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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

+ + + + +

67th MEETING

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THURSDAY

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

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The meeting convened at 9:00 a.m., 

Pacific Standard Time, in the Marriott 

Manhattan Beach, 1400 Parkview Avenue, 

Manhattan Beach, CA, James M. Melius, 

Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

JAMES M. MELIUS, Chairman

HENRY ANDERSON, Member

JOSIE BEACH, Member

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Member

MICHAEL H. GIBSON, Member*

MARK GRIFFON, Member

RICHARD LEMEN, Member

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

JOHN W. POSTON, SR., Member
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PRESENT: (continued)

ROBERT W. PRESLEY, Member

DAVID B. RICHARDSON, Member*

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor

AL-NABULSI, ISAF, DOE

BRADFORD, SHANNON, OCAS

BURGOS, ZAIDA, NIOSH Contractor

CANO, REGINA, DOE

CRUZ, RUBEN, CDC

DARNELL, PETE, OCAS

GLOVER, SAM, OCAS

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS

HINNEFELD, STU, OCAS

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A

KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL

LAM, LIVIA, Senate Committee on Health,

 Education, Labor, and Pensions*

LIN, JENNY, HHS

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A

MCFEE, MATTHEW, ORAU Team

MILLER, RICHARD, House Committee on Education

 and Labor*

NETON, JIM, OCAS

PRESLEY, LOUISE

RAFKY, MICHAEL, HHS

ROBERTSON-DEMERS, KATHRYN, SC&A

RUTHERFORD, LaVON, OCAS

TURNER, LEROY, OCAS

VON ZEPPELIN, ROBERT, Westinghouse Electric

 Corp. Petitioner*

WADE, LEW, OCAS

ZEITOUN, ABE, SC&A

*Participating via telephone
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C O N T E N T S

Welcome, Chairman Melius................... 4

Westinghouse Electric Corp SEC Petition.... 5

(Bloomfield, NJ (83.14) 

LaVon Rutherford, NIOSH

SEC Petition Status Update................ 34

LaVon Rutherford, NIOSH

Subcommittee and Work Group Reports....... 78

Subcommittee/Work Group Chairs

Board Working Time....................... 210

Chairman Melius

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

2 (9:04 a.m.)

3 MR. KATZ: Good morning, 

4 everybody, for the third day of the Board 

5 meeting. Let me again -- this is the Advisory 

6 Board on Radiation Worker Health, of course. 

7 For folks on the phone, let me check first to 

8 see if we have our two at-large Board Members 

9 present already.

10 So, Dr. Richardson, are you with 

11 us?

12 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, I am.

13 MR. KATZ: Great. And Mr. Gibson. 

14 There is a possibility he won't be here for 

15 all of the meeting.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Actually, Mike 

17 emailed. He thought he would be on later this 

18 morning, our time.

19 MR. KATZ: That is right. Then 

20 just let me remind everyone on the phone, 

21 please, to mute your phones. Use *6, and if 

22 you need to come off mute to address the 
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1 Board, you just press *6 again. Then it will 

2 bring you back online.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We have a number 

4 of things to cover today. I know Dr. Lockey 

5 has to leave early. Does anybody else need to 

6 leave early? Josie, I know about, yes. It 

7 helps in terms of what actions we take later.

8 MEMBER MUNN: But our Chair will 

9 remain with us, right?

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The Chair will, 

11 yes. You haven't heard about the ankle 

12 bracelet?

13 MEMBER MUNN: That comes with the 

14 job.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: LaVon, 

16 Westinghouse Electric.

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: LaVon Rutherford. 

18 I am the Special Exposure Cohort Health 

19 Physics Team Leader for the Office of 

20 Compensation Analysis and Support, and I am 

21 here to talk to you about the Westinghouse 

22 Electric Company and the SEC Petition for 
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1 that.

2 On December 10th, NIOSH informed a 

3 Westinghouse Electric claimant that we were 

4 unable to do his dose reconstruction, and we 

5 sent that claimant a Form A Petition Form. On 

6 December 18th of 2009, we received that Form A 

7 back as an 83.14 SEC Petition.

8 On December 18th, again we 

9 qualified that Petition for evaluation. On 

10 January 15th of this year, we issued our 

11 Evaluation Report.

12 A little background about 

13 Westinghouse Electric. Westinghouse Electric 

14 is located in Bloomfield, New Jersey. It was 

15 basically the home of the lamp division. It 

16 was an Atomic Weapons Employer from August 13, 

17 1942, which is the beginning of the MED, 

18 through December 31, 1949. They actually had 

19 involvement prior to 1940, that August 13th 

20 date, but that is the official beginning of 

21 the MED.

22 They were involved in the 
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1 production of uranium and thorium metal work. 

2 They were deeply involved in the process of 

3 preparing the metal in support of the CP-1 and 

4 the atomic bomb.

5 Sources of available information: 

6 We looked at Site Profile Technical 

7 Information Bulletins, and we have no Site 

8 Profile associated with Westinghouse Electric 

9 work. We also looked at the Site Research 

10 Database, and we did data captures.

11 I do want to point out that, 

12 because I think there might have been some 

13 confusion on others, there is a detailed data 

14 capture synopsis. It is located at the back 

15 of the Evaluation Report. It lays out the 

16 locations we searched, different parameters in 

17 searching, and what we found at those places. 

18 We put that at the back of all of our 

19 Evaluation Reports.

20 One of our biggest sources of 

21 documents that we got was actually from 

22 Westinghouse Electric work from their History 
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1 Center, the Senator John Heinz History Center.

2 We also looked at the ADAMS 

3 Database, DOE Legacy Management, all our 

4 standard places. We typically will go to the 

5 Department of Health for the state that the 

6 facility is located. We did. We went to New 

7 Jersey Department of Health, National Archives 

8 Record Centers. 

9 We did get some good documentation 

10 from the National Archives as well, Washington 

11 State University, DOE OpenNet, internet 

12 searches, CEDR database, the Hanford DDRS or 

13 Declassified Document Retrieval System, 

14 National Academies Press, and that was it.

15 As of January 27th, you will 

16 notice that we had one claim for this site. 

17 The one claim does fit within the Class 

18 Definition, and dose reconstruction -- we have 

19 not completed any dose reconstruction on that 

20 one claim, and we do not have any internal or 

21 external monitoring data for that.

22 A little background about 
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1 Westinghouse. In August 1942, Westinghouse 

2 was contracted by the Manhattan Engineer 

3 District to produce uranium metal at the 

4 Bloomfield, New Jersey, plant. It actually, 

5 back in the 1930s, had experimented with 

6 uranium as using uranium as a filament to 

7 replace tungsten. However, that process took 

8 about -- it took them about four years to 

9 refine the process to produce the uranium, and 

10 in that process they determined that the 

11 actual uranium would melt quicker than the 

12 tungsten. So they did not use it.

13 So they continued to produce the 

14 uranium, but only on small scales per 

15 university applications. They were ultimately 

16 contacted by MED to produce massive 

17 quantities. It started out as a smaller 

18 quantity of roughly 500 pounds which, when you 

19 are producing kilograms to 500 pounds, is a

20 big difference.

21 They beefed up their scale of 

22 production. They ultimately went from 500 
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1 pounds to over one ton per month, and produced 

2 150,000 pounds from the 1942 through 1943 

3 period.

4 This was a unique process they 

5 used. It was uranyl nitrate with a mixture of 

6 potassium fluoride, hydrochloric acid, sucrose 

7 and formic acid that was mixed on trays and 

8 put on top of the building. They used the 

9 ultraviolet light to cause a reaction to occur 

10 to actually produce the potassium uranium 

11 fluoride, which they actually called green 

12 salt, which is not what we would call green 

13 salt today.

14 This production was then -- these 

15 trays, or this green salt was then pumped down 

16 to the basement of the facility. This was in 

17 Plant 7 of the building. It was pumped down 

18 to the basement, and in the basement they did 

19 some filtration to remove the supernate, and 

20 they actually took the green salt at that 

21 point, and they mixed it with a sodium, or 

22 actually a calcium fluoride sodium chloride 
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1 mixture, and they used by electrolysis process 

2 and superheated that to separate the uranium 

3 from it.

4 The uranium then was broken away 

5 from the electrodes, and it was centered and 

6 then pressed into buttons. After it was 

7 pressed into buttons, the buttons were put in 

8 and melted to form the uranium melt that was 

9 ultimately shipped to the University of 

10 Chicago for Enrico Fermi's Stagg Field 

11 experiment.

12 In August of 1944 -- again, they 

13 produced the uranium from 1942 through 1943. 

14 In August of 1944, they were actually 

15 contracted by the MED to produce thorium 

16 metal. We have very little information on 

17 this process.

18 I want to bring up another thing. 

19 The work that occurred for the uranium at the 

20 Bloomfield Site recognized that there were no 

21 production facilities built for this uranium 

22 application. This was a lamp division that 
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1 was doing work for producing lamps. 

2 They, in a matter of months, 

3 pulled together the equipment and the 

4 necessary design application, and you can also 

5 find in the reference documents the actual 

6 procedures that were used for the production 

7 of this metal. They used very crude stuff, 

8 trash cans, wooden trays and so on, in the 

9 production of this process.

10 It is assumed that they used the 

11 same production process to produce the thorium 

12 metal as well, but I have no information on 

13 that and any details on that.

14 This is consistent with that it is 

15 roughly the same time that the Ames Facility 

16 was producing thorium for the MED. We had 

17 indications they produced a total of 200 

18 pounds of thorium metal in the form of bars, 

19 tubes, sheets and wires in 1945.

20 Again, no information could be 

21 found describing the process, and it is not 

22 clear when the thorium processing stopped. We 
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1 do have documentation that indicates that 

2 there were thorium inventories on site in 

3 1949.

4 The Westinghouse Site consisted of 

5 11 principal buildings, several smaller 

6 structures, and it was located on 14 acres of 

7 property. It appears most of the work that 

8 took place was on the rooftop and in the 

9 basement of Building 7. There was indication 

10 that there were some laboratory applications 

11 that took off in other places, but no real 

12 definition of that type of work.

13 There is no information concerning 

14 the control of personnel movement or control 

15 of radiologic materials to identify nonexposed 

16 workers. I do know that, based on the 

17 documentation that we have, that the thorium 

18 nitrate feed material was sent to the site. 

19 We do not know who the supplier was of that 

20 thorium nitrate, but it is indication because 

21 when they received it from the vendor, there 

22 are discussions of the testing to ensure that 
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1 it was the proper quality that they needed.

2 Internal exposure hazards, 

3 inhalation and ingestion from operations 

4 involving uranium, thorium, and their 

5 respective progeny radionuclides. There is a 

6 little discussion in the reference documents 

7 about that most of the people are aware. Most 

8 everyone is aware of the pyrophoric issues 

9 associated with uranium. It talked about the 

10 uranium fires that they incurred from the 

11 incinerated material and trying to control 

12 that.

13 External exposure hazards: Photon 

14 and beta sources from operations involving 

15 uranium, thorium and their respective progeny.

16 Available internal monitoring 

17 data: We have no internal or external 

18 monitoring data available. We have no air 

19 monitoring data. We have no surface 

20 contamination monitoring data available, and 

21 there is no data available associated with 

22 medical X-rays.
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1 We do have some source-term 

2 information, the total uranium metal produced 

3 of 150,000 pounds. One thing I will say is 

4 you could tell just by the documentation we 

5 read that it was a ramp-up process where they 

6 started, where they were producing a few 

7 hundred pounds, and then they went to 1,000 

8 pounds and more ultimately. So it was an 

9 increase over the months to that 150,000 pound 

10 total that they actually produced.

11 Then we know they had thorium 

12 metal, and we know they produced at least 200 

13 pounds in 1945. We do not know if that 

14 operation continued in '46 and '47.

15 There is insufficient source-term 

16 information and process information to develop 

17 occupational exposure models for uranium and 

18 thorium. 

19 We do have a good description of 

20 how the uranium process, the actual chemical 

21 process, of how it worked, but we do not have 

22 the description -- enough description to 
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1 actually put together a model using the 

2 source-term information and the process 

3 information that we could come up with a good 

4 exposure model for these workers, nor do we 

5 have a surrogate facility based on this 

6 operation that we could use any of that data 

7 to bound the workers.

8 There are also some pictures that 

9 you can look at in the reference documents 

10 that kind of show you that the workers did --

11 it was actually the scientists at the time 

12 looking at the uranium metal and how they 

13 handled it. It was not -- they were not 

14 wearing gloves. There was no protective 

15 equipment involved in that.

16 Our internal exposures: We found 

17 that there is insufficient monitoring and 

18 source-term data from which to draw 

19 conclusions regarding potential magnitude of 

20 internal dose from exposures to uranium or 

21 thorium and their progeny.

22 Our external exposures, we again 
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1 found that there is insufficient monitoring 

2 and source-term data for us to draw 

3 conclusions regarding the potential magnitude 

4 of the external exposures. 

5 We do think we can reconstruct the 

6 medical dose using our standard Technical 

7 Basis Document for that, and we will use any 

8 personal monitoring data that would become 

9 available for completing partial dose 

10 reconstructions in the future.

11 So our feasibility determination 

12 is that, from August 13, 1942 through December 

13 31, 1949, which is the covered period for 

14 Westinghouse, that the internal dose 

15 reconstruction is not feasible, and external 

16 dose reconstruction is not feasible with the 

17 exception of medical X-rays.

18 So our evidence revealed that 

19 workers in the Class may have been 

20 accumulating chronic exposures through intakes 

21 of radionuclides and direct exposures from 

22 radioactive materials. So we find that health 
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1 may have been endangered for those workers.

2 Our proposed Class is all AWE 

3 employees who worked at Westinghouse Electric 

4 Corporation, Bloomfield, from August 13, 1942, 

5 through December 31, 1949. That is the 

6 standard language following that.

7 Again, our recommendation is from 

8 August 13, 1942, through December 31, 1949, 

9 and dose reconstruction is not feasible, and 

10 health endangerment is yes. Questions?

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Questions for 

12 LaVon? Paul?

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Lavon, do we have 

14 an idea of the potential size of this Class, 

15 if it is approved?

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: It is not as 

17 large, if you actually look at -- I think in 

18 there I talk about the site consisted of 11 

19 principal buildings and several smaller 

20 structures on a 14 acre property. I asked the 

21 one claimant that we have, who is actually a 

22 survivor, who is the petitioner, and I 
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1 couldn't get a real good number.

2 I think that you wonder. We only 

3 have one claim for this site. That could be 

4 due to lack of information to those people. 

5 It is also 1942 through 1949. So you would 

6 assume the workforce is probably most 

7 deceased. Their survivors are, obviously, 

8 probably in their sixties time frame, 50-60 

9 time frame, but it may just be outreach, maybe 

10 not enough outreach.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Henry?

12 MEMBER ANDERSON: When was the 

13 initial claim filed? Do you know?

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: You know, you got 

15 me on that one. When we received the initial 

16 claim for Westinghouse? I can find that out.

17 MEMBER ANDERSON: No, I am just 

18 curious as to was this one of those legacy 

19 cases that have been around a long time?

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, it is. It 

21 is a legacy case that has been around for a 

22 long time. You could have many reasons why it 
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1 took so long, but we only had the one claim 

2 for the facility, and so on. Yes, it is one 

3 of the legacy cases.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Other questions 

5 from Board Members? David Richardson, do you 

6 have any questions?

7 MEMBER RICHARDSON: One question 

8 is: There's an unknown end date for the 

9 contract. So how did you select 1949?

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: The 1949 date was 

11 selected by the Department of Labor. That is 

12 the end of the covered period, and we did not 

13 find any information that would support 

14 extending that covered period that we would 

15 have fed to the Department of Labor. So we 

16 did not pursue an extension of that.

17 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay. 

18 MR. VON ZEPPELIN: Hello. Can you 

19 hear me?

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, just a 

21 second. We now need to -- if there are no 

22 more questions from the Board Members, we will 
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1 hear from the petitioner who, I believe, just 

2 tried to speak.

3 MR. VON ZEPPELIN: Yes. Can you 

4 hear me?

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, we can.

6 MR. VON ZEPPELIN: Okay. You have 

7 the question here. I petitioned this back in 

8 -- and my [identifying information redacted]

9 and I, I am 66; my [identifying information 

10 redacted] is [identifying information 

11 redacted]. I petitioned this back in July of 

12 2001, and this is going on nine years, and I 

13 have talked to many people in this program 

14 over the years, and I said this case here can 

15 be settled in 15 minutes. I was told in no 

16 uncertain terms to basically stick it up my 

17 rear end, we are not interested in you.

18 I said, I am dealing with a case 

19 that goes back to the 40s, and I was talking 

20 to people that never heard of Manhattan 

21 Project, and World War II was actually history 

22 to them, too, and I am thinking, what is going 
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1 on here.

2 I can tell you that the protection 

3 that these people wore, from what I understand 

4 from what my father said and my mother said, 

5 was rubber gloves and an apron, and she said 

6 they were up to their rear ends in the stuff. 

7 Do I have to say anything more?

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, you don't. 

9 Thank you for your comments.

10 MR. VON ZEPPELIN: No, I have some 

11 more here to say. You know, my [identifying 

12 information redacted] and I are not in the 

13 best of health, and I was determined I am 

14 going to outlive this, and I told many people 

15 over the years that I have been dealing with 

16 this. I said, what if both of us pass on 

17 before this case is settled? I said, where 

18 are you going to send the information that 

19 this case goes one way or the other? Who is 

20 going to receive it, if we are both in the 

21 grave?

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, all I can 
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1 say is I think that the Board will be taking 

2 action, and I think this issue will get 

3 resolved pretty shortly.

4 MR. VON ZEPPELIN: The thing is, I 

5 have heard this going on eight-and-a-half 

6 years now. I have been handed the same thing. 

7 I even had my Congressman get involved in 

8 this, and what I got out of him was a form 

9 letter, and that is all I have been getting 

10 over the years. 

11 I have been battling this and 

12 battling this and battling this, and I have 

13 come to the point where I want to see action. 

14 I don't want to hear talk, and I don't want 

15 to see letters. I got a stack of letters that 

16 go from probably a foot high, and that is all 

17 I have gotten over the years.

18 I told people years and years and 

19 years ago, this case can be settled in 15 

20 minutes. There is no problem here. Listen to 

21 me. But I am the stupid person.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I believe we 
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1 will settle it in the next 15 minutes. 

2 MR. VON ZEPPELIN: I hope so.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: This is the 

4 first time the Board, the Advisory Board --

5 that this has been brought to our attention. 

6 So we will be taking action, I believe, over 

7 the next 15 minutes, as soon as we --

8 MR. VON ZEPPELIN: Well, it is 

9 good news, you know. the thing is, this is 

10 back in the infancy of, basically, dealing 

11 with nuclear energy and nuclear power or 

12 anything else like that, because as you all 

13 know, the atom was only split in '38, and 

14 these people were working with very dangerous 

15 material, no safeguards, no nothing. 

16 My mother, after my father died 

17 back in 1967, said he died basically because 

18 of his work during the war, and the doctor who 

19 treated him lastly said -- when he heard his 

20 case history, he said this is definitely a 

21 case of his work during the war, and every 

22 person that has ever heard of this said that.
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1 So this is what I don't 

2 understand, is why this bureaucracy has taken 

3 this long to finalize this when it is so 

4 simple. Even an idiot like me can understand 

5 it.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. We 

7 have one question from a Board Member. Wanda?

8 MEMBER MUNN: Not a question. I 

9 just wanted to make a motion.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We have one 

11 question for you. Do you have any estimate 

12 about how many people worked at the facility?

13 MR. VON ZEPPELIN: From what my 

14 mother and my father said, it was a very, very 

15 small number, and the only thing is -- the 

16 problem is the only reason I ever knew about 

17 this is that in the spring of 2001, USA Today 

18 had about three or four main articles on this 

19 program, and they listed all the facilities 

20 that would be included on this, and 

21 Westinghouse Electric was listed. 

22 That is the only reason I ever 
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1 knew about the program, and I had to get on 

2 the computer and get all the applications and 

3 everything else to fill them out and send it 

4 in, and then I sent it in to Washington, D.C. 

5 Fifteen months later I get a call from 

6 somebody in Jacksonville, Florida, telling me 

7 I sent it to the wrong place. I said, how did 

8 it get to Jacksonville, Florida? She said, 

9 you sent it there. I said, I didn't send it 

10 there; I sent it to Washington, D.C., and this 

11 is when the parade started.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, we 

13 apologize for that, though some of us recall 

14 the USA Today article. I am glad that you 

15 were seeing that.

16 MR. VON ZEPPELIN: Well, that is 

17 the only reason I know about. The thing is, 

18 if you can go back in and check the number of 

19 employees that were there working there by 

20 their Social Security numbers, which probably 

21 you can, and find out. Also, you can find 

22 out, too, is when their death dates occurred, 
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1 and I bet you none of them got -- it was 

2 probably in the late 50s or mid- to late-60s 

3 when they all passed away. You can bet your 

4 dollar on that.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you. 

6 We have a motion coming from Wanda?

7 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, you do. I 

8 would like to reassure the claimant that there 

9 are people who are deeply appreciative and 

10 understanding of the work that your father 

11 did.

12 MR. VON ZEPPELIN: Well, I 

13 appreciate that, and thank you very much, 

14 because a lot of people don't understand, and 

15 I have battled it, and I have battled it, and 

16 I have battled it, and they just didn't 

17 understand, and they were just saying that are 

18 you sure of this, are you sure? And I have 

19 been asked for dosimeter readings. I have 

20 been asked for Geiger counter readings. I 

21 have been asked for health reports on him, and 

22 everything else. And I am thinking, dosimeter 
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1 readings, Geiger counter readings, and I am 

2 thinking what planet are these people on or 

3 what have they been smoking.

4 MEMBER MUNN: Well, our program 

5 makes an effort to obtain as much specific 

6 information as they possibly can, but that 

7 doesn't change the fact that most of us truly 

8 understand the kinds of work that has had to 

9 be done for the real pioneers of the nuclear 

10 age, and your father was one of those. That 

11 is appreciated. His work and the material 

12 that came from that plant were crucial to the 

13 future of our nation. It is very much 

14 appreciated. 

15 I am very pleased to make a motion 

16 that we accept the NIOSH recommendation to 

17 recommend to the Secretary that all Atomic 

18 Weapons Employees who worked at Westinghouse 

19 Electric Company in Bloomfield from August 13, 

20 1942, through December 31, 1949, be added to 

21 the Special Exposure Cohort.

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: I second.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Second from 

2 Brad. Any further discussion among the Board 

3 Members? If not, Ted?

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, I think I 

5 am just a little uneasy still on the overall 

6 number of employee issue. I think yesterday 

7 we had a lengthy discussion about that with 

8 the GE facility, and I appreciate the 

9 statement by the petitioner that there are 

10 probably only a few people involved in this 

11 operation, but it was a 14-acre site with 11 

12 facilities. I can't imagine there were 10 

13 people in these 14 buildings.

14 MR. VON ZEPPELIN: No, no, wait. 

15 Wait, wait, wait, wait. You are talking about 

16 one building here. Now that is all they 

17 worked on, is one building. It was not a 14-

18 acre project. It was a very -- from what my 

19 mother told me and my father told me, this was 

20 Top Secret. Nobody knew about it. Nobody was 

21 supposed to know about it, only people -- and 

22 they probably didn't know the whole story of 
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1 it. They only had the need to know. 

2 It was not what you call a big 

3 facility like you have at these other plants 

4 today that were during the Cold War. This was 

5 very small. It was making especially one 

6 project for basically a small number of bombs.

7 Now you would have to go back into 

8 World War II mindset and what the project was. 

9 This was not a Cold War project. Do you 

10 listen to me? Do you hear what I'm saying?

11 MEMBER MUNN: We certainly do.

12 MR. VON ZEPPELIN: I'm glad now, 

13 because I don't want to go into this again and 

14 try to educate people on what this project 

15 was. I've had it over the years.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: LaVon?

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: I would like to 

18 address Mark's comment. I think this is 

19 totally different than GE Evandale. First of 

20 all, this is 1942 through 1949. It is not 

21 1961 to 1970.

22 MR. VON ZEPPELIN: That is 
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1 correct.

2 MR. RUTHERFORD: It is a site that 

3 is one-tenth, or less than that, the size of 

4 GE Evandale. The magnitude of the workforce 

5 is not even near, and the fact of the matter 

6 is this is a consistent application for what 

7 we have done at Westinghouse Atomic Power 

8 Development this same time period, Standard 

9 Oil at the same time period, Metallurgical Lab 

10 the same time period.

11 These are all those early 1942 

12 period. We do not have data. They were 

13 making this stuff. They were mixing it on the 

14 roof of the building. We have no application 

15 of any environmental approach that we could 

16 possibly use for that.

17 So my point is it is definitely 

18 not comparable from a GE perspective.

19 MR VON ZEPPELIN: Okay. We got 

20 that point across now, I hope. I don't want 

21 to hear another question that is just so 

22 stupid, it blows my mind.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Any 

2 further questions from Board Members? If not, 

3 Ted, could you do the vote?

4 MR. KATZ: Dr. Ziemer?

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

6 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield?

7 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler?

9 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

10 MR. KATZ: Dr. Richardson?

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

12 MR. KATZ: Mr. Presley?

13 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes.

14 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston?

15 MEMBER POSTON: Yes.

16 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn?

17 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

18 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius?

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

20 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey?

21 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes.

22 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lemen?
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1 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes.

2 MR. KATZ: Mr. Griffon?

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes.

4 MR. KATZ: Mr. Gibson? Oh, I am 

5 sorry. He is absent, and we will have to, as 

6 our procedures are, collect his vote either 

7 when he joins us later this afternoon or 

8 afterwards.

9 Dr. Field?

10 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

11 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson?

12 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

13 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach?

14 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

15 MR. KATZ: Dr. Anderson?

16 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

17 MR. KATZ: Did I call everyone? 

18 So then it is unanimous, with one absent 

19 Member at this point, 15 in favor.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Very 

21 good. The petition is approved. We will move 

22 forward with that. Thank you for your 
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1 participation, sir.

2 The next item is SEC Petition 

3 Status Update, LaVon.

4 MR. RUTHERFORD: The purpose of 

5 this presentation -- we typically do this 

6 presentation at every Board meeting to provide 

7 the Board an update of existing petitions --

8 MR. KATZ: LaVon, could you raise 

9 your lavaliere? Thanks.

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: It would help if 

11 I turn it on.

12 MR. KATZ: Turn it on. That would 

13 be good, too. Thanks.

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay, does that 

15 help?

16 Again, we do this presentation at 

17 every Board meeting to provide an update to 

18 the Board, qualified SEC Petitions that we are 

19 currently in the evaluation phase. We also 

20 discuss potential 83.14s that we have.

21 We do this -- this gives the Board 

22 enough information to support future Work 
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1 Group efforts as well as Advisory Board 

2 meetings.

3 As of January 25th, we had 

4 received 163 petitions. I can say, as of 

5 February 10th, which was yesterday, we had 165 

6 petitions. I didn't look at it this morning 

7 to give you a true value today.

8 We have seven petitions as of 

9 January 25th during the qualification phase, 

10 92 petitions that have qualified. Of those 92 

11 petitions, four are in the evaluation process, 

12 and 88 had completed the evaluation. We had 

13 64 petitions that did not qualify.

14 Currently, these petitions are in 

15 the evaluation phase. We have Weldon Spring 

16 Plant. We did have a little difficulty in the 

17 qualification process of this petition. We 

18 had hoped to actually have this Evaluation 

19 Report completed late in January/early 

20 February.

21 We had not anticipated that we 

22 would present it, though. Although we did --
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1 we ended up pushing back the completion of the 

2 evaluation to March of 2010, we are trying to 

3 address a couple of the surrogate data issues 

4 in the evaluation.

5 Hooker Electrochemical, we 

6 anticipate completing this month. The St. 

7 Louis Airport Storage Site. Again, we are on 

8 schedule for completion in March 2010. All 

9 three, Weldon Spring, Hooker, and the SLAPS 

10 Site, we anticipate presenting at the May 

11 Board meeting.

12 Linde Ceramics, those you may 

13 remember. We actually received a petition. 

14 We had actually received a petition prior to 

15 for this same time period, and were unable to 

16 qualify that petition. 

17 We have recently received another 

18 petition, and through some additional work, we 

19 actually have qualified that petition, and 

20 that petition for the Linde Ceramics Plant, 

21 and we will evaluate the rest of the covered 

22 period of 1947 through 1953. The prior years 
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1 to that are already part of the SEC. We were 

2 afraid Dr. Roessler's group was going to run 

3 out of work.

4 Petitions with the Advisory Board 

5 at this time. Chapman Valve, we did discuss 

6 yesterday. I believe that the Board is going 

7 to allow the new Board Members additional time 

8 to review the documentation in hopes that we 

9 can resolve that by the May Board meeting.

10 Blockson Chemical is in the same 

11 situation as well. 

12 Feed Materials Production Center. 

13 There continues to be some work NIOSH is 

14 working on, and NIOSH, SC&A, and the Work 

15 Group are working to resolve the final issues 

16 associated with that site.

