THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 

convenes the 

EIGHTEENTH MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

 VOLUME I 

 The verbatim transcript of the Meeting of the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health held 

at The Adams Mark St. Louis, 315 Chestnut Street, 

St. Louis, Missouri, on October 28, 2003. 

 C O N T E N T S

 

 October 28, 2003 
 2 

REGISTRATION AND WELCOME 

 Dr. Paul Ziemer, Chair. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 

 Mr. Larry Elliott, Executive Secretary . . . . . . . . 10 

REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF DRAFT MINUTES - MEETING 17 

 Dr. Paul Ziemer, Chair. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

.12 

CLAIMANT COMMUNICATION 

 Ms. Chris Ellison, NIOSH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 

PROGRAM STATUS REPORT 

 Mr. David Sundin, NIOSH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 

STATUS REPORT - DEPARTMENT OF LABOR 

 Mr. Jeff Kotsch, DOL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

.51 

STATUS REPORT - DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY 

 Mr. Tom Rollow, DOE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 

PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 

DOSE RECONSTRUCTION WORKGROUP 

 Mr. Mark Griffon, Workgroup Chair. . . . . . . . . . .111 

BOARD DISCUSSION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 

PUBLIC COMMENT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 

ADJOURN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .234 

 

COURT REPORTER'S CERTIFICATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 
 3 

 TRANSCRIPT LEGEND

 The following transcript contains quoted material. 

Such material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

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

unintentional or purposeful interruption of a sentence. An 

ellipsis (. . .) indicates halting speech or an unfinished 

sentence in dialogue or omission(s) of word(s) when reading 

written material. 

 In the following transcript (sic) denotes an incorrect 

usage or pronunciation of a word which is transcribed in its 

original form as reported. 

 In the following transcript (phonetically) indicates a 

phonetic spelling of the word if no confirmation of the 

correct spelling is available. 

 In the following transcript "uh-huh" represents an 

affirmative response, and "uh-uh" represents a negative 

response. 

 In the following transcript "*" denotes a spelling 

based on phonetics, without reference available. 

 In the following transcript (inaudible) signifies 

speaker failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 
 4 

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

 (By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

 BOARD MEMBERS

CHAIR

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D. 

Professor Emeritus 

School of Health Sciences 

Purdue University 

Lafayette, Indiana 

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY

ELLIOTT, Larry J.

Director, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Cincinnati, Ohio 

 

 

MEMBERSHIP

ANDRADE, Antonio, Ph.D. 

Group Leader 

Radiation Protection Services Group 

Los Alamos National Laboratory 

Los Alamos, New Mexico 

 

DeHART, Roy Lynch, M.D., M.P.H. 

Director 

The Vanderbilt Center for Occupational and Environmental 

Medicine 

Professor of Medicine 

Nashville, Tennessee 

ESPINOSA, Richard Lee 

Sheet Metal Workers Union Local #49 

Johnson Controls 

Los Alamos National Laboratory 

Espanola, New Mexico 

GIBSON, Michael H. 

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union 

Local 5-4200 

Miamisburg, Ohio 
 5 

GRIFFON, Mark A. 

President 

Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc. 

Salem, New Hampshire 

MELIUS, James Malcom, M.D., Ph.D. 

Director 

New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund 

Albany, New York 

MUNN, Wanda I. 

Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired) 

Richland, Washington 

OWENS, Charles Leon 

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union 

Local 5-550 

Paducah, Kentucky 

PRESLEY, Robert W. 

Special Projects Engineer 

BWXT Y12 National Security Complex 

Clinton, Tennessee 

ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D. 

Professor Emeritus 

University of Florida 

Elysian, Minnesota 

 AGENDA SPEAKERS

Ms. Chris Ellison, NIOSH 

Mr. David Sundin, NIOSH 

Mr. Jeff Kotsch, DOL 

Mr. Tom Rollow, DOE 

Mr. Mark Griffon, Workgroup Chair 

 STAFF/VENDORS
 6 

CORI HOMER, Committee Management Specialist, NIOSH 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, Certified Merit Court Reporter 

 AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS

NANCY ADAMS 

WILLIAM M. BECKNER 

DEBORAH BERKEY 

DENISE BROCK 

EVELYN COFFELT 

GERI L. DREILING 

CLARISSA EATON 

DONNA EHLMANN 

CHRIS ELLISON 

WILLIAM C. FRANSON 

DAVID GWEN 

CHRIS HADDOX 

RUSS HENSHAW 

LIZ HOMOKI-TITUS 

THOMAS M. HORGAN 

PATRICK KELLY 

JAMES KNUDSEN 

JEFF KOTSCH 

ROBERT LEIFIED 

CAROL LUEDDECKE 

HAROLD LUEDDECKE 

ROBERT MCGALERRA 

DANIEL W. MCKEEL 

LOUISE MCKEEL 

RICHARD MILLER 

CHERYL MONTGOMERY 

EDWARD MUECKE 

DAVID NAIMON 

STEVE POWELL 

LOUISE S. PRESLEY 

TOM ROLLOW 

D.M. SCHAEFFER 

SARA SHIPLEY 

BARBARA A. SMIDDY 

FLORENCE STROPER 

DELORES STUCKENSCHNEIDER 

DAVE SUNDIN 

STAN/ANN SZTUKOWSKI 

BOB TABOR 

BRIAN THOMAS 

PAMELA TODOROVICH 

RICHARD TOOHEY 

DAVID UTTERBACK 
 7 

JIM WERNER 

MARILYN ZIEMER 

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

2 

3 (9:00 a.m.) 

4 REGISTRATION AND WELCOME

5 DR. ZIEMER: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 

6 18th meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

7 Worker Health. We're all pleased to be here in St. 

8 Louis. I suppose there's a lot that can be said about 

9 St. Louis. I heard the weather man say this morning 

10 this was a bluesy day in St. Louis, and I thought well, 

11 that's appropriate, I suppose. But anyway, we're 

12 pleased to be here, even on a bluesy day in St. Louis. 

13 My name is Paul Ziemer. I'm Chair of the Advisory 

14 Board. I'm not going to actually introduce all the 

15 members of the Board, but for those who are here 

16 observing, members of the public, the Board members' 

17 names are on the placards in front of them, so you can 

18 identify who they are. 

19 This morning we have one individual who will not be 

20 with us at the meeting. Dr. Henry Anderson is not able 

21 to be with us. Dr. Jim Melius will be joining us a 

22 little later in the morning, I understand is flying in 
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1 from overseas, actually, so will not arrive until a 

2 little bit later. 

3 We ask that everyone present, including the Board 

4 members, register their attendance on the -- in the 

5 registration book which is back at the entrance. Also, 

6 members of the public who wish to make comment during 

7 the public comment period, we ask that you please sign 

8 up on the sheets in the back -- there's a sign-up book 

9 or sign-up sheets -- so that we have some idea of how 

10 many wish to address the Board and can allot the time 

11 accordingly. 

12 There may be a number of other members of the public 

13 join us a little bit later. I'm going to make some 

14 comments now in terms of the public comment period, but 

15 I may have to repeat these comments later, as well. 

16 Those are as follows: First of all, to remind members 

17 of the public that this is an opportunity for you, as a 

18 public member, to comment on the program, the policies, 

19 concerns you might have relative to this particular 

20 compensation program. It is not really a time to ask 

21 questions about personal claims. If you have questions 

22 about personal claims, timing or issues about where 
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1 your claim is in the process, we ask you to do that 

2 privately with the NIOSH staff. 

3 Also I would like to point out that the format for the 

4 public comment period is really not intended to be a 

5 question and answer period. Rather it's simply a time 

6 where members of the public can place on the public 

7 record their comments. If you do wish to raise 

8 questions, particularly if there are a lot of people at 

9 that point present, you may wish to raise those 

10 questions, but we would then defer answering them -- if 

11 you do have questions, something about the program, we 

12 may have to get back to you with an answer at a later 

13 time in order to preserve time for all who may wish to 

14 speak. 

15 A couple of other pieces of information for you today. 

16 On the table here near the front there are copies of 

17 minutes and other information from past meetings, and 

18 we invite you to make use of those as you may wish. 

19 You may also notice that there's a television camera 

20 present here today. The Village Image News, I believe 

21 is the correct title of the group that's televising. 

22 That's a local public access group here. They've asked 
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1 for and been given permission to televise the 

2 proceedings here. And I just want to tell the Board 

3 members not to get your hopes up that this will be a 

4 new reality TV show of some sort. This is simply for 

5 public access information. 

6 With those comments, I'm going to invite Larry Elliott 

7 to make any additional comments he may wish, and then 

8 we will proceed with the agenda. 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. I'd like to 

10 welcome the Board to St. Louis on behalf of the 

11 Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services 

12 and the Director of NIOSH, Dr. Howard. I'd like to 

13 welcome the public to the Advisory Board meeting. It's 

14 the first time we've been in St. Louis and we -- the 

15 Board does go around the country and hold its meetings, 

16 and we're pleased to be here to share this Board 

17 meeting with the public here in St. Louis. 

18 We have a full agenda. Today you're going to hear 

19 status on the dose reconstruction program at NIOSH, as 

20 well as status on the overall program from the 

21 Department of Labor, as well as status on the 

22 Department of Energy's responsibilities under the 
 11 

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1 program. We also will have time on the agenda for the 

2 working groups that have been assembled to speak and 

3 provide reports on their various activities on 

4 developing task orders for your contractor to perform 

5 the audit that you are required to do of our dose 

6 reconstructions, as well as we have a closed session 

7 tomorrow afternoon -- which will be closed to the 

8 public -- to discuss the independent government cost 

9 estimates that have to be generated regarding those 

10 task orders. 

11 I would remind the Board of your responsibilities to 

12 recuse yourself, given your individual waivers. We 

13 have recently gone through a new waiver process and so 

14 many of you have new waiver letters. And as we proceed 

15 into the review of dose reconstructions, I would remind 

16 you of those obligations. 

17 Dr. Ziemer announced that we do have a video being 

18 taken of this meeting. I need to make sure that 

19 everyone understands that NIOSH will not be able to 

20 provide copies of that video because it's not -- we're 

21 not conducting the taping and it's not our 

22 responsibility to provide tapes from that. 
 12 

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1 We hope that you find this meeting informative and 

2 productive. And again, welcome to St. Louis. 

3 REVIEW AND APPROVAL OF DRAFT MINUTES - MEETING 17

4 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Larry. We're going 

5 to now proceed with the agenda. Our first item on the 

6 agenda is the review and approval of the draft minutes 

7 of meeting seventeen. Let me make several comments. 

8 First of all, these minutes are quite extensive. The 

9 total number of pages is 54. Some of you only received 

10 these minutes last night. Some only received them this 

11 morning. Some have not yet received them; that is, 

12 those who have not yet arrived. Therefore I'm going to 

13 rule that we will actually not act on these minutes 

14 today. But I do want to make a couple of comments 

15 relative to the minutes. 

16 First of all, if you would, please read them and 

17 indicate any technical information that you believe is 

18 incorrect, and you can let Cori know that. Actually 

19 I'm going to be going through the minutes in much 

20 detail myself because I -- I actually would like them 

21 to be consolidated to a shorter version, and I'm going 

22 to work with Ray, who's helped us with the minutes -- 
 13 

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1 our recorder -- to come up with a more abbreviated 

2 version of these, if we are able to. I do appreciate 

3 the effort that Ray's made to get us a good set of 

4 minutes, but I've already indicated to Ray that I feel 

5 that they're too long. We have the transcript 

6 available, and so I'd like to get these shortened up a 

7 little bit. But in the meantime, if you would indicate 

8 to us any technical information that you feel needs to 

9 be corrected, let Cori know or you can let me know, or 

10 both. And then I will work with Ray -- it may be that 

11 Ray has already made these as concise as can be done. 

12 This is two days worth of deliberations and we had a 

13 lot of discussion in that last meeting, so that's all 

14 here. It also is in the transcripts, however, and 

15 there may be cases where we can shorten up the minutes 

16 simply for efficiency's sake. 

17 I will, however, ask tomorrow that we approve these, at 

18 least in principle, with the understanding that we may 

19 wish to prepare an abbreviated version, as well, for 

20 the final copy. 

21 Is there any objection to proceeding on that basis? 

22 (No responses) 
 14 

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1 DR. ZIEMER: There appears to be no objection, so it 

2 will be so ordered. 

3 CLAIMANT COMMUNICATION

4 DR. ZIEMER: We're going to move ahead then and Chris 

5 Ellison from NIOSH is here with us today. She's going 

6 to discuss with us the communication process that the 

7 Agency has with claimants, go through that in some 

8 detail so that we understand exactly what the 

9 interchange/exchange is between the Agency and the 

10 claimants. That -- when I say the Agency, I think 

11 we're also including the work that the contractor does 

12 in assisting in that regard. 

13 So Chris, we're pleased to have you here this morning. 

14 Please proceed. 

15 MS. ELLISON: Thank you. Good morning. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: You may need to snap that -- there's an 

17 on/off switch on that hand mike, please -- or that 

18 lavaliere mike. 

19 MS. ELLISON: Good morning. As Dr. Ziemer has said, 

20 that here -- I'm -- this morning to give you a current 

21 overview of some of our activities in approaching the 

22 claimants and getting information to them about their 
 15 

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1 claims and the program itself. 

2 Primarily we do this through four major ways. We have 

3 the phone calls that we get from the claimants. 

4 According to our database this month of October, we've 

5 logged in over 7,000 phone calls. Now those phone 

6 calls do include a number of things. Of the phone 

7 calls that have been logged in include inquiries as to 

8 the status of the claims. It also includes information 

9 on the closeout interviews, scheduling of the telephone 

10 interviews, all contacts that have been made with 

11 claimants on those basis have been logged into the 

12 system. 

13 And if I separate it out just a little bit, roughly so 

14 far in the month of October we've handled a little over 

15 1,000 inquiries as to the status of claims. So that -- 

16 that -- currently the activity with the phone calls. 

17 Another way that we provide information to claimants is 

18 through e-mails. During the month of October we've 

19 received roughly 118 e-mails. And they do vary -- 

20 phone calls and e-mails vary quite a bit, depending 

21 upon activities that have occurred in the media and 

22 other things with -- that are occurring on the web 
 16 

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1 site. 

2 Which is also the third piece of information that we 

3 have available for the claimants to gain information on 

4 our program. And we do try to update the web site as 

5 frequently as we can with the most current information. 

6 I know that I updated the web site this past Friday to 

7 include the newly-approved side profiles for 

8 Mallinckrodt and Blockson Chemical, so those are the 

9 two new features that appeared on our web site. 

10 And the last major piece that we do use with 

11 communicating information to the claimants are the 

12 letters, and there are a variety of letters. And after 

13 I go through these, I will show you some of the new 

14 things that we have developed. But all of our letters 

15 that we currently have in use cover the major stages of 

16 the dose reconstruction program, and trying to keep 

17 claimants up to date with where their claim is 

18 according to those major stages. 

19 The first one that the -- letter that the claimant does 

20 receive is what we call an acknowledgement letter. The 

21 letter basically tells the claimant that we've received 

22 their case from the Department of Labor. There are 
 17 

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1 some details in this letter that tell the claimant why 

2 their case was sent to NIOSH. We give some information 

3 on what dose reconstruction is, and at that time we 

4 also assign the tracking number to the claimant and 

5 tell them what that is so that they can call in and 

6 provide us with that tracking number. It's a way to 

7 follow the claim through the system and things. And 

8 then when we send that acknowledgement letter to the 

9 claimant, we also enclose three things. There's a 

10 brochure that is sent to them which is general 

11 information on the program, a little on NIOSH, and also 

12 the compensation program. There's also a fact sheet 

13 that is sent to them with this letter which describes 

14 in detail some of the information about the dose 

15 reconstruction process, what is required and what all 

16 it entails. And then the last thing that currently is 

17 being sent with the acknowledgement letter is a magnet, 

18 and the magnet we hope -- there's a space on there for 

19 them to write their tracking number and it has all the 

20 contact information and various telephone numbers and 

21 e-mail information and the web site, so hoping that 

22 they'll keep that close to their refrigerator so they 
 18 

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1 can give us that tracking number when they ever -- if 

2 they should happen to call. 

3 After the acknowledgement letter is sent, the next 

4 major step in the dose reconstruction program is the 

5 telephone interview. And we do send them a letter 

6 ahead of time with that -- regarding that interview. 

7 One of the things that we do include in that letter are 

8 the -- a copy of the questions. We want people to know 

9 ahead of time what to expect from that telephone 

10 interview. And one of the things that is conveyed in 

11 the letter and then on the cover sheet of those 

12 questions, we do convey a question that -- when we 

13 remind people that participation in this telephone 

14 interview is voluntary, and we are aware of the fact 

15 that even though some individuals may not be able to 

16 answer all of the questions, we encourage them to 

17 participate in the telephone interview because any 

18 information they do provide can be of some benefit 

19 potentially for that dose reconstruction. And that is 

20 pointed out in the attachment with the questions and 

21 things. 

22 The next letter after the telephone interview, the next 
 19 

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1 major step or item to occur in the dose reconstruction 

2 process, is the summary report. After they've had that 

3 telephone interview the claimant will receive a copy of 

4 a summary report so that, for the record, they see what 

5 is going to be submitted into their claim. And during 

6 that, when we provide them with that summary report, we 

7 do ask that they review it and provide us with any 

8 comments or corrections that they may have so that we 

9 can fully envelope everything that was discussed in 

10 that telephone interview in that summary report. 

11 The next major piece of communication in the letters 

12 that we send is what we call the dose reconstruction 

13 introduction letter. Basically at this point, this 

14 letter is sent out when we have obtained enough 

15 exposure information and are ready to proceed with the 

16 actual dose reconstruction. Something that is 

17 mentioned in this letter -- there is some discussion in 

18 the letter about the conflict of interest and how that 

19 is dealt with when assigning the dose reconstructions. 

20 And attached with the letter is the list of potential 

21 individuals and their affiliations so that people can 

22 review the list and see who potentially can be assigned 
 20 

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1 to work on the dose reconstruction for their case. 

2 And the next thing then that we send is a letter 

3 regarding the draft dose reconstruction. Enclosed with 

4 that letter will also be the draft reconstruction 

5 report, and with this letter we also send what we call 

6 the OCAS-1 form, and there are instructions in the 

7 letter to sign and return the form. There's also 

8 information in this letter about the closeout interview 

9 that will be scheduled, because once the draft 

10 reconstruction is sent to the individual, we then 

11 conduct a closeout interview with each individual so 

12 that then it's -- the purpose is to explain the draft 

13 dose reconstruction report, answer any questions that 

14 they may have at that time as to what was done in the 

15 dose reconstruction. 

16 The last major letter that we receive is sent out only 

17 after we have completed the dose reconstruction stages. 

18 That means after that OCAS-1 has been received back to 

19 us, then we can finalize that dose reconstruction. And 

20 once the administrative record and the final dose 

21 reconstruction is sent back to the Department of Labor, 

22 at that time the claimant also receives a letter to let 
 21 

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1 them know that. 

2 So those are -- those are the primary stages of our 

3 dose reconstruction and the core letters that go out to 

4 represent those stages. 

5 One of the things, listening to the phone calls and 

6 trying to get people to understand the program, and 

7 because of those facts we've now added -- or the -- the 

8 two new communication pieces to our program. 

9 The first one is a flow chart. It basically explains 

10 and shows the claimant what to expect during the dose 

11 reconstruction process. On the brochure that we sent 

12 the claimants there's a list-by-list item of the major 

13 steps of the dose reconstruction program. This has 

14 been provided as a visual and I'll go into more detail 

15 about it in a minute. 

16 And the second new piece that we've developed for 

17 claimants is an activity report, and this is in primary 

18 response to the multiple questions that we get as to 

19 the -- you know, when they are inquiring about the 

20 status of their claim. We know that that is a major 

21 concern for the claimants, so the activity report has 

22 been developed to address those questions. 
 22 

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1 Here's the flow chart. And I know -- and for the 

2 Advisory Board, in the back of my presentation is a 

3 full-blown page of this so you don't have to try to 

4 look at it on the little printouts there. What's been 

5 developed with this flow chart is -- there's two things 

6 going on in the flow chart. The right side shows what 

7 NIOSH is responsible for in the dose reconstruction 

8 process. It kind of -- it shows the major stages and 

9 the major steps. And then the left side, in the gray 

10 box, shows the claimant what they will receive from us. 

11 And they're kind of -- the items are lined up 

12 according to the process on the right. It's a little 

13 bit of a visual, little bit different than numbering it 

14 one, two, three, four, some -- it's a two-fold thing. 

15 Some people can understand steps better. Some people 

16 want to see it visually. And this is available 

17 currently on our web site. 

18 And the other piece that we've newly developed is, like 

19 I've said before, the activity report. But of the 

20 current plans with the activity report, that it will be 

21 mailed out quarterly, and that will be in the month of 

22 January, April, July and October. The contents are two 
 23 

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1 -- the activity report will be divided primarily into 

2 two different areas. The first will be an area for the 

3 status report and the second will be program 

4 information. 

5 Now we've currently been in the process of -- these -- 

6 what -- we've divided these two pieces out into two 

7 mailings. The current status of this mailing we want 

8 to include in a cover letter. We couldn't just send 

9 the flow chart to individuals and expect them to 

10 understand what we had done, so we basically wanted to 

11 make sure -- we're trying to give each claimant the 

12 right to understand the process, so we went back 

13 through and mailed the flow chart to all of our current 

14 claimants, and that has been completed. But the cover 

15 letter basically said here is a flow chart to help you 

16 better understand the process. And in that letter we 

17 also explained that we would be sending out activity 

18 reports. 

19 Now the activity reports are in the process now of 

20 being printed and we're preparing to begin mailing them 

21 out this week. Specific information that's found in 

22 that activity report, they will see the exact status of 
 24 

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1 their case. They will -- in that activity report will 

2 appear everything they should hear that -- if they 

3 would call us or receive an e-mail, information as to 

4 when we receive their case will be on there, when an 

5 acknowledgement letter was sent to them and all of the 

6 basic stages. Therefore, from that activity report, a 

7 claimant can see what stages have occurred with the 

8 dose reconstruction that their claim has been in and 

9 what stages then are left. And also I'd like to 

10 mention, with that activity report we will plan to mail 

11 that out to the claimants until they receive a copy of 

12 their draft dose reconstruction. 

13 And both of these mailings -- each time -- right now in 

14 the system we have just slightly under 20,000 claimants 

15 that we will be sending this to. And when I say 

16 claimants, that includes Energy employees, survivors 

17 and authorized representatives. 

18 And that's basically where we are. Are there any 

19 questions? 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Chris. Let's open 

21 the floor for questions at this point. Gen Roessler. 

22 DR. ROESSLER: Chris, the web site is very good and 
 25 

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1 very up-to-date and very complete. But my question is, 

2 I'm wondering how -- can you determine or is there any 

3 measure for determining how effective it is? I know 

4 you can do hits and things like that, but I'm just 

5 wondering how many of the claimants or potential 

6 claimants or other interested individuals are actually 

7 going to the web site for the information. 

8 MS. ELLISON: We do monitor hits. And to be quite 

9 honest, I know we're -- we're changing systems and how 

10 they're tracking the hits, and I have not received a 

11 report in some time because they're setting up a new 

12 way of looking at that. We do receive occasional e13 mails from individuals regarding the web site. To be 

14 quite honest, most comments have been favorable. 

15 There's a vast amount of information available on the 

16 web site, and we've tried to gear it to an -- you know, 

17 two types of individuals. There's some information 

18 that's there that's strictly only pertinent for 

19 claimants. There's some information that's for a more 

20 technical audience. You know, the Department of Labor 

21 and Department of Energy also use our web site. And 

22 it's difficult, but you know -- but right now primarily 
 26 

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1 the only input we have are e-mails we receive, or phone 

2 calls. And they do occur minimal. Most of the phone 

3 calls are wanting to know when the Advisory Board's 

4 going to meet -- I know any time there's an Advisory 

5 Board meeting, I get questions about when -- when is 

6 the agenda going to be posted and things -- and 

7 location. Usually people are a little impatient on 

8 that. But other than that, primarily things are pretty 

9 low. We don't hear too much about the web site. 

10 DR. ZIEMER: Roy DeHart. 

11 DR. DEHART: This is a dynamic process occurring over 

12 time and repeated. And having been involved in similar 

13 sorts of situations -- not with these numbers, but -- 

14 how many dead letters are you receiving? In other 

15 words, letters that are returned to you because the 

16 address is incorrect. And if you are getting those, 

17 how do you try to identify or find the people? 

18 MS. ELLISON: I do know I -- the exact numbers of 

19 returned mail I cannot answer. If we do receive a 

20 response or a letter back undelivered, we do try to 

21 contact the Department of Labor and there are issues 

22 that we're trying to work out with that. Recently we 
 27 

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1 had tried to put a return address correction on our 

2 envelopes, but I think that's going to have to stop, 

3 but... 

4 DR. ZIEMER: Chris, has there been any confusion 

5 amongst the claimants in terms of the letterhead and 

6 who the letters come from? As I look at these I see 

7 the identity of ORAU, Dade Moeller Associates and MJW. 

8 MS. ELLISON: Uh-huh. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: There's very little NIOSH identity in the 

10 letter. Does that cause any confusion amongst the 

11 claimants as to what the -- who -- who's sending this 

12 and why? 

13 MS. ELLISON: So far it does not appear to. In the 

14 acknowledgement letter there is some detail about 

15 contact information. And at NIOSH we do have public 

16 health advisors that are assigned to the claims, and 

17 those primary core letters, when they come from NIOSH, 

18 are signed by that public health advisor. And always, 

19 from that acknowledgement letter on, they are mentioned 

20 that they also can contact our contractor for status 

21 updates and things. And so it is mentioned from day 

22 one, that they -- when they receive letters from us, of 
 28 

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1 the existence of the contractor. And so far, there's 

2 not been any confusion. I know usually in the letters 

3 that ORAU does send out, they state that they are 

4 assisting NIOSH with the dose reconstruction program, 

5 so -- but not to my knowledge. 

6 DR. ZIEMER: Right. I just want to make sure that 

7 people actually read the letter -- 

8 MS. ELLISON: Right. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: -- and identify that that's the case. 

10 Otherwise -- it is a form letter, after all, and I get 

11 a lot of form letters and I look at who they're from 

12 and -- before I pitch them. Sometimes I look at who 

13 they're from before I pitch them. 

14 MS. ELLISON: Right. 

15 DR. ZIEMER: And I just want to make sure that people 

16 who think they're in the NIOSH/Department of Labor 

17 program actually are fully aware of the role of the 

18 contractors and that there's no confusion there. 

19 MS. ELLISON: Right. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: If I could remark upon that question -- 

21 it's a very good question, and we attempted to 

22 anticipate fully the confusion that letters are going 
 29 

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1 to generate when the letters come from different 

2 entities. The first letter that Chris talked about, 

3 the acknowledgement letter, is on NIOSH letterhead and 

4 it, as she says, introduces the ORAU team and indicates 

5 that -- and maybe the next letter also is a NIOSH 

6 letter, I need to get my mind straight on that -- it is 

7 a NIOSH letter. 

8 MS. ELLISON: Huh-uh. 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: It's not a -- well, anyway, each letter 

10 in succession introduces who's going to communicate 

11 with the claimant next, which -- whether it be NIOSH or 

12 whether it'll be ORAU. And so we try to make sure that 

13 in those letters, you know, the claimant understands 

14 what's the next step and who they're going to be 

15 talking to in the next step. 

16 And I agree with Chris, I don't think we've heard much 

17 concern or -- or confusion about that. We need to get 

18 on top of also the number of dead letters. We're 

19 working on that end, as well. And right now, with dose 

20 reconstructions becoming finalized, it's even more 

21 important to us to be able to find those people. We've 

22 got perhaps like 50 I think that we are -- we're 
 30 

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1 tracking down now at the dose -- final dose 

2 reconstruction stage, just to try to get their decision 

3 to them. And so this is an important piece, so I 

4 appreciate those questions and we are working on them. 

5 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Then it appears this has not 

6 been an issue at all. If it becomes an issue, then 

7 you'd have to say okay, maybe there needs to be some 

8 identification such as these -- on behalf of NIOSH or 

9 something in the letter to clarify that. But if it's 

10 not, I don't want to solve a problem that doesn't 

11 exist. Actually, I do. University professors like to 

12 solve a lot of problems that don't exist, but -- what 

13 other questions do we have? 

14 (No responses) 

15 DR. ZIEMER: There appear to be no further questions. 

16 Thank you very much, Chris. We appreciate -- 

17 MS. ELLISON: Thank you. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: -- your update on that. Now we're ready 

19 for our regular program status report. Dave Sundin is 

20 -- is Dave going to give the report or Jim? I see -- 

21 oh, you're -- Jim is the helper. Okay, Dave, welcome 

22 back and we're anxious to hear the update. 
 31 

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1 PROGRAM STATUS REPORT

2 MR. SUNDIN: Good morning. It's not on? 

3 DR. ZIEMER: It's not on. 

4 MR. ELLIOTT: Can everybody -- 

5 MR. SUNDIN: Good morning. 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: -- in the back of the room hear? 'Cause 

7 I was worried about Chris's presentation. I didn't 

8 know if -- 

9 MR. SUNDIN: Can you hear me in the back? Good, 

10 thanks. Okay. 

11 Well, good morning, and I'll echo Dr. Ziemer's 

12 comments. It is great to be in St. Louis here at the 

13 foot of the Gateway Arch, the banks of the muddy 

14 Mississippi, and home to many former Mallinckrodt 

15 workers, Weldon Spring plant workers and United Nuclear 

16 Corporation workers and their families. 

17 I'll be presenting a brief overview of the program 

18 status, and I'll follow the basic approach that I've 

19 used in previous meetings here. 

