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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

 CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL 

 + + + + + 

 NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL 

 SAFETY AND HEALTH 

 + + + + + 

 ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND 

 WORKER HEALTH 

 + + + + + 

 63rd MEETING 

 + + + + + 

 WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 2009 

 + + + + + 

 The meeting convened, at 9:00 

a.m., in the West Chester III Ballroom at the 

Cincinnati Marriott North at Union Centre, 

6189 Muhlhauser Road, West Chester, Ohio, 

Paul L. Ziemer, Chairman, presiding. 

PRESENT: 

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Chairman 

JOSIE M. BEACH, Member 

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member 

MICHAEL H. GIBSON, Member 

MARK GRIFFON, Member 

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member 

JAMES MALCOLM MELIUS, Member 

WANDA I. MUNN, Member 

ROBERT W. PRESLEY, Member 

JOHN W. POSTON, SR., Member 

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member 
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PRESENT: (Continued) 

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member 

THEODORE M. KATZ, Acting Designated Federal 

 Official 

REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS: 

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor 

AL-NABULSI, ISAF, DOE 

BALDRIDGE, SANDRA 

BRADFORD, SHANNON, NIOSH 

BROCK, DENISE, NIOSH 

BROEHM, JASON, CDC 

DOLL, LOU, BTNMSP 

GILL, JANICE, Fernald Worker 

HINNEFELD, STU, NIOSH 

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 

KOTSCH, JEFF, US DOL 

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A 

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 

McFEE, MATT, ORAU Team 

MEDL, EUGENE, Fernald (Retired) 

PRESLEY, LOUISE 

RAFKY, MICHAEL, HHS 

ROLFES, BETH, NIOSH 

ROLFES, MARK, NIOSH 

RUTHERFORD, LaVON, NIOSH 

ZIEMER, MARILYN 
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 C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S 

Welcome..................................... 4 

 Chairman Paul Ziemer 

SEC Petition Status Update.................. 5 

 LaVon Rutherford, NIOSH 

Subcommittee, work group Reports........... 22 

 Subcommittee/WG Chairs 

 CATI Recommendation (Proced.)........ 34 

 Security Updates (Mound/Pinellas).... 56 

Board Working Time........................ 105 

 Chairman Paul Ziemer 

 DR Case Selection................... 107 

Board Working Time........................ 167 

 Chairman Paul Ziemer 

 Board Correspondence................ 167 

 Future Meetings..................... 168 

 Other SC&A Assignments.............. 174 

 New WG Assignments.................. 181 

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

 9:16 a.m. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, good 

morning, everyone. We will be ready to begin 

our deliberations on this third day of the 

Advisory Board meeting here in the Cincinnati 

area, more specifically West Chester, Ohio. 

 I will begin with my usual reminder 

to register your attendance with us this 

morning in the foyer if you have not already 

done so. Again, copies of the agenda and 

related documents are on the table in the rear 

of the room. 

 We are going to begin this morning 

with kind of what I think of as our heads-up 

report. It's SEC status and SEC petitions 

that are coming down the line or are in 

process. And LaVon Rutherford will give us 

that update. 

 Good morning, LaVon. 

 MR. RUTHERFORD: Good morning, Dr. 

Ziemer. Thank you. 
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 As Dr. Ziemer said, Lavon 

Rutherford, Special Exposure Cohort Health 

Physics Team Leader for NIOSH, and I will give 

the update on SEC petitions. 

 We do these at each Board meeting 

to give the Advisory Board information on the 

current number of SEC petitions we have, their 

status. It allows them to prepare for future 

work group sessions and also prepare for 

future Board meetings. 

 As of July 7th -- and I think this 

number has already increased -- we are at 148 

petitions. We have seven petitions that are 

in the qualification process. We have 

qualified 83 of those 148. We have four 

evaluations in progress at this time. And we 

completed 79 Evaluation Reports. There are 58 

petitions that did not qualify. And we have 

20 petitions that the Board is acting on. 

 SEC petitions currently in the 

evaluation process: Brookhaven National Lab, 

as you have heard at a previous meeting, we 
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have had difficulties through data capture, 

some PII information issues, a little funding 

issues at times, but we do believe that that 

is coming to closure and that we should issue 

that report sometime in August and be ready to 

present that at the October Board meeting. 

 United Nuclear Corp., we had 

completed that evaluation. However, during 

the evaluation process, we had made a 

recommendation to the Department of Labor that 

we believe the current covered period should 

be extended to 1973. We decided to pull that 

evaluation back to add the additional years in 

once the Department of Labor concurred and 

added those years. We decided to pull that 

evaluation back and do that. 

 So we are in that process at this 

time. We anticipate completing that 

Evaluation Report in August and presenting it 

at the October Board meeting as well. 

 Piqua Organic Moderated Reactor, 

very similar situation. During our 
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evaluation, we looked at the covered period. 

And the petitioner had actually petitioned for 

an extended period. 

 And in our review of that extended 

period, we recognized that D&D was not 

included in the current covered period. We 

provided the information to the Department of 

Labor. And that covered period was extended. 

 So we pulled that Evaluation Report 

back. We are currently in the process of 

adding that portion of the evaluation to the 

report. We anticipate completing that in 

August and presenting that at the October 

Board meeting as well. 

 University of Rochester. We 

received that petition on March 6th. And we 

are on schedule to complete that report in 

September. 

 I do believe that report will be 

completed in time. That will give the Board 

and the petitioners adequate time for review 

to present that at the October Board meeting. 
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 So we have University of Rochester, 

Piqua, United Nuclear, and -- what was it? -- 

Brookhaven National Lab are four that we 

anticipate presenting in October as well as 

which are not on the -- my slides, at least 

two 83.14s. And one of those will be for 

metals and controls, and the other one -- and 

I will discuss briefly -- will be Hanford. 

 SEC petitions that are with the 

Board for recommendation, Chapman Valve, we 

believe all of our NIOSH actions are complete 

with this one. Blockson Chemical. Blockson 

Chemical was discussed at yesterday's meeting. 

 I think there is going to be further 

discussion this morning during the work group 

updates. 

 Fernald Feed Materials Production 

Center, there is research and discussion 

ongoing with this one. There are few 

remaining issues. 

 Bethlehem Steel. NIOSH's actions 

we feel are complete with Bethlehem Steel. 
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And the petition and report are with the Work 

Group. 

 Hanford. Hanford has been on our 

plate for a while. There were a number of 

issues identified by SC&A. We have worked 

through a lot of these issues. However, we 

have come to a position that we believe that 

the resolution of those issues will be 

resolved by doing an 83.14 to extend the 

existing class. And then in parallel what we 

will do, we will be doing a TBD revision that 

will include what work we believe we can do 

out of that period from the 83.14. 

 So we anticipate the 83.14 being 

complete and ready for the October Board 

meeting and the TBD revised and claims 

completed shortly thereafter. 

 Nevada Test Site. The Work Group 

is down to a few remaining issues. That work 

is still ongoing. 

 Mound plant. I believe Ms. Beach 

gave an update earlier in the meeting. 
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Research and discussion continue. 

 Texas City Chemical. We are 

currently revising the existing Evaluation 

Report to include some documentation that we 

received right at the time we had issued 

Revision 0. We anticipate completing that and 

issuing that Evaluation Report very soon. 

 Santa Susana. There is still 

research and discussion ongoing with the Work 

Group. 

 Dow Chemical, we had a Work Group 

meeting on this past Friday. SC&A is going to 

take a look at the Appendix C, which 

incorporated NIOSH's addendum to evaluation of 

Dow Chemical to see how we incorporated that 

into Appendix C. And so there is still a 

little work left there. 

 Pantex. Research and discussion 

continues with Pantex as well as Savannah 

River site. 

 General Steel Industries, there is 

a little bit of work going on still with 
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General Steel Industries with Work Group. 

 Los Alamos National Lab, again, 

research and discussion continues. 

 Linde Ceramics, SC&A just recently 

completed their review of the NIOSH 

evaluation. There is a work group tentatively 

scheduled for the end of this month or the 

first of next month. Dr. Roessler is working 

on that. And I think at that time we will 

also present the actual evaluation to the Work 

Group. 

 Bliss and Laughlin. We had 

anticipated that we would be presenting this 

at this Board meeting. We had completed our 

report and sent the report out. However, and, 

you know, we did not get that report out as 

quickly as we wanted. 

 The petitioner did ask if we would 

postpone presenting that petition. They 

talked to the Designated Federal Official. 

And we will present that petition at the 

October Board meeting. This will give the 
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petitioners a little more time to review it 

and also give the Board a little more time as 

well. 

 Baker-Perkins. We presented that 

report at the Board meeting yesterday. And 

the Board concurred with our recommendation. 

 Lake Ontario Ordnance Works. We 

presented this report at the Board meeting 

yesterday. And the Board concurred with our 

recommendation. 

 Oak Ridge Hospital. We presented 

the report at the Board meeting yesterday. 

However, the Board has recommended a little 

more review. And they wanted to get back and 

verify that we had actually pulled all of the 

strings to look for information at Oak Ridge 

Hospital. And I believe that there will be 

further discussion on that today and a work 

group established. 

 Norton Company. We presented our 

Evaluation Report at the Board meeting 

yesterday. And the Board concurred with our 
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recommendation. 

 And that's it. Questions? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Very good, LaVon. 

 Let's ask if anyone has comments or 

questions for LaVon. 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We appreciate the 

regular summaries to help us stay on track. 

The number of SECs is expanding, and it is 

helpful to track them in this way. So we 

appreciate that. 

 While we are looking at the SECs 

and we are just slightly ahead of schedule, I 

think it would be a good time just to take the 

wording from the actions that LaVon just 

referred to. 

 And we have distributed to the 

Board members and also to the NIOSH staff, to 

counsel, and to Labor the proposed wording of 

the letters that would go to the Secretary 

concerning Baker-Perkins, Lake Ontario 

Ordnance, and the Norton Company. 
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 And if you would take those right 

now, I think it would just be a good time just 

to make sure that we have the wording. The 

motions have already passed. And we simply 

need to confirm that the wording is as it 

should be. 

 Most of this, Dr. Lockey, who was 

an apprentice to Dr. Melius on the wording 

yesterday, and took that burden to actually do 

the wording. 

 And, Dr. Lockey, did you have any 

final changes after your mentor had a chance 

to look at these and correct you? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I hadn't had a 

chance to talk to Jim, but we have a female 

Secretary now. And I changed the wording in 

the first paragraph. And I looked at it again 

last night, and the wording had to be for our 

distinguished Chair, Paul. So it has to be 

changed back from she to he. That is the only 

correction I have. That is in the first -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Which one is 
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this? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: First paragraph. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Of which letter? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Both letters. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Oh, both letters? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, both 

meaning the Norton letter -- 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: And the Lake 

Ontario. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- and the Lake 

Ontario letter. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Third sentence, 

last word. And I will change that on the 

draft. This should be the -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. It's the 

third line. The Board requests that he, 

referring to me. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes, that's 

correct. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: He. So that 

would be a change on the copy of the Ontario 
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letter that you have. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: And the Norton 

letter. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Same change on 

the Norton letter. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Correct. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 So let's look first at the Lake 

Ontario. The first sentence is actually or 

the first paragraph is not part of what goes 

to the Secretary, of course. This is the 

formal recommendation charging the Chair to 

move this document out. 

 The letter to the Secretary would 

begin with the second paragraph, which 

indicates that the Advisory Board has 

evaluated this SEC -- this is sort of 

boilerplate language -- and that we recommend 

something, in this case that they become a 

Class of the Special Exposure Cohort. 

 We identified the facility and the 

time. That is, this is the description of the 
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Class. And it is particularly that 

description that we want to make sure the 

words are okay with NIOSH and Labor and 

counsel. 

 And then we have several bullet 

points, in each case indicating the basis for 

the recommendation, and then the final 

paragraph, which refers to the deliberations 

at this meeting and various materials that 

will be provided to the Secretary as backup 

information. 

 So this is the usual form of the 

letters. Board members, are there any 

comments on wording or any editorials that you 

believe need to be made? Let me ask first 

about Lake Ontario. We are not going to take 

any formal action because we have approved the 

motion and simply want to make sure the 

wording is okay. 

 I will also ask both Labor and OCAS 

and counsel, are we okay on the wording or any 

questions? Okay. I am pausing here for a 
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moment. Mr. Hinnefeld is speaking with 

counsel. And that makes me a little nervous. 

 Larry Elliott? 

 MR. HINNEFELD: Norton is an Atomic 

Weapons Employer. And the wording here is the 

stock wording for a DOE facility in the Norton 

letter. So it should say things like AWE 

employees, instead of DOE employees. And 

subcontractors would not be included. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes, we talked 

about that yesterday. And it says, let's see 

-- its predecessor agencies. Does that cover 

--? 

 MR. HINNEFELD: No, predecessor 

agency would be the Atomic Energy Commission 

or the Manhattan Engineering District. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay. 

 MS. HOWELL: If I could just 

suggest that you use the wording from the 

actual NIOSH SEC Evaluation Report from the 

Class. I'll show you my notebook if you don't 
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have it in front of you because the wording 

for DOE that is used for Lake Ontario is a 

little different than Norton. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 MS. HOWELL: So, rather than just 

switching out the words, actually. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I think you can 

go to the slide presentation that was made or 

go to the Evaluation Report. That will be 

better. That's just for Norton, I believe. 

 MS. HOWELL: I mean for both of 

them but specifically Norton. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: So in the second 

sentence of the second paragraph, it would 

read, the Board respectfully recommends 

Special Exposure Cohort status be accorded to 

all AWE employees who worked at the Norton 

Company in Worcester, Massachusetts from 

January 1st, '45 through December 31st, '57 

and then the rest of the material. So we will 

accept that as the correct wording. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And Lake Ontario 
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Ordnance Works, I don't see any corrections to 

be made to that definition. But I will await 

counsel's -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. That's just 

the Norton. Is that correct? Yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Just Norton. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We will make that 

change. Are there any others on either Norton 

or Lake Ontario? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: If not, those 

will be the documents that will go forward. 

The third one is the document where NIOSH has 

determined that it could do dose 

reconstructions with sufficient accuracy. 

This is for the Baker-Perkins Company in 

Saginaw. And that letter is still a draft, 

although since we were using a previous 

template, it also shows up on our normal 

letterhead. 

 It does not have the usual leading 

paragraph that instructs the Chairman to send 
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this forward within 30 days, but I understand 

that that is part of the intent. 

 So this is actually what the letter 

would look like. And it is a little different 

than the others in that it simply says NIOSH 

has recommended that these workers not be 

added to the Special Exposure Cohort, but 

NIOSH has determined that it has access to 

adequate exposure monitoring, other 

information to do dose reconstructions with 

sufficient accuracy. And then it simply says 

the Board concurs. 

 We do supply supporting 

information, which basically are the 

transcripts of the meeting that become 

available for backup material. We have not 

had many letters like this that have gone to 

the Secretary, but this is the format that has 

been used where a Special Exposure Cohort is 

not recommended. 

 Again, there is no class 

description here since no SEC is being 
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recommended. It simply refers to the petition 

and the fact that NIOSH and the Board concur 

that dose reconstruction can be done with 

sufficient accuracy. 

 Any editorial changes or comments 

on the final product here? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: If not, we will 

consider those approved. Good. That was 

actually part of the Board working time that 

we used since LaVon gave us some additional 

minutes there. So now we will return to the 

regular schedule. 

