is without question, an 

evolutionary one and that each evolution makes 

an attempt to improve the validity of the 

calculations that are done as we narrow more 

and more to the best estimate cases and that 

will be the case. 

 But we really don't say in this 

letter that the validity of the material and 

the approach appears to be scientifically 

acceptable and accurate. We haven't met any 

of those specific criteria. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. 

Mike? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: I think it's going 
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to be hard to get a consensus to make one 

clear statement because of the different 

opinions of the subcommittee. You know, the 

science that is used, you know, appears 

correct but there's still questions in some of 

our minds about the data that that science is 

gathered from and the discrepancies that could 

come from that. So you know, I don't want to 

send a letter to the Secretary saying this 

thing is broken and I don't believe it yet, 

but in my mind I'm not convinced that the 

validity of the data used to bound this is -- 

the junk in could effect the overall outcome. 

 So it's just a work in progress, I think, and 

it's -- that's about all we can say, you know. 

 We've done this many and here's 

kind of what we found but I'm like Mark, I 

don't think there can be any statements made 

that the subcommittee would agree on. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, it's possible 

we could even indicate that there's some mixed 

evaluations on what the meaning of these 
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things are or it could be broken down maybe -- 

it may help to look at the -- for example, the 

over-estimates and the under-estimates and the 

best estimates separately and say what we can 

about those. For example, the under-estimate 

-- I think most Board members would agree that 

the under-estimate procedure, which virtually 

always compensates a person, seems to work 

pretty well. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, by 

definition, it has to -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes, it has to and 

it is -- it's an efficiency procedure and -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: It's an efficiency 

approach. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: -- but if we don't 

think that's a good procedure but I think both 

-- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, even that, 

even that. I think I agree, Paul. I think -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, you get what 

I'm getting at. 
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multiple statements but I -- as I start to 

write multiple statements, I almost start to 

say, well, you know, I'm relisting the 

findings here. You know, so I don't know 

that, you know, one -- I don't have a one-line 

answer to this but even the non- -- the underestimate cases, I'll give you an example where 

that's been a problem and that's the underestimate approach is used and then the person 

goes back -- has another cancer and has to 

resubmit and then the DR report comes back to 

them and there's -- no, the under-estimate is 

for compensable, I'm sorry. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: No, no, that 

wouldn't happen. They would -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I'm thinking of 

over, I'm sorry. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes, the overestimate. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: So the underestimate is probably okay. 
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 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes, the overestimate where it changes. It causes problems 

sometimes for the claimant, certainly, because 

the number changes, it goes down and doesn't 

make sense. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I'm sorry. I 

was thinking of the over-estimated, but anyway 

-- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, another way to 

think about this might be and if we have to 

say it, if you have to say we've not sampled 

enough cases yet to make a conclusive 

statement on the quality, we could even say 

that, although I would -- you know, we've been 

at this several years and I sort of feel like 

we owe something to -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I mean, this is the 

charge to the Board, so I think we have to 

struggle with this. If we don't agree on it, 

we've got to figure out a way to express that 

and maybe, you know, and I don't have a good 
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solution to that. I'm simply concerned about 

sending this forward without addressing the 

primary charge to the Board. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right. Well, we 

can -- I mean, I think -- I'm not prepared 

here to come up with something but we could 

take it back and -- I think you're right, that 

is our charge and it might just take us a 

little longer to hammer it out. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Now, if the Board 

wishes -- I mean, I'm just giving my opinion. 

 This Board can say, "No, let's send it the 

way it is and let it be", and I will do that. 

 I'm just trying to push you because at some 

point, I think we have to say something. We 

have -- you know, if we don't send this today, 

almost, then it's -- I mean, if you have 

another subcommittee, then it stretches into 

the next Secretary, although that's not as 

critical as the SECs because it doesn't effect 

claimants in any direct way. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, right. 
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 CHAIR ZIEMER: So that's not an 

issue from sort of a pressuring point of view. 

 I don't want to prolong it in that sense, but 

I feel somehow we're going to have to come to 

grips with the main question. And I don't 

know, Board members, if you -- or 

subcommittee, if you guys can struggle with 

that, and I think -- Mike, I think it's all 

right if you guys don't all agree on the 

bottom line. You might be able to craft 

something that says that. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, right. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I don't know. I 

know it's harder to do it if we don't all see 

things the same way. It's very hard to craft 

what you would call a consensus statement. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: But at some point, 

we have to -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: But sometimes the 

consensus is to agree to disagree also, and I 

think it's all right. It's not always as 

helpful to our administrators or it doesn't 
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always address our charges well, because 

everybody wants a yes or no answer. And we're 

already dealing with uncertainties and that's 

a difficult thing anyway, but I think it's all 

right to say that there's some level of -- we 

see this in different ways and that a lot of 

that is built into what we're looking at. 

It's also built into do we have different sort 

of views on this and that's fine. There's 

nothing wrong with that, you know. 

 And my view is not the best view 

and yours isn't the best view. We all have a 

good view and somehow we need to bring those 

together and paint the picture in a way that 

is -- expresses that and still is sufficiently 

helpful to those who administer this so that 

they can understand what it means. And I 

don't even know what I just said, what that 

really means either except that I just feel 

like we have to do something to be responsive 

to our charge. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: No, I agree. I 
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would like to have some sort of more 

conclusive statement or statements, you know, 

in the front end and almost an executive 

summary sort of thing. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And I think you 

know, your subcommittee you have talented 

folks who are creative and you know where you 

are on the view point spectrum. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I'm certainly 

willing to bring it back and rework and take 

and add this to our agenda for January, yes. 