17 Bethlehem Steel. That is with the 

18 Surrogate Data Work Group, and I believe Dr. 

19 Melius will correct me if I am wrong, but I 

20 think there is a Work Group coming up very 

21 shortly prior to the May meeting.

22 Hanford. This petition is -- we 
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1 recently did an 83.14 to add an additional 

2 Class to Hanford. Since we have done that, 

3 the Work Group, SC&A, and NIOSH have been 

4 working to identify the remaining issues and 

5 work through those issues associated with the 

6 Hanford Site.

7 The Nevada Test Site. We issued a 

8 revised Evaluation Report. Dr. Neton 

9 presented yesterday, and the Board concurred 

10 with recommending a Class for the Nevada Test 

11 Site. So we should be able to move that one 

12 to closure.

13 The Mound Plant. Ms. Beach's Work 

14 Group has worked to resolve the issues 

15 associated with that, and based on the 

16 discussions I have had with Dr. Ulsh, I 

17 believe we are hoping to have that one closed 

18 out, or hoping to come to some resolution by 

19 the May meeting, if possible. I have to put 

20 those caveats on that.

21 Texas City Chemical. We have 

22 revised the Evaluation Report. It is not 
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1 issued yet. There are some internal 

2 discussions that are still proceeding 

3 associated with the surrogate data and radon 

4 model.

5 Area IV Santa Susana. This Work 

6 Group continues to evaluate the issues 

7 associated with that petition. We did just 

8 add additional years up through 1964. We 

9 presented that evaluation at this Board 

10 meeting, and the Board concurred with that 

11 recommendation. However, continued work on 

12 the petition through '65 as well as Site 

13 Profile issues continue.

14 Dow Chemical. We recently had a 

15 Work Group meeting, Dr. Melius' SEC Work 

16 Group. We discussed the remaining findings 

17 from SC&A on that, and SC&A has been tasked to 

18 go back and summarize the surrogate data use 

19 that was identified in our approach in the 

20 Battelle 6000 Appendix that we have for this 

21 site. 

22 Pantex. Again, research and 
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1 discussion continues on this site between 

2 SC&A, the Work Group, and NIOSH. I believe 

3 NIOSH provided a response to SC&A. They did 

4 not? It has not been released yet. I 

5 apologize. Brad is shaking his head, and I 

6 corrected myself there. So, hopefully, we 

7 will get that to the Work Group soon, so we 

8 can start getting a Work Group set up for that 

9 -- meeting set up for that.

10 Savannah River Site. There was a 

11 recent Work Group meeting on the Savannah 

12 River Site, discussed issues associated with 

13 the Evaluation Report and petition, and NIOSH 

14 continues to work through a couple of issues, 

15 and that Work Group will continue its research 

16 and discussion.

17 General Steel Industries is with 

18 the Battelle 6000 Work Group headed by Dr. 

19 Ziemer. As Dr. Ziemer mentioned yesterday, 

20 there are a number of sites that that group 

21 has been tasked with. Research and discussion 

22 continues on that.
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1 LANL. Mark Griffon's Work Group 

2 is continuing work on that one as well.

3 Linde Ceramics Plant. Dr. 

4 Roessler's Work Group has recently met, 

5 actually, I believe, once in person and once 

6 on the phone, and continues to work through a 

7 couple of issues that were described by the 

8 petitioner, and we hope to be able to bring 

9 that one to resolution soon.

10 Bliss and Laughlin Steel is with 

11 the Battelle 6000 Work Group as well.

12 Electro-Met, again with the 

13 Battelle 6000 Work Group.

14 United Nuclear. I presented that 

15 Evaluation Report yesterday. I believe Dr. 

16 Melius is going to allow the petitioner a 

17 little more time until the May Board meeting 

18 to do their presentation on that.

19 University of Rochester. This one 

20 is one we presented at the Port Jefferson 

21 meeting. Dr. Melius and Dr. Lockey were 

22 concerned that we had possibly not done 
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1 complete due diligence on this, and Dr. Melius 

2 went back to the State of New York and 

3 questioned to see if they could come up with 

4 documentation on this University of Rochester 

5 Site or identify where it may have went.

6 Actually, the University -- or the 

7 State of New York was -- Dr. Melius didn't 

8 come up with anything, but Dr. Lockey did 

9 identify a person that indicated that the 

10 records may have been sent to the Oak Ridge 

11 National Lab or the Hanford Site.

12 We had searched the Oak Ridge 

13 National Lab already. However, we had not 

14 done a detailed search of the Hanford records. 

15 We did. In December we sent a -- we asked 

16 the Hanford Site to do a preliminary search, 

17 and their preliminary search showed positive 

18 hits. We sent a formal letter requesting them 

19 to search their records, and they identified a 

20 number of documents.

21 They sent to us a list of 150 

22 documents, I believe. If I am correct, it is 
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1 around 150 documents. They sent a list to us 

2 just recently. We are going through that list 

3 right now to determine what records we want, 

4 and they are going to send those records to 

5 us.

6 In the meantime, we had actually -

7 - Dr. Glover in some of his work had 

8 identified a different -- a search technique 

9 for the nearer College Park in Maryland for 

10 records, and additional searches there have 

11 identified that there may be additional 

12 records as well. We have already gone to 

13 capture those records because there's also a 

14 number of other sites that records were 

15 identified.

16 We anticipate that we will be able 

17 to get those records, review those records, 

18 and have a determination of any change at all 

19 to the feasibility for the May meeting.

20 Brookhaven National Lab. The Work 

21 Group has been established for that. However, 

22 it has not met yet. They are, I believe, 
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1 waiting on SC&A's review of the post-1980 

2 period. 

3 Canoga Avenue Facility. We did 

4 present that evaluation at this Board meeting. 

5 However, due to Class Definition issues, we 

6 have been sent back to do a little additional 

7 homework, and we are going to do that. We 

8 plan to provide an update to the Board at the 

9 Board conference call, based on what we found 

10 and, hopefully, we can get that resolved 

11 quickly.

12 Westinghouse Electric Corp., I 

13 just presented, and the Board concurred with 

14 that recommendation to add a Class.

15 Lawrence Livermore National Lab we 

16 presented yesterday, and the Board concurred 

17 with the recommendation to add a Class from 

18 January 1, 1950 through December 31, 1973, 

19 which was basically a modification of the 

20 existing Class.

21 Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. 

22 We presented the -- it was yesterday, I 
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1 believe, and the Board concurred with our 

2 recommendation to add the Class there as well.

3 General Electric Company. We did 

4 present that Evaluation Report yesterday. 

5 However, the Board has requested that we do 

6 additional work. We are going to go back and 

7 do some interviews and do some additional, if 

8 possible, data capture searches and, 

9 hopefully, come up with a better -- either a 

10 different Class Definition or a complete 

11 argument based on our current Class 

12 Definition. 

13 During the last Board meeting in 

14 October, there were a couple of questions that 

15 were brought up by the Advisory Board. One is 

16 what is NIOSH's process for ensuring that all 

17 claims have been appropriately included in SEC 

18 Class, and has NIOSH changed the way it 

19 defines classes over time?

20 I wanted to talk -- when we go 

21 through the process for identifying potential 

22 SEC claims. We will make an initial 
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1 determination of an SEC Class after we 

2 determine there is an infeasibility. 

3 When we do that, during an 

4 evaluation process we determine there is an 

5 infeasibility. We will draft a Class 

6 Definition. We will send that Class 

7 Definition to the Department of Labor, and we 

8 will ask the Department of Labor to determine 

9 if they can administer the Class.

10 Once the Department of Labor 

11 responds, if they respond that they can 

12 administer the Class as written, we proceed 

13 with the final evaluation. Then we will 

14 present that final evaluation to the Advisory 

15 Board, and the Advisory Board may concur, may 

16 request additional work.

17 Once the final designation occurs, 

18 we identify those claims that are affected by 

19 that Class and send those claims back to the 

20 Department of Labor. The Department of Labor 

21 then evaluates whether the Class -- or whether 

22 the claims fit within the Class or not. If 
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1 they return claims to us, then we would assume 

2 -- we assume that they have evaluated them 

3 against the Class.

4 Ultimately, during that process, 

5 we revise our Site Profiles to indicate the 

6 current final designation and feasibility 

7 determinations that we had identified in the 

8 Evaluation Report. 

9 So we basically revise the Site 

10 Profiles to ensure that they identify any 

11 infeasibilities that we identified in our 

12 Evaluation Report to ensure that dose 

13 reconstruction does not attempt to do those 

14 infeasibilities.

15 So once we start redoing claims --

16 so we are doing the partial dose 

17 reconstructions now on non-presumptive claims 

18 -- those reconstructions will come through, 

19 and the dose reconstructor will review -- the 

20 NIOSH dose reconstructor, as well as our 

21 contractor, will review those dose 

22 reconstructions against that revised Site 
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1 Profile. 

2 If during that review the dose 

3 reconstructor identified the claims that they 

4 feel should have been evaluated or possibly 

5 have been in the SEC, they will review the 

6 claim file to determine if an SEC 

7 determination was made from the Department of 

8 Labor. If they go through that and they see 

9 that there is a SEC determination, they can 

10 determine from that determination why they 

11 have been excluded from the Class.

12 If they still -- or if that does 

13 not exist within the claim, they will 

14 correspond with the Department of Labor to 

15 determine why a claim was denied. 

16 If in the process we determine 

17 that there may have been -- that claims were 

18 denied that ultimately we can't do dose 

19 reconstruction from for the same reasons that 

20 we had originally identified a Class, we will 

21 initiate an 83.14 to basically modify that 

22 Class.
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1 If you look at what we did with 

2 Y-12, here is a prime example. Y-12 was 

3 defined as a Class. It was individuals 

4 involved with uranium enrichment and other 

5 radioactive material or other radioactive 

6 areas or something. I can't remember, 

7 something like that.

8 We had defined it in a manner 

9 because we had felt that the site -- there was 

10 radioactive material all through the site, 

11 which would have included everyone. So we 

12 defined it that way. However, the actual 

13 interpretation of that was different than what 

14 we had intended. 

15 So we started receiving claims for 

16 individuals that we felt should have been 

17 included in a Class. Ultimately, we ended up, 

18 instead of what -- we ended up doing an 83.14 

19 to modify that Class to change it to all 

20 employees, which is what it is now, from '42 

21 to '47.

22 So the process is in place to 
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1 ensure that claims that go through the 

2 process, if they come back to us and we feel 

3 that they were missed, we have ways to contact 

4 the Department of Labor to review why the 

5 claim was denied; and if, in that process, we 

6 determine that they have denied a claim that 

7 we can't do dose reconstruction, we can 

8 initiate an 83.14 to resolve that.

9 Now I want to also say, now we 

10 identified that with Y-12. We have done that 

11 with Y-12 earlier. We have also done it with 

12 Lawrence Livermore as well. So it has not 

13 happened a lot, but it has happened.

14 I also want to talk about defining 

15 SEC Classes. There has been a lot of 

16 discussion on that as well, and I think they 

17 kind of go hand in hand somewhat.

18 After going back from the Board 

19 meeting, we perform -- we had a health 

20 physicist, who is not typically involved with 

21 the SEC process, perform an internal 

22 assessment. Basically, what he was doing was 
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1 he went back, and he looked at how we defined 

2 Classes from the very first one at 

3 Mallinckrodt in Iowa to how we are defining 

4 Classes today, and what criteria were we using 

5 or what boundaries were we using to do that.

6 From that assessment, he did find 

7 there had been changes, as every Board Member 

8 knows. Some of the early Class Definitions 

9 went from defining divisions to defining 

10 buildings, specific buildings and specific 

11 areas, should have been monitored, and to all 

12 employees, which we use a lot today.

13 So he actually went back. He went 

14 through all these, and he laid it out. The 

15 findings are, yes, we have changed over time. 

16 So our path forward for that is we want to go 

17 now, and we are going to go through each one 

18 of the Classes we have added since the 

19 beginning. 

20 We are going to look at the 

21 technical reasons that were used for defining 

22 that Class, from access control, environmental 
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1 controls, all the different things that we use 

2 in defining that Class, and we want to look at 

3 the language that we used and determine if the 

4 Class should be modified to be consistent with 

5 how we would define a Class today.

6 If that occurs -- when we do that 

7 process, if that occurs, we would do an 83.14 

8 to modify the Class. The difficulty with that 

9 will be there has to be claims that are 

10 actually being missed in order for that to 

11 happen, meaning that we would have to have 

12 claims that Department of Labor is denying 

13 that we would feel would fit into that 

14 modified Class.

15 That's it.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That's it? 

17 Okay. Do we have questions for LaVon? Dr. 

18 Lockey and then Dr. Lemen.

19 MEMBER LOCKEY: Well, thanks for 

20 the presentation. I have two points, because 

21 I do have to leave in order to get a flight 

22 out.
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1 One is it is concerning about the 

2 due diligence in relationship to looking for 

3 records. Do you have -- is there a systematic 

4 approach you take in that, and do you 

5 reevaluate that approach on an ongoing basis?

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: Why would these 

8 records for Rochester be at Hanford and not at 

9 Oak Ridge, and why would you have searched 

10 Hanford?

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, you know, 

12 and we do do a general search of Hanford, the 

13 DDR System, but a detailed search of every 

14 record -- of all the records, electronic 

15 databases and records, we don't do at every 

16 site.

17 Now the lessons learned from that 

18 -- and you know, it is like anything, any 

19 process. If you look at what we searched at 

20 the beginning of this program to what we 

21 search now, it is huge, completely different, 

22 because we have learned a lot of things, that 
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1 Hanford is a great repository for a lot of the 

2 records of all the sites.

3 So what I would say is that the 

4 University of Rochester issue is kind of a 

5 lesson learned, that, okay, we need to do more 

6 of a formal search at Hanford for records 

7 associated with these other sites.

8 DR. GLOVER: LaVon, I just want to 

9 make -- this is a special circumstance in that 

10 it was Newell Stannard's collection.

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'm sorry?

12 DR. GLOVER: Newell Stannard wrote 

13 on radioactivity and health, and he went from 

14 Rochester to Hanford. So it is a special 

15 collection of about 150 boxes of information 

16 related to everything he gathered from the 

17 beginning of time, but since he was at 

18 Rochester, he also took the original reports 

19 with him. 

20 So it is a very unique 

21 circumstance why this record collection 

22 exists.
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1 MEMBER LOCKEY: Someday I would 

2 like to see maybe just a short presentation 

3 about how you go about the process of 

4 searching, retrieving records.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: Should I add that 

6 onto my SEC presentation next meeting?

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: Well, no, I don't 

8 think we need to see it every week, but I 

9 would like to --

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: No. I mean just 

11 as a one-time.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: As a one-time, 

13 it is something we should consider for an 

14 agenda item. 

15 I am just a little confused on 

16 Rochester still. I thought you mentioned or 

17 implied that there was another set of records 

18 someplace.

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That one, I am 

21 also --

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: Sam could 
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1 actually talk about the search tool that was 

2 identified, but it is National Archives 

3 records at College Park, I believe, and they 

4 had identified -- it was another search tool 

5 that was used that actually identified records 

6 that had been missed in the first search.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Maybe then as 

8 part of the presentation -- Sam, do you want 

9 to add anything to that?

10 DR. GLOVER: It was a -- DOE 

11 captured certain historical records that they 

12 had essentially -- we thought they were in one 

13 location, and they had been subsequently 

14 moved. So you had to pull a different thread, 

15 and it happened that I came across a different 

16 finding, a large collection of these early AWE 

17 facility records, but they had been moved. So 

18 it was --

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think we 

20 understand the difficulty, but as we are 

21 talking about SEC Class Definitions, I think 

22 we know that there will always be this stuff 
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1 out there that is going to be found 10 years 

2 later, but I think at least my concern is that 

3 someday we are going to come across -- we will 

4 have granted an SEC, and then we are going to 

5 find all of the records for that SEC.

6 I don't know if we have a 

7 procedure for rescinding an SEC, but it is 

8 just a difficult circumstance. Hopefully, we 

9 don't have to confront it, but I think it is 

10 as thorough as it can be, but we understand 

11 that takes time and money to do. So there has 

12 to be some level of reasonableness on it.

13 I think it would be helpful for 

14 the Board maybe at one of the next few 

15 meetings. Maybe we can even do it on our next 

16 conference call, the kind of thing that we 

17 could do for that. Dr. Lemen?

18 MEMBER LEMEN: Did you have 

19 something else, Jim? You had you had two 

20 points.

21 MEMBER LOCKEY: I have one other, 

22 and this goes around the General Electric 
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1 issue in regard to how a Class is defined in a 

2 large industrial complex where part of the 

3 process at the complex is devoted to these 

4 types of production issues, but the rest of it 

5 is not.

6 It would be labor intensive, but 

7 some type of archeological reconstruction of 

8 the site would at least give us some 

9 information as to what kind of issues we are 

10 dealing with, with a large workforce where 

11 perhaps only a small percentage of the 

12 workforce is involved with this type of 

13 nuclear production issue. General Electric 

14 would be a good example of that.

15 How do we define what this plant 

16 looks like? What were they making over what 

17 time frame, and how many buildings? Just an 

18 education so at least we have something we can 

19 rely on to say we can't determine it or 

20 perhaps we can determine boundaries in 

21 relationship to Class limitation.

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: I have no problem 
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1 with that and agree with that. I think the 

2 biggest thing, from my perspective, is 

3 understanding where that boundary -- where, at 

4 what level of information or what definition 

5 is the Board going to be acceptable of? I 

6 believe that, in order to reduce -- to define 

7 any of these Classes in a more smaller 

8 geographical area, in some cases it is going 

9 to be a subjective determination based on 

10 information that you hear from interviews and 

11 such.

12 MEMBER LOCKEY: I think the Board 

13 is capable of making those decisions, but we 

14 have to make them with at least some 

15 foundation, and right now we don't have 

16 foundations for certain of these sites.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Dr. Lemen?

18 MEMBER LEMEN: I would like to ask 

19 if NIOSH in their future presentations on 

20 their tables, under the SEC Evaluation 

21 Reports, if it would be possible to add two 

22 things. 
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1 First, under the ER completed,

2 could you add when the petition was initiated?

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: I certainly can.

4 MEMBER LEMEN: And secondly, under 

5 the facility and Class evaluation, could you 

6 give us an estimate, if you have it, of the 

7 number of persons that would be covered under 

8 those classifications? Is that possible? Do 

9 you have estimates like we --

10 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

11 MEMBER LEMEN: I am going to what 

12 Jim Lockey said, and that is yesterday when we 

13 talked about General Electric and others, I 

14 don't think that NIOSH understood the size of 

15 the population that they were looking at, and 

16 to include all 10,000 or 12,000 people -- you 

17 know, the Board could pass that, but not 

18 realize the size of it. Is there some way you 

19 can estimate size and put that in your report 

20 next time?

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, we can 

22 estimate the workforce, the size of the 
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1 workforce. I mean, part of our evaluation 

2 process is to try to do that.

3 I will say, though, that NIOSH was 

4 very familiar with the size of GE Evandale, 

5 considering the fact that most of us drive by 

6 it or have been by it a number of times. So I 

7 don't think that was not recognized, and we 

8 have discussed that.

9 MEMBER LEMEN: Thank you.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Dr. Ziemer?

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: I have almost 

12 forgotten what I was going to ask, but I do 

13 have a follow-up.

14 I like the concept that Dr. Lockey 

15 has suggested where, on a large site like GE, 

16 it may be possible for us; and this wouldn't 

17 be completely subjective, but it would require 

18 judgments, to think about the likelihood that 

19 a person on another part of the site could 

20 have roamed into the area unchallenged, and 

21 maybe narrow down such a site.

22 Then the burden would be on 
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1 someone outside some parameter to make a case 

2 that, yes, I went there for lunch every day, 

3 because my good buddy worked there, or 

4 something like that. But it seems to me, we 

5 can make some judgments, if necessary, that 

6 would put some level of restriction on some of 

7 these.

8 The original thing I was going to 

9 talk about now -- I figured if I talked long 

10 enough, it would come back to me. I do 

11 commend what you are proposing, to go back and 

12 look at how the language has evolved over 

13 time, but can you give us some idea of when 

14 that process will be ready? This isn't going 

15 to take a whole lot of time. It sounds like 

16 you are underway already.

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: So are you going 

19 to be reporting back fairly soon on that?

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. I can 

21 probably give a better estimate of completion 

22 at the Board conference call, and with any --
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1 in my mind, I can sit here and think, oh, we 

2 can do that and be ready by May, but then I 

3 start to actually look at resources and 

4 everything else, and recognizing all the other 

5 things everybody will remind me that they have 

6 to do. But I think I could definitely give 

7 you a good finish date at the Board conference 

8 call.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We will hold you 

10 to that, by May, but -- Henry?

11 MEMBER ANDERSON: I just wanted to 

12 raise the issue. Is there any difference in 

13 the efforts to identify workers who were there 

14 or I think, like at the GE Plant, there has 

15 got to be, of all of those people, far more 

16 than you maybe talked to that could give us at 

17 least a subjective feel for did people move 

18 around the site or what types of people did.

19 Certainly, if you were a 

20 maintenance worker, you might have. So those 

21 kind of things, and when you kind of make a 

22 determination that you can't do dose 
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1 reconstruction, things seem to move pretty 

2 quickly, and I don't know if you give the same 

3 amount of emphasis to going and trying to 

4 track down and talk to people when you have 

5 done a data search and it is not there, and 

6 then it seems we may move ahead very quickly 

7 when, in fact, describing how people 

8 interacted on the site might be very helpful 

9 in the Class Definition, once you have made 

10 that --

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: Dr. Melius has 

12 actually made that point on a few occasions. 

13 You know, again -- and we will definitely move 

14 in that direction in the future, and we will 

15 work to make sure that we get additional 

16 interviews.

17 Up to this point, we have kind of

18 looked at that the bar was up here and 

19 reducing the Class, meaning that we needed to 

20 have the data, the actual supporting 

21 environmental monitoring data and other 

22 information, that we could quantitatively 
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1 ensure that we could bound exposures for those 

2 people outside.

3 Now just in the Board's discussion 

4 that there may be a little movement in that, I 

5 think there is definitely some -- there would 

6 be some added value in going back and doing a 

7 lot more work with our worker interviews.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Can I just 

9 follow up a little bit on that, on some 

10 questions to what Dr. Ziemer is saying. I 

11 think it was the point Brad made yesterday 

12 also when we were talking about General 

13 Electric, is that I think one of the concerns 

14 of the Board is that, okay, you are sort of 

15 broadening your definitions for the major 

16 sites where there is a lot of activity going 

17 on and a lot of workers who routinely would 

18 have exposures of some sort.

19 Now that may be balanced by 

20 controls on access and sort of also the nature 

21 of the facility and what it is doing. Then on 

22 the other hand, we have these AWE sites, these 
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1 older sites where there is very little 

2 information, which is the problem, but at the 

3 same time, I think there is a feeling at these 

4 larger manufacturing facilities that there is 

5 relatively less probability that a person on 

6 that site would have significant exposures, 

7 loosely defined.

8 I think that is what we are sort 

9 of wrestling with and trying to come up with a 

10 right balance so that we are being equitable 

11 in terms of how we are treating people at 

12 these different sites.

13 Back to the SEC Class Definition 

14 issues, my recollection is that way back when 

15 we started the program, originally -- we had 

16 discussions on this and disagreements, I think 

17 -- we had to redo a Class or so. I can't 

18 remember what the circumstances were, but 

19 originally it was that the Department of Labor 

20 would show up at the meetings, and that would 

21 be the first time they would see the report, 

22 basically when it was presented for the Class 
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1 Definition.

2 So there was some -- we tried to 

3 work out some problems there. So then you 

4 started the process of sharing the information 

5 with the Department of Labor. I think, from 

6 Department of Labor's side, they are trying to 

7 think how can they practically process that 

8 Class Definition, make that operational, given 

9 what information they have and the natures of 

10 the claims coming in to them.

11 Then, clearly, they don't have the 

12 same access or people with access to all the 

13 information that NIOSH may have, and they may 

14 need other types of information that is 

15 useful, clearly, evidence a person was 

16 employed there. So personnel records or at 

17 least records that people worked at these 

18 sites are more critical to them. 

19 I just would think that it would 

20 help us if we also maybe had a better 

21 understanding of how the Department of Labor 

22 currently implements an SEC and how they get 
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1 instructions out. 

2 We have done that occasionally 

3 with other -- some of the Classes in terms of 

4 their instructions on how to do that, but I 

5 think some sort of overview from them and 

6 update, because if we are going to change how 

7 we do SEC Class Definitions, we should do it 

8 with input from Department of Labor also on 

9 that.

10 I think, clearly, something like 

11 the GE -- the proposed GE Class Definition is 

12 the most easy one to implement, just did you 

13 work there and so forth. Then it should have 

14 been monitored, clearly, is another high level 

15 complication for them in terms of how they 

16 make that work, or in a building and so forth.

17 So I think we need to find some 

18 way that is appropriate in terms of who is 

19 getting covered and, at the same time, is 

20 practical to implement. So I would hope we 

21 would be able to do that with input and 

22 involvement from the Department of Labor also.
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1 So, Jeff, if you could think about 

2 that also.

3 David Richardson, do you have any 

4 questions? Oh, sorry, Regina first.

5 MS. CANO: Dr. Melius, I just 

6 wanted to add, I think it is also helpful if 

7 this information is shared with the site as 

8 well, because they can actually let you know 

9 how difficult it may be to put somebody on 

10 site or find records for those individuals.

11 So we have come into that problem 

12 in the past. So I share that with NIOSH as 

13 well as Department of Labor when they are 

14 defining the Class.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think that 

16 would be appropriate also. I don't believe 

17 that -- I think one of the difficulties we 

18 have when we are defining a Class is the 

19 nature -- most of the records at the site are 

20 things that's being developed by NIOSH. You 

21 are looking for exposure records, and you are 

22 not looking at personnel records or what is 
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1 available at the site for confirming 

2 employment at DOE, nor should you be. 

3 Most of the time, you don't need 

4 it, but that is something that, I think, 

5 Department of Labor needs to do. Clearly, it 

6 puts a burden on the sites and on Department 

7 of Energy, and they may know other sources of 

8 information that would make it facilitate that 

9 process.

10 I know there are a lot of 

11 difficulties with many of the -- confirming 

12 subcontractors when people worked there and so 

13 forth. So maybe we can work out a process 

14 among the three agencies that would make this 

15 all work better. That is a good suggestion. 

16 Thanks. Sorry, David Richardson, do you have 

17 any questions for LaVon?

18 MEMBER RICHARDSON: No, I don't 

19 think so. I thought that the story of how 

20 Rochester records ended up at Hanford was 

21 really interesting, and it made me think about 

22 whether there was -- you talked about one set 
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1 of lessons learned about looking at Hanford, 

2 but then it was pointed out that this was --

3 you know, it's got a particular narrative 

4 thread to it, that somebody moved from one 

5 institution to another one, and then those 

6 records were archived there.

7 I know from my own experience that 

8 that is often the case, that people will end 

9 up leaving their records at an institution or 

10 at a nearby library or archive where they 

11 stop. 

12 So I was trying to think if there 

13 was a way to exploit that more, and have you 

14 thought about that?

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, I don't know. 

16 We put together -- typically, when we go to 

17 these sites like Hanford with large electronic 

18 databases, we put in a number of search terms. 

19 We wouldn't just put in -- we may not just 

20 put in University of Rochester. We may 

21 actually put in other things, if we know there 

22 were specific positions and such that worked 
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1 there. We may put their name in as well, but 

2 beyond doing that, I don't know what else we 

3 can do.

4 It is something I can definitely 

5 think about.

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes. I wasn't 

7 thinking about search terms so much as there 

8 are a few key personnel that -- people in 

9 charge of health physics programs, for 

10 example, if you could identify their 

11 professional history when you are looking, do 

12 they end up moving to another DOE facility?

13 We have had people that left their 

14 records to the university in the city where 

15 they were, for example. So I was trying to 

16 think if that sparked an idea. 

17 For example, could you identify 

18 the key for a period, a covered a period, the 

19 head of the health physics department, and 

20 figure out where they ended up, and would that 

21 give you another clue for another place to 

22 look?
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: And that is a 

2 good point. We do do that on a lot of 

3 occasions. We will actually try to determine 

4 who the RSO for some facilities or who the 

5 head of the health physics department was 

6 during those time periods. We have done that 

7 in the past, but that is a good suggestion to 

8 ensure that is part of our protocol.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: David, in the 

10 Rochester situation, NIOSH had talked to a lot 

11 of people at the University who were 

12 apparently trying to cooperate. It was just 

13 identifying the person who had left with the 

14 records was hard.

15 I was suspicious that they were 

16 available, because I knew somebody that wanted 

17 to do a study with them. So I thought they 

18 might have been -- New York State might have -

19 - I knew they were available at least about 12 

20 years ago. So where they were I didn't know, 

21 but I knew somebody had access to them and 

22 knew where they were. 
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1 So between Jim and I, with our 

2 contacts at University of Rochester in New 

3 York, we had a few more people that we could 

4 talk to. But it wasn't that NIOSH didn't try, 

5 and it is hard, but I think your points are 

6 good, that especially in the universities and 

7 settings, as people move around, yes, they do 

8 tend to bring records with them, if they are 

9 going to do some sort of follow-up with them.