20 Of course, as you know by now, we began receiving cases 

21 from Department of Labor around two years ago actually, 

22 October, 2001. And to date, we've received 14,500-some 
 32 

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1 claims. And as Chris very ably described, we begin our 

2 communication process with claimants at that point by 

3 starting them out with acknowledgement letters, and 

4 continue to attempt to keep them posted about what 

5 we're doing with their claim. 

6 Also importantly, and again, I've mentioned it before 

7 but I think it's important to keep in mind, one of the 

8 important things we do is to scan all claim documents 

9 when we receive them so that we have an electronic file 

10 to deal with, which is really absolutely essential as 

11 we get dose reconstructionists throughout the country 

12 opening these files and beginning to do their work. So 

13 there is that step in the process which has so far 

14 served us well. 

15 About 16 percent of our cases continue to involve AWE 

16 employment or Atomic Weapons Employers. That's 

17 important because, with few exceptions, we don't have 

18 as many points of contact to go to to get actual 

19 personal exposure information on employees that worked 

20 at Atomic Weapons Employers. There are about four I 

21 think points of contacts from AWEs where we actually 

22 are able to get some personal exposure information. 
 33 

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1 There's a smaller number of cases in process, at the 

2 bottom of this slide, 13,500, and I believe that's the 

3 number that you will see on our web site when you look 

4 for claim status. The reason that's less than the 

5 number of cases received is that we subtract out, for 

6 purposes of reporting cases in process, those claims 

7 which have been returned to Department of Labor as 

8 complete, and also those cases the DOL has asked that 

9 we pull. There's not a large number of pulled cases, 

10 but some cases come to us that we shouldn't have, and 

11 when DOL recognizes that, they ask that the case be 

12 returned to us. 

13 This is a time trend chart of the rate at which we are 

14 receiving cases from Department of Labor. And as the 

15 chart shows -- and you've seen this before; I've just 

16 updated it with the first quarter of fiscal '04 number 

17 to date -- the trend is generally downward since about 

18 second quarter -- or fourth quarter of fiscal '02, 

19 where we received over 2,700 cases. We're now getting 

20 cases referred to us at around 200 a month, and 

21 declining slightly. 

22 Of course, as you're aware, each -- Department of Labor 
 34 

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1 has done their work on the case before we receive it. 

2 They've developed the verified employment and the types 

3 of cancers that the Energy employee had. And at that 

4 point we do generate requests to the appropriate 

5 Department of Energy point of contact to request the 

6 personal exposure information. And for a significant 

7 number of the claims, the -- there are multiple 

8 employment sites. The Energy employee, for example, 

9 worked at several different sites, so we need to 

10 generate several different requests for exposure 

11 information. 

12 This shows you where we are with our requests for 

13 exposure information. The reason that the number of 

14 responses received, 20,000-some, exceeds the number of 

15 requests that we've sent, which is right at 16,500, is 

16 -- really there's two reasons. One is that, as I 

17 mentioned, Energy employees can work at multiple sites. 

18 And the other reason is that some sites are sending 

19 their responses in several separate packages. For 

20 example, some sites will send us the X-ray -- the 

21 diagnostic X-ray information as one response, and then 

22 the personal exposure radiologic information as a 
 35 

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1 second response. 

2 I think if you remember -- which you probably don't -- 

3 the slide from our presentation in August, there's been 

4 improvement across the board, really, in the 

5 responsiveness of the Department of Energy points of 

6 contact. The total percentage of outstanding requests 

7 that are 60 days older or more is now eight percent. 

8 It was actually 12 percent in August. So we continue 

9 to see improvement in the timeliness of the DOE 

10 responses. 

11 There are of course a significant number, really -- 

12 730-some -- that are 150 days or more outstanding, and 

13 I'll explain that in the next slide. 

14 This shows the top eight sites from which we request 

15 exposure information, and you'll notice that five of 

16 these sites have a 90 percent or better response rate 

17 within the 60-day period. So really the major sites 

18 are doing quite well. There are a couple of sites that 

19 we're still working with, with the help of DOE's Office 

20 of Worker Advocacy. 

21 Savannah River Site has a significant number of 

22 responses that are at 150 days or more, as does INEEL. 
 36 

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1 And really those two numbers make up the bulk of that 

2 700-some that were 150 days or older. 

3 The quality of the responses we're getting from 

4 Savannah River Site is quite good. It's just that they 

5 started a little later than some of the other sites to 

6 get the machinery up and running to get the information 

7 to us. 

8 Idaho, I believe I explained last time, has spent a 

9 significant amount of front-end work in indexing their 

10 records in a way that they can now begin to provide the 

11 information to us more efficiently. And that process 

12 is complete and we're starting to see some -- much 

13 better response from Idaho. 

14 We do continue to send periodic status reports to each 

15 of the DOE points of contact to list out actually very 

16 specifically the cases that we show on our books as 

17 being 60 days or more outstanding. It's sort of a 

18 check with them to make sure that they know of the -- 

19 they have the same list of cases that are overdue. So 

20 we do that every month as our goal. We -- there's 

21 certainly periodic reports that go out. 

22 And of course outside of this effort is a rather large 
 37 

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1 parallel effort to compile site-specific profile 

2 information to develop the Technical Basis Documents 

3 that then go into making up a site profile, which is a 

4 very essential piece of information to do dose 

5 reconstructions at a particular site. And there are 15 

6 teams that are working on completing site profiles. 

7 Dr. Neton will give you more information on that during 

8 his presentation. 

9 The telephone interviews that we offer each claimant 

10 are an important part of our dose reconstruction 

11 process. Interviews were not required under the 

12 statute, but they were built into the NIOSH process 

13 because we believe that it's important that we 

14 communicate with claimants and allow them to give us 

15 what information they can to help us do the dose 

16 reconstruction. 

17 ORAU continues to do a very good job and make 

18 impressive progress in completing interviews with 

19 claimants. And again, it's not always easy to locate 

20 people to establish -- to set up a time and a date for 

21 the interview, but whereas in August we were reporting 

22 something around 6,000 completed interviews, we're now 
 38 

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1 approaching 10,000 a couple of months later. So this 

2 group has been very effective at getting these 

3 interviews done. 

4 And then of course the next step, as Chris mentioned, 

5 is to send a summary report to the claimants and make 

6 sure that we got the interview recorded properly. The 

7 claimant has an opportunity to add to that or correct 

8 information, and then of course we send them a 

9 corrected report if that's necessary. 

10 The group at ORAU that's doing the telephone interviews 

11 will also be conducting the closeout interviews very 

12 soon. That is the interviews that are done after the 

13 claimant has received their draft dose reconstruction 

14 report. So given the success that this group has had 

15 with doing the first interviews, we expect that this is 

16 a -- this will also be a success in terms of conducting 

17 what we call the closeout interview. 

18 Well, now the bottom line. When I reported to you in 

19 August, the number of final dose reconstructions that 

20 had been sent to the -- back to the Department of Labor 

21 and also to claimants and DOE was around 350. As of 

22 yesterday morning sometime, we've got roughly 1,000 
 39 

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1 draft dose reconstruction reports that are out to 

2 claimants or have actually come back from claimants and 

3 are over to DOL. 

4 So we've made some progress. We've got a long ways to 

5 go, but I think the hard work that we've put in and our 

6 contractor's put in is beginning to pay off. 

7 There are I believe around 32 Mallinckrodt claimants 

8 that are represented in either claims that have 

9 received their draft or have gone over to Department of 

10 Labor, and I think maybe around three -- rough numbers, 

11 and again, it changes daily -- three Mallinckrodt 

12 claims I believe are back at Department of Labor by 

13 now. 

14 The early break-out here is around -- approaching 40 

15 percent of the claims we've returned have a probability 

16 of causation of 50 percent or greater. We realize 

17 that's probably a percentage that will change and 

18 likely in fact go down as we work more of the tougher 

19 cases. But that's the rough indication. 

20 I thought I'd show you a very rough profile of the 

21 types of cancers that are represented in our claimant 

22 population. And I should say there's plenty of caveats 
 40 

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1 to over-interpreting this list. But what I've done 

2 here is, first of all, removed the gaseous -- the SEC 

3 sites, because the cancer profile in those sites tends 

4 to be, in general, different than the rest because if a 

5 claimant had an SE-- a specified cancer, they're -- 

6 they will be coming to us only to reconstruct the non7 specified -- dose for a non-specified cancer or a -- so 

8 I couldn't figure out exactly how to integrate those. 

9 I took those out, so this does not include those sites. 

10 Also bear in mind that claimants can have multiple 

11 cancers, so that's why we've got 20,400 total cancers 

12 represented among 14,500 claimants. Also this is only 

13 primary cancers. I've not attempted to profile 

14 secondary cancers here. In general, secondary cancers 

15 come into play in our system only if a primary is 

16 unknown, so while a lot of people have secondary 

17 cancers arising from an identified primary, if the 

18 primary is known, that's of course what we do the dose 

19 reconstruction on. 

20 But as you can see, skin -- non-melanoma skin cancer 

21 predominates in terms of frequency, and that includes 

22 both basal cell carcinoma a squamous cell carcinoma, 
 41 

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1 for which there are in fact two different models in 

2 IREP, but for purposes of just descriptive statistics, 

3 I've lumped them here. 

4 Next is the all male genitalia. That's the grouping of 

5 ICD-9 codes that makes up the IREP model, which 

6 includes primarily prostate cancer. There would be a 

7 few other cancers in there, but the vast majority of 

8 that second category are prostate cancers. 

9 Lung is also up there pretty high, and then as you go 

10 down the list, you see how the others array themselves. 

11 Even though of course the literature demonstrates that 

12 certain cancers are more apt to be related to 

13 radiation, I would caution against sort of over14 interpreting anything here because, in the case of 

15 multiple cancers, of course there may be one cancer 

16 which may be significantly more radio-sensitive than 

17 others. So -- and certainly the uncertainty in the 

18 individual claimant characteristics have an important 

19 part in the whole dose reconstruction and probability 

20 of causation. That's just a crude look and something 

21 I've been curious about and thought you might be 

22 interested in. 
 42 

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1 In terms of recent accomplishments, NIOSH has a role 

2 under the statute to appoint physician panels to assist 

3 the Department of Energy in implementing their 

4 responsibilities under Subtitle D. We have appointed 

5 123 physicians to date. And based on DOE's request 

6 that we identify more and appoint more physicians, we 

7 have initiated another recruitment effort. We're now 

8 looking at approximately 85 CVs from physicians that 

9 have expressed an interest in serving and will add any 

10 and will appoint any that are highly qualified from 

11 among that group. 

12 I mentioned briefly the site profile teams that are 

13 staffed up and developing data. And we now have I 

14 believe four site profile documents that are out on our 

15 web site. Bethlehem Steel has been there for a while. 

16 Savannah River Site, Blockson Chemical and, most 

17 recently, the Mallinckrodt Technical Basis Document is 

18 available on the web. 

19 The residual contamination final report has been 

20 drafted and is in review. And of course as you -- as 

21 this group knows, the contract for supporting your 

22 effort to evaluate the completed dose reconstructions 
 43 

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1 has been awarded. 

2 So I think I'll stop there, and if there are questions, 

3 I'll try and answer them. 

4 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, David. Let's have questions 

5 now. First Roy. 

6 DR. DEHART: David, could we go back to the cancer 

7 types? Maybe if you can just flip that chart back. 

8 The reason I mention that, as perhaps you're aware, I'm 

9 doing some of these medical reviews in Subtitle D. And 

10 the medical information that we see frequently is mis11 diagnosed. It's called one thing and the medical 

12 record supports something else. Dealing with the 

13 cancer types, as you've pointed out, the code -- the 

14 medical coding of those are critical in determining how 

15 you're going to calculate the dose, et cetera. Is 

16 there a problem -- are you doing that or is it coming 

17 out of Department of Labor? Who's -- who's assuring 

18 that the diagnosis and the code that's being used is 

19 accurate? 

20 MR. SUNDIN: Well, it is Department of Labor's 

21 responsibility to ensure that the cancer is -- or that 

22 the disease is a covered condition and that it's 
 44 

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1 supported by the right kind of medical -- by credible 

2 medical evidence. So Department of Labor does review 

3 the medical evidence provided by the claimant and they 

4 assign the ICD code. I mean if we notice errors, or 

5 what we think are errors, in that assignment, we will 

6 communicate back to Department of Labor and ask them to 

7 clarify or to review the case. But that code is 

8 assigned by Department of Labor. 

9 DR. DEHART: And the response of Labor to a potential 

10 mis-coding is what? Is it positive? Do they -- is it 

11 positive, do they -- do they go back and look and 

12 change? 

13 MR. SUNDIN: They go back and look, and if it needs to 

14 be changed, they change it. There are occasions where 

15 what may appear to be an error to us is not. So it 

16 goes either way, but they're quite willing to go back 

17 and review if something looks, on the surface, to be an 

18 error. 

19 DR. DEHART: Okay. I can think of a common problem. 

20 That would be metastatic disease to the lung. 

21 MR. SUNDIN: Yes. 

22 DR. DEHART: And instead of -- it might be diagnosed as 
 45 

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1 a primary lung. 

2 MR. SUNDIN: Right. Well, as you probably well know, 

3 metastatic cancer doesn't mean that it was a secondary 

4 cancer. It sometimes -- that terminology is used to 

5 describe a primary cancer that metastasized, so yeah, 

6 that's why, looking at the pathology reports, all the 

7 underlying medical records, is very important. And DOL 

8 has a -- you know, an extensive procedure manual to 

9 describe what information is most credible to establish 

10 the diagnosed condition. 

11 DR. ZIEMER: Robert? 

12 MR. PRESLEY: Robert Presley. Dave, the report for 

13 residual contamination in draft, is that available for 

14 our consumption? 

15 MR. SUNDIN: It will be when it's released to Congress, 

16 but not until then. I'm not even exactly sure at what 

17 stage of review it is. I know it's out of NIOSH, so -- 

18 but there could be changes that would be made. So at 

19 the time that it is sent to Congress, it will be made 

20 available to the Board. 

21 DR. ZIEMER: Mike Gibson? 

22 MR. GIBSON: (Off microphone) The site profile teams -- 
 46 

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1 DR. ZIEMER: Use the mike there, please, Mike. 

2 MR. GIBSON: The site profile teams that are staffed 

3 and developed, personally I feel like we really haven't 

4 had much information on how that was developed and how 

5 those teams were formed. And you know, that's a very 

6 critical step in assuring that you're getting adequate 

7 information to do dose reconstruction. Could you go 

8 into more detail about that? 

9 MR. SUNDIN: Well, I think probably I will defer a 

10 detailed discussion on that to Dr. Neton's 

11 presentation. I believe he intends to cover not only 

12 the progress, but how the teams are put together and so 

13 forth. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: Is that agreeable, Mike, and Jim's going 

15 to discuss the site profile process, so -- 

16 MR. GIBSON: Yes, that's fine. 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

18 MR. SUNDIN: Since that is an agenda item, I think I -- 

19 recommend that, anyway. That's tomorrow morning, Mike. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Be sure, though, that that question gets 

21 answered, Mike, tomorrow. 

22 Could you give us some idea of what the time commitment 
 47 

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1 is to a physician on the physician panel? I'm just 

2 curious, what -- maybe Roy can answer that better 

3 than... 

4 DR. DEHART: I think most of you know that I sit on the 

5 Subtitle D panel, as appointed by NIOSH in support of 

6 DOL. The average case that we currently are seeing -- 

7 I'm sorry? You can't hear me? 

8 DR. ZIEMER: Just get close. 

9 DR. DEHART: It's on now, isn't it? The average case 

10 that I'm seeing will run between 400 and 600 pages. 

11 Those pages include sort of a site profile. And in 

12 fact, I was talking to Mark, I just had reviewed a case 

13 that was from a gaseous diffusion plant and his report 

14 on the gaseous diffusion plant's risk was included in 

15 there. So if we're looking at Y-12 or K-25 or Savannah 

16 River, we have a description of those case, and that'll 

17 run 100 pages. And then the medical records and all 

18 are reviewed. I average something on the order of four 

19 to six hours per case. Some of the cases may run far 

20 less. 

21 For example, I've had two cases that had absolutely no 

22 medical records. The claimant had not been able to 
 48 

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1 provide any medical records, or chose not to provide 

2 them, and that made the case review very simple. 

3 MR. SUNDIN: I know, just to add to that, that's 

4 useful, to get the inside view. DOL -- DOE has 

5 indicated that they're extremely interested in 

6 identifying physicians that are able to devote as many 

7 hours as possible. A lot of physicians, of course, 

8 have got other duties, or even perhaps active 

9 practices, so it's difficult to squeeze as many hours 

10 out of some of these people as DOE would like. So our 

11 latest recruitment announcement emphasized that we were 

12 particularly interested in hearing from physicians that 

13 may be able to work full time, even -- a retired 

14 physician, who had a recent -- you know, may be 

15 recently retired, had an active clinical practice and 

16 could be otherwise qualified would be extremely useful 

17 to DOE. And as a matter of fact, there's been a few 

18 physicians identified that are willing to work full 

19 time, willing to relocate to DO-- to Washington for a 

20 short tour of duty to sort of sit down in one 

21 contiguous space and just go through a number of cases. 

22 So it is a significant time commitment that conflicts 
 49 

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1 with other duties, so we're interested in -- if you 

2 know other physicians -- 

3 DR. DEHART: One other point I think that would be 

4 appropriate is that each case is reviewed by three 

5 separate physicians, and they either meet by phone or 

6 e-mail and determine whether they're in concurrence or 

7 not. A minority report can be filed, so you've got -- 

8 you have three physicians looking at each record. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: So there really is a significant time 

10 commitment involved there. Okay. Thank you. 

11 Dave, I wonder if you might also give us a sort of 

12 interpretation of your third slide, which had to do 

13 with the cases received. That's the bar graph on cases 

14 received by quarter. And the clear peak there at the 

15 fourth quarter of last year and -- does this mean that 

16 the bulk of the cases have now been submitted, or does 

17 this mean that the word got out there initially -- I'm 

18 just trying to understand what the implication here is, 

19 for example, in terms of projected number of cases, 

20 total, that we'll have down the road. Do we expect an 

21 upsurge again later? How do we understand this bar 

22 graph? 
 50 

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1 MR. SUNDIN: Well, I'm not sure that I would do any 

2 long-range trend projection based on this, but I -- and 

3 this may also be an interesting question to raise of 

4 Pete Turcic or the DOL representative because they are 

5 sort of sitting on cases that are undergoing 

6 development that may or may not come to us. So they, 

7 in a sense, have a better picture of the potential 

8 additional cases. And of course they are involved with 

9 the traveling resource centers that go out and reach 

10 out to potentially new claimants. 

11 But I do know that NIOSH was not, in a sense, open for 

12 business until we had promulgated our rule on dose 

13 reconstruction, even though it was issued as an interim 

14 final rule. It took some time to actually get that in 

15 place. So DOL in fact had cases waiting for NIOSH when 

16 the rule was published. So there was an initial bolus 

17 of cases that moved over to us that had already been 

18 developed, and many more that were nearly complete at 

19 that time. DOL got the cases sent to them even before 

20 the Act became active, of course. People were filing 

21 claims, so they were working on claims from virtually 

22 day one. 
 51 

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1 I think the easier cases, if you will, the ones that 

2 DOL has not had to work with the claimant a lot to get 

3 developed and ready to come to NIOSH probably have 

4 gotten here. But again, I -- that may be a useful 

5 question for DOL also to comment on. New cases clearly 

6 do continue to come to DOL. You know, not all 

7 claimants filed early. There are continuingly -- 

8 claimants still continue to come in. But certainly the 

9 large group that they were working with at the outset 

10 of the program I think has filtered, for the most part, 

11 our way. 

12 DR. ZIEMER: Peter, will you be -- is Peter here? 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: Supposed to be here. 

14 UNIDENTIFIED: No, he's not. 

15 DR. ZIEMER: Well, then maybe we can re-ask the 

16 question. I'm just interested in what the long-range 

17 projection will be in terms of total cases. I'm sure 

18 NIOSH is interested in that number, too. But Labor may 

19 be able to tell us a little better then what's down the 

20 road, I think is what you're saying. Correct? 

21 MR. SUNDIN: I think so. Certainly they know how many 

22 cases they're developing right now, and that may be on 
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1 their web site, now I think about it. 

2 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other questions for David? 

3 (No responses) 

4 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. There appear to be no other 

5 questions, David. Thank you very much. 

6 MR. SUNDIN: Thank you. 

7 STATUS REPORT - DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

8 DR. ZIEMER: Actually I was going to suggest that we go 

9 ahead with Peter's presentation before the break, since 

10 we're a little ahead of schedule. We're trying to 

11 track down -- I wonder if -- 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: Jeff Kotsch is going to do it. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Is Jeff -- yes, can we -- okay. Jeff 

14 Kotsch is going to do the presentation. Thank you. 

15 And if possible, answer the last question. 

16 MR. KOTSCH: Good morn-- can everybody hear me back 

17 there? Good morning. My name's Jeff Kotsch. I'm the 

18 health physicist with the Department of Labor's Energy 

19 employee's compensation program. My director, Pete 

20 Turcic, is unable to attend today. He's -- and he 

21 sends his apology. He stayed back in Washington to 

22 work a Congressional oversight hearing that he has to 
 53 

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1 attend on Thursday, so -- and unfortunately, I don't 

2 think there's any electronic presentation materials for 

3 this presentation. So this'll just be the audio 

4 portion of the audio/visual presentation. Which is 

5 probably a good thing 'cause I don't have to use the 

6 remote control. 

7 Primarily it's going to be a recitation of a fair 

8 amount of numbers, all of which are current as of 

9 October 23rd, 2003. As of that date, the Department of 

10 Labor has received 48,311 claims. And for most of 

11 these other numbers, I'm going to round them off just 

12 for the ease of presentation rather than going off and 

13 trying exact digits. But of those claims, the 

14 majority, 32,800, are cancer claims. And then it drops 

15 off -- beryllium sensitivities, we've got about 2,100 

16 claims; chronic beryllium disease, CBD, about 2, 300 

17 claim; silicosis, 900; RECA claims from the Department 

18 of Justice, 5,100. And then there's a bunch of others 

19 that actually is 23,000-plus claims that don't fall 

20 into any categories, really are not claim conditions -- 

21 lung and -- different kinds of lung conditions, heart 

22 conditions and things like that. 
 54 

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1 And then we had 36,597 cases. Now let me just -- I 

2 always have to make sure I get myself clear on when I 

3 talk about cases and claims. There's a case for every 

4 employee, but there could be more than one claimant or 

5 claims on that case. Obviously if the employee's still 

6 living, he's the claimant. But if he's the -- he or 

7 she is deceased, then the claimants can be either the 

8 spouse or the children. So you can always -- you'll 

9 always have more claimants than cases. 

10 Again, as of October 23rd, Department of Labor has 

11 reported 14,552 cases to NIOSH. We have 1,700 pending 

12 final decision. We have 19,300 that have reached a 

13 final decision, and we have about 1,500 in the pipeline 

14 at our district offices that are pending some kind of a 

15 decision. 

16 So again, 48,311 claims, 36,597 cases. 20,100 cases 

17 have received a recommended decision, and another 

18 14,000, like I said, 14,552 cases have gone on to 

19 NIOSH. That, for the Department of Labor, gives us a 

20 percentage for cases that have gone to some kind of an 

21 initial decision of 95 percent. That is, either 

22 they've gone to recommended decision and been denied or 
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1 approved, or have gone to NIOSH for dose 

2 reconstruction. 

3 We have 19,300 cases that have gone to final decision, 

4 and that's about 53 percent of our cases that have 

5 received a final decision. That's resulted in 

6 compensation payments to 9,143 claimants, to the amount 

7 of $673,991,000 in compensation payments. And medical 

8 benefits have been paid to the amount of $19,765,000 as 

9 of October 23rd. 

10 Of those cases that went to final decision, there were 

11 actually about 24,000 claimants involved in that and 

12 there were about 10,200 that were approvals and 13,700 

13 were denials. The majority of the denials are 

14 basically -- about 8,800 -- for non-covered medical 

15 conditions. And then there are a number of other 

16 categories -- employees not covered, survivors not 

17 eligible, conditions not related to employment, things 

18 like that -- that result in a denial. 

19 A little bit just about performance of the Department 

20 of Labor during the past fiscal year, 2003. We have 

21 two groups that we basically set targets for as far as 

22 claims processing goes. One group involves the AWEs, 
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1 the beryllium vendors and the DOE subcontractors and 

2 then their claims. For that group the Department of 

3 Labor has set a goal of 180 days to work those claims 

4 through the process. In the first quarter of last year 

5 -- the last fiscal year -- we were at an average 

6 processing time of 242 days. By the third quarter we 

7 were down to 142 days, and by the end of last fiscal 

8 year we were down to 102 days, well below the goal of 

9 180 days. 

10 For the other group, for initial processing -- which 

11 includes the DOE and the RECA claims -- the DOL 

12 established a goal of 120 days, because it was assumed 

13 that the information would be more readily available 

14 for these. For the RECAs, it comes from -- RECA 

15 claims, it comes from the Department of Justice. It's 

16 pretty easily accessible for DOE. Obviously from the 

17 larger facilities it should be easier to get the 

18 information. So anyway, the goal for this group was 

19 120 days for the initial processing of claims. 

20 We started the last fiscal year at 177 days, but by the 

21 third quarter we were down to 64 days, and actually 

22 ended up a little higher by the end of last fiscal 
 57 

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1 year. We were at 80 days as an average for processing 

2 that information for the initial processing. 

3 And then the last thing, we were just -- I just wanted 

4 to talk about was the status of NIOSH referrals, again, 

5 as of October 23rd of last -- of this year. And these 

6 numbers don't exactly match the ones that Dave 

7 presented because of the differences in the dates and 

8 things like that. 

9 Anyway, our numbers as far as -- as of the 23rd of 

10 October, we had 859 cases returned from NIOSH, 720 of 

11 these had completed dose reconstructions. The others, 

12 dose reconstructions were not required. Included in 

13 those are cases that have -- that are involved with 

14 chronic lymphocytic leukemia or something like that. 

15 Then of that population, the cases that have a 

16 recommended decision with the Department of Labor are 

17 582. Acceptances were 216 of those and denials were 

18 366. And then we've got 307 cases that are in final 

19 decision. Of those, 176 are acceptances and denials 

20 are 131. So you can see we're actually above 50 

21 percent for acceptances right now. That -- as David 

22 said, those numbers, as with their numbers, will 
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1 ultimately probably decrease and be going down. But 

2 for the moment, that's -- those are the numbers that we 

3 have. 

4 That's the end of what I was going to talk about. You 

5 had raised the question about where do we go from here 

6 or what's coming, and that's an interesting question, I 

7 know, for -- even for our people at the Department of 

8 Labor. We do have a continuing outreach program that -

9 - through both traveling resource centers and the fixed 

10 resource centers that are operated with the Department 

11 of Energy. Sometimes the efforts wane and -- ebb and 

12 wane because of -- whether they feel that there's a 

13 sufficient number of claims being generated. I think 

14 now that we're actually on an upswing again, they'll 

15 begin more resource -- traveling resource center and 

16 going out into the field to promote -- more actively 

17 promote the program and go through various union 

18 newsletters and other kinds of communications channels 

19 to try to get the word out to make sure that people are 

20 aware of the program. I think we're running about -- 

21 overall receiving about 200 cases per week. I think 

22 we're sending about 40 to 50 a week to NIOSH. We were 
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1 earlier in the year running about 100 to 120 a week to 

2 NIOSH, but I think it's down around 40 or 50 a week. 

3 But as far as the long-term projections, I know the 

4 Department of Labor's -- I'm not the best one to answer 

5 that question. I can certainly pass that back to Pete, 

6 but I know there is an outreach program that's in place 

7 to try to, you know, get the word out and make sure 

8 that people are aware of the program. As far as 

9 projections go, I'm -- unfortunately, probably don't 

10 have the best answer for that as to which way it's 

11 going to go. It has obviously tailed off from the 

12 initial surge and the -- you know, the initiation of 

13 the program. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: Let me ask a question that perhaps you or 

15 someone from NIOSH can answer. Is it generally felt 

16 that all of the major facilities have gotten the word 

17 about the program, in terms of past workers? All of 

18 the national lab type facilities, the facilities like 

19 the Mallinckrodt here and others of that type around 

20 the country. Are there any pockets where we would have 

21 expected to see cases and we aren't seeing any? Or 

22 claims, rather? 
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1 MR. KOTSCH: Yeah, again, I have to -- I guess my 

2 caveat is that I'm not -- that part of the program I'm 

3 not as familiar with as I am with the technical portion 

4 of the program because of the work that I do. It's my 

5 recollection is -- my understanding of the program, 

6 we've gotten the word out fairly well across the board. 

7 I know there's always been some concern that -- like 

8 at Hanford -- at least my understanding is at Hanford 

9 we didn't receive the number of claims, I guess, that 

10 we would have initially expected, based on the 

11 population that's present there -- or the number of 

12 people that have worked there. A large number of 

13 people in the DOE complex at some point in time worked 

14 at Hanford, it appears, and we just haven't gotten -- I 

15 know we haven't gotten that -- what we might have 

16 thought -- 

17 DR. ZIEMER: The numbers you expected aren't that high, 

18 so -- 

19 MR. KOTSCH: Yeah, the numbers we expected, even though 

20 that's -- obviously the word's been there and there 

21 have been claims there. I'm not aware of any other 

22 sites -- I mean there may be some AWEs that may not 
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1 have been hit, but there was a pretty good program to 

2 get out there and spread the word. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: NIOSH, you have any comments on that? Or 

4 -- okay. Mark? 