All I would ask is that -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Let's see how the 

other Board members, Board members, if you 

want to go forward with this, say so. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: No. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Paul, this is 

Gen. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Gen. 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes, thank Nancy, 

I did get the report and I've looked at it 
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very, very quickly. I agree with what you're 

saying. I think that if I were receiving this 

report, the thing I'd want to know, right at 

the top is what was the value of having done 

all of this work and what are the implications 

for the future? And I don't -- in my quick 

look at it; I don't see anything like that. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, well, it's a 

bottom line issue. Everything else in the 

report, I think, you know, it's a good report. 

 Wanda. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: That would be my 

question, too, to Board members; if -- I'm 

willing to take it back but I would also ask 

at this point, does anyone have any input on 

the findings themselves. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Any input? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, right, 

because that would be helpful, too. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Wanda, did you have 

an additional comment? 

 MEMBER MUNN: My comment was with 
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respect to the current topic which is if we 

don't decide to do this now, then at what 

juncture in following cases, in following 

reports would we decide to do it. So since 

we're going to have to grapple with this 

entire language -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, you'll have to 

grapple with it at some point. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, yes, we'll have 

to do it. We're set up for January. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: We're never going to 

have -- I mean, we can do another hundred 

reports and I can just predict it's going to 

look sort of similar. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: We'll have more 

cases, but we will have various levels of ease 

and unease with the final result. We might as 

well try to grapple with it. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: And it's going to 

have more value to NIOSH if we say some sort 
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of conclusive language up front, too. You 

know, if we -- depending on what that is, it 

may have more -- so, you know, I think you're 

right, we have to try to answer the questions. 

 We'll grapple with it. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Right, and it may be 

that you'll, you know, end up very frustrated 

and you'll say -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, that's right. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: But let's give it a 

try, if that's agreeable with the Board 

members. And it will delay it a little bit 

going forward. I think it's all right. Maybe 

it will be fine to go to the new Secretary of 

Health and Human Services as a picture of 

what's happened so far. We have a new group 

coming in. The previous Secretary has all the 

other reports. Maybe the new folks would 

appreciate getting a roll-up of what's 

happened up to date and it would be helpful to 

them to get up to speed anyway. So I'm not 

that concerned that it goes to the next group. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: No, I'm fine in 

taking it back. I don't know how the others 

feel. It's fine with the Chair. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Are we okay with the 

Board. We don't need to vote if -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: We'll further 

consider it. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, I sense 

there's a consensus here. Appreciate the 

subcommittee and you guys have worked hard and 

we appreciate all the work that you've done. 

It's been a good committee and they've -- I 

think they've done us well in evaluating all 

of these cases and not just the subcommittee, 

because all of you have worked on the 

evaluation teams for all of these cases, not 

just this 100 but all of the previous ones as 

well. So it's been an excellent effort. 

 I think the feedback to NIOSH has 

been useful, so the efforts have been very 

useful in the total picture. So we do thank 

you for all of that. 
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 Okay, so do we need a little break 

then before we go to the subcommittee reports? 

 Okay, comfort break. Now, the break effects 

when we finish this morning, so that will be 

incentive for you to come back in about 10 

minutes if possible. Okay? 

 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

matter went off the record at 10:37 a.m. and 

resumed at 10:50 a.m.) 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, let's 

reassemble and we'll get underway again. 

Board members, if you want a copy of that 

Excel spreadsheet that Nancy Adams described, 

the flash stick is being circulated. I think 

Phil has it right now. Phil, if you'll give 

it to Wanda when you're done, and then Wanda 

can pass it over to Mr. Presley. Okay, and 

Josie has a copy already, so just make sure 

everyone has a copy of they want it. 

 Okay, we're going to move to the 

subcommittee -- or continue the subcommittee 

report and then proceed with the work group 
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reports and that will pretty much complete our 

business for today. We've already had the 

report from Mark on the 100 case roll-up. 

 Mark, also you're going to speak 

about the path ahead on the next set of 

reviews. What do you have for us there? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Just an update on 

the -- where we're at so far. We had a 

meeting recently in Cincinnati and we 

continued on our work with the sixth and 

seventh set of cases. We had the eighth set 

of cases on the agenda but that was a little 

too optimistic. We're continuing on the 

finding resolution process on the sixth and 

seventh and the next meeting, I anticipate 

we'll get into the eighth. 

 The sixth, we have almost reached 

resolution on almost all the findings. The 

seventh set is not quite as complete and then 

like I said, the eighth set we have NIOSH 

responses, but we have not gone through those 

with a first pass, so that will be our first 
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time to discuss those. We're going to have 

another meeting in January of the subcommittee 

in Cincinnati. And then we also want to 

select the next set of cases for SC&A to start 

working on and as -- if I'm remembering it 

correctly, I don't know if Stu's in the room, 

it will be our eleventh set of cases and Stu 

assembled a file for the subcommittee and if 

you're a member, just to refresh all of us, 

we're doing this like in a two-step process, 

so we're going to take a look at the files 

that Stu pulled, both best estimate and 

random, I think is the way he's done it again, 

and go through those for potential cases of 

interest and then ask him to take that sublist, that smaller list and go back and get 

more information such as did it involve 

neutron doses, pre, post-70 I think we asked 

and did it -- several other factors are in 

there, best estimate for internal, external. 