10 Hopefully, we can identify those 

11 people.

12 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Oh, yes. I am 

13 not implying that you are not trying at all. 

14 This is total detective work. I commend you 

15 for your efforts. I thought it was an 

16 interesting one and it made me think about 

17 other lessons learned. Thank you.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Any 

19 other questions for LaVon? If not, you are 

20 off the hook, LaVon, and we will take a break. 

21 We will start at 10:45. I think we have 

22 somebody calling in then as part of our 
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1 follow-up. Ted, any announcements?

2 MR. KATZ: Yes. Just that we need 

3 to try to start promptly at 10:45, for that 

4 reason.

5 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

6 matter went off the record at 10:17 a.m. and 

7 resumed at 10:47 a.m.)

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If everyone can 

9 get seated, we will get started here, please. 

10 MR. KATZ: Thank you, everybody. 

11 Before we proceed, let me check the phone 

12 lines. First, our two Board Members, Dr. 

13 Richardson and Mr. Gibson, are you with us 

14 again?

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I am, David 

16 Richardson.

17 MR. KATZ: Well, Mr. Gibson -- I 

18 am not sure if he was going to be able to make 

19 this session either. 

20 Let me also check. We are 

21 expecting a Congressional staffer to join us, 

22 Mr. Richard Miller with the House -- Education 
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1 and Labor Committee of the House. Richard, 

2 are you with us? Richard Miller? We are just 

3 going to hang in here for a couple of minutes 

4 and give Richard a little bit of time to join 

5 us.

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I believe 

7 Richard is on the phone. Can you hear him?

8 MR. KATZ: We couldn't. We 

9 cannot. Richard, we can't hear you. 

10 (Off the record comments.)

11 MR. MILLER: Hi, there. Richard 

12 Miller.

13 MR. KATZ: Okay, thank you, 

14 Richard. Glad you could join us. 

15 MR. MILLER: Sorry for the delay. 

16 I called a little earlier.

17 MR. KATZ: No, that is quite all 

18 right, and we have not begun. 

19 MR. MILLER: Terrific.

20 CHARIMAN MELIUS: We are just 

21 coming back from a break, and I would like to 

22 start. We have a number of administrative 
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1 issues, other issues, to deal with for the 

2 rest of the day, including a number of Work 

3 Group reports, Subcommittee reports.

4 The first issue -- a couple we 

5 want to try at the time. As I said earlier, 

6 one will be this discussion of surrogate data, 

7 and we will hear from Richard Miller from the 

8 House Education and Labor Committee in a 

9 second, and then, as I said, the worker 

10 outreach evaluation framework we will talk 

11 about. 

12 We are hoping that Mike Gibson 

13 will join us on the line. He had some 

14 personal business to deal with today, but 

15 should be back on later this morning or early 

16 this afternoon.

17 So why don't we start with the 

18 surrogate data discussion. There is a draft 

19 of the criteria. The Surrogate Data Work 

20 Group met a few weeks ago. There is an 

21 updated draft that I have circulated to 

22 everybody and, I believe, is on your 
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1 information, the memory sticks that we were 

2 all given here.

3 Before we start that, I believe 

4 Richard Miller had wanted to give us a little 

5 bit of background. So, Richard?

6 MR. MILLER: Hi, there. Well, 

7 thank you. I won't take much of your time. I 

8 assume you have the whole Board there except 

9 David Richardson. Is that right?

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: David is on the 

11 line.

12 MR. MILLER: Terrific. Well, I 

13 appreciate you all just giving me two minutes 

14 here on this issue. We have had some 

15 discussions, just by way of background, both 

16 with the GAO and between and amongst a variety 

17 of Congressional -- individual Congressional 

18 offices and the Senate Health Committee and 

19 the House Ed and Labor Committee, regarding 

20 NIOSH's interpretation of EEOICPA as it 

21 pertains to the use of surrogate data and, 

22 while your Board may not be necessarily poised 
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1 to address the specific legal issues, the 

2 intersect between science and laws, where 

3 policy gets formulated, 

4 In this instance, the discussions 

5 that we have had and particularly with Dr. 

6 Howard when he came in, with Stu Hinnefeld and 

7 others about a month or so ago was to ask 

8 NIOSH to please present to us their view on 

9 why it is even permissible for surrogate data, 

10 with the definition of surrogate data being 

11 data used from other sites for purposes of 

12 either individual dose reconstruction or for 

13 use in decision making on whether to approve 

14 or deny a Special Cohort -- and the Agency's 

15 view expressed to us was that they believe 

16 that the statute, although it does not 

17 expressly authorize the use of surrogate data, 

18 it also does not preclude the use of surrogate 

19 data.

20 What I had sorted wanted to make 

21 sure you all had as a data point coming out of 

22 that discussion, because it included people 
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1 who -- Members who were involved in the 

2 original negotiations on EEOICPA back in 2000, 

3 including Senator Bingaman and Senator Harkin, 

4 and other --

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Richard, we just 

6 lost you.

7 MR. MILLER: Sorry, I interrupted 

8 you. I apologize for the interruption.

9 What happened was that, out of the 

10 course of that discussion, there was an issue 

11 raised which was, has the Department exceeded 

12 its legal authority by using data from other 

13 facilities in reconstructing dose.

14 Then, of course, a number of cases 

15 have come up over the years where this has 

16 arisen. A White Paper was provided by NIOSH 

17 to the committees, and here, I guess, is sort 

18 of where we came down, and for the benefit of 

19 your deliberations.

20 Our view, based on a textual 

21 reading of the law and the intent as folks 

22 recall and understand it, is as follows: That 
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1 to the extent that radiation dose -- and this 

2 is out of Section 7384n, if you have a copy of 

3 EEOICPA handy, which deals with the section on 

4 exposure in the performance of duty -- Dr. 

5 Melius, do folks have access to a copy of the 

6 statute?

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, they do. I 

8 believe it has also been provided to everybody 

9 on the memory stick.

10 MR. KATZ: Yes. It was circulated 

11 to everybody, at least by a link. But, yes, 

12 it was provided in advance.

13 MR. MILLER: Thanks so much. In 

14 Section 7384n, it was sort of our view that 

15 the use of surrogate data, while not expressly 

16 prohibited, there was a clear preference to be 

17 using the data from, quote, such facility, 

18 meaning the facility where employees were 

19 employed.

20 In particular, what I would like 

21 to do is to draw your attention under Section 

22 7384n covering exposure in the performance of 
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1 duty to Subpart C, which deals with the 

2 guidelines for estimating radiation dose.

3 Under that, the guideline should 

4 be based on radiation dose received by the 

5 employee, paren, or a group of employees 

6 performing similar work at such facility. It 

7 doesn't speak there to using other facilities.

8 It does contemplate the notion of 

9 coworker models by using a group of employees 

10 performing similar work, but it didn't speak 

11 to a group of employees performing similar 

12 work at any facility other than such facility, 

13 and in this case the term such facility refers 

14 to a facility where they were working, not 

15 some other facility.

16 So when we thought about the 

17 Blockson Chemical instance when, at one point, 

18 NIOSH had proposed to contend that they could 

19 reconstruct radon dose from the Blockson 

20 facility in Illinois based on emissions 

21 measured coming off of a stack of phosphate 

22 waste in Florida from a fertilizer factory 
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1 there, that clearly, although you may have 

2 other ways to choose on whether you would use 

3 or not use such data, the question was is it 

4 even permissible.

5 So since we are dealing here with 

6 the guidelines for the interpretation of the 

7 statute, dealing with dose received by the 

8 employee or group of employees performing 

9 similar work at such facility -- we felt it 

10 was exceeding the statutory authority to even 

11 contemplate the use of surrogate data for 

12 approving or denying claims or approving or 

13 denying petitions. However, such guidelines 

14 also are to incorporate methods established 

15 under Subsection D below.

16 The Subsection D on the methods 

17 for dose reconstructions deal with coming up 

18 with regulations for reasonable estimates of 

19 dose received by an individual specified in 

20 The Act for each of the following employees. 

21 And again, an employee was not monitored for 

22 exposure at such facility. They were 
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1 inadequately monitored at such facility. The 

2 exposure records at such facility are missing 

3 or incomplete.

4 What we have is we have a constant 

5 emphasis in four cases here toward Congress' 

6 intent that one look to such facility where 

7 the employee was employed for purposes of 

8 establishing dose, and if you can't do it 

9 using those guidelines, then you go to a 

10 Special Cohort. That is why the cohort is 

11 there.

12 So from our perspective, as a 

13 matter of what the boundary conditions were 

14 that were established and are reflected in the 

15 plain language of The Act, it seemed to us a 

16 stretch for NIOSH to conclude legally, unless 

17 there is some formal legal opinion that they 

18 have provided to you all and not provided to 

19 us -- it seemed to us a stretch to interpret 

20 that such facility could be construed to 

21 include facilities where people were not 

22 working and for where such dose could be 
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1 derived.

2 So that was our conclusion in our 

3 communications. I think it was sort of a 

4 consensus view from the Senate Health 

5 Committee, Senator Bingaman, our Committee 

6 staff, that the Department had exceeded its 

7 legal authority in moving forward with the use 

8 of surrogate data.

9 I don't think any of us took any 

10 issue if surrogate data were to be used for 

11 validation purposes. In other words, if you 

12 already have some data from such facility, and 

13 you want to validate that that is reasonable 

14 data, that didn't seem to us to be exceeding 

15 the boundaries, but if you didn't have data 

16 from such facility to start with, importing it 

17 from elsewhere exceeded the statutory basis.

18 That was just our comment on that, 

19 and we thought we would put that on the table. 

20 If folks have questions, we would be delighted 

21 to take them.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Mr. 
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1 Miller. Anybody have questions? Wanda, I 

2 see.

3 MEMBER MUNN: Well, not so much 

4 questions as a comment or two.

5 Richard, I think you have defined 

6 very clearly one of the greater issues that 

7 exist in our society today. Snow talked about 

8 it in his Two Worlds. When you say policy is 

9 where law and science have to meet, you are 

10 talking about large segments of people, both 

11 with certain kinds of powers, who do not 

12 communicate well with one another, and each 

13 group working under the assumption that the 

14 other does not understand the real issue.

15 That is probably true, to a large 

16 extent. I risk offending both groups, I 

17 suppose, by saying it is probably true that 

18 most technical people don't understand and 

19 don't appreciate the law very well, and most 

20 people who are involved in the law don't 

21 appreciate and understand science and numerics 

22 very well. But that doesn't change the fact 
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1 that we have a job to do.

2 I have been told on more than one 

3 occasion in this particular forum that it is 

4 not my place to question the sense of Congress 

5 or to attempt in any way to --

6 MR. MILLER: I'm sorry. Could you 

7 speak up, Wanda, a little bit? I have a hard 

8 time hearing you, trailing off.

9 MEMBER MUNN: I'm sorry. I 

10 thought I was right on the microphone. Can 

11 you hear me now?

12 MR. MILLER: Go ahead.

13 MEMBER MUNN: So, obviously, if we 

14 are to not question the position that our 

15 Congressional leaders take with respect to the 

16 scientific work that is being done, it is very 

17 difficult for us to respond to concerns of the 

18 sort that you are bringing to us here.

19 If those positions are writ in 

20 stone, as it were, and we are asked not to 

21 question them, then all we can do is accept 

22 the position that you bring to us as being an 
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1 accurate one, even though that may run 

2 contrary to everything that our other 

3 scientific minds may tell us.

4 When you speak of the Blockson 

5 issue as being improperly compared to a 

6 fertilizer plant in Florida, you are speaking 

7 of a situation which is worthy of a couple of 

8 hours of vigorous debate face to face, and we 

9 certainly can't argue that with you here now. 

10 But I am trying to understand exactly the 

11 bottom line of what you are saying here.

12 Are you saying that the Committee 

13 which you represent is giving instructions to 

14 this group to disregard anything other than 

15 the position that surrogate data must consist 

16 only of data from plants -- from, not 

17 necessarily plants, but facilities involved in 

18 exactly the same work with exactly the same 

19 materials? Is that the purpose of your 

20 discussion with us today?

21 MR. MILLER: Is that a question?

22 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, it is.
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1 MR. MILLER: Okay. I think the 

2 concept of instructing you is a bit extreme, 

3 if that is the word you were using. I think 

4 the point we are making is that the statute 

5 has plain language. There was discussion at 

6 some length when this thing was put together 

7 back in 2000.

8 Those considerations ought to be 

9 factored in as you look at whether or not the 

10 policy you have there conforms to your reading 

11 of the statute and/or your -- and to the 

12 extent that there is value in identifying the 

13 parameters that the statute contains from our 

14 perspective, then you can weigh that 

15 accordingly.

16 You're a body tasked with 

17 providing advice both on matters of science 

18 and policy. You are not there to provide --

19 you are not tasked by statute with rendering 

20 legal determinations. 

21 Having said that, you can either 

22 take or leave what it is we have to offer 
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1 here, but I think that from the folks who have 

2 been looking at the use of this surrogate 

3 data, there have been a lot of questions 

4 raised.

5 There was a consideration as to 

6 whether or not to even seek a separate legal 

7 opinion from the Government Accountability 

8 Office on whether or not NIOSH was going to 

9 exceed its legal authorities by using 

10 surrogate data in a manner to dispose of cases 

11 or petitions, and we had told NIOSH that we 

12 would probably hold off on such a request for 

13 a legal opinion until we saw what the Advisory 

14 Board came back with through its Working Group 

15 process, which had been advised of by Dr. 

16 Howard, and we were going to wait until we saw 

17 what your policy looked like and whether Dr. 

18 Howard adopted it or not.

19 So the final shape of what our 

20 reaction will be from a Congressional point of 

21 view will, in part, be shaped by what you all 

22 and Dr. Howard and the Agency adopt. So at 
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1 this point, our view is -- this is the 

2 perspective we have to offer in terms of the 

3 legislative language and our appreciation of 

4 what the history was.

5 There may be different legal views 

6 and different legal opinions about what this 

7 law means or how you should or shouldn't use 

8 surrogate data, and I am sure that NIOSH has 

9 their own views, but to the degree and extent 

10 that you are going to be developing a policy 

11 and sending it up through as a recommendation 

12 to the Secretary, at that point we will make 

13 our own judgments as to how we will choose to 

14 react, whether it is to seek a legal opinion 

15 to provide greater legal clarity in the 

16 statute, if necessary. So that remains to be 

17 seen.

18 MEMBER MUNN: Thank you.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Dr. Ziemer.

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: Good morning, 

21 Richard. Paul Ziemer here. I just wanted to 

22 seek some clarity when you spoke about our 
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1 view and how we felt, and so on.

2 Are you expressing the views of 

3 the current Senate Committee with which you 

4 are working versus the initial views when the 

5 legislation was established? It wasn't clear 

6 to me, or were you indicating that it reflects 

7 both? Could you clarify that, and then I have 

8 a follow-up.

9 MR. MILLER: Sure. Hi, Dr. 

10 Ziemer. Thank you for the question.

11 What we are reflecting right now 

12 is sort of a product of our Committee's work. 

13 I know the Senate Health Committee is also on 

14 this call. So they can certainly speak for 

15 themselves, because I am only on the House 

16 side, and there is another body on the other 

17 side of the Capitol.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: I'm sorry. I 

19 meant to say the House side. I didn't want --

20 MR. MILLER: I think the Senate 

21 folks are on the call as well.

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: -- didn't want to 
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1 insult you with Senate staff, sir. Go ahead.

2 MR. MILLER: In any event, what we 

3 are offering you is -- this issue was brought 

4 to a head since I have come to the Committee 

5 as something that a bipartisan working group 

6 in the House and the Senate of various member 

7 offices, many of whom were signatories on the 

8 request to the GAO, wanted to get addressed.

9 They had two sets of legal issues 

10 in the implementation of the statute, one of

11 which is this, and there is another one 

12 involving the Labor Department. They have 

13 asked for our assistance in bringing clarity 

14 to this issue, and try to identify whether it 

15 can be resolved administratively or whether 

16 this is something that needs to be addressed 

17 legislatively.

18 So that is the capacity in which I 

19 am bringing this forward.

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: Thank you. That 

21 is helpful. The other comment that I would 

22 add at this point, and I think we are aware 
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1 that there has been some debate over the years 

2 as to, certainly, the proper use of surrogate 

3 data, and one of the focuses and objectives of 

4 Dr. Melius' Work Group is to bring clarity to 

5 that in terms of how we use that and to 

6 develop criteria for the proper use.

7 I think many of us on the Board 

8 feel that, from a scientific point of view, 

9 the use of surrogate data -- not just in this 

10 particular instance, but as a broad scientific 

11 approach to many matters where there may be, 

12 for example, missing information -- is a valid 

13 scientific process.

14 The public policy part of that, of 

15 course, is what is being dealt with here, that 

16 if the public policy is going to use that, we 

17 obviously have to use it in a proper way, and 

18 so far we have been operating under the sort 

19 of understanding that surrogate data was 

20 allowed, provided it was properly used.

21 You mentioned the criteria which 

22 you want to look at, and I think that is 
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1 entirely proper, and we would not want to be 

2 using surrogate data improperly, in any event. 

3 So our goal in that regard, I think, matches 

4 yours. However, if the legislative bodies 

5 believe that, even with that, it is not 

6 appropriate for this program, I think that is 

7 their prerogative to move in what direction 

8 they believe to be appropriate, and we would 

9 have to live with that. But I do want to at 

10 least personally be on record as indicating 

11 that the proper use of surrogate data 

12 certainly is not scientifically wrong, and 

13 that could, if properly used, help in the 

14 decision making within the framework of the 

15 existing law.

16 So those are my comments, Richard. 

17 Thank you.

18 MR. MILLER: Well, Dr. Ziemer, I 

19 think, if the statute were clear that there 

20 were express authorization to do so, I don't 

21 think there would be any dispute in this phone 

22 call today; but I think there is significant 
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1 question as to whether the Department has 

2 exceeded its legal authority up to this point 

3 in using surrogate data, and your Working 

4 Group or the Working Group that Dr. Melius has 

5 been chairing, I guess, has been trying to 

6 refine a policy so that it is validated and is 

7 appropriately applicable.

8 I am still looking for someone to 

9 show me where there is clear and express 

10 authorization for the Department to do it, 

11 given that when you read the statute, it seems 

12 pretty clear that the statute wants to focus 

13 on the facility where the incident -- the data 

14 from the facility where the employee was 

15 employed, and not elsewhere.

16 So I think, you know, your -- I 

17 think the area of consideration here really is 

18 do you have express authority to even be going 

19 down this road, or not?

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, 

21 Richard. Emily Howell, who is representing 

22 HHS counsel is at the microphone. So I 
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1 believe she wants to say something.

2 MS. HOWELL: I wanted to thank 

3 Richard Miller for his input here today, but I 

4 did want to clarify to the members of the 

5 public and the Board that it is the Department 

6 who has the sole provenance in interpreting 

7 the statutory language where the legislative 

8 intent is unclear.

9 I think we have informed the Board 

10 in the past that we do interpret the language 

11 that Richard has pointed out to allow for the 

12 use of surrogate data as a legal matter. It 

13 is up to the Board to determine what 

14 recommendations it feels are appropriate about 

15 the use of surrogate data from a scientific 

16 perspective. It is not to the Board to opine 

17 about the legal interpretation that the 

18 Department has rendered on this matter.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Before you sit 

20 down, Emily, I continue to -- I just don't 

21 recall. Has this ever been provided to the 

22 Board in writing?
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1 MS. HOWELL: I believe that this 

2 has been provided in presentations. I am not 

3 sure if it has been provided in writing. I 

4 know Dr. Wade may --

5 DR. WADE: There was a closed 

6 session of the Board where this issue was 

7 presented.

8 MS. HOWELL: So it is not typical 

9 HHS protocol to provide the Board with legal 

10 opinions rendered for the Agency.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: But is there a 

12 written legal opinion? I don't know how HHS 

13 counsel operates. I am not necessarily saying 

14 we are asking for it. I am just trying to 

15 understand.

16 MS. HOWELL: An opinion was 

17 issued to the Agency.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Any 

19 questions? Before you sit down, Emily, any 

20 other Board Members have questions for Emily? 

21 Brad?

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, as Paul was 
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1 talking about the scientific end of this, I 

2 would just like to bring up, too, that I have 

3 a real heartache with using it, because you 

4 are using two totally different facilities. 

5 They keep calling up the phosphate plant in 

6 Idaho which I am intimately knowledgeable 

7 with, which looking at the designs of Blockson 

8 and everything else, which is totally 

9 different.

10 The processes are different. The 

11 issues -- I just really, from my perspective, 

12 cannot see how they can even use that. I know 

13 the weaknesses of that facility. I know how 

14 the process was run in there and so forth, and 

15 I really personally -- it is just my personal 

16 opinion -- have a hard time seeing how they 

17 can even use it.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We will be 

19 talking more about those issues in a second. 

20 Is someone from the Senate Health staff on the 

21 call? I wasn't given information on who might 

22 be participating. So I know with the weather 
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1 --

2 MS. LAM: Yes. It is Livia Lam.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Do you have 

4 anything to add at this point?

5 MS. LAM: Not at this point.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. 

7 MR. MILLER: Dr. Melius, would it 

8 be okay if I just jumped in for one last 

9 point. 

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I was going to 

11 call on you. 

12 MR. MILLER: Regarding the 

13 comments, we regard the legal opinion, whether 

14 there is or there isn't one, of the 

15 Department, we have not yet seen a legal 

16 opinion from the Department on this. We have 

17 certainly received verbal ones. However, I 

18 just wanted to bring to everyone's attention 

19 that I think it is a very cramped reading of 

20 the authorization for the Advisory Board to 

21 presume what it can and cannot provide advice 

22 on, and I don't mean to publicly disagree with 
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1 legal counsel's view of what you are entitled 

2 or not entitled to provide advice on. But let 

3 me just say this, that the duties of the Board 

4 are to advise the President on the development 

5 of guidelines under 7384n(c). 

6 Not that is the very specific 

7 guideline we are talking about here, and that 

8 guideline, as it has always been debated and 

9 discussed, the dose reconstruction rule and so 

10 forth, has constantly been a matter of a 

11 mixture of law and policy.

12 Likewise, it also provides for 

13 providing advice with regard to other matters 

14 that may be deemed appropriate. So it is not 

15 quite as cramped a set of authorities. I 

16 would just encourage you to go look at the 

17 Advisory Board section and look at the 

18 specific tasking that you have received, 

19 because I don't believe it is quite as limited 

20 as was just defined by counsel. But that is 

21 for you and your counsel to work out.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, 
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1 Richard. Does any other Board Members --

2 David Richardson, do you have questions?

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes. My first 

4 question is: Is there a case currently under 

5 our consideration in which the proposed method 

6 for radiation dose assessment depends upon 

7 exposure information from another facility, or 

8 are there cases?

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: There are cases. 

10 There are individual dose reconstructions 

11 where surrogate data has been used, and there 

12 are a number of pending SEC evaluations where 

13 part of the NIOSH method for doing 

14 reconstruction involves the use of surrogate 

15 data.

16 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Could you list 

17 those out, Dr. Melius?

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Actually, it may 

19 be a little bit out of date, but I know there 

20 is a report from SC&A that is -- what? -- two 

21 years old, John?

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, that is 
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1 what I am wondering, because for example, 

2 Blockson, it seems like we are focusing on. 

3 My understanding now is that the use of the 

4 surrogate data has been put aside, and there 

5 is an exposure reconstruction model which is 

6 based on source terms and kind of a set of 

7 parameter assumptions.

8 So that is no longer drawing upon 

9 the Florida phosphate data, for example.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I believe John 

11 Mauro is getting to the microphone. He may be 

12 able to --

13 DR. MAURO: Yes. This is John 

14 Mauro with SC&A. We have been asked to review 

15 two Site Profiles from the perspective of 

16 degree to which surrogate data was used and 

17 was used in accordance with the draft criteria 

18 that the Surrogate Data Work Group developed.

19 I am trying to think of the two 

20 sites. One, I believe, was Texas City, and I 

21 am drawing a blank on the other one, but there 

22 are a number of sites where we explicitly 
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1 looked at it from the perspective of the use 

2 of the surrogate data.

3 So, absolutely, surrogate data has 

4 been and is being used on a number of Site 

5 Profiles.

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Isn't 

7 Bethlehem Steel one of those, Dr. Mauro?

8 DR. MAURO: Bethlehem Steel, yes, 

9 is one of those. At that site, data was used 

10 from Simonds Saw and applied to supplement the 

11 data that Bethlehem Steel had.

12 I would say the one area that goes 

13 to perhaps the heart of this issue is the use 

14 of TBD-6000/6001. What this is is a generic 

15 compendium of data collected from many, many 

16 facilities dealing with uranium, and on many 

17 occasions some of the old AWE facilities where 

18 data -- where a dose reconstruction or an SEC 

19 issue might arise or whereby the compendium of 

20 data that is available in TBD-6000/6001 has 

21 been drawn upon, which basically represents a 

22 compendium of data from other sites that are 
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1 being brought in and applied to supplement 

2 data for a particular site under 

3 consideration.

4 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Wasn't it also 

5 the case, Dr. Mauro, that the neutron/photon 

6 ratios that were at Lawrence Livermore at one 

7 point were being used at Hanford?

8 DR. MAURO: Yes. Neutron/photon 

9 ratio is another area. We have been 

10 categorizing that as different. When we have 

11 been looking at the surrogate data issue, we 

12 have divided the matter from a scientific 

13 perspective into what we would call Type 1 

14 surrogate data.

15 This is where you take air 

16 sampling data, bioassay data, film badge data, 

17 direct dosimetry data directly related to the 

18 reconstruction of dose, and where that data 

19 from one facility is used at another, that is 

20 what we, SC&A, have been calling the term Type 

21 1 application.

22 There is also what we call Type 2 
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1 where it is more indirect, and the 

2 neutron/photon ratios are what we consider to 

3 be a Type 2. But, yes, in a way, if you want 

4 to broadly interpret or define surrogate data, 

5 the use of neutron/photon ratios that are

6 drawn upon from the experience of the industry 

7 and the weapons complex where you have some 

8 understanding of what those ratios might look 

9 like for certain types of activities, and then 

10 applying that ratio observed at one site or 

11 facility to another.

12 I guess you could broadly 

13 interpret that as a type of surrogate data 

14 also, but we have been calling that a Type 2 

15 surrogate data.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Stu has 

17 comments.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, Stu Hinnefeld 

19 from OCAS. I just wanted to offer one point 

20 of clarification in response to Dr. 

21 Richardson's question.

22 The Blockson SEC that has been in 
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1 front of the Board does not use surrogate for 

2 radon, but there is an application of 

3 surrogate data in that. It is the particulate 

4 exposure in -- I forget exactly where in the 

5 plant. This is the Building 40 particulate 

6 exposure model, relies on dust loading 

7 measurements from the Idaho Phosphate Plant, I 

8 think the one that Brad alluded to earlier. 

9 So that surrogate use is in Blockson.

10 Then I think most of the other 

11 uses that are in front of the Board are TBD12 6000 uses.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And, Stu, before 

14 you sit down, I believe that either you or Jim 

15 -- I can't remember who it was -- indicated 

16 earlier today that NIOSH is also currently 

17 reviewing your use of surrogate data in a 

18 number of settings based on your criteria.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. It is our 

20 judgment that there are some, but not a lot of 

21 differences between this draft Work Group 

22 document in our IG core guidance. So we are 
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1 proceeding now to try to do that, but that is 

2 sort of different question. That is the 

3 question of, if it is allowable, are we doing 

4 it well? Are we doing it appropriately? That 

5 is sort of a different question.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

7 you, Stu. Yes, John?

8 DR. MAURO: In order to -- there 

9 is a continuum of what might be considered 

10 surrogate data. I just thought of another 

11 perspective that may enrich the appreciation 

12 of the complexity of the subject.

13 There are OTIBs procedures. I am 

14 thinking of OTIB-0054. This is where you have 

15 bioassay data from a person, a beta-gamma 

16 bioassay urine sample, and you want to assign 

17 what mix of radionuclides might be -- that 

18 person may have taken in to have that result 

19 in his urine.

20 What has been done in this OTIB is 

21 to draw experience from what the mix of 

22 radionuclides are in different types of 
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1 reactors throughout the complex. So in a way, 

2 one could argue the mix that you assign to a 

3 person that you have bioassay data at one 

4 facility -- you may say, well, we are going to 

5 assign this mix based on experience at another 

6 reactor, because we know this is the kind of 

7 mix that we would expect this person to have 

8 been exposed to. 

9 It is important, I think. So 

10 there is this degree and continuum of the use 

11 of surrogate data.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Any 

13 more questions for Richard Miller? If not, 

14 obviously, Richard, you are welcome to stay on 

15 the line as we discuss this issue more, but I 

16 am trying to move this into different parts.