5 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, just a quick question about the 

6 outreach. Do you have -- does DOL have an outreach 

7 plan that might be made available to this Board? The 

8 reason I ask is there is a number of groups that have 

9 experience. I do work with the medical surveillance 

10 programs at DOE and we've had various successes at 

11 different areas, rely on different methods to reach 

12 some of the retirees, and -- 

13 MR. KOTSCH: Yeah -- 

14 MR. GRIFFON: -- we've found -- we've found that 

15 certain areas we have great successes with some means 

16 of outreach and not with others, and so I think you 

17 might -- there's a number of places you might tap into, 

18 so I'm wondering if you have a plan that -- 

19 MR. KOTSCH: Yeah, I know the program has a plan. It's 

20 in another group than the group I'm in, and I know that 

21 they have been looking at and discussing, you know, all 

22 the different ways of getting the word out, Mark, like, 
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1 you know, union newsletters and different kinds of 

2 newspapers, even the more local newspapers in an area 

3 versus just the, you know, more established. You know, 

4 but there's those weekly -- even the advertiser type 

5 newspapers trying to get the word out in some of those, 

6 especially for when they do the outreach in a 

7 particular area. 

8 But certainly I can pass the question back to Pete and 

9 ask him if we can get the plan to the Board. I know 

10 there is a plan on the way they want to approach 

11 outreach. 

12 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I think probably just as a matter of 

13 information, it would be of interest to many Board 

14 members just to know that. Although it's not our 

15 direct responsibility, it certainly relates very much 

16 to what we do. 

17 I think we have Leon next and then Genevieve Roessler. 

18 MR. OWENS: Dr. Ziemer, I'm not speaking for DOL, but I 

19 would like to respond to Mark's question. Mr. Turcic 

20 attended the atomic council at -- atomic council's 

21 composed of about 15 or 20 PACE locals, and Mr. Turcic 

22 attended that three weeks ago, and we had a session on 
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1 outreach. So there were a lot of ideas that were 

2 passed back and forth and I think that once those ideas 

3 are compiled, that will be used for an actual outreach 

4 program by DOL. So there has been participation by the 

5 active unions. 

6 DR. ROESSLER: Gen Roessler. Just a little expansion 

7 on the same question with regard to outreach, which I 

8 think would be important for the Board to know, or at 

9 least my question is, what about those retirees that 

10 have left the geographic region? And I assume that 

11 some of these newsletters and materials are sent to 

12 people who used to work at a site but have moved away 

13 and should have the information. 

14 MR. KOTSCH: Gen, those are things I know that they're 

15 exploring and, you know, working through, like Leon 

16 said, the unions to try to get the word out through 

17 union newsletters and other -- we know that retirees 

18 obviously exist in different places other than where 

19 they worked. So yeah, the effort is to get to those 

20 people, too. 

21 MR. OWENS: Again, I think the challenge has been 

22 accessing the information that some of the DOE sites 
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1 have had relative to employment records so that we can 

2 reach these retirees. We've had some difficulty with 

3 some of the sites in getting that particular 

4 information. I know at my particular site, since we're 

5 now privatized, the private corporation was reluctant 

6 to provide information, so the union has entered into 

7 an agreement with them to allow them to send out 

8 mailers. We initially had 1,500 retirees that we sent 

9 information to, but there is a list of roughly 10,000, 

10 so we're now able to tap into that list. And I'm sure 

11 that at Hanford they've experienced the same thing. 

12 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you for that additional input. 

13 Again, although this is not a direct responsibility of 

14 this Board, I think it is in our interests to make sure 

15 that those who may be eligible for our program actually 

16 get the word. And anything that we can do to help 

17 enhance that would be useful. And you know, we're not 

18 asking the Labor Department to be accountable to us, 

19 but I think there is an interest in what they're doing. 

20 Might it -- might I also ask, since you didn't have any 

21 handouts and we got a lot of numbers thrown at us and 

22 they're very hard to track, can we get a summary of 
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1 what you told us -- 

2 MR. KOTSCH: Yeah, I -- 

3 DR. ZIEMER: -- before our minutes come out? 

4 MR. KOTSCH: Well, I got -- I just got the notice to 

5 come out here yesterday morning before -- 

6 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

7 MR. KOTSCH: -- I left, so -- 

8 DR. ZIEMER: No, I appreciate that, but perhaps -- 

9 MR. KOTSCH: Certainly. 

10 DR. ZIEMER: Perhaps sooner than we get our minutes, we 

11 might have -- just like a one-pager with the highlights 

12 would be helpful. 

13 MR. KOTSCH: Okay. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: We'd appreciate that. Other comments or 

15 questions? 

16 (No responses) 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. 

18 MR. KOTSCH: Okay. 

19 DR. ZIEMER: We're going to take our break at this 

20 time. We're -- let's plan to reconvene at 10:45. 

21 Thank you. 

22 (Whereupon, a recess was taken.) 
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1 STATUS REPORT - DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

2 DR. ZIEMER: We'll now proceed with the next item on 

3 the agenda, which is a status report from the 

4 Department of Energy. Department of Energy of course 

5 has an important role in this program in terms of 

6 providing dose and site information. The individual 

7 from the Department who now has a big part of the 

8 responsibility in supporting this effort is Tom Rollow. 

9 Tom used to be with the Office of Nuclear Safety in 

10 the Department. He's now with the Office of 

11 Environment Safety and Health. Tom, we're pleased to 

12 have you here with us today. 

13 MR. ROLLOW: Thank you. Good morning. I can't tell if 

14 this is on or not, but I guess I -- now I can hear 

15 myself talking. Do we have some slides booted up here 

16 or... Okay, good. 

17 I'm the director of the Office of Worker Advocacy at 

18 the Department of Energy. I've been in this job for 

19 about seven months now. And what I thought I'd do 

20 today is give you a short -- about a dozen slides, give 

21 you the status of where the Department of Energy 

22 program stands currently, and then answer any questions 
 67 

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1 that you might have. If you'd just give us one moment 

2 here, we're loading a CD-ROM into the computer. 

3 (Pause) 

4 I'm sure the Advisory Board is well aware the 

5 Department of Energy both manages the Subtitle D 

6 portion of the program, Labor of course manages the 

7 Subtitle B portion of the program, and in addition to 

8 that we also provide records from the DOE sites to the 

9 Department of Labor and to NIOSH to support the 

10 Subtitle D portion of the program. 

11 DR. ZIEMER: The pressing question now is how many 

12 NIOSH staff people does it take to load a CD-ROM? 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: It helps to know the computer. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: We'll pause just a minute here. I think 

15 Jim's got it under control. 

16 MR. ROLLOW: Well, at the Department of Energy, our 

17 favorite saying, when we're dealing with IT challenges 

18 like this, is it's not rocket science and that's why we 

19 can't do it. 

20 (Pause) 

21 MR. ROLLOW: Well, let me just go through some of the 

22 points that I have on the slides that I passed out to 
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1 you, and I think we had some handouts also for the 

2 audience. 

3 The Department of Energy currently has a total of about 

4 20,000 applications for Subtitle D, and I apologize for 

5 the microscopic nature of the handout here. When we do 

6 get this loaded up you'll be able to see it in a little 

7 larger format on the screen. 

8 Total cases completed to date for the Department of 

9 Energy is a little over 1,000 cases. That includes 

10 both cases that have findings in the physicians panels, 

11 as well as ineligibles and people that we have 

12 withdrawn their applications. We are currently 

13 producing cases at the Department of Energy for the 

14 physicians panels at a rate of about 50 cases per week, 

15 and so those are starting to stack up. You can see in 

16 the numbers on the chart that I've provided for you 

17 that we have -- cases that are currently being 

18 developed is over 3,000, and that we have about 456 

19 that are actually waiting to go to the physicians 

20 panels in different phases. 

21 We have been looking at the Department of Energy at 

22 ramping up the program to move it faster. The 
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1 Secretary actually asked us to -- last April/May time 

2 frame, to begin an initiative to process all cases in a 

3 12-month period. The challenge with that directive 

4 from the Secretary is it does take resources, and so we 

5 have been working inside the Department to identify 

6 resources to apply to this program to movement inside 

7 the Department of Energy. 

8 We were successful in recently winning approval for 

9 Congress to move $9.7 million from other projects in 

10 DOE to the EEOICPA Subpart D case processing. And in 

11 addition to that, we are also looking for additional 

12 funds in the FY '04 year to move into case processing. 

13 The bottom line is that we have pretty much maxed out 

14 our current operations at our current budget and case 

15 processing at about 50 cases per week. We'll actually, 

16 through some efficiencies, be able to increase that 

17 case processing up to about 75, maybe to 100 cases per 

18 week with our current budget. But we need an influx of 

19 new -- of budget, approximately $43 million for the 

20 total FY '03/FY '04 12-month period to accomplish the 

21 Secretary's objective, which is to process all the 

22 backlog at the time, which was in the April/May time 
 70 

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1 frame, which was about 15,000 cases, to process those 

2 in 12 months. 

3 Those funds are in various stages of being requested, 

4 either inside the Department or Congress. Funds for 

5 out years, in '05 and beyond, of course would be 

6 requested through the President's budget approval 

7 process. And there is in your package a chart showing 

8 what we project as the funding needs for this program 

9 to accomplish those objectives. 

10 If we don't -- if we're unable to obtain these 

11 resources to process these cases in this nature, it 

12 will take an extended time to process the Subpart D 

13 cases. The estimates right now, depending on how you 

14 do the mathematics, if we were to do 100 cases per week 

15 and we have 20,000 cases, then we're obviously talking 

16 200 weeks or over four years -- four to five years to 

17 process all the cases. 

18 This also does not take into account the challenge that 

19 we have with the physicians panels, which is on the 

20 tail-end of the process. The physicians panels, as you 

21 recall, is a panel of three physicians appointed by 

22 NIOSH, and we have about 120 physicians that are 
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1 actually appointed at this time. But each panel 

2 consists of three physicians and they're generally 

3 working part time. And the production rate that we're 

4 able to utilize these 120 physicians working part time 

5 is about 17 cases per week, which is far short of the 

6 100-case per week goal and well far short of the goal 

7 to get 15,000 cases done in a year. 

8 We're working aggressively with NIOSH and with the 

9 occupational health physician community to provide some 

10 remedies to that situation. For example, one of the 

11 things we're considering doing is bringing in 

12 physicians full time. We think that a team of three 

13 full time physicians working close by our case 

14 processing operation can process about 20 cases per 

15 week. 

16 Thank you. Pull the trigger. Okay, I can do that. 

17 I'm not going to go through this chart. This was at 

18 the beginning of the presentation. If we need to have 

19 some points of discussion, we can come back to this 

20 chart which shows the Department of Labor and the 

21 Department of Energy process. And this is just some 

22 descriptive material that talks about the Labor program 
 72 

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1 versus the DOE program. 

2 These are the numbers of the cases that I was talking 

3 about, and I think I've been through those so I won't 

4 dwell on that, but we can come back and talk about it 

5 if you have some questions in a few minutes. 

6 This is the reprogramming effort I was talking about. 

7 If we continue current operations, when we say $12 

8 million -- 12 years, one projection has us not only 

9 having the 20,000 cases that we currently have, but 

10 also adding to that. We're still getting cases in -- 

11 new cases in at the rate of about 120 to 150 per week. 

12 And so our model assumes that we will continue getting 

13 new cases in for about two years. So on top of the 

14 20,000 cases we have now, there's probably another 

15 10,000 cases coming, so that's a total of about 30,000 

16 cases. And if you do the math on that, we're 

17 processing at 40 to 50 cases per week, which is our 

18 current rate, the math would map out at about a 12-year 

19 period. And that would not just be due to the current 

20 backlog, but that would be the future backlog, also, 

21 the cases we'd get in over the next two years. 

22 The Secretary feels that this situation is unacceptable 
 73 

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1 and that's why he's asked for the option on the right, 

2 which is to expedite processing and reprogramming. One 

3 year, from funds available, we'll start this 

4 initiative. We just, as I mentioned, received approval 

5 of the $9.7 million to reprogram from Congress a couple 

6 of weeks ago. We will not start the ramp-up for this 

7 major effort until we are able to identify the rest of 

8 the money to accomplish this. And in fact, we've been 

9 having discussions with some hill staff that -- not to 

10 go do that until we get a clear signal from Congress 

11 that there will be some more funds coming. 

12 We term this a batch process. What I've tried to do in 

13 the seven months I've been at the Department of Energy 

14 Office of Worker Advocacy is try to get the process 

15 going in a systematic fashion. We're all parts of the 

16 process. We're all parts of the assembly line and 

17 working at the same rate. This reprogramming effort, 

18 this expedited processing effort, though, we'll revert 

19 back to what we call batch processing. A concept is to 

20 stand down from processing cases for about a month, and 

21 you'll see where it says month one, all remaining data 

22 requests to the field. We will get all the requests 
 74 

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1 for personnel records -- that's exposure records, 

2 employment verification records, industrial health 

3 records and site profile data that we don't have -- we 

4 will get that all from the field -- requested from the 

5 field the first month of this effort. 

6 And then in months one through six -- in other words, 

7 in parallel with that first month but continuing for 

8 another six months -- the DOE sites will work at 

9 getting all those records back to us. Once we start 

10 receiving records back -- we actually have records in11 house right now that we're working on in the steady 

12 state process, so we won't -- we don't need to stop 

13 processing cases. Basically in months two through 12 

14 then, the case processing people will start processing 

15 cases at a higher rate. 

16 Also, not shown on this chart is a growth factor which 

17 we have to incorporate into the process to basically go 

18 out and hire about 130 to 140 case processing 

19 personnel. And we've already identified sources for 

20 those new hires and we're ready to do that if we do get 

21 the go-ahead for this effort. 

22 This is just a graphical representation to show you how 
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1 unacceptable case processing spanned out over 12 years 

2 is. The green line would be the 12-year option and the 

3 red line would be the one-year option. 

4 This is just a picture representation of our budget, 

5 and I do need to caution you that, as with any budgets 

6 in the Federal government, anything beyond FY '04 -- 

7 anything really beyond FY '03 is proposed right now 

8 because the FY '04 budget has not been approved by 

9 Congress, and the FY '05 budget has not even been 

10 requested by the President yet of the Congress. 

11 This is a graphic which shows case processing activity 

12 inside my office, so these are the cases that have been 

13 put together and sent -- and are ready to be sent to 

14 the physicians panel. And you can see we've had our 

15 ups and downs. The print's a little small on this, but 

16 the left-hand end of the chart is April and the right17 hand end is last week. And we just hired about 24 new 

18 case processing personnel in the past month and a half. 

19 This was not a function of the $9.7 million that we 

20 got, although it will help us to pay the bills here. 

21 That 75 cases we did last week I think is probably a 

22 spike. I think we'll probably come down from there 
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1 this week and next week, but I think the range of about 

2 50 to 55 cases per week is easily achievable. 

3 When you're looking at data like this, it's probably 

4 more relevant to look at like a four-week moving 

5 average or something rather than to respond to 

6 individual datapoints. 

7 Challenges to accelerating cases per week. We 

8 originally set a goal of 100 cases per week to the 

9 physicians panel back last spring. That was based on 

10 my and my staff's projections. When I got into this 

11 job, looking at the resources and estimating the time 

12 it would take to process these cases, that was -- that 

13 estimate -- we were unable to make that 100 cases per 

14 week. And we now think the number on the current 

15 budget, the current $16 million budget is about 50 

16 cases per week. 

17 Records collection continues to be a challenge. We 

18 have a little bit more records that we collect than the 

19 Department of Labor does for their program -- in fact, 

20 significantly more. We get, in addition to employment 

21 records which Labor collects, we also -- and radiation 

22 exposure, which it goes to NIOSH, also -- we are 
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1 collecting the medical and industrial health records. 

2 And some of the challenges that we have, which are 

3 really challenges with both Subtitle B and Subtitle D 

4 parts of the program, is we're talking back to the 

5 1940s. We've had contractors change in the field, 

6 which makes it difficult sometimes to find the records. 

7 Subcontractors disappeared and some workers have 

8 worked multiple sites, which is a challenge. I know 

9 NIOSH is dealing with that a lot in the dose 

10 reconstruction area. And a lot of records are 

11 archived. I end up sending my records people to 

12 strange places like Atlanta and caves in Montana and 

13 places like that to pull these records. 

14 We're getting a good handle on that, though, and I 

15 think we're on the downhill slope on the records side, 

16 though. We've got a pretty good handle where the 

17 records are, and pretty good processes in the field for 

18 pulling the records together now. 

19 We are trying to assemble the best case for the worker. 

20 There are different varying degrees of sophistication 

21 and time we can put into this process. We could just 

22 slap the files together and send them on to the 
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1 physicians panels in whatever form we get the records 

2 from the sites. But I have medically-trained people 

3 that are trying to do a good job of putting the best 

4 case forward for the individuals so that they get the 

5 best and most accurate results. 

6 Accomplishments and vulnerabilities I just wanted to go 

7 over with you briefly this morning. There's some 

8 infrastructure issues that we had back in DC which 

9 really are not much interest to this Board, but we've 

10 been moving people around in different office space 

11 trying to get the appropriate office space for the 

12 operation. I know NIOSH had some of the same 

13 experiences in Cincinnati some number of months ago, 

14 and that is -- it is very disruptive when you've moving 

15 people. We're actually moving people this week, and 

16 the production numbers will actually drop a little bit 

17 this week because of that. 

18 We also hired a management consultant company that does 

19 consultant work with state Work Comp agencies to come 

20 in and look at our operations and give us some ideas of 

21 some improvements that we can make, and they're in the 

22 draft stages of that report. We should be getting the 
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1 results of that in the next few weeks or a month or so. 

2 And that's -- I think I would characterize that as 

3 kind of an efficiency expert kind of recommendations, 

4 and we'll meet with them and score those and figure out 

5 which ones can have a lot of pay-back for us and we'll 

6 implement those into our process. 

7 NIOSH has helped us get more physicians for the 

8 process. We're still far short of the number of 

9 physicians that we need if we're going to continue to 

10 work on a part-time basis. We're also working -- an 

11 idea, as I mentioned before, on a full-time basis, 

12 getting physicians from the Public Health Service, VA, 

13 hiring them directly, whatever we can do to get -- I 

14 think full-time physicians are going to be a big part 

15 of the answer here. 

16 There's some other innovative ideas that are floating 

17 around on the physicians panel, also. The panel right 

18 now is made up of three physicians. A majority of our 

19 cases are unanimous votes by the three physicians, and 

20 so there's other ideas such as why don't we have panels 

21 that are two physicians, and then only bring in a third 

22 physician as a tie-breaker. Those kinds of issues need 
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1 to be well-vetted before we implement them, and they're 

2 also currently written into our rule, so any changes in 

3 that process would probably involve rule changes. 

4 Vulnerabilities to our program really ends out -- is 

5 out there on that payer* end. Some -- excuse me, 

6 vulnerabilities internal to the program. Some sites 

7 are still having difficulty meeting quota for data. 

8 And I don't mean to put Paducah on the report. In 

9 fact, Paducah actually has been making pretty good 

10 progress in the past few months, but we still continue 

11 challenged, bringing in the records under the current 

12 budget structure. If we do go to the batch process, I 

13 think that a lot of that will be alleviated because 

14 we'll basically put a lot more people on the jobs in 

15 the field at DOE. I've already mentioned the issues 

16 with the numbers of physicians. 

17 Overall issues, these are really more external kind of 

18 issues for the program, which I think you're all well 

19 aware of and you've seen discussed in the media. 

20 Payment of the worker compensation is complicated, a 

21 complicated issue, and I know you know that. It's 

22 different in all states. It's different in most 
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1 states, I guess I'll say. Also our relationships with 

2 our contractors at each site and their relationships 

3 with their insurance carriers and the state governments 

4 and state funds all play into this. 

5 I characterized it once to a reporter to say that well, 

6 there's probably about 20 different variables that you 

7 have to multiply together to come up -- to determine 

8 whether there's going to be a willing payer at the end 

9 of the process when we have somebody apply for work 

10 compensation -- Workers Compensation, and those 

11 variables are different for different points in time, 

12 different relationships the contractors had at the 

13 sites with the Department, different relationships they 

14 had with the state government, with the insurance 

15 companies, and it's a very complicated mathematical 

16 equation,l if you will. 

17 A couple of states, just as examples here -- Ohio for 

18 the most part operates a State insurance fund, and 

19 there's also some potential statute of limitation 

20 issues there, although those may be removed for this 

21 program. Subcontractors generally provided their own 

22 coverage at DOE sites, and so the Department does not 
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1 have a relationship where it can order a contractor not 

2 to contest a claim if there was a subcontractor who 

3 came to the site whole, with his on Work Comp claim 

4 coverage. The US Enrichment Corporation is not a DOE 

5 contractor and is -- course is running portions in 

6 Paducah operations and we don't know how they'll 

7 respond when they get Worker Compensation claims, but I 

8 cannot make a direct order to them not to contest 

9 because they're just leasing the property from us, the 

10 facilities from us. 

11 There is a GAO audit in progress, which has been 

12 discussed in the media. It's focused on both the 

13 willing payer issue, as well as production. The report 

14 on that audit is not out. We were told the report 

15 would be out sometime in the March time frame, although 

16 I -- you are seeing some of the facts that they've 

17 identified being discussed in the media. 

18 We have a reprogramming, which is very important to us, 

19 that we either request for FY '04. We hope the 

20 appropriators will make that available during the 

21 conference process in the next few weeks. I don't know 

22 how that's going to come out, nor would I guess at it, 
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1 but that's the additional funds we need to move this 

2 program faster. 

3 Applications are still coming in at 125 to 150 per 

4 week, and physician availability to serve on panels 

5 still continues to be an issue. 

6 I apologize for the size of this chart here, but I 

7 think if you just look at the optics here, it's high on 

8 the left and it gets low on the right, and that's the 

9 good direction. This is actually a reflection of how 

10 well we've been doing on employment verifications for 

11 the Department of Labor. In the early days -- and I 

12 think that chart starts -- looks like June of '02, as 

13 best I can read the chart there, we had literally over 

14 1,000 that were over 60 days old. Department of 

15 Labor's performance metric on this is to -- for the 

16 Department of Energy to return employment verifications 

17 to the Department of Labor, once they're requested, in 

18 60 days. Then there's a percentage, I think, that were 

19 allowed to be over 60 days. I think it's like ten 

20 percent or something. But we actually for the past 

21 five months have got it down to less than two percent, 

22 so I think our performance -- the Department's 
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1 performance there in getting the documents back to 

2 Labor have been very good. 

3 I'd also like to draw your attention to the fact that 

4 employment verifications for Labor, we have provided 

5 over 33,000 of those employment verifications for the 

6 Department of Labor, and they use that in the Subtitle 

7 B program. So the Department of Energy does play a 

8 significant role in providing data for the Subpart B 

9 program. 

10 This is our performance on providing information back 

11 to NIOSH, which I think is more near and dear to your 

12 concerns here. The reason that there's some gaps is 

13 that some months we didn't run the numbers to determine 

14 what the status of the program was. NIOSH has a 

15 similar criteria for us, which is to get the data back 

16 to them within 60 days and to not have over ten percent 

17 past due, past that 60 days. We're down below eight 

18 percent, and we're going to continue driving this down. 

19 I think it's important for me to mention here that the 

20 Department of course has three roles. Not only do we 

21 process the Part D claims, but we supply this data to 

22 NIOSH and to the Department of Labor. I've made it 
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1 clear to the field offices that support me in this 

2 effort and support NIOSH and the Department of Labor 

3 that their first priority is to support NIOSH and the 

4 Department of Labor with this data so that when we have 

5 challenges, whether they be resource-driven or whatever 

6 at the sites, the first customer they serve is the 

7 Department of Labor and NIOSH. So we do not want the 

8 Department of Energy to be a problem or the long leg -- 

9 the long pole on the tent for those operations. 

10 And that's really all I brought to show you today. I'd 

11 be happy to answer any questions. 

12 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Tom. Mike Gibson 

13 will start the questions. 

14 MR. GIBSON: Not only are -- you know, I'm glad to hear 

15 the Secretary's upset at the backlog of the cases, but 

16 I can also tell you that the people I'm passing from my 

17 former site, you know, they're very well frustrated, 

18 too. I also notice that some of the Senate are very 

19 concerned about this, too, and are looking at possibly 

20 ways to move this responsibility to another agency. 

21 Could you give me the Department's opinion on that? 

22 MR. ROLLOW: Well, I need to be careful here. I'm not 
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1 really in a position to comment on pending legislation. 

2 I will tell you this. The original law as written in 

3 the year 2000 asked the Department of Energy to do this 

4 -- carry out this part of the -- the Subpart D portion, 

5 and we're going to do that to the best of our ability 

6 and going -- and complete that job. If the Congress or 

7 the President decide to change that, I think that's 

8 what you mean when you're talking about pending 

9 legislation, then we'll support that 100 percent and 

10 work with whatever remedy they choose to put in place 

11 there. 

12 DR. ZIEMER: Mark Griffon. 

13 MR. GRIFFON: Tom, just to follow up on the data 

14 requests, the last slide that you showed, I've noticed 

15 -- and I don't have the references in front of me, but 

16 I think it was the Savannah River Site profile that 

17 NIOSH put out, they mentioned that certain archived 

18 records would be very difficult to retrieve. And I'm 

19 wondering if, you know, who -- how is that -- how -- 

20 how is that process determined between DOA and NIOSH? 

21 You know, NIOSH requests records that they believe 

22 might be valuable to their site profile and DOE says 
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1 well, these are too difficult to retrieve or -- who -- 

2 who is responsible for that? Is it the individual 

3 sites, DOE staff, or is it headquarters or how is that 

4 -- 

5 MR. ROLLOW: Well, basically the way this program is 

6 funded and operating, I fund the retrieval of those 

7 records. So ultimately I have a say in what's done 

8 there. I'm not familiar with this specific case. I'd 

9 be happy to take a look at it later. But we generally 

10 err on the side of going -- at least my records people 

11 tell me -- very far and very deep on these records. 

12 I'll be happy to take another look at this. I haven't 

13 specifically discussed it with Larry Elliott, but will 

14 be happy to discuss it with NIOSH and see if there's 

15 something more that we can or need to do there to 

16 support NIOSH. 

17 MR. GRIFFON: And just a follow-up. Do you have any 

18 sense of the types of records that have been requested 

19 versus the types that you've provided? For instance, 

20 personnel records versus like area monitoring or air 

21 sampling records or -- or, you know -- I guess records 

22 by categories sort of, that have been requested versus 
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1 provided by the Department back to NIOSH? 

2 MR. ROLLOW: No, I'm not familiar with -- you're saying 

3 have we -- were we not responsive in providing what 

4 they requested or -- 

5 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I'm just wondering if you had any 

6 breakdown on -- 

7 MR. ROLLOW: No, I just -- I don't have that with me 

8 and -- I can get that kind of information and get it 

9 back to you. 

10 MR. GRIFFON: Or NIOSH may have that breakdown, as 

11 well, I don't know, but I'd be interested... 

12 DR. ZIEMER: Roy DeHart? 

13 DR. DEHART: Tom, last week before coming to this 

14 meeting there was an article in our local paper in 

15 Nashville, and I understand there were similar 

16 publications elsewhere, which are totally confusing the 

17 two programs. And they're talking about the Worker 

18 Comp program with a guaranteed $150,000 of the Special 

19 Cohort side. I don't know how you get the right 

20 information out once it's out there in a newspaper, but 

21 somebody needs to be clarifying what these programs are 

22 providing. And I know you're trying -- I assume that -
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1 - but it's not getting through. 

2 MR. ROLLOW: That's a very good point. It took me even 

3 a month and a half when I first got this job to 

4 understand the difference in the two programs. It is a 

5 very complex program, the way it's set up in the 

6 legislation. And that's not a criticism of the 

7 legislation, but to accomplish whatever the goals were 

8 of the legislation, it's very difficult to do. We're 

9 very much aware of that and every conversation I start 

10 -- I mean you may have even noticed this slide show, 

11 this esteemed group here that's been involved with this 

12 for many years and you know it frontwards and backwards 

13 and sideways, the first two slides of my presentation 

14 here even to you today were to explain this if I needed 

15 to, and that's the left side is Labor, the right side 

16 is DOE, that first chart. And the second was in prose, 

17 trying to explain the difference in the programs. 

18 We are continuously challenged. I went to Fernald week 

19 before last to talk to the Fernald II workers and that 

20 put three programs up on the podium in front of them -- 

21 the Fernald II program for those who -- that are 

22 familiar with it, as well as the Subpart D and Subpart 
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1 B programs -- and you talk about a confusing mess, it 

2 really was. And it took about an hour and a half to 

3 untangle that, to explain to people -- and I'm not sure 

4 that we successfully did it for everybody. 

5 So my commitment is, at least from the Department of 

6 Energy standpoint, that we will continue to do more and 

7 more communication on that. We're looking at more 

8 things we can put on our web site to describe those 

9 differences rather than just let people read the dusty, 

10 dry law, but also put some graphics up there that 

11 explain the difference. And my telephone operators, 

12 making sure when people call -- and they do do this 

13 well already, but to sort it out. Are you -- did you 

14 mean to call the Department of Labor, are you working 

15 on this program -- and send people to the right places. 

16 But it is a continuous challenge. 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Tom, the fees for physician panels, are 

18 those out of your budget or out of the NIOSH -- 

19 MR. ROLLOW: They're out of my budget. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Your budget. 

21 MR. ROLLOW: Yes, sir. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 
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1 MR. ROLLOW: And you may be aware that the fees are 

2 fixed by law to a certain pay scale in the Federal 

3 government, and that is one challenge that we do have 

4 attracting enough physicians, as it is on the low end 

5 of the scale for what these physicians are used to 

6 being paid. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: Unlike the fees for the Board. Right? 

8 Okay. Other comments or questions for Tom? 

9 (No responses) 

10 DR. ZIEMER: There appear to be none, Tom. Thank you 

11 very much, we wish you all success in your part of this 

12 effort. 

13 DR. DEHART: I have a question. Will you be around at 

14 lunch? 