 The next item is the subcommittee 

and work group reports. And we will go 

through these. If your subcommittee or work 

group has particular actions or issues that 

you wish to report to the Board or actions 

that need to be taken, we ask that you do 

that, chairs of the Subcommittees and work 

groups. 

 If you have nothing to report, you 
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can just so indicate. And those that have 

already reported, for example, Mound, we had 

an extensive report. So it's not necessary 

that we do anything further unless the chairs 

themselves want to add additional information. 

 So we do know that in a couple of 

cases, there are some specific things, such as 

for the Procedures Work Group. And I would 

suggest that we start with that, Ted. And 

then we can pick up. This is the Procedures 

Subcommittee now. 

 And then we will do the Dose 

Reconstruction Subcommittee separately because 

we have a time set forth for that later. So 

we will do the Procedures Subcommittee and 

then the other work groups. 

 Wanda Munn, if you are prepared to 

proceed, why, we will go from there. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I am sorry. I was 

carrying on a sidebar conversation. I hope 

you are talking about Procedures? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, we hope we 
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were. 

 MEMBER MUNN: That's very good. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And I think you 

were going to present something on the CATI 

today -- 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, as a matter of 

fact. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- and anything 

else that your subcommittee wishes to report. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Before I begin that 

report, I would like to make sure that all of 

the members of the Board do indeed have the 

material, the CATI material, that was 

forwarded to you by email on the 20th, I 

believe. So that you would have had adequate 

opportunity by now to look through that so 

that you would see what changes our Procedures 

group had suggested in collaboration with our 

interactions with NIOSH and with our 

contractor over an extended period of time. 

 We have worked on that correction, 

those corrections, in order to try to make the 
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interactions with our claimants more easy and 

more comforting for the claimants, rather than 

create a stress issue for them. 

 If it's all right with you because 

that will require, I suspect, some discussion 

among the Board, I would like to address that 

issue at the very end of our other comments. 

That way we can go through a quick review of 

what the Procedures Review organization has 

been doing since you last heard from us and 

postpone our discussion to the end of the 

comments. 

 The Subcommittee met on June 9th 

and spent a significant portion of our time 

working on that CATI issue. Our second issue 

that we have pending before us right now is a 

discussion relative to a status report to the 

Secretary. 

 Procedures has only given the 

Secretary one report during the history of our 

organization here, and it was the general 

feeling of the Subcommittee that it was time 
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to make another report to the Secretary. 

 What that will contain is an 

overview of what has transpired since the 

previous letter, which was more than a year 

ago. During the period of time that we have 

been doing this -- we are right now dealing 

with the change in the operating system of the 

database that we work with. And it is closely 

tied in with the computer activities that we 

have been having so much grief with the last 

day or two but now appears to be resolved. 

 So the end of this week, we expect 

the entire database that we use to be of the 

same format but completely different operating 

system, which will be commensurate with an 

electronic system that we are using 

individually. 

 That status letter we hope to have 

drafted and be ready for our next subcommittee 

meeting, which is coming up next month. It is 

our intention to have that draft in your hands 

at our next face-to-face Board meeting so that 
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if you have any concerns with respect to that 

report, you will be able to tell us about it. 

 One of the things that our 

contractor has done for us during the last two 

meetings that we have had is provide the 

progress report of where we are in not only 

numerical spreadsheet format but also a 

graphic format. 

 And I have loaded that graph on the 

computer up here. I would like to show it to 

you for just a minute. I think most of you 

will agree that graphs serve an enormously 

effective purpose in conveying information to 

individuals who are not always enthusiastic 

about spreadsheet presentations and numbers. 

 These will give the information to 

all observers in two ways. One, a 

straightforward numerical review of what the 

numbers are as we go along from over the last 

period the changes that have been made. 

 I may need to get up to read that 

myself since I don't have it on my screen. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Maybe we could 

also expand that in terms of the zooming in a 

little further and then put the single page up 

if that is possible. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. It should zoom. 

 There we go. Now you can read what the 

colors represent. Thank you. The first one, 

as I indicated, will be the status of the 

procedure reviews in numerical form only, the 

red being the open items that we have, the 

magenta in progress, the orange being 

addressed in some other format in other 

procedures than the one where the binding was 

originally indicated. 

 The aqua is our transferred 

material, which will go from one work group, 

our Procedures Subcommittee, to another for 

reasons having to do primarily with the focus 

of that particular procedure. 

 The purple is indicating what we 

have in abeyance, which essentially means we 

are holding that awaiting further action or 
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additional information from some other 

resource. And the blue shows the number that 

are closed. 

 As I indicated, that is pure 

numerical information. The other that we 

intend to provide is the status in terms of 

percentage of issues, which is another way to 

look at what we are doing. 

 Regardless of which of these you 

see, I believe you will see that we are making 

progress. We have over 500 individual 

findings with which we are dealing. 

 Some of them are relatively simple 

and simply have not been addressed thoroughly 

yet. The others are extremely complex and 

take a great deal of effort on the part of 

both the Subcommittee, the agency, and the 

contractor. 

 So we are getting there. But it 

will change from month to month as we 

occasionally have the Board recommend 

additional material that they would like us to 
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review and as we clear things from this 

particular -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Wanda, I am not 

seeing it very well from here, but is what you 

call blue the bottom part of the bar? 

 MEMBER MUNN: The bottom part of 

the -- yes. That is our closed items. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Yes. So 

the number is close to 50 percent now. Is 

that correct? 

 MEMBER MUNN: It is pretty close to 

50 percent if you use the closed and in 

abeyance figures. In abeyance is something 

that we as a subcommittee can't do anything 

about together. Then it comes to about 50 

percent. That is correct. 

 I can read you the numbers of the 

most recent spreadsheet that we had, but I 

doubt that that will -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And I have those 

numbers. I simply wanted to clarify what the 

closure value was on these issues. And the 
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colors often look a little different from this 

angle at least. I may be colorblind as well. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Well, it always 

depends on the screen and the presentation 

itself. I am going to leave that up. It is 

not unusual for us to have a situation where 

it is necessary for us to have technical calls 

in between our meetings. 

 Quite often we find that the 

individual findings with which we are dealing 

boil down to such technical specifics that it 

is impossible for anyone other than the health 

physicists themselves to work out an agreement 

and come to a resolution. 

 We had such a situation this last 

month where we had two outstanding issues with 

OTIB-0029. We had dosimetry and coworker data 

issues there, two different findings that 

needed to be resolved. We did have that 

telephone call. The issues were, I believe, 

resolved satisfactorily and will be 

recommended for different status at our next 
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meeting. 

 We are also in the process of 

asking our contractor to prepare for us a list 

of commonality of findings. As you probably 

are aware from the years of our having gone 

through these things, from one site to 

another, there are many findings that recur 

again and again. 

 We have tried to identify those in 

the past and put them into a pool that we call 

various names. We started out with 

over-arching issues. And I think we now have 

a different terminology that we use. But our 

contractor has been tasked with the work of 

identifying those outstanding issues that we 

have from our multiple procedures, all of 

which essentially are the same finding, just 

in a different set of procedures. 

 And so we are going to try to 

identify those so that we can remove those 

from the list we have, which would be very 

helpful for all concerned since they will be 
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probably not always complex-wide but certainly 

repetitive kinds of issues that can be 

addressed with a single finding. 

 We are preparing a very simplistic 

template for the transfer of findings or the 

transfer of I should say full responsibility 

for full procedures that are outstanding from 

one group to another. 

 You can understand how that would 

occur from time to time. And we have come to 

the conclusion our best option and the most 

simplistic way for doing that is to transfer 

them by email with copies to all of the 

members of the Board so they know when 

responsibility has gone from the Subcommittee 

to a work group or vice versa. 

 We will be in the process of 

transferring OTIB-0058, which is external 

coworker dosimetry data for the Rocky Flats 

plant, to Mark Griffon's work area. 

 And I will have that transfer 

template, as it were, ready to make that 
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change before our next work group meeting. We 

will then decide if that is acceptable as a 

method for transferring from one 

responsibility level to another. 

 If anyone on the Board has any 

grief with that method, if they feel that it 

needs to be much more formalized than that or 

if they feel it is inadequate in any way, 

please let me know. 

 This brings us, I believe, to the 

issue of the CATI. The Computer-Assisted 

Telephone Interview has been of concern to a 

great many people for quite a number of 

months, if not years, and we have been working 

on it for several months. 

 We believe that the material that 

we sent to you earlier now constitutes our 

best effort. We believe we have removed from 

that process if not all, then certainly the 

vast majority of the types of questions or 

wording of questions that was creating concern 

for the claimants, many of whom mistakenly 
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believed that they were going through some 

kind of test when we were asking them to 

complete these forms. 

 If any member of the Board has any 

comment with respect to the material that we 

have placed before you, we would certainly 

like to have that discussion now because it is 

our intent to direct NIOSH to take the 

document that we now have in hand for them, to 

take whatever steps are necessary to make it 

our official CATI document. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Let me insert 

here that these are, in essence, NIOSH 

documents. I always want to be a little 

careful in terms of what our prerogative is 

relative to sort of NIOSH's business. 

 As I look at the CATI interviews 

and the letters, I think -- and NIOSH has 

asked for the Board's input. I don't think we 

are directing them to do something, but we are 

suggesting changes that we think would be 

helpful. 
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 I want to put it in that framework 

because I don't believe it is our prerogative 

to direct NIOSH's work. And the CATI 

interviews and the letters are in a sense, I 

guess, work products that NIOSH uses. 

 But, nonetheless, in our role as 

sort of an interface with the public and with 

NIOSH, NIOSH has certainly asked for our 

input. And so we want to frame it in that 

way. And so we are not approving something 

for NIOSH's use so much as suggesting what we 

think might be improvements. 

 And so when we in a sense ask for 

the Board's concurrence on some revisions, 

these are revisions, first of all, that, based 

on discussions in the Procedures Subcommittee, 

that NIOSH has developed. They have developed 

this wording. And basically we are working 

together on it. 

 I just want to frame it out in 

terms of our roles and make sure that you 

understand that we are not directing so much 
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as recommending. 

 Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Mark was actually 

-- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Oh, Mark, did you 

have a comment? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I wasn't sure if 

you wanted to do these in a certain order, but 

I have the EE questionnaire up, as opposed to 

the survivor one. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. And let's 

make sure everybody knows there are two sets 

here. There are two different cover letters 

depending on whether it is the worker or the 

survivor that is the claimant. And then there 

are two sets of interview -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Questionnaires, 

yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- 

questionnaires. So there are actually four 

separate documents. And these are identified. 

 One is called the EE cover letter. And the 
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other is the EE questions. And the other one 

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 MEMBER MUNN: Standing for 

survivor. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: That is the 

survivors. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Or SB, the 

survivor letter and the survivor questions, so 

those four documents. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: And I was in the 

Subcommittee process. So I did have some 

input into this. There is one little one that 

I wanted to note on 19.11, question 19.11, of 

the questionnaire, the energy employee, the 

EE. It says, did you receive chelation 

therapy or other medical treatment as a result 

of radiation exposure from this incident? 

 And then it says, yes, chelation 

therapy. I think it says, chelation therapy 

or other medical treatment. And then the only 

yes option is, yes, chelation therapy. 

 So I am not sure why that was added 
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in. It seems like it maybe should be, yes, 

chelation therapy or, yes, other, or 

something. I don't know. That is a minor 

thing, though. I just wanted to note it 

because it is a new edit, it looks like. 

 And my bigger concern is -- and 

this one was discussed at length on the 

Procedures Subcommittee -- the last question 

at the bottom. This is getting back to the 

coworker thing. I asked that we still include 

this question. And I think I am okay with 

NIOSH putting sort of a qualifying line in the 

front that -- which is there already. 

 It says, NIOSH is confident it will 

obtain enough information to complete your 

dose reconstruction without receiving 

information from other individuals. However. 

 But it's the however part that I think there 

should be a however and then have a yes/no 

option and then still have the, if yes, list 

the names and contact information because it 

is almost like, you know, don't list the names 
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here. We will call you if we need some 

coworker information. 

 And I think it might be useful for 

other reasons because I can see a situation 

where a lot of the workers list the same 

radiation contact person. They really trusted 

this guy. He knew his stuff. He was in the 

field all the time. And you start to query, 

although there is another whole level of 

questioning here with Larry and me. 

 But if you look through all of the 

questionnaires from, say, K-25 and you start 

to see this one guy pop up like 20 times 

listed as a contact person for exposure issues 

for people, I think, you know, SC&A, NIOSH 

might say, you know what? We haven't talked 

to -- you know, this guy might be somebody to 

interview about the overall rad operations 

and, you know, might help us shed some light 

on a certain topic. 

 So I think there is value in 

collecting those. I think qualifying it up 
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front so there is not that expectation that, 

you know, when people -- I understand your 

concern that if people come back and say, I 

gave you four names, and you never contacted 

any of them, you know. 

 I think qualifying it is fine, but 

I think you should still include the section 

to allow them to list the names if they have 

the main contact information if they have it. 

 So that is just my opinion on how to word 

that section. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. And, 

actually, the original concern was what you 

described, that people typically have fed back 

to us the idea that they have provided these 

contact names and they have not been 

contacted. 

 With regard to your first comment, 

Mark, on 19, on the chelation therapy, I note 

that below that, they do give the option that 

you describe. 

 So it would appear that there would 
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be no reason to put the chelation therapy 

there under 19.11 because 19.12 says, if your 

answer was no, skip ahead. If it was yes, 

then you tell us whether it's chelation or 

other. 

 So you're right. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: It's a little odd. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: It looks a little 

odd under 19.11 since 19.12 actually resolves 

that issue so you don't need it in 19.11. 

 Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I have a few 

comments. Actually, the main thing is a 

question. First of all, in response to Mark's 

comments, I would also remind us that many of 

these people are elderly. And dose 

reconstruction does take some time. 

 And so often they are either more 

ill, you know, they have cancer and are unable 

to answer, provide information at a later 

point in time in the dose reconstruction 

process. So it seems to me collecting it 
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earlier may be better. 

 Now, it may need to be supplemented 

or there may be more specific information 

needed, but it seems to me it would be useful 

to collect that information at the earliest 

possible time in the process while people have 

gathered as much information as possible and 

are still capable of responding. 

 I guess my second issue -- I don't 

want to elaborate. I don't think we need to 

elaborate on it, but I do think we're charged 

with reviewing dose reconstruction. It is 

being done. 

 And certainly individual dose 

reconstruction, certainly commenting on the 

interview, you are right. We don't write the 

interview. We don't direct NIOSH to change 

it, but we are certainly well within our 

authority. And I think we have a 

responsibility for providing comments in this 

situation and are asked to. 

 The question I have -- this is like 
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But I am trying to get sort of caught up with 

the process where NIOSH is with doing these 

revisions. 

 I think when we first started, it 

was about to go to OMB. And NIOSH has, I 

think appropriately, delayed that and move it 

through our process first. 

 But I am just trying to understand 

what happens now. We give comments, these 

comments, to NIOSH. What happens from here 

forward? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: We have an extension 

from OMB to use the current questionnaire for 

both claimant and survivors. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And this allows us 

time to hear your comments, hear your input, 

and consider it. And then we go back to OMB. 