 So we get more information for the 

cases, then we make a final selection and 
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bring it to the Board for a final -- so it's 

going to be a two-step process. We're not 

going to be ready to put sort of work in the 

hopper for SC&A yet, but we are starting that 

and we'll start that in January and I would 

hope some time -- the next Board meeting is in 

February. I think we'll be ready for a full 

selection at that point for the eleventh set 

of cases. So that's where we stand. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And just for the 

record and for clarity, the ninth set of 

cases, have all of the teams finished their 

work with SC&A on the ninth set? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I'm seeing 

from the audience that that has happened. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: That has happened, 

so that is complete. And my understanding is 

SC&A is completing or will complete their 

review of the tenth set. They will not have -

- by the end of January at least because the 

contract is being extended by David Staudt 

through January. My understanding from John 
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Mauro was that at least SC&A's part of the 

tenth set would be completed. They probably 

would not have the Board's review teams in 

place and that part done, but at least the 

deliverable will be in place is my 

understanding. So SC&A will have completed -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I would think so, 

yes, yes. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: -- the tenth set. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: And on the ninth 

set, I don't think we -- SC&A has yet 

submitted a matrix to NIOSH but Doug can speak 

to that. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: But the teams have 

met but perhaps we don't have a matrix yet on 

that. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 MR. FARBER: We have completed all 

conference calls. We have made all the 

corrections from the conference calls and now 

it's a matter of putting together the summary, 

executive summary. 
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 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, so that will 

complete the -- 

 MR. FARBER: That should be out 

shortly. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: -- initial work on 

the ninth set ready for the matrix. 

 MR. FARBER: On the ninth set. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And then the tenth 

set will have the SC&A report but not the team 

reviews. 

 MR. FARBER: Right, that is our 

plan to have that completed. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Thank you very much. 

 Now, just for the record, and Mark, you 

talked really about the eleventh set that 

you'll be looking at. And I think it would be 

appropriate if the Board actually -- and maybe 

we don't need to do it today but in case 

you're ready with the eleventh set, we can 

officially task and I will describe it as 

task, the contractor -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, right. 
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 CHAIR ZIEMER: -- to proceed as 

soon as the work group has identified the 

eleventh set. Will that occur before the next 

meeting? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I don't think -- 

we've always brought the list, our list, back 

to the full Board. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, so we won't 

have an eleventh set before our next meeting 

anyway. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: So we don't have to 

task today. Okay. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, we can't 

really. I mean, we were hoping to, but I 

don't think we can do it to stick with our 

procedure. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: No, I wanted to make 

sure that our quote contractor which currently 

will be unnamed for -- after January, at the 

moment is unnamed, would -- if necessary, 

would be in place to do the work but it won't 
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be ready in any event till our next meeting 

and hopefully, we will know the name of the 

contractor at the next meeting. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, so we don't 

need to task that. Any questions for the Dose 

Reconstruction Subcommittee? Okay, then let 

us proceed to the Work Group reports. And 

what I'd like to ask you to do -- well, first 

of all, we won't repeat reports of groups that 

we've already covered, such as Blockson. 

 Also, if your work group has 

nothing new to report, you either haven't met 

or there's no new issues or updates for the 

Board, simply indicate no report and we'll 

move onto the next one. So let's go down 

through the list. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay, so the first that 

hasn't already met or discussed its work is 

Chapman, John, Dr. Poston? 

 MEMBER POSTON: No report. 

 MR. KATZ: Right, no report. And 
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the next is Fernald, Brad. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: We've had a work 

group since then. We're still chasing some of 

the issues we raised on the K-25 silos and so 

forth, but we're just proceeding on K-65. 

 MR. KATZ: The Chair for the next 

is not here. It's Dr. Melius, does someone 

who's-- that's Hanford Site Profile, so 

there's Brad and -- 

 MEMBER POSTON: Yes. He did, in 

essence, report that Hanford has not met. 

They were awaiting the documents. So we're 

aware of that, right. 

 MR. KATZ: That's right, thank you. 

 So the next is INL. Phil? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Well, there's a 

-- my designee is working on the -- SC&A has 

worked on the text basis document, going over 

it. I haven't seen what they've come up with 

yet. Neither has anybody else that I know of. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: The work group has 

not met yet. 
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 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: No, we have not. 

 MR. KATZ: Los Alamos, Mark. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: No progress -- we 

haven't met, no progress. I think we have -- 

the evaluation report is still being worked 

on, is that correct? LaVon has been updating 

me in between, but there's been some delays on 

it, some -- is it similar to Savannah River or 

different? Anyway, it's been delayed a little 

bit, and we're not going to meet until we have 

the evaluation report for the later years of 

the petition. 

 MR. KATZ: Mound, Josie? 

 MEMBER BEACH: I have nothing new 

to report than what I reported on our November 

6th conference call for the Mound Work Group. 

 MR. KATZ: NTS. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: We met on October 

the 29th. We have not had a meeting since, but 

at this meeting, SC&A and NIOSH and myself 

have got together and ironed out some of the 

problems that we had on getting some of the 
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information back and forth, and hopefully 

something will be forthcoming at our next 

meeting on the site profile. 

 MR. KATZ: And we have Pantex, 

Brad? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Nothing to report. 

 We haven't met yet. SC&A has delivered a 

matrix to us, and we're trying to set up a 

meeting as we speak. 

 MR. KATZ: Pinellas, Phil? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: We had a work 

group scheduled, but we've had to cancel it 

because of some new information that we 

haven't seen yet on the depleted uranium and 

give everybody a chance to look at the 

Revision 66. 