17 Now all of you should have 

18 received an updated set of criteria dated 

19 January 2010 on draft criteria for the use of 

20 surrogate data. This is based on some earlier 

21 drafts that came from the Surrogate Data Work 

22 Group, which I chair.
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1 This draft was updated based on 

2 our last telephone call. I will say up front, 

3 it does not represent a consensus of the group 

4 nor is it a specific recommendation from the 

5 Surrogate Data Work Group. This was something 

6 that the -- the updates to this policy were 

7 something I put together based on our 

8 discussions at the Work Group meeting that we 

9 had, and then circulated to the Work Group 

10 and, after that, to the Board. 

11 So much of this looks familiar. I 

12 will say that the parts of it that are updated 

13 are probably starting on page two to page 

14 three. We expanded some of the discussion on 

15 plausibility, and then tried to summarize how 

16 I thought this was applied and some of the 

17 considerations. It does not deal directly 

18 with the sort of legal issues that were raised 

19 with that. So I guess we would be open to 

20 discussions of that, and we will start with 

21 Wanda again.

22 MEMBER MUNN: I have no comments 
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1 of my own. Dr. Lockey, who had to leave us, 

2 left a couple of comments that he asked I 

3 relay.

4 On the first page, the last 

5 sentence of the first paragraph, he indicates 

6 the word "latter" should read "former." I 

7 think he is correct.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Minor.

9 MEMBER MUNN: This reports focuses 

10 on the former situation, Type 1. First 

11 paragraph, last sentence.

12 Then on page 2, the first sentence 

13 just under the four bullets under Item 3:. 

14 Where it says "Surrogate data should not be 

15 used if the equivalents are claimant 

16 favorability of working conditions," he marked 

17 through "are claimant favorability" and says 

18 he is not sure what this means. 

19 It does seem to be a little -- the 

20 sentence itself seems a little clumsy. 

21 Doesn't seem clear enough.

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: This is Ziemer. 
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1 Dr. Melius has suggested to me that it was my 

2 sentence. The only reason he knows that, he 

3 doesn't see any dangling participles. So it 

4 must be mine.

5 I honestly don't recall why the 

6 word claimant favorability would be in there. 

7 I think, without that, the sentence is still 

8 clear, that we are looking for equivalence in 

9 terms of working conditions, source terms and 

10 processes. If you couldn't establish those, 

11 then you don't have a case. 

12 I am not sure where that came in 

13 or if that got added later. I admit, it is 

14 not even clear to me, if it is my sentence, 

15 why it is in there.

16 MEMBER MUNN: I suspect that Dr. 

17 Lockey would have suggested that those three 

18 words be removed, but I am not certain that 

19 would be his recommendation. It would be 

20 mine.

21 On page 3 under the first bullet 

22 there, the end of the second line, "is based 
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1 on." He suggests used "when" rather than 

2 "based on." "Have the models been validated 

3 when actual monitoring data collected in a 

4 similar situation is available?" he would add. 

5 Are available.

6 Second bullet, third line down, 

7 the word "affect." He suggests that affect is 

8 too broad or is not as appropriate as 

9 "significantly impact." So that he would 

10 suggest the sentence read: "Have all of the 

11 factors that could significantly impact 

12 exposure been taken into account," because 

13 most anything could affect it. Whether it 

14 affects it in the fashion that is of any 

15 consequence is an issue.

16 In the last paragraph, he suggests 

17 on the third to the last line that "the rare" 

18 be removed, and instead of "fully met" as the 

19 last words of that sentence, the words 

20 "address and documented in the Evaluation 

21 Class."

22 So let me read that sentence, I 
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1 believe, as he is suggesting it. "Given the 

2 difficulties in obtaining the comprehensive 

3 information needed for validating the use of 

4 surrogate data for individual dose 

5 reconstruction and the inherent concerns about 

6 its use by claimants, the Work Group 

7 recommends that the use of surrogate data be 

8 limited to circumstances where other 

9 approaches are not feasible, and then only if 

10 the above criteria have been addressed and 

11 documented in the Evaluation Report."

12 That is the last of Dr. Lockey's 

13 comments.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Dr. Lemen?

15 MEMBER LEMEN: As a new Member of 

16 the Board, I was not on this Committee or even 

17 addressed this issue previously, since this is 

18 my first meeting. But I know that probably my 

19 comments are going to be taken adversely by 

20 the rest of the Board Members, but I feel 

21 compelled to tell what I think about using 

22 surrogate data, and I think that using 
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1 surrogate data, first of all, is absurd.

2 I think that there are many 

3 conditions in plants that you cannot control 

4 for using data from another plant, such as 

5 what type of protective measures were taken in 

6 the other plant. 

7 As I understood this issue with 

8 the phosphate data, I happen to have done a 

9 study in the phosphate industry in Florida, 

10 and that is a completely outdoor facility. It 

11 may have similar processes, but it is not 

12 going to compare to an indoor facility, in the 

13 first place, and there are a lot of 

14 differences from plant to plant.

15 So I find even considering the use 

16 of surrogate data for the purposes of doing 

17 compensation a misguided approach, and I would 

18 like to suggest that, instead of "rare," you 

19 say "never." 

20 That is my opinion, and I know 

21 that that is adverse to the fact that you set 

22 a Working Group up on this, but I have to 
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1 express I just feel that the use of surrogate 

2 data is inappropriate.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Other comments 

4 from Board Members? Bill?

5 MEMBER FIELD: I guess I have a 

6 little bit different take on it. I think, in 

7 some cases, surrogate data can be very useful, 

8 but I think that is the whole question. In 

9 some cases, it goes back to the 

10 representativeness of the surrogate data. How 

11 representative is it to the site in question, 

12 which brings me back to the draft on page 2, 

13 number 3, the bottom comment there.

14 "Do the surrogate data reflect the 

15 type of operations or work practices in use at 

16 the facility in question?" So I guess my 

17 question would be how is that evaluated? Do 

18 you need a whole new Site Profile for that 

19 site to see if it -- that is my whole 

20 question, is how representative is it, and how 

21 far do you really explore it to assess its 

22 representativeness?
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, in the 

2 circumstances that we have -- it is assessed, 

3 and there are examples, and I guess Blockson 

4 would be one that we talked about yesterday, 

5 is that where NIOSH has proposed the use of 

6 surrogate data based on the Florida phosphate 

7 -- I guess this is for radon -- and so in 

8 examining and evaluating that source of that 

9 data, that information, we have determined 

10 that it was not an appropriate, basically, by 

11 comparing the two facilities, and that it does 

12 require some due diligence to do that.

13 I think, back to Dr. Lemen's 

14 comments earlier and Dr. Lockey's, another way 

15 of thinking about the never/rare to just 

16 leaving it open is I think we also have to 

17 keep in mind that there is also -- both the 

18 statute and, obviously, the regulations allow 

19 the alternative approaches, which is the 

20 Special Exposure Cohort.

21 That is really what we are 

22 weighing. The use of "rare" in that, I will 
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1 not try to attribute that to Dr. Ziemer. That 

2 is mine. I will be honest. But it was to try 

3 to capture that we would be very stringent on 

4 that. 

5 Again back to your comment, maybe 

6 this was developed assuming that surrogate 

7 data is allowed to be used legally, but I 

8 think we have to sort of capture some of the 

9 balance there of, one, how you apply it.

10 I guess, again, assuming that it 

11 is legally permissible to use it, then I don't 

12 know if I would agree with the comment that 

13 there is never a circumstance, because there 

14 may be one. Again, I am very loathe to use 

15 it, but I can't rule out that there would be a 

16 circumstance where it might not be appropriate 

17 to do that.

18 I can tell you, the history of 

19 this issue was it is something that was raised 

20 by the Board. I don't recall it, but I guess 

21 we did have a legal briefing when it was first 

22 raised a number of years ago on it, and then 
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1 we developed -- the Working Committee 

2 developed some criteria.

3 After we developed some draft 

4 criteria, then NIOSH developed their criteria, 

5 and we have gone back and forth, and we have 

6 some, obviously, pending evaluations. 

7 Some of those have been sort of --

8 Originally, the Work Group was focusing on 

9 Blockson and Texas City as the examples that 

10 we would sort of initially look at from the 

11 surrogate data, and then NIOSH decided not to 

12 use surrogate data at those sites, at least 

13 preliminarily. I don't think you have reached 

14 a final decision on Texas City yet, but at 

15 least for the radon they went to a different 

16 model. 

17 So we start with the general and 

18 then try to see how it would apply, but it is 

19 sort of difficult, and there is a long history 

20 here that at least the new Board Members and 

21 even some of the more recently appointed Board 

22 Members have picked up on. Actually, Henry 
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1 probably remembers back to the early 

2 discussions of it.

3 MEMBER ANDERSON: I remember the 

4 briefing.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Henry, and then 

6 Dr. Ziemer.

7 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes. I think, 

8 one, I would -- as a new Member, I would 

9 support the need to develop some kind of a 

10 written set of guidelines, the major 

11 challenges, but you would like to have, before

12 decisions are starting to be made, a set of 

13 criteria. You can basically say does it meet 

14 this or does it not, rather than wait until we 

15 have a set of circumstances and then say, wow, 

16 gee. Then it isn't consistently applied.

17 Now coming up with that list is a 

18 major challenge. So I don't know. I think 

19 this does a good job kind of framing or, as we 

20 have done in these meetings, bounding things.

21 One thing I would think might be 

22 worth putting in here, and this is just for 
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1 discussion, its kind of primary use versus 

2 secondary use, that if you have no data -- I 

3 mean, I could see surrogate data becoming the 

4 driver for most of these SECs. You look --

5 there is not enough data to really do it.

6 Now surrogate data could be used 

7 to, well, you don't have representative 

8 samples from a site, but you have some values, 

9 and you say are these likely to be on the low 

10 end? Are they likely to be the high end, or 

11 what? So then looking at beefing that up by 

12 saying, gee, it is very similar to what we 

13 have seen at other sites, gives you a better 

14 confidence on how you might be able to use 

15 those, versus we don't want to have any. 

16 So let's try to look at a site to 

17 then assign those values to another. So I am 

18 probably like Dick saying that, if you don't 

19 have any measures to basically apply 

20 everything to a -- use a surrogate set of data 

21 to assign to a facility, I think that, to me, 

22 would be very problematic and reaches the 
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1 boundaries of kind of zero to one, while it 

2 covers the universe.

3 So a primary/secondary, I think, 

4 is one way. I think it could be useful to 

5 support describing activities, but I wouldn't 

6 go beyond it as support data.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Initially with 

8 SC&A, as John Mauro mentioned, he had built 

9 sort of Type 1 and Type 2. As you heard from 

10 even his earlier presentation, it is sometimes 

11 hard to make even that distinction at times, 

12 because there are things that fall in between 

13 the two.

14 Generally, we are trying to focus 

15 just on Type 1, and I actually agree with you, 

16 Henry. It may be, in some ways, more helpful 

17 to think about both Type 1 and Type 2 at the 

18 same time, at least to capture some of the 

19 criteria and how the application of the 

20 criteria would sometimes ease up with a Type 2 

21 as opposed to a Type 1 where you have no data.

22 MEMBER ANDERSON: The other 
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1 comment was at some point, you have to get 

2 into a how much effort then needs to go into 

3 looking for surrogates. I mean, once you say 

4 you can use surrogate, how broad a search and, 

5 therefore -- I mean, if one were limited to 

6 say you want to look at data from the same 

7 time period. 

8 Since most of these where the data 

9 is missing are the early years, you don't have 

10 to search very hard, but going broader than 

11 that, I think we need a limit as are we 

12 looking -- you know, when we heard about on 

13 the phosphate side, well, maybe there is some 

14 data from Poland or wherever. Well, we ought 

15 to have a set of criteria for when do we not 

16 drag this out.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. 

18 Paul?

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: I appreciate the 

20 concerns that Dr. Lemen raised. I did want to 

21 point out that in Item 4, which is temporal 

22 considerations, part of the effort there was 
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1 to point out that, in fact, it is not fair 

2 game to use surrogate data if you don't meet -

3 - it is not just a plant that is called the 

4 same thing, but there are these other

5 considerations, what we call here temporal, 

6 and that there are some criteria about 

7 monitoring methods, the procedures used, the 

8 working conditions.

9 So there is a lot of opportunity 

10 for a mismatch, which would rule out the use 

11 of the data. So the criteria -- you know, it 

12 can be fairly rigorous, and you would have to 

13 determine which items are not critical to the 

14 final outcome, but I think all of those things 

15 have to be considered, and you have to make a 

16 judgment on the extent to which the use is 

17 appropriate.

18 I would point out -- and I just 

19 noticed here, you see an asterisk in there, 

20 and the footnote, I think, from our early 

21 draft dropped out, but that footnote spoke to 

22 the issue of what same general period means.
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1 Same general period has different 

2 meanings for different things. For example, 

3 if you are talking about legal requirements, 

4 the same general period might be the period 

5 during which a certain dose limit was enforced 

6 in some way versus later.

7 We have seen this in facilities 

8 where the law changed in terms of dose limits 

9 or something, and subsequently the approaches 

10 and procedures changed. So that is one kind 

11 of a general period limit.

12 Sometimes it has to do with 

13 technology. Suddenly, you can do whole body 

14 counting, and you couldn't before. So you 

15 have those kinds of things. So the same time 

16 period might be a year. It could be a decade. 

17 So I think you have to look at that, and that 

18 footnote had to do with sort of clarifying.

19 Time period does not necessarily 

20 mean that same year, but what can you say in 

21 terms of the equivalence of all of these 

22 things, which may be a bigger or a smaller 
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1 time period.

2 So there is a lot of those issues 

3 that come up, and I kind of agree with what 

4 Andy says here, that if you have the criteria, 

5 aside from the legal issue which Dr. Miller 

6 raised with us earlier, but if we have this 

7 use, even in cases where there are SECs, you 

8 have some cancers which are not covered, and 

9 what do you do with claimants for whom there 

10 is no data? Sometimes having surrogate data 

11 helps you in even those cases where we have an 

12 SEC.

13 So I will make the statement I had 

14 made before. I think, in general in science, 

15 there are cases where we use surrogate data. 

16 It is used sometimes even in epidemiology, as 

17 Dr. Field knows, and again you have to make 

18 sure that you are using it appropriately. 

19 Otherwise, you can distort or even invalidate 

20 the outcomes.

21 So as a general approach, I don't 

22 object to it at all. I think it is 
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1 appropriate. There are cases where it can 

2 indeed help us. The legal issue might turn 

3 out different, and it may be -- I think Dr. 

4 Miller suggested that the Board could weigh in 

5 on 83.14 -- is it 83.14? Well, in any event, 

6 the dose reconstruction rule.

7 Well, I don't want to get off on 

8 that. 

9 MR. HINNEFELD: The dose 

10 reconstruction rule is 82. I think it might be 

11 relevant to 83 as well, which is the SEC rule.

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, in any 

13 event, insofar as the Board would want to 

14 weigh in on that separately, but otherwise the 

15 legal part, I think, we may have to leave to 

16 the legislature.

17 MEMBER LEMEN: Could I possibly 

18 comment briefly on Dr. Ziemer's comment or did 

19 you want to go to somebody else?

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, Dr. Poston 

21 has waited patiently. Okay, Dr. Lemen.

22 MEMBER LEMEN: I just wanted to 
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1 say that I agree that in epidemiology we often 

2 use surrogate data. As I understand our role 

3 on this Committee, however, we are 

4 compensating people based upon calculations 

5 that we make for their radiation exposure in 

6 the plant that they are in, and when you do an 

7 epidemiological study, you are going to put 

8 all the caveats together that Andy talked 

9 about and you talked about, and you are going 

10 to publish that, and that is what the 

11 epidemiology says in that study. So you can 

12 take that or leave it. 

13 Here where we are using surrogate 

14 data, as I see it, we are talking about real 

15 people that are waiting to get compensated and 

16 using data that has multiple caveats to it, 

17 such as you might do in an epidemiological 

18 study, seems to me -- if I don't understand 

19 the role of the Committee, correct me, but 

20 seems to me completely wrong.

21 When you are talking about 

22 compensating people, you don't play around 
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1 with caveats and other things of that nature. 

2 That is where I am coming from. 

3 I don't deny that surrogate data 

4 has been used in some cases in epidemiology, 

5 but I think we have to divorce ourselves from 

6 the role of epidemiology and look at our role 

7 as Board Members, and is it really 

8 scientifically solid to use surrogate data 

9 when we are going to base that on whether or 

10 not a person gets compensated or not? That is 

11 where I am coming from.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I would just add 

13 to that, that when the Work Group met and we 

14 were discussing this issue with NIOSH, NIOSH 

15 said they were not basing using the use of 

16 surrogate data in epidemiological studies as a 

17 justification in parallel to what is being 

18 done for dose reconstruction. 

19 So they are acknowledging that 

20 distinction -- nor the use of surrogate data 

21 in terms of radiation protection matters. I 

22 think they recognize there is a difference 
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1 now. We may still have a difference in what 

2 that difference is, but they are acknowledging 

3 that. 

4 Dr. Poston, you have been patient.

5 MEMBER POSTON: Thank you, Dr. 

6 Melius. I guess in general, I am in support 

7 of surrogate data, but I would like to go back 

8 to your word, which would be rare. 

9 I see the use of surrogate data or 

10 the nonuse of surrogate data as equivalent to 

11 asking all the NIOSH staff to have a lobotomy 

12 and forget all the experience that they have 

13 in how do you apply the scientific principles 

14 and so forth to solve a problem.

15 I think what you have written here 

16 is very important. The temporal 

17 considerations and the plausibility, to me, 

18 are the keys to this, and it falls not 

19 necessarily to the Board, but it certainly, to 

20 me, would fall to the Work Group to make a 

21 determination of whether NIOSH has used 

22 surrogate data appropriately.
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1 So if I were doing dose 

2 reconstruction for a facility, the first 

3 question I would ask is, is this plausible? 

4 Does this make sense? Is this appropriate? If 

5 the answer is no, then it is clear what you 

6 do.

7 So somehow NIOSH has to justify 

8 that to the Work Group, and it is up to us, 

9 before it comes to the main Committee, to 

10 decide whether or not they have done things 

11 appropriately, and that is what SC&A, that is 

12 what the Work Group is charged to do, in my 

13 opinion.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. 

15 David Richardson, do you have anymore 

16 questions or comments?

17 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I do. 

18 Firstly, I agree with the comment that 

19 epidemiology is different than what we are 

20 doing here, and in epidemiologic study it is 

21 fine to break people into groups of three or 

22 four or five categories, and those categories 
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1 can have lots of variation within them, and if 

2 you are -- you want to draw a contrast between 

3 groups of people. 

4 So you are not trying to estimate 

5 an individual's dose, and it is fine to have 

6 lots of error there. You want to characterize 

7 kind of the average value for the group, and 

8 contrast those groups.

9 So here, I think the framework is 

10 sort of coming from job exposure matrices or 

11 the kinds of things that industrial hygienists 

12 do to characterize the exposure conditions for 

13 people in different areas or in different 

14 times, and they may draw analogies to other 

15 plants. But those are -- I mean, those sort 

16 of methods are used not to assign scores to 

17 individuals. They are to characterize the 

18 mean value for a group and maybe its variance. 

19 I think, to me, that is kind of starts to get 

20 to kind of where the discomfort is. 

21 One specific question about this 

22 document. Item 1 is hierarchy of data. I was 
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1 surprised in reading that, because my 

2 impression was the hierarchy of data would be 

3 at a given facility, for an individual, if you 

4 have monitoring data, that would be 

5 preferable. 

6 If you have workplace monitoring 

7 data, not individual level monitoring data, 

8 that would second in the hierarchy, and then 

9 below that would be surrogate data. But the 

10 way the document is written is surrogate data 

11 should not be used to replace available data 

12 from the site in question that is at the same 

13 or at a higher level in the hierarchy, which 

14 would imply that you might have workplace 

15 monitoring data for your facility, but there 

16 is surrogate data at the individual level that 

17 in some sense would be preferable to the 

18 actual data you have for area monitoring for 

19 your facility. 

20 Am I reading the document wrong or 

21 are you actually imagining that there are 

22 situations where, even though you have data 
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1 for a facility, you would want to replace it 

2 with surrogate data?

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The intention of 

4 what is written there is consistent with what 

5 you just said. Maybe we just need to clarify. 

6 Maybe sort of which way it goes in the 

7 hierarchy is confusing. Let me try to clarify 

8 that, but we are not talking about trying to 

9 use surrogate process data to replace when 

10 there is lots of workplace monitoring data or 

11 something. So let me try to clarify that.

12 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, because 

13 it sort of brings a bunch of scenarios where, 

14 if it is equal or -- I was surprised. I guess 

15 I wasn't surprised by that.

16 I started to think about it. 

17 There are a number of situations where 

18 surrogate data must be used all the time, like 

19 for the medical X-rays. I think what is being 

20 done right now is there is almost never 

21 individual measurements or even workplace 

22 measurements of the dose delivered by a chest 
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1 X-ray. 

2 So you are assigning a dose under 

3 an assumption of an annual screening practice 

4 or something like that. Is that correct?

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That is correct, 

6 and we may have tried to call it Type 2. As I 

7 said, I think it is a gray area, but is easily 

8 interpreted as surrogate data for the Type 1.

9 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, and it 

10 leads to thinking about one way that dose 

11 reconstruction is being done, which is there 

12 is an average intensity of exposure which is 

13 applied to a group or often to the whole 

14 cohort, and then the exposure that is assigned 

15 to that population is just the integral over 

16 time of that exposure intensity.

17 So the only distinction that you 

18 are getting between people in the cohort is 

19 length of employment. It sort of parallels, I 

20 think, in Blockson what is done. You say that 

21 there is, either based on surrogate data from 

22 another plant or a model, you are going to 
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1 assign an exposure intensity, and then you are 

2 just going to integrate that up, and everybody 

3 is going to get that exposure intensity.

4 That is sort of where I was again 

5 feeling like, okay, you probably can have some 

6 sort of bounding, but where do you stop with 

7 this? You want to have a high level -- you 

8 know, you don't have -- I mean, you could do 

9 this at the Nevada Test Site, too, I suppose, 

10 if you wanted to consider some extremely high 

11 level of average intensity, and then we are 

12 just going to integrate up over that and say 

13 that the maximum exposure somebody got to an 

14 agent. Whether it is inhalation of radon, 

15 inhalation of uranium dust or medical X-ray 

16 exposures. We are going to give an upper 

17 bound of the exposures.

18 So I don't have an answer to that, 

19 but it seemed to me that this question, 

20 really, is pretty much always falling into 

21 these scenarios where you are not going to 

22 actually attempt to do any individual exposure 
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1 reconstruction other than just some integral 

2 of their time on site.

3 Maybe you do have examples where 

4 you have finer distinctions than that, but I 

5 haven't seen them.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That is correct. 

7 Any other questions by Board Members? We are 

8 pushing up to lunchtime here.

9 Why don't we actually break for 

10 lunch, and then when we come back, I think we 

11 can briefly talk about some follow-up on the 

12 Surrogate Data Work Group, and I also want to 

13 talk briefly about Texas City and clarify that 

14 from that Work Group, and then we will go on 

15 to our other reports. So let's, I think, come 

16 back at 1:30.

17 MR. KATZ: Thanks, everybody, for 

18 calling in, and we will reestablish the line 

19 at 1:30.

20 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

21 matter went off the record at 12:02 p.m. and 

22 resumed at 1:34 p.m.)

23
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1 A F T E R N O O N S E S S I O N

2 (1:34 p.m.)

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Why don't we 

4 reconvene. I would just like to briefly 

5 finish a couple of issues with the Surrogate 

6 Data Work Group.

7 One is sort of what are next 

8 steps. Step number one, I think, is to make 

9 some revisions to this document, and bring it 

10 back to the Board at our next conference call 

11 meeting. So we can do that.

12 Secondly, I think it might be 

13 helpful -- I actually think it would be 

14 helpful to have SC&A update their document and 

15 list the use of surrogate data in the Type 

16 1/Type 2 issues. I think that would inform 

17 some of our discussions and some of the 

18 questions that came up today. 

19 I don't think it is a large task 

20 to do, because most of it has been done, but 

21 there have been some changes in it that, I 

22 think, would help us when we are thinking 
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1 about, well, where has surrogate data been 

2 used, and how has it been used in the 

3 document, and then have them update, then 

4 circulate that to the Board.

5 I think the other issue 

6 outstanding, we have at least two, probably 

7 more, SECs that are, in some ways, awaiting 

8 some resolution by the Board on how we are 

9 going to handle surrogate data.

10 The one that, in some ways, is 

11 immediate -- our next meeting is in Buffalo, 

12 and that is the Bethlehem Steel SEC Petition 

13 that is up. 

14 For those of you that are new on 

15 the Board, Bethlehem Steel is particularly --

16 I won't say particularly. It is somewhat 

17 problematic in the sense Bethlehem Steel, the 

18 use of surrogate data, and the dose 

19 reconstructions done there were done before 

20 the SEC Evaluation regulations were written. 

21 So it is out there, and I think as 

22 we were dealing with that issue as a Site 
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1 Profile review issue and discussing a number 

2 of changes made in NIOSH's approach for dose 

3 reconstruction there as a result of Board 

4 input, but that was all done without reference 

5 to the possibility they could be in the 

6 Special Exposure Cohort. After that, the 

7 group of workers there or worker 

8 representatives have filed for an SEC 

9 Petition, which was qualified and so forth.

10 So we have not evaluated that 

11 pending the Surrogate Data work Group. I 

12 think it would be helpful to apply our 

13 criteria to that situation there, what is 

14 being done, because it is a use of surrogate 

15 data, and inform that. So we can, hopefully, 

16 try to reach some conclusion on how to deal 

17 with that SEC Petition by our May meeting.

18 I think, in order to do that, I 

19 think SC&A needs to do some -- needs to be 

20 tasked to do that.

21 The other SEC that is potentially 

22 involved here is the Texas City SEC. Again, 
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1 that has been on hold for a while pending the 

2 Board reaching some conclusion on how to deal 

3 with surrogate data.

4 The confusion there -- and again, 

5 some of this is also the radon issue, I 

6 believe, there, but it is also NIOSH has sort 

7 of been holding back on their Evaluation 

8 Report, possibly modifying that, pending how 

9 the Board decides to deal with the Blockson 

10 radon issue.

11 Then I heard LaVon say that you 

12 were -- I thought you said you were moving 

13 ahead with a report. So I guess I am trying 

14 to get updated on -- okay.

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: This is LaVon 

16 Rutherford. We actually -- the report is held 

17 up internally, and it is internally because of 

18 the radon modeling and some discussion on 

19 surrogate data --

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right.

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: -- look back at 

22 ensuring consistency with IG-004.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So that 

2 is still on hold then. So I think we -- then 

3 in that case, I think we need to move on that, 

4 but I don't think -- it is a little bit 

5 different situation. 

6 So what I would like to do is task 

7 SC&A with the update on their document, the 

8 use and abuse of surrogate data, how it is 

9 being used, and then secondly, look at the 

10 Bethlehem Steel which, I think, would sort of 

11 be a focused SEC Evaluation, because it has 

12 been an extensive evaluation of that situation 

13 already by SC&A.

14 Why don't we go through the 

15 Subcommittees and Work Group reports. While 

16 we are doing that, if people can be looking 

17 through just the five letters that have been -

18 - either four or five -- that have been passed 

19 out.

20 For those of you that are new on 

21 the Board, our normal procedure, usual 

22 procedure, is that we sort of approve the 
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1 motion, and then we do the letter to the 

2 Secretary, and then the Board then approves 

3 the letter. It takes time to write the 

4 letter. This is sort of our standard format 

5 for the letter. When we go into it, I will 

6 explain some of it to you. We go over those, 

7 but you can be looking at those, dangling 

8 participles and other significant -- yes?

9 MR. KATZ: Just one note. For 

10 those of you that have a conflict for a site, 

11 obviously, you don't review that letter, and 

12 you will recuse yourself from that discussion. 

13 That is all, but those are relatively brief, 

14 those discussions, and we will bring you back 

15 in.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Did NIOSH staff 

17 and Emily get the letters?

18 MR. KATZ: Yes.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, good. 

20 Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee, Mark?

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. We have had 

22 a meeting since the last Advisory Board 
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1 meeting. I think the only one we had was a 

2 telephone meeting, and the main thing to 

3 report, we are continuing on our progress with 

4 the regular case reviews, just out of -- I 

5 think we are up to the 12th set of cases. 

6 Usually, we do pretty much batches of 20. 

7 There is a little variation there, but just 

8 for the new Members, we have done a -- the 

9 first five sets we completed altogether, and 

10 we released the report to the Secretary on the 

11 first 100 cases, to sort of wrap-up findings 

12 from the first 100 cases.

13 We were then asked by the Advisory 

14 Board to the full Board to go back to those 

15 first 100 cases and, given the deficiencies, 

16 make a determination of what impact they had, 

17 and if we had any recommendations at this time 

18 to give to NIOSH as far as program 

19 modifications.

20 So we are in the process of doing 

21 that follow-up, and we have been working with 

22 a couple of, I guess, draft White Papers to 
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1 bring back to the Board. At this point, we 

2 have -- we have been looking at identifying 

3 deficiencies or categories of deficiencies 

4 that were considered critical factors in 

5 assuring scientific validity and quality of 

6 dose reconstruction, and got a couple of 

7 categories from those first 100 cases.