 And as soon as this concludes, this process 

concludes, and we understand what your input 

is, then we can go back to OMB with our 
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proposed revision to the instruments and get 

their clearance on those. That is what we are 

waiting on. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: So the immediate 

process will be that we will provide these 

comments to you. You will respond to the 

Subcommittee or how is that? What happens 

specifically next? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I think we can 

respond to the Subcommittee or we can respond 

to the full Board, however the Board wants to 

see this conducted. I think the full Board 

has an interest in this, but certainly the 

Subcommittee has spent a lot of time and 

discussion about it. 

 But yes, we would react to the body 

and explain how we handled, how we addressed 

or why we didn't incorporate a change. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: In my mind, this 

has moved from the Subcommittee as of today to 

the full Board because the Subcommittee is 
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bringing this as a recommendation and getting 

the additional input. 

 So it would seem to the Chair that 

the final document unless the Board so 

charges, would come back to the Board because 

it would be our action at this point. 

 And Larry would basically bring a 

document and say, here is what we are sending 

forward. And I don't think we want to keep 

extending this process. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Oh, no. That was 

my -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: They have been 

very gracious in awaiting these comments. And 

so we want to bring it to closure. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I would offer this, 

that we go back to OMB with revised 

instruments. These are the questionnaires. 

At that point, there is opportunity for public 

comment on them again. 

 So you as individual members of the 

public and/or as a Board can come back again 
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and say, we made a comment. They didn't take 

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at it again, and we think this. So you still 

have another opportunity at the OMB approval 

process. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Go ahead. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. Then my 

suggestion would be that we get this to NIOSH 

as quickly as possible. I would be willing to 

approve it today. And then see what the NIOSH 

comes back to us with. 

 There are points that need further 

discussion at the next Board meeting or even 

the next Board conference call, try to do it 

then and then expedite it to the extent that 

we can. I mean, if there are just sort of 

minor things, I don't think we need to delay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. And, 

actually, the intent here was to get Board 

action today to do just that. And the other 

items, such as Mark raised, in my mind are not 

items that we need to take formal action on. 
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Rather, I would consider them to be sort of 

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I don't think we need a formal vote on every 

item. 

 Stu? 

 MR. HINNEFELD: I just wanted a 

little assistance in resolving Mark's comment. 

 Mark, the comment relating to 19.1 we can 

resolve. I think we -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: That is very 

easy. You just strike that, take the thing 

back out. 

 MR. HINNEFELD: The comment with 

regard to number 22 you said -- I'm not 

exactly sure where your comment ended. What 

change to 22 would satisfy your comment? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I would just add 

onto the bottom. Maybe it's just because it's 

kind of at the bottom of the page, but I would 

add on the bottom, after the question mark, 

put a yes or no option, just like you had 

before. And then, if yes, please list the 
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names. 

 MR. HINNEFELD: So, in other words, 

okay. So it says, can you readily provide 

names, which I kind of took like we would put 

some blank lines down here and they -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. The way it 

read here was like, you know, we just want to 

know if you can. 

 MR. HINNEFELD: If you can, we 

might call you back. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: We might call you 

back. 

 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Got it. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: But I would rather 

have a listing. 

 MR. HINNEFELD: So we could put 

yes/no and then, if yes, just have some blank 

lines. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, right. 

 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: The only other 

thing I would say in there is -- and this is 
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definitely a friendly amendment, but it says, 

provide names and contact information for 

coworkers and industrial hygienists. I would 

say radiation safety specialists and 

supervisors, you know, -- 

 MR. HINNEFELD: Got you. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: -- just to be 

complete there, I guess. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: One other thing I 

want to remind the Board members who were not 

on the Subcommittee and may not have been as 

close to this is that this questionnaire is 

not filled out by the claimants. It is sent 

to them in advance to give them a head's up on 

what will be asked on the phone interview. So 

the interviewee has a great flexibility. 

 For example, it makes no difference 

if there are four lines there to fill out or 

five or ten, but the interviewee can extract 

as many names as the person wants to and, in 

fact, has the capability of even asking, you 

know, are there other people who don't have to 
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even be listed. 

 I believe they have a fair amount 

of flexibility once this is approved. You 

know, it doesn't have to be the category of a 

radiation safety specialist or industrial 

hygienist. It is anyone the person wants to 

name. So there is additional flexibility on 

the part of the interviewer. 

 So this document goes to OMB to get 

the kind of information before OMB that will 

be asked of the public, but the interviewee 

does not fill out a form and send it back. 

 Did you have additional comment on 

that or --? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: No. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Wanda, did 

you have a comment on it? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Just one. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Oh, the other 

thing is I don't believe the letter goes to 

OMB, only the questionnaire. Is that correct? 

 So the letter is completely within NIOSH's 
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prerogative in terms of the final product. 

 But what we would want -- is there 

something similar on the other interview? 

Okay. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, the same 

comment would apply for the survivor. That 

question is still listed as 22, but I think 

the numbering is going to change because there 

are other questions that are missing, yes. 

But it is on the bottom. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: So, let me ask if 

there are other comments or recommendations on 

either of the questionnaires or at the letters 

that would accompany them as far as what the 

claimants get. 

 If there isn't, we can ask for a 

motion to recommend that NIOSH consider these 

recommendations as they prepare the OMB 

documents. And we could do this as four 

motions or as a group motion. 

 I will ask for it as a group motion 

unless the assembly wishes to divide the 
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motion. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: So moved. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: The motion is to 

recommend to NIOSH that these proposed changes 

be included, including those that were 

discussed here this morning. Is there a 

second? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Second. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Is there a 

discussion? And, Madam Chair, do you have 

additional comments on the documents that you 

wish to make before we vote? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Not really, only to 

thank you for clarifying that the claimants 

are not expected to fill these forms out and 

to add that the people who conduct the 

interview have been trained to make every 

effort to be as flexible as possible in 

achieving the end, which is desired to be as 

much complete information as the claimant can 

provide without undue stress. 

 With respect to the discussion that 
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we just had about the wording of item 22 and 

others, there was a great deal of time spent 

negotiating words and discussing the fact that 

the terminology that we currently use today is 

not always the terminology that was familiar, 

especially to older workers. 

 That being the case, we have tried 

to use language that could be generally 

interpreted, not only in today's world but as 

having some context in 1945 as well. 

 It was I think the intent of the 

entire subcommittee to bring this as a 

recommendation from the Subcommittee. So 

thank you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Other comments? 

Yes, Josie? 

 MEMBER BEACH: I just want to be 

clear. Are we going to vote on all four? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, unless you 

wish to divide them. I think if a Board 

member has an issue with a particular one, 

that we would divide the motion. Otherwise we 
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would do it as a single motion. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I guess then I would 

look at the copy of the -- if the claimant is 

a family member and going back to what Mark 

had addressed in the other on the -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. This would 

be the survivor. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I just wonder if we 

want to incorporate putting in the names on 

that one as well. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. I think 

Mark had -- 

 MEMBER BEACH: Did you cover both? 

 I'm sorry. I missed that, then. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. He 

suggested that. And I think Stu made a note 

of that as well. So it would be a parallel 

change in both documents. 

 Then are we ready to vote, then? 

This is a recommendation to NIOSH. All in 

favor, say aye. 

 (Chorus of ayes.) 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Proposed, no. 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Abstentions? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Ayes above the 

nos. Okay. 

 Now we are ready to do the Work 

Group activities. There are two items in 

there that perhaps we want to highlight first. 

 And that deals with security issues and 

updates on Mound and Pinellas. Perhaps we 

should do those two first. Okay? 

 Well, we had the general Mound 

review, but what about security update on 

Mound? Do you have comments on that? 

 MR. KATZ: Let me just give some 

context for this. Dr. Melius at the last 

Board meeting asked that we have regular 

updates for these sites where there are sort 

of very special security concerns just to know 

that things are proceeding well or if they are 

not, what the issues are and whether we have 
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come to a point in any of these sites where we 

have very substantial difficulties in moving 

forward because of security matters, 

classified information, and so on. 

 So I have asked the two work group 

chairs who are dealing with these issues right 

now just to give an update as to how things 

are proceeding. Brad is indicating three. 

And that is fine. Any other work group that 

has these issues, certainly this is something 

that I think is in the interest of the Board 

to keep abreast of any issues that are arising 

here. 

 Thank you. 

 MEMBER BEACH: So, as far as Mound 

is concerned, we have not experienced any 

significant delays in reports, White Papers. 

I would say there is about a three to 

four-week lag time in our White Papers once we 

give them to DOE. So, in reality, we haven't 

had any problems. 

 I also did a report on the secure 
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meeting that was set up for us. That was 

handled very well. So at this time Mound has 

not experienced any real issues with this 

security issues. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And then, Phil, 

let's talk about Pinellas. And you can also 

talk about any other related matters for that 

site. We will consider that the Work Group 

report. 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay. As far as 

the security issues, many of those issues were 

taken off the table when we met with DOE in 

Germantown, things that were of concern that 

they have basically opened the book to just 

about everything except for a few minor issues 

that we will have to work with. Otherwise 

they gave us the go-ahead to proceed. 

 Right now the Technical Basis 

Document is with DOE for a review of the 

revisions. As soon as that comes back, we 

will schedule a work group meeting. I might 

as well go ahead and hit INL and Idaho 
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National Lab on the -- there is a matrix on 

that being worked on right now. 

 We are also going to combine 

Argonne National Labs West with INL into one 

review because they share common buildings, 

common sites. They just were so entwined you 

can't separate one from the other with the 

blessings of the Board. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Jim? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Can I ask? Yes. 

We at our Work Group meeting on Idaho -- I 

mean, frankly, the NIOSH staff seemed quite 

unprepared to deal with the SC&A comments. 

Has there been progress on that that you are 

aware of, Phil? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: They are 

supposed to have a matrix ready for us on just 

the INL section of it, just in relation to INL 

without any of the Argonne National Lab West 

-- they haven't started on that is my 

understanding. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: When are they going 
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to have it ready, I guess? Do you know? Have 

you heard? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I have heard no 

time frame yet. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: You are asking 

about Argonne West or INEL? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: INL. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Or it's 

now INL. I am used to INEL. Okay. 

 Brad, did you have additional 

comments also on the security matters? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Mine is a little 

bit different because Mound and Pinellas are 

actually gone, but I am dealing with an active 

facility right now that has many security 

issues. 

 Since the implementation of the 

Board's procedure for retrieving documents and 

so forth like that, we got off to a little bit 

of a rough start. But it looks like it is 

starting to work forward and going through 
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there. 

 It did please me to hear that Glenn 

had spoken the other day and his support to be 

able to help us get in there because in our 

case, there are some real national security 

issues and so forth, which we have been 

working on and we are preparing to go down and 

interview some claimants. 

 And we are also working on a tour 

down there in late August, early September, 

some time frame. But we are seeing some 

delays in kind of a miscommunication of some 

sorts, but overall it is working fairly good. 

 We are more having a hard time with 

the site itself, retrieving information. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: The tour that you 

refer to is for the Work Group itself? Is 

that? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, it is. It is 

for the Work Group. And so it is closed to 

them because of a Q clearance that we have to 

be able to have and so forth. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. We can 

proceed. 

 MR. KATZ: Just to clarify, this is 

Pantex that Brad is speaking for. I know all 

of us here recognize that. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I appreciate that. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Phil, do 

you have an additional comment? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Actually, this 

is more of a question. I was wondering if 

Larry Elliott could give us any idea when 

OTIB-0066 -- how they are going to use it and 

how it would be applied, if they have any idea 

when this is going to be ready. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: OTIB-0066, which 

is? Remind us. 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Is on the 

tritium issues. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: On the tritium. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: OTIB-0066 is in 

place. The issue, the question I think, Phil, 

goes to how OTIB-0066 is referenced and 
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applied for a certain site, like Pinellas, 

Pantex, or Mound. And we see that being 

different in those different facility 

situations. 

 So the Site Profile is going to 

have to speak to how OTIB-0066 is employed at 

that site. I don't know where that is at. I 

don't have that right now for Mound or 

Pinellas or Pantex. I think we are close. 

 There are discussions going on in 

each of those work groups. I think you have 

heard for Mound what the plan is, but I don't 

believe the Site Profile has been fully 

changed to reflect that yet. 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay. Thank 

you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. Okay. 

 Let's proceed through the other work groups 

or at least get underway here for a few 

minutes. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. So Blockson we 

are going to address later, right? Correct? 
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Then we have Chapman Valve. Dr. Poston? 

 MEMBER POSTON: We attempted to 

schedule a telephone conference to try to wrap 

up Chapman Valve and were unsuccessful. So we 

will try again after this meeting. The summer 

turns out to be very busy for a lot of folks. 

 And we were unable to schedule it. 

 MR. KATZ: And DOE Security; that's 

Brad, but, really, we have gone forward on 

that. That's really maybe -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I believe that 

Work Group has finished the task, which was 

the task of developing and recommending the 

document. And that is basically completed. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, it is 

completed. But if you remember, in Amarillo, 

you kept us together if security issues arose. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. And, 

actually, at some point if this becomes sort 

of a standing group with a broader mission, we 

may have to make that a subcommittee. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: But at least the 

actual work that was originally charged to it 

was completed. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes. It was 

completed, and they are implemented. 

 MR. KATZ: Right, yes. For the 

record, the documents were finalized. I do 

have some comments from Dr. Melius about the 

final documents, which I will circulate to the 

Board after this meeting. I mean, they're 

minor. It would be minor changes. And they 

relate to an issue that was raised on the 

first day of this Board meeting. 

 So those are in place. And I also 

have from all of the Board members 

certification that they're ready to comply 

with it, educated, and ready. And I have the 

same from the SC&A organization. So we are 

really all set. 

 I will be sending a letter to the 

Department of Energy just to document that for 

their sake, for their security plan. And we 
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 Then we have Fernald. And that is 

Mr. Clawson? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, Fernald, 

we've had three work group meetings so far. 

We have got six outstanding issues being 

discussed at this time. 

 Three of the issues were being 

addressed by SC&A, which has issued a White 

Paper. They are in process right now of going 

to DOE and being cleared and then will be 

submitted to NIOSH. NIOSH had three other 

issues that they were looking into. And we 

are waiting for a report to come back from 

that. 

 After we have had, both sides have 

had, time to review and digest what each side 

is going to do, what they are discussing 

about, then we are going to schedule a work 

group at that time. 

 MR. KATZ: Hanford, Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Hanford, there has 
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been no activity. I believe I shared with the 

Work Group, I'm not sure with the Board NIOSH 

has reevaluated their approach on Hanford. 

 And at our October meeting, I think 

-- that is still on schedule -- they will be 

presenting essentially an expansion of the 

current SEC to cover more groups and more 

people. They will have a full explanation 

from the time right now to do that and a new 

Evaluation Report to justify that. I think it 

is coming in as 83.14. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, sir. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, and do that, 

which will cover a much longer time period. 

And so they are busy doing that. Arjun and I 

have some sort of technical calls and sort of 

administrative calls to get caught up on that, 

but we will all, the whole Board will, be able 

to see that in October, be presented to us. 

And hopefully we will have it a little bit 

before then. So there may be some need for 

the Work Group to meet and discuss it before 
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the October meeting, but that somewhat depends 

on the timing of this, of NIOSH. 