 MR. KATZ: Right, so we've 

postponed that. Procedures we've done-- and 

the next is Rocky Flats. Mark? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, we haven't 

had a work group meeting, but there has been 

some -- and I think Larry on the first day 
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gave an update, sort of a news update of some 

stuff that's going on with regard to Rocky 

Flats. There's still this question of whether 

people qualify for the class based on, you 

know, it should have been monitored for 

neutrons, and Larry indicated in his remarks 

on Tuesday that they are still working with 

the University of Colorado to try to get this 

database, and we're hoping that that happens 

sooner than later. 

 I know Larry is hopeful as well. 

As soon as that is available, Larry indicated 

that NIOSH will put it on the O Drive for the 

work group's consideration. I will commit to 

looking at that. There's some questions 

raised about whether this University of 

Colorado database has different information 

than what NIOSH had. 

 We had been under the understanding 

-- right now, we're just not sure. It seemed 

all along that it was from the same source 

data, so discrepancies seemed to -- I mean, we 
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couldn't understand why there might be 

discrepancies, but there appear to be some 

concerns about it, so we want to follow up on 

that, and I know NIOSH wants to follow upon 

this, too, and resolve it. So we're just 

hoping that the database can be obtained 

quickly and we can move on this, but I will 

commit as a work group to follow this and make 

sure we do look at the database once it's 

available. 

 MR. KATZ: Great, and Santa Susana, 

Mike. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: We're still working 

on trying to get a possible combination 

meeting with our work group and a worker 

outreach type meeting out in the area near the 

site, but we haven't done it yet. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you. Savannah 

River Site we have covered. And exposure 

cohort issues, that's Dr. Melius. Maybe -- 

did Jim speak with Josie or Mark? Did one of 

you want to give a brief -- this is 250-day 
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and preliminary. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: We did meet. 

 MR. KATZ: You did meet, yes. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I'm -- we did have 

a meeting. I think -- I'm not exactly sure 

where we left it, so I'd be reluctant to give 

an update. We did discuss the aim situation 

fairly extensively, and some on the NTS, but 

I'm not sure where it stands at this point, so 

I'd hate to -- 

 MR. KATZ: You discussed Dow as 

well, I think, right? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, and we did 

discuss Dow, right, and the procedure that 

went along with Dow, the technical information 

bulletin that went along with Dow. So I know 

we had a meeting and we did discuss those 

items, and I don't have any conclusions to 

report. I didn't know I'd be speaking for 

Jim's work group. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, I was involved 

in that, too, and we didn't come to closure. 
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It appeared that most of the cases we 

discussed, which were the Aims cases-- it 

ended up being in order to discuss them, they 

were bounding the doses. It appeared that 

they could be bounded, I think in every case-- 

but I'm trying to remember if there was still 

an open issue, and I didn't bring my notes 

with me. I wasn't planning to report, and I 

was looking to see if Jim Neton was still here 

because Jim may remember, because we were 

talking about that, but the group did meet and 

they're still trying to address those issues 

of the blow-outs and so on, and the Dow issue 

is still on the table as well. 

 MR. KATZ: Then we have Dr. Ziemer, 

TBD-6000. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes, TBD-6000's work 

group had its initial meeting November 10th,

and so we were starting basically from 

scratch, but we inherited some material from 

the procedures work group, so at the meeting 

on November 10th we reviewed the SC&A findings 
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from TBD-6000. There were seven main 

findings, and we reviewed those and the 

initial SC&A-- or the initial NIOSH responses, 

mainly to become familiar with the material. 

We didn't take any actions on those because it 

was new material to the work group. We also 

then focused on Appendix BB, which is the 

General Steel Industry's appendix for which 

there are 13 findings, and there are responses 

from NIOSH on those-- and we did an initial 

review of those to become acquainted with the 

issues and the responses, but then the focus 

was on the NIOSH White Paper, which dealt with 

the General Steel Industry's film badge 

results which had been obtained from the R.S. 

Landauer Company. 

 So we had just received that 

initial White Paper, and that's being looked 

at also now by SC&A as well. But we're kind of 

in the middle of things, and are underway. We 

have a number of tasks that were assigned. 

NIOSH is putting on the O Drive the film badge 
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data that they received so that there's some 

differences between what the petitioners have 

found in their film badge searches through 

Personal Identifier redacted and what we got 

from Landauer, so we're trying to resolve some 

of those. 

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 NIOSH is in the process of 

responding to some of the matrix findings on 

TBD-6000 itself, and on the White Paper 

dealing with film badges, there's some issues 

on the modeling, to establish and confirm that 

the film badge data indeed supports the issue 

of whether the model that NIOSH is using is 

bounding. 

 NIOSH is also addressing some other 

issues on unmonitored exposures to the 250 KVP 

x-rays and the cobalt sources at General Steel 

Industries. We have to confirm some high dose 

19 values that come out of some of the personal 

identifier redacted data, so there's a number 

of open issues that are being looked at, and 

hopefully we'll be able to meet again shortly 

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after the new year and pursue many of these 

open issues. But there's much to be done yet 

both -- well, right now the priority item is 

the General Steel Industries' appendix and of 

course, there will be other appendices that 

will be looked at following that as well. So 

that is our report. 