8 We need to do some follow-up, 

9 especially on -- we had several findings that 

10 fit into the sort of quality assurance 

11 category, and on the Subcommittee we have 

12 asked SC&A to go back and do a sampling of 

13 some of the cases that involved quality 

14 assurance findings, to sort of do drill-downs 

15 and see what was the nature of the quality 

16 control finding. Was it dose reconstructor 

17 error or was it something more systemic.

18 So we have asked SC&A to do that 

19 follow-up. So our report back to the Board --

20 we are kind of waiting. We think it would be 

21 much more meaningful if we could include some 

22 of that information in the report. Then we 
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1 could have more specific recommendations, 

2 theoretically.

3 The other two areas are 

4 consideration of information from workers, and 

5 this is the CATI. This is the worker 

6 interviews when they do Site Profiles, 

7 different aspects of considering the worker 

8 information.

9 This one, I have to coordinate a 

10 little bit with the Worker Outreach Work 

11 Group, because I think some of the draft 

12 recommendations that I sort of was throwing on 

13 the table at our Subcommittee meeting 

14 overlapped with some things that the Worker 

15 Outreach Work Group is still looking into, but 

16 we have at least identified that as a 

17 category. Once we flesh it out a little more, 

18 we will bring it to the full Board.

19 The last one was case 

20 documentation and reporting, and I think this 

21 speaks to both the DR report from the claimant 

22 standpoint, but also from the auditor's 
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1 standpoint, our standpoint in terms of having 

2 a sufficient auditable trail, so to speak, 

3 having the case files including all the work 

4 that makes it something that will last the 

5 test of time and people can go back to these 

6 at a much later date, or if claimants have 

7 expertise, helping them review cases. There 

8 is enough there that they can actually follow 

9 along how the calculations were conducted.

10 Those were the three categories 

11 kind of. The last thing that we are including 

12 in this letter is -- again, this is a letter 

13 back to the full Board, not to the Secretary. 

14 The last thing we are including in this is 

15 some things, areas, that have resulted --

16 areas of change in NIOSH's program that are, 

17 at least in part, a result of the audit of the 

18 first 100 cases.

19 For instance, one example would be 

20 the Dose Reconstruction Report format. There 

21 have been some modifications, and they did 

22 that early on. They weren't going to wait for 
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1 us to go through 100 cases and do it. They 

2 recognized it early on in the first 30 or 40, 

3 we were having a similar finding several 

4 times, and NIOSH proactively made some 

5 modifications to their report form to the 

6 claimants. So we are also trying to note some 

7 of those.

8 Another area is the Program 

9 Evaluation Reviews. There have been some 

10 Program Evaluation Reviews that -- again, I am 

11 being careful with the words here -- at least 

12 in part were a result of the audit process for 

13 the first 100 cases. So we are going to 

14 identify those and describe what -- so that is 

15 sort of what was the value of doing those 

16 first 100 cases.

17 That report -- hopefully, we will 

18 have that ready for the next probably full 

19 meeting, not the phone call meeting. It might 

20 be ready to bring that back to the full Board.

21 Other than that, we are proceeding 

22 on the case reviews. We are working with the 
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1 -- I think we actually wrapped up the sixth 

2 matrix. The seventh and eighth set of cases, 

3 which are all, again, batches of 20, kind of 

4 are in progress, somewhere in our finding 

5 resolution process between SC&A and NIOSH, 

6 which is what we do at the Subcommittee level.

7 I believe all those -- I am asking 

8 now, Ted. All those -- at least the final 

9 matrices and things like that, they are all 

10 available somewhere where the new Board 

11 Members can see them. Right?

12 MR. KATZ: I would have to ask 

13 OCAS about that.

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: I know they are 

15 somewhere on there. We will have to make sure 

16 we can point you in the right direction. At 

17 least for the first five sets, the finalized 

18 report, that's got to be available for new 

19 Members.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: I'm sorry. What 

21 was the question?

22 MEMBER GRIFFON: The matrices of 
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1 all the findings, the ones that -- I mention 

2 this, because I was thinking that the new 

3 Members would certainly be interested in 

4 seeing the matrices and how we go through this 

5 resolution process, and I am wondering if 

6 those are collected in any one area on the O: 

7 drive or maybe we need to make that happen.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: We would have to 

9 make that happen. So you are talking about 

10 the first five matrices with the final 

11 resolution?

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, actually, I 

13 need to work with NIOSH on this anyway, 

14 because we have talked about putting an area 

15 similar to the Procedures Work Group, having 

16 an area where we have the findings altogether 

17 in one spot, and possibly in a database 

18 format. 

19 So I will keep people apprised on 

20 that one, because I think you need to see that 

21 and see how the resolution process is working. 

22 It is sometimes slow, and if there is one 
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1 issue that we are all aware of that is there 

2 are concerns going forward, I think, with a 

3 lot of our Work Groups is the sort of tracking 

4 of the findings, because often it will turn 

5 out that the resolution is that NIOSH agrees, 

6 and the procedure is being revised, but that 

7 falls under the Procedures Work Group.

8 So we don't want to shuffle 

9 something to another Committee and forget 

10 about it. We want to make sure it was 

11 completely closed out. So tracking is going 

12 to be an issue going forward for several of 

13 our Committees. I will certainly let people 

14 know where -- when we get this all in one 

15 spot, I will let you know where it is and make 

16 sure it is available for you.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thanks, Mark. 

18 Any questions from Board Members? Yes, Paul?

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Mark, could you or 

20 John remind us where we are on the 12th set of 

21 cases? I believe all of the teams have 

22 reviewed the 11th set, and I believe the 12th 
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1 set had been picked.

2 DR. MAURO: The 11th set is 

3 completed and delivered.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right. Is your 

5 team still looking at the 12th set?

6 DR. MAURO: The 12th set, we are 

7 about halfway done with the batch. So, yes, I 

8 would say that it will be a couple of months 

9 before we will be ready for one-on-ones on the 

10 12th set we are on.

11 My guess is the next batch may be 

12 May. It might be put on the agenda to fill 

13 the pipeline up. That will be probably a 

14 perfect time.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, the reason I 

16 asked that question, we don't have teams 

17 assigned, and this is a good opportunity to 

18 get the new Members now involved on the review 

19 team. So I suggest that --

20 MEMBER ANDERSON: We got the 

21 copies of the 11th emailed to us.

22 MEMBER GRIFFON: You did? Oh, 
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1 okay.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: And you have --

3 Did we assign you to any --

4 MEMBER ANDERSON: No.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: No, I didn't think 

6 so. You got the copies, right. I guess you 

7 have the opportunity, if you want it, to 

8 listen in, but we need to make sure, and I 

9 know the Chair will take care of that, but I 

10 just wanted to emphasize it. That is coming 

11 up fairly soon, and not only to see the 

12 previous matrices but now become involved in 

13 reviewing cases.

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: Just to be clear 

15 what we are talking about, we have always had 

16 Board teams, two or three individuals, get 

17 case assignments, and we have had the Chair 

18 doing that, because there is the conflict 

19 concern. So we have to kind of sort through 

20 who can be reviewing what.

21 That is your opportunity to sort 

22 of weigh in on SC&A's findings in a 
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1 preliminary fashion. Then SC&A brings all 

2 that information back to the Subcommittee, and 

3 the Subcommittee Members have another crack at 

4 it, along with NIOSH, to discuss it. So that 

5 is sort of how the process has been working.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

7 questions for Mark? Wanda, Procedures Review 

8 Subcommittee.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Although we usually 

10 meet every six or eight weeks, we have not met 

11 since November. Both the Agency and the 

12 contractor were heavily involved in activities 

13 preparing for this particular meeting we are 

14 in today, and so we did not meet in January, 

15 as we ordinarily would. 

16 November was our last meeting. We 

17 are now scheduled to meet immediately 

18 following the Dose Reconstruction

19 Subcommittee's meeting on March 23, I believe 

20 it is, in Cincinnati.

21 Our letter to Secretary Sebelius 

22 giving a report on -- our second annual report 
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1 of our activities, as you approved it during 

2 our Port Jefferson meeting, was mailed on 

3 January 29 and is now gone.

4 We have somewhere between 15 and 

5 20 very specific issues that we have 

6 outstanding and are in various degrees of 

7 being resolved between NIOSH and SC&A.

8 At our last meeting, we spent just 

9 about half the day, possibly even more than 

10 that, wrestling with the issues that are 

11 surrounding PERs and how they need to be 

12 handled. 

13 SC&A has given us their review of 

14 potential protocol, and we are going to have 

15 to work through how we approach these, simply 

16 because they involve a lot of cross17 responsibilities with the Dose Reconstruction 

18 Subcommittee. So that will be a major issue 

19 on our upcoming agenda. We are going to have 

20 to do that.

21 If you would like to take a look 

22 at where we are, I have -- hold on just a 
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1 moment, I am going up to the podium. I had 

2 thought we might want to take a look again at 

3 our spread of information with respect to 

4 where our cases are. 

5 You have seen this before. This 

6 is what is on the database right now, the 

7 status of all of the procedures at which we 

8 are looking. As you can see, we have a total 

9 of 538 total findings that we are dealing 

10 with, of which we still have 104 open, which 

11 means they have not been addressed yet.

12 The others, we are addressing in 

13 some fashion. We have closed almost half of 

14 the findings that have been placed before us, 

15 but we are not quite there yet.

16 We are hoping that in the next 

17 couple of meetings, we will be able to move 

18 through some of those fairly quickly, because 

19 we are close on a half-dozen or so. 

20 So this material, the data that 

21 you see here, is accessible to you through the 

22 database on O: drive. If you don't know how 
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1 to get to it and want to get to it, I can give 

2 it to you. 

3 It is not ordinarily updated 

4 except during our meetings, at which time we 

5 try to keep our database literally as close to 

6 today's findings as possible, but of course, 

7 these things are only closed in our meetings 

8 or when we bring something specifically to 

9 you. 

10 So that is all I have unless you 

11 have questions.

12 MEMBER ANDERSON: What is the 

13 findings? I mean, to go to this table, how do 

14 I see what you are really looking at?

15 MEMBER MUNN: In order for you to 

16 see what I am really looking at, you will have 

17 to go to the full database, and in our full 

18 database you would need to sort. 

19 If you want a little tutorial on 

20 how to do that, Henry, I will be glad to do 

21 that for you offline, or any of the other new 

22 Members who are interested in doing that. We 
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1 can give you some written instructions, if you 

2 would like. Once you are a little more 

3 familiar with the O: drive, you can get to it.

4 What those indicate is groups of 

5 specific procedures that had a number of 

6 findings in each case, and the individual 

7 findings are listed on the left side. That is 

8 not the number of procedures we are looking 

9 at. It is the number of findings.

10 MEMBER ANDERSON: I know, but 

11 where does one get what the procedure is and 

12 what the findings are? 

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That is the full 

14 database.

15 MEMBER MUNN: That is the full 

16 database that lists everything on it, and 

17 needs to be sorted to find what you want at 

18 any given time. We can show you how to do 

19 that.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And there are 

21 periodic reports from SC&A.

22 MEMBER ANDERSON: That is what I 
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1 thought. That is what I meant.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: They are 

3 compiled, and then -- but the database doesn't 

4 -- correct me if I am wrong, Wanda, which I 

5 know you will. It just sees where we are in 

6 terms of resolving the findings between SC&A 

7 and NIOSH under the direction of the 

8 Procedures Subcommittee.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Right.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Did I get it 

11 right, Wanda?

12 MEMBER MUNN: You got it right.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Hey, you taught 

14 me well.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Gold star for the 

16 Chair. Thank you.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

18 questions for Wanda? Brookhaven, Josie?

19 MEMBER BEACH: Brookhaven, as you 

20 recall, in October we tasked SC&A to do a 

21 focused review for that Evaluation Report. At 

22 this time, it is with DOE. Once it has been 
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1 released, then I will work with Ted and the 

2 other Work Group Members to schedule a 

3 meeting.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So you expect a 

5 meeting between now and May?

6 MEMBER BEACH: Well, it depends on 

7 how long that report is with DOE, and maybe 

8 Joe might have a better idea of how long until 

9 that report is released from DOE.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: I don't think it 

11 is going to take very long.

12 MEMBER BEACH: So once that is 

13 complete, we will talk to Ted.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Fernald?

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: The Work Group -

16 - we met January 29, 2010. We have basically 

17 got six outstanding issues that we are dealing 

18 with, bioassay data, to assure that the 

19 database that they are using can be used for a 

20 coworker model. 

21 NIOSH and OCAS has recently put 

22 several papers on, ranging from radon for body 
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1 burden and thorium body burden. SC&A is 

2 reviewing those, and several other issues with 

3 K-65, and one of the ones that you heard last 

4 night that a Fernald individual brought up is 

5 how this would work -- the coworker model 

6 would work for the construction workers. This 

7 has been tasked to NIOSH and SC&A, and we are 

8 waiting to hear back from them.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any questions 

10 for Brad? Hanford -- I am Chair of the Work 

11 Group for Hanford.

12 At the last meeting before this 

13 one, we approved a large petition to the SEC 

14 Cohort for Hanford as a result of sort of a 

15 reevaluation by NIOSH, and a lot of new data 

16 that they collected from Hanford on that site.

17 So in response to that, we have --

18 the Board approved NIOSH's recommendation on 

19 that. So that has moved forward. We now have 

20 to sort of revise our issues matrix, which 

21 Arjun has done, and I think we are just sort 

22 of waiting on NIOSH, some other work to go on.
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1 I don't know if, Sam and Arjun, if 

2 you want to give us a brief update on where 

3 that is.

4 DR. GLOVER: Yes. As I have been 

5 speaking with Arjun, essentially we have 

6 completed our research, focusing a lot mostly 

7 on 1972. It is essentially in the Board's 

8 hands at this time. We are working on the 

9 matrix, and there are a few data captures that 

10 are open, and we are interacting with SC&A. 

11 So they are fully aware of that. I am also in 

12 the process of updating the Advisory Board's 

13 website, so you have access to our previous 28 

14 data capture efforts. So you will have all 

15 that information, so you can proceed.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

17 you. Arjun.

18 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. We haven't 

19 had a three-way conversation since NIOSH has 

20 put up their revised Site Profiles to reflect 

21 all of the recent information, and basically, 

22 as I understand our informal conversations, 
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1 that NIOSH is essentially saying the rest are 

2 Site Profile issues, and we are going to 

3 review, if we have SEC issues, they will come 

4 up as part of our review of the revised Site 

5 Profiles.

6 So, basically, as I understand it, 

7 going forward we are going to follow the 

8 matrix issues through the revised Site 

9 Profiles from 1972 onward. I have got to 

10 create a work plan for our team and run it by 

11 you.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

13 you. Idaho. Phil.

14 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: A couple of 

15 things. One, we are trying to get a tour set 

16 up before the meeting in Idaho for the full 

17 Board. 

18 The other thing is there has been 

19 some movement on the Idaho and Argonne 

20 National Labs West information. Pete Darnell 

21 will give us an update.

22 MR. DARNELL: My name is Pete 
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1 Darnell. With Idaho, the Oak Ridge Associated 

2 Universities has updated the issues matrix for 

3 SC&A, and it is currently under review at 

4 OCAS. Once we get that, we will be turning it 

5 over to SC&A to update responses.

6 We have also received from Oak 

7 Ridge Associated Universities the internal and 

8 external Technical Basis Document sections. 

9 The internal section has been reviewed by 

10 OCAS, and comment resolution is in process. 

11 The external Technical Basis Document is still 

12 under review. 

13 That is pretty much where things 

14 stand. We expect more sections of the 

15 Technical Basis Document in accordance with 

16 the procedures in our Gantt chart over the 

17 next couple of months.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any questions on 

19 Idaho? For that matter, Hanford? I realize 

20 that I tried to avoid questions myself there.

21 MR. DARNELL: One thing I forgot 

22 to mention, the Idaho update Technical Basis 
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1 Document update is also the Argonne national 

2 Laboratory West update. Those two sites are 

3 being combined.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And that has 

5 been part of the hold-up in moving us forward. 

6 Good. Thank you. Linde.

7 MEMBER ROESSLER: We have had two 

8 Work Group meetings since the last Board 

9 meeting. The first one was face to face in 

10 Cincinnati, and there are two things from that 

11 I will mention.

12 One might be of interest to the 

13 Outreach Group. Our claimant's 

14 representative, [identifying information 

15 redacted], had mentioned earlier that it is 

16 very difficult for the claimants to read the 

17 documents that are put out by NIOSH and SC&A. 

18 Intentionally, they go into a lot of 

19 scientific detail and so on. 

20 She said it would be very helpful 

21 if a summary of the Evaluation Report could be 

22 written so the claimants could understand the 
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1 whole process better. 

2 Chris Crawford from NIOSH, who is 

3 our Linde NIOSH person, wrote about a three 

4 and a third page summary of the Linde ER, 

5 which I think was very helpful. [identifying 

6 information redacted], I think, was pleased 

7 with it. In fact, I find as a Work Group 

8 Member it is helpful myself. That might be 

9 something other groups would want to look at 

10 doing.

11 The other thing at that meeting in 

12 December, SC&A agreed -- we had resolved all 

13 the issues that we had on the table. SC&A 

14 agreed that NIOSH's approach to bounding doses 

15 was satisfactory. However, at that meeting 

16 [identifying information redacted] brought up 

17 some other issues.

18 We had some other discussions. So 

19 we decided to have another Work Group meeting 

20 by teleconference, which we did on January 

21 25th.

22 We went over these issues. A 
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1 number of them were raised by the claimants, 

2 in fact. So we still have a few more things 

3 to do. NIOSH has a list of a few things to 

4 accomplish. SC&A is supposed to look at a few 

5 more things that NIOSH has done, just to see 

6 that they feel that they are done 

7 appropriately.

8 So our goal is to have another 

9 Work Group meeting, and then at the May 

10 meeting, Board meeting in Buffalo, which is 

11 in the Linde territory, [identifying 

12 information redacted] is hoping that we will, 

13 as a Work Group, come and present our 

14 findings. So I hope we can pull these last 

15 things together and present to you our Work 

16 Group's conclusions.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Any 

18 questions for Gen? Yes, Brad?

19 MEMBER CLAWSON: Just one thing 

20 that I was thinking when she was talking about 

21 that brief rundown. Ted has requested that 

22 SC&A and NIOSH, after each Work Group, that 
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1 they give a brief summary of what the issues 

2 are and so forth. I received mine from John. 

3 Just in short sentences, it is kind of 

4 telling what the issue is and where they are 

5 going with it, and I found that quite 

6 interesting. It may be able to help them a 

7 little bit.

8 MR. KATZ: Yes. These are the 

9 action items. So we agreed, and OCAS as well, 

10 that SC&A and OCAS after every meeting would 

11 issue as quickly as they can the action items, 

12 just so that everybody is clear about who is 

13 doing what.

14 MEMBER ROESSLER: In our Work 

15 Group, SC&A's Steve Ostrow has done a very 

16 good job of keeping track of everything we do 

17 on a nice table in very understandable format.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. Thank 

19 you, Gen. Los Alamos.

20 MEMBER GRIFFON: Los Alamos is, I 

21 guess, the only -- right now, the ball is in 

22 SC&A's court, really. SC&A is reviewing 
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1 NIOSH's Evaluation Report, and they did --

2 since the last meeting, my understanding is 

3 that Joe and the team went out and did some 

4 interviews as well as some classified 

5 documents review for about a week.

6 I am not sure if you have the 

7 timing on when you might be ready, but as soon 

8 as they come out with their report, then we 

9 will schedule a Work Group meeting, but we 

10 haven't met yet. 

11 So, I don't know, Joe, if you have 

12 a time frame on that.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: We just got the 

14 redacted notes back on the interview about two 

15 weeks ago. So we are going through and doing 

16 summaries of that. So I think we are getting 

17 relatively close to having a response, a first 

18 response. We have two on-site reviews, a lot 

19 of interviews, a classified review, and we had 

20 -- I think ORAU staff was on that site visit. 

21 So I think we are getting close, another 

22 month or so.
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: So we may be able 

2 to schedule a meeting before the May full 

3 Board meeting.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Any 

5 questions for Mark? Okay. Mound? Josie.

6 MEMBER BEACH: Thank you. Mound 

7 last met for a two-day meeting in January on 

8 the 5th and the 6th. Of the 16 remaining 

9 issues, the Work Group has unanimously agreed 

10 to close the following matrix items, Issue 13, 

11 which is the buried records. This was an 

12 issue specifically addressed in the petition 

13 related to the burial of Mound records at Los 

14 Alamos and the Nevada Test Site.

15 Issue 16 was our R-beta shallow 

16 dose issue, and also 21, the PAAA violations 

17 where inadequate bioassay sampling was done. 

18 This issue is being addressed further under 

19 Issue 11 and 12. That is our adequacy and 

20 completeness of internal dose. So while that 

21 is closed, we will still have some issues to 

22 follow-up on.
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1 The Work Group has assigned 

2 actions to the following issues, Issue 9 is 

3 the high-fired Pu-238. NIOSH is reviewing the 

4 Type L versus Type J solubility models as 

5 bounding options, and it will establish for 

6 the Work Group what approach will be taken for 

7 dose reconstruction and the rationale behind 

8 it.

9 What we call the Roadmap is an 

10 integrated issues 1, 3, 4, 7 and 8. The Work 

11 Group has agreed that the Roadmap mirrors the 

12 King report and is not responsive to original 

13 data adequacy issues. These issues are being 

14 addressed again under Issues 11 and 12.

15 Issue 10 is the D&D era. NIOSH 

16 will review and report back to the Work Group 

17 the availability of information regarding rate 

18 of conformance by former D&D workers for 

19 providing termination bioassays upon departure 

20 from Mound work sites. 

21 If the information is available 

22 and the rate of conformance is low, we will 
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1 have to determine the feasibility of 

2 conducting validation reviews of the internal 

3 dose, coworker model application to D&D 

4 workers.

5 These topics are SEC relevant 

6 issues remaining that have been addressed --

7 or, excuse me, have been assigned actions from 

8 the Work Group for both NIOSH and SC&A.

9 The first one is Issues 14 and 15, 

10 neutron dose reconstruction. Concerns remain 

11 over NIOSH's use of the MCNP model application 

12 and the validity and application of NIOSH's 

13 coworker dose data in NIOSH's dose 

14 reconstruction approach.

15 The next one is Issue 6, the 

16 stable tritium compounds. A secure meeting 

17 has been scheduled for February 18th to review 

18 classified documents pertinent to establishing 

19 scope of workers potentially exposed to Type S 

20 tritides. 

21 Based on the results of that 

22 meeting, we are going to establish for the 
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1 Work Group what approach will be taken for 

2 dose reconstruction for both Type S and the 

3 intermediate solubility of the STCs.

4 The other one is Issue 11 and 12, 

5 adequacy and completeness of internal dose. 

6 More work is needed to identify and 

7 substantiate radionuclides for which exposure 

8 potential existed, but where bioassay data is 

9 lacking.

10 We need to define a basis for 

11 judging exposure potential and whether NIOSH 

12 can still reconstruct the missing doses with 

13 sufficient accuracy.

14 There is one last topic, and I was 

15 hoping maybe Jim would mention this at this 

16 meeting. I am not sure if he can speak on it, 

17 but SEC actions under consideration, Issue 

18 Number 2, was our radon issue, and NIOSH is 

19 working with DOL on a proposed scope of the 

20 postulated SEC.

21 I didn't know if you would want to 

22 mention anything more on that.
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1 DR. NETON: LaVon might be able to 

2 fill in a little more detail, but we had 

3 identified in the review of the petition a 

4 portion of the time where radon couldn't be 

5 reconstructed at the Mound Site. 

6 That was a very unusual 

7 combination of events that occurred that had 

8 exposure potential to these three different 

9 isotopes of radon gas, radon-219, radon-220 

10 and radon-222 in extremely large 

11 concentrations.

12 So because of that, we are going 

13 to modify our Evaluation Report to recommend 

14 addition of a separate Class of workers for 

15 that one facility for -- I believe it is one 

16 building. I forget which building it is now, 

17 but this is a very confined exposure to one 

18 building, and we feel that those workers could 

19 be adequately identified as to who was in 

20 those buildings.

21 MEMBER BEACH: And I believe it 

22 was possibly two buildings, but that hasn't 
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1 been worked out.

2 DR. NETON: Yes, I think they were 

3 somewhat connected by some kind of walkway. 

4 There may be two buildings.

5 MEMBER BEACH: Right. Yes. so, 

6 hopefully, we will be hearing from NIOSH on 

7 that soon. That is all I have.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Questions for 

9 Josie? Nevada Test Site? We have heard from 

10 them yesterday.

11 MEMBER PRESLEY: As everybody 

12 knows, we did get our SEC passed yesterday. 

13 One thing that I would like to

14 bring up today to see if we could go ahead and 

15 vote on is the NTS Site Profile.

16 MR. KATZ: Bob, can you speak 

17 closer to the microphone, please? Thanks.

18 MEMBER PRESLEY: One thing that I 

19 would like to bring up today and vote on was 

20 the Board accepting the NTS Site Profile. 

21 In the last three or four years, 

22 NIOSH has made a tremendous amount of changes. 
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1 We have gotten a lot of feedback from SC&A. 

2 Their changes have been implemented. The Site 

3 Profile, about six or eight items have been 

4 rewritten and implemented.

5 What I would like to do is make a 

6 motion that we accept the Site Profile as it 

7 stands today. Everybody needs to realize that 

8 this is a living document, and as changes come 

9 up and as information comes up, it will be 

10 added in.

11 The one thing that the Working 

12 Group would ask is that, when things of this 

13 nature happen, that we are immediately 

14 apprised of the change so that, if it is 

15 deemed that we need to go back and re-look at 

16 this, that we will have the chance to comment 

17 and so that things don't fall by the wayside.

18 That is all I have, but I think we 

19 do need to go ahead and accept the Site 

20 Profile as it is today.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Bob and I talked 

22 about this a little yesterday. It was sort of 
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1 in the context of more disbanding the Work 

2 Group, because there is no activity for the 

3 Work Group going forward.

4 In the promise Bob sort of puts it 

5 is, yes, the Site Profile keeps changing, to 

6 some extent. I guess the question would be --

7 I guess one is we can sort of disband the Work 

8 Group or put it in mothballs or something, 

9 whatever. 

10 I don't know how people feel about 

11 accepting a Site Profile review that they 

12 aren't really -- isn't in front of them to 

13 see. That would be my question. I don't want 

14 to force that issue, and I don't know that we 

15 really have a procedure for this. In fact, 

16 Mark reminded me that there are some old, real 

17 old, Work Groups that dealt with some SEC 

18 issues, and we have sort of don't have any 

19 Site Profile -- a Work Group to really deal 

20 with some of the Site Profile issues.

21 Any comments? Yes, Brad?

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: Part of my issue 
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1 is and what I am nervous about is I understand 

2 that the Site Profile is a living document, 

3 but as a Work Group I don't know how it is 

4 going to work, because -- I wonder how it is 

5 going with Rocky Flats, because there is a lot 

6 of changes. It seems like Mark is kind of 

7 spearheading quite a few of those, since the 

8 SEC kind of stopped.

9 I don't want to lose so many --

10 anything, because there's many things that are 

11 still going on, like [identifying information 

12 redacted] said yesterday, with Yucca Mountain 

13 and the 25 Area of how this is going to work 

14 in and so forth, like that.

15 I would like to be able to somehow 

16 make sure that we are still in the loop for 

17 these issues that come up with Nevada Test 

18 Site. That is the only thing I am nervous 

19 about.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Jim?

21 DR. NETON: I would just like to 

22 make a couple of comments. I see Bob Presley 
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1 stepped out for a second. So, hopefully, he 

2 will be able to -- well, I'll repeat when he 

3 comes back, I guess.

4 We are certainly going to have to 

5 revise the Site Profile now to pull out all 

6 the internal monitoring reconstruction or 

7 basically to revise it, so that we don't do 

8 internal dosimetry calculations through 1992 

9 now. So all of those findings related to 

10 internal dosimetry prior to '92 go away. I 

11 mean, we have agreed that we can't do dose 

12 reconstruction.

13 So what is left, or the balance of 

14 what is left is the external dosimetry 

15 reconstructions through '92, and then full 

16 dose reconstructions after '92. But we have 

17 not revised the Site Profile. 