 Meanwhile, we have worked with 

Arjun to sort of adjust the matrix and our 

plan for follow-up to take into account this 

change by NIOSH. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you. And then 

next we have -- we have covered INL, Phil has 

covered that -- Linde, Dr. Roessler? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: The Linde Work 

Group has been reconstituted. And the Chair, 

Josie Beach, Mike Gibson, and Jim Lockey are 

on it. We have scheduled a meeting for 

September 2nd at the airport, Cincinnati 

Airport, Marriott starting at 9:30. And I had 

hoped that the Work Group will expect to be 

there pretty much for a full day. 

 The focus of the meeting will be 

the Linde SEC petition 107 covering the 

residual period, which is January 1st, 1954 to 

July 31st, 2006. 

 The meeting will include the OCAS 
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presenting their petition evaluation and the 

petitioner presenting her petition since this 

petition has not been presented to the full 

Board. 

 [Identifying information redacted] 

is the petitioner. And I understand she will 

be at the meeting. Also, SC&A will present 

its review of the petition, which was 

completed in June of 2009. And OCAS will have 

the opportunity to respond to the SC&A review. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you. And let me 

just add a little bit to that, which is 

[Identifying information redacted], the 

petitioner, had sent a letter to the Board 

concerning Linde. She had submitted a 

petition for an interim period just prior to 

the period that is being covered by this 

petition that qualified. 

 And that relates to the review that 

was done by SC&A of the original Site Profile 

and the discussions that then underwent 

regarding that Site Profile. 
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 As part of reviewing the SEC 

petition that qualified, SC&A also looks over 

-- I mean, it's just part and parcel of that 

-- looked over the changes that were discussed 

for the Site Profile and then the new Site 

Profile that has been issued since to see what 

transpired in terms of implementing the sort 

of changes that were discussed for the Site 

Profile. 

 So I have asked SC&A prior to this 

Board meeting. She had wanted the Board to 

consider having the new Site Profile reviewed. 

 And I understood that SC&A had sort of done a 

considerable amount of work in looking at the 

new Site Profile in relation to this SEC 

petition. 

 So I asked them to just sort of 

fill in the holes in terms of addressing the 

changes that were made and how they were 

followed up on, which I think they have, they 

have undertaken and is underway. 

 As I understood from SC&A, it is a 
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very small amount of additional work to 

provide a memorandum to cover whatever wasn't 

quite covered in the petition review document 

itself. So they will be providing that. 

 And I would just ask that, although 

this Board, I mean, the Working Group, is 

taking up the petition, that they could follow 

up on whatever issues might arise related to 

the Site Profile, the new version of the Site 

Profile in implementing those changes. So I 

would just ask that for the Board to consider. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, the tasking 

has been done already. And I don't think any 

formal action is needed at this time. 

 MR. KATZ: No. Just that the 

Working Group could consider those -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Oh, the working 

group. 

 MR. KATZ: -- elements as well, not 

-- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, yes. 

 MR. KATZ: -- strictly the SEC 
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petition. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: The working group 

I guess is -- have we named that an SEC? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: I think you did, 

yes, once the petition qualified. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, right. So 

the issue is that of expanding the scope of 

the Work Group to include this. Well, I am 

not going to say it is necessarily minor, but 

the Site Profile revisions. 

 Is there any objection on the part 

of the Board members to expanding their charge 

to over this? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I see no 

objections. And we will consider that their 

charge is amended suitably to extend as 

needed. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you. So Los 

Alamos National Lab, Mr. Griffon? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. We haven't 

had a meeting since the last Board meeting, 
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but I think we are getting close. There is 

activity. I know SC&A was recently out to 

LANL doing more document review and 

interviews, I believe. 

 So I would hope before the next 

full Board meeting we will have a work group 

meeting but no update other than that. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. We have Mound 

already. Nevada Test Site, Mr. Presley? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: NTS Working Group 

has not had a meeting since the last meeting. 

 However, we have two outstanding issues. 

Those issues are being worked between HHS and 

SC&A. 

 Hopefully the outcome will become 

worked out before our next meeting and we can 

have a Working Group meeting to discuss the 

final outcome of the deliberation and move 

forward with the NTS Site Profile and the 

other document -- I am having a senior moment 

-- Technical Basis Document and the SEC. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: Rocky Flats. Yes, 

we did, as you sort of got briefed on this on 

the last two days, actually, but we did have a 

Work Group meeting on the 20th, I believe, 

just before this meeting, to discuss the -- it 

is still the one issue: implementation of the 

Class and the question of the University of 

Colorado/Ruttenber database and whether that 

has any implications on how the Department of 

Labor will implement the Class as the 

Secretary proposed it. 

 I know there are requests for SC&A 

to sort of review this report that NIOSH put 

out, but Labor has just received this report. 

 So what I think is the best path forward here 

would be to allow the Department of Labor some 

time to consider this report. 

 I spoke with Jeff yesterday, Jeff 

Kotsch from Labor. And, you know, he says 

they do have the report, but, really, they 

need a little more time to consider it and 
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whether it would impact their implementation 

of the Class. 

 And then after that, I think we 

would consider tasking SC&A if needed. So I 

think we want to get a read on DOL before we 

move on this any further. 

 And I don't know, Jeff, if you have 

anything to add to that. 

 MR. KOTSCH: No, Mark. I mean, we 

will. We just got it when you got it, 

received. In fact, I haven't even been in the 

office in the last few weeks, but we will take 

a look at it. 

 Also we talked to Larry about 

getting a copy of the Ruttenber database 

because we haven't seen that yet either. So 

we will review those things and I guess 

respond. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I mean, I will 

stay in close touch with all of the parties. 

I think certainly we would hope that the 

Department of Labor can get us a fairly quick 
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answer on this, on where it would stand. 

 And then, you know, we will deal 

with that afterwards and whether we need to 

ask SC&A to review the report. But first we 

want to hear back from Labor. 

 Larry wants to add. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. The database 

from the Ruttenbers is going to be placed on 

our secure data network and shared with DOL 

before the week is out. 

 And I have offered our technical 

team to Jeff to give them an interpretation 

and a navigational overview of the dataset 

because it is not straightforward and not 

self-explanatory. So we will help them with 

that. 

 If I could, I would like to make a 

couple of comments here because I certainly 

appreciate those folks during public comment 

who have pointed out that where we at NIOSH -- 

as we are scientists, we are not effective 

communicators in all respects. 
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 And so I want to point out that we 

haven't done as good a job as I wanted to on 

communicating about this Ruttenber study. And 

I would like to expand on what I said Monday 

just for the record and to be clear. 

 The analysis that is outlined in 

the report has confirmed that our original 

understanding that Dr. Ruttenber and then his 

wife Margaret Ruttenber gave us was that the 

data used by the Ruttenbers came from the 

Rocky Flats radiation protection group, same 

data that was being incorporated and developed 

into the NDRP. So it is the same data source. 

 Both the Ruttenber and the NDRP studies start 

with the same dosimetry data source. 

 While the Ruttenber team clearly 

expressed to Rocky Flats personnel and the 

NDRP that they would like to use the NDRP, it 

wasn't ready at the time that they conducted 

their study. 

 And so the data that they had been 

given required them to make some assessments 
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of whether or not neutron exposure occurred 

for certain types of job categories that 

weren't reported to them in the NDRP data that 

they had received. 

 They, therefore, felt that any 

member of a job classification or category 

that might have had opportunity to enter one 

of the identified buildings where plutonium 

occurred and neutron exposures could have 

existed should be given an imputed dose, an 

assigned dose, a dose that is estimated to 

have been a potential for that kind of 

activity for that kind of job category. And 

all people in that job category would have 

been assigned that dose. 

 So when the Ruttenbers assigned 

these doses, the NDRP relied primarily on 

dosimetry records constructed in detail as 

individual work histories and time lines. And 

he assigned those doses to workers if there 

was evidence of a neutron exposure in a 

building they went into. 
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 There is no difference in the 

neutron identified buildings in the NDRP from 

the neutron buildings in the Ruttenber 

dataset. They are the same. The buildings 

that have been identified as neutron exposure 

buildings are the same. 

 It is important to remember, I 

think, that NIOSH's responsibility here is to 

the claimants. And so when we developed this 

evaluation, we talked with the team about how 

they were going to evaluate the two datasets. 

 You know, our responsibility is to 

the claimants. So we focused on the 100 

current claims that we had in our system. And 

for Rocky Flats workers who were not included 

in the NDRP prior to 1967 but for whom the 

Ruttenber data imputed a neutron dose, there 

were of these 100 claims, 50 individuals that 

were already included in the SEC Class. There 

were 22 that had non-SEC cancers and nine had 

less than 250 days of employment in the SEC 

period. 
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 Four had dose reconstructions that 

had a PoC of greater than 50 percent. And 

three individual claims were closed because 

either the employee died or the survivors 

died, which is just terrible in my opinion. 

That is where we fail these folks 

dramatically. 

 And one had a non-SEC cancer but 

was compensated for beryllium exposure. So 

for the total of 89 of the 100 claimants with 

imputed neutron doses in the Ruttenber 

database, this data can have no impact on the 

compensation decision. 

 In addition, the imputed annual 

neutron doses in the Ruttenber database are 

less than 100 millirem for each year in the 

SEC period for 10 of the remaining 11 

individuals. 

 A detailed review of these 

claimants' dosimetry files was conducted. And 

there was nothing that suggests that neutron 

exposure occurred for them prior to 1967. 
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That is, there were no neutron dosimetry 

results, no incident reports from a plutonium 

building, no plutonium bioassay results, or 

any other evidence indicative of neutron 

exposure potential. 

 There is one claimant with an 

annual neutron dose of greater than 100 

millirem in the Ruttenber database but not in 

the NDRP. And there is no evidence of neutron 

exposure potential for this individual in his 

dosimetry files. 

 So I guess, in summary, NIOSH in 

our evaluation has determined that the impact 

of using the Ruttenber database, in addition 

to the NDRP for determining eligibility in 

this Special Exposure Cohort Class, is a 

decision that DOL needs to make. We have 

tried to give them an understanding based upon 

claims that we have how this Ruttenber 

database would affect that population. 

 So if we have missed the mark, I 

apologize for the poor communication of this, 
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but I sensed enough irritation about it, 

enough frustration about it from public 

comment I felt I wanted to clarify the record. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Let me just add, I 

think you got pretty far down into the weeds 

there. And I am not going to redo our work 

group conversation because we got quite into 

these details and how the 100 cases were 

considered. 

 This is all part of this report, 

which is available for everybody. It is on 

the website, on the O: drive, also. You know, 

I think now let's let DOL look at it and 

consider it. 

 The one thing that I would ask -- 

and it came out of the Work Group -- is that 

the analysis of those 100 cases would be added 

to the O: drive. 

 And I haven't seen. I looked right 

before the meeting to see if that was posted, 

and I don't think it has been put up there 

yet. 
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 So if NIOSH could do that for us 

and for DOL, I think that might be helpful, 

too, to understand all of those details you 

just went through and see that but anyway. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Again, without 

trying to belabor the situation but I'll agree 

with one thing, Larry, that this was a poorly 

communicated report. I found it to be very 

confusing, very poorly written. 

 And I would object. I think the 

duty of NIOSH and certainly the duty of the 

Board is to more than just the 100 claimants. 

 It is to a whole class of potential claimants 

and whether in reviewing and defining a Class 

definition we made the proper designation and 

that the Ruttenber data offered a new source 

of data. 

 So I think we have an obligation to 

look into this more than just to do with the 

100, what happened to 100, claimants, whether 

they are a convenient sample that can be used. 
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into. 

 I am also comfortable with DOL, I 

think needs to take a look at this given where 

we are in implementing this Class. And I 

think we need to be appropriately careful and 

prudent in how we approach this now given what 

has gone on. So I think feedback from DOL 

would be welcome. And then let's see where we 

need to go with this. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, indeed, the 

issue has really focused on the implementation 

of a Class which has already been approved. 

And if, in fact, DOL after looking at this 

determines that there should be some 

modification, that will impact on what we do 

next. 

 So it is very appropriate to let 

DOL take a look at this first. And then we 

can determine a course after we see what comes 

out of that. 

 So thank you very much. Let's go 
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ahead. 

 MR. KATZ: Santa Susana, Mr. 

Gibson? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: We met April 17th 

in Cincinnati. We went over the matrix and 

the concerns that SC&A had. Those concerns 

are in NIOSH's hands right now. They made no 

response to them. We're awaiting that. 

 Also since last meeting, I have 

become aware of some information that is out 

there that I don't think SC&A has reviewed yet 

that -- I haven't been able to share this with 

the rest of the Work Group. 

 So I am not comfortable with asking 

SC&A to do that now, until I talk to the rest 

of the Work Group. But, just for your 

information, I think there may be some 

additional tasking we want to do for SC&A to 

do some additional review. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Mike. 

 Savannah River site, Mr. Griffon? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, pretty much 
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the same update as for Los Alamos. We are 

close, but we haven't had a meeting yet. And 

SC&A has also been down there. Joe's group 

gets around. 

 Again, I think early fall we are 

expecting to have a work group start up down 

in Savannah and maybe in the area, actually. 

I am not sure about that because we might 

coincide it with data collection activities. 

So it will either be in our normal spot, 

Cincinnati, or Savannah. And that is it. 

 MR. KATZ: SEC issues, Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: The SEC Issues Work 

Group met by conference call, I believe, 

stealing or beating John Poston to the one 

open time we had. Sorry, John. We all had 

scheduling problems between health physics and 

other vacation schedules and so forth. 

 Anyway, we met, reviewed two 

things. One was the Dow SEC petition, which 

was mainly trying to update and make sure 

where we stood with a variety of issues 
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related to that. 

 We do need to task SC&A with one 

more review related to that. It is not a 

large task, but the Appendix, I think it's 

Appendix C, but I may be wrong, to the 

TBD-6000, which covers Dow and needs to be 

reviewed by SC&A, they haven't reviewed it in 

relationship to the SEC because I wasn't 

available at the time they did their last 

technical review. And there are a few other 

informational things. 

 I think if SC&A proceeds correctly, 

I think we will try to do another Work Group 

meeting before the October meeting and 

hopefully can bring some closure to that SEC 

evaluation review. 

 The other potential problem there 

is that the residual covered period is being 

under evaluation also. And there may be some 

changes to that and being forwarded from 

NIOSH. The timing on that is sort of out of 

our hands, but we may want to proceed anyway, 
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but that could complicate the timing a little 

bit. 

 The second issue we looked at was 

we had the discussion on the 250-day issue 

involving the Metallurgical Laboratory, 

Chicago and I think, again, more of a 

technical discussion about how to approach 

that problem. And I think it was a good 

discussion. We will need to do follow-up. 

 So I think probably at the same 

time we do Dow, we will probably have a 

meeting of the Work Group to also discuss the 

250-day issue. 

 MR. KATZ: Any questions? 

 (No response.) 

 MR. KATZ: Thanks, Dr. Melius. 

And, just for clarity here, SC&A was tasked at 

the Work Group meeting to take on Appendix C. 

 Okay. So then we have TBD-6000, 

6001. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: This Work Group 

has been focusing mainly on the Appendix B, 
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which is the General Steel Industries issue. 

And at the last Board meeting, we tasked SC&A 

to look at the SEC Petition Evaluation Report. 

 SC&A has completed that. And that 

report has been sent to DOE for clearance. It 

has not yet come to the Work Group. I think 

it went to DOE last week, late last week. 

 And we expect that to be out to the 

Work Group perhaps in a week or two. And once 

we have that report from SC&A, we will be 

ready to schedule our next Work Group meeting. 