 MR. KATZ: The next group is 

surrogate data. Dr. Melius leads that. It 

hasn't met. Josie's on that group. Is there 

anything else to say? 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, I will report 

one thing and remind the Board members that 

Dr. Melius did distribute the draft criteria 

for how surrogate data should be used. The 

work group had identified I believe it was 

four criteria, and it asked the Board for 

comments, and we're actually using those 

criteria. It sort of worked out this way, I 

think. 

 Originally, we thought perhaps the 

Board would adopt criteria, then apply them to 
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a site, but as it worked out, we ended up 

using Texas City site to sort of determine how 

well these criteria worked. It certainly 

appears to me-- and I've given some comments 

to Dr. MeliusB- I believe there's at least a 

fifth criteria that need to be added and some 

modifications of the other criteria, and I 

think Dr. Melius was seeking input from other 

Board members as well, so if you would go back 

and find the five criteria -- or the four 

criteria that were distributed. If you have 

comments, feed that back to the work group and 

the work group needs to sort of settle on 

those and also address how well they work with 

-- and I think the Texas City facility is 

probably a good site to try that out on, so 

it's going to work out well, I think, to see 

whether the criteria are useful and meaningful 

and whether they cover what needs to be done-- 

but in any event, if you could take a look at 

those criteria and not just in terms of Texas 

City, but think about them in terms of how 
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they might apply in any case where surrogate 

data are used in kind of a generic way, and 

feed your comments back because there may be a 

number of sites where the surrogate data issue 

arises. Well, there are some already, and we 

need to establish the ground rules for that. 

 So the issues are important, and 

we're still sort of in the draft stage. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Paul, you mentioned 

that you had provided some suggestion with 

respect to a possible fifth. Does anyone 

other than the work group CHAIR have those 

comments? 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I think that I made 

copies of my comments to the other members of 

the work group but I'd have to go back and 

check. Did you get -- 

 MR. KATZ: You copied them in the 

e-mail. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I guess I didn't save 

it in the right place then. 
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remind me, I'll resend them. Mine are not so 

profound, and actually I must give credit, I 

think, to SC&A because I think the fifth 

criteria is one that they suggested and I 

thought it was such a good suggestion, I tried 

to modify it a little bit and take partial 

credit for it. But I believe it actually was 

a criteria that SC&A may have raised, is my 

recollection. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Thank you. 

 MR. KATZ: I mean, I might just -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: In connection with 

Texas City, I believe, but go ahead. 

 MR. KATZ: I might just mention, 

SC&A has done -- I'm not clear, maybe Joe can 

clarify exactly where it is, but I think SC&A 

has completed a review of the NIOSH procedure 

with respect to surrogate data which I think 

is IG 004 or -- and anyway, it's not quite 

delivered yet, but I think it's largely 

completed work, and to do that will be 
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information that will be useful to the 

subcommittee. That was just my main point. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Right, Joe 

Fitzgerald, repeat what you said. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it's in 

draft. I don't know exactly where it is from 

out standpoint to the Board. So I think it 

probably is on our side still. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. Okay then, the 

last work group so far is worker outreach. 

Mike? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: We have a meeting 

scheduled in Cincinnati on January the 12th, 

2009. 

 MR. KATZ: Just freshly scheduled. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Can I ask one 

thing? I've asked this before but -- and 

maybe it was never a work group. It might 

have been this broader group that we had-- but 

Y-12, it's not like we had a meeting, but Y-12 
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has still outstanding site profile issues that 

we've never gone back to. So I just don't 

want to lose it. At one point, I was -- I 

chaired the process for the Y-12 SEC. I 

forget if that was a separate work group or if 

it was combined with Mallinckrodt. You know, 

I don't know if it was one big work group at 

that point. I can't remember, but I think we 

need to -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And we may need to 

have Nancy Adams go back and help us remember 

what we did in the past on Y-12. But in any 

event, I think -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, but I know 

there are outstanding issues on the site 

profile. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: -- the reminder that 

Y-12 is still something that we don't want to 

lose. If we need to reappoint a -- I guess we 

don't currently have a Y-12, do we? 

 MR. KATZ: We do not currently have 

a Y-12. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: It's not listed, I 

know, but I know -- I mean, I can't remember 

who was on -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, and we may 

have done that in the days when we were kind 

of working as a full group. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: It was a larger 

group, right. It wasn't a full group. It was 

a sub-group. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: We may need to go 

back and pick that up with a separate Y-12 

work group. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Is that the only 

work group that's in question? It might be 

handy to put all the closed work groups on 

that one close-out sheet that we now have. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Well, actually, in 

the work group -- the website listing, we have 

included all work groups that existed as far 

as we know, and including those that are no 

longer active. So I think -- I believe that's 

the only one that -- it sort of didn't have -- 
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it may not have had an official status. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. Was 

Mallinckrodt on that? 

 MR. KATZ: There was no work group. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I think it 

was kind of the -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: It was indicated in 

some of the earlier days. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: There was a work 

group. It wasn't the full board, I know that, 

but it wasn't a site specific work group. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: But we hadn't 

formalized things in the way we do now. We 

just had a subgroup work on an issue. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I know, 

right, right. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And we've become a 

little more formal on work groups since then. 

 So I believe there may not have ever been an 

official Y-12 work group, just a subset of -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think you're 

right, yes. 
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said, "Examine this and report back to us", or 

something. That completes our work group 

reports, does it not? 

 MR. KATZ: It does. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Thank you very much. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Now, we also need to 

look at where we -- this is not really on the 

agenda as an annotated item, but we need to 

look at the tasking issues in terms of both 

completing work that's on the docket for our 

contractor and then looking ahead for future 

work, and I indicated earlier in this meeting 

it may be important for us to task whoever it 

may be-- "the contractor"-- as we move ahead. 