15 MR. ROLLOW: Yes, I'll be here the greater part of the 

16 day. 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. Now let's stop a moment 

18 and look at our agenda. Our lunch schedule is a ways 

19 off yet. I'm wondering if we could think about 

20 starting the dose reconstruction information -- Mark, 

21 do we need to wait till after lunch? I know your folks 

22 have met early this morning, your work group. You may 
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1 have been counting on the lunch hour to get all of your 

2 things ready, so let me ask that question because -- 

3 MR. GRIFFON: I was sort of counting on that. 

4 DR. ZIEMER: You were counting on that, okay. 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: We could take public comment. 

6 PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD

7 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, we could do that. Let me ask -- 

8 although the public comment period is not scheduled 

9 till later this afternoon, we could, if there are some 

10 interested -- we could take some public comment now, 

11 although we certainly don't want to require that since 

12 some may have been counting on doing it later in the 

13 day. But if there are any -- first of all, let me ask 

14 if any -- if there are some signed up and do they wish 

15 to wait or -- 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: Cori's getting that. 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. We'll wait just a moment here. 

18 (Pause) 

19 DR. ZIEMER: We do have a number that have signed up. 

20 Is there any objection if we hear some of the public 

21 comment now? Tom Horgan from the Senator's office is 

22 here. Tom, do you object to going now, or would you 
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1 prefer to wait? 

2 MR. HORGAN: Not at all. Fine, it'd be great if it 

3 helps the program. 

4 Okay. I'm Tom Horgan, and I am the professional 

5 staffer on the health, education, labor and pension 

6 subcommittee on aging and where I handle labor and work 

7 force issues, and that is chaired by Senator 

8 Christopher Bond of Missouri, the state you're in. And 

9 I just first of all want to extend a warm welcome to 

10 everyone to the St. Louis area and the great state of 

11 Missouri. It's the -- either the Gateway to the West 

12 or, as my late father would say, the back door to the 

13 east, depending on which direction you're headed in. 

14 But that being aside, I certainly appreciate -- as you 

15 all know, we have quite a few former atomic energy 

16 sites in our area, predominantly the Destrehan site, 

17 which was I believe based in downtown St. Louis, as 

18 well as the Weldon Spring site, which is a rather large 

19 site that has just recently been cleaned up out in 

20 Weldon Spring in St. Charles County, about 25 to 30 

21 miles out Highway 40, just across the Missouri River. 

22 There are some other sites in Hematite*, as well, 
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1 vicinity properties and what have you, so this is very 

2 helpful, I believe, to myself as a member of the 

3 committee, as a member -- a staffer of the committee 

4 and someone who works on Missouri issues in this area. 

5 Again, thanks for coming. 

6 I think it's also helpful to the public. We certainly 

7 appreciate this. I want to commend NIOSH for coming in 

8 and all of you for making the long trek in. This is a 

9 very highly complex issue, and I realize it's not the 

10 easiest piece of legislation to implement. And what we 

11 need to find out is from experts in the field, we need 

12 to get your feedback. And I certainly thank everyone 

13 for showing up here today. I know there's quite a few 

14 interests. You know, you can imagine a lot of the 

15 constituents here are a little frustrated right now. 

16 But you know, again, I understand it's not the easiest 

17 piece of legislation to implement. But again, I just 

18 wanted to give y'all a warm welcome and thanks for 

19 coming. This is, I believe, very -- going to be very 

20 helpful. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you, Tom. Dr. Ziemer had to step 

22 away for a moment. He'll be right back I'm sure. 
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1 Anyone that has signed up, we don't want to take time 

2 away from this afternoon. We will commit to having 

3 public comment period as the agenda specifies later 

4 this afternoon. 

5 Next on the sign-up list is Carol Bergesh Lueddecke. I 

6 hope I didn't mess your name up. 

7 MS. LUEDDECKE: (Inaudible) 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: For the record, she's indicated that her 

10 questions were already answered. Yes, thank you. 

11 Denise Brock? Denise has been with us before. Denise, 

12 do you want to proceed now? 

13 MS. BROCK: I, too, would like to thank you all for 

14 coming to St. Louis. I know I've asked several times 

15 and I'm happy to see you here today. Again I have 

16 several questions or comments. I guess my first would 

17 be to Tom Rollow from DOE. Is that okay if I do that? 

18 DR. ZIEMER: We can have you pose the question, Denise, 

19 but we may -- depending on the length of the answer, we 

20 may ask Tom to answer that separately. 

21 MS. BROCK: Okay. Thank you. To the willing payer 

22 issue, I guess I'm somewhat perplexed by that. I 
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1 noticed you mentioned another state, but we're in 

2 Missouri and we have that same issue here. Willing 

3 payer seems to be -- to me to be somewhat of an 

4 oxymoron. I don't think anybody really wants to pay 

5 this from this area. We have a situation that -- here 

6 that Mallinckrodt years ago had private insurance. And 

7 then of course you've got a statute of limitation 

8 problems. Now we've got Tyco that purchased 

9 Mallinckrodt, and I believe Tyco has their own set of 

10 issues. So I'm really curious. Are these people 

11 without remedy on Subpart D? We don't have anybody to 

12 take care of this, so where does this go? 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Why don't you go ahead with other 

14 questions. These questions will go on the record, and 

15 then -- depending on our time -- we may allow some 

16 responses. But as I indicated earlier, this is not 

17 intended to be a question/answer session for the public 

18 comment period. 

19 MS. BROCK: Okay. And then I guess maybe another one, 

20 for the record again, would be to Tom Rollow as far as 

21 documents. And maybe I'm asking the wrong person, but 

22 I'm wondering about FOIA requests, maybe from -- to Amy 
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1 Rothrock*. If we are trying to obtain certain FOIAs 

2 that have documents and memos in there, is it possible 

3 to -- do you take those into consideration under 

4 Subpart D, as well, as far as exposures to people. And 

5 I understand that a lot of these diseases have latency 

6 periods. How does that factor into a worker's comp? 

7 If a worker didn't become sick until years later, is 

8 there remedy for that person? 

9 Go ahead? And I would also like to address the 

10 outreach. We had 3,300 employees -- direct employees 

11 of Mallinckrodt; 400 of those -- or somewhere around 

12 400 -- have filed claims. I believe there was not a 

13 whole lot of outreach in this area until recently. And 

14 I believe it's everybody's responsibility, and I 

15 include myself in that, to try to contact each and 

16 every one of those 3,300 employees or their survivors. 

17 Anybody that was exposed to any of this radiation and 

18 was made ill or died, they deserve compensation or 

19 their surviving family members do. And I don't know 

20 what it is that we need to do to get that word out 

21 there. But again, it's not just the direct employees. 

22 We have building and construction trades council 
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1 meetings that I try to attend -- anybody involved in 

2 cleanup, dismantling or construction of these 

3 facilities -- and I just don't know what else it is 

4 that we need to do to try to get that word out there. 

5 And it is a complex program, but the way I try to tell 

6 everybody, it was just split into two parts. One was 

7 implemented by DOL and the other one's by DOE. But I 

8 think that a lot of this just needs reform and there 

9 just -- there has to be a way to do this. The money's 

10 there. We have to find a way to get the word out to 

11 these people and take care of them. 

12 Thank you, and I'm sure I'll have more tomorrow. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Denise. In terms of the two 

14 questions you raised, those are questions that the 

15 Board members may also wish to know the answers to. 

16 And I'm going to suggest, Tom, if you are able to 

17 address those now, we'll give you some time to do that. 

18 Otherwise, if you could supply the answers for the 

19 record later, both to the Board and to Denise. 

20 MR. ROLLOW: I can answer those now. Let me get to the 

21 microphone. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: Tom can address those issues now. 
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1 MR. ROLLOW: The first question had to do with the 

2 wiling payer issue, and it's a very complex issue and 

3 not very satisfactory for some parts of the community. 

4 The law ordered the Department of Energy to not -- to 

5 order its contractor not to contest a claim in the 

6 Workers Comp system -- in the State Worker Comp system. 

7 The Department of Energy does not pay claims directly. 

8 There is no fund, no entitlement to pay these claims. 

9 It basically uses the State Work Comp system. The law 

10 is very specific that it says the Department of Energy 

11 can order a contractor who employed a contract worker 

12 not to contest the claim. 

13 The problem we have is that there are a lot of 

14 facilities where DOE -- there are some facilities where 

15 DOE is no longer present and has no contractor at that 

16 facility. And so no relationship, no contractor that 

17 we can order not to contest the claim. 

18 In other cases, there are subcontractors that may have 

19 worked at a site who did not work for our contractor, 

20 but worked for a subcontractor, and they came to the 

21 site either with their own Work Comp arrangements, and 

22 we have no -- we just have no vehicle, no legal way to 
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1 order them not to contest -- to order someone not to 

2 contest that claim, and that's the willing payer issue. 

3 Yeah, "willing" is a funny word, but there is no payer 

4 there -- now, does that mean there's no payer? No, it 

5 does not. Workers Compensation in each state works 

6 differently and different rules, but you can apply for 

7 Workers Compensation, but what you don't have is the 

8 Federal government perhaps at the tail end of that 

9 process. But there may be a State fund, there may be 

10 insurance companies that hold policies. They'll have 

11 to review that. 

12 You also mentioned a question about FOIA, Freedom of 

13 Information Act, requests and can that information get 

14 into the process. I'm not really sure that I 

15 understand your question there, but you also tied it up 

16 -- related it to getting sick later. You want to 

17 clarify that? 

18 MS. BROCK: Yes, I'm sorry. I probably confused the 

19 two. I'm wondering if -- if a claim is denied under 

20 Subpart D -- and I'm not really -- I have to say I'm 

21 sorry because I'm just not as familiar as what I should 

22 be with that program. But hypothetically, if that goes 
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1 in front of that physician panel and that claim is 

2 somehow denied for whatever reason, maybe that person -

3 - I don't know, is that saying there -- is it similar 

4 to the dose reconstruction? Would it be saying that 

5 that person was not exposed enough? And I'm wondering 

6 if a FOIA request that would have extra information in 

7 it could be obtained and reviewed. Does that somehow 

8 factor into Subpart D? 

9 MR. ROLLOW: Okay. In the Subpart D process every 

10 applicant is allowed to submit items for the record. 

11 And so if they have FOIA'd from former employers or 

12 from the Department certain information that they want 

13 to see in their record, they can add that to their 

14 record. And there are several opportunities in the 

15 process, including they get a last look at the package 

16 before it goes to the physicians panel. 

17 The physicians panel does not deny anything. The 

18 physicians panel either has a finding that it was more 

19 likely than not that their illness or injury was caused 

20 by their work at the Department of Energy, or they do 

21 not have that finding. That doesn't necessarily mean 

22 that this person will see a denial in the State system. 
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1 It just means that they will not have a positive 

2 finding from the physicians panel. 

3 MS. BROCK: Okay. Thank you. 

4 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Tom, for clarifying 

5 those issues for everyone. 

6 Clarissa Eaton, are you interested in speaking now or 

7 would you prefer to wait till this afternoon? 

8 MS. EATON: I'll speak now. 

9 Good afternoon. Thank you for coming. My name is 

10 Clarissa Eaton. I'm from Festus*, Missouri. 

11 Fortunately I'm not a claimant, nor do I have any 

12 family members who are claimants. I am a board member 

13 of the United Nuclear Weapons Workers of the St. Louis 

14 Region. 

15 And just to give you a background of how I got involved 

16 in this, our home was contaminated by Mallinckrodt. 

17 Right now there's -- at least we know of 60 pounds of 

18 uranium about 3,000 feet from my home. 

19 I realize that we have a serious problem here in the 

20 state of Missouri. I'm glad somebody's here from Kit 

21 Bond's office. We haven't heard a lot from his office 

22 and I'll be sure to keep that in mind at voting time. 
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1 I am here on behalf of the weapons workers who once 

2 worked for my behalf as an American citizen. It is my 

3 duty and honor to be here to express my concerns, for 

4 the public record. We owe this to the men and women 

5 who worked to protect the United States. 

6 First of all, I'd like to say that the missing records, 

7 I don't believe that that's an accident. It seems to 

8 be typical these days with these big corporations and 

9 it seems to be standard operating procedures. In that 

10 case, I believe that the worker deserves the benefit of 

11 the doubt and that the burden should not be on the 

12 employee, and that we need to get serious about 

13 addressing the health concerns and hazards to these 

14 workers, and come forward and do your jobs. And I 

15 would appreciate that, and I know the families would. 

16 I also believe that, as a DOE facility, that everyone 

17 that worked at these facilities after, whether it be 

18 commercial, should be included because of the residual 

19 contamination that was left over. I don't think it 

20 should stop at the Cold War weapons workers because 

21 essentially after that, the walls, the buildings -- to 

22 this day the plant in Hematite is so contaminated it 
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1 should have been dismantled in 1974. Instead it was 

2 sold to a commercial facility and they played a big 

3 game of hot potato and just kept selling the property 

4 and not addressing the cleanup problems. 

5 Missouri has now become a state of pollution, and we 

6 have a serious problem here, and I hope that everyone 

7 here hearing this message will lift the veil of what 

8 has been going on. You, the professionals, the health 

9 and safety people, the chemists, all the high-paid 

10 people that should have been watching out for us, 

11 including the State agencies, they have really let me 

12 down. I am astounded at the things that are going on 

13 right under our nose and in our own back yards. 

14 I also would like to ask about the other health-related 

15 conditions that aren't mentioned. I know there's 

16 cancer and -- but I know there's also a lot of other 

17 things that aren't ever mentioned, like Parkinson's 

18 disease, different things that are affected, like the 

19 degreasers and things that were used to clean up this 

20 radiation stuff. I know TCE, which is another thing 

21 that is in our water that my family was drinking -- 

22 there's lots of things that aren't discussed or 
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1 covered. And I know if it was my grandfather or one of 

2 my family members, I would definitely like to see that 

3 they get justice. 

4 I think this process is extremely slow, and I think 

5 it's embarrassing, and it's also insulting to the 

6 claimants. Thank you. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Clarissa, for your 

8 comments. 

9 Let's see -- oh, Bob Tabor. I'm trying to read the 

10 writing here. Bob has been with us before. Bob, do 

11 you wish to address us this morning or -- 

12 MR. TABOR: Yeah, very briefly. I'm Bob Tabor from 

13 Fernald Atomic Trades and Labor Council from the 

14 greater Cincinnati area. Just say I'm happy to be here 

15 once again. 

16 I just wanted to follow on with some comments that Tom 

17 Rollow made. He mentioned a few weeks ago that the 

18 DOL, DOE, people from the Workers II compensation -- 

19 no, not compensation, the health program that's 

20 provided the employees there. There was an outreach 

21 effort at our site. I think there was probably maybe, 

22 just by my visual estimations, 200 to 300 people 
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1 probably that turned out for that, mostly retirees. 

2 Unfortunately, I think more people left more confused. 

3 Jim was there, by the way, also. 

4 Our people that participated on the panel, as well as 

5 myself, I think did an excellent job as specialists, 

6 you know, in their particular area. But the efforts to 

7 communicate that as an outreach, you know, effort 

8 wasn't well planned as far as how do you coordinate the 

9 communication so it makes some sense to the people. I 

10 believe that possibly some kind of an overhead that may 

11 simplify the program, because people would speak to 

12 like Federal programs, and maybe somebody in the 

13 audience would ask well, how many programs are there, 

14 and -- you know, and one said well, we have two 

15 programs. We have a Federal program for this and a 

16 Federal program for that. You know, personally, I 

17 believe the answer should have been there's the Energy 

18 employees occupational compensation act program and 

19 it's got two subparts, kind of something like your 

20 overhead showed there. And you know, this subpart is 

21 handled by this particular agency and this part handled 

22 by that agency. This is not rocket science to bring 
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1 that kind of a communication across to these folks. 

2 You had a lot of confusion inasmuch as a number of 

3 these retirees is something that we need to take into 

4 consideration when communicating, you know, anything in 

5 outreach is that a lot of these folks have already 

6 applied to states for compensation, way before any of 

7 these programs were invented. So there was confusion 

8 over, you know, the DOE's Office of Worker Advocacy and 

9 state compensation efforts there, as opposed to people 

10 who have already previously applied directly to the 

11 states, as well as those who've applied to the DOL for 

12 the Subtitle B, you know, process. 

13 I appreciate the effort that was made. Unfortunately, 

14 it didn't come off as good. So my comment would be 

15 that if we do anything like this in the future, you 

16 know, to also try to provide outreach to people who 

17 maybe don't know about the program, that we think our 

18 way through this and have some overheads with some 

19 simple explanation of just the basic structure of the 

20 program, you know, from that perspective. 

21 It's easy for me to get up and explain to somebody how 

22 to do that, but after all, I've been to every one of 
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1 these sessions and I deal with this on a daily basis, 

2 you know, on my own home ground for those folks making 

3 application. And of course I will say I'm very pleased 

4 with the progress that's being made with the resource 

5 centers. Those folks are really making a genuine 

6 effort to re-establish credibility and to help those 

7 claimants out there. So you know, I applaud them for 

8 that effort and whatever Department or Agency's 

9 responsible for that. 

10 On another note -- let me see, another comment that I'd 

11 like to make here -- and it might be -- I don't know if 

12 I want to form this in the way of a comment or a 

13 question. Willing payer issue. There's some 

14 confusion, I think, with a lot of the claimants out 

15 there relative to the Department of Energy's -- let me 

16 see if I can frame this right. Some people believe 

17 that the Department of Energy is supposed to have told 

18 the prime contractors not to oppose the claims at the 

19 state level. I'm not so sure that we don't need some 

20 additional clarification, or maybe I don't understand 

21 it. 

22 Apparently what it is is people that have claims or 
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1 make claims at the state level, at least those that I 

2 know that have made those claims that were maybe 

3 employees at my site, the prime contractor has showed 

4 up with their legal people and have opposed those 

5 claims. And that left the claimant somewhat surprised, 

6 because their impression was well, we thought the DOE 

7 was telling the prime contractors not to do this. My 

8 basic understanding is that that does happen, but only 

9 if you have worked your claim through the Office of 

10 Worker Advocacy and it's been seen by the physicians 

11 panels and some decision has been made one way or the 

12 other. 

13 Now I don't know which it is, but I know that prime 

14 contractors are showing up because most of -- are 

15 saying well, this didn't happen on my watch. We have -

16 - we have a claim number with the state and this didn't 

17 happen under our claim number. Whereas the position of 

18 the unions and the employees are well, it's our 

19 understanding, you know, that -- this would be the 

20 union speaking in this sense -- would say well, it's 

21 our understanding that, you know, when a new prime 

22 contractor takes over this site, he inherits, you know, 
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1 the work force and he inherits the problems that that 

2 site had previously. So when you make a claim, as far 

3 as I'm concerned, it should be under the current prime 

4 contractor. But the current prime contractor says 

5 well, wait a minute here, you're going to have to file 

6 that claim with the previous contractor, or the 

7 previous contractor before that. 

8 So there's some considerable confusion relative to 

9 Workers Comp claims, the recommendations coming from 

10 the DOE to the prime contractors and what that criteria 

11 is, and possibly Tom might be able to clarify that 

12 because it's difficult for me to answer a lot of our 

13 claimants' questions on that. Does any of this make 

14 any sense, what I just said? And maybe that might be a 

15 subject matter that could be offered up for some 

16 clarification at whatever point in time. 

17 DR. ZIEMER: And thank you, Bob. And Tom, if you do 

18 want to respond at this point, I'll certainly give you 

19 that opportunity, or maybe you can bring some 

20 clarification for everyone, as well, on that issue. 

21 MR. ROLLOW: Sure. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: Or those issues. 
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1 MR. ROLLOW: I mentioned earlier an equation that had 

2 about 20 variables in it, and you just went through 

3 about 16 of those variables. This subject really needs 

4 a lot more time than we're going to be able to give it 

5 today, so I'll give you a couple of short answers on 

6 it. 

7 The program -- the legislation tells the Department of 

8 Energy not to contest claims that do come through the 

9 Subpart D program only, so that's what the order is 

10 from the Congress to the Department of Energy. That's 

11 what my office does. 

12 Commentary on the Workers Compensation process in this 

13 country at the state level, it does tend to be an 

14 adversarial process. Both sides are challenged to 

15 prove their points. The claimant's challenged to prove 

16 what they're claiming, and the contractor or the 

17 contractor's representatives are challenged to disprove 

18 it, or prove the truth lies somewhere else. And so I 

19 apologize for that, but that's -- that's the way the 

20 process works. 

21 To my knowledge, the Department of Energy has not put 

22 out a do-not-contest order to other than claims that 
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1 come through the Subpart D process. And there's 

2 reasons for that which we don't have time to go in 

3 today, but the state process has to work the way the 

4 state process works, and the Federal government has no 

5 say in that. And those -- those rules are made up by 

6 the states. And we're not asking our contractors to 

7 roll over on every claim. 

8 Now if there are some over-adversarial relations that 

9 take place at contract sites that you're aware of, then 

10 those issues might need to be raised either with the 

11 Department or with the local management at those sites. 

12 So does that answer your question, I hope? 

13 MR. TABOR: Yes. 

14 MR. ROLLOW: Thank you. 

15 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Tom. We're now going 

16 to take our lunch break. I do want to emphasize that 

17 there will still be the scheduled public comment period 

18 this afternoon, as well. We do thank those who 

19 commented already for being willing to move their 

20 comments up earlier in the schedule. But again, that 

21 doesn't preclude the same individuals or others from 

22 commenting later today. 
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1 We will break for approximately an hour and a half, so 

2 let's shoot for 1:15 return time, which is just 

3 slightly earlier than what is on the schedule, since we 

4 are breaking a half-hour early anyway. So let us 

5 return at 1:15, please. And it's okay to leave things 

6 here. I gather the room will be locked. 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: Will be monitored. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: Or monitored, at least. Thank you very 

9 much. We're recessed till 1:15. 

10 (Whereupon, a lunch recess was taken.) 

11 DOSE RECONSTRUCTION WORKGROUP

12 DR. ZIEMER: Not quite the gavel, I don't have my gavel 

13 today, but we will come to order. 

14 We're going to now begin our discussion from the dose 

15 reconstruction work group and Mark Griffon will lead us 

16 through that, and then we'll have a discussion period. 

17 Mark, are you set to go? 

18 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. If it's okay, I'd just as soon 

19 present from here 'cause I was going to go through some 

20 of these documents and we'll probably be shifting 

21 documents around, so... 

22 Just wanted to give an update on what the working group 
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1 has done on the dose reconstruction review work. Since 

2 the last Board meeting, the working group has had a few 

3 other meetings. We agreed to meet in Cincinnati and 

4 primarily the purpose of that was to meet with the 

5 NIOSH staff and sort of walk through the procedure on 

6 how to process claims and -- and work on the other 

7 tasks that we needed to -- to complete, which were the 

8 site profile review task and the case tracking task. 

9 And so we met in Cincinnati September 8th and 9th, and 

10 then we did a follow-up conference call on October 10th 

11 to finalize some of those documents, and that's what we 

12 have here today mainly to focus on is the -- if you 

13 remember the last meeting, we had talked about the 

14 individual dose review task -- individual dose 

15 reconstruction review task, as well as the methods and 

16 procedures review task. And the Board voted on those 

17 and approved those. And now we have before you -- I 

18 think we've passed these out. Right, Paul? 

19 DR. ZIEMER: In the packet, I believe. 

20 MR. GRIFFON: In the packet are the site profile review 

21 task and the dose reconstruction review tracking task. 

22 And then the other document, which you've seen before 
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1 -- I even think we discussed this other document at the 

2 last meeting. It's called the Advisory Board on 

3 Radiation and Worker Health Procedure for Processing 

4 Individual Dose Reconstruction Reviews. So this is 

5 sort of our procedure on how to proceed with the case 

6 reviews. And this has been substantially modified from 

7 the last time the Board met. So those three items are 

8 really the new things that the working group is 

9 bringing before the full Board. 

10 What I'd like to do is just walk through those and 

11 highlight some ma-- you know, significant changes, and 

12 then maybe, you know, we can open it up for discussion, 

13 if that makes sense. 

14 Let's see -- okay. Let me start with that procedure 

15 first, the Procedure for Processing Individual Dose 

16 Reconstruction Reviews, if people found that. That's 

17 the lengthier document, three-page document. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: In your packet I think it's the second 

19 document under that tab. No, third, I'm sorry. Or 

20 maybe I have the wrong one. 

21 UNIDENTIFIED: The one with all the bullets towards the 

22 -- 
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1 MR. GRIFFON: Oh, it starts with all the bullets at the 

2 top, yeah. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, got it, right. 

4 MR. GRIFFON: Okay? 

5 DR. ZIEMER: It's actually the fourth one, then. 

6 MR. GRIFFON: Is it the fourth -- the fourth one in the 

7 book, yeah. Wanda, you got that? 

8 MS. MUNN: Well, it's the fifth one in mine. 

9 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

10 MS. MUNN: I have the bullets. 

11 MR. GRIFFON: All right. Some of this you'll recognize 

12 from the last draft that we worked on with the full 

13 Board. Highlights of the changes, and I'm not saying 

14 this is every word that was changed, but the main 

15 things we addressed -- Section A, Selection of Cases 

16 for Review, the main points to note are that the cases 

17 are selected by the Board and the cases are randomly 

18 selected -- stratified random selection on the 

19 parameters of interest. And in a later section, I 

20 think we outline -- in the case tracking procedure, 

21 actually, we outline some of those parameters of 

22 interest. And also in that section we note that the 
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1 contractor will be responsible for tracking progress on 

2 the case reviews. 

3 Section B, things here of particular interest to us is 

4 that -- if you look at this, we're talking about 25 

5 cases every two months, on average, I guess is the way 

6 we're looking at this. And that's -- later in this 

7 document we mention that that's six cases to four 

8 three-Board-member panels. So we -- we -- and the 

9 reason we -- we debated on this issue of -- all Board 

10 members are going to be involved in reviewing the 

11 cases. We thought it made most sense because different 

12 Board members are going to rotate off the Board at 

13 different times. We thought at the outset everyone 

14 should be involved to do some of these reviews so we 

15 could construct four-member panel-- three -- or four 

16 three-member panels to do the reviews. So that means 

17 every two months, each of us is going to have to review 

18 six cases. This doesn't really address conf-- you 

19 know, conflict of issue -- interest issues whereby you 

20 might have to recuse yourself from certain panels and 

21 certain cases. But on average, we're saying probably 

22 the commitment from Board members is going to be six 
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1 cases between every Board meet-- every two months. 

2 This section also -- another thing to note is that the 

3 section does call for a subcommittee. You'll see the 

4 dose reconstruction subcommittee, and I think in our 

5 working group we agreed and we actually drafted a draft 

6 charter for a dose reconstruction subcommittee to 

7 oversee the review of the -- of the -- of this process. 

8 And you know, one of the primary reasons for that is 

9 that, by definition, the subcommittee would have to be 

10 an open meeting to -- open to the public, whereas these 

11 working group sessions are sort of ad hoc and not open 

12 -- you know, not necessarily open to the public. So we 

13 thought that once we start the reviews, we should have 

14 it more formalized and that it should be an open 

15 process, and we're recommending that a subcommittee be 

16 formed to do that task. 

17 DR. ZIEMER: And I might insert at this point, you 

18 recall that a working group is more like an ad hoc 

19 group. It has a specific, defined task, whereas a 

20 subcommittee is an ongoing group. We see this as an 

21 ongoing effort now from this point forward -- 

22 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 
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1 DR. ZIEMER: -- as opposed to a single sort of one-time 

2 effort thing, and therefore it would call for a 

3 subcommittee under FACA rules since it would be an 

4 ongoing -- more like a permanent committee of this 

5 Board and therefore becomes a subcommittee and we'll 

6 have to follow those guidelines in terms of the 

7 constitution of the committee, the charter and the 

8 rules of engagement. And we'll address that at a later 

9 point then. 

10 MR. GRIFFON: Section C talks about the distribution of 

11 data. Some of the primary things we discussed here 

12 with the working group was questions about privacy and 

13 Privacy Act issues. And I think we came to the 

14 conclusion that NIOSH was going to provide de15 identified data for all these reviews. Is that -- I'm 

16 not sure if you -- we finalized that, but that was the 

17 -- yeah. 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: That was your recommendation. 

19 MR. GRIFFON: Right. Right, I think NIOSH is looking 

20 into the cost and timeliness issues on that -- in that 

21 regard, but that -- that is -- our recommendation is to 

22 -- that all the -- all the reviews would be done on de-
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1 identified data to avoid Privacy Act concerns. 

2 Section E -- or Section D was -- it didn't really 

3 change. It was the interface of the Board and review 

4 contractors with relevant experts, and that section 

5 basically remained the same as in the last document. 

6 And Section E -- yeah, the main -- one thing to note 

7 here is that -- and I think this is for the contractor, 

8 which -- which has a -- the contract has been awarded, 

9 and I think it's good for the contractor to note in 

10 this section that there's a great deal of interface 

11 between the Board and the contractor, and that's 

12 spelled out in pretty good detail here on how closely 

13 the contractor will have to work with the individual 

14 panels and the subcommittees and -- and have to present 

15 back to the full Board, so they're going to have to 

16 take that into account in their -- in their planned 

17 work. 

18 Section F -- Section F specifies the reports that will 

19 come out of this process, the summary reports and 

20 that's -- that's -- each panel will provide a summary 

21 of the six cases that they review. This is aggregate 

22 data. You know, we're not -- we're not bringing a 
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1 report back on each case that you reviewed, 

2 necessarily, but it's a summary of the six cases. And 

3 then there's an aggregate report from the Board to HHS, 

4 so those are spelled out there. 

5 And finally, Section G is recommendations, and I don't 

6 think that was greatly modified from the last time. 

7 Does it make sense to stop here and discuss this and 

8 then go on to the other two then? 