18 We have agreed in principle with 

19 SC&A on virtually all the remaining issues, to 

20 my knowledge, but we have not yet produced the 

21 final report that contains that -- those 

22 agreed upon paths forward, if that is helpful.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So that would be 

2 that there is -- if I understand you, there 

3 would be some point in the future -- I want to 

4 say near future, but I don't want to try to 

5 pin you down, but that there would be a 

6 revised Site Profile that would address all 

7 these issues in the context of what has been 

8 approved for the SEC and so forth, and then 

9 there would really be a need to review and 

10 ascertain that that --

11 DR. NETON: I would think so.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Then I 

13 guess the question would be whether we 

14 maintain the same Work Group and have it ready 

15 to do things or do we try to come up with a 

16 new Work Group or wait until the time? I will 

17 ask you, what is the time frame for that, 

18 because I guess that would make a difference 

19 in terms of --

20 DR. NETON: I have learned my 

21 lesson not to give very definite time 

22 schedules. I really can't say when it is 
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1 going to be done. I would have to confer with 

2 others who are more privy to the schedule than 

3 I am.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That is fine, 

5 Jim. Other Board Members? Bob, while you 

6 were out, Jim sort of updated us. They are 

7 revising the Site Profile. I think there is 

8 general agreement there would be possibly some 

9 need or probably some need to review the 

10 revisions, see do they address all the issues 

11 satisfactorily. I guess the question is do we 

12 disband the Work Group while NIOSH is doing 

13 that, then maybe reconvene it in some way at 

14 the time, or what.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: Maybe we could 

16 put it in emeritus status or something.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We have some 

18 that are -- the Security one. 

19 MEMBER PRESLEY: I just want 

20 everybody to understand, you know, that when 

21 we were tasked with this, what we were tasked 

22 with doing was taking care of the Site Profile 
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1 and the SEC.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And I think we 

3 can say, up to date, you have taken care of 

4 those two overarching tasks, and now there is 

5 maybe a third task coming up, which will be 

6 the Site Profile revision, which will reflect 

7 what has happened so far. Why don't we just 

8 say it is on, have a latent or whatever we 

9 want to call it, Work Group. Thank you.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Did I understand 

11 from Dr. Neton that the only change would be 

12 to basically remove or change that part of the 

13 internal dose calculation in accordance with 

14 what basically has been agreed to?

15 DR. NETON: No. There will also 

16 be some changes that we have agreed to through 

17 the Working Group process in the external 

18 dosimetry area as well. Like I said, we have 

19 agreed in principle through these Working 

20 Group deliberations on the path forward, but 

21 we have yet to revise the Site Profile to 

22 completely address our proposed path forward.
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, but in 

2 essence all the proposed changes are things 

3 that have been agreed to. 

4 DR. NETON: Correct.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: So the only point 

6 in the review, as I could see it so far, would 

7 be simply to confirm that those have actually 

8 occurred. So it would not be -- it is not 

9 like you are completely revising things now. 

10 All the revisions in principle have been 

11 agreed to.

12 DR. NETON: Correct.

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Thank you.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Pantex?

15 MEMBER BEACH: So do we need to 

16 pull that motion from the table or table it, 

17 because he did make a motion.

18 MEMBER PRESLEY: It was never 

19 seconded.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It was never 

21 seconded.

22 MEMBER BEACH: Oh, so it doesn't 
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1 matter? Okay. Thank you.

2 MEMBER CLAWSON: At the request of 

3 the petitioners -- they have been getting many 

4 different conflicting information on Pantex. 

5 So they asked me, instead of just saying that 

6 we haven't met, that I kind of lay out where 

7 the issues are at and where we are, and I want 

8 to make something clear.

9 This is not to point blame or to 

10 say anything. I know that Stu has stepped 

11 into this position and has inherited a lot of 

12 these things, but this is more so the 

13 petitioners know exactly where we are at, and 

14 as requested. As they said, it might be a 

15 good idea, Brad, if you write this stuff down 

16 so you don't get lost. 

17 So here is where we are at. Just 

18 so you know, Pantex Evaluation was issued by 

19 NIOSH in December 2008. The Board asked me 

20 and my Working Group to review the ER back 

21 then. Petitioners and members of the public 

22 are increasingly asking me what is happening, 
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1 why no findings, no recommendations have been 

2 rendered to date in the Board's review after 

3 some 14 months after the SEC was filed.

4 Quite frankly, I share their 

5 concerns. Since the ER was issued and SC&A 

6 presented in the early 2009 what it considered 

7 to be the key SEC issues, the Work Group and 

8 NIOSH have not been able to meet and have not 

9 even been able to tour the site.

10 Why are many of these reasons? 

11 One of the ones that is a big one is security, 

12 which we understand and we accept from our 

13 national security standpoint. However, 

14 security alone is not the only issue.

15 The tour that I mentioned has been 

16 requested for over a year and a half and has 

17 been under consideration by both DOE 

18 Headquarters and Pantex during that time. 

19 Simple interview notes have taken over six 

20 months to clear and to be returned to SC&A, 

21 and even in some standpoints longer.

22 Each on-site visit requires a lead 
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1 time of about three months. Workers are 

2 apprehensive about being interviewed at 

3 Pantex, which I would like to thank DOE for 

4 issuing a letter on worker retaliation, which 

5 I hope will bring a little bit of peace to the 

6 workers.

7 A list of issues were identified 

8 by SC&A in its 2007 Site Profile and has been 

9 carried forward into the March 2009 Issue 

10 Matrix. To date, despite repeated requests by 

11 me, no cleared response has been forthcoming 

12 from NIOSH. Apparently, the Work Group cannot 

13 meet at this time until we have these back. 

14 This is why the Work Group has not been 

15 meeting.

16 The bottom line is that Pantex SEC 

17 review is hardly off to square one due to the 

18 proceeding implementations at times dragging 

19 on. It is incumbent on the Board to press 

20 both agencies of DOE and NIOSH to respond in a 

21 timely manner. However, at this pace the 

22 Pantex review -- and these are just my 
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1 calculations -- may take well over the three 

2 to five years if we don't get under it a 

3 little bit better.

4 At this time, Stu has told me that 

5 we have a review that is finally being sent 

6 back to us, but at this time I still have not 

7 received anything. 

8 I hope that this allows the 

9 petitioners to understand what many of our 

10 problems are and that we are trying to deal 

11 with these things. That's it.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any comments, 

13 Stu, updates?

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, just a 

15 little bit in terms of our -- I believe the 

16 product that Brad is talking about is our 

17 response to the findings. I believe these are 

18 the Site Profile findings. Isn't that right?

19 MEMBER CLAWSON: And there was SEC 

20 issues. When we first started out, it was the 

21 Site Profile, and the SEC came. So they kind 

22 of are combined.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: So that they are 

2 combined. Okay. Our response -- the way the 

3 process works on these is that, when the team 

4 responding to those findings prepares their 

5 product, their initial product, that goes to 

6 the Department of Energy for clearance for 

7 sensitive material before anybody else, even 

8 in the project, sees it.

9 So there was some amount of time, 

10 and then there was a double clutch on the 

11 preparation of that, because as the team was 

12 preparing the response, in the middle of the 

13 preparation we received a large number of 

14 documents that we had requested from our site 

15 research like months earlier from the 

16 Department of Energy. 

17 So once we received those, then we 

18 looked at those, and we felt that they would 

19 either change or strengthen our responses. So 

20 that then delayed the response some more. The 

21 preparation of the response took longer.

22 That response has been reviewed 
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1 now and released. You will recall that that 

2 was the team's initial draft of the response, 

3 and it came to us to review, and we felt that 

4 there should be some strengthening of it. So 

5 we made some comments, and those comments are 

6 now being resolved.

7 I would think that it is not that 

8 far from being available, but our experience 

9 has been that this has been a really tough 

10 site to keep things moving through. So I 

11 don't really have a prediction for a date 

12 right here today.

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: And I just wanted 

14 to make sure, because the petitioners -- you 

15 know, many times when they have called in, and 

16 this is why they asked that I do this, is 

17 because they get conflicting points. They 

18 want to know what is going on, and I really 

19 don't blame them.

20 As I wrote this down, I forgot one 

21 thing. I already talked to Stu about it 

22 earlier, but that is the data retrieval plan 
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1 that we still to date have not seen, and per 

2 the procedures we are supposed to both be 

3 issuing these, so that both sides know what we 

4 have.

5 I talked to Greg and Regina before 

6 they left, and I have made them very much 

7 aware of where we are at. They have promised 

8 me that they are starting somewhat of a new 

9 process, that whenever anything goes into 

10 Pantex, requests and so forth, that they will 

11 also go to DOE headquarters to somewhat assist 

12 with this. But this is dragging on.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Brad. 

14 Questions for Brad? I would just add, as I 

15 have said, I think, many times now, I just 

16 question whether, given the nature of the 

17 security issues with Pantex, whether we can 

18 have a meaningful and appropriate SEC 

19 evaluation process. Let's see where we are by 

20 the next meeting.

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: I am giving it my 

22 best shot.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We understand 

2 that, and I think NIOSH and everybody and, 

3 hopefully, DOE headquarters is going to step 

4 in a little bit more on that. 

5 Pinellas.

6 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: We still 

7 haven't had a meeting, and right now we are 

8 still on schedule. Hopefully, we will be 

9 ready by August. It is way down in the queue. 

10 Because of all these SEC Petitions, NIOSH has 

11 been quite busy, but they are still hopeful 

12 that maybe by August we will be ready.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you. 

14 Piqua Power Reactor. John?

15 MEMBER POSTON: The Piqua Working 

16 Group was established at our last meeting, and 

17 consists of Phil Schofield, mark Griffon, and 

18 Bill Field, and myself.

19 I was advised not to have a 

20 meeting until our new Members were baptized in 

21 fire. So we will try to have a meeting soon. 

22 We do not have anyone from SC&A appointed to 
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1 the Working Group so far.

2 I think the first meeting will 

3 probably be a telephone conference, because we 

4 need to sort of outline how we are going to go 

5 about it, and I think the expense of traveling 

6 to Cincinnati and holding a face to face 

7 meeting is probably not justified. So I will 

8 be contacting the Members, and we will try to 

9 have a teleconference.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thanks, 

11 John. SC&A can get somebody assigned. You 

12 don't need to -- just do it, unless you have 

13 something else.

14 DR. MAURO: This is one of the --

15 a bit unusual in terms of the process. I just 

16 want to make sure I understand. 

17 SC&A is not to take any action in 

18 terms of reviewing the Piqua material until 

19 the Work Group meets. As long as you are in 

20 that position, I am going to be the person. 

21 So just let me know when you want to get 

22 together, and I will certainly bring aboard 
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1 other Members. 

2 So as of this date, we have not 

3 billed an hour to Piqua.

4 MEMBER POSTON: I wanted to give 

5 especially Bill a chance to read the report 

6 that was issued at the last meeting, and then 

7 for the four of us to get together and talk 

8 about what we think needs to be done and how 

9 to proceed.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That is fine, 

11 and helpful. Now we've got an SC&A contact. 

12 So we have accomplished something.

13 Rocky. Mark?

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: Rocky Flats is 

15 essentially inactive. We do have open Site 

16 Profile issues, though. So we are not 

17 complete with our work, but have really been 

18 trying to resolve this implementation of the 

19 Class issue before we move forward with any of 

20 the Site Profile -- outstanding Site Profile 

21 issues. 

22 So we are still waiting for 
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1 information from DOL on that, and you heard 

2 the brief report two days ago that they are 

3 still working with University of Colorado 

4 database. They are considering that and its 

5 impacts on the implementation of the Class as 

6 established. 

7 So we will schedule a Work Group 

8 meeting soon. I know there are lots of other 

9 priorities, but we haven't forgot about 

10 closing out the Site Profile issues.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Santa Susana, 

12 Mike Gibson.

13 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes. Dr. Melius, 

14 we have not met recently. Dr. Hughes is 

15 providing periodic updates on OCAS response, 

16 and the last indication from OCAS is that they 

17 should be ready to have a meeting sometime in 

18 the April time frame.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, excellent. 

20 Any questions for Mike? Okay, thanks, Mike.

21 Savannah River?

22 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, Savannah 
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1 River, we did have a Work Group meeting. If 

2 you remember, the last couple of reports I 

3 have given, NIOSH was in the process of 

4 getting quite a bit more data, especially 

5 related to thorium exposures. 

6 They have that data now, and along 

7 with several other -- I won't list them all, 

8 but there are several other radionuclides 

9 where they are going to have to do coworker 

10 models. They believe they can accomplish the 

11 coworker models, but they are still pulling 

12 this data together.

13 They did at the last Work Group 

14 meeting give us a time line. I believe most 

15 of those coworker models will be completed by, 

16 at least according to the time line, if my 

17 memory serves me, sometime in May/June time 

18 frame of this year.

19 So we are waiting to reconvene 

20 until some of these outstanding actions are 

21 further along, but we did have a Work Group 

22 and made some progress.
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1 We also have an open issue on data 

2 adequacy that we are looking into, and 

3 construction worker model, and I think that is 

4 a quick summary of where we are at, but the 

5 Work Group continues to work.

6 I guess I will make -- one note on 

7 this is that we do want to strike while the 

8 iron is hot, so to speak, with Savannah River. 

9 We had a Work Group meeting -- well, I don't 

10 know if that was the right term, but we -- I 

11 guess keep the momentum is more the phrase I 

12 am looking for.

13 The last Work Group meeting --

14 when we have these things spaced so far apart, 

15 we find ourselves going over the same ground 

16 again and again, and to the extent we can -- I 

17 know we have -- the problem now is we have so 

18 many SECs in front of us, and major sites, but 

19 my goal is to keep the momentum with Savannah 

20 River. So working closely with Tim Taulbee to 

21 do that.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thanks, Mark. 
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1 SEC Issues? This is my Work Group.

2 We had a meeting last Friday 

3 regarding two particular issues for that 

4 meeting. One was the Dow Madison Site, which 

5 had been assigned to that group. We have a 

6 number of issues there. We are basically 

7 trying to outline what the issues were and 

8 what needed to be done in terms of follow-up.

9 There were also some issues 

10 longstanding for the petitioner to get 

11 information they had requested from DOL and 

12 from NIOSH and so forth. I think we have 

13 finally resolved those. I just got an email 

14 from [identifying information redacted]

15 indicating that he had received or was about 

16 to receive a lot of the information that he 

17 had recently requested from DOL.

18 So our plan is to have a meeting 

19 and try to resolve and come to some conclusion 

20 on that SEC Evaluation Report shortly. The 

21 meeting will take place as part of another 

22 meeting. 
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1 The other half of our meeting on 

2 SEC issues concerned the 250-day issue where 

3 we have been talking about a long time in what 

4 situations or circumstances will we qualify 

5 people for the SEC when they don't have a 250 

6 work day requirement and basically when there 

7 are short term, very high exposures, and how 

8 to resolve how to interpret that in terms of 

9 the regulation, the situations that we 

10 encounter which are varied, depending on the 

11 site and amount of information we have, 

12 involve a number of the specific sites, the 

13 NTS, Ames, among others. The Met Lab was the 

14 other one.

15 I think we made good progress in 

16 our conference call on that, and we plan on 

17 another probably full day Work Group meeting 

18 or at least an in-person Work Group meeting 

19 sometime before the May meeting, and hope to 

20 be able to report back with some 

21 recommendations to the Board by the May 

22 meeting. 
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1 TBD-6000? 

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: TBD-6000 Work 

3 Group met in December, and our main focus at 

4 that time was still on General Steel 

5 Industries, although we have the TBD-6000 and 

6 6001 matrices themselves to completely 

7 resolve, as well as the now three newer sites 

8 that we have basically not looked at yet. But 

9 our prime focus is still on GSI.

10 There is a SEC Petition as well as 

11 the main Appendix B, which serves as the Site 

12 Profile. 

13 After our meeting in December, at 

14 which time [identifying information redacted]

15 had reported to us that he had identified the 

16 source of information that would help 

17 characterize the workplace much better, which 

18 included the actual AEC/NRC licenses, 

19 inspection reports, and some related 

20 materials, and these now have been provided to 

21 NIOSH, and we are awaiting their review of 

22 these materials. Dave Allen has informed me 
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1 just this past week that he is still going 

2 through those materials.

3 Then the other important piece of 

4 information we are still awaiting is the 

5 outcome of the search for Picker X-ray 

6 records, which perhaps may be present in the 

7 Landauer records repository, and NIOSH has 

8 actually entered into a contract with Landauer 

9 to search the Picker records, not only for GSI 

10 information but for film badge records 

11 possibly from other locations as well.

12 In any event, we are hopeful that 

13 those efforts will provide a better 

14 characterization of the workplace for GSI, and 

15 as soon as NIOSH has completed their 

16 evaluation of those materials, the Work Group 

17 will schedule its next meeting.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: To put you on 

19 the spot, Dr. Ziemer, we talked on, I believe, 

20 our first day of these meetings, whether --

21 maybe it was yesterday -- whether we should 

22 add another SEC Evaluation to your Work Group 
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1 or whether we should form a new Work Group 

2 relative to that. I don't know if you have 

3 had time to give it some thought.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: I have tried not 

5 to think about it too much. I suppose, in 

6 fairness, we should at least pick it up 

7 initially, because although if you feel like 

8 you have some people who need more Work Group 

9 activities -- a lot of this ends up being the 

10 same people, but I don't have a good --

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: Is United Nuclear 

12 then the one?

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, United 

14 Nuclear. But it is fairly clear to me that 

15 our next meeting is probably going to have to 

16 be a two-day meeting. We cannot do General 

17 Steel Industries plus these others. So either 

18 way, if we have a new Work Group, they will 

19 have to meet. Some of this is the same 

20 people, but in any event, if we don't have 

21 people available to do that individually, I 

22 guess we will add it to our workload, but --
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1 MEMBER BEACH: What if we add 

2 another alternate to that?

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: I think it would 

4 be excellent to have at least --

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: What are you 

6 offering?

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Lunch at the 

8 Cincinnati Marriott. Perhaps at least one of 

9 the new Members might want to participate in 

10 that, but we can talk further, I suppose, 

11 after we get the other reports.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Is there 

13 some way -- it is just a thought. Is there 

14 some way of having a sub-Work Group that would 

15 just focus on a particular site that would 

16 sort of ease some of the burden on you to keep 

17 track of all this, and also at the same time 

18 take into account what is going on and then be 

19 able to understand it?

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: Like a Work Group 

21 of the Work Group?

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, one of the 

2 things that ties these together is they all 

3 are subsets of TBD-6000 or 6001, as the case 

4 may be. So the work of whatever group is 

5 handling this still has to tie in with TBD6 6000, which as was indicated earlier, is a 

7 type of surrogate data situation. But even in

8 that framework, places like General Steel 

9 Industries, although it comes under that 

10 category, still have their own dataset.

11 So we are not doing what you would 

12 call surrogate data there, in any event, but I 

13 see no reason why we couldn't have a separate 

14 group, for example, for this new one, maybe 

15 with some overlapping membership, and have the 

16 Work Groups back to back, and maybe the folks 

17 who aren't on both can sit in if they want to 

18 on the other. That might be a way to do it.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. 

20 Worker Outreach, which I believe is the last 

21 one on our list. Mike Gibson, do you want to 

22 give us an update on Worker Outreach? I 
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1 believe the information that the Work Group 

2 had compiled has been circulated to the Board 

3 and has also been made available here at the 

4 meeting. So, Mike, if you want to --

5 MEMBER GIBSON: Thank you, Dr. 

6 Melius. When the Work Group was established, 

7 you know, we were charged with looking at 

8 worker outreach and how worker input was given 

9 due diligence to the program, when 

10 appropriate. This turned out to be a 

11 complicated task.

12 There were many avenues to look 

13 at. So it has taken us some time, but we 

14 provided the Board with a mission statement on 

15 a previous meeting, which was adopted, and we 

16 also told the Board we would bring forth an 

17 implementation plan, which is before you now.

18 By procedure, I don't know if this 

19 needs to be adopted by a motion, but we did 

20 want to present it to the Board, because it 

21 potentially could have some impact on the 

22 agencies, the Board and other Work Groups, and 
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1 we just wanted to make sure that it is 

2 comprehensive but it is not too burdensome on 

3 the process.

4 So the presentation itself is kind 

5 of lengthy. So I just felt it was better to 

6 send it out to the Board in advance, giving 

7 them time to review it, and maybe we could 

8 just have a short discussion on questions on 

9 what the Board feels right now.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So for 

11 the Board Members, there's two documents. One 

12 is a PDF of a PowerPoint presentation. That 

13 is on your memory sticks, and then there was 

14 another document that was handed out that 

15 supplements that. Ted, do you want to add?

16 MR. KATZ: Yes. The other handout 

17 is the actual plan, which I think Mike's 

18 presentation very closely follows. So you 

19 don't necessarily have to read both, but some 

20 of you may have read it already, because we 

21 distributed it before a prior Board meeting.

22 David, just to let you know, I 
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1 emailed this to you, if you want to see the 

2 actual plan, but again Mike's presentation, I 

3 think, covers it pretty closely.

4 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: This is 

5 Kathy Robertson-DeMers. I think it is not the 

6 actual implementation plan. I think that was 

7 the options to be considered for the Board.

8 MR. KATZ: We are talking about 

9 two different things, Kathy. That is coming 

10 up next. We are just talking about the plan 

11 for evaluating outreach right now.

12 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: Okay.

13 MR. KATZ: Thanks.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So do people 

15 have comments on that, or questions? Dr. 

16 Ziemer?

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I certainly 

18 want to compliment the Work Group on the 

19 preparation of this plan, Mike. You and your 

20 colleagues have really done a fine job in 

21 scoping out the work.

22 I must say, it looks very 
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1 ambitious to me, and my thought was that 

2 probably you need to try some of this out and 

3 then refine it later, if it needs refining. 

4 But I think it has got a lot of items in it 

5 which seem to be appropriate, if we can do 

6 them, that would be helpful if we could do 

7 them.

8 Again, I think it is very 

9 ambitious, but you won't have a full grasp, I 

10 don't think, of the extent of this effort --

11 it looks extensive to me -- until you start to 

12 try some of it. It is not always obvious if 

13 you are asking fully the right questions, but 

14 this is one of those areas, like many others, 

15 that we have had in the past where we have to 

16 try things and then modify them or improve 

17 them or get rid of them, as the case may be.

18 So that is my comment. I did have 

19 one question, which is on objective 4. This 

20 is a question that you will probably put in 

21 the same category as my typical dangling 

22 participles, because another thing that always 
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1 dangles is the use of et cetera.

2 I am pretty good at figuring out 

3 what et cetera means when somebody says it is 

4 1, 3, 7, 9, et cetera. I know that the next 

5 thing is 11. But when they list a number of 

6 things such as here, I have no idea what the 

7 next thing is. 

8 So what I am wondering is, did the 

9 group have anything specific in mind or was 

10 this just a place holder in case something 

11 else emerged? What is the next thing on the 

12 list represented by et cetera in objective 4?

13 MEMBER GIBSON: Dr. Ziemer, I 

14 totally agree with you. This is a much bigger 

15 task, we are finding out, than what we 

16 originally thought, and we do intend on trying 

17 to take baby steps and maybe do one or two 

18 things at a time, and just work through the 

19 process and see how it works.

20 Et cetera is just that. It is a 

21 place holder. We were just trying to be 

22 comprehensive. If we left something out, we 
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1 just wanted to make sure we weren't limited to 

2 that. We weren't trying to necessarily expand 

3 into other areas.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thanks, 

5 Mike. Any other Board comments on this? 

6 I have one comment, and I don't 

7 know how much of this you could hear and 

8 appreciate from over the telephone, but at the 

9 beginning of our meeting Lew Wade outlined 

10 NIOSH's plans for their own evaluation, and 

11 that evaluation includes some evaluation of 

12 worker outreach.

13 I think it is fine to have -- I 

14 think the Board should be doing what we are 

15 doing through this Work Group. I don't think 

16 that is a problem, but certainly in terms of 

17 what steps, where we start and so forth, it 

18 would probably be better if we focusing on 

19 different areas or at least complement what is 

20 done, so we are not sort of duplicating --

21 they are not duplicating what the Work Group 

22 is doing, and vice versa. 
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1 So some coordination on that would 

2 be helpful, I think. If you talk to Lew, he 

3 can fill you in on what is going on and be 

4 able to work that out.

5 MEMBER GIBSON: Sure. We would be 

6 glad to, Jim.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. Thanks. 

8 But again, I compliment the Work Group on your 

9 efforts here in developing this plan, and we 

10 look forward to its implementation.

11 Are there more comments? Okay. 

12 The other piece we have, which is 

13 what has caused some of our confusion here 

14 today is this discussion on tracking public 

15 comments and issues to the Advisory Board, 

16 which is a four-page document that is in front 

17 of us.

18 As I understand it, this is from 

19 the Work Group, and it is in response to some 

20 comments that Dr. Ziemer made at the last 

21 meeting. It outlines -- this is the one that 

22 lists a number of different options and so 
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1 forth for doing that. I don't know if people 

2 have input on that. 

3 Mike, do you have anything you 

4 want to say?

5 MEMBER GIBSON: Well, basically --

6 and again, I know this is wordy. Dr. Ziemer 

7 had made a comment in our New York meeting 

8 about that the Work Group might consider 

9 looking into public comments and how they are 

10 tracked or responded to.

11 As we looked at that, we tried to 

12 determine -- not only at public meetings, but 

13 there are times at Work Group meetings that 

14 the workers, the advocates might comment. So 

15 we have tried to just -- basically, what I 

16 think this breaks down to is we want to be 

17 able to track comments, and we are trying to 

18 find a way that at public meetings, either 

19 Worker Outreach Work Group, SC&A, whoever we 

20 designate, would track those comments, but we 

21 are not necessarily involved in Work Group 

22 meetings. 
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1 So that perhaps the Work Group 

2 Chairs could track comments, and we need to 

3 find a mechanism to maybe follow them back to 

4 this Work Group when appropriate and just find 

5 a way to determine whether they are site 

6 specific, issue specific, whether they are 

7 programmatic-wide, whether it is something 

8 that is appropriate for a Work Group to 

9 respond to or whether it is something that is 

10 appropriate for the full Board to discuss 

11 before the comment is responded to, is 

12 basically what this is trying to say.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Any 

14 questions?

15 MEMBER BEACH: No questions, but I 

16 do have a comment. If you look at this 

17 document and if you look at the scope, option 

18 1, 2 and 3, basically lays out in very simple 

19 language what each of those options are. If 

20 you go into the body of the document, it just 

21 -- that is where it gets a little wordy, but 

22 it gives you how, how the scope is going to be 
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1 accomplished.

2 I guess we as a Work Group wanted 

3 to give as many options as possible. During 

4 NIOSH's presentation, they did talk about a 

5 tracking system, and I believe they put -- it 

6 is on our memory stick of how they are 

7 tracking, and it is something we asked SC&A to 

8 maybe look at tracking in that format also. 

9 So something to look at.

10 MEMBER GRIFFON: I guess I am 

11 struggling with to what end? What are we -- I 

12 mean, is this task to begin tracking -- I 

13 think I understand the different options, 

14 although they may not be as clear as you think 

15 they are to others. But is it a goal?

16 I don't understand why the Work 

17 Group would be setting up a tracking system? 

18 Are you evaluating whether the current --

19 whether past comments have been tracked and 

20 have been considered by NIOSH or are you 

21 proposing to begin tracking? I guess I am not 

22 exactly sure what the options are or to what 
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1 end. What are you trying to get at with this 

2 proposal?

3 MEMBER GIBSON: Mark, I think what 

4 we are trying to do is we want to review the 

5 current policies and procedures on how the 

6 meetings are conducted. We want to take a 

7 limited slice in time back at the past to see 

8 how that has worked, not go back to day one, 

9 but then see how that is working and see if, 

10 in the future, that the current policies and 

11 procedures and conduct of meetings serves our 

12 purpose and gives due diligence to the 

13 questions and the responses and the input to 

14 the program that the workers give.

15 MEMBER GRIFFON: I actually think 

16 that makes sense to me. You are talking about 

17 a sample retrospectively, and then if you find 

18 some concerns or flaws, making recommendations 

19 going forward. Is that sort of --

20 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes.

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: I am not sure I 

22 see that in option 1, 2, 3 or 4, but I accept 
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1 that. I think that is not a bad idea.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think it is in 

3 there. It was just, there are other options, 

4 and it was a little hard. Actually picked 

5 that as option 1, as I understood it. Yes, 

6 Kathy DeMers from SC&A.

7 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: I just 

8 wanted to kind of clarify. The goal was to 

9 kind of be accountable for the comments that 

10 the public was making and follow through on 

11 those comments. What the Working Group tried 

12 to present here was various options for

13 various portions of that process that you 

14 should consider.

15 They range from very minimal to 

16 very detailed, and we are looking for guidance 

17 from the full Board on how they want it done.

18 MR. KATZ: Maybe just recollecting 

19 the Work Group meeting, I could shed some more 

20 light on this.

21 OCAS already has sort of put in 

22 place a program to sort of track that they are 
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1 responding to comments that sort of they find 

2 are in their domain to respond to, whether it 

3 is to refer on to DOL or because it is a dose 

4 reconstruction issue with a particular dose 

5 reconstruction or what have you. So they have 

6 set up this tracking system to make sure they 

7 are doing their job diligently when it is 

8 their issue from a Board meeting.

9 So the Work Group liked that model 

10 and wanted sort of accountability for the 

11 Board's responses to issues that really belong 

12 in front of the Board.

13 So it wasn't so much to monitor 

14 that OCAS is doing its piece correctly, 

15 although that model is nice, and certainly 

16 they want to look at that, at how OCAS is 

17 doing with their responses, but also I think 

18 the intent -- and, Mike, correct me if I am 

19 wrong, but this is how I sort of understood it 

20 all -- was to make sure that the Board itself 

21 covered those issues that had been put before 

22 it, gave some response to the public.
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: I guess I totally 

2 misinterpreted it. I thought it was to look 

3 at NIOSH's past activities and see if they had 

4 actually been following through. Maybe that 

5 is part of the --

6 MR. KATZ: That is the evaluation, 

7 that other stuff that you already dealt with.