 In relation to General Steel in the 

meantime, there have been some other 

activities. SC&A staff people have also done 

some phone interviews with some of the General 

Steel workers to clarify some of the issues 

that have arisen. 

 We have had a fair amount of input 

from both the petitioner and the site expert. 

 So that there is a fair amount of additional 

information for the Work Group to look at as 

well. 
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 So as soon as we get the SC&A 

report, we will be ready to schedule a meeting 

within the next four to six weeks. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. 

 Surrogate Data, Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Nothing new to 

report. We will be planning to try to hold a 

Work Group meeting between now and the October 

meeting on that. 

 We took our own time. The time 

available for that was also like that 3:00 

o'clock last Friday. 

 MR. KATZ: I see a very busy fall 

ahead of us for work groups, which is great, 

actually. 

 And, Mr. Gibson, Worker Outreach? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes. We met in 

Cincinnati on June the 16th. And we have 

another meeting scheduled August the 12th in 

Cincinnati. 

 We tried to find how we are going 

to assess the worker outreach efforts. We put 
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together some draft language, and we are still 

working with that. But today there are a 

couple of issues. 

 Number one, we would like to 

present to the Board a draft mission statement 

to see if the Board would concur for us to 

adopt that. The mission statement is, the 

mission of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

Worker Health's Worker Outreach Work Group is 

to monitor and assess the effectiveness of 

NIOSH and other sources of assistance for 

potential EEOICPA claimants and assure this 

information is available to as many current 

and former workers of the U.S. weapons complex 

as possible. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I interpret that 

as a motion for approval of the Board for sort 

of the charge to the Work Group. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And if there's a 

second, we will discuss that. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I will second that. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And there is a 

second. Before we actually discuss the 

motion, let me point out that when the Worker 

Outreach Work Group was proposed -- and I 

believe, Mike, you actually proposed it 

originally -- both Mike and the chair and 

maybe the full Board, we weren't completely 

clear as to what exactly the Work Group should 

do except sort of an intuitive feeling that 

they needed to take a look at how outreach is 

being done. 

 A lot of that is done by Labor, but 

NIOSH certainly has activities and works with 

Labor in these outreach activities. And so 

basically the Work Group had the opportunity 

to define their task. 

 They have deliberated on this over 

the past number of months and determined that 

this would be the kind of framework in which 

they could move forward. 

 So I think it is in that context 

that Mike and the Work Group have proposed 
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this as sort of their official charge. And I 

would like to ask if any of the Board members 

-- do you need to hear the words again? 

Because we haven't seen this in writing. 

 So why don't you read it once again 

for us just so we have it clear in our minds 

what the charge would be? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: The mission of the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

Health's Worker Outreach Work Group is to 

monitor and assess the effectiveness of NIOSH 

and other sources of assistance for potential 

EEOICPA claimants and assure this information 

is available to as many current and former 

workers of the U.S. weapons complex as 

possible. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

 The key points here I think are monitor and 

assess. And as the Work Group moves forward 

if we approve this, they would have to 

determine, actually, how to do the assessing. 

 And that would be their next step and then 
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the issue of sort of making sure that the word 

gets out there. And that has some 

implications itself in terms of how that would 

be done. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: And we do have some 

draft language that we are still commenting on 

that we think is leading us down the road on 

what we are going to assess and how to assess 

it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: So this is just 

an overall sort of charge with the 

understanding that details on how to actually 

do this, the group would work out. We would 

assume that, Mike, you would report back to us 

as you make progress and get input from the 

Board. 

 I think this is a very important 

Work Group in terms of overall impact on the 

program. And so it would be important to get 

feedback from the Board itself. 

 When counsel whispers in someone's 

ear, I always pause. 
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 MR. KATZ: No. It's okay. Counsel 

has just advised me about a concern because 

it's vague language. I think in the language 

that it was NIOSH and other sources of 

assistance. And the concern was that if DOL 

is considered another source, that DOL is 

really outside of the scope of the charter for 

the Board to be evaluating DOL actively. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, let me just 

comment that we are certainly not going to be 

formally evaluating DOL. I think Mike would 

understand this. And we want to make clear 

that if there are things that we, NIOSH, can 

do -- and some of these might be in 

conjunction, I guess, with DOL activities 

because we are often there. 

 So I think we want to make it clear 

that we are not making recommendations to DOL. 

 It would be surprising to me if in the 

process of the activities, that one might note 

something in terms of how things -- I mean, it 

happens in our regular meetings. We hear from 
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claimants. We hear from public comments 

issues that are often DOL-related issues. But 

they get sort of merged together. 

 So we are not going to try to 

control or recommend to DOL. It would be 

surprising to me, though, that if the 

activities were completely divorced in terms 

of the fact that we do try to work together 

with DOL on this. 

 So I think, for Ms. Howell, we will 

certainly try to steer clear and stay in our 

own boundaries. And I don't think we want to 

say that the other entities as code words for 

DOL or anything like that. 

 Well, enough said on that. Maybe 

others have comments. I see a number. Brad 

has a comment, Dr. Lockey. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Mr. Chairman, could 

I respond? We totally understand that our 

duties are to advise NIOSH and that you are 

exactly right, Paul. The reason the other 

sources were put in there is because many of 
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the meetings are initiated by DOL. And NIOSH 

attends those meetings. And so, as a work 

group, we would like to be there, too. 

 We have been there in the past. 

And there are going to be potential comments 

on how NIOSH was or was not effective in those 

meetings. And if there is something that we 

see concerning DOL, if we bring it to the 

Board, we have made comments to other agencies 

in the past about other issues. And that may 

happen in the future. 

 But we understand that we are just 

to assess the NIOSH program and its outreach. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Brad? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: And I understand 

what Emily has put forth, but the one thing I 

didn't want us to meet. Being able to have 

been asked to go to a couple of DOL meetings 

at one of the sites that I am in the Work 

Group for, there was some very interesting and 

some very important information that came out 

in there. 
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 This is what I kind of see as the 

worker outreach process is doing to us to make 

sure that this information that is talked 

about in a public setting or so forth like 

that isn't lost, that we're taking 

acknowledgment. 

 And also, too, from the people that 

were there, they appreciated knowing that the 

Advisory Board did have an interest in what 

was being said. And I don't want to ever be 

able to lose that. 

 I understand we can't tell DOL or 

anything else like that, but there is some 

very, very good information that comes out. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Wanda? 

 MEMBER MUNN: If there is going to 

be heat about the other sources comment, you 

need to direct it at me because I was highly 

instrumental in suggesting that we include 

that language. 

 The Department of Labor was 

actually the last of the sources that I was 
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considering. We know we have no 

responsibility at all toward what Labor, the 

Department of Labor, does or does not do. 

 On the other hand, professional 

organizations, organized labor organizations, 

and by this point even attorneys are involved 

throughout the entire country in attempting to 

provide information to claimants, both 

positive and negative information. 

 If we do not take into 

consideration the fact that -- if we are going 

to assess how claimants are getting their 

information and we do not even pay any 

attention to other sources, then it appears to 

me that we're failing what I believe most of 

this work group interpreted was our charge. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Jim? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: When I listen to 

the language, when I hear the word assess, 

that means it is an active process that means 

resources being committed to a working group. 

 Are you saying that the working group itself 
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is going to go out and assess or have 

resources to do the assessment or are you 

going to be making recommendations as to how 

NIOSH should assess it? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: We have in the past 

and we continue to physically go to meetings 

and assess the process as it goes forward. 

 NIOSH, they have changed the 

database on how they used to track worker 

comments into a different type of database. 

And that is close to going online and being 

shared with us. 

 So there will be some review of 

stuff like that, too, you know, just directly 

with NIOSH. So it is going to be a 

combination of both. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: So active working 

group assessment, attending meetings, as well 

as making recommendations as to how NIOSH 

should assess the program? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Ted? 

 MR. KATZ: I don't want to be a 

stickler about language. It is just for the 

charge of the Work Group. So I am not 

suggesting it has to change, but monitor 

normally implies an ongoing activity. 

 And just we need to keep in mind 

that this is a working group. And as long as 

it is going to be a working group, it has a 

sort of finite charge, a beginning and an end 

to it. If it were to become a more monitoring 

type of function, it would need to be a 

subcommittee. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I fully agree. 

And this is one of those areas. And it is not 

focused on a specific site and might very well 

morph or merge or move into that mode. 

 I think once we have their charge 

and a better delineation of what they are 

going to do, we will be in a position to 

answer that. I still consider it somewhat ad 

hoc until we reach that point. I very well 
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would expect it might become a subcommittee. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: And the second 

issue I told you that we were going to discuss 

today is we have not formally voted as a work 

group to make a motion to the Board. 

 But the thing I think we have 

consensus on and I wanted to throw out for the 

Board's consideration is changing us. We have 

presented a draft basic task to you that we 

want to go after, but we think that task is 

going to be an ongoing thing. So we wanted to 

throw out for short discussion or whatever 

here today about modifying this work group or 

changing the status to a subcommittee. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, that is the 

point, then. And I would suggest that for 

today, we simply vote on this new -- what do 

we call it? -- charter, as it were. 

 And once you come back with the 

details on monitoring and assessing, we get a 

kind of a full feel for the scope, it might be 

an appropriate time to take the next step, 
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then, if that is agreeable. 

 Jim? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I would feel 

comfortable if we could see the statement and 

the objectives, what you are proposing, going 

forward really outlines -- so that gives us an 

idea of what you all are committing to. 

 It sounds like it needs to go to a 

subcommittee, but perhaps having the 

objectives in the outline under the statement 

also would be very helpful so we can get our 

arms around this. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: And that is. We do 

have that in draft form. We are still 

commenting on it as a work group. And NIOSH 

has got some comments in on it. We just 

didn't have it ready for today. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I think we are 

still discussing the original motion. And 

then those other details would come perhaps at 

the next meeting, at which point we could take 

the follow-up action. 
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 Let me ask you if the Board is 

ready to vote on this motion. This is I will 

call it the monitor and assess motion. How is 

that? All in favor, aye? 

 (Chorus of ayes.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Opposed, no? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Abstentions? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: The motion 

carries. Thank you very much. Thank you, 

Mike. 

 MR. KATZ: I think that is it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: That is it. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I just covered 

Pantex. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. We have a 

little add-on. And then we are going to take 

our break. It is too bad we are not able to 

do dose reconstruction selection, but we will 

do that after the break. 

 Go ahead. 
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 MEMBER CLAWSON: I just wanted to 

report on Pantex. We have had two site visits 

there. Like I said earlier, Pantex is 

different than what we have dealt with a lot 

because there are a lot of security issues. 

The Work Group is made up of a few cleared 

people so that we are getting access to this 

information and we will be able to see it. 

 SC&A submitted its report to NIOSH 

last December. They had to take and tweak it 

a little bit. And it was reissued in the 

April time frame. And we are waiting at this 

time for a response from NIOSH on the SC&A 

report. 

 After that happens, we are going to 

be able to schedule a work group meeting. 

But, like I said earlier, the first of August, 

early September time frame, the Work Group is 

going to go down or not work group but SC&A is 

going to go down and the members from the Work 

Group have the opportunity to go down. They 

are going to have some worker interviews and 
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so forth like that. 

 And then once we get the report 

back from NIOSH, which if we could get a time 

frame, it would kind of help us towards a work 

group scheduling. And we'll go from there. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 

much. 

 Then let's take a break until 

11:30. Then we are going to come back. We 

need to do dose reconstruction case selection. 

 We need to take care of the Oak Ridge 

Hospital Work Group. We need to complete some 

work on Blockson. So we will have about an 

hour to finish that up. 

 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

 matter went off the record at 

 11:11 a.m. and resumed at 11:35 

 a.m.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We will now 

reconvene our session. The next item on the 

agenda, part of our Board working time, is the 

dose reconstruction case selection. 
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 Mark is prepared to lead us through 

there. Mark and I have conferred on this. 

The suggestion is Mark will indicate the 

cases. And we will do this page by page. He 

has preselected some and will ask for 

additional suggestions on each page. And we 

will try to move through this more rapidly. 

 I told Mark if we take more than 

one minute per selection, we are going to use 

up our whole hour with this. So we want to be 

fairly efficient. 

 So, Mark, you are working off the 

copy that has them numbered in order starting 

with -- we will just use the last three 

digits, 201, -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, 201. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- so the 

sequential copy, and move through that page by 

page. Okay. Mark, it's yours. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. And I'll 

just say quickly I came up with like around 68 

or 70 cases. These are kind of preselected. 
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We always know that we lose some on the next 

step. So we are ultimately trying for 38. 

 So I will go through my choices. 

And then if you have any additions or 

subtractions or whatever, we will do it page 

by page. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Mark? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 MEMBER MUNN: What criteria did you 

use? Because I ended up just randomizing my 

selections and -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I mean, basically 

similar criteria that we have used in the 

past. I mean, I generally looked for cases 

under 50 but near 50, 45 to 50. This is 

sorted on 30 to 60. So it is a little 

broader. 

 So the choices, I always look for 

the site choices. If there was a unique site 

that I -- and I did this by memory. I didn't 

really go back to our -- SC&A has a tracking 

matrix for us of all of the sites we have 
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looked at and the numbers and all of that. 

 But I tried to look at if there 

looked like a unique site that we haven't seen 

before, that would be worth -- because that 

ends up being like the mini Site Profile 

Review situation. So I might have selected 

that. 

 MEMBER MUNN: So you pretty much 

used the same variance of criteria that was 

used before yours were, -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Pretty much, yes. 

 MEMBER MUNN: -- where they were -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: And I figure we 

can fine-tune this on the Subcommittee. Once 

we get down to the final selection, we can 

look and say, you know, if we end up with a 

dozen Savannah Rivers and we look at our total 

numbers from before and we're getting too many 

Savannahs, we may want to drop some of those 

off or something like that. So this is like a 

first triage. So I went broader than we will 

end up. 
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 Okay. So on the first page, I have 

205, 207, 208, 211, 212, 218, 220, 221, and 

222. Any additions or ones that I mentioned 

that you want to remove? We can look at those 

now. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I had 207 or did 

you say that one? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I said 207, yes. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. How about 

213? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I didn't have 213 

because it is a -- yes, that is a possibility. 

 It is Iowa, but it is a non-SEC cancer, 

correct? So I can add that, 213. 

 Any others to add or subtract? 

 (No response.) 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. Let me know 

if I need to slow down on this, but we will 

try to keep them moving. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I had marked 202, 

Mark, just because liver is one of those that 

doesn't come off a lot. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: We looked at 

Bethlehem Steel, and it is a site-wide model. 

 That is why I didn't -- 

 MEMBER MUNN: No problem. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. Page 2, I 

have 224 and 227. And that was it on that 

page from me. Any additions or -- 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I just had 247 was 

all. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Two forty-seven? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, very bottom 

of the page. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, we can 

consider that. I think we looked at Superior 

Steel. And it is a site-wide model again. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: So I would, yes. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: No problem. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: So we will leave 

that off. 

 MEMBER MUNN: And I marked 246 

primarily because of Albuquerque. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: 246, Albuquerque 

Operations Office. That is true. I don't 

think we have looked at that. So that is 

fine. Is that it? 

 Page 3, I don't have any. Most of 

these are over 50 percent. That is part of 

the reason I think I don't have any on this 

page. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I marked 249. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I am sorry, Wanda. 

 I didn't hear. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I said I marked 249. 