9 (Whereupon, Dr. James Melius arrived and joined the 

10 Board members at the table.) 

11 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, I think we should see if there's any 

12 questions or comments on this draft. This would be 

13 basically an operational document that, if we approve 

14 this, it becomes our working guide, as it were. And 

15 it's our own document, so it could be changed at any 

16 time. 

17 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: It's not like this is a final 

19 recommendation to somebody. It's our own process or 

20 procedures, which can be added to, modified, whatever, 

21 as we get further into the process. But at least this 

22 is how, presumably, we believe it should proceed at 
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1 this time, once we've agreed to it. So comments? 

2 Okay, Wanda first. 

3 MS. MUNN: Are we going to, in one of the other 

4 documents, discuss the subcommittee itself? Or is this 

5 an appropriate time to be asking questions -- 

6 DR. ZIEMER: We can -- 

7 MS. MUNN: -- like how large do we -- 

8 DR. ZIEMER: -- ask questions -- 

9 MS. MUNN: -- expect this to be? 

10 DR. ZIEMER: -- now, but that would be a separate 

11 action. The makeup -- I lost my volume here. The 

12 makeup of the subcommittee -- is the operator back 

13 there? I think I lost volume here. 

14 MS. MUNN: Yeah, you did. 

15 MR. PRESLEY: Can you turn Dr. Ziemer up just a little 

16 bit, please? 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Or at least turn my mike up. There, it's 

18 back, I think. Thank you. 

19 But if you have questions now, that is part of the 

20 recommendation. But I think it'll be a separate -- 

21 basically a separate charter and an appointment -- an 

22 official appointment of a subcommittee. 
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1 Also -- this is really getting strong now. Welcome to 

2 Jim Melius. Jim, we're glad to have you join us. The 

3 record will show that Jim has now arrived, so to speak. 

4 So did you want to raise a question on that part, 

5 Wanda? 

6 MS. MUNN: My only question had to do with how large 

7 this subcommittee was envisioned to be. I'm thinking 

8 the subcommittee, and beyond that, each member of the 

9 Board, will be dealing with a certain number of cases. 

10 And I guess my -- I can't quite identify how large or 

11 how small others are envisioning this subcommittee to 

12 be. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Well, what the -- the group has 

14 recommended that there be a chair, at least two members 

15 and a government representative. I believe you 

16 envisioned this -- four is the minimum size, I believe. 

17 MR. GRIFFON: I don't know that we made that 

18 recommendation, but yeah, I was thinking of something 

19 similar to the size of the work-- the existing working 

20 group. You know, not larger than that, but -- and I 

21 don't know if there's FACA requirements on the size or 

22 makeup of -- 
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1 DR. ZIEMER: We can check on that, but at some point we 

2 had -- I thought your group had developed that 

3 recommendation. 

4 MR. GRIFFON: I don't -- I don't recall. 

5 DR. ZIEMER: Well, in any event, then if it's not 

6 yours, it's going to be the Chair's. Somebody's got to 

7 claim it. Anyway, it would be probably a minimum of 

8 four. It might be five. In that -- in that range. 

9 MR. GRIFFON: In that range, yeah. 

10 DR. ZIEMER: This would serve as kind of a steering 

11 committee, be responsible for -- well, guiding the 

12 process, if I can use that terminology. 

13 MR. GRIFFON: Right. Yeah, I mean I think the 

14 subcommittee is going to have some ongoing, you know, 

15 work. And I think we -- we did discuss at the working 

16 group that, you know, the Board may choose to delegate 

17 some responsibilities to the subcommittee, for a lot of 

18 reasons, but one of which is just the timing. You 

19 know, if -- if the contractor had to wait for the Board 

20 to meet each time for certain decisions to be made, it 

21 might be -- you know, might be very cumbersome. So one 

22 of those tasks might be the case selection process. So 
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1 there is some work for this subcommittee to do in a -- 

2 on and above the panels, you know, the individual 

3 panels. Jim? 

4 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. I guess I'm on now. I'm not sure 

5 if I'm asking the same question Wanda did, but I think 

6 we can assume that this document would work within some 

7 structure which we have to talk about, whether it's the 

8 -- a subcommittee, whatever. And then we would then 

9 sort of fill in some of these -- who would do some of 

10 these tasks or how some of this would get -- be made 

11 operational at some point. So we would approve or, you 

12 know, make whatever appropriate changes are in this 

13 document, with the understanding that we would then, as 

14 we sort of fleshed out the process, be going back and 

15 might -- you know, might -- having said this, you know, 

16 the subcommittee will -- you know, based on cases 

17 selected by the subcommittee in some way or things like 

18 this. Is that how we're envisioning this -- 

19 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Other questions on Mark's presentation so 

21 far? 

22 Now we can go ahead and act on this document, which 
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1 comes, I believe, Mark, as a recommendation of the 

2 working group for adoption by the Board. Is that 

3 correct? 

4 MR. GRIFFON: Yes, yes. 

5 DR. ZIEMER: Or would you rather wait and have in 

6 context the other documents that are sort of part and 

7 parcel of the bigger package before you vote on them 

8 individually? Would you rather hear the rest of the 

9 picture first? 

10 MS. MUNN: I'd rather hear them all and then vote 

11 individually. 

12 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Anyone object to that? 

13 (No responses) 

14 DR. ZIEMER: Then we'll come back individually and act 

15 on each one. Is that agreeable? Any objection? 

16 (No responses) 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Without objection then, Mark will proceed. 

18 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. The other two documents, the Site 

19 Profile Review task is the first one, and this is a 

20 task that we generated -- a lot of the language you'll 

21 see in the -- 

22 DR. ROESSLER: Second to last. 
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1 MR. GRIFFON: Second to last in the notebook, Gen says. 

2 Site Profile Review task is -- again, I think you've 

3 seen the first draft of this. A lot of the language 

4 was extracted from the RFP. The primary addition to 

5 this was in the third paragraph, the large paragraph at 

6 the bottom of the page. We added -- tried to add some 

7 more specificity to it, since we've seen a few of the 

8 site profiles that have come out. One part in 

9 particular talks about we're reviewing the worst-case 

10 estimates. It's near the bottom of the paragraph, so 

11 there's language in there about the fact that they 

12 shall review the worst-case estimates -- and NIOSH/ORAU 

13 have included in some of their site profiles worst-case 

14 estimates, so the -- the -- for the most part, it is 

15 similar to the last draft. 

16 The other things in -- that has been added to this 

17 document is on the second page, Period of Performance 

18 and Deliverables. You know, we're asking the 

19 contractor up front to give a procedure on the site 

20 profile review process and how do they plan to review 

21 these site profiles, proceduralize it for us. They 

22 would -- they would come back to the Board with that 
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1 procedure for our approval before they proceed. 

2 Also in the Period of Performance, we estimated ten to 

3 12 DOE site profile reviews and two to four AWE site 

4 profile reviews. This is quite a bit of a larger scope 

5 than I think we projected in the initial RFP, but we've 

6 also seen a shift -- a lot of these are going to be out 

7 early on, and we think this'll probably be front8 loaded. In other words, in years two through five of 

9 this contract, you -- there wouldn't be as many site 

10 profile reviews to do, so a lot of these are going to 

11 occur in this first year. And so this is a larger task 

12 item than I think I envisualized it when we did the 

13 first draft of the RFP. So that -- that was the other 

14 specific that was added. We -- we tried to estimate 

15 the number of DOE sites and AWE site profiles that 

16 would be reviewed. 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. And this appears to incorporate 

18 most of the changes, or maybe all the changes we talked 

19 about before, as far as I can tell. 

20 Tony, comment or question? 

21 DR. ANDRADE: Question, quick question. Given that the 

22 scope now includes some -- oh, perhaps a minimum of 12 
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1 sites, including both DOE and AWE sites, then I guess 

2 the question is, this task would not really begin until 

3 a number of site profiles have been developed by NIOSH. 

4 So this task will probably not be issued for some 

5 period of time yet? 

6 MR. GRIFFON: I'm not sure exactly of the timing of the 

7 site profiles. I know there are a bunch currently in 

8 the hopper and ready for -- almost ready for approval, 

9 so I don't know that we would have to delay the task a 

10 whole lot before releasing it, but maybe Larry can help 

11 us out there, or Jim. 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, yeah, let Jim answer this question. 

13 DR. NETON: Yeah, this is Jim Neton. We have a goal to 

14 complete a large number of site profiles by the end of 

15 this calendar year. I was going to address that 

16 tomorrow, but I believe right now we've anticipated 15 

17 major sites -- those are DOE sites -- to be completed 

18 by the end of the year. Again, that's a goal, a 

19 target, you know. There may be situations outside our 

20 control that might delay those slightly, but -- but 

21 that's the plan. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: But it certainly appears that there would 
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1 be no reason to -- to delay getting underway with this 

2 part of the task at some level. They're obviously 

3 going to be all done at once, anyway, from -- as far as 

4 our review's concerned, anyway, so... 

5 DR. ANDRADE: Okay. Well, my question stems from this 

6 concern. I know that the initial site profiles that 

7 are being developed are being -- and I don't want to 

8 say this in a prejudicial way, but some of the simpler 

9 sites, some of the sites that perhaps dealt with one 

10 isotope or maybe just a few and had limited operations 

11 are being looked at first. And I wonder if that's 

12 going to affect the overall product of this particular 

13 task. 

14 DR. NETON: This is Jim Neton again. That's not the 

15 case. Actually the site profiles are being completed 

16 principally on the number of claims that are out there 

17 outstanding, so you -- it will cover the majority of 

18 the sites that, you know, had complex isotopic work and 

19 that sort of thing. These would be the major DOE 

20 facilities covering somewhere approaching 80 percent of 

21 our claimant population. 

22 DR. ANDRADE: Good. Thank you for that clarification. 
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1 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: I know, also, again, you know, with this 

3 -- the Board is going to control the selection of the 

4 sites for review. I'm not sure how it would work, 

5 though, hypothetically, as Tony was saying, if there's 

6 not a -- enough sites that we are interested in 

7 reviewing that are completed, the profiles. I don't 

8 know if this task can be, you know, sort of a no-cost 

9 extension kind of idea or -- or how that works. You 

10 know, if this -- in other words, if the year's run out 

11 and they've only done three site profile reviews, I 

12 don't know how that works in the task contract 

13 approach, but anyway... 

14 DR. MELIUS: I have a question along the same line. 

15 MR. GRIFFON: Jim. 

16 DR. MELIUS: It would seem to me that we're almost 

17 forced to put a lot of the -- as you said, front load 

18 on the site profiles and get a number of those done, 

19 because if I understood from the last meeting how NIOSH 

20 is going to go about doing the individual dose 

21 reconstructions now, they're going to be very dependent 

22 on the site profiles. So we're going to be evaluating 
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1 the individual claims, we're going to be referring back 

2 to these site profiles as part of that process, and I 

3 don't know if this working group has thought through -- 

4 I mean I don't know if we have enough information yet 

5 to sort of figure -- to work this out, but to me, the 

6 two are much more intertwined than I think we thought 

7 originally they were going to be. We were under the 

8 impression that the site profiles would be sort of 

9 developed over time, some way built from the individual 

10 cases, where now we're going -- starting from the other 

11 end. I don't know, you know, whether five years from 

12 now there's really any difference. I don't think so, 

13 but certainly at this point it's going to be very 

14 dependent on -- the initial cases for some period of 

15 time are going to be very dependent on what's in the 

16 site profiles. At least, you know, a high proportion 

17 for each site. So I think -- I think we need to put a 

18 large task out early to look at some of those. How we 

19 sample from those and so forth I think is a little bit 

20 more challenging. I think that's a good point Tony -- 

21 Tony makes about that. But I do think we're going to 

22 have to -- to spend a fair amount of the effort 
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1 initially looking at those site -- site profiles. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: And we did base this, you know, this ten 

3 to 12 number was based on Dick Toohey's projections and 

4 Jim's and Dick's projections on, you know, when they 

5 were going to complete -- so we're assuming there's 

6 going to be a fair amount of sizeable complex sites 

7 that we'd be interest-- you know, be very interested in 

8 reviewing. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: I think here in the procedure you have to 

10 proceed as if that's the case. And number two, one of 

11 the things that I believe we're asking the contractor 

12 to do is recommend to the Board the sampling procedure 

13 of the profiles. Is that not correct? In other words, 

14 how are we deciding which profiles -- this is not 100 

15 percent profile review. Second paragraph says there'll 

16 be a review process. Procedure may include 

17 recommendations -- let's see -- contractor shall review 

18 selected profiles. And part of this -- the contractor 

19 has to come to us, I think, and say how are you going 

20 to select these, what's the process. 

21 MR. GRIFFON: Well, we -- 

22 DR. ZIEMER: And whatever that process is, is in a 
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1 sense independent at that point of whether the 

2 profile's done or not. He may select one and we say 

3 okay, this is one we want to -- to review now. Oh, 

4 it's not done? Well, what then? But -- 

5 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I did -- I did call, in this 

6 document, for the contractor to develop the site 

7 profile review procedure, which could include, you 

8 know, the selection process. I do, however, think that 

9 that function has to remain a Board function -- 

10 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, it says -- 

11 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

12 DR. ZIEMER: It comes back -- 

13 MR. GRIFFON: It says -- 

14 DR. ZIEMER: -- to the Board for approval. 

15 MR. GRIFFON: Right. So I agree with that, yeah. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, I mean we -- 

17 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: We're not going to let the contractor say 

19 I'm going to take the -- 

20 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

21 DR. ZIEMER: -- 12 smallest sites and review them. 

22 There's got to be some rationale for how they're 
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1 selected that the Board approves. 

2 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: But once having done that, then you have 

4 to turn around and say okay, are those profiles 

5 available. 

6 MR. GRIFFON: Uh-huh. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: And if not, what do we do. Jim, another 

8 comment. 

9 DR. MELIUS: I think there's also a point, thinking 

10 through this process -- for the Bethlehem Steel site, I 

11 mean an individual dose, you know, case would -- it's 

12 the same as doing the site profile. I think, you know, 

13 they overlap so much 'cause it's -- you know, 

14 everything was built from that site profile, I think. 

15 You go to a Los Alamos or a much more complicated site, 

16 then you're going to have a mix of some things covered 

17 by the site profile, some not. And we may want to 

18 rethink that matrix of how to select cases -- 

19 individual cases based on how we've done -- you know, 

20 what site profile reviews we've done. There's no sense 

21 in repeating -- you know, if the entire individual 

22 cases depend on the site profile -- 
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1 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

2 DR. MELIUS: -- there may -- we may not want to put as 

3 much effort into that. I mean we want to make sure 

4 that they followed it correctly, but it certainly 

5 wouldn't take as much time and effort as -- as doing a 

6 full site profile. Other cases -- we may want to 

7 somehow select cases that aren't well covered by a site 

8 profile 'cause those may involve, you know, more 

9 difficult technical circumstances. And I think having 

10 the contractor do that is -- is I think a good first 

11 step in terms of thinking through and -- I mean the 

12 only real I guess more complicated site profile we -- 

13 we've seen, I guess the one of the two is the Savannah 

14 River, and so working off of that and based on what 

15 information Larry and his staff have already gotten 

16 about the mix of cases there, they can probably I think 

17 come up with a pretty good plan, but -- provide a good 

18 review without a lot of duplication of effort and... 

19 MR. GRIFFON: That makes sense. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Wanda? 

21 MS. MUNN: How does the working group arrive at the 

22 choice of numbers for the number of sites that are 
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1 going to be reviewed? I guess my real question is what 

2 percentage of the total sites that are going to be 

3 profiled are we talking about when we say ten to 12? 

4 MR. GRIFFON: I'm not sure what percentage that works 

5 out to, but -- Jim's going to answer that. 

6 DR. NETON: Yeah, I think -- I think, if I recall, at 

7 the working group meeting we actually provided the site 

8 profile completion plan for review, and I think at that 

9 time we had something on the order of 15, so ten or 12 

10 would be the majority of the site profiles that were 

11 going to be completed in this calendar year. But they 

12 are the major sites. 

13 MR. GRIFFON: And the -- I guess the rationale for -- 

14 for picking such a high percentage was that they were 

15 going to impact on so many cases anyway, as Jim was 

16 talking about, given the -- the presentation we had at 

17 the last few meetings. It's pretty clear that, you 

18 know, these are going to be relied upon heavily for 

19 individual dose reconstruc-- so we thought in the first 

20 year it was important to -- to -- for the Board to 

21 review many of these, especially for the larger sites, 

22 because they're going to impact so many individual 
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1 cases and how they'll proceed. So we do front-end it -

2 - front-end load it with a high percentage. I don't 

3 see that happening in the two, three, four -- you know, 

4 further years out of the work. 

5 MS. MUNN: In the interest of expediting our entire 

6 process, there is some question in my mind as to 

7 whether or not this large number is justified if we do 

8 in fact find, in initial review of some of the earlier 

9 large site profiles, that the process and the result 

10 appear commendable, reasonable, acceptable. 

11 DR. ZIEMER: And the point you're making then is that 

12 if the -- what you might call the audit process shows 

13 that the process is working, that it may be not 

14 necessary -- we don't have to validate every site 

15 profile. That's not necessarily the job. The job is 

16 to audit and find weaknesses in the system. 

17 MS. MUNN: In the system or the process, and -- 

18 DR. ZIEMER: So you're suggesting that -- 

19 MS. MUNN: -- I guess -- 

20 DR. ZIEMER: -- the number may turn out -- you might 

21 want to do more or less, depending on what you find -- 

22 MS. MUNN: That's -- 
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1 DR. ZIEMER: -- early. 

2 MS. MUNN: I guess the word "will" stopped me there, 

3 where we say the contractor will perform this certain 

4 number. I'm wondering if it isn't -- if it's necessary 

5 for us at this juncture to establish such a high number 

6 as being absolutely necessary to be done. That's my 

7 bottom line question. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: Anyone on the subcommittee want to respond 

9 to that one? 

10 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I mean I guess -- you know, the 

11 rationale in my mind was that -- that the -- especially 

12 for the larger sites, that it was going to impact a lot 

13 of dose reconstructions and -- I'm not sure that we 

14 need that strong of -- you know, maybe we can back it 

15 off to "may", but I think the variety of those large 

16 sites, too, and the -- in my experience with the 

17 variability in the data at some of these large sites, 

18 you know, I think that they are unique enough that -- 

19 you know, it may not be necessarily true that if one 

20 was very sound that the next one is going to be as, you 

21 know, thorough or whatever. And it impacted on -- you 

22 know, I thought it was going to impact a lot on the -- 
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1 on the large number of overall cases, so -- you know, 

2 maybe ten to 12 isn't the right number, but we thought 

3 we needed a large percentage -- of those major sites, 

4 anyway. 

5 DR. ZIEMER: Others have comments on that issue? Roy. 

6 DR. DEHART: Actually the wording, as it is written, 

7 gives us that flexibility because you're using the term 

8 "approximate" and you're giving a range from ten to 12. 

9 So it could be eight. But the contractor's going to 

10 need some kind of guidance in order to bid on this, or 

11 to give a figure, so he's going to -- 

12 MR. GRIFFON: That's part of why we had the numbers in 

13 there was to give them something to bid against, you 

14 know. 

15 DR. ZIEMER: Others? Okay. We're looking for items 

16 that you feel should be modified. We'll come back and 

17 have formal approval again, but -- shall we proceed 

18 then? 

19 I sense that there is some concern about the 

20 specificity, but we want a guidance number for our 

21 contractor. The approximate -- I don't know what the 

22 plus or minus is on the approximate, but ten to 12 
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1 sounds like a range. Is it nine to 13 or... But 

2 there's sort of a feeling that it's a little bit fuzzy. 

3 Is that what you're saying? Is it fuzzy enough or no? 

4 Okay. 

5 Proceed, Mark. 

6 MR. GRIFFON: The last new item is the Dose 

7 Reconstruction Review Tracking task, and this -- 

8 basically really, this -- responsibility for the 

9 contractor here is to develop a tracking system capable 

10 of -- the second paragraph outlines some of the 

11 parameters, and we -- in here I think we said that the 

12 following types of parameters, to the extent available 

13 or some language like that. I can't find it right now, 

14 but we left ourselves a little flexibility there, but 

15 these are some of the parameters that we may consider 

16 selecting across as far as our selection criteria. And 

17 we -- we want the contractor to develop a database 

18 system to be able to track the cases that are being 

19 reviewed on these parameters, and then in addition -- 

20 once they set up the database, they also have to do the 

21 tracking and give sort of progress reports back to the 

22 Board so that we know how many cases we've done and 
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1 what -- what they fit -- you know, how many approved 

2 cases did we review versus unapproved. You know, that 

3 sort of -- we can get that sort of break-out of -- of 

4 what kinds of cases we reviewed, sort of descriptive 

5 statistics of the kinds of cases we've reviewed. So 

6 that sort of just takes the tracking function -- 

7 originally I was thinking of that being a subcommittee 

8 task, but it makes a lot of sense to have the 

9 contractor just to do that task, to track the progress 

10 on these tasks -- or on these cases as we're -- as 

11 we're doing them. 

12 And that's really the crux of that task. Anything to 

13 add from the working group? I don't think I missed 

14 anything. 

15 DR. ZIEMER: This probably is something the contractor 

16 would have to do for their own purposes, anyway -- 

17 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: -- keep track of what they're doing. But 

19 we're making it a formalization where they provide that 

20 data to the Board on a regular basis. Are there any 

21 questions on this document, or items that need 

22 clarification, or additional parameters that should be 
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1 included? 

2 Tony? 

3 DR. ANDRADE: Is it envisioned that the same contractor 

4 will be doing -- for example, is the three levels of 

5 review on individual cases? 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: There is only one contractor, so the same 

7 contractor will be doing all tasks that you place 

8 before them. 

9 MR. GRIFFON: Have you announ-- have you announced the 

10 award of the contract or... Can we announce that? 

11 DR. ZIEMER: It can be announced. Let's finish this 

12 discussion and then we'll ask the staff to formally 

13 announce the outcome of that bidding process. 

14 Tony, was your question answered? 

15 DR. ANDRADE: Yes. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: All right. Mark, any other issues? 

17 MR. GRIFFON: Those are the -- the three new items that 

18 we worked on. I did -- the only -- there was one other 

19 thing that came up during the development of the 

20 procedure for processing individual claims, the first 

21 thing that we looked at with the bullets here. One 

22 issue came up and Jim -- Jim's comment reminded me of 
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1 this, that we -- we will be doing a lot of the site 

2 profiles sort of at the front end of this process. A 

3 question came up as to whether -- when the cases would 

4 be available for review for the Board. And I guess the 

5 working group has taken the position that -- that once 

6 we have -- and -- and please step in if I get this 

7 language wrong, but once we have DOL's final approval, 

8 is that the correct language? Once we have DOL's final 

9 approval, our work -- the work group's recommendation 

10 is that those cases should be available for review. 

11 DR. ZIEMER: Now we can ask Jim to clarify this, or 

12 perhaps one of the legal staff, but I believe there was 

13 a brief time period -- that might have been as short as 

14 30 days after -- after DOL -- well, let's ask -- let's 

15 ask Jim or the staff to clarify when the cases would be 

16 available for review. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: They would -- they would be available for 

18 review -- is this not working? 

19 DR. ZIEMER: There you go. 

20 UNIDENTIFIED: It's got a short in it. 

21 MR. ELLIOTT: Can you hear me now? 

22 MR. PRESLEY: No. 
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1 MR. ELLIOTT: No, you can't hear me now? Bad mike. 

2 Cases would be -- oh, this is a good mike. The Chair 

3 got the best mike. I'll have to back away. 

4 DR. MELIUS: You got the fuzzy bureaucrat mike. 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: I got the fuzzy bureaucrat -- 

6 governmentspeak. The cases would be available for 

7 review upon the final decision from DOL. And as long 

8 as the cases is not in appeal, it would be available. 

9 Does that answer your question? Does that help? So 

10 once there is a final decision from DOL and there is 

11 apparently no appeal underway, that case would be 

12 eligible for your audit. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Did that answer the question? Whose 

14 question was that? Mark's, oh, okay. 

15 Okay, let's go back now and see where we are. I want 

16 to ask a question -- we have in the packet a couple of 

17 documents that we previously approved. One is the 

18 individual dose reconstruction review. 

19 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: But I notice that in this version there 

21 are a couple of marginal notes that have been added, 

22 which I think grow out of the presence of the three new 
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1 documents. 

2 For example, statement of work on individual dose 

3 reconstruction review, the comment in the margin now 

4 says I believe this is what you have have -- this 

5 doesn't make sense -- what you have having done -- I 

6 guess what you are having done under a separate task, 

7 so you may want to delete this paragraph, referring to 

8 paragraph two. 

9 Is that saying that it is now covered in one of these 

10 new documents and therefore doesn't need to be 

11 mentioned here? Or what -- what is that? 

12 MR. GRIFFON: I don't know whose -- who made those 

13 comments, actually. Did -- who -- these are new to me, 

14 these comments. But the notion there -- this language 

15 has been carried through every draft and it's nothing -

16 - you know, we had the procedures review before. The 

17 idea was that even when they're doing individual case 

18 review they should -- they're going to be looking back 

19 at the procedures, also. It's not going to be maybe a 

20 thorough review, but they're going to say it's 

21 consistent with the approach. It might be as simple as 

22 a check in a box on that level. It's not going to be, 
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1 you know, detailed review of the entire procedure and 

2 method. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Well, and also there's a marginal 

4 comment on the second page. I'm just asking where 

5 these comments -- 

6 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: -- come from. Are they from the sub-- 

8 working group? This is the individual dose 

9 reconstruction review, a document I think that we've 

10 approved previously. 

11 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I think what might -- 

12 DR. ZIEMER: There you are. There now appear some 

13 marginal notes which suggest some changes, and I was 

14 puzzled as to what that meant. 

15 MR. GRIFFON: I think -- 'cause if I see on page three, 

16 the comment about the phone interview, I think these 

17 are old comments that unfortunately -- 

18 DR. ZIEMER: They disappeared in the file. 

19 MR. GRIFFON: Right, when I forwarded the file, I 

20 didn't delete these hidden bubble comments. 

21 DR. NETON: That's correct, Mark. I think these are 

22 errant commen-- I mean they were in there, but when you 
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1 removed the track changes mode, they shouldn't appear 

2 and somehow these -- this was printed out and -- 

3 DR. ZIEMER: So just X them out then? 

4 MR. GRIFFON: X them out, yeah, they're no longer -- I 

5 think they've been addressed, yeah. 

6 DR. ZIEMER: And that's true also -- 

7 MR. GRIFFON: I'll make sure I provide the right copy. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: -- of all three pages. 

9 DR. MELIUS: Good thing they're all polite. 

10 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, just don't look at those comments. 

11 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So you have in your packet the 

12 approved individual dose reconstruction review 

13 document. You have the approved -- 

14 MR. GRIFFON: Procedures and methods. 

15 DR. ZIEMER: I'm looking for the title -- Dose 

16 Reconstruction Procedure and Method Review. Is that 

17 correct, Mark? 

18 MR. GRIFFON: Uh-huh. 

19 DR. ZIEMER: The new Site Profile Review task that was 

20 just discussed, the new Procedure for Processing 

21 Individual Dose Reconstruction Reviews, and the new 

22 Dose Reconstruction Review Tracking document. 
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1 Now let's go back -- the first one that was discussed 

2 today is the Procedure for Processing Individual Dose 

3 Reconstruction Reviews. This comes as a recommendation 

4 from the working group, constitutes a motion, requires 

5 no second. Is there further discussion on this 

6 document? 

7 (No responses) 

8 DR. ZIEMER: Are you ready to vote? I remind you that 

9 if this document approves -- or is approved, it 

10 becomes, in essence, our working document. It is not 

11 forever cast in stone. We can change it at any time, 

12 upon action of the Board. 

13 All those who favor adopting the Procedure for 

14 Processing Individual Dose Reconstruction Reviews, say 

15 aye. 

16 (Affirmative responses) 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Those opposed say no. 

18 (No responses) 

19 DR. ZIEMER: Those abstaining? 

20 (No responses) 

21 DR. ZIEMER: The motion carries. 

22 Next the Site Profile Review task. This comes as a 
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1 recommendation from the working group and hence 

2 constitutes a motion and does not require a second. Is 

3 there further discussion on that document? With the 

4 inclusion of the ten to 12 site reviews. 

5 Wanda, you started to pull the mike towards you there? 

6 MS. MUNN: Yes, I remain somewhat concerned about the 

7 establishment of that large a number. I understand the 

8 rationale, but I -- I'm uncertain myself whether 

9 greater specificity or less specificity is wiser in 

10 situations like this. The ultimate question really is 

11 do we wish for a given number of site profiles to be 

12 done, regardless of what the findings of the first 

13 reviews show. That's really the issue. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: Let me suggest something here and then 

15 we'll ask Gen Roessler also to comment. I believe the 

16 Board can change the task at any time, can it not? For 

17 example, if we wish to have more sites reviewed, what 

18 do we do? This -- initially this gives us a parameter 

19 against which the contractor can bid. Suppose, once 

20 the contractor's underway, we say well -- suppose we 

21 say you know what, we only need five reviews, or maybe 

22 we need 20. What do we do? What's the process for 
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1 that? 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: You can very well add to your task. You 

3 can modify the task and add work to it as it proceeds. 

4 At the same time, you need to be very careful and -- 

5 you're placing a scope of work in a task in front of 

6 your contractor, and you need to get them to propose 

7 against that. And when you award that task, that's 

8 what needs to happen. So if you -- along the way, you 

9 can't back away. If you say we want X done, that's 

10 what the contractor's going to go forward and do. 

11 Okay? So you can state what you want done. You can 

12 add to it, but you can't take away from it. Once 

13 you've agreed to what it is you want done and how much 

14 it's going to cost, then you must proceed along those -

15 - that course. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: It appears that it might be better to have 

17 a lower number and -- with the flexibility of 

18 increasing, rather than a larger number with no 

19 flexibility for decreasing. 