8 Mike, so does that do you justice?

9 MEMBER GIBSON: We wanted to make 

10 sure the Board fulfills what we believe its 

11 responsibility is to the workers, but I think 

12 part of our task is also to monitor NIOSH. We 

13 don't want to make this a burdensome task that 

14 pulls down the Board, the Work Groups and OCAS 

15 and everything else, but I do think we have a 

16 responsibility to monitor OCAS, how they 

17 collect the comments and how they respond to 

18 them, too.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Go ahead, Dr. 

20 Ziemer.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: I just wanted to 

22 comment that, actually, when I brought this 
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1 issue to the Board last time, I wasn't fully 

2 aware that NIOSH was formally tracking any of 

3 this, but it had seemed to me important to 

4 recognize that there are reoccurring themes 

5 that come to this Board from public comment.

6 Now we often hear individual cases 

7 or information and stories about individual 

8 experiences that are very individual specific, 

9 and those are handled by staff people, claims 

10 people, and so on. But I am talking about the 

11 other kinds of things that we hear that have 

12 to do with people's experiences with the CATI, 

13 as an example.

14 We actually in the past have 

15 followed up on many of those things, but the 

16 concern was that there could be issues that 

17 fall through the cracks. We get so many 

18 comments, and superimpose that on all the 

19 things we cover in the Board meeting, and it 

20 is very easy to forget some of those things.

21 The idea was, if we formalize and 

22 said, yes, we are going to keep track of this 
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1 information, and if we can categorize it --

2 they have given some examples. Well, I guess 

3 NIOSH gave examples of how they would do it --

4 but categorize them, and then determine 

5 whether or not some follow-up or action should 

6 be taken.

7 Now there are many that are Work 

8 Group specific. For example, in General Steel 

9 Industries, I have a whole lot of comments 

10 that have come out from the petitioners, and I 

11 feel that is something the Work Group has to 

12 track in the sense that we are responsible not 

13 necessarily to have a matrix, but at least to 

14 track what the issues are for the petitioner, 

15 and we do that, but we have a lot of people 

16 that call in, and we have had some that aren't 

17 necessarily petitioners, but they have some 

18 concern about something in the program. That 

19 was kind of genesis in my mind.

20 As was indicated, some of these 

21 are issues as to -- they are Board related 

22 issues. Now none of our Board related issues 
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1 are really separate from NIOSH. We don't 

2 operate in a vacuum. So there is a lot of 

3 overlapping things, and we need to recognize 

4 that. From my point of view, if NIOSH tracks 

5 it all, that's great, as long as somebody is 

6 tracking it.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: This may help or 

8 it may confuse, but I know I have seen this 

9 someplace. But if you go to our memory 

10 sticks, under the NIOSH program update, the 

11 folder, there are -- I believe this is the 

12 list of the issues that they are tracking, the 

13 comments they are tracking from, I think, the 

14 last two Board meetings, under that.

15 I guess what I am a little 

16 confused on is what are the criteria for what 

17 they track versus what they are not tracking, 

18 and what was -- maybe, Stu, you can address 

19 that, because I think that -- then I think, if 

20 I understand it right, then what the Outreach 

21 Work Group is doing is proposing setting up a

22 tracking and follow-up of issues that NIOSH 
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1 isn't tracking, because they are Board issues. 

2 So the Board needs a way of 

3 keeping track of that and assuring that those 

4 are being followed up. Stu?

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I want to 

6 offer a little information, just so everybody 

7 knows this isn't a historical practice that we 

8 have been doing all along. It was discussed 

9 at the October Board meeting, as I recall, as 

10 it would be desirable that we keep track of 

11 these comments that are made in public comment 

12 in some fashion.

13 Following that meeting then, we 

14 embarked -- you know, we took the action to do 

15 that, and we did it just for the previous 

16 meeting, because those transcripts were 

17 available. We started right after the October 

18 meeting. The transcripts for the July meeting 

19 were available, and we reviewed those 

20 transcripts to record the comments.

21 We had our Worker Outreach 

22 contractor do this task. I believe our 
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1 instruction to them was to record the comments 

2 that were a response -- that were essentially 

3 respondable to. 

4 You know, there are a number of 

5 public comments, there is really nothing to 

6 respond to. People recount their history and 

7 the difficulties they have encountered in the 

8 history, but there is not really a lot to 

9 respond to those. I believe we asked our 

10 contractor to record the comments that it was 

11 possible to respond to.

12 This was sort of a pilot thing, 

13 just to get started. We have not finalized 

14 anything. We have not written -- I believe we 

15 just gave the contractor verbal instructions 

16 from their contract's technical monitor.

17 So there is nothing really 

18 formalized about what we had proposed to do. 

19 I think we can, in fact, provide responses for 

20 things that reflect our activities, to the 

21 extent we can. 

22 I don't want to be presumptuous in 
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1 making an assignment even to myself, though, 

2 for these comments that we would really 

3 consider essentially in the domain of the 

4 Board, since these are public comments made to 

5 the Board. By doing it, by going ahead and 

6 writing some responses, it provides some 

7 timeliness that wouldn't be there if it were 

8 sort of a Board deliberated thing, because we 

9 could -- once we had compiled them, we could 

10 assign and start working on it.

11 This is embryonic here. We just 

12 started this, and we have not really done much 

13 of anything on how to proceed yet.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I would just add 

15 to that that there are also, I can imagine, 

16 comments that need to be followed up by both 

17 NIOSH and the Board. If someone reports on 

18 some particular circumstance or something 

19 about a particular site, obviously, NIOSH is 

20 going to be -- it is relevant to NIOSH's work 

21 on that site. It is also relevant to the 

22 Board and SC&A's review of that site. So it 
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1 ought to be tracked by both, and I think at 

2 least communicated to both, obviously. So, 

3 therefore, a tracking system for either is 

4 appropriate. Josie?

5 MEMBER BEACH: I would like to 

6 propose -- this was actually brought up at the 

7 last Board meeting for our Work Group to bring 

8 these recommendations to the Board so that the 

9 Board could decide how they wanted to track 

10 public comment.

11 So that is what we did here. What 

12 I would like to recommend, if Mike is in 

13 agreement and the Work Group, is -- I know 

14 SC&A took comments during all the public 

15 meetings, this meeting -- if we could get 

16 together as a Work Group and put those into a 

17 tracking system and present it to the Board at 

18 the May meeting to give you an idea of how it 

19 would look from the Work Group, if that would 

20 be --

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think that 

22 would be fine, and also some coordination with 
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1 NIOSH on that. So if we are going to do this, 

2 let's make sure we have some coordination and 

3 understand what each party is doing. 

4 I would add, if my memory is 

5 correct, that once upon a time a long time 

6 ago, ORAU was tasked to do this also, and 

7 somehow that got stopped. So we are starting 

8 again. 

9 MEMBER GIBSON: Jim, again this is 

10 -- as we started out this discussion, these 

11 are just our first baby steps. We may be a 

12 little overarching right now, but just, let's 

13 take a little time and see how it works, and 

14 we can always modify what we are doing. We 

15 just want to make sure that, again, worker 

16 comments are given due diligence, and their 

17 input is looked at in the program in the right 

18 perspective when appropriate.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think we 

20 understand. I think it is helpful to have 

21 sort of a big framework for it, which is what 

22 you have done. So it is broad. I think, at 
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1 the same time, the implementation is 

2 implemented in steps, and that is what you are 

3 proposing. I think that is helpful.

4 Kathy, did you want to say 

5 something?

6 MS. ROBERTSON-DeMERS: I just 

7 wanted to say something that might clarify 

8 something. We gave you a presentation on the 

9 implementation plan, and then you have a copy 

10 of the full implementation plan that we talked 

11 about earlier.

12 That implementation plan is for 

13 evaluating NIOSH worker outreach activities. 

14 The options that are presented for data15 tracking are for Board comments that are 

16 received.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We understand 

18 that, but I think that on the worker outreach 

19 part, I think, now that we understand this 

20 better, all of us, that we need to read this 

21 over. I would like to put this -- a report 

22 from this Work Group in an update, and maybe 
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1 we can reach some decisions, give some advice 

2 to the Work Group at our next Board call, 

3 which would be at the end of March. 

4 Meanwhile, I think we should go ahead with 

5 what Mike proposed on the public comment 

6 follow-up. Is that satisfactory with 

7 everybody? Okay.

8 Thank the Work Group for their 

9 work on this. 

10 You have an item here: managing 

11 conflicts on tasking and TBDs and PERs.

12 MR. KATZ: I do have that, and I 

13 can go into that, although it is not pressing 

14 right now, and I am just worried about your 

15 time.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I am worried 

17 also.

18 MR. KATZ: I could address that at

19 the teleconference.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. That 

21 would be fine. 

22 I think let's do additional --
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1 well, let me ask the Board, would people like 

2 to take a 15 minute break? 

3 (A chorus of yes.)

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. We will 

5 take a 15-minute break.

6 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

7 matter went off the record at 3:15 p.m. and 

8 resumed at 3:33 p.m.)

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, Ted, you 

10 want to check the lines?

11 MR. KATZ: Yes. Dr. Richardson 

12 and Mr. Gibson, are you with us?

13 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes, I am here, 

14 Ted.

15 MR. KATZ: David?

16 (No response.)

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It is very late 

18 there. We have five items left. We have SC&A 

19 tasking to do and some issues relative to 

20 that. Following that, we have some Work Group 

21 --

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Just for the
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1 record, I am here. I'm sorry. couldn't get 

2 the mute off.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Both you 

4 and Mike have been very good. We understand 

5 it is not easy.

6 Work Group assignments, 

7 volunteering, and then we have the letters to 

8 approve. We have some letters, correspondence 

9 kinds of issues to respond to. Finally, we 

10 have to do some meeting scheduling.

11 So we will start with SC&A. So, 

12 John, if you want to come to the microphone 

13 and sort of give us an update. John, I think, 

14 provided to us -- I don't believe it was on 

15 the memory sticks, but it was through an 

16 email, a document that was his sort of status 

17 report, I guess you would call it, material 

18 for consideration by the Board at the meeting.

19 DR. MAURO: I sent out two 

20 packages, not expecting it to be anything 

21 formal but just for the information of the 

22 Board and, certainly, the new Members of the 
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1 Board.

2 Two packages went out. One is a 

3 complete listing of everything that we have 

4 done or are actively doing on this contract 

5 since 2003. Basically, so it is almost a 

6 laundry list. In that same package, the items 

7 that are still active where we have been 

8 tasked and we are doing things, and we are 

9 billing time, I put down an estimate of what I 

10 believe it is going to cost to finish up the 

11 work that we have been tasked to date, so that 

12 everyone has a sense of the amount of 

13 resources that have effectively been committed 

14 and how much is basically available to the 

15 Board.

16 So it sort of sets the stage of, 

17 okay, here is the work that is ongoing, this 

18 is what was completed and done, and here is 

19 the work that currently is ongoing and it will 

20 require this much resources to finish, which 

21 effectively puts you in a good position to 

22 judge, to know, okay, we have this much 
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1 resources available to us to task SC&A as we 

2 see fit.

3 The other package is a listing of 

4 all of the Site Profiles, PERs, that we have 

5 not yet reviewed. In effect, it is a menu, 

6 and what they cost. If you want us to review 

7 this one, it will be this much. 

8 So in effect, I am trying to put 

9 you in a position to help judge where you 

10 would like us to be tasked.

11 Now it does not include anything 

12 related to SECs. The SEC issues emerge from 

13 these meetings. So in effect, what this is, 

14 is a listing of, basically, Site Profiles that 

15 you may or may not want to task us with and 

16 how much they would cost.

17 So, basically, I am trying to put 

18 in front of you the information you might need 

19 to task us, which is over and above any 

20 tasking that might emerge as a result of the 

21 SEC discussions. 

22 I guess that is it. Now we could 
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1 go through it. I could put it up on the 

2 screen or -- I don't know really where to go 

3 from here.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think we would 

5 like to not go through it in great detail. We 

6 have had it, but I think we need to have 

7 enough understanding to be able to make 

8 assignments.

9 We traditionally make assignments 

10 sort of incrementally from meeting to meeting, 

11 because the information changes and so forth, 

12 and it changed over this particular meeting.

13 I would also add that there are 

14 things that -- there are also changes that 

15 SC&A has been assigned to do Site Profile 

16 reviews, but there are some Site Profiles that 

17 there are not Work Groups formed for yet.

18 DR. MAURO: That is true.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And once we form 

20 the Work Group, then there's costs associated 

21 with the SC&A contract for the resolution 

22 process.
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1 DR. MAURO: You make a very 

2 important point. In the table where I list 

3 the things that have been completed and how 

4 much resources to that -- well, have not been 

5 used, there are many Site Profile reviews that 

6 we have completed over the last five years 

7 that have no Work Group, and in the table I 

8 put zero dollars there, because we have not 

9 yet been tasked. There is no Work Group, and 

10 we have not been tasked to do anything with 

11 that Work Group.

12 So I am not assuming there will be 

13 money, because we may never get to that. So 

14 the dollars that are in there that I am saying 

15 are sort of committed, these are really 

16 committed. They are not anticipating that 

17 maybe someday a Work Group will form to look 

18 at Weldon Spring or to look at X-10 or K-25. 

19 These are all Site Profiles that we have 

20 completed, but there really is no active Work 

21 Group. So I did not put any dollars in.

22 If I did that, if I were to assume 
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1 that there would be a Work Group opened on 

2 every single one of these that are Site 

3 Profiles that we have already performed, I 

4 would say that we would probably be very close 

5 to have already have committed all the dollars 

6 available to SC&A. 

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So, John, do you 

8 want to -- I don't know if you have slides 

9 ready or what, just as a way of putting these 

10 up in front of people. I am not sure that 

11 everybody has them in front of them.

12 DR. MAURO: We have a stick here 

13 with that on it. I am trying to track it 

14 down.

15 MR. KATZ: While John is getting 

16 ready, let me just check on the line. Chris 

17 Cox, are you on this line, by any chance? Oh, 

18 okay, no need. I am just getting a signal 

19 from the audience. Thank you.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: While they are 

21 working on that, I will address two other --

22 bring up two other things that I think we have 
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1 identified in terms of Work Groups. 

2 One is Lawrence Berkeley where we 

3 did approve an SEC. We have a Site Profile 

4 review that, I believe, is undergoing 

5 classification review but should be -- if my 

6 memory is right, it should be back shortly, 

7 and the question is do we want to try to form 

8 a Work Group to go through that Site Profile 

9 and resolve that. So I think that is one we 

10 need to assign.

11 The second one is United Nuclear, 

12 which would be sort of the subgroup that --

13 what we are calling that sub-Working Group --

14 would coordinate with Paul's committee.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: One possible 

16 suggestion that came up, actually, during the 

17 break was that it might be worth thinking 

18 about splitting the TBD thing and do TBD-6000 

19 and its facilities, the Appendices, and TBD20 6001.

21 So the suggestion would be, for 

22 example, to take the current Work Group and 
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1 make it the TBD-6000 Work Group, and it would 

2 continue to have General Steel Industries, and 

3 then to appoint a new Work Group for TBD-6001 

4 and the Appendices that come under it.

5 A further suggestion would be to 

6 take some of the -- have some overlap in 

7 membership, so that there is some continuity, 

8 so maybe a couple of Members, perhaps, and 

9 certainly include a couple of the new people. 

10 That would be the suggestion.

11 Was United a 6000?

12 MEMBER MUNN: It is 6000.

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: 6001. So that 

14 would fall under the new Work Group.

15 MEMBER MUNN: It is?

16 DR. NETON: TBD-6001 is uranium 

17 production type facilities, and I believe that 

18 would be United Nuclear. TBD-6000 is uranium 

19 metalwork type operations.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think the 

21 general consensus is that that is a good idea. 

22 So that would be the second Work Group that 
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1 we need to form.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right, and I would 

3 point out Electro Metallurgical is also a 

4 6001. That is Appendix C, I believe, of 6001. 

5 I don't know if LaVon can confirm that.

6 DR. NETON: I believe that 

7 Electro-Met -- I believe that is a 6001, 

8 because that was a uranium recovery.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right. I have it 

10 down as Appendix C of 6001.

11 DR. NETON: Okay. Yes, I think 

12 that is correct.

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: So Electro 

14 Metallurgical would also join that, whereas 

15 Bliss & Laughlin, I believe, is a 6000.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: John, while we 

17 have you up there, before we start this, off 

18 the top of your head, are there other finished 

19 Site Profiles where you have not had Work 

20 Groups assigned yet? There are a number.

21 DR. MAURO: Oh, yes. They are in 

22 the -- one of the packages I gave you lists 
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1 all the Site Profiles that we have done. The 

2 ones in bold in the copy that you have -- the 

3 ones in bold are the Site Profile reviews that 

4 have been completed, but there is no Work 

5 Group. Is it apparent on your copies?

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I am trying to 

7 see if I have the right copy here or if it is 

8 on the other. Well, rather than hold up, why 

9 don't I ask. I am going to ask for volunteers 

10 first for the new 6001 Work Group, an idea of 

11 who would be interested in serving on that.

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: I would offer to 

13 be an overlapping member of that.

14 MR. KATZ: So, Mark, you said yes?

15 MEMBER ANDERSON: As long as there 

16 is somebody else who is overlapping. I don't 

17 want to be lead on anything.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I will 

19 overlap, too, if we need another overlap.

20 MEMBER ANDERSON: I would be happy 

21 to do that.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think, at this 
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1 point we are not going to assign any of the --

2 we are not going to make new Members of the 

3 Board as Work Group Chairs yet, and we will 

4 take into account overlapping, try to get who 

5 is willing, so to speak, on that.

6 MEMBER ANDERSON: The 6000 group?

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: This would be 

8 the new 6001 group. It would overlap. So I 

9 have got that filled.

10 MR. KATZ: Okay, that is four.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And Mark.

12 MR. KATZ: Who would Chair?

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We will see 

14 where we are with that and so forth. Then for 

15 Lawrence Berkeley.

16 MEMBER ANDERSON: Do you meet at 

17 Berkeley? I'll take that.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Wanda? David or 

19 Mike, if you are still on the phone, are you 

20 interested?

21 MEMBER GIBSON: Jim, this is Mike. 

22 If you need someone for one of the Work 
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1 Groups, I will volunteer.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. What I 

3 will do is also follow up with Jim Lockey, and 

4 then I will figure this out later, and then do 

5 the assignments.

6 DR. NETON: There are three people 

7 on that one?

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We may just do 

9 three or something. John?

10 DR. MAURO: We ready? Thank you. 

11 I wasn't expecting to go through this. So I 

12 won't take up too much of your time.

13 I put up -- you folks have all 

14 received this email report dated February 6th. 

15 I know you receive a lot of material, but I 

16 sent this, basically, I thought it would be 

17 helpful, given that we have been -- our budget 

18 is fully approved for this year as of January 

19 1st, and it turns out that that budget is 

20 always about $3.4 million, $3.5 million.

21 So what we are looking at is the 

22 big picture right now. Stay with me, and I 
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1 will get this under control. There it is. 

2 Okay.

3 As of January 1st -- and you can 

4 think of it as the project manager for SC&A --

5 we have $3.4 million available to us or 

6 available to the full Board to task us. Now 

7 it is important to recognize that, as of this 

8 date, we have a lot of work that we are still 

9 working on.

10 We have work that was tasked last 

11 year. There is a lot of -- there are Work 

12 Groups active. So what, in effect, the second 

13 line says is, well, we have work in progress 

14 right now that we are already involved in, and 

15 we have work products that we owe you. As of 

16 today, that is $1.3 million as of today. So 

17 we already have a backlog where we have 

18 deliverables that I estimate will cost $1.3 

19 million.

20 Now the third line says, I 

21 anticipate that this upcoming year we are 

22 going to require -- SC&A will require, sort of 
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1 like effectively committed, $360,000 to 

2 support program management. What program 

3 management is, SC&A -- whenever we come to 

4 these meetings, that is part of program 

5 management, and it is basically my time. So 

6 it is supporting meetings, but that is 

7 effectively committed. So that is really not 

8 available, so to speak.

9 The next is: we also expect that 

10 you will be assigning us this year 60 new DR 

11 reviews. That has sort of been a staple. So 

12 I am making the assumption that during the 

13 course of this year we will be asked to 

14 perform 60 new dose reconstructions. It is a 

15 presumption.

16 On that basis, as of today we have 

17 committed -- we are effectively committed to 

18 $2.3 million out of the $3.5 million. So the 

19 Board has what I would call discretionary 

20 funds of $1.15 million available to it to task 

21 us. So that is sort of where we are right 

22 now.
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1 So, in theory, you could task us 

2 to do -- today to do some work, and the 

3 purpose of that is to set the stage to say, 

4 okay, that is the resources available to the 

5 Board to task SC&A.

6 Now you folks probably have a 

7 sense regarding the degree to which there is 

8 any new SEC work that you think might be 

9 needed that you might want us to task us. I 

10 am not addressing those here. I am just 

11 simply -- what I am doing now is saying in the 

12 past historically, the places beside Dose 

13 Reconstruction Reviews, which seem to be very 

14 consistent -- year after year after year, we 

15 do 60 a year. That is why I have put them in. 

16 I am just assuming you are going to want us 

17 to do that. 

18 So that money is effectively 

19 committed. But tasking us to do Site Profile 

20 Reviews is sort of like -- I call it a 

21 judgment that you make from time to time, 

22 whether you would like us to do any Site 
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1 Profile Reviews.

2 What you are looking at here is a 

3 list of all of the Site Profiles that are out 

4 there that we have not reviewed, SC&A has not 

5 reviewed. There may be some of them now, in 

6 light of where the developments are, that 

7 might be of interest that you might want us to 

8 task, and I have put down the price. It is a 

9 menu.

10 So a judgment could be made. 

11 Effectively, you have $1.5 million available 

12 to you. For example, if you wanted us to do 

13 all the Site Profile Reviews that are out 

14 there right now, I totaled it all up. It 

15 would require almost half the budget we 

16 currently have left.

17 By the way, these are relatively 

18 inexpensive. Your experience in the past is 

19 that they were a lot more expensive, because 

20 we were doing the big ones: Hanford, Savannah 

21 River. What is left are what I consider to be 

22 relatively small ones. 
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1 So that is why these are

2 relatively inexpensive, but I would like to 

3 put you in a position -- and that is why I 

4 presented this to you -- that, if you elect to 

5 task us to do any Site Profile Reviews, here 

6 is how much they will cost, and you will see 

7 what it does to the budget.

8 You may not want to do that. You 

9 may want to save the resources to do SEC10 related work. Besides Site Profile Reviews, 

11 there also are some procedures that you might 

12 want reviewed. There aren't very many left.

13 We have basically reviewed all of 

14 them. We have reviewed about 130 procedures, 

15 and we are well along in the issues 

16 resolution, but there are a few remaining. I 

17 listed those and their price.

18 Finally, PERs: this is something 

19 that is emerging. To date, we have only 

20 performed three PER reviews. We did Blockson 

21 PER, thoracic lymphoma, and high-fired 

22 plutonium, and we have delivered those reports 
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1 to you.

2 These are a list of all of the 

3 PERs that are out there, and the number of 

4 cases that they affect. In other words, you 

5 may decide that, yes -- the way I am starting 

6 to look at it is there really aren't very many 

7 procedures, but maybe there are some PERs that 

8 you might be interested in having reviewed.

9 These are all the PERs, and the 

10 number of cases that might be are impacted 

11 that were reevaluated. In other words, every 

12 one of these PERs resulted in a reevaluation 

13 of the cases. So the second column tells you 

14 how many cases were reevaluated. That will 

15 help you make a judgment which ones might be 

16 important to look at, and I have put down the 

17 price that we estimate it would cost to do it.

18 So in effect, this is a listing of 

19 here's the resources that are available to the 

20 Board, and here are all of the different kinds 

21 of things you might want SC&A to do or not do, 

22 bearing in mind that I think your greatest 
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1 interest has been, and probably continues to 

2 be, SEC-related activities.

3 So I guess I will leave it at that 

4 point. That is, you can make a judgment on 

5 some SECs, and I am going to try to keep you 

6 apprised of where we stand, because if we 

7 start to open up, let's say, a lot more Work 

8 Groups to look at many of the old Site 

9 Profiles we reviewed, the burn rate will start 

10 to increase, and I could see a situation 

11 arising where SC&A will run out of money 

12 before the end of the year.

13 We have been very fortunate, I 

14 have to say, over the last six years that the 

15 way in which the work has unfolded is we have 

16 been in budget. We have never been in a 

17 situation where we ran out of money by the end 

18 of the year.

19 Given that we have new Board 

20 Members, given that there may be more Work 

21 Groups, more Site Profiles that are going to 

22 go through issues resolution, the burn rate of 
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1 SC&A may increase. I will keep you apprised 

2 on a routine basis of when I think we might be 

3 in trouble. I think that is what I was hoping 

4 to explain.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. 

6 Don't leave there. Can you go back to the 

7 Site Profile page? 

8 As I said earlier, what we have 

9 traditionally done is we've tried to do this 

10 incrementally, recognizing that, again, we 

11 don't want to have an important SEC evaluation 

12 that we can't address. At the same time, we 

13 don't want to let things -- we don't want to 

14 end up with essentially a lot of money left in 

15 the contract, unused resources, and find that 

16 we haven't dealt with issues, and they stay 

17 around for too long.

18 I think what we have tried to do 

19 in terms of prioritizing the Site Profiles and 

20 so forth is basically a sense of what the 

21 number of cases there, so how important are 

22 they for that? I think that, given these 
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1 costs, we can make some assignments on, again 

2 off the top of my head, four or five of these 

3 Site Profiles to do.

4 Ted, do you want to comment on 

5 that?

6 MR. KATZ: No. Before we actually 

7 get into the dialogue about which, I would 

8 like to discuss what I was planning to discuss 

9 about tasking in this sort of situation.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

11 MR. KATZ: Is this the time to do 

12 that?

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That is the time 

14 to do it, before it is too late.

15 MR. KATZ: Okay. Thank you. So 

16 this came up with the PER tasking the last 

17 Board meeting, and I have gotten some 

18 guidance. I want to make it clear, this 

19 guidance is interim guidance, because the 

20 source of this guidance needs to consult with 

21 others who are expert for this sort of 

22 situation.
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1 The guidance for now, when we have 

2 a situation like this with PERs or Site 

3 Profiles where there are multiple sites, and 

4 it is really not practical for Board Members 

5 to leave because they might be conflicted with 

6 one site; but if you have a whole bundle of 

7 sites that we will be discussing all at once, 

8 the practice would be, when the discussion 

9 comes around to a site that you are conflicted 

10 at, for you to just state for the record that 

11 you are recused from the discussion, to put 

12 that on the record at that point that it comes 

13 up, and then, of course, not engage in that 

14 discussion at all.

15 Then if it is decided by the rest 

16 that that is a site for which we want to task, 

17 then there needs to be an individual -- we 

18 need to do a roll-call type vote as opposed to 

19 -- in the past, I think we have often just 

20 sort of done a general consensus, a verbal 

21 tally that everybody agrees, but in this case, 

22 we actually need to make it clear on the 
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1 record that the person with the conflict did 

2 not vote in favor of that tasking for that 

3 site.

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: What do we do for 

5 like high-fired -- and this came up before 

6 with high-fired plutonium PER where we would 

7 not retain -- I am not sure we would retain a 

8 quorum? Maybe we will, but I think a lot of 

9 people would have to -- could be conflicted on 

10 that one because it affects so many sites.

11 MR. KATZ: And that particular, 

12 for example, one -- and there are not that 

13 many that, I think, fall in that bucket, but I 

14 would suggest we don't deal with that right 

15 now. 

16 MEMBER MUNN: Ted is our man.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It would cut 

18 down on the number of Board comments, though. 

19 That is for sure. Actually, John Poston had 

20 a question or a comment.

21 MEMBER POSTON: We may be asking 

22 the same question. John, I noticed on the 
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1 unreviewed projected cost for the Site 

2 Profiles that West Valley is on there twice. 

3 DR. MAURO: Is it?

4 MEMBER POSTON: Yes.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: At least, the 

6 cost didn't change.

7 MEMBER POSTON: That is the 

8 question. Should we reduce the cost by 

9 60,000?

10 DR. MAURO: That is it exactly. I 

11 am sorry about that.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Wanda?

13 MEMBER MUNN: In looking at those 

14 Site Profiles, Canoga and De Soto jump out at 

15 me because of the discussion that we had about 

16 them during this very meeting. It may be only 

17 my sense, but it seems that it is going to be 

18 very difficult for us to segregate the Canoga 

19 and De Soto sites from the other Santa Susana 

20 activities. They appear to be so intertwined. 

21 It would appear logically to me 

22 that that particular pair of Site Profiles 
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1 would be amongst those that we would choose.