 I thought that was one of those very near the 

tipping point. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: A lot of work 

experience and very near. Okay. Yes. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Two forty-nine. 

We will add that on. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Two sixty-six is 

one that I marked. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. 
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 MEMBER MUNN: Two sixty-six? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Two sixty-six. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Okay. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: We will add that. 

 All right. 

 Next page is I have 275, 283, 284. 

 And 283-284 I picked for the very unique time 

period that they worked and the fact that one 

of them, actually, Paducah, 284, is a less 

than one year and 51 percent on lung cancer, 

which is kind of interesting to me. 

 So 275, 283, and 284 is all I have 

on that page. Any others? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I had 285. I know 

that it is compensated, but I was just 

interested in all of the different sites. And 

it was only 7.9 years. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. We did have 

several that had a bunch of Oak Ridge sites, 

but I am willing to add it if other people 

agree. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Just a suggestion. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: All right. I 

don't want to make Stu's work too big. The 

idea is to narrow the list, but we can add 

that one, 285. 

 Page 5, I have -- are we on page 5? 

 Yes. Page 5, I have nothing. A lot of these 

are over 50, I think most of them. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I marked -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes? 

 MEMBER MUNN: -- 297. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Two ninety-seven? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Two ninety-seven. As 

I said, I was doing these fairly randomly, but 

we haven't had many non-melanoma skin that we 

have marked so far, have we? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: No. I am willing 

to add that one. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Mark, I had one 

that was 292 that Iowa Ammunitions, but it was 

non-compensated. But it was close. That's 

why I marked it. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. And we just 
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added another Iowa one on. So I would say 

they are going to be similar models there. I 

would think one of those would be enough if 

that is okay. I don't want to get too high 

with the numbers here. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: That's fine. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Page 6 I don't 

have any on. Again, a lot of these were 50 

percent. And I realized as I went through the 

whole document that there were plenty in the 

range that we wanted. So I tried to stay away 

from a lot of the ones that were compensable. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Well, but some of 

them -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Does anybody have 

any on page 6? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Do we have any for 

Santa Susana? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I'm sorry? Three 

fourteen did I hear? Oh, yes. He worked a 

long time. Yes. 

 MEMBER MUNN: It is those. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, yes. 

 MEMBER MUNN: It is those extra 

hours you get for extra shifts. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Ask him what diet 

he's on, right, he or she? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Mark? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Three nineteen. 

Have we done many from Santa Susana? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I don't think so. 

 We can mark it down. It is a compensable 

one, but I'm not sure we have done Santa 

Susana. 

 MR. HINNEFELD: Excuse me, Mark. 

Did you select 314? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: No. 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: No. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: We just pointed 

out -- 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: I think that has 

got to be a -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. So 319 is 
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the only one I added on that page. 

 Page 7, I have 342. 

 MEMBER MUNN: So did I. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: And that is it. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I had 344. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. I started to 

have that. But then I saw .3 years worked, 

and it wasn't so interesting to me anymore. 

 MEMBER MUNN: It's another one of 

those how do you get even that high with .3 

years worked. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. Okay. I can 

put that down, 344. Yes. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I assume that's all 

assumed. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Page 8. I had 347 

for the same reason as I stated before, that 

.2 years worked and the compensable lung 

cancer, 356 and 358. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Mark, I've got two 

on there, 361 and 362. These are both 

Bethlehem Steel. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: But they are very 

close, right? Is that right? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: One of them is 

49.44, and the other is 46.58. And they are 

both almost 35. One is 37 years. One is 35 

years. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. I have those 

as question marks. What if we pick 361 

because they are the same model? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes, they are the 

same model. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: And one is very 

close. You are right. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Okay. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. Three 

sixty-one we'll do. Okay. 

 Page 9, I have 369 and 377. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: I have got 374. 

It is a lot of years, and it's close, up at 

Portsmouth. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: And it is in the 

early years. And I have got one from Rocky 

Flats that is 377. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I had that one, 

yes. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Okay. I'm sorry. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I have 364. It's 

compensated, but I just found it interesting, 

all the different sites, 41 years worth of 

work. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. I marked that 

one, too. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. Three 

sixty-four. 

 Page 10 is, I have, 380, 381, 390, 

and 391. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Would you say those 

again please, Mark? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Three eighty, 381, 

390, and 391. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Mark, this is 
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probably the same model, but what I found 

interesting was nine years work at Bethlehem 

Steel. That's at 392. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: And it's at 49.57. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. I mean, I 

feel like it's the same. We just picked one 

that was real close. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. I didn't 

remember if that was Bethlehem Steel or not. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, it was 

Bethlehem Steel. There's your round-off, too, 

Paul. 

 Any more on page 10? 

 (No response.) 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Page 11? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: I've got 403. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Hold on. We are 

going back to 392. We can look at this on the 

next phase, but we might want to swap that out 

with the other one, you know. Yes. Yes, 392 

I will add on. 
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 Next page I have 397, 398, 399, and 

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 MEMBER PRESLEY: How about 403? 

It's a high number, 20 years. And I don't 

think we have done a whole lot of General 

Steel. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, I would say 

let's not do 402 and then just do 403, 

probably the same model. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: What about 404? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think anyway. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: All three of those 

are -- 

 MEMBER MUNN: Could be the same 

model. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: The other one is 

real close. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: So, how about 403 

and then 397, 398, 399? Is that right? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Mark, I liked 404. 

 It's low, but it's General Steel. But these 
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are almost ten years more than any of these 

other guys, 33 years. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Again, I am 

expecting it is the same model for all three. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: So I am not really 

wedded to which one we pick, but I think we 

should just stick with 403 if that is all 

right. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: That's fine. I 

was just seeing the different cancer. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Page 12. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Which did we 

decide on? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Four-o-three. 

 Page 12 is 416, 421, 422, and 430. 

 And 421 I am not so wedded. I think I would 

drop off 421, actually, because I picked that 

for the reason you added the other one, Brad, 

was the multiple sites. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: But I would drop 
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it off now. So 416, 422, 430. That's what 

I've got. And I believe U.S. Steel Company 

National Tube Division is a site we haven't 

done. So that is why I added that on. Yes. 

It's one of those. It would be a mini Site 

Profile review kind of thing. So 416, 422, 

and 430. 

 Page 13 I have 439 because I 

haven't seen that site before, 442. Fourforty-three because I don't think we have done 

DuPont either, DuPont Deepwater Works; 445; 

446; 450; '51 and '52. 

 Four fifty I picked because this 

person -- and this might be not a typo. He 

worked 57 and a half years, he or she, so 

could still be employed, started in '50. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: The only one that 

I had is 434 at the very top of the page. I 

know it's a General Steel, but all other 

ill-defined sites. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. We just had 

another one of -- 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. I just 

picked one of those other ill-defined sites 

because we hadn't seen that before. So I 

think I've got that covered. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. 

 MEMBER MUNN: And I guess I had 

chosen 444 instead of -- I actually chose 444 

and 445, thinking it would be interesting to 

see the difference in the 2 sites, both bone 

cancer. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, actually, 

444 might be better than 443. I assumed that 

it was going to be the same model. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: But yours is much 

more years worked. So I would be willing to 

not do 443, pick 444 instead. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Okay. Great. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. Page 14 I 

have 453 -- I don't think we've done that site 

-- 457; 460 because it's very close -- well, 

it's actually 45 percent -- 464; and 466. 
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 MEMBER PRESLEY: Mark? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Four seventy-one 

is a 49.3, Paducah, with non-melanoma skin 

basal cell, didn't work but 3 years -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Three years. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: -- but worked in 

the early days. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. I'm willing 

to add it on to look. And sometimes we also 

find that even though they say full 

internal/external, they end up being 

overestimating a purchase. So we might triage 

some of these out, but okay. 

 Page 15, 480, 482, 485, 487, 488, 

489. There are a couple of sites I wasn't 

sure we have done: United Nuclear Corp and 

Uranium Mill in Durango. That is why I picked 

those. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: I've got 447 

simply for the fact that it's -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Four seventy-four 
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you mean? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Four 

seventy-seven. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Four 

seventy-seven? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: It's very high. 

We've got a lot of Rocky. This guy has got a 

lot of years, person. Again, it's a -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. Four 

seventy-seven. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: The only one that 

I had that you didn't was the 488. It was a 

thyroid. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I had 488. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Oh, do you? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I guess I was 

wrong. Sorry. 

 MEMBER MUNN: So would you read the 

numbers on that page again, please? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Four 

seventy-seven, 477, 480, 482, 485, 487, 488, 
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and 489. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Thank you. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: All right. Page 

16. I have 491, 500, 501, and 504. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: What about 502? 

It's close. It's only got six years, but it's 

at Blockson. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Six years. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Building 55. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. Five-o-two. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: What about 507? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

Five-o-seven, I think that's a new place we 

haven't looked at, International Minerals. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Mark, have we done 

much at Sandia? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, we have done 

several. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. We've done some 

cases. Which one was that? 

 MEMBER BEACH: I was looking at 

506. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: Five-o-six. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Well, we've got one 

up in 491. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, yes. So we 

won't include that if that's okay. 

 MEMBER BEACH: That's fine. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Page 17, I have 

509, 512, 513, and 522. I had a question on 

this Carborundum Company, but I thought we 

might want to wait on that one because this is 

.6 years worked. We might see some other 

cases from that. But I don't think we have 

done that site before. 

 MEMBER MUNN: That was very short 

years worked. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: That was an early 

Union Carbide site. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: That's right. Do 

we want to add that one? I'm open. We can 

always get it at another. 
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 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: So right now it 

stands at 509, 512, 513, and 522. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Good. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: On page 18, I have 

524, 525, and 535. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I had 540 just 

because it was so close and only 2.2 years. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: That's why I've 

got 540 and 542 marked. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. Five forty 

and '42. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. They're 

both close, and they're both a lot of years 

yet. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I marked 537 because 

I thought, hmm, that was a squeaker. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. Yes. Okay. 

 That's okay. Five thirty-seven. 

 And last page, I have 545 and 547. 

 I would almost say we don't really need to go 
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to the random list because I think we have 

more than enough here, but if anybody has any 

on the random list that they're really wedded 

to, you know, I guess we can add them on. But 

otherwise I think we have plenty here to get 

our 38. 

 So we will leave it at that unless 

-- is everybody okay with that? All right. I 

will get this list to Stu, then. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We'll take it by 

consent that that is the list. And we need to 

formally authorize the Subcommittee to task 

SC&A with their final selections from this 

group that we have just authorized. Is there 

a motion to that effect? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: So moved. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Seconded? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Second. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Any discussion? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: All in favor, 

aye? 
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 (Chorus of ayes.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Any opposed, no? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Motion carries. 

Thank you. 

 Let's next pick up the Blockson 

discussion that we agreed yesterday would 

carry over to today. Yesterday Mark Griffon 

presented his concerns about the radon model. 

 Jim Neton talked with us further about the 

radon model. 

 It was my understanding that Dr. 

Melius may have had some other questions or 

concerns to raise about Blockson. And I think 

it would be appropriate, Jim, if you shared 

those at this time as well. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. Two things. 

One, specifically, I had made the suggestion 

to Jim Neton that they look into whether NIOSH 

would have some industrial hygiene data from 

the many industrial hygiene surveys they had 

done that might be used to help validate part 
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of the Blockson model since there might be an 

industrial process that would be similar where 

area personal monitoring samples have been 

collected might help us look at the 

parameters. That particularly goes to this 

issue of whether individuals in that kind of 

facility, how well they will be reflected by 

sort of a general area model, which is what is 

used there. 

 I think Jim replied back to me that 

he didn't think that was feasible, partly on 

the chemical and physical, more physical 

properties and whether they could locate one. 

 I don't know how hard they tried that 

exactly. 

 I think my more general concern 

about it is still we have a model that has 

been developed in the absence of actual data 

and something that is going to be applied or 

actual very limited data to base it on. It's 

essentially some estimates based on source 

term. 
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 And I have concerns about that as 

an appropriate method for estimating or 

reconstructing, doing dose reconstructions, 

and even more so given that they are planning 

to use this model for other sites. And I 

still think that some validation of the model 

is necessary before we can go forward with 

that. 

 My understanding, I wasn't here 

yesterday, but Mark raised a number of other 

technical questions about the model itself and 

the parameters used in that. I think those 

continue to concern me. 

 And, again, if this is something 

that has been going to be used widely 

throughout the dose reconstruction process at 

this and other sites, then I think some 

further work is needed before it can be 

accepted. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you for 

those additional comments. Also, for my 

clarity here, in the Work Group, I believe 
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SC&A also reviewed the model at some point or 

did they not? John, can you report? And if 

they did, what was SC&A's evaluation of that 

final model or did they? 

 DR. MAURO: As you recall, the 

model that has been adopted was originally a 

model that SC&A developed to review a number 

that was developed quite some time ago. 

 And we developed the model, just 

checked the number. And it sort of matured to 

the point where now - 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. And so it 

morphed into -- 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. So now NIOSH has 

adopted it. So we are in an unusual position. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: Nevertheless, I was 

just going to say that, of course, Mark copied 

us on his questions. Jim copied us on the 

answers. We were not tasked to look at any of 

that. 

 Of course, we read it. Of course, 
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I did discuss this with Bob Anigstein, who was 

our lead analyst. So no, we have looked at 

it. 

 And we discussed it. We have 

talked about it. But no. We were never 

tasked to look specifically at the questions. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: No. I wasn't 

asking that. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: But the original 

-- 

 DR. MAURO: Oh, the original -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- model, -- 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- at least at 

that point -- 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- there was some 

level of agreement. 

 DR. MAURO: That model is the 

equation, not the input parameters now, but 

the equation is the model we developed. And 
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we think it is a robust model for 

characterizing this Class of problem. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. And 

those who do modeling, if there are any such 

in the room who actually are the true 

modelers, what would be required to validate 

such a model? Jim Lockey, do you have a 

comment or a question on it? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I just have a 

question. Jim, when you look at 95 percent, 

is it geometric standard deviation that you're 

looking at? 

 DR. NETON: Actually, we selected 

the 95th percentile of the output of the 

dataset itself. It would be very close to 

using the geometric standard deviation, which 

I believe is like about 2.7. 

 If you took the GSD to the 1.645 

power, you would end up with the 95th 

percentile of the distribution. And it would 

be fairly close to the 17, not exact, within a 

picocurie or two per liter. 
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 MEMBER LOCKEY: So close to the 

geometric standard deviation? 

 DR. NETON: Well, no. It would be 

close to the 95th percentile if we used the 

geometric standard deviation to calculate the 

95th percentile. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay. 

 DR. NETON: Because the GSD would 

be like 64.5 or something like that or the 

84th. I'm sorry. One GSD would be 84th 

percentile on a normal -- 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: The exact 

percentile -- 

 DR. NETON: What we did is we got 

the output of the, I think it was 10,000 runs. 

 And we said -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Sixty-five 

thousand, I think. 

 DR. NETON: Sixty-five or whatever 

or 100,000. I forget how many runs we had, a 

large number of runs. We went to the 95th 

percentile of all of the outputs that were 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: But you are right. 

 It is almost equivalent to -- 

 DR. NETON: It is very close, yes. 

 You could do it either way, but we felt -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right. 