 Now, SC&A has been willing to help 

us think about that, because in terms of what 

they've done-- and John Mauro and his folks 

have helped us think about what's already been 

done and what's coming on the horizon. 

 And John, before he left today, did 
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jot down some ideas, and I think Joe 

Fitzgerald is here to represent that in terms 

of what SC&A thought might be of value for our 

consideration on site profile reviews-- SEC 

reviews-- and of course, dose reconstruction 

we've already talked about doing the eleventh 

set, so -- and we won't task that until the 

next meeting, in any event. And then, 

perhaps, even some PER work. 

 So I think if it's agreeable, I'd 

like to ask Joe Fitzgerald: Joe, if you 

wouldn't mind first giving us your -- I'm 

calling it your-- SC&A's recommendation on 

what might be the next group of site profiles 

that we should think about reviewing, from 

your perspective. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. Actually, 

we're looking downstream at some of the, you 

know, upcoming SEC ERs. I think a lot of the 

value we've gained in the recent past has been 

to get ahead of the curve in looking at site 

profiles for which an SEC is -- an Evaluation 
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Report-- is expected, and I think one of those 

is Brookhaven. The last status report, I 

think, LaVon put out that was briefed to the 

Board had the ER for Brookhaven I guess 

earmarked or tentatively scheduled for maybe 

the May meeting. 

 So this gives about six months 

before that. That would be an appropriate 

time for us to, you know, be able to review 

the existing site profile, perhaps be in a 

better position if, in fact, the Board would 

want to charter a contractor next year to look 

at the Evaluation Report, starting from zero. 

 The other site, I think, that was 

on John's list as an idea was Lawrence 

Berkeley, only because I think we're now 

getting to the point where most of the major 

sites have been covered. I think this was 

perhaps one of the few major sites that has 

not been addressed in terms of site profile 

review. So those are the two, I think, for 

the coming year that were, you know, more 
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obvious, I guess, from the standpoint of being 

of some value to look at. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. 

I'm going to stop at this point and I'll call 

you back in a minute, but let's talk about 

site profiles. Keep in mind that at the time 

that a new contractor-- or a continuing 

contractor, as the case may be-- is 

identified, the contract includes or 

identifies tasks and it -- under the site 

profile task, it has funding for a certain 

number, I forget what it is, but it's not that 

critical at the moment. But within that task, 

it's the Board's prerogative to assign the -- 

or do the tasking for which site profiles we 

wish to have done. 

 Now, what I'm suggesting is that it 

would seem appropriate, since we're expecting 

the contractor identity to be revealed within 

the next few weeks, hopefully-- or sooner, 

maybe the next few days-- but in any event, 

soon, as we were told by David Staudt, that 
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the identities of the site profiles that the 

Board wishes to put on first priority also be 

readily available to the contractor, so once 

the contract is awarded, that work can get 

underway. 

 So you've heard the recommendation 

from SC&A regarding Brookhaven and Lawrence 

Berkeley, and I'd like to ask the Board 

members if you agree that these are of high 

priority, or are there other sites that you 

would add or substitute for these? And so 

let's discuss that. 

 Brookhaven is recommended, and 

Lawrence Berkeley as the next two site 

profiles for the contractor to review. Yes, 

Mr. Presley? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: What are we doing 

about Sandia, Albuquerque and Sandia 

Livermore? 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, Sandia, 

Albuquerque and Livermore. I believe there are 

site profiles for both of those. I don't 
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think -- we've not done Sandia, have -- 

 MR. FITZGERALD: I can say safely 

that we've completed that review, and it 

hasn't -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Albuquerque? 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it hasn't 

been forwarded to the Board. It had to go 

through DOE review, so that's held it up a 

little bit, but it's finished. We did do the 

review. Sandia, Livermore, no. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Now, that's not been 

delivered, but will be by -- before the end of 

the contract. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Shortly, very 

shortly, right, by the end of the year. 

Sandia Livermore, no, we have not done that 

component of Livermore. We did do the 

Livermore-- you know, the full lab, but not 

that component. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And that might be 

also a high priority item as well, and could 

be yet a third one on such a list or could be 
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-- you know, the order may not be so critical 

now, but we do want to identify several high 

priority ones, at least two and maybe more. 

Thank you. Others? 

 If there aren't any others, I think 

just for the record I would ask for a motion 

from the Board to task the Board's contractor 

to identify as its first priorities under the 

new contract, the site profile reviews for 

Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley and Sandia 

Livermore. I'm not sure if the order is 

critical here. If you wish to order them, we 

can do that. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I move that we 

task the Contractor. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, is there a 

second? 

 MEMBER BEACH: I'll second it. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: It's been seconded. 

 Any discussion? What about priority? Do you 

wish to put one or the other at the top of the 

list? 
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 MEMBER PRESLEY: Do we know how 

many cases we have at Berkeley versus Sandia? 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: We do know that 

there are some activities coming up on 

Brookhaven, do we not? What are we 

anticipating there? It seems to me that 

Brookhaven may be fairly high on the list in 

terms of what we may need to do as a Board. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Brookhaven would be 

my suggestion for the first priority, yes. 