2 With respect to the PERs, if there 

3 is nothing --

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Maybe, can we do 

5 it maybe Site Profiles, then procedures, then 

6 PERs?

7 MEMBER MUNN: I wasn't even going 

8 to address individual PERs.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, then.

10 MEMBER MUNN: What I was going to 

11 suggest is that, because we have had such a 

12 lengthy discussion about it in Procedures, we 

13 have just about beaten this to death, but we 

14 have not yet worked out the final thinking 

15 with respect to how we really should address 

16 the business of who has what responsibility 

17 for reviewing the PERs and how we were going 

18 to do it.

19 We intend to do that at our March 

20 meeting, and if we can, in fact, bring that 

21 information to the Board so that you can have 

22 the Subcommittee's recommendation on how to 
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1 deal with PERs, then that might give us a 

2 better handle on how to go forward choosing 

3 our group.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Excellent. 

5 Good. Then that would be something we could 

6 take up on our March 31st phone call.

7 MEMBER MUNN: Correct.

8 DR. MAURO: May I say something 

9 regarding the PERs? We have delivered three 

10 PER reports, but they are not complete. The 

11 last part of them is the review of selected 

12 cases. So that is one of the places where, 

13 once a judgment is made on the responsibility, 

14 one of the first things that will need to be 

15 done would be identification of cases that 

16 should be reviewed to see the degree to which, 

17 in fact, the PERs were implemented.

18 So that is something that is not 

19 on this chart, but that remains to be done. 

20 One of the things I had mentioned is, we could 

21 identify some that we think might be useful to 

22 test or we just could wait until the Board 
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1 points out which cases you would like us to 

2 review.

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: Is that 

4 considered in your cost estimate, John, 

5 reviewing the cases?

6 DR. MAURO: The review of the 

7 cases is included in the cost estimate. I 

8 assumed three cases, but the last one we did -

9 - turns out that one of the most recent 

10 reviews we just completed, which was the 

11 thoracic -- no, I forget which one -- one of 

12 the last ones we just completed, we think it 

13 is going to take more than three cases. There 

14 may be as many as 10, because there are so 

15 many dimensions to the problem.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. You had 

17 originally -- when you were talking to us in 

18 Procedures, you said probably a minimum of 

19 seven, and more than likely more.

20 DR. MAURO: On that particular 

21 one.

22 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, on that 
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1 particular one.

2 DR. MAURO: But in general, we 

3 felt we will do three just to confirm that it 

4 was done, but this one had lots of dimensions 

5 to it. I just don't recall which.

6 MEMBER MUNN: Just another one of 

7 those things that we hadn't finished working 

8 through in Procedures.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I understand. 

10 Good point. Brad?

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: I guess, looking 

12 at this, I am looking for a little bit of a 

13 bang for my buck, because Clarksville and 

14 Medina, 90 percent of the information on those 

15 facilities is at Pantex, plus on numerous 

16 petitioners a large amount of the people came 

17 from Clarksville and Medina to Pantex.

18 I feel they are kind of important 

19 to get in place for the main site that I am 

20 working with now. All the information that 

21 was in those facilities went down to where we 

22 are at now. So I think, just to be able to 
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1 make it easier, it sure would be nice to get 

2 those going. They are a part of it.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Are we going to 

4 be able to get the information, I guess, is my 

5 question.

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: That is another 

7 question, but in some of the information that 

8 I have already reviewed -- and also a majority 

9 of the petitioners that I have ran into, 

10 numerous ones of them have already come from 

11 Clarksville and Medina, and this is part of 

12 their issues: where did everything go? We 

13 haven't reviewed those.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The only 

15 hesitation I would have is that we -- if I 

16 understand this right -- so we would make the 

17 assignment to SC&A. Nothing could be done, 

18 because in terms of getting information back 

19 and so forth, and we would have all this money 

20 committed that we might need for other uses. 

21 I guess we can readjust it at some point.

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: I think that we 
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1 are getting at the door right now with the 

2 issues that DOE has committed to assist us 

3 with and so forth. I think we are going to 

4 get there, and I understand your concern. It 

5 is just that, while we are already there, we

6 might as well be pulling this other stuff, 

7 kind of a bigger bang for our buck.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: My question 

9 would be the top two on the list there that 

10 have the most cases, and I think we have put 

11 off on Pacific Northwest for a while, and the 

12 same on Kansas City. It has come up before, 

13 and we should address those.

14 So I guess we will do the 

15 6000/6001. You have separate lists for those, 

16 I believe, John.

17 DR. MAURO: Yes. What I did here 

18 --

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Just sum them.

20 DR. MAURO: Yes. The actual 

21 individual ones are listed later on in the 

22 write-up, and you can see, the individual ones 
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1 are relatively inexpensive. Quite frankly, 

2 many of them have already gone through what I 

3 would call a mini-review, because I have done 

4 a lot of cases where, when I review the case, 

5 I have to review the Appendix. Now it is not 

6 a very thorough review. It is only reviewed 

7 to the extent to which it applies to the case.

8 That is why you could see there 

9 are 15 AWEs, and the total price of the 15 is 

10 whatever that number there is, $72,000.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So if my quick 

12 math is correct, for the six that we have 

13 talked about, Pacific Northwest, the Kansas 

14 City plant, the Clarksville-Medina, Canoga, De 

15 Soto, that would be about $270,000 or so to 

16 do? Let's do the 6000/6001 separately.

17 So if we got those going now in 

18 terms of assignments, is that reasonable with 

19 everybody? Now the conflicts and then the 

20 vote, but --

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: Those six?

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Those six, yes. 
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1 So could we have a motion from somebody on 

2 the Board?

3 MEMBER ANDERSON: So moved.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So moved. Thank 

5 you.

6 MEMBER LEMEN: I will second.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Second from 

8 Dick. All in favor?

9 (A chorus of ayes.)

10 Opposed?

11 (No response.)

12 Abstain?

13 (No response.)

14 Okay. I think Wanda proposed that 

15 we -- on Procedures and PERs, we hold off 

16 until the March 31st call, when we will hear 

17 from the Subcommittee. So that then would 

18 leave any assignments on the 6000 and 6001. I 

19 don't know, Paul, if you have any comments on 

20 what would are priorities on those? It is 

21 quite a long list.

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, John, remind 
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1 me. On Appendix BB, which is General Steel, 

2 you have already covered that in the existing 

3 budget.

4 DR. MAURO: Yes.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: So that is not an 

6 issue.

7 DR. MAURO: These are exposure 

8 matrices that we have not yet reviewed.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Now on both 

10 Electro Metallurgical and Bliss & Laughlin, 

11 last time what we said was something similar 

12 to what has been said on Piqua, that we wanted 

13 the Work Group to look at it first to see 

14 whether or not -- no, one of those we did 

15 task. That is right.

16 DR. MAURO: We are almost done 

17 with both of those.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: Oh, we did that. 

19 That's right. I know we had talked about 

20 that, and then we did task them both. So 

21 those are --

22 DR. MAURO: Those are close to 
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1 being delivered.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right, and I don't 

3 have a feel on the new ones, whether we would 

4 want to task those now or authorize the 

5 tasking and let the Work Group, the new Work 

6 Group look at the new one or not.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I would say, 

8 given the process, let's authorize the 

9 tasking. At least, I would be comfortable 

10 with that.

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: For all the 

12 6000/6001?

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: That would be 

15 United Nuclear.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: On United Nuclear, 

18 let's see, you also mentioned that that is 

19 being revised -- right -- that Appendix. So 

20 we need to clarify the status before we have 

21 them --

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. It is being 
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1 revised. I don't have a date for when it will 

2 be completed, but that Appendix is being 

3 revised.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: I am not sure we 

5 want to authorize --

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: I could give the 

7 Board an update at the Board conference call.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: That would be 

9 good. Then if it is revised, then we could 

10 immediately begin the tasking.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And then that is 

12 also going to affect the SEC.

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So your 

15 suggestion is a motion?

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, the 

17 suggestion is to defer the tasking. If we 

18 don't task, we don't need a motion anyway. We 

19 don't need a motion to not task, I don't 

20 think, unless we need to stop it.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: By the way, I 

22 want to introduce one person. The new CDC 
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1 Contracting Officer has been here with us. I 

2 think many of you have seen him. Ruben Cruz 

3 is there. Welcome, and glad to be able to 

4 work with you, and look forward to doing that. 

5 I also worked with him on World Trade Center 

6 medical program. So he has quite a challenge 

7 in terms of sort of different programs, I 

8 guess you would call them, the large and 

9 complicated.

10 Good. Anything else?

11 DR. MAURO: Thank you. Thank you 

12 very much.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. I 

14 don't know what order I said we would do it 

15 in, but we have the five letters to do. 

16 Counsel's office is sick of hearing me. So 

17 Emily has given us permission not to read the 

18 letters into the record, but we will be 

19 providing them to the Court Reporter. So they 

20 will be in the record, but we will do that.

21 There are five of them. One that 

22 somehow the heading got left off, that is, 
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1 obviously, the Nevada Test Site; LLNL; Santa 

2 Susana; Lawrence Berkeley; and Westinghouse.

3 Are there comments or changes? I 

4 believe Emily wanted to make some corrections.

5 MR. KATZ: Are we doing these one 

6 by one, LLNL to start with?

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, I guess. I 

8 was hoping we could do a motion as a group and 

9 adopt them with the changes.

10 MEMBER ANDERSON: Just a question, 

11 what is the supporting documentation? Is 

12 that just transcripts?

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That is 

14 transcripts of -- petition reports, all the 

15 information, yes. 

16 MEMBER ANDERSON: So it is a big 

17 pack?

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

19 MS. HOWELL: I think, due to 

20 conflict of interest concerns, we may need to 

21 separate them.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That is a good 
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1 point.

2 MR. KATZ: That is what I was 

3 going to say. It is just that we have two 

4 people who have conflicts, one -- two of 

5 these, one for Lawrence Livermore and then one 

6 person is conflicted for Berkeley. So we 

7 can't do these as a group.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So why 

9 don't we start -- what is on top of your pile 

10 there?

11 MS. HOWELL: NTS.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, let's 

13 start with NTS.

14 MS. HOWELL: I will clarify. I 

15 gave Dr. Melius a copy of some minor, more

16 grammatical --

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: A point of order, 

18 if I might. We have already approved this. 

19 All that we are doing is editing the material. 

20 So I just want to make sure it is editing.

21 MR. KATZ: I do understand that. 

22 I understand, but --
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: We are not going 

2 to vote on anything.

3 MR. KATZ: I understand we are not 

4 voting, but we are discussing, and it is 

5 discussing the substance of one of the sites. 

6 Even though it is just editing, it is just 

7 safe --

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: I wasn't sure that 

9 we were discussing substance so much as 

10 editing.

11 MS. HOWELL: So I gave Dr. Melius 

12 earlier copies of each of the letters that had 

13 some grammar issues and places where the 

14 language in the Class Definition did not 

15 exactly track with the Class Definition 

16 language in the NIOSH SEC Evaluation Report. 

17 Those are all pretty minor changes. The only 

18 things I am going to talk about are a few 

19 bigger issues. I will leave that to you, and 

20 I did not have any comments regarding NTS.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I would just add 

22 for NTS, it is a little different from some 
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1 other letters. Some of this was taken as a 

2 paragraph there, under the bullets. It was 

3 something we had commented on with the 

4 previous above-ground testing, about people 

5 working on-site, actually living on-site, and 

6 asking Department of Labor to take note of 

7 that, which I believe they do. So it is not 

8 an unusual request but, otherwise, it is 

9 relatively standard.

10 Any comments on that? If not --

11 MEMBER MUNN: I have only one 

12 question. I am assuming that counsel and 

13 someone else has double-checked the dates in 

14 each of these letters. I did not take the 

15 time to check the dates. They are correct.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I did okay on 

17 the dates.

18 MEMBER MUNN: Good. Thank you.

19 MR. KATZ: Just for the record, 

20 Mark can rejoin the table. 

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

22 MS. HOWELL: The next one in my 
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1 pile is Santa Susana. In Santa Susana, I 

2 requested that the language in the second 

3 paragraph be changed to delete Section 83.13 

4 and the word and from the fourth line down, 

5 since this is an 83.14 SEC Petition.

6 I also requested that the location 

7 of Ventura County, California, be deleted from 

8 the Class Definition, since it doesn't appear 

9 in the NIOSH Class Definition. We have had 

10 some concerns in the past with physical 

11 locations being included.

12 Then a third issue: the second 

13 bullet on the page, second line, if you could 

14 change the word laboratories to facilities, so 

15 that it reads, radiological operations at 

16 these facilities, in order to be able to 

17 complete accurate individual dose 

18 reconstructions, et cetera.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Anybody else 

20 have comments? Dr. Ziemer?

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, one comment. 

22 If you delete Ventura County, California, is 
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1 there an address location that can be used 

2 other than just the title?

3 MS. HOWELL: My concern with the 

4 location -- I don't have a problem --

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: I know the Ventura 

6 County part was probably the issue, though. 

7 Right? 

8 MS. HOWELL: That would be fine. 

9 My concern is that the location -- that 

10 sentence -- that Ventura County, California, 

11 appears in is actual Class Definition. If you 

12 would like to put a location in the very first 

13 sentence, then that is better, but in the 

14 Class Definition, the concern was if there is 

15 any tiny part of the facility that falls 

16 outside of Ventura County, we don't want DOL 

17 to have an issue with the implementation.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And actually, 

19 when we did the first one there, we had that 

20 particular question. There was uncertainty 

21 about location, because things had moved 

22 around or something. I can't remember the 
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1 details, but that was what we did. I just 

2 forgot to take it out there. Next?

3 MS. HOWELL: The next one in my 

4 stack is Lawrence Berkeley. MR. KATZ: 

5 And for the record, Dr. Field is recusing 

6 himself.

7 MS. HOWELL: In this letter, 

8 again, on the second paragraph, fourth line 

9 down, if you could remove the reference to 

10 83.13 and that phrase, since it is an 83.14, 

11 and those were the only comments I had for 

12 that one.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Everybody else 

14 okay?

15 MEMBER ANDERSON: Is it okay with 

16 Berkeley, California?

17 MS. HOWELL: The next one in my 

18 stack is Westinghouse. Again, if you could in 

19 the second paragraph, fourth sentence, remove 

20 the reference to Section "83.13 and." 

21 MEMBER ANDERSON: It is just a 

22 generic letter, right?
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: At one point we 

2 had both in, on advice of counsel. Now we 

3 have better counsel.

4 MS. HOWELL: And that was all I 

5 had on that one. 

6 The next one -- I believe the last 

7 one in my stack is Lawrence Livermore.

8 MR. KATZ: And for the record, Dr. 

9 Poston has recused himself.

10 MS. HOWELL: We wanted to make 

11 sure that Board Members had an opportunity to 

12 stretch their legs.

13 On that one, the second paragraph, 

14 fourth line down, once again just remove 

15 "83.13 and." That was all. All of the dates 

16 were correct.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Dr. Ziemer had a 

18 correction under the second bullet, just to 

19 say that at the end of that, the Board concurs 

20 with this determination. It has sort of 

21 become our standard language in that area.

22 MEMBER MUNN: What?
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: End of the 

2 second bullet, add as the last sentence, "The 

3 Board concurs with this determination," for 

4 the second bullet. 

5 MEMBER MUNN: So we will be saying 

6 twice, "The Board concurs"?

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Excuse me. We 

8 have on all of these letters except for this 

9 one. 

10 MEMBER ANDERSON: We got to show 

11 some independence here. That's fine.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We have Board 

13 correspondence. Dr. Poston, you are welcome 

14 back. Ted, you are going to have to help 

15 here.

16 MR. KATZ: Correspondence?

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Correspondence, 

18 yes.

19 MR. KATZ: So we have the letter 

20 from ANWAG, the beefiest one.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: There is a 

22 letter from the ANWAG group that actually 
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1 precedes the meeting that, I believe, Lew Wade 

2 talked about that, or John Howard, earlier. 

3 So some of their issues have been discussed at 

4 that meeting and, Dr. Ziemer, you attended, I 

5 believe.

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: You spoke of 

8 that. I guess the question is were there 

9 issues there that -- in terms of answering 

10 their letter, are there issues that weren't 

11 addressed there. Some, clearly, we are, like 

12 we are addressing the surrogate data issue in 

13 terms of follow-up.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: I was looking for 

15 the letter itself. One of the issues, my 

16 recollection is that ANWAG had requested 

17 automatic tasking of NIOSH -- not of NIOSH --

18 of SC&A whenever NIOSH produced an Evaluation 

19 Report for which they indicated that they 

20 could reconstruct dose with sufficient 

21 accuracy that the Board not wait to do the 

22 tasking, that it be done automatically.
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1 I am looking for the letter.

2 MEMBER ROESSLER: From 

3 [identifying information redacted] to you?

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, and it was 

5 distributed. Oh, here it is, I believe.

6 I think Dr. Melius was asking me 

7 if all of the issues had been covered, and let 

8 me just identify the issues. One of the 

9 issues was the use of surrogate data. They 

10 were concerned about that, and of course, that 

11 is being addressed. 

12 I believe -- I am looking at the 

13 letter now to see -- basically, a concern on 

14 the use of surrogate data and the parameters 

15 there; urges the Board to reverse their 

16 position, and it says to advise the President 

17 that the use of surrogate data is inconsistent 

18 with the spirit of EEOICPA.

19 I think, in the context of our 

20 discussion earlier today, beginning with the 

21 discussion by Dr. Miller and then the work of 

22 the Surrogate Data Group, I think that is 
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1 being addressed.

2 Another issue was the 

3 confidentiality issue on the disclosure of 

4 worker identity when workers talk to people, 

5 particularly at the sites where there were 

6 classified information. I am not quite sure 

7 where that stands now. 

8 There was concern that the 

9 identity of those that SC&A spoke to was being 

10 revealed to the federal agencies. That was 

11 one of the concerns that was raised. Again, I 

12 leave it to the Chair, to the extent we 

13 discuss that.

14 There was also concern about SC&A 

15 having to turn over their documents to OCAS, 

16 again, I think, related to those -- all of the 

17 things that SC&A retrieved, and the issue of 

18 who owns the work product.

19 Oh, and then she talks about the 

20 joint meeting and invites us to participate, 

21 which we did. So those were the issues 

22 raised. 
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: For the new 

2 Board Members and my recollection, the letters 

3 for the Board, other than simple 

4 acknowledgments, are all discussed with the 

5 Board before they go out. In this case, I 

6 think we could respond, if it is okay with 

7 people, respond informationally to them that, 

8 yes, we have attended the meeting, we followed 

9 up, and we are taking these issues under 

10 consideration and will at future meetings. If 

11 that is okay with people, I will send that 

12 letter out, and then circulate that.

13 We have a second letter. This is 

14 dated December 3 from -- I don't believe this 

15 is in the package, or not. I can't recall, 

16 but it is relatively short. It is from 

17 Senator Durbin in Illinois: "Writing on 

18 behalf of my constituents who" --

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: That is under 

20 miscellaneous.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oh, that is 

22 under miscellaneous, basically about General 
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1 Steel Industries. I think a response back to 

2 Senator Durbin would be to the effect that we 

3 have an active Work Group that is considering 

4 this and is following up on it, and we expect 

5 to take action in the near future. I think 

6 that that -- is that kind of response 

7 appropriate?

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: My only comment 

9 here: I originally didn't think this letter 

10 called for a response, simply because he was 

11 simply indicating that he supported this 

12 petition. At a minimum, probably it would be 

13 good to indicate that we have received his 

14 letter. It has been distributed to the Board, 

15 in addition to the suggestion you have made 

16 that the Working Group is developing a 

17 recommendation for the Board.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right. I think 

19 we should try to acknowledge the letter.

20 The other letter we have is from -

21 - that was read yesterday when we discussed 

22 NTS -- from Senator Reid, I think, which we 
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1 have obviously taken care of the SEC. He 

2 asked for follow-up on three other issues, and 

3 I think you heard me respond to his staff 

4 person with what we were doing on those 

5 issues. I would just write an acknowledgment 

6 letter back just saying, thanks for the 

7 letter; we have done the SEC, and the other 

8 three issues that you raised, we are following 

9 up on -- or, actually, NIOSH is addressing two 

10 of them. So is that satisfactory? Okay.

11 I think that is our last letter. 

12 The only other letter we have is when we talk 

13 about what I believe is our final item, the 

14 next meeting. Checking with Ted to make sure 

15 I didn't miss anything.

16 MR. KATZ: Yes. Not a letter, but 

17 the next item is future meetings.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Next item. It 

19 is also a letter, too, because we have a 

20 request regarding a meeting place.

21 MR. KATZ: We do. 

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, let's talk 
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1 about the meeting first. Scheduled for March 

2 31st.

3 MR. KATZ: Yes. So presently we 

4 have a teleconference on March 31st, and then 

5 -- sorry, let me go to my records here. We 

6 have our meeting at INL in Idaho, and that is 

7 in August. Let me find my dates here, August 

8 10-12 in Idaho Falls, and given how much -- we 

9 might want to query the Board at this point, 

10 given how much work there will be at that 

11 meeting, as to whether we are going to be able 

12 to do it in three days.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It was scheduled 

14 for two days, right? Three days?

15 MR. KATZ: The schedule is three 

16 days, yes. I am just wondering if three days 

17 is going to be big enough. This is for Idaho 

18 Falls, August 10-12.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We have a May 

20 meeting.

21 MR. KATZ: Oh, I'm sorry. Excuse 

22 me. I did skip a lot. I'm sorry. May 19th 
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1 through the 21st is Buffalo, New York. How 

2 did I do that?

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And I think, due 

4 to various schedules, as I recall, this ended 

5 up being doing a Wednesday, Thursday and 

6 Friday, and I think there was a problem with 

7 Tuesday, and I can't remember, among some 

8 Board Members. So I think there we are --

9 MR. KATZ: We will have to squeeze 

10 in.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- we will have 

12 to squeeze in, in three days.

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: What was the 

14 date?

15 MR. KATZ: May 19th through 21st, 

16 and following that we have July 14th. That is 

17 French Independence Day. That is a 

18 teleconference.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Nancy is going 

20 to correct.

21 MS. ADAMS: This is Nancy Adams. 

22 Ted, there was some confusion. It is really 
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1 not Buffalo. It is Niagara Falls, is actually 

2 the location.

3 MR. KATZ: Yes. We call it 

4 Buffalo, I guess, but it is Niagara Falls.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Where are we in 

6 Niagara Falls?

7 MS. ADAMS: We are at the Crowne 

8 Plaza Hotel.

9 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Nancy.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: There is an 

11 airport in Niagara Falls they have been trying 

12 to get someone to fly to for a long time. I 

13 better not say anything more or I will get in 

14 trouble, a letter from the Niagara Falls 

15 Board.

16 MR. KATZ: Okay. So everyone has 

17 that July 14th teleconference. That is a 

18 teleconference.

19 Then we have August 10th through 

20 12th. That was what I was -- Idaho Falls.

21 MEMBER LEMEN: Do you know the 

22 hotel where that is at?
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1 MR. KATZ: I don't know. It may 

2 be set, but we will get information to you on 

3 that. I don't know that we have that set yet.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I would say, on 

5 the Idaho Falls meeting -- and, Brad, don't 

6 take offense, but given the time and how long 

7 it takes to get in and out of there, I think 

8 we would all be leaving on the morning --

9 Friday morning. I don't think -- maybe Josie 

10 and, obviously, Brad. Wanda might be able to 

11 get out. I don't even know if you can easily 

12 that night. So I think we will have three 

13 full days of meetings there.

14 MR. KATZ: I would also note, for 

15 that we are going to try to set up a tour of 

16 INL.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: On the 9th?

18 MR. KATZ: Yes, that is right, 

19 whatever, that fits, the 9th, a tour of INL 

20 and Argonne West, I think that is.

21 MEMBER GRIFFON: That won't take 

22 long. It is a small site.
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1 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Mark. Then 

2 we have a teleconference on October 7th. That 

3 is as far as we have scheduled. In your 

4 bullets, I framed approximately the right time 

5 frame is November 1st through the 19th for the 

6 next face to face, but of course, we will move 

7 in whatever direction we need to, to 

8 accommodate schedules.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I thought, these 

10 future meetings, we had an 18-day meeting.

11 MR. KATZ: I don't think anybody 

12 would survive 18 days together.

13 MEMBER MUNN: Was that in 

14 November?

15 MR. KATZ: That would be November.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Or December?

17 MR. KATZ: Well, November 1st 

18 through 19th is the right time frame. 

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Ted, what is the 

20 December date, 9th through 20th -- September 

21 20th through October 1st? 

22 MR. KATZ: That is -- ignore that. 
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1 That was, before I realized we already had 

2 the teleconference set up for October 7th. So 

3 you can ignore that. Ignore that little 

4 parenthetical in your agenda. No matter.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I guess November 

6 -- we all know, once we get past Thanksgiving, 

7 scheduling is always difficult.

8 MEMBER MUNN: We did pretty well 

9 this last year.

10 MR. KATZ: So we are looking from 

11 November 1st through the 19th for three days 

12 that work.

13 MEMBER MUNN: Well, some folks 

14 wouldn't like to meet on Tuesday, the 2nd, 

15 election day, and do the Feds have Veterans 

16 Day off on the 11th, or not?

17 MEMBER ANDERSON: How about the 

18 week of the 15th, the 15th through the 19th, 

19 somewhere in there?

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: How does that 

21 week work? 

22 MEMBER MUNN: That would do.
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1 MR. KATZ: It is perfect.

2 MEMBER MUNN: Sixteenth, 17, 18?

3 MR. KATZ: Sixteenth through 18th? 

4 Is that good for everybody? How about for 

5 you, David and Mike? 

6 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes, that should 

7 be okay, Ted.

8 MR. KATZ: How about David? 

9 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, I think 

10 that is okay.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

12 MR. KATZ: November 16th to the 

13 18th. Okay, that is dates then.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, we have a 

15 letter, a request from petitioners at Los 

16 Alamos. I believe it is a security guard 

17 petition group requesting that we meet in --

18 MEMBER LEMEN: Is that going to be 

19 a problem with snow? 

20 MR. KATZ: November 15th, it will 

21 be.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- in Los 
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1 Alamos. We have met times in Santa Fe, times 

2 in Albuquerque. 

3 MEMBER LEMEN: Whatever you want 

4 to do.

5 MEMBER MUNN: Albuquerque is no 

6 problem.

7 MEMBER LEMEN: I will just bring 

8 my snowshoes.

9 MR. KATZ; Is everybody in favor 

10 of that?

11 MEMBER POSTON: CDC has been 

12 having meetings at the Buffalo Thunder Resort, 

13 which is about halfway between Los Alamos and 

14 Santa Fe.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Do we think we 

16 will have something to talk about? Obviously, 

17 we have a full Board agenda, but in terms of 

18 the sites out there.

19 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, I think the 

20 LANL Work Group would have met at least. Joe, 

21 that is fair to say, right? LANL Work Group 

22 would have met prior to November. I think it 
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1 is fair to say that we will have made some 

2 progress and something to report.

3 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Can I throw in 

4 my two cents on location? At that time of 

5 year, it might be safer to pick Albuquerque. 

6 It is not a very long drive from Los Alamos to 

7 Albuquerque. 

8 MR. KATZ: So you think that would 

9 be okay for people from LANL to be able to 

10 attend? Okay.

11 Phil, how far is it for the LANL 

12 folks?

13 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: It is about an 

14 hour and a half. 

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We might have 

16 gotten out of Idaho Falls by then. Just come 

17 directly.

18 MEMBER PRESLEY: Santa Fe at that 

19 time of year will be all right.

20 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, it is.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Before we end 

22 the public meeting, are there any other 
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1 issues? I said the public part of the 

2 meeting. We won't forget ethics. 

3 One thing I don't think we have 

4 had time to do, and I will put on the -- I 

5 think we should put on the agenda for the next 

6 meeting is Lew did ask for some response and 

7 comments on the NIOSH review plan. I think, 

8 if individual Board Members want to comment 

9 directly to Lew in the meantime, since they 

10 are going to be doing some planning on this 

11 and so forth, it would be appropriate. Then 

12 we can also talk about it at the meeting 

13 coming up in March. Dr. Ziemer?

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: It just occurs to 

15 me -- I am thinking back a moment here to the 

16 ANWAG letter -- one of the items that was 

17 raised in that letter was the issue of 

18 automatic tasking of SC&A. We didn't actually 

19 deal with that.

20 Our practice has been to wait 

21 until the Board actually has a chance to see 

22 the Evaluation Report, and at least from my 
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1 point of view, I recommend that we continue 

2 that, but I think we owe at least the 

3 opportunity for Board Members who may not 

4 agree with that to voice that so that we can 

5 at least indicate what the consensus is.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And as I said, I 

7 noticed that also, but in, I think, the 

8 response we would say that some of these 

9 issues are under consideration and will be 

10 considered by the Board. We will respond to 

11 them, once we have done that.

12 Well, I will adjourn the public 

13 part of the meeting, and everybody can leave 

14 except us and Emily.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: Can we take a 

16 break?

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No. She said 

18 yes. Why don't we take a ten minute break.

19 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

20 matter went off the record at 4:43 p.m.)

21

22
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1

2

3

4