20 Gen Roessler. 

21 DR. ROESSLER: I just don't think this is a large 

22 number, in view of the fact, as Mark stated, that 
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1 there's going to be -- there are so many sites that are 

2 so different from each other that we want to make sure 

3 that the contractor looks at enough of them to make 

4 sure that it's being done properly. And the fact that 

5 we say approximately in there I think also gives us a 

6 little flexibility. I'd stay with what we've got. 

7 That was the intent, was the idea that there's a wide 

8 variety of different sites that should be looked at. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. Other comments? Jim? 

10 DR. MELIUS: I would just add to that, given the 

11 current work plan from NIOSH, which is so -- so 

12 dependent on these site profiles for doing individual 

13 dose reconstructions, I think it is -- given that work 

14 plan, I think it's critical that we do a significant 

15 number and I think -- I agree with Gen that this is a 

16 reasonable number to -- to be looking at under that 

17 plan. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Others want to speak? We don't 

19 have a proposed amendment on the floor, but we're 

20 trying to get a sense of whether -- probably whether 

21 there should be an amendment proposed. Other comments? 

22 Maybe the degree of comfort or discomfort that others 
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1 may feel with the number would be helpful for -- for 

2 the group. Roy? 

3 DR. DEHART: As I was suggesting before, I think we 

4 have flexibility. And more importantly, I think we 

5 have a need to get the -- get the site surveys checked 

6 quickly. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Further comments? Tony. 

8 DR. ANDRADE: I think given the process that Larry 

9 described insofar as our ability to -- and flexibility 

10 to add scope to a given task, I think Wanda's comment 

11 is -- is very appropriate. And also given what we 

12 heard from Jim earlier that even some of the very 

13 complicated sites are going to be looked at, a site 

14 profile may very well be a very large compendium of 

15 data. At Los Alamos you're going to be looking at 

16 uranium operations, plutonium operations, accelerator 

17 operations, production of radioisotopes thereof, et 

18 cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I mean that's just one 

19 facility, one member of the complex. Hence I would be 

20 -- my inclination would be to start with something like 

21 perhaps five total, and then add to the scope if the 

22 Board deems it necessary or of interest. 
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1 DR. ZIEMER: Leon? You need a mike? Get a mike there. 

2 That one may be -- is that working now? It doesn't 

3 work. 

4 MR. OWENS: Dr. Ziemer, I'd like to commend the working 

5 group for its job that it's done, but at this point I 

6 would like to call for the question. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: The question's been called for. The Chair 

8 can recognize that as a motion to end debate, or I can 

9 give you one last chance if anyone wants to make an 

10 amendment. Calling for the question is, in essence, a 

11 motion to end debate, which requires a vote in and of 

12 itself. Are you making a formal motion to limit 

13 debate? 

14 Is there a second? 

15 MR. ESPINOSA: Second. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: There's no discussion allowed. It 

17 requires a two-thirds vote to end debate. All in 

18 favor, aye? 

19 (Affirmative responses) 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Opposed? 

21 MS. MUNN: No. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: I think the ayes have it. 
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1 MS. MUNN: I think they do. 

2 DR. ZIEMER: Ten to two. 

3 UNIDENTIFIED: Eight to two. 

4 DR. ZIEMER: Eight to two, the ayes have it, and debate 

5 is ended and we now call for the motion, which is to 

6 adopt this document. 

7 UNIDENTIFIED: So moved. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: It doesn't -- it's on the floor. There -- 

9 this would be the document as presented by the working 

10 group. Thank you. 

11 All who favor adoption of this document, say aye. 

12 (Affirmative responses) 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Those opposed, say no. 

14 (No responses) 

15 DR. ZIEMER: Any abstentions? 

16 DR. ANDRADE: (Indicating) 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

18 UNIDENTIFIED: One abstention. 

19 DR. ZIEMER: One abstention, okay. Let the record show 

20 that there is an abstention. Thank you. 

21 Now if I am tracking correctly, I think we're on the 

22 tracking document. Is that correct? 
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1 MR. GRIFFON: Correct, yes. 

2 DR. ZIEMER: I hate to get off-track. Okay. The 

3 document now that comes before us is Dose 

4 Reconstruction Review Tracking. Again, this comes as a 

5 recommendation from the working group and constitutes a 

6 motion, does not require a second. Is there further 

7 discussion on this document? 

8 (No responses) 

9 DR. ZIEMER: Are you ready to vote? It appears that 

10 we're ready to vote. 

11 All in favor, say aye. 

12 (Affirmative responses) 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Any opposed, no. 

14 (No responses) 

15 DR. ZIEMER: Any abstentions? 

16 (No responses) 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Motion carries. Thank you. Let me thank 

18 the working group for their efforts. They've spent 

19 considerable time, both in a special meeting in 

20 Cincinnati, phone conference and even meeting early 

21 this morning to finalize things, so we thank them for 

22 their excellent work. 
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1 BOARD DISCUSSION

2 It would be appropriate now if we had information on 

3 the awarding of the task contract. Larry, would you 

4 want to do that -- or Jim, or who's... 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: The contract for technical support to the 

6 Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health has been 

7 awarded to Sanford Cohen & Associates. I believe that 

8 award is on our web site now. This is a five-year 

9 award for $3 million and we welcome them to -- to this 

10 work. I anxiously await and look forward to a review 

11 of our dose reconstruction program and where we might 

12 improve it. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. Any questions at 

14 this point? 

15 (No responses) 

16 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

17 (Pause) 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay, here's an amendment -- an amendment 

19 to my announcement. It's not on our web site yet 

20 because we are -- as I've just been told, we're working 

21 with procurement to make a proper announcement on our 

22 web site. There's certain pieces of their proposal 
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1 that can go on -- and we've gone through this with our 

2 ORAU team. I should know better than to think we can 

3 just put up a whole document. So we're working with 

4 procurement to get the right pieces that will be 

5 presented on our web site. 

6 I think it would be good if we could take some time and 

7 talk about the subcommittee and how -- since Cori's in 

8 the room, we may need her input on how a subcommittee 

9 functions or may function and may not function with 

10 regard to reporting and delivering information and 

11 products and carrying on the will of the Board. So I 

12 would encourage you to hold that discussion. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Let's begin by asking Cori if you or one 

14 of the staff could review for us sort of what I might 

15 call the rules of engagement for a subcommittee in 

16 terms of FACA requirements for meeting and related 

17 issues. I know that we have to have a charter. I 

18 believe the Chair appoints the members of the 

19 subcommittee, but we need to have a charter, and what 

20 other rules must we follow? 

21 MS. HOMER: Okay, establishing a subcommittee, we have 

22 to provide, first off, a subcommittee name and identify 
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1 membership. The chair of the subcommittee must be a 

2 member of the parent committee. That's generally a 

3 person selected through discussion with the Executive 

4 Secretary and the Chair of the parent committee. Other 

5 members -- we should have at least two other members of 

6 the parent committee in addition to the chair 

7 appointed. 

8 We have to identify the function of the subcommittee 

9 and frequency of meetings. It doesn't have to be 

10 extremely specific, but we do have to provide some 

11 information about how frequently they plan on meeting. 

12 The name of the Executive Secretary must be 

13 identified, as well. 

14 I have rules for a subcommittee. To begin with, a 

15 subcommittee doesn't function independently of the full 

16 committee. The subcommittee must report back to the 

17 parent committee and not directly to the agency. All 

18 members of the subcommittee have to be members of the 

19 parent committee. External consultants can be invited 

20 to share their expertise with the subcommittee, but 

21 cannot participate as members in any way. 

22 Subcommittees established do not have to be chartered 
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1 separately, but are covered by the charter of this 

2 parent committee. We can establish a subcommittee 

3 based on the full charter. 

4 Subcommittees are subject to all other requirements of 

5 the Federal Advisory Committee Act. We have to 

6 announce subcommittee meetings, as we do full committee 

7 meetings, in the Federal Register within a certain time 

8 frame in advance of the meeting. They must be open to 

9 the public, unless covered under a Privacy Act -- 

10 specific Privacy Act clause that would allow us to 

11 cover -- to close that meeting. Minutes must be kept 

12 and a designated Federal official must be present at 

13 all the meetings. 

14 There aren't any specific written guidelines about how 

15 a chair is selected or who does that, but again, it's 

16 generally done by the Executive Secretary and the Chair 

17 of the parent committee. 

18 Any questions? 

19 DR. ZIEMER: Now Cori, could you clarify -- aside from 

20 minutes, is there a transcript required, as well, or 

21 just minutes? 

22 MS. HOMER: Minutes are required, transcript is not. 
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1 That would be at the discretion of probably the agency 

2 as the transcript is at the discretion of the agency 

3 for the full committee. 

4 MR. OWENS: Dr. Ziemer? 

5 DR. ZIEMER: We have a question. Leon? 

6 MR. OWENS: Cori, you did say that the chair and the 

7 committee members normally are appointed by the Chair 

8 of the parent and the Federal member, but that's not 

9 necessarily rules per FACA. 

10 MS. HOMER: No, no, that is not specifically rules 

11 because there are no rules in the Federal Advisory 

12 Committee Act on how that's done. But the Centers for 

13 Disease Control and HHS, that's been the process. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other comments or questions? 

15 Oh, Jim Melius has -- 

16 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I'm not sure this is a question for 

17 Cori, but I guess -- I think what I'm trying to 

18 understand is what advantage -- why do we need a 

19 subcommittee as opposed to working groups? What are 

20 the pros and cons, 'cause I think that's the real issue 

21 here. It seems to me that subcommittee adds -- I'm not 

22 sure it's a necessary level of formality to this and I 
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1 think that's what we need to try to understand and -- 

2 DR. ZIEMER: Let me partially answer that and Cori can 

3 probably help me out, but my understanding is that a 

4 working group is more of an ad hoc group that has a 

5 specific task to carry out, and when the task is done, 

6 it's done. It's sort of a one-time thing. Now as to 

7 our working group, the task took a while to finish, but 

8 that was the task. 

9 Whereas a subcommittee is more like a standing 

10 committee that has ongoing responsibility, and that's 

11 how this was being envisioned, ongoing responsibility 

12 to oversee the dose reconstruction review process. 

13 MS. HOMER: That's -- exactly. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: And there may be some other issues. 

15 MR. ELLIOTT: If I may, I think the pragmatic benefit 

16 of having a subcommittee perform the work that you've 

17 identified here in this one document -- selecting 

18 cases, identifying, you know, who's going to serve on 

19 the panels to review what the contractor and those kind 

20 of things -- makes more sense than having the whole 

21 committee meet. I think there's been some discussion 

22 about how many meetings it will take to accommodate and 
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1 make this happen, and do you want the whole Board to 

2 meet. It's certainly your prerogative, your 

3 discretion. You can decide if the whole Board needs to 

4 meet on a more frequent basis than you've been meeting, 

5 or you want to have a subcommittee handle some of these 

6 kinds of day-to-day functions in setting up your review 

7 process. 

8 Does that help, Dr. Melius? 

9 DR. MELIUS: It helps, it just -- 

10 DR. ZIEMER: You were asking about work group versus -- 

11 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, but I'm trying to think -- again, 

12 it's sort of the pros and cons of doing this and so 

13 forth. And one clearly relates to how often we meet, 

14 but -- you know, I hadn't expected that to change, I 

15 guess, hadn't thought about it. 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: It would get worse, I think, if -- but -- 

17 DR. MELIUS: Is somebody from the -- I guess the 

18 working group, or has someone done a schedule to think 

19 through a time frame of when certain things would get 

20 done and so forth and what the amount of time required 

21 would be? 

22 DR. ZIEMER: For this subcommittee, or -- 
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1 DR. MELIUS: For this subcommittee or for this -- for 

2 this review process. Then I -- I think the -- whether 

3 it's a subcommittee or a working group or how we 

4 accomplish it is -- is secondary. I was just trying to 

5 get a better handle on what -- what's involved in -- 

6 there's some -- you know, frankly, if we're meeting 

7 every month anyway, what difference does this, you 

8 know, make? I mean the subcommittee's going to meet as 

9 part of the meeting, so it seems to me that all we're 

10 doing is making it a little bit more complicated that 

11 there's a separate set of minutes rather than the 

12 minutes being, you know, reported in the working -- a 

13 working group reports back to us. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, this -- this group, for example -- 

15 based on our documents -- would be the one that -- 

16 working with the contractor who establishes the cases 

17 that would be reviewed, I guess, and assigns them out 

18 to specific Board members. It's a sort of -- as I 

19 would see it -- a steering group type of thing. 

20 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, we did -- I mean we talked about a 

21 number of things that -- number of responsibilities 

22 that could be delegated to the subcommittee if the 
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1 Board decide, and that's where I think we weren't sure 

2 yet. We -- but some of the things we were talking 

3 through when we were talking about these tasks that are 

4 released, and the contractor comes back with a proposed 

5 work, there are a number of -- of points where the 

6 Board needed to approve or the subcommittee needed to 

7 approve, and we were -- we were concerned about some of 

8 these points being two-month delays each time when they 

9 -- you know, they've got a year period here to do a 

10 task. And if they have a product that the Board needs 

11 to review -- one week after our meeting say they're 

12 completed with a product, maybe there's certain of 

13 those tasks -- maybe not all of them, but certain of 

14 those tasks that can be delegated to a subcommittee to 

15 expedite that process. That was part of the thinking. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: One of the -- The other -- Let me 

17 interrupt, though, at this point -- related issue is 

18 what authority does the subcommittee have -- 

19 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: -- in acting on behalf of the Board. 

21 MS. HOMER: They cannot act on behalf of the Board. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: They cannot act on behalf of the Board. 
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1 MR. GRIFFON: No. 

2 MS. HOMER: Well, there is a way that -- 

3 DR. ZIEMER: Unless the Board does what? 

4 MS. HOMER: Provides very specific authority to act on 

5 their behalf. 

6 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, on a specific issue. 

7 MS. HOMER: But we have to be very specific about that. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: Go ahead, Mark. 

9 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I -- I guess the other -- the other 

10 benefit to the subcommittee as opposed to a working 

11 group -- this is not subcommittee versus full Board, 

12 but subcommittee versus working group -- was the idea 

13 that going forward -- just the openness of it, that it 

14 would be open to the public and we wanted to make sure 

15 that, as we're having these subcommittee meetings and 

16 discussing groups of cases, that that process would be 

17 opened, you know, so that was another part of the -- 

18 but that... 

19 DR. MELIUS: But -- but -- I guess my concern there 

20 would -- 'cause I was actually thinking the opposite. 

21 I mean one of the concerns I have about a subcommittee 

22 is it becomes -- it's not as transparent to the public. 
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1 I mean not that there's not huge numbers of public 

2 people that, you know, come to all our meetings and so 

3 forth, but the fact that they're sort of open 

4 discussion of anything that's of public interest I 

5 think is useful. And I mean, you know, in reality, are 

6 people going to go to the subcommittee meetings? It 

7 seems to me they're going to be relatively short and so 

8 forth. And then I guess related to that is what's the 

9 burden on the subcommittee in terms of meeting? Are 

10 these going to be the kinds of tasks or activities that 

11 they're going to have to meet person as opposed to 

12 conference call? And with formal announcements and so 

13 forth, so -- I mean do people want to -- do people on 

14 the subcommittee want to put that amount of -- amount 

15 of -- are they going to want to put that amount of time 

16 and effort in with meetings between meetings if those 

17 meetings are going to have to be in person? 

18 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Cori, did you have any additional 

19 items on the structure or the rules for a subcommittee 

20 that you wanted to add to that? 

21 MS. HOMER: Not particularly, no. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: Any others want to either respond or make 
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1 other points on what -- issues that have been raised? 

2 Yeah, Roy? 

3 DR. DEHART: As I remember, going back in history, as 

4 we were talking about the purpose of the subcommittee 

5 and what its function would be, we were also looking at 

6 the Board and trying to determine how often or 

7 frequently the Board would meet. And I think we've 

8 decided quarterly is going to be sufficient, because 

9 the subcommittee is going to be able to take care of 

10 this kind of -- of function. Isn't a quarter 

11 arrangement for -- what we determined for travel and so 

12 on? 

13 MR. GRIFFON: I don't -- I don't -- I know we had that 

14 discussion. I'm not sure we came to a conclusion on 

15 that. That was part of the discussion was, you know, 

16 maybe some of those in-between periods could be covered 

17 with subcommittee meetings. But then -- you know, I 

18 guess if -- if we had to be very specific on what 

19 powers could be delegated to the subcommittee, that may 

20 be problematic, too, so I don't -- you know. 

21 DR. ZIEMER: Let me read something to you. I don't 

22 think I wrote this. I think your group did, Mark. 
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1 It's called Subcommittee for Dose Reconstruction 

2 Review. It's dated October 7th, which is the date when 

3 you guys -- 

4 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

5 DR. ZIEMER: -- had your conference call. This 

6 appeared in my e-mail. I don't think it's spam. 

7 MR. GRIFFON: I think it is. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: Let me read it. (Reading) The 

9 subcommittee will be responsible for the following 

10 tasks related to dose reconstruction review: Negotiate 

11 with contractor over individual tasks (costs and 

12 technical scope), case selection for individual dose 

13 reconstruction reviews, case assignments, taking into 

14 account conflict of interest and a balance of 

15 scientific, medical or worker perspectives, development 

16 or revisions of procedures related to dose 

17 reconstruction review, and prepare draft report from 

18 review panels including dose reconstruction review 

19 summary reports, procedures review reports and site 

20 profile review reports. 

21 Under procedures approved by the Board, the 

22 subcommittee may be authorized to make decisions on 
 170 

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1 behalf of the Board for specific responsibilities as 

2 delegated by the Board. 

3 Does that sound familiar to any of the working group? 

4 MR. GRIFFON: I don't know where it came from -- no. 

5 Yeah. Yeah, certainly we -- certainly we drafted that. 

6 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

7 MR. GRIFFON: But -- and I -- 

8 DR. ZIEMER: But as a starting point -- 

9 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

10 DR. ZIEMER: -- that gives an idea of -- 

11 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

12 DR. ZIEMER: -- the kind of thing we were -- 

13 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: -- thinking about. 

15 MR. GRIFFON: Right. And -- and -- but we -- we did 

16 also, in that meeting, question the, you know, rules 

17 under FACA and -- 

18 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

19 MR. GRIFFON: You know, so there's some... 

20 DR. ROESSLER: I think one of the motivations for 

21 having the subcommittee was looking at the difficulty 

22 that we have in getting the whole Board together for 
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1 any meeting, I think if you reduce the number by half 

2 or less, there must be some formula somebody can come 

3 up with, but it just makes it much easier to get that 

4 group together. And if they have a specific task that 

5 the Board as a whole has assigned to them and given the 

6 committee the right to do it, then it can be done in a 

7 much more efficient manner. That's -- I'm just 

8 repeating what I think our discussions were. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: Perhaps the initial idea at least was that 

10 going forward, the main activity of this Board might in 

11 fact be reviewing dose reconstructions since the rule 

12 making is over and that's past and that sort of thing. 

13 And I think the idea was that perhaps the Board itself 

14 as a full Board would not have to meet as frequently 

15 and that such a subcommittee might work with the 

16 contractor in getting the reviews done and meeting with 

17 -- and having the meetings in between the main Board 

18 meeting, whatever frequency that was. But perhaps the 

19 full Board can do that job. 

20 DR. DEHART: There was another concern, too, and that 

21 is there is another major workload awaiting us, 

22 perhaps, and that's the special cohort. And the Board 
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1 will be fully engaged in that. 

2 DR. MELIUS: Two comments, though if I recall right 

3 that there also will be -- each of us on the Board or 

4 many members of the Board, I'm not -- will be involved 

5 in doing the individual dose reviews. Now some of 

6 that's conference call, some of that may be in person. 

7 I don't know if we've really -- that's been thought 

8 through or described to me or I've forgotten, but -- so 

9 for -- be lots of meetings anyway as this -- as this 

10 effort goes on. 

11 And secondly, I guess I'm still a little confused on 

12 this whole contractor thing exactly what a subcommittee 

13 can do and how it has to go -- I think if we do 

14 delegate specific tasks related to the contract to 

15 them, then those meetings have to be in person. 

16 Correct? Those can't be by conference call? Or they -

17 - I'm just -- 

18 MR. ELLIOTT: No, they -- once a task order is let, 

19 they can be -- to negotiate a task order may require a 

20 closed session with the contractor to discuss dollar 

21 figures. 

22 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 
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1 MR. ELLIOTT: It may not. 

2 DR. MELIUS: Uh-huh. 

3 MR. ELLIOTT: But once it's let, once it's awarded to 

4 be done, then you could have whatever meetings you 

5 wanted to have with a subcontrac-- with your contractor 

6 could be done by phone or in person. 

7 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: Just I want it to be clear for the record 

9 that we're not advocating one way or the other. We 

10 just want to help the Board do the work, and it 

11 certainly is the Board's discretion to decide how best 

12 to do this work. So we stand here at the ready to help 

13 you do that. 

14 DR. ZIEMER: Other comments? Mark? 

15 MR. GRIFFON: I think it was -- you know, a lot of it 

16 was for efficiency, being -- you know, we see a lot of 

17 work ahead for the entire Board, and part of the 

18 reasoning was to make it more efficient. But if it -- 

19 if it -- if we come to the conclusion that there's only 

20 certain tasks we're willing to delegate to a 

21 subcommittee and it's not going to add much to the 

22 efficiency, I don't know if it's -- you know, then it 
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1 may not be as useful of a concept, so... 

2 DR. ZIEMER: There seems to be some level of 

3 uncertainty whether this is needed or not. One thing 

4 that could be done would be to say we will form the 

5 subcommittee when we're convinced we need the 

6 subcommittee. If that's not this meeting, it can be at 

7 the next meeting, or never. Do we need to get some 

8 experience with the contractor first and kind of get a 

9 feel for what the workload's going to be in terms of 

10 individual dose reviews plus whatever is needed to 

11 monitor and oversee the contractor? I don't know. 

12 What's your feeling? I mean this is a Board decision. 

13 I'm quite willing to appoint a subcommittee if the 

14 Board believes it needs one to proceed. 

15 Mike, Jim, Roy -- Mike. 

16 MR. GIBSON: It's my feeling that I believe that we 

17 need to get to know a little bit about the 

18 subcontractor. We need to let them get to know a 

19 little bit about us and our expectations, and just get 

20 familiar with each other before we decide what might be 

21 the best path forward for the process. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Jim? 
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1 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. I think that having a subcommittee 

2 relatively soon would -- is going to be necessary in 

3 terms of dealing with the contractor and negotiating 

4 some of the tasks and so forth, if I understand that 

5 process right. I have some concerns about delegating 

6 too much to a subcommittee in -- in losing some of the 

7 transparency and some of the involvement of the Board 

8 in decisions in terms of the credibility of the overall 

9 -- all process because -- for lots of reasons, just -- 

10 selection of cases, there's going to be concerns about 

11 and -- 'cause it's not going to be every case that's 

12 looked at obviously and people will have concerns. 

13 I think what I'd like to think would work procedurally 

14 is that for either the working group or a new working 

15 group to come back for our next meeting with a -- I'd 

16 like to see a specific charge for the subcommittee and 

17 a document that's a little longer than that, sort of 

18 figure out a schedule, what they would specifically do, 

19 how they would report back and what -- and what 

20 specifically we would need to delegate to them in order 

21 to make the contracting task order process work well, 

22 as well as the individual views. And I think that -- 
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1 you know, in the next couple of months, with the 

2 contractor in place, I think that could be accomplished 

3 and I don't know if we're still planning on meeting in 

4 December or early next year, but by that time have it 

5 place -- something in place. I think that would work 

6 in keeping efficient process. 

7 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Roy, did you have a 

8 comment, too? 

9 DR. DEHART: Yes, I want to jump in on Jim's comments 

10 because those were some of the ones that I wanted to 

11 make. I think before we can vote on what a 

12 subcommittee's going to do, I think we need to know 

13 what the charter of the subcommittee is. 

14 Having concern about delegating I think is not really a 

15 major concern. This Board always has the prime 

16 responsibility of what happens, including everything 

17 that happens with the subcommittee, and the Board, by 

18 vote, can end the subcommittee. So I see no reason not 

19 to form the subcommittee, as long as we keep in mind 

20 that we are overseeing whatever happens within that 

21 subcommittee. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Wanda? 
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1 MS. MUNN: It would seem logical and wise to me that a 

2 brand new contractor would, at a very minimum, want to 

3 become familiar with the personalities on this Board, 

4 to at least read the transcript of this discussion 

5 here, and therefore be prepared to bring to us any 

6 concerns or any questions that they might have, given 

7 the documents that we have just approved today. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other comments? Okay. Larry? 

9 MR. ELLIOTT: I wonder if it'd help in the Board's 

10 deliberation here if I walked you through the process 

11 of issuing task orders. I mean give you a sense of 

12 what that's going to be like and whether you can insert 

13 subcommittee versus Board where I mention it. Would 

14 that be helpful? 

15 MR. PRESLEY: Yes. 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay. The task order process would 

17 involve the Board approving the tasks to be placed 

18 before the contractor, which you've done today. You've 

19 essentially handled these four. NIOSH will now submit 

20 these tasks to the contracting officer in Pittsburgh 

21 and for submission to Sanford Cohen & Associates. We 

22 also -- at the same time that we make that action, 
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1 we'll send a funding document that is forwarded to 

2 Atlanta in our office down there that handles tracking 

3 of money, and simultaneously we send that task to 

4 Sanford Cohen & Associates. Sanford Cohen & Associates 

5 will have 14 days to prepare their response, their 

6 proposed response to a given task and how they -- what 

7 skill levels and how much money they feel they need to 

8 do the work. 

9 That will then come back. The proposal will need to be 

10 reviewed and approved by either the Board or the 

11 subcommittee, depending upon if you have a subcommittee 

12 and you give them that charge, you give them that 

13 specific authority to review and approve. You could 

14 just have them review and then recommend to the full 

15 body. 

16 If the Board accepts or if the sub-- if you give the 

17 subcommittee the authority to do that, if the 

18 subcommittee accepts, the contracting officer is then 

19 instructed to award the task. If they don't accept, if 

20 revisions to the proposal are required, then once the 

21 task is resubmitted to Sanford Cohen & Associates, they 

22 will have now seven working days -- seven working days, 
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1 not a week, seven working days -- to revise the 

2 submission. And once -- and then once these come back 

3 to -- through NIOSH to the Board or to your 

4 subcommittee, you can take as long as you want to 

5 deliberate on them. You're not -- there's no time 

6 placed upon you as a body to make a decision. The only 

7 time element is placed upon your contractor to provide 

8 proposal back. 

9 So once you approve the task, it's awarded and 

10 reporting requirements are then outlined in that task, 

11 how often do -- how often do you want them to report, 

12 what kind of reports do you want from them. 

13 Does that -- I don't know if that helps, but that's the 

14 process. That's pretty much the cycle of things with 

15 the time embedded. 

16 DR. ZIEMER: Mark, comment? 

17 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, and I think that was, you know, 

18 part of our rationale and our discussions on the 

19 working group level. It was this sort of 14-day cycle. 

20 You know, we -- you know, we certainly want to get 

21 this process going, so if they get a response to a task 

22 within 14 days and the next Board meeting is a month 
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1 and a half away, and I don't know how long in advance 

2 is required to announce a Board meeting, but you know, 

3 even if we moved one up, you know, it would be a delay. 

4 So that was part of the rationale. And then if 

5 changes were required, we may have another delay in 

6 there till the next Board meeting, so we thought the 

7 subcommittee might be able to add some efficiency to 

8 that process. 

9 DR. ZIEMER: Jim Neton has a comment, then Tony. 

10 DR. NETON: Yeah, I don't want to confuse the issue, I 

11 just want to comment on Wanda Munn's idea that you 

12 could ask the contractor to review the minutes and then 

13 come and become familiar with the Board and that sort 

14 of thing. This is a task order contract, so there is 

15 no mechanism to pay the contractor to do anything other 

16 than through a task order. So you would have to write 

17 a task order to get them to do that, that's what I'm 

18 saying. So you're sort of in a catch-22 here, so just 

19 be advised. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Not going to do anything you don't get 

21 paid for. Okay. Let's see, who had -- Tony had a 

22 comment. 
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1 DR. ANDRADE: Question is for Larry. 

2 DR. ZIEMER: You know you're in trouble if you have an 

3 attorney whispering in your ear. Right? Okay. Tony 

4 has a question for you, Larry. 

5 DR. ANDRADE: Larry, I just wanted to know if there's 

6 any potential gain in efficiency, given that there is 

7 some minimum time for announcing meetings, or if 

8 there's some provision for announcing multiple 

9 meetings, for example, in the Federal Register, such 

10 that if you know you have a heavy workload over the 

11 next couple of months, you can do so. 

12 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you. That's a very good question 

13 and it actually offers me a great segue to comment on 

14 what I just heard in my ear. 

15 I want to call your attention to what Cori said a 

16 moment ago. Even if you have a subcommittee, we still 

17 have to announce their public meetings in advance. And 

18 generally they like for us to do that 30 days in 

19 advance, but given our history with this particular 

20 Board, you know, they understand that we do things in 

21 real time. So we get them there at least two weeks in 

22 advance and they still would like to see it 30 days, 
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1 but that's kind of the time frame. 

2 Yes, we can -- and Cori will stand up and correct me if 

3 I'm wrong here again -- but we can, if you know what 

4 your schedule of meetings would look like, where you 

5 want to have them and all of that, the date specified, 

6 we can roll that out in a Federal Register

7 announcement. We probably would have to have a rolling 

8 Federal Register announcement to say the next meeting 

9 of the series would be coming up, so... 

10 MS. HOMER: (Off microphone) We could announce one 

11 Federal Register notice for one year, if you have those 

12 dates, the problem being (Inaudible). 