 MEMBER BEACH: With a second of 

Lawrence. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, Lawrence and 

then Sandia, okay. Is that agreeable? So the 

motion for these three will include as 

priority, Brookhaven, one, Lawrence Berkeley, 

two, Sandia Livermore as three. Okay, let's -

- we'll just voice vote. All in favor "Aye". 

 (Chorus of Ayes.) 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Opposed? 

 (No verbal response.) 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Gen Roessler? 
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 MEMBER ROESSLER: Aye. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay. With your 

vote, Gen, it carried the say. 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Oh, good. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And that will get us 

underway on site profiles. Let's talk about 

SECs. Again, Joe, I'm going to ask for the 

SC&A on SEC. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Isn't it great to 

talk in acronyms? 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, there's been 

a lot of news in SEC. This is Special 

Exposure Cohorts. There's several, I think, 

categories on the SECs. We have the existing 

work that we're doing on the SECs: the Fernald 

SEC, the Mound SEC-- let's see if I can 

remember them all-- Hanford, you know. So 

that grouping would need to continue, 

obviously. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Right, and you also 

have been tasked I think on Savannah River. 
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Have we or not? 

 MR. FITZGERALD: No, no. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, the paper 

review, okay, yes. Right. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, there's a 

second grouping. That's the first group that 

we're working on now. We've already been 

authorized and there's work groups. The 

second grouping is the so-called paper 

studies, the ones that were authorized because 

of the end of the contract back at Redondo 

Beach in that meeting. That's where we have 

Pantex, Savannah River and Santa Susana, 

right. So those three would need, I think, 

authorizations from the Board to in fact do a 

full traditional ER evaluation. And that's 

pretty much the two groupings. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes and actually, we 

have another meeting in February, but to cover 

us between now and then, probably to task 

these three would be plenty for a contractor 

to get those underway. 
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 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And Board members, 

if you agree with that, let's have a motion to 

officially task. Yes. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: So moved. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, Mike has moved 

that we task our contractor to do the SEC 

work, and seconded by Poston for Savannah 

River, Santa Susana and Pantex. And again, I 

think, you know, others will come along, but 

we will be meeting again in February. Are you 

ready to vote on that tasking? All in favor, 

"Aye"? 

 (Chorus of Ayes.) 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Opposed? 

 (No verbal response.) 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Abstentions? Dr. 

Roessler? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Aye. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Thank you. So the 

SECs -- we don't need to do anything today on 

dose reconstructions. We may wish to do some 
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tasking on reviews of PERs. There have been 

at least a couple PERs that are substantial, 

and I know that -- I know that SC&A has also 

thought about this a bit. Joe, do you want to 

comment on that at all? I have some 

suggestions, but -- 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, you know, I 

think the only comment is -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: There's a couple 

PERs. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: -- there's a 

couple PERs, in confirming with Larry, that 

have reached a point where it would be, in 

fact, useful to review those and provide some 

feedback in support of the Board, so certainly 

a future contractor would have at least the 

two, I think, that were identified on your 

idea list, which is Blockson and high fired 

issues that came about from Oak Tip 49. So 

those are the two, I think, key ones that have 

come up. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: And there may be 
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some others that NIOSH would recommend, but 

those are certainly high on the list. Larry? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I'm fairly certain 

that the Blockson PER has been completed but 

we're not -- I'm awaiting an e-mail 

confirmation that the high fired plutonium is 

not a completed PER. We're still getting 

cases back to finish that one out. So I don't 

believe that that one is a finished PER of 

cases that have been treated. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Right, right, but we 

could still do the tasking. I mean, it 

wouldn't -- yes, I guess you could or maybe we 

should -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I think we've 

agreed that you review a completed effort, not 

an in progress effort. So -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: No, no. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- you could task, 

but -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Nothing would happen 

until it's completed, right. 
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 MR. ELLIOTT: -- you couldn't pick 

it up. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I mean, even if we 

tasked-- and I honestly don't know whether 

it's better to wait until the document is on 

the street and do the tasking or task in 

advance, understanding that nothing will 

happen until the -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: On the street. PERs-

- there are 32 PERs that have been issued, but 

the PERs, as you know, prescribe how to screen 

cases that might be effected, and then the 

next step in the process is that we work with 

DOL to see those cases returned to us for 

examination and rework. And in that instance, 

in this high-fire plutonium situation, I don't 

believe we've completed all those cases. We 

have issued the PER, but we haven't completed 

the cases. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: The Blockson is 

complete, and we can certainly task that at 

the moment. A motion to do that? 
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 MEMBER CLAWSON: Move to perform 

Blockson for the PER. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: PER review for 

Blockson. Second? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Second. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Discussion? All in 

favor, "Aye". 

 (Chorus of Ayes.) 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Opposed? Aye, okay, 

thank you. I'd like to ask Ted, do we need to 

authorize close-out for any existing reviews 

or -- 

 MR. KATZ: No, we do not. It's 

already authorized. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, so old work 

will continue under the contract, which is the 

continuation of the close-out for the tasks 

that are underway. And the only caveat would 

be there -- I think John has told us that not 

everything can be closed out either in the 

time available or within the resources 

available, but the close-out process is 
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underway. I think the only question would be 

if there's something that the Board feels has 

highest priority that needs more attention 

than something else we can so identify that. 

Otherwise it will continue as it is. 