 DR. NETON: -- we didn't want to 

get into the dispute whether it was log-normal 

or not. And we said just pick the 95th 

percentile right off of the output dataset. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Correct me if I am 

wrong, but when I have done modeling for 

looking at exposure reassessments, if you use 

close to standard, geometric standard 

deviation, usually that value is anywhere from 

10 to 100 times greater than if you used the 

standard arithmetic mean standard deviation. 

Is that correct or am I wrong on that? 

 DR. NETON: No. I don't think it's 

100 times. It would depend on the individual 

dataset. But the GSD -- 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: It depends on what 
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the means are and how much data you have. 

 DR. NETON: Yes. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: But I am trying to 

get a handle on -- 

 DR. NETON: Well, I mean, I can 

tell you that the geometric mean of the 

distribution is about four. Four picocuries 

per liter would be our best guess, our best 

estimate of the concentration in the room 

given the distributions that we put into the 

model. 

 Using a GSD of about, I think it 

is, 2.7, the 95th percentile comes out about 

17. So it is a factor of almost four higher 

than what the geometric mean would be. 

 And that, as I have stated several 

times, is to account for the difference in the 

variables that make up the model and 

particularly where the main driver is the 

building ventilation rate. We have modeled it 

anywhere from one to five air changes per 

hour. 
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 And one small point of 

clarification. This is, in essence, the SC&A 

mathematical equation model. We do differ in 

several of the input parameters that we have 

used. Most notably the lower bound of the air 

turnover rate is one in our model versus .1 in 

SC&A's model. 

 As long as I am up here, one more 

point. We did have this model independently 

reviewed by Dr. Naomi Harley, who was an 

internationally and nationally recognized 

radon expert. And she agrees in substance 

with the concept of using this model, although 

she would have some issues with some of the 

input parameters that SC&A had proposed. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Thank you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Now, let me try 

to evaluate where we are in this. The 

Blockson issue is kind of, now the Blockson 

petition action is on the table. But we have 

this radon issue. 

 And the closure of the radon issue 
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seems to be the critical point in terms of the 

next step. And it appears to me that the 

Board needs to determine whether it believes 

that it has enough information at this point 

to close the radon issue. 

 You have heard the questions that 

have been raised. You have heard the various 

responses. And if so, a motion, for example, 

to accept the NIOSH radon model as being 

adequate or if the Board believes that there 

is additional work that needs to be done if 

these questions that have been raised reach a 

level in the Board's mind that requires 

further pursuit of these issues, then a motion 

to do something in response to that would be 

in order, which might also include a tasking 

issue. 

 So it is really in the Board's 

hands at this point. The main motion is on 

the table. And we have this radon discussion. 

 But, as I talked about yesterday, we have got 

to come to closure one way or the other on 
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Blockson. 

 And so I want to push you to that 

point. And so you can push back now, but 

let's see if we can move one way or the other 

on this. 

 Wanda, do you have a comment or a 

question or an action? No. Mark? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I mean, I don't 

know that there is anything more that I would 

ask of NIOSH right now other than -- I mean, I 

know Jim Melius put a question on the table 

about other industrial, you know, but from my 

standpoint, at least as I was putting together 

my questions and looking at NIOSH's answers, 

it dawned on me that some of these -- I would 

actually like some time to go back to some of 

the original assumptions that are made in the 

model that I was kind of taking as absolutes. 

 And now I am not so sure they are absolutes, 

such as the 6,000 tons per week throughput, 

which is obviously an important point on this 

if you have the source term wrong. 
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 And I may be wrong. And I am not 

asking NIOSH to provide anything else. I am 

just asking for an opportunity to review that 

information again because my sense just 

looking at it the last couple of nights is 

that that number is based on one memo from 

1951. And if that is the case, I have more 

concerns about going forward with a source 

term-based model. 

 There are a number of things like 

that that I just want to double check. I am 

not saying the information is not there and 

hasn't been provided. You know, I just have 

to refresh myself on it and find it and look 

at it a little closer. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. You have 

heard Mark's comment that, again, I simply 

want the Board members to make a determination 

as to whether that concern rises to the level, 

in terms of the radon issue that you would 

believe we should take more time to do that. 

 I am pushing both ways. Make sure 
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we cover concerns, but at some point concerns 

-- one can always find issues that may be a 

concern but may take years to resolve. So we 

don't want to do that. I mean, we have a 

responsibility also to make decisions. 

 So I want to push that and, yet, 

respect the concern. And it is not my 

decision. It is the Board's. So what would 

you like to do? Okay. People are pointing. 

Oh, Wanda has got her -- I was blocked off by 

the Lockey computer. Wanda, do you have a 

comment or an action? 

 MEMBER MUNN: I have a comment. We 

have worked on this site and on this model and 

on these questions, although the questions 

have evolved over time for well over two 

years. 

 It is difficult to be enthusiastic 

about newly discovered information in this 

model, which has not changed a lot. The radon 

issue was discussed thoroughly, I believe, in 

our previous discussion. 
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 Regardless of the number of 

documents we have to support whatever the 

input is, we have documentation to support it. 

 The model which was of concern has been duly 

reviewed by appropriately qualified 

individuals. 

 Our own contractor has indicated 

very clearly that they feel this issue is 

ready to move forward, that we have the right 

model and the right method for proceeding with 

Blockson. I would like to see us continue 

along that same path today and bring this to 

closure if we possibly can. 

 The Chair has asked that we 

separate the issues. One issue is whether you 

are ready to vote yet. And the other is, can 

we vote? I will leave that in his hands to 

pursue. 

 It appears almost futile to 

continue reviewing material which in recent 

months has not changed and has been available 

to us for a considerable period of time in 
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almost any form we wish to observe it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Other comments or 

questions or suggestions or actions? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Actually, I am 

wanting someone to make a motion. The motion 

can be either way. We need to do something 

here. Okay. Otherwise the Chair will suggest 

a motion. Okay. Dr. Lockey? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: It is on the table 

right now. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: No, no. The 

petition motion is on the table. We're not 

talking about it. We're talking about what to 

do about radon. If we could close the radon 

issue, we would still need a motion for the 

main petition to come off the table. Yes, 

right. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: In relationship to 

this issue, I think, you know, that the 

scientists at NIOSH and SC&A cannot reach a 

threshold with certainty regarding this dose 
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reconstruction that is felt to be adequate 

from a scientific perspective by the majority 

of Board members. 

 Then this aspect of the SE 

evaluation by the Board is really an academic 

exercise with no achievable endpoint. There 

are consequences of this long delay in this SE 

final decision process, both for NIOSH as well 

as SC&A, in relationship to determining dose 

reconstruction in regard to frustration to 

claimants and really unproductive use of 

professional time and resources by NIOSH, by 

SC&A, as well as the Board, as well as costs 

incurred by the Treasury. 

 I think we have to come to closure. 

 And if we are not going to be able to reach a 

level of scientific adequacy using our 

consultants and NIOSH, then we are at an 

impasse. And we are not serving anybody. So 

I think we have to bring this to closure. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Larry? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I would just like to 
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comment that NIOSH and OCAS have been involved 

in these deliberations. And we have accepted 

the model that was developed by SC&A. 

 We have moved from what our 

thinking was on how to bound this particular 

dose at this site and really have in place, we 

feel, an ability to bound this particular dose 

for Blockson workers in a claimant-favorable 

way. 

 The target organ we are primarily 

concerned with here is lung cancer. This is 

actually going to compensate all of those lung 

cancers at Blockson as it stands. 

 It is a model that can be applied 

and source term inputs changed for like Texas 

City. Yes. But it will have to address the 

Texas City circumstances. Texas City is 

different than Blockson. 

 So we are thinking Blockson 

Chemical. We are proceeding with dose 

reconstructions on Blockson Chemical. And we 

think that we have come forward with a 
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claimant-favorable bounding approach. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 And Dr. Lockey? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: And I concur. This 

is a lung cancer issue primarily. It may be a 

lymphoma issue in certain cases, but it is a 

lung cancer issue primarily. 

 In looking at the 95 percent 

deviation, I think it is a very 

claimant-friendly model for that particular 

cancer. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. There are 

a couple of possible motions. I have already 

indicated what they are. One is to move to 

accept the radon model that has been provided. 

 And then we would move to the main motion, 

which is on the table, or to direct some 

further action with respect to the questions 

that have been raised about radon. 

 Wanda Munn? 

 MEMBER MUNN: I am willing to move 

that we accept the radon information that has 
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been provided to us as adequate and move on. 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: I second. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: You have heard 

the motion. It is open for discussion. Dr. 

Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I think we have 

said everything. I don't want to lengthen 

this, but I will state for the record that I 

continue to think that this model has not been 

adequately validated and has not been 

demonstrated. 

 I think it could be and there could 

be steps that NIOSH has taken and they 

haven't. And until I see adequate 

information, I am not willing to accept this 

model. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: So you are 

speaking against the motion? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Correct. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Any others who 

wish to speak for or against the motion? 

 (No response.) 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Then I assume we 

may be ready to vote on the motion. Okay. If 

you vote aye, you are voting to essentially 

end the debate on the radon issue. And then 

we would not necessarily need to move to the 

next step today, but the next step would be to 

move to bring the petition from the table. 

 Okay. So all who favor the motion 

regarding the radon issue -- well, let's roll 

call vote it. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes is accepting 

and no -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes is accepting. 

 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach? 

 MEMBER BEACH: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Gibson? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Griffon? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey? 
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 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston? 

 MEMBER POSTON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Presley? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Ziemer? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. Then I will 

declare that the motion fails since there is 

not a majority. The motion having failed 

means that we are obligated in the Chair's 

mind to address the issues that have been 

raised. So let me suggest a path here. 

 Mark, you have indicated a 

willingness to review the issues that you have 
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raised. I think that part is pretty much in 

your hands. 

 We have removed this from the Work 

Group in any event. It is at the Board level. 

 So if you will agree to address those issues 

and report back to the Board? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I am willing to do 

it in the same process I did before. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And, Jim, in 

terms of the issues you raised, I am not sure 

how to proceed there. I think in terms of 

finding industrial hygiene data that you 

suggested to Jim, I think Jim has indicated 

that NIOSH does not believe that that would be 

fruitful. 

 The other part is the validation 

issue. Actually, I am always for validating 

models. So in principle, I am fine with that 

concept. It is not clear to me how we do that 

in this case, unless you had a suggestion. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: One thing to be 

considered that may require work on the part 
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of NIOSH is to look at other situations where 

there may be radon data available that might 

be useful. 

 Secondly, a more indirect way of 

validating this and us better understanding 

how the model would be applied would be to 

apply it to the Texas City situation and given 

what information is there since that appears 

to be their intent. 

 And I think that would also -- 

could be helpful in us understanding the model 

if there is not adequate sampling data 

available in appropriate facilities to be able 

to validate the model. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Jim Neton? 

 DR. NETON: I would just like to 

comment on Dr. Melius' first suggestion. I 

think in our responses to Mark Griffon's 

questions, one of the analyses that we did was 

to compare the 17 picocuries per liter we 

proposed against all of the existing radon 

data we could find that was as close in time 
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to the Blockson situation as possible. And 

that was provided as attachment 1 to our 

responses. 

 In fact, all of those values were 

close to an order of magnitude or more below 

the values we were proposing, acknowledging 

the fact that there were different time frames 

and such and sort of talking about how the 

ventilation rates would have been 

substantially different in order to get those 

low values. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, you have 

made some suggestions relating to validation. 

 And we are not in a position I don't think to 

task NIOSH to do some of this, but perhaps Jim 

and Larry, you can give some thought to what 

might be done. 

 Do we have a copy of the Naomi 

Harley report? I am trying to remember if 

that was distributed to us. 

 DR. NETON: Yes, I am pretty sure 

you have a copy of it. That was an analysis 
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of actually the input parameters. But tacit 

in that analysis was an endorsement of the 

approach itself, which was to the 

probabilistic model. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I don't know if 

any other Board members have suggestions on 

this. It may be that where we will have to 

leave it today is proceed with Mark's issues 

and maybe in our phone call meeting, which 

comes before our next meeting, we can have 

something more definitive. 

 I would ask that without tasking, 

both to ask NIOSH and to ask our contractor 

for suggestions on how we might proceed on 

what we might call validation. And different 

people have different ideas on actually what 

validation is. So we would have to sort of 

agree to what it means to validate a model, 

but - 

 MEMBER MELIUS: And I agree. I 

will try also to make some more specific 

recommendations to NIOSH about what I mean and 
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am looking for and expecting in validation. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. Because I 

think to some extent -- and I am sort of -- 

this is intuitive, too. If you feel uneasy 

about a model, you feel like something needs 

to be done to relieve that uncertainty. But 

it is not always clear how you do it. 

 I mean, there are formal ways of 

validating models that engineers and others 

have. And whether this applies, I don't know. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: But there's also 

issues related to -- there may be parts of the 

model that can be validated or certain aspects 

of the model where there is available data. 

That is what I have been trying to look for. 

 I think we have recognized that 

there are limited data available to do this. 

It's not like there's a whole universe of 

thousands of similar buildings where there's 

tons of data collected and so forth that can 

be done, but there may be situations where at 

least parts of this probabilistic model can be 
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validated or at least we can have more 

confidence in the results from that model. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Larry? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, we certainly 

would welcome any suggestions that any of the 

Board members have about how to examine this 

model for a sense of sanity and reality and 

realism. 

 We have talked about Dr. Melius' 

suggestion, but I would offer that the data 

that is collected and is NIOSH holdings and as 

an industrial hygienist for 30 years at NIOSH, 

I am pretty familiar with the different types 

of data that have been collected, different 

purposes for collecting that data as well. 

 Under those purposes, the data may 

not lend itself to this kind of an 

examination. So you have to understand that 

going into it. And I'm sure that he 

understands that. He has worked at NIOSH 

before. He knows the datasets that we're 

talking about. 
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 So we're not resistant to attempts 

to validate, but we want to be very clear 

about what validation means, as you have 

pointed out. And we want to be very clear 

about how we would go about that. So if you 

have suggestions, we certainly would welcome 

them. 

 I am going to offer this, though. 

I really would like to see a consensus of the 

Board to that end because this next year is 

very difficult for us trying to achieve our 

management objective and balance all of the 

resources that we have got. 

 And, quite frankly, you know, when 

we look again at the target organ that is 

primarily affected here and understand that 

this model is -- in my mind, it approaches the 

implausible aspect of bounding almost, 17 

picocuries. You know, that is a lot in a 

building, extremely high level of radon inside 

a building that is generally an open air 

building, to be quite frank about it. 
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 So, you know, I am hard-pressed to 

say that, on one hand, I find that we come 

forward with a claimant-favorable and 

reasonable estimate when it approaches the 

implausibility bound. And we are going to try 

to validate something about that. 

 So I sense that we need Board 

consensus to direct or to ask NIOSH to pursue 

this to great ends because I have to balance 

the resources that are given to me. 

 Quite frankly, we're moving forward 

with Blockson claims. We are seeing Blockson 

claimants with lung cancer get compensated 

through not only this model, but when this 

model is added, they definitely are going to 

be compensated. 

 So I guess I would leave you with 

the question, to what benefit? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. Thank you 

for that comment. 

 Dr. Lockey? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: And I would state 
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the same thing, that the model is very 

claimant-friendly for lung cancer. And radon 

is a cause of lung cancer. And it is not 

clear as to why we would want to go ahead and 

invalidate this because it is a very 

claimant-friendly approach. So I concur. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I think one of the 

risks that I see in an attempt to validate is 

it will drive perhaps the model the other way. 