13 (On microphone) The problem being if you announce even 

14 six months ahead of time, having one meeting change 

15 will require an amendment to the Federal Register

16 notice. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: I truly believe we would establish a 

18 policy that would say, if you want to go this way and 

19 you want to have a series of meetings, we'd do one 

20 Federal Register announcement, as Cori says. But 

21 because I want to make sure we have ample opportunity 

22 for the public to know about these meetings and remind 
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1 the public, we would not just rely on one announcement. 

2 We'd go back after -- say you had one meeting, we'll 

3 announce the next set, and we'll keep that going on 

4 until we exhaust the schedule. Okay? 

5 DR. ZIEMER: Roy. 

6 DR. DEHART: I think this is a practical question. 

7 What's the quorum requirement for this Board versus 

8 what would be the quorum for a subcommittee? 

9 DR. ZIEMER: Well, the quorum for the Board we 

10 established early on. The Chair doesn't remember what 

11 it is, but -- but Cori's got it at her fingertips. I 

12 know it's more than half, though. 

13 MS. HOMER: The quorum for the full Board is one more 

14 than one-half, and that's just a widely-accepted quorum 

15 for any committee or any group. The subcommittee would 

16 be the same way, one more than one-half would equal a 

17 quorum. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other comments? Now we don't have 

19 to come to closure on this issue this afternoon. We 

20 can revisit it tomorrow after you've had a chance to 

21 mull it over and -- yeah, Jim. In fact, we can even 

22 delay it further if we need. 
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1 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) Well, I guess is there 

2 anything -- I guess this is for the working group and 

3 Larry (Inaudible) -- anything that -- that we ought to 

4 be doing between now and the next Board meeting if -- 

5 and I don't know if we decided yet whether that's in 

6 December. There's sort of a -- I think as sort of a 

7 practical issue, we may want to set up a subcommittee 

8 just to meet between now and the next meeting of the 

9 Board in order just to get the task orders -- initial -

10 - initial task order -- something -- process underway. 

11 I mean that could be a simple thing that we would do 

12 tomorrow, so... 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: Let me speak to that by answering what we 

14 have in mind and as far as what we're ready to do. 

15 We're ready to take your task orders and Martha DiMuzio 

16 is on leave this week, but when she gets back next week 

17 in the middle of the week, we would forward those on, 

18 as I identified here in the process, to Pittsburgh 

19 procurement office and the funding document down to 

20 Atlanta and start the process. And so Sanford Cohen & 

21 Associates would have perhaps 14 days starting next 

22 Wednesday or next Thursday -- calendar days -- calendar 
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1 days for the first piece, so they'd have 14 calendar 

2 days to prepare their response. So you can look at 

3 your calendar and figure that out. I think Dr. 

4 Ziemer's got it here. It's going to be around November 

5 19th. Okay? So at that point, we were ready to either 

6 convene your subcommittee and share the proposal with 

7 your subcommittee, or we can hold the proposal until 

8 you meet in December. 

9 You've selected two days in December as everybody's 

10 available to meet. I think we've also got a -- the 9th 

11 and the 10th, I believe, of December. And you talked 

12 about Amarillo or Vegas for Nevada Test Site and we've 

13 worked with a hotel in Las Vegas. We're also trying to 

14 assemble or coordinate a site tour to the test site if 

15 that is of interest to anybody. But at that point, in 

16 Las Vegas at your meeting, we would need to handle this 

17 -- this set of task orders. You need to negotiate 

18 those out perhaps, or if you're fine with what you see 

19 in the proposal, then you make approval of them and we 

20 would see them awarded post that meeting. 

21 So do you have to have a subcommittee to make that 

22 happen? Do you have to have another Board meeting in 
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1 between? No. You get the proposal back after the 14-

2 day time period. We would hold onto that until we met 

3 in Vegas and then you could take action on it. 

4 If you had a subcommittee, you could have them meet 

5 before then. Does that make sense? 

6 MR. PRESLEY: Would the full Board still have to vote 

7 on it? 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: Depends upon what you specify as an 

9 authority to the subcommittee. 

10 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Mark, you had a comment? 

11 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I was just going to ask Larry to 

12 elaborate on the -- when we review the -- when we 

13 review their submittal, you negotiate technical skill 

14 and cost? And if we negotiate cost, does that have to 

15 be Executive Session or -- 

16 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

17 MR. GRIFFON: Whether it's a subcommittee or full 

18 Board, it's got to be -- 

19 MR. ELLIOTT: Whether it's a subcommittee or a full 

20 Board, once you start talking about the costs piece, 

21 you would do that in closed session. You can discuss 

22 the technical merit of their proposal -- in other 
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1 words, did their proposal address the technical scope 

2 of work adequately. You can do that in open session. 

3 But once you start talking dollar figures, you've got 

4 to go in closed session. 

5 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) I'm not sure which -- I'm 

6 not advocating any of these, but it seems to me there's 

7 some different possibilities. One is that we could 

8 have -- charge a subcommittee with doing that initial 

9 review, let them -- let them approve the task orders 

10 there, or -- which may be more important, if they need 

11 -- needs to be renegotiated, there's a problem and it 

12 needs to go back out for another proposal, they would 

13 have the authority to do that, but not the authority to 

14 do the approval. That would depend on full Board 

15 approval for this first time through. We could wait 

16 until we get the -- to Las Vegas, I guess, and do it 

17 all there, then set up a subcommittee that would -- at 

18 that point, should there have to be a renegotiation, 

19 would have the authority based on whatever instructions 

20 we gave them based on full Board review. 

21 We could also I think set up a work group to look at 

22 the task, just in order to be able to report back to 
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1 the Board and -- you know, particularly with, you know, 

2 some more of the detail and with their experience in 

3 having written up these task orders and so forth. So 

4 there would be maybe necessary -- necessity to meet, 

5 but at least a group that would be charged with doing a 

6 review before the next meeting. 

7 Just looking at the calendar, the only practical thing 

8 is that if we're talking about around November 20th, 

9 we're starting getting into Thanksgiving and so forth. 

10 I'm not sure if it's even practical to do a -- a 

11 subcommittee meeting between now and then, what we 

12 really gain from it, but that's -- 

13 MR. GRIFFON: Only gains us a week or so to -- yeah. 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: I think you've identified as many 

15 scenarios as I can envision that you could do this 

16 under. You mentioned a working group. You certainly 

17 could use a working group, but you could not designate 

18 any -- delegate any authority to that working group to 

19 make any decision on behalf of the Board. That you 

20 cannot do. That only can happen with a sub-- an 

21 established subcommittee. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: Further comments? So the real issue again 
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1 comes down to the extent to which the Board wants some 

2 action to occur before December 9th, which is our next 

3 meeting. 

4 Mark, question. 

5 MR. GRIFFON: I think -- you know, especially for this 

6 first round, one of -- one of Jim's options of having 

7 the first round go to full Board review for approval 

8 makes sense to me, and then it -- because I think the 

9 time it's going to take us to -- you know, we did a 

10 very cursory draft charter of a subcommittee, but we 

11 have to think through how much power we want to -- you 

12 know, what task we want to delegate to a subcommittee, 

13 who's going to be on the subcommittee, all those issues 

14 have to be worked out. And in the calendar here -- for 

15 this first round, anyway -- I don't think it gains us 

16 much time. So I think it might be beneficial for the 

17 first round to go to full Board approval and then -- 

18 you know, maybe, like -- like Jim said, with a work 

19 group review as soon as we get them in, just so they 

20 can present back to the full Board. But -- but then 

21 after that December 9th meeting, maybe we can further 

22 discuss, you know, a subcommittee for ongoing work 
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1 there. 

2 DR. ZIEMER: I think it was Mike that suggested it 

3 might be of value to have the full Board meet initially 

4 with the contractor anyway, and maybe the Board would 

5 prefer a full Board face-to-face, which that -- that 

6 opportunity presents itself in that context. Yes, 

7 Robert. 

8 MR. PRESLEY: Would it be to our advantage to add a 

9 extra day to the meeting in Vegas and meet with the 

10 contractor and go over this? 

11 DR. ZIEMER: I think that's going to depend on what 

12 other agenda items we have. It may be that we only 

13 need one day or one day and a half for the open 

14 meeting, and then -- I'm not sure it would take more 

15 than a half-day with the contractor, anyway. But the 

16 point is well taken. We can -- we'll have to look at 

17 the full agenda. 

18 Again, we can revisit this tomorrow. I think you have 

19 the issues before you. Unless I hear any specific 

20 motions to move forward on the subcommittee, I'm going 

21 to just ask that it be held in abeyance, at least till 

22 tomorrow, and then we can -- Jim? 
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1 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) This is more for -- for 

2 thought. To me, the -- there's some advantage now with 

3 these task orders to having a subcommittee (Inaudible), 

4 but that's -- I don't think it's going to be an ongoing 

5 advantage to a subcommittee. It may be a taskable one 

6 to have as other tasks come up, it would expedite that 

7 and so forth. But is this issue of selecting cases and 

8 reviewing -- and assigning people for review, and so 

9 forth, and sort of how we schedule all of it -- this 

10 and I think it would be useful -- I do think we ought 

11 to think about setting up some sort of a work group or 

12 something -- some way to really come up with a proposal 

13 that would think through what a schedule would be. 

14 Now we talk about quarterly meetings, then we would 

15 have, for example, a full Board and then between those 

16 -- each of those meetings, a meeting of a subcommittee 

17 so that would be roughly six weeks between meetings. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: Well -- 

19 DR. MELIUS: Is that -- is that adequate? 

20 DR. ZIEMER: -- one thing we can do is the following, 

21 and we can -- we can work on this some tomorrow. We 

22 actually have a draft, a straw man draft, and we can 
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1 look at that and say, you know, what are the -- what 

2 items are missing, what should be added, and we can 

3 polish that up and say okay, this -- and then -- and 

4 then use that at the next meeting -- you know, we'll 

5 have an opportunity between -- I don't think we need a 

6 work group to address that further. We have the straw 

7 man item that we can work from I think as a starting 

8 point, add to it, delete and so on. 

9 DR. MELIUS: But my only question is who's going to -- 

10 DR. ZIEMER: Unless I'm the only one -- 

11 DR. MELIUS: -- do the polishing? 

12 DR. ZIEMER: -- that has that mysterious document. 

13 MR. GRIFFON: I thought that was distributed to 

14 everyone, but maybe not. 

15 DR. ZIEMER: Well, in any event, we can make it 

16 available tomorrow. 

17 DR. MELIUS: But again, my only question is who's going 

18 to do the polishing that you said... 

19 DR. ZIEMER: Well, if we have input from the Board, at 

20 least on the straw man thing, then the Chair or Mark, 

21 we can work together and polish it up, a final draft 

22 for the next meeting, if that -- if that's the way the 
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1 Board wishes to go. And then -- and then we can 

2 establish -- again, we'll revisit it tomorrow. If 

3 you're comfortable waiting till December and -- and 

4 going full Board, and there may be some advantages in 

5 doing that, at least in the initial contact with the 

6 contractor, then we can go from there. If there -- if 

7 the Board feels the urgency of gaining a week or two on 

8 this issue, and NIOSH is prepared to have us move 

9 forward -- I mean it'll be our call, let's put it that 

10 way. 

11 I'm going to suggest -- we don't have it on the agenda, 

12 but I'm going to suggest a comfort break for the Board 

13 and others, and we'll reconvene in about 15 minutes. 

14 I want -- before we -- before we take a break, I want 

15 to make sure that any members of the public who wish to 

16 comment during the public comment period please be sure 

17 to sign up. It appears that we will be able to move 

18 that comment period up a little bit in time, so please 

19 take care of that as soon as you're able to. Thank 

20 you. We'll recess for 15 minutes. 

21 (Whereupon, a recess was taken.) 

22 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we're going to reconvene. We're a 
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1 little bit ahead of schedule, but I think we're not so 

2 far ahead that it'll catch people off-guard. 

3 PUBLIC COMMENT

4 DR. ZIEMER: Our next portion is an opportunity for 

5 public comment. I have four individuals that have 

6 signed up now for public comment. There may be others 

7 who will be coming in, but we'll begin with these 

8 individuals who've already signed up, beginning with 

9 Richard Miller from Government Accountability Project. 

10 Richard. 

11 MR. MILLER: Greetings to the committee. It's Richard 

12 Miller, Government Accountability Project. I just 

13 wondered if I had over-- maybe in running in and out 

14 that I had missed -- do we have a schedule or has there 

15 a schedule been announced for when the Special Exposure 

16 Cohort rule is going to be made available? I just -- I 

17 just note it only because we're approaching the third 

18 anniversary of the passage of the law and we still 

19 don't have a rule. 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: The Special -- is this the bad one again? 

21 Okay. 

22 The Special Exposure Cohort rule has been revised and 
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1 is under review. As soon as the Department releases 

2 that, we'll publish it and it'll be available for 

3 petitions to be generated against. 

4 MR. MILLER: Yeah, can you give us any more insight 

5 than that? Because that was the exact same answer we 

6 got in August, and I know that, you know, you don't 

7 control what goes on above you in the food chain and -- 

8 but I mean are we looking at something where this is 

9 like imminent or -- because it's -- the reason I'm 

10 asking is it's very difficult to evaluate these site 

11 profiles without the benefit of understanding how the 

12 Special Cohort rule intersects with what constitutes 

13 feasibility or non-feasibility for dose estimation for 

14 -- for parts or subparts or subgroups of your -- of 

15 your facilities. And so there's -- it's -- it's sort 

16 of a -- it's hanging out there. I'm sure it's not 

17 escaped your attention. 

18 You've nothing more to add, I see. Yes. Okay. May 

19 the record reflect. 

20 Secondly, I would like to re-raise an issue that was 

21 raised at the last meeting concerning the conflicts of 

22 interest requirements that do not apply to those 
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1 performing the site profiles. It's come to my 

2 attention, and I assume it's come to NIOSH's attention, 

3 that one of the companies which has been retained to do 

4 the K-25 site profile, Auxier & Associates, has also 

5 been retained by insurance company in Alaska to fight a 

6 Subtitle D claim that had gone through the physicians 

7 panel. And so I just was puzzled that if you've got 

8 the same outfit sort of on both sides of the program, 

9 albeit different Titles of the program, where are the 

10 boundaries beyond which you all would consider that 

11 kind of conduct permissible or impermissible, I guess. 

12 I mean where -- what -- what are the boundaries here 

13 for the folks doing site profiles, if any? 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: Richard, I'm going to answer your 

15 question this way. We are looking into this particular 

16 example that you have identified and we're working with 

17 the ORAU team. We are, too, concerned about 

18 individuals who work on our products and the -- let me 

19 just state this for the record -- the products of a 

20 site profile or a dose reconstruction in their final 

21 form are NIOSH products. But we fully recognize that 

22 certain expertise are applied to those products along 
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1 the way. And we're examining this particular situation 

2 and we have legal review of it right now. 

3 MR. MILLER: Well, let's just look at the policy 

4 question and I'll get out of the weeds then. And -- 

5 because it's just -- it -- it -- it raises this 

6 circumstance, I think. You know, it's -- it's -- it's 

7 like seeds in a moist flower bed, you know, they're 

8 going to sprout some more. And -- and I don't think 

9 this is the exception, and yet I guess the question I 

10 have is has -- since you all took under consideration -

11 - I think it was where it was left at the last Advisory 

12 Board meeting -- the question of whether you would 

13 apply the conflict of interest requirements that apply 

14 to those who do dose reconstruction to those who are 

15 performing site profiles, whether you've rendered any 

16 policy determination with respect to that question. 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. All -- all people who are working 

18 on site profiles, their disclosure statements are on 

19 the web site now. 

20 MR. MILLER: But the -- what about the do-not list 

21 which is contained in the ORAU conflict of interest 

22 disclosure in their contract? There's a set of do-
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1 nots, beyond disclosure. 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: I defer that question to Dick Toohey. 

3 I'm not sure exactly I understand what you're -- 

4 MR. MILLER: Well, I'll tell you what I -- 

5 MR. ELLIOTT: -- referring to. 

6 MR. MILLER: -- mean by do-nots, just so the record's 

7 clear. I mean there is individuals who are serving in 

8 defense on these claims can't perform dose 

9 reconstruction if you're working at a site where you 

10 were previously employed or by an employer. I believe 

11 there's both an individual limit and there's also a 

12 corporate limit, I believe, within that. 

13 MR. ELLIOTT: Right, and that's the do-not. Okay, I'm 

14 understanding a do-not now. 

15 MR. MILLER: That's what I mean by the do-nots, and 

16 that's what I was questioning. I noted that there has 

17 been some disclosure made on the ORAU web site with 

18 respect to those individuals assigned to these teams, I 

19 must say. I found -- 

20 MR. ELLIOTT: We do not want to see anybody working on 

21 our product who's testifying on the opposition side. 

22 That's the policy. 
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1 MR. MILLER: Well, okay. I don't know what the policy 

2 is because what we heard last time was that the ORAU 

3 policy that applies to dose reconstruction will not 

4 apply to those doing site profiles, and I'm just trying 

5 to understand -- 

6 MR. ELLIOTT: No. No, no -- 

7 MR. MILLER: Has that changed since the last meeting? 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: The policy is that we do not want to see 

9 anyone working on our products serving in the -- 

10 litigation on the opposition. 

11 DR. NETON: I think Larry's addressed that -- that 

12 issue that arose that you just alluded to regarding 

13 someone testifying against us or against -- on Subtitle 

14 D, even though they worked on a profile. But I think 

15 the other issues that you raise related to persons who 

16 have worked at a site doing site profiles, I think we 

17 still believe that the expertise required to do the 

18 site profile lies with the people who have experience 

19 at the sites. So at this point, we have not made the 

20 decision that a person who worked at a facility would 

21 be barred from working on the site profile. I think 

22 that's a -- I think we discussed this at previous Board 
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1 meetings and I thought that it was generally understood 

2 that that was the most -- that was taking advantage of 

3 the expertise that was out there to its best benefit. 

4 We are looking at this legal issue, though, that you 

5 raised, and considering that. 

6 MR. MILLER: Let me -- let me cut to the chase then a 

7 little bit further, because seems like if you have 

8 different standards that you're applying for those that 

9 do dose reconstruction in terms of your -- your 

10 professional standards of conduct that you expect than 

11 you have for those who do site profiles, you have an 

12 incongruity there. The -- my question is, is that 

13 clearly spelled out and do we actually see where the 

14 bright lines are, because from my perspective, given 

15 what I've now gotten from reading your four site 

16 profiles that you've done, this is really the well17 nourished, you know, material from which one will 

18 extract individual dose reconstructions -- not quite 

19 cookie-cutter style because some of these are a bit 

20 more complex, although Bethlehem was certainly a 

21 cookie-cutter case, and without going to the merits of 

22 any of these site profiles right now, the idea was 
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1 you've got the raw material, you pull it out and bingo. 

2 And it didn't look terribly challenging. I mean it's 

3 challenging, but it didn't look anywhere near as 

4 challenging as it once did in terms of doing dose 

5 reconstruction. 

6 I'm all for the efficiency. I'm just questioning what 

7 are the standards of conduct you're going to apply to 

8 those that are performing it. And that, from my 

9 perspective -- and let me give you another example. 

10 One of the site profiles we saw -- Mike Gibson will 

11 recall -- a former EG&G health physics official from 

12 the Idaho National Engineering Labs who, in his 

13 disclosure, couldn't recall all of the cases that he'd 

14 been involved in as a defense expert. Now having been 

15 on the other side of a couple of cases from him, I had 

16 no trouble recollecting his -- his involvement in -- in 

17 -- in this. His name's Bryce Rich* and -- and -- and a 

18 nice fellow, and -- and -- but, you know, my question 

19 is, where do the lines apply for these folks? And one, 

20 I just want to advise you, his disclosure's woefully 

21 incomplete. It just says I don't remember what cases I 

22 worked on. You know, it's sort of -- it's like getting 
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1 to Congress and saying well, Mr. Chairman, I can't 

2 quite recollect, you know, and we've all laughed, but -

3 - but here we are. So I just, one, would encourage you 

4 to have disclosure there. But two, I would like to see 

5 clear policy where the ORAU policy clearly spells out 

6 what those standards of conduct are and what they 

7 should be, because I don't -- I -- I'm hearing what 

8 you're saying, Larry, and I appreciate what you're 

9 saying. But I think this really needs to be spread out 

10 very, very clearly for those of us who are looking at 

11 this from the outside. 

12 So that -- that's sort of my suggestion for the Board 

13 and the -- and the staff. 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: I want to be clear for the record that 

15 the example that you brought up, Richard, is accurately 

16 portrayed. What we have here is one individual from 

17 this particular company who's working on one site 

18 profile, who is not the individual testifying against 

19 the Subtitle D claim in Alaska, but another colleague 

20 of his in that same company. And so that's the issue. 

21 Can -- can a person perform that kind of expert 

22 witness testimony as an individual without 
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1 demonstrating or identifying their affiliation, or even 

2 if they do identify their affiliation, is that a 

3 perceived conflict and how do we handle it. So I just 

4 want to make sure that's -- 

5 MR. MILLER: Right, I'm glad you clarified that because 

6 it's really the question of are you biting -- or do you 

7 have a risk of someone biting the hand that feeds them, 

8 one; two, are you creating an appearance standard; 

9 three, are companies -- are companies -- are 

10 individuals then held to a standard and the companies 

11 they work for are not held to that standard. Okay? I 

12 -- I -- I mean I think we saw -- seen a lot of this 

13 with law firms trying to parse out which lawyers at a 

14 law firm can be on opposite sides of the same divorce, 

15 and -- and -- at a -- and I hope that we don't parse it 

16 the same way lawyers parse their ethics here. 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Richard. You lawyers take that 

18 and that and that. 

19 Next I have Daniel McKeel, if I pronounced that 

20 correctly, from Washington University. Daniel. 

21 DR. MCKEEL: I'm Dan McKeel. I'm a pathologist at 

22 Washington University and I have really two concerns 
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1 that I'd like to relate. The first one is I got the 

2 Technical Basis Document for Mallinckrodt last Friday 

3 afternoon from the web site and have certainly not had 

4 a chance to review it in detail. But there was 

5 something that I wanted to call to your attention that 

6 I think is such a glaring omission that it actually 

7 calls into question basically the entire document, as 

8 far as I'm concerned. And that is, in the bibliography 

9 -- and maybe I missed something; if I did, I apologize. 

10 But on pages 69 and 70 there are two citations by 

11 Elizabeth Dupre-Ellis about articles that I'm 

12 intimately familiar with. One is about the external 

13 radiation exposure in the Mallinckrodt uranium cohort. 

14 That was published in the American Journal of 

15 Epidemiology in the year 2000. 

16 And then on page 70 there's a study which I got a copy 

17 of by Dr. Dupre-Ellis from 1998, and the copy I have 

18 was under the NIOSH Health and Human Services banner, 

19 so I'm sure that's the same publication. 

20 What's not on here are two other publications that Dr. 

21 Dupre-Ellis herself authored, and I find this extremely 

22 strange, because she works for Oak Ridge Associated 
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1 Universities, and that was a 1995 study on the internal 

2 exposures to the Mallinckrodt cohort, the dust study 

3 results. I think it was blended with three other 

4 places. But that's in Epidemiology, 1995. It's cited 

5 in the CEDR catalog for 1999. So I find that extremely 

6 strange and I would just echo the concern of why I'm 

7 con-- why I find that disturbing is that to publish 

8 data, exposure data, in a peer-reviewed, excellent 

9 journal such as Epidemiology or the American Journal

10 implies that you have full data for that. And I've 

11 read those papers carefully. There's no mention in 

12 there about missing data, how missing data is handled, 

13 so I'm assuming that there's very little missing data. 

14 And I find that amazing not to have those two 

15 publications cited in this document. So that's just a 

16 concern that I have. 

17 The other concern maybe is even larger, and that is 

18 that in all this process, it seemed to me that one set 

19 of facts that's needed has not come out at all. And 

20 that is -- just take for example Mallinckrodt, which a 

21 lot of us in St. Louis are interested in -- is how many 

22 workers do you have complete radiation exposure data 
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1 for, just a number like -- why don't we say 500 out of 

2 764. So not having that data, I decided that I would 

3 write Mr. Neton and see if he would provide that data 

4 to me, and I don't want to paraphrase his answer, but 

5 basically the answer was that data is -- that number is 

6 not known. 

7 And the reason that concerns me is this, that if you 

8 have -- let's say 90 percent complete data on the 

9 Mallinckrodt cohort and ten percent missing data, I 

10 think everybody would say well, that's okay; you can 

11 probably do an excellent dose reconstruction based on 

12 that. But suppose it was the reverse. Suppose you had 

13 complete radiation data on ten percent and basically 

14 you were making educated guesses on 90 percent. That 

15 wouldn't be all right. And so it seems to me that that 

16 number is absolutely critical and essential, and I 

17 would beg you all to produce that number, let people 

18 know about it. This is not just for Mallinckrodt. 

19 This is for all the sites. Because unless and until 

20 that number is produced, it raises the question that 

21 we're really operating on lots of missing data. And 

22 you don't have to read very far in the Technical Basis 
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1 Document to know that there's a huge amount of missing 

2 data and a lot of very broad assumptions that -- 

3 personally, as a scientist in the medical field -- I 

4 would be unwilling to make in my own research. So 

5 there are just two comments and I appreciate your 

6 listening. 

7 UNIDENTIFIED: Excuse me, I (Inaudible) to your list. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. I'm sorry -- 

9 UNIDENTIFIED: (Inaudible) 

10 DR. ZIEMER: You can -- yes, you can be added to our 

11 list. We have a couple of other individuals here, but 

12 others who have come in since we reconvened, if you do 

13 wish to speak, there is a sign-up list in the back, so 

14 you can still be added. 

15 Next I have -- and thank you -- is it Dr. McKeel? Yes. 

16 Thank you. 

17 And next we have Nancy Adams, who's with United Nuclear 

18 Weapons Workers. Nancy. 

19 MS. ADAMS: I'm Nancy Adams and I'm also the daughter 

20 of a long-time Mallinckrodt worker. And I have a 

21 concern about dose reconstruction. Because of my own 

22 personal experiences and the experiences of many of the 
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1 claimants that we've talked to, we have almost 400 or 

2 so that we are -- have been in contact with -- I feel 

3 there's a lack of dose information on many of these 

4 long-term Mallinckrodt workers. And here -- here's a 

5 little bit of what happened with my -- our own. 

6 My father's missing records -- really peculiar. He 

7 started working there in 1943, in March, and retired in 

8 1968, in June. He was a worker for 25 years until 

9 retired, was in several nuclear incidents at the plant 

10 downtown, was on disability for a good number of years, 

11 totaling about a year -- a good number of months, I 

12 mean, totaling about a year. He worked in multiple 

13 buildings at both Destrehan and Weldon Spring when they 

14 moved the plant -- uranium processing out there, came 

15 back to Destrehan afterward -- and was one of the 

16 subjects in the study that Dr. McKeel referred to. We 

17 happen to know for sure that he was because all of his 

18 records were removed from Mallinckrodt for that study. 

19 That's what we were told, and I can tell you who told 

20 us that. It's a good -- a good source. 

21 But when we filed a FOIA request, had no incident 

22 reports -- report data, no medical data, nothing but an 
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1 employee record and a badge number. And this is at DOE 

2 and we filed for this request after we did our phone 

3 interview because we were finding things along the way, 

4 and it turned out that we were trying to give some of 

5 the material to the person giving the phone interview 

6 and we were told oh, you don't need to do that. We 

7 have 16 pages of your father's medical records. And we 

8 thought oh, okay, great. But there's nothing. We have 

9 nothing. They tell us there's nothing. 

10 So if there are large numbers of missing files on the 

11 long-term workers, how can the data be accurate? My 

12 father's missing records aren't an anomaly. I've heard 

13 this same thing over and over and over again. How can 

14 you do comparison data if you don't have the ones who 

15 worked there from the beginning for 25 years? And this 

16 is not uncommon. 

17 So it just makes me feel -- I just can't help but feel 

18 that there's some -- either gross negligence or fraud. 

19 Thank you. 

20 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Nancy, and your comments have 

21 been noted by the staff here. 

22 Next -- I think it's James Mitulski -- is that -- do I 
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1 pronounce that correctly, James? 

2 MR. MITULSKI: Yeah, that's fine. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: United Nuclear Weapons group, as well. 

4 MR. MITULSKI: Yeah, my dad, James Mitulski, worked at 

5 Mallinckrodt for 20 years, part of it downtown, part of 

6 it at Weldon Springs. And one of the things that Nancy 

7 said, I would back up, in terms of inability to recover 

8 data. I talked to many people at our meetings who had 

9 a hard time proving they ever even worked for 

10 Mallinckrodt. The only way they were able to prove 

11 that they worked for Mallinckrodt was not from 

12 documents from Mallinckrodt or from any other 

13 organization except their Social Security records. 

14 There were just no records that they were even ever 

15 there. And some of these people are the people 

16 involved in your study, because they either have cancer 

17 themselves or their relatives have cancer, or other 

18 diseases that seem to stem from the situation at Weldon 

19 Springs. 

20 And basically Weldon Springs is what I'd like to talk 

21 about a little bit. My concern about dose 

22 reconstruction there, too, is that somebody like my dad 
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1 worked at six different buildings, oftentimes three of 

2 them at a time. And there were many incidents that 

3 occurred in these buildings that I'm sure nobody will 

4 find anywhere in records. 

5 Like for instance, one of the things that happened to 

6 Dad was there was -- in the metal building -- a 3,000 

7 pound crucible that they used to melt uranium. Now 

8 somebody had devised an invention that would gather the 

9 uranium into three ingots that were put together -- 

10 held together by a metal band. And when that metal -- 

11 when this first went into process, the ingots would not 

12 fill up at the same time. They would overflow. The 

13 metal band would melt because of the uranium rolling 

14 over the sides and Dad and another man would go into 

15 the furnace and clean -- well, Dad has had part of his 

16 foot amputated because of a very rare form of cancer on 

17 his foot. I'm sure things like that are not recorded 

18 anywhere. 