 Okay, unless there's any direction 

-- 

 MR. KATZ: I guess a question which 

arises from the whole discussion yesterday, 

but it all arose out of the special case at 

Lawrence Livermore. What's going on with 

Lawrence Livermore? I don't know whether there 

needs to be a work group and work done in that 

area or -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: It appeared to me 

that it is not necessary at the moment. Is 

that -- is that Lawrence Livermore issue taken 

care of, or is that ongoing? 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, no, I think 

it's fine. I think if anything develops, we 

owe it to you to come back and report that. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Right now it's not 
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an issue, okay, thank you. Ted, we need a 

report on status of IT arrangement. 

 MR. KATZ: Right, that's 

Information Technology-- to get out of 

acronyms-- but that's all the Board members 

getting on line with the government computers 

and so on, and the computers haven't come in 

yet, but the security folks at CDC seem to be 

working well with people. I'd be happy to 

hear any feedback for anybody who might have 

any issues with that. It seems like they're 

making reasonable progress in getting people 

lined up. 

 There are a few Board members, it 

seems, who will require fresh fingerprinting. 

 It's a minority of Board members, and they're 

going to do their best to arrange that so that 

either you can do it when you're already 

visiting Cincinnati and go out to the facility 

and get your fingerprints, or even possibly be 

able to get it at a local facility near where 

you live. 
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 CHAIR ZIEMER: But they will let 

each person know. 

 MR. KATZ: They will, and I think 

some -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: If you have any 

fresh fingers that need printing -- 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: I've been talking 

with Personal Identifier. He's already sent 

me a package, so I can get the fingerprinting 

locally. 

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 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, so apparently 

they can arrange for that as needed. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. The other piece is, 

everybody needs to complete their -- who 

hasn't-- complete their IT training and send 

in their tests showing that -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Right. And you 

should have all received a disk with the 

training and the form in it, right? 

 MR. KATZ: Everybody should have a 

disk, that's correct. 

 MEMBER POSTON: I just got mine 
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this week. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: I did too, just 

received it this week. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, and some of you may 

find that you can take the test without taking 

the training and pass. It would be very quick 

then. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: There's a through 

the whole thing or refresh or -- if we can go 

through the refresher and test out, then we're 

all right or -- 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. Anyway, you take 

the test and pass and that's good enough for 

them. They're not concerned with whether you 

read the materials leading up to that, the 

training. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: As long as you know 

it. 

 MR. KATZ: As long as you get the 

right answers. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, any other 

questions on that at this time? 
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 MR. KATZ: No, none others. I 

still expect some time early January we'll be 

wrapping this up, and everybody will be 

getting computers. But there's a little bit 

of a question with that, just because of the 

holidays, and I know how government works over 

the holidays when everybody has leave and so 

on. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay. And then 

future meetings. Ted, you were looking forward 

to October 2009 and wanting recommendations on 

where to meet, is that correct? 

 MR. KATZ: Right, exactly. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Let me ask a 

question. Let's see, that's a ways off. 

Should we think about meeting in the 

Brookhaven area by then? 

 MR. KATZ: I mean, that was a 

thought I had, but I'm not sure what sort of 

in the schedule in terms of, for example, SECs 

and so on that might also make sense. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, another 
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option might be Cincinnati or Dayton, because 

we have -- 

 MR. KATZ: We have a meeting in 

Cincinnati already so -- 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Brookhaven is a 

logistical problem. And I don't know if 

anyone at Brookhaven can advise us. Is there 

any site that's a little more convenient that 

would still be suitably convenient for the 

workers to get to? 

 MR. KATZ: Nancy, I think, has 

lived near there and could probably give us 

some guidance. 

 MS. ADAMS: There's -- from a hotel 

perspective, Port Jefferson has got a nice 

hotel with conference facilities. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: How far from 

Brookhaven and how far from the nearest 

airport? 

 MS. ADAMS: It's 35 miles from 

LaGuardia and closer to Islip, although 

getting into Islip-- in and out of Islip-- is 
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not necessarily the best in terms of 

schedules. And I think LaGuardia, there's 

even a shuttle type thing. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: A shuttle? 

 MS. ADAMS: And it's only 25 miles 

at max from the site. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, so that's 

probably doable, yes. So that's one 

possibility. When do we have to lock this in, 

fairly soon? 

 MR. KATZ: Fairly soon. I mean, 

you tend of have to go out pretty far to get 

suitable hotel accommodations and so on. So 

that's why I keep trying to raise these seven, 

eight months in advance. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Are there any other 

suggestions at the moment? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: I'm holding out 

for the Bikini Atoll. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Idaho is fine. Will 

we have any sort of actions that are pending 

for Idaho that would -- 
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 MEMBER CLAWSON: I don't think so. 

 I think we're okay. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: The Bikini Atoll. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Okay, any other 

frivolous remarks? 

 MR. KATZ: With respect to Idaho, I 

think there are a couple things going on. 

SC&A I think is doing a refresher review, 

isn't it, of the site profile? So that's one 

thing that's going on and another is that we 

did form a work group that hasn't met yet and 

probably won't meet in the near future but so 

there's a little bit of action going on. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I have to hold out 

on for better months or whatever, but I would 

like to see one there. 

 CHAIR ZIEMER: Yes, we have met 

there in the past a couple of times, but we're 

due to come back there. Well, shall we go 

ahead and recommend Brookhaven at the moment? 

 I suppose if something occurred that was an 

urgency to move the meeting, I suppose that 
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could happen in February, but are we agreed 

that we will think about the Brookhaven area? 

 Very good. 

 Is there any other business to come 

before us? Anything for the good of the 

order? If not, we stand adjourned. Thank 

you, everyone. 

 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

matter went off the record at 11:41 a.m.)