19 The other thing is, when you work in three different 

20 buildings -- and they were all hot buildings, and he'd 

21 run -- he was a supervisor. He'd run from one building 

22 to another. I don't know how you can judge the time he 
 212 

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1 spent in one building and another to do dose 

2 reconstruction. 

3 Another thing that bothers me is if the government 

4 spent $900 million to cover up the Weldon Springs site 

5 because it was so dangerous, it seems like a non6 sequitur that everybody that worked there was put in 

7 harm's way. And they're willing to spend a lot more 

8 millions to keep that building -- that -- that former 

9 building area secure. So that bothers me, too. 

10 And then the fact that these other groups of workers, 

11 because of their fine legislators, were able to move 

12 into a -- what do you call it, Denise? -- Special 

13 Cohort status, it almost seems -- it almost seems like 

14 a prejudicial act that some workers who worked in an 

15 equally radioactive environment are not questioned 

16 about their ability to receive the monies that were 

17 appropriated to them, while other workers, because of 

18 not working in a state where the legislatures were able 

19 to pass this -- this particular bill, are subject to 

20 this -- this kind of scrutiny. If the United States 

21 government would pass a law that people in Illinois 

22 were granted food stamps but people in Missouri were 
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1 not eligible for them, it would certainly not fly very 

2 well. And I kind of see this as the same kind of 

3 situation. You know, some people have been granted 

4 their -- their compensation simply because of a law 

5 that was passed, while others have not. It seems very 

6 inequitable to me. 

7 That's basically all I have to say. Thanks. 

8 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, James. And then I have Barbara 

9 -- is it Barbara Smiddy? Yes. 

10 MS. SMIDDY: Yes. 

11 DR. ZIEMER: If you'll identify the organization or -- 

12 MS. SMIDDY: Excuse me, that's G. B. Windler Florist. 

13 That's my brother's -- I'm retired from Monsanto. 

14 These people are all Mallinckrodt. I started 

15 corresponding, talking on the phone with the EEOIC in 

16 July of the year 2000. Okay? I was sitting there 

17 having coffee one morning, bleary-eyed, before I went 

18 to work, and it flashed across the screen. There's 

19 only 12 survivors showed up down here regarding the 

20 Weldon Springs situation. I believe it had just been 

21 okayed that they were going to have a distribution. 

22 Okay? So I thought okay, my dad -- I'm 59 years old -- 
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1 59-and-a-half, almost. My dad worked at the small arms 

2 in Weldon Springs during the second World War. I've 

3 got it all in that briefcase, somewhere between '42 and 

4 '46. I was born in June of '44. And my dad went from 

5 making $10 a week and driving from Grand and Merrimac 

6 in south St. Louis, to $100 a week 50 miles one way to 

7 work for the small arms in Weldon Springs. Okay? 

8 My father passed away June 30th, 1964. I was 20 years 

9 old. And he died of lung cancer. Now I have been 

10 corresponding with the EEOIC. We -- they made us jump 

11 through their hoops and said send us this, send us 

12 that. I've got a certified copy of his working -- you 

13 know, from the Social Security, his records, his work 

14 records. And it went to the point of adjudication 

15 April 10th of this year, to be denied. And -- but the 

16 glitch of it all was, they didn't tell us that they 

17 were going from 1950 forward. That's, quote/unquote, a 

18 covered facility. Okay? 

19 So needless to say, I'm a little put out about it. Go 

20 through all these hoops, and the man worked there -- 

21 and nobody can find him. I called Mallinckrodt; they 

22 can't find him. Until I talked to a lady at the U.S. 
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1 Department of Labor yesterday. She says well, that was 

2 an Army -- an Army -- whatever, I've got it in my 

3 papers -- that belonged -- she says maybe you should 

4 talk to the Department of Defense. So I thought oh, 

5 good, I've got another two and a half years to go 

6 through this craziness, and I won't. 

7 This morning I called President Bush's comment line. 

8 So I get on the phone, and you can imagine my -- my 

9 long distance with the White House. My nickname's 

10 Blabbera. Well, anyway, I get ahold of this guy and he 

11 says well, what is Weldon Springs? And I start telling 

12 him about it. He says oh, yeah. And I said well, you 

13 know, we have a -- a guardian angel named Denise Brock 

14 -- they've nicknamed Brockovich -- I know of what you 

15 speak. He says I want you to know I'm writing this 

16 down now, and I'm going to give this to President Bush. 

17 Well, it's not just my dad. I cannot -- I want to know 

18 where you started -- when did they decide that you're 

19 going to cover from fifties forward? You know, the 

20 atom bomb was dropped, and that's when the war ended. 

21 Okay? Now these poor devils that worked out there at 

22 Weldon Springs for the small arms, and that's what my 
 216 

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1 dad worked for, nobody knows about them. 

2 Now Mallinckrodt is a big company. I retired from 

3 Monsanto, and Mallinckrodt's a big company, they carry 

4 a lot of weight. And I'm really pulling for these 

5 people. 

6 I told the gentleman this morning, you know, if I don't 

7 -- or my brother and I don't get any remuneration from 

8 this in our lifetime, and it comes after I'm under the 

9 ground pushing up the daisies, I want it to go to the 

10 Humane Society because evidently our human aspect is 

11 zilch. All this money, this $900 million -- what was 

12 it, $900 million? If you break that down for the 

13 claims, that's your $150,000, that's your $150,000, 

14 that's your $150,000 for how many years, and that pile 

15 of rock is never ever going to go away, and what's 

16 buried out there will never go away. 

17 So I'm an old number-cruncher from Monsanto, and bottom 

18 line is bottom line, and the word "plug" is a dirty 

19 word in the accounting function. And if you don't 

20 bring out the facts -- I went through the same thing. 

21 I couldn't find medical records. My dad died in '64. 

22 Lutheran Hospital -- oh, we don't keep them past such-
 217 

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1 and-such. And I thought well, if it's keeping all of 

2 us and your organizations employed, that's fine. But I 

3 think these people really need a break, 'cause I lost 

4 my dad when I was 20. I didn't get married, so he 

5 couldn't walk me down the aisle anyway, but there's 

6 been a lot of families and a lot of, lot of anguish 

7 gone over this -- gone on through this. And I thank 

8 you. Have a heart. Okay? 

9 I'm going to, I guess, contact the Department of 

10 Defense and start this whole 360 again, but I -- I do 

11 want an answer, where did they start, what was their 

12 decision-maker from the fifties forward, and they've 

13 forgotten all these guys that opened our borders, that 

14 fought for our freedom. They gave them the stuff 

15 initially 'cause that was a uranium place back in the 

16 forties. Thank you. 

17 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you for your comments. I don't know 

18 that we have any answers to those questions today, but 

19 if the staff is able to, I know that they will make 

20 information available to you. 

21 Let me ask if there are other members of the public 

22 who've come in in the meantime and -- we still have 
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1 time, if there are others who wish to speak. Yeah, 

2 Denise, please. 

3 MS. BROCK: Would it be okay if I tried to address 

4 Barb, because I think I understand what she meant by 

5 that? I think that when this first started, we 

6 probably were confused. Prior to the Weldon 

7 Spring/Mallinckrodt going in -- and I'm assuming you 

8 all are aware of this, I don't know; I'm assuming DOE 

9 is aware of this. Prior to that Weldon 

10 Spring/Mallinckrodt going in, there was a TNT/DNT 

11 plant, and I think this is correct -- Dr. McKeel would 

12 probably know that. It's a small arms plant, and I 

13 believe it was owned by the Army. And I think that's 

14 what the confusion was is that the Department of Energy 

15 -- this covers Department of Energy facilities. Is 

16 that correct? It does not cover Army-owned facilities, 

17 and so therefore people such as Barb's dad -- and we 

18 have numerous people that were exposed to -- to 

19 carcinogens or toxins that just were made sick, as 

20 well. But unfortunately, there hasn't been remedy up 

21 to this point for those people. And there are just 

22 numerous people that worked at that site. And so when 
 219 

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1 people say Weldon Spring, I think that's very 

2 confusing. And I -- the way I understand it, I think 

3 that Mallinckrodt or DOE purchased some of the very 

4 same buildings that the TNT/DNT were in. And so what 

5 they have there in this big, huge mound, is basically a 

6 witch's brew of mixed contaminants there. So not only 

7 is it TNT/DNT workers, Mallinckrodt workers, anybody 

8 that's involved in the runoff and ground water and soil 

9 there, so it is, it's absolutely horrible. But is that 

10 correct that that is why the TNT/DNT workers are not 

11 covered? 

12 DR. ZIEMER: That's apparently correct, because the -- 

13 that would be specific to that facility, I believe. 

14 There's not a restriction in the legislation on the 

15 year 1950 because some other facilities were certainly 

16 in operation as atomic weapons facilities prior to 

17 that. 

18 MS. SMIDDY: (Off microphone) How can it be addressed? 

19 How can these people be covered? 

20 DR. ZIEMER: I don't know if I can answer that 

21 directly, but I will say that it's a legislative issue 

22 because, you know, in a sense, this group is restrained 
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1 to working with the group for whom we have legal -- in 

2 a sense, legal responsibility. I'm sure that -- and 

3 this is why we have representatives in Congress to seek 

4 redress on issues of this sort. I think the other 

5 gentleman made the point that it doesn't look always 

6 fair because some -- and this is true of all kinds of 

7 things. You know, one -- us guys in Indiana don't 

8 think we get our fair share of the Federal monies, you 

9 know. We pay those taxes in and they go down to Texas 

10 or somewhere else. But it's -- your legislatures have 

11 to help out on these kinds of things, and that seems to 

12 me where a lot of this starts. When we're seeking 

13 redress for past issues, we need the help of our 

14 Congressmen. And some are more effective at this than 

15 others, that's for sure. 

16 Certainly we sympathize with many of these issues and 

17 feel hamstrung that there are some things that we can't 

18 do anything about ourselves, but -- so we recognize 

19 that. 

20 Are there any others? Richard Miller, are you -- 

21 MR. MILLER: A follow-up question. 

22 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, sure. 
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1 MR. MILLER: At the last meeting there was a discussion 

2 -- and I know you all have been digging into this -- 

3 about the availability of the IMBA model or something 

4 so we can take the site profiles and convert them into 

5 organ dose. Can you give us any update on where that 

6 is at this point? 

7 DR. NETON: Yeah, we did -- is it on? We did look into 

8 that issue with our contractor who provided the IMBA 

9 program. And unfortunately, it's not possible to have 

10 a web-based version of the IMBA program. It is -- is 

11 proprietary-type -- a proprietary-type calculation 

12 engine that -- that NIOSH has had a front-end put on 

13 it, so to speak, so that it's customized for our 

14 application. But it would be equivalent to asking Bill 

15 Gates to put Excel spreadsheets on the web -- I mean 

16 then who would buy them sort of thing -- so it is 

17 available through our vendor. 

18 I will say that we have available at NIOSH a public 

19 reading room that would have IMBA available for use. I 

20 understand it's not convenient, but that is one -- one 

21 option. Outside of that, I can -- we cannot come up 

22 with any solution that would make IMBA generally 
 222 

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1 available to the -- to the public. 

2 MR. MILLER: Would -- would you be interested in doing 

3 some $1, low-cost licenses to members of the public 

4 that are interested? We'd be happy to sign up, if it's 

5 on a CD and it doesn't have to be web-based. It's 

6 really difficult to try to take these site profiles and 

7 go the next step. And I know you want transparency in 

8 the program, too. I -- I mean I know that's where 

9 you're at. What can be done to fix that? I mean it's 

10 just a question of money? I mean just to cut to the 

11 chase, is this just money that's necessary to make -- 

12 how is this Board going to audit if it doesn't have 

13 access to IMBA, or are you going to give the Board 

14 IMBA? 

15 DR. NETON: We have a license agreement with our 

16 contractor that members of the Board and our contractor 

17 are -- have access to use the software, but it's a 

18 licensure issue with members of the general public. 

19 MR. MILLER: Okay. Well, that's good. I'm glad the 

20 Board has it. Now the next question is, what other 

21 methods -- if you're going to make it available in 

22 Cincinnati, is there any other place on the planet that 
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1 it could be made available for those of us who -- I 

2 mean I'm sure all of us live in the Cincinnati region, 

3 but you know, what can be done -- I mean is there some 

4 practical solution? I mean is -- is what you need is 

5 $10,000 and the problem goes away? Or is this -- what 

6 -- how big is this problem? 

7 MR. ELLIOTT: The only practical solution is, for those 

8 who want to use IMBA outside of the availability that 

9 we can make, they need to purchase the software and get 

10 a license themselves. That's it. That's the licensure 

11 issue and that's the way it is. 

12 MR. MILLER: You're using proprietary software that's 

13 not available to the general public to make decisions 

14 about public compensation -- about a public 

15 compensation program. That's a real problem. I mean 

16 we don't -- we -- I mean I -- this is opaque, and we've 

17 been patient, but I mean I think you all have to 

18 grapple with this a little bit more on the licensure 

19 question. I mean I don't know whether it goes on the 

20 internet or whether you work out some arrangement to 

21 let people use CDs of it or how you'd want to limit its 

22 distribution, but this is -- this is -- this is 
 224 

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1 starting to pose a question. 

2 DR. NETON: You raise a good point, Richard, but I 

3 would suggest that it is software that is proprietary, 

4 but the methodology that is used is -- is open and we -

5 - we do have verification/validation type runs that can 

6 be used to document that it is indeed calculating what 

7 we've intended it to calculate. But the methodology 

8 itself, the ICRP methodology is generally available to 

9 the public. 

10 MR. MILLER: Yeah, yeah -- no, I think that's right. 

11 We could all sit down and we could all do the hand 

12 calculations, as I'm sure you all do. But you know, at 

13 the end of the day, if one wants to run sensitivity 

14 analyses, you want to look at particle size, you want 

15 to look at a number of variables as you move forward 

16 where you have uncertainties, you want to -- you want 

17 to sort of test the boundaries of your own uncertainty 

18 analysis, it's really hard to do that in any kind of 

19 effective way fairly, I think you would admit, without 

20 the benefit of the software that you're using, 

21 particularly if you want to replicate exactly the 

22 outcomes that you're getting, like to make sure we're 
 225 

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1 in the ball park. So I -- I don't know what the 

2 solution is, but I -- I guess -- 

3 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I was going to actually ask you what 

4 you thought should be done, Richard, but maybe -- since 

5 you don't know the solution -- Richard -- okay, Mark. 

6 MR. GRIFFON: Just an -- just an -- just an option, 

7 maybe. I don't know if this is possible, but the DOL 

8 resource centers might be a place where you could have 

9 a version dedicated that would stay at that facility, 

10 but at least it's a little more reasonable for people 

11 to travel to their local DOL resource center than to 

12 Cincinnati. I don't know if that's viable through the 

13 license agreements or not, but -- 

14 DR. ZIEMER: I think we've heard the point, and maybe -

15 - I don't know if this is something the staff could 

16 explore or, you know -- obviously -- 

17 MR. MITULSKI: Where is that resource center? 

18 DR. ZIEMER: -- somewhere out there there may be a 

19 simple solution that we haven't thought of, and thank 

20 you for making the point. Okay. 

21 MR. MITULSKI: That's all I was going to say was maybe 

22 there could be something set up in a -- in like the St. 
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1 Louis Public Library, that there would be a dedicated 

2 site that would plug into this program. 

3 But where is this -- where is the closest office that 

4 you're talking about? 

5 MR. GRIFFON: The resource center. 

6 DR. ZIEMER: Cincinnati is what you're -- no. Oh, 

7 you're talking about the DOL -- 

8 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, the Department of Labor resource 

9 center, the closest one to this area I believe is 

10 Paducah -- Paducah, Kentucky. 

11 MR. MITULSKI: So it would still be pretty far. 

12 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 

13 MR. MITULSKI: But I don't see why, you know, there 

14 couldn't be a -- like in either a public library 

15 somewhere or something -- a computer dedicated to -- or 

16 in a government building somewhere here, a computer 

17 dedicated to connecting to this program. 

18 DR. ZIEMER: I'm not sure that those of us sitting here 

19 at the table know what the licensure issues are on that 

20 fully, but perhaps it can be explored. At least -- the 

21 point has been raised and may be worth following up. 

22 Thank you, Richard. 
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1 Are there others who have comment? 

2 DR. MELIUS: I have a follow-up comment. Jim Melius, 

3 behind you. 

4 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, Jim. 

5 DR. MELIUS: Sorry. 

6 DR. ZIEMER: I was looking for a member of the public. 

7 DR. MELIUS: 'Cause I think it may be helpful at this 

8 time, and I apologize if you'd talked about it this 

9 morning, and it may very well be on the agenda tomorrow 

10 afternoon. But the last time we talked about how you 

11 were going to possibly make -- give public access or 

12 opportunity for input and comments on the site 

13 profiles, and it would seem to me that some of the 

14 comments that have come up today are related to that -- 

15 that issue. So is -- have you made progress on that, 

16 Larry, or is that something we can talk about? 

17 MR. ELLIOTT: Tomorrow on the agenda we have Dr. Neton 

18 presenting information on site profiles. You will hear 

19 him speak tomorrow about this. What we have done, 

20 though -- in brief, for those who are here this 

21 afternoon -- we have, one, placed the site profiles on 

22 our web site, and anybody that calls in, we'll send 
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1 them a hard copy if they don't have web access. We ask 

2 for written comments to be generated. If anybody has 

3 comments or input that they want to provide on these 

4 documents, they are asked to do so and provide it to 

5 our regulatory docket office. NIOSH keeps a -- the 

6 docket office keeps track of all written comments on a 

7 variety of publications, and so that's the mechanisms 

8 that we have put in place for receiving, collating and 

9 sharing comments. Any -- any comments that the docket 

10 office would receive would then go on the web site or 

11 be available upon request. 

12 Also we are taking the opportunity to go out to the 

13 site where -- specific to a Technical Basis Document or 

14 a site profile once it's approved for use and sharing 

15 that in a meeting with our organized labor and 

16 representatives of non-organized labor that are from 

17 the site, explaining the document to them, explaining 

18 and providing examples of dose reconstructions that 

19 were built from the document so that they can 

20 understand how the dose reconstruction process works 

21 and where these site profiles are critical in that 

22 process. And asking those individuals, if they have 
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1 comments, we would like to receive those. 

2 We also -- we're doing that both at the site level and 

3 at the national level, so we're talking with the 

4 national labor reps about our documents and what kind 

5 of comments they might have on them. So that's -- 

6 that's, in a nutshell, where we're at with that. Jim 

7 Neton might have more details tomorrow in his 

8 presentation. 

9 DR. MELIUS: One detail, if you have it already, is 

10 there any -- a meeting scheduled out here for the 

11 Mallinckrodt profile now that it's out? Are you at 

12 that point yet? I'm... 

13 DR. NETON: I will actually be discussing the 

14 Mallinckrodt profile tomorrow morning as part of my 

15 Technical Basis Document update, but we do not have a 

16 general meeting to discuss the Mallinckrodt -- 

17 Mallinckrodt profile in the St. Louis area. It's 

18 difficult to identify -- the facility, you know, is no 

19 longer in business doing this operation, so it's 

20 difficult to identify the organized labor 

21 representatives, at least, that we would present this 

22 to. 
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1 DR. ZIEMER: Any comment? 

2 DR. MELIUS: I just find that hard to believe, that you 

3 can't -- given even some of the comments we've heard 

4 here today from various parties that have been involved 

5 with this and are interested this. It seems to me that 

6 pulling together a group of people that have -- with 

7 knowledge of the facility and sort of representational 

8 interest wouldn't be that difficult, and I certainly 

9 would hope that you would do it. And if that could be 

10 combined with some sort of a public availability 

11 session to talk to -- address some of the kinds of 

12 questions that came up today, I think it would be 

13 helpful for everyone involved. I mean there's a lot of 

14 confusion out there, as well as there's some questions 

15 that have already been raised today in the -- what, the 

16 two or three days since it's been publicly available. 

17 And I don't think it would be that difficult to pull 

18 together a -- various types of review meetings. 

19 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Mike? 

20 MR. GIBSON: And just to follow up on Jim's comment and 

21 one I made last -- at the last meeting, wouldn't it be 

22 more efficient to add workers that have been in the 
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1 field and been through these exposures to these site 

2 profile teams while they're going on, rather than 

3 showing them a finished product, and letting the people 

4 put together the site profile that in some cases tried 

5 to hide these exposures for years? 

6 DR. ZIEMER: Is that a specific question to Jim or is 

7 that a rhetorical -- 

8 MR. GIBSON: To -- to whoever's putting together the 

9 site profile teams. 

10 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Jim, do you want to address that 

11 now or you want to -- 

12 DR. NETON: I think I might want to defer to discuss 

13 that tomorrow. I mean I am going to talk -- I have an 

14 hour scheduled to go into those issues, unless you'd 

15 like to go into it right now. But if it'd be okay, I'd 

16 rather -- 

17 MR. GIBSON: No, that's fine -- 

18 DR. NETON: -- talk about it tomorrow. 

19 MR. GIBSON: -- to talk about it tomorrow. 

20 DR. NETON: Similar to what came up this morning, I 

21 think. 

22 MR. HORGAN: Larry, I don't want to knock anybody out 
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1 of time, I just want to make a quick question, if it's 

2 okay. 

3 DR. ZIEMER: Identify yourself, please. 

4 MR. HORGAN: Tom Horgan, Senator Bond's office. Did I 

5 just hear that we're not going to really talk about the 

6 site profile for Mallinckrodt tomorrow? Is -- is -- we 

7 are? Are we going to have a discussion where we can 

8 get feedback from members of the Board, because I -- 

9 you know, with the -- working for the committee that 

10 has legislative oversight -- the authorizing committee 

11 that has legislative oversight of NIOSH, Health and 

12 Human Services and the Department of Labor, that's one 

13 of the main reasons I came in, to learn more about the 

14 Mallinckrodt site. And you know, everything I've found 

15 today has been very helpful. Some of it's a little 

16 over my head, but it's been helpful and I appreciate 

17 the procedures, but I sure hope we're going to have a 

18 discussion about the site profile for the Mallinckrodt 

19 site because -- where we can get feedback from the 

20 Board because, you know, that's what -- from what I 

21 understand, is what details the dose reconstruction 

22 process for that particular site. So I sure hope we do 
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1 that. Okay? 

2 DR. ZIEMER: I believe that's included in the schedule 

3 tomorrow, yes. 

4 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, but I think what we -- I was 

5 referring -- 

6 MR. HORGAN: (Off microphone) (Inaudible) I was just a 

7 little confused (Inaudible). 

8 DR. MELIUS: What I was referring to was at the last 

9 meeting we had a discussion of -- that there be, one -- 

10 one, which Mike mentioned -- involvement of people who 

11 are -- have interest in the site or represent workers 

12 at the sites in development of the profile. 

13 Secondly, that once the -- the profile is approved or 

14 whatever the process is, that there be a session where 

15 people get a chance to meet and NIOSH to present the 

16 profile, there'd be a review of the profile by people 

17 with an interest and knowledge of the site to answer 

18 some of these questions, and there may also be a -- a 

19 good time, in association with that, for a meeting with 

20 the general public, people with, you know, family 

21 members, whatever, that -- affected by this program to 

22 explain what's going on with the profile, where things 
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1 stand, as well as to answer some of their questions. 

2 MS. BROCK: Could -- could I address that for just a 

3 moment? Denise Brock again. Last week -- or actually 

4 earlier this week the UAW, which oddly enough was the 

5 union for Mallinckrodt -- years ago it was independent, 

6 and then after that it became the UAW. There are 

7 several retirees at that UAW. I had recently planned a 

8 rally and had been -- more -- earlier than that had 

9 actually been going to many of the building and 

10 construction trades, and that's how I came in contact 

11 with the UAW, had a meeting set up with them and had 

12 actually sent one of my board members, as well as I 

13 sent the Paducah resource center in to speak with these 

14 retirees, let them know about the compensation program. 

15 But we have much interest in this area. I spoke last 

16 night at my rally. We have had very little publicity 

17 in this area. Again, there were 3,300 direct 

18 employees. We only have 400 claims filed. There are 

19 numerous people out there that either worked there or 

20 have survivors that are living that may possibly be 

21 aware. But I think that the biggest wealth of our 

22 information would come from our workers such as Jim 
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1 Mitulski, and I have several other workers and I was 

2 just curious if perhaps if the site profile is done and 

3 there is not time to -- to go over that with these 

4 workers, if there's not some time in the very near 

5 future, if we couldn't get some of these workers in 

6 here to make comments or anything contributory to even 

7 the site profile, to add to it. I know their -- their 

8 stories are just amazing and their memories are, as 

9 well. And it would be great if we could actually do 

10 that tomorrow somehow. I just don't know how many 

11 people we could get together in that short a time, but 

12 I'd sure be willing to give it a try. 

13 DR. ZIEMER: Comment from Larry. 

14 MR. ELLIOTT: In Cincinnati in August at the Board 

15 meeting, we heard individual comments, and we've 

16 considered those comments. My response to Dr. Melius's 

17 question a moment ago gave you the decisions that we 

18 have made about how we're going to handle rolling out 

19 these Technical Basis Documents or full site profile. 

20 I don't want anybody confused. We are going to take 

21 these documents out into the field and solicit comments 

22 and input. We certainly -- I don't -- maybe there's 
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1 some confusion on Jim Neton's remarks a moment ago. 

2 This is only the first step in the process to meet -- 

3 to the -- have this Board meeting in St. Louis to talk 

4 about this recently-developed Technical Basis Document 

5 or site profile for Mallinckrodt. You'll get a -- 

6 you'll get a brief introduction to that tomorrow and 

7 welcome Board comment, welcome public comment on that. 

8 It's not the final step, though. We will bring it 

9 back. We are going to do this with all our Technical 

10 Basis Documents. We heard the individual comment from 

11 Mr. Gibson about putting workers on the site profile 

12 teams. That is not a viable solution, so we've opted 

13 for this, to go out and present these documents and 

14 present examples of dose reconstruction, try to get 

15 folks to understand how the documents are used and what 

16 a dose reconstruction actually looks like, and take 

17 their comments. We need comments to the written 

18 record, though. And so that's what we have decided. 

19 We've given due consideration to individual comments of 

20 this Board, and we're proceeding along those lines. 

21 DR. MELIUS: Well, Larry, I'm confused now 'cause Jim 

22 Neton said there was no meeting out here. Now you're 
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1 saying there will be meetings? I -- 

2 MR. ELLIOTT: We don't -- your question was has a 

3 meeting been scheduled, and Jim's comment was no, there 

4 has not been a meeting scheduled as of yet. This Board 

5 meeting is the first step in this process. 

6 DR. MELIUS: So -- so there will be a meeting 

7 scheduled? 

8 MR. ELLIOTT: That's what I've been saying, we're going 

9 to take -- 

10 DR. MELIUS: Well, I'm just trying to make sure. 

11 MR. ELLIOTT: -- the site profiles into the field. 

12 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Further comments? Board 

13 members, any further comments this evening? Mike. 

14 MR. GIBSON: With all due respect, it just -- it just 

15 seems to me that, you know, the legislators felt it 

16 necessary, the President that signed this bill felt it 

17 necessary to establish this Board equally by doctors 

18 and scientists and workers in the field. And it just -

19 - it appears to me that each step, where possible, 

20 throughout the process, workers ought to be involved. 

21 And I know workers don't understand all the scientific 

22 jargon of dose reconstruction and everything else. But 
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1 they know when they were sent into a room and alarms 

2 went off and the professionals in the room turned the 

3 alarm up and told them to go back in, it was just 

4 radon, when in fact it was actinium. Those things 

5 ought to be considered. Those things aren't even -- 

6 haven't been brought to the table in the original 

7 document, probably, because the people that turned the 

8 dial up are the people that wrote the site profile. 

9 And that just -- to me, that's just blatantly unfair. 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: There is no argument with that, Mike. I 

11 have no argument with that at all. I agree with you 

12 100 percent, and there are mechanisms, there are points 

13 along the process that we solicit that kind of 

14 information. One of those steps is the interview 

15 process. We've added with the site profile process 

16 the opportunity, by making visits in the field, 

17 organizing meetings, hearing people comment about them 

18 and asking for written comment, that's another point in 

19 the process to solicit the workers' input to this. I 

20 value that. I've always valued that and I -- and I 

21 think we have addressed the -- the ability to gain and 

22 garner those thoughts and those perspectives in various 
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1 ways in the process. I don't argue with you. I just 

2 want -- I hope you understand that we have tried to 

3 bring the worker perspective to bear in more ways that 

4 just workers sitting on this Advisory Board. 

5 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other comments? 

6 (No responses) 

7 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, it's time for us to recess for the 

8 day. We will pick up again in the morning, as per the 

9 agenda. Thank you all for your participation today. 

10 We look forward to seeing you tomorrow. 

11 You need to take your things with you. Don't leave 

12 things in the room overnight. This will not be 

13 necessarily secure. 

14 (Whereupon, the meeting was adjourned at 5:00 p.m.) 

15 
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1 

2 C E R T I F I C 

3 A T E

STATE OF GEORGIA ) 

 ) 

COUNTY OF FULTON ) 

 I, STEVEN RAY GREEN, being a Certified Merit Court 

Reporter in and for the State of Georgia, do hereby certify 

that the foregoing transcript was reduced to typewriting by 

me personally or under my direct supervision, and is a true, 

complete, and correct transcript of the aforesaid 

proceedings reported by me. 

 I further certify that I am not related to, employed 

by, counsel to, or attorney for any parties, attorneys, or 

counsel involved herein; nor am I financially interested in 

this matter. 

 WITNESS MY HAND AND OFFICIAL SEAL this _____ day of 

November, 2003. 

 ___________________________ 

 STEVEN RAY GREEN, CVR-CM 

 GA CCR No. A-2102 
 241