 That is a possibility. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Highly likely. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And Jim Neton? 

 DR. NETON: I can't resist. A 

couple of things. One is a point of 

clarification. I think almost all of the lung 

cancer cases at Blockson Chemical have been 

paid already based on not the radon model but 

the claimant-favorable nature of the uranium 

inhalation model. 

 I don't know that this model when 

added would change one case. I don't know 

that. I don't think it would. But that is 
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probably not relevant. 

 Oh, gee. I lost my train of 

thought here. That was a major point, too. 

Oh, we have sort of come full circle here 

because if you remember -- and John Mauro 

pointed this out -- the original point of this 

model was to validate the original NIOSH 

number that was being used, which was around 

two picocuries per liter. 

 And the issue was raised, well, 

that number seems low. And we concurred that 

Florida phosphate plants, which is what it was 

based on, was probably not a good surrogate. 

 But, nonetheless, the original 

model came out and said, well, the medium 

value is not too bad. The model sort of 

validated that two to four picocuries per 

liter seemed to be a reasonable number in a 

plant with reasonable ventilation parameters. 

 So we have kind of validated the 

original numbers we were using. And now we 

are going back and saying, well, we need to 
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validate the model that was used to validate 

the original numbers. I guess at this point 

we have come full circle here. 

 And, again, I have provided the 

data from all of the relevant radon studies 

that I could find from the 1970s and '80s 

that, in my opinion, clearly validate that the 

model parameters are claimant-favorable; that 

is, 17 picocuries per liter versus almost the 

highest you can get in an operating floor is 

about .4 picocuries per liter in a phosphate 

plant, even in Idaho. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you 

for those additional comments. So where this 

is, then, is that the petition remains on the 

table. Mark will be looking at the items that 

he discussed. The validation issue is still a 

fuzzy item. 

 We don't have any specific actions 

on that other than for Dr. Melius, who raised 

the validation issue to consider what the 

validation means as far as he is concerned for 
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ideas if either NIOSH or SC&A without detailed 

tasking comes up with some ideas of what they 

might suggest as a direction or Board members. 

 And I will ask the designated 

federal official to put this item on the next 

agenda, not the next full-face meeting but the 

phone agenda, and see if we can't try to close 

this issue. 

 Even after this issue is closed, we 

still have the thorny matter of the petition 

itself, which, as you recall, was also a split 

vote. And that is of concern as well. But we 

need to close this matter one way or the 

other. 

 So thank you very much for that. 

Let's move ahead here. We passed our 

adjournment deadline. So we have got to 

really move quickly on this one. 

 Oak Ridge Hospital. We agreed to 

establish a work group. I have had already a 

number of individuals volunteer for that. 

They include Robert Presley, John Poston, Jim 
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Lockey, Phil Schofield. And was there one 

other one? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: I volunteered. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Gen Roessler, 

right. Those were the five that I had 

already. Is that six? That's five. I had 

some interest, but I think I will set aside to 

this group of experts. 

 I think I would like to ask Dr. 

Lockey to chair that if he would be willing to 

do that. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: That would be fine. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. The charge 

for that group would be to examine the 

Evaluation Report. I can't remember if we 

felt we needed SC&A assistance on that. Where 

did we stand on that? I think the Work Group 

will determine whether they need assistance on 

that after they meet and delineate what the 

issues are. 

 So we will charge the Work Group 

with examining the petition, evaluation review 
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of the petitions. And then if tasking is 

needed, they can let us know. 

 Is that agreeable? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Any objection on 

the part of the Board? And, Larry, a comment 

or question. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I would just like to 

hear what the expressed issues are because 

there were two that I understood -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Exactly. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- that were on the 

table. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: That was the 

other half of this one. We said that we would 

delineate what the issues were. And somewhere 

I thought I had a list of those. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: One issue was the 

completeness of the data of the -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Let's jot these 

down. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: The other issue was 
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class definition. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, it was the 

Class definition from two aspects. One was, 

was it inclusive enough to include? Could 

there have been outside individuals who were 

not specifically under contract or that period 

but who were working there, such as, 

particularly doctors, and also whether there 

were individuals who were hospital employees 

that could not have, although I think there is 

some evidence that it would be pretty hard to 

determine that. But the Work Group can look 

at that. 

 So it is the definition of the 

Class. What were the other issues? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think there was 

some question. John. I think John raised the 

question of whether the record search was 

exhausted and whether there are dosimetry 

records. I think that was your point. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, certainly I 

am assuming that the NIOSH OCAS staff person 
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will be a resource to this group. And that 

would be -- is that Dr. Hughes? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Lara Hughes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, yes. So, 

Larry, am I correct in assuming that Dr. 

Hughes would be the resource person from 

NIOSH? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, that is correct. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I wonder. Can I ask 

again to get a little sharper edge on this 

issue of the Class definition? If the issue 

goes to what I heard you talk about, Dr. 

Ziemer, about are there physicians that worked 

there at that hospital during that time that 

were not AEC-employed, I'm not sure how that 

goes directly to the Class definition that we 

have established. It goes to the eligibility 

of filing a claim, which is DOL's authority. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right, right, 

right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: So if that is not it, 
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what is the Class definition issue? I mean, 

if we take that aside, I mean, I think you can 

examine that. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I am not advocating 

you shouldn't examine that. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: But I am saying that 

if that is part and parcel of the issue of who 

is in the Class and who is not, that is a DOL 

eligibility issue. And it would help them to 

understand that there might have been 

physicians or people who worked in the 

hospital but were not AEC-employed. Do you 

see my distinction I am trying to draw? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. Right, 

right, right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: So that is not Class 

definition. That is class eligibility. And 

that is DOL's purview. The Class definition 

if you are trying to understand is it too 

broad or is it too narrow, I think that is 
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your charge. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And I think that 

is the framework we are talking about: too 

broad or too narrow. 

 So that was one issue. What was 

the second one? 

 MR. KATZ: The second issue was 

whether the record search has been sufficient. 

 And sort of related to that, I think Dr. 

Poston was questioning whether there are 

substantial exposures to be credited, in 

effect, I guess. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Where all the 

strings have been pulled, simple fact. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Were there any 

other issues that -- Gen? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: I had to take a 

brief break, but I think I had a question 

about interviewing people, whether the 

interview list of the people who might have 
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been familiar, that it was complete -- and I 

don't know if you brought that up -- as 

complete as can be. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Basically 

this work group may simply need to go into 

more depth with Dr. Hughes. You may find that 

all of the issues have been covered and you 

can report back or if not, what are the open 

strings? 

 Dr. Lockey, are you sufficiently 

clear on that, too, as chair? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I am clear. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: He's clear. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: That is about the 

only thing I am clear about, but I am clear. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I am going to 

postpone formalizing our transcript policy 

until next time because I don't want to have a 

discussion because there is one thing that we 

have to do, I think. I could postpone it to 

the telephone thing, but you have on your 

table a draft response to the Higgins letter. 
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 I call it the Higgins because it 

was Representative Higgins' office that read 

the original record or original letter into 

the record earlier this week. The letter was 

signed by Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, by 

Representative Higgins, Representative 

Slaughter, Representative Massa, and 

Representative Lee. 

 Do you all have a copy of the 

proposed response letter? The response letter 

basically acknowledges receipt of their 

letter, indicates it was distributed to all 

members of the Board and read into the record. 

 It acknowledges their request to consider 

Buffalo as a future meeting and indicates we 

are considering that. No promises were made, 

but we are considering that. That was 

discussed already. 

 I have added a paragraph here 

acknowledging that we realize that the 

claimants have had frustrations. And I have 

framed that in sort of general terms. 
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Claimants, both at that site as well as 

others, are concerned about both the process 

and the times. And we acknowledge that. 

 I point out -- and often this gets 

overlooked. And I hope it is okay to say 

this. And I need the exact number, but I 

pointed out here that a large number of the 

claims have been successful, Bethlehem Steel, 

and indicate that dose reconstructions have 

been carried out because the implication often 

in these letters is that nothing has happened. 

 And I have indicated here that some 

-- and I have put in as a holder 40 percent, 

but I don't -- we will get the exact number of 

the claimants have actually been compensated. 

 And I think it is important to 

particularly some of the representatives here 

we have not had interactions with before and 

to make sure that they are aware of that, that 

there has been action already at Bethlehem and 

then simply thank them for their interest in 

the program. 
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 So I would like to ask if this 

letter is acceptable. I will send it. If you 

want changes, so indicate. 

 Wanda? 

 MEMBER MUNN: It is incumbent upon 

this Board to make every effort to make sure 

that all of the parties who have any interest 

in it are correctly informed. We have not 

correctly informed Congress in my view since 

we initiated this program with respect to what 

realities are, including a figure which is -- 

not only is including the figure an excellent 

idea, but it is also an excellent idea to, 

probably not a political idea, but it would 

more than likely be a very truthful idea to 

include at some juncture, not in this letter. 

 But we might consider in later letters 

indicating what the rate of such occurrences 

are in the general population. That is not 

generally known. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

 Yes, Jason? 
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 MR. BROEHM: I just wanted to see. 

 The Board has not yet decided on the May 2010 

meeting location? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: No. We have not 

decided on that. I think we agreed to 

postpone that until, was it, the next, the 

full meeting. Which meeting are we talking 

about? 

 MR. KATZ: We did target Buffalo 

for May. I would say that we have done some 

preliminary looking at hotels and are having a 

little bit of difficulty with the dates 

because it is a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 

schedule. 

 And we can't really revisit that 

date given we have already lost members here. 

 But that apparently is a problem with some of 

the hotels that could accommodate the meeting. 

 So tentatively at least we have 

penned in Buffalo for May. 

 MR. BROEHM: Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I thought we had 
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both Buffalo and Washington as possibilities. 

 But, in any event, I think this is still a 

correct statement. We are not locked. We 

don't have a final. 

 MR. BROEHM: Right. I guess I just 

wanted to get at whether you could say 

something more positive than we are taking 

this under consideration. I don't know if you 

want to commit yourself at this point given 

that we don't know about hotel availability, 

but you could say something stronger, like, 

we're looking into Buffalo possibly for the 

May meeting, something along those lines that 

might more fully address their question and 

request. I leave that to the Board to -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, we are 

certainly willing to do that. We could say 

something like, we are considering it for our 

-- what meeting was it? 

 MR. KATZ: May. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- our May 

meeting if we are able to arrange a hotel or, 
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if not, a subsequent meeting. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. I mean, I hate to 

sort of raise their expectations at this point 

until we can pin that down. So I would rather 

under-promise and over-deliver than the other 

way. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I concur with that. 

 I am happy the way the language is. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Well, let 

me ask you, are there any concerns about 

anything in the letter? Brad? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Just for Mound, 

were we going to get the exact number and put 

in there? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. Larry is 

going to give me that. That is kind of a 

placeholder. I know it is very close to 40. 

When I drafted this, I didn't have it. There 

is probably a more recent number than I would 

have anyway. But it is very close to 40. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: And I understood 

that. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And I will put in 

the exact value, yes. Can I take it by 

consent that this is all okay? We still have 

a quorum here. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: If there are no 

objections, I will draft a final copy of this 

letter. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Please. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Ted, help 

me out here. We are going to defer 

formalizing our transcript policy until later. 

 You had something else, though. 

 MR. KATZ: I have a couple of other 

things, but having lost some members and all, 

I am not sure what you want to do with them. 

 One, with respect to tasking SC&A, 

there are a number of SECs going forward that 

will be delivered for October for which you 

don't have a Site Profile review. 

 So I am just raising the question 

as to whether you want to consider tasking 
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SC&A to do a Site Profile review knowing that 

those will come before the Board in October. 

 And some of them I gather from 

conversations with John Mauro are relatively 

simple sites. So they probably don't warrant 

that sort of work but really would be fine to 

have a response of SC&A action if you need it 

after you have the SEC evaluation delivered. 

 The two that he raised with 

question marks because they are perhaps more 

complex sites -- and Jim Neton can speak to 

that if that is characterizing that -- are 

United Nuclear and Piqua. John thought those 

might be more complex and you might want a 

head start on those. But again, Jim, can you 

help us with this? 

 DR. NETON: Piqua, I don't think is 

very complex. It was a fairly short operation 

of a nuclear reactor in Ohio. But United 

Nuclear I am not sure. I am drawing a blank 

on that one. It could be Piqua. 

 MEMBER MUNN: They do a lot of 
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stuff. 

 MR. KATZ: So then the question is 

whether for United Nuclear you want to task 

SC&A to do a Site Profile review. You haven't 

tasked that many Site Profile reviews under 

the new contract at this point as a way of 

sort of getting the Board ready for hearing 

SEC petition evaluation in October. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I certainly think 

it is in order. Any comments, Board members? 

 Any objection to proceeding with that 

tasking, realizing that that is on the horizon 

in any event? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I take it by 

consent that we are free to go ahead and task 

SC&A on that one. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Are there other 

tasking things we need to address, Ted? 

 MR. KATZ: Not at this -- I mean, 

the other ones that he raised I will just 
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raise to your attention, but we can revisit. 

The TBD-6000, the first few appendices SC&A 

has looked at, but there are a number of other 

appendices they haven't. There has been no 

tasking so far for those other appendices. 

 And then the other sites of 

interest are PNNL - there has been no SC&A 

look at that -- Kansas City and Simonds Saw. 

So I just wanted that. SC&A provided 

information on this, but I want to bring that 

to your attention. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Did we task SC&A 

on Appendix C, which is Madison? We did that 

already, didn't we? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. So he is 

talking about the rest of them. And they are 

involved in Appendix B as well already. So it 

is the remaining. But we don't actually need 

to do that today apparently. 

 MR. KATZ: We don't need to. You 

could task them to look at the other 
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appendices. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Most of those are 

actually fairly brief. Remind me, how many 

are there: A, B, C? 

 DR. NETON: A lot. It goes through 

double letters. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think we should 

consider those in the 6000 Work Group. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. Let the 

6000 Work Group take a look and see which 

ones, yes, because there are a lot of small 

ones there. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Explain to me. 

PNL? Pacific National Labs? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Pacific Northwest 

National Laboratories. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Now, was that part 

of Hanford or is this different? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. No, it is not a 

part of Hanford. They are a separate 

laboratory. They are a national laboratory 

outside of the Hanford site. 
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 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. 

 MEMBER MUNN: They work with the 

Hanford site, but they are a separate 

laboratory. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. That's what 

I wanted to clarify because I was under the 

impression that they were the same. 

 MEMBER MUNN: No. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We're rapidly 

losing people. I think if there is further 

tasking, we will need to do it in our phone 

meeting. 

 MR. KATZ: So that takes care of 

tasking. 

 The other thing I just would raise, 

but I think at this point we can't really deal 

with it, is as far as whether we need other 

work groups. Did we establish any work group 

for the Oak Ridge Hospital? And that I guess 

will be a brief exercise. 

 The other sites where we have SC&A 

Site Profiles but we don't have any resolution 
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process with the Board, just to note them for 

the record at this point, -- and I'll remind 

you at the next Board meeting -- K-25, X-10, 

Portsmouth, Sandia, Albuquerque, ANL-East, and 

Weldon Springs. None of those are currently 

under any kind of resolution process in 

looking at the Site Profiles. 

 And I would just note, then, of 

that list, K-25, I think Jim or somebody 

noted, maybe it was Larry, on Monday that that 

is one of the sort of highest fliers in terms 

of number of claims these days, I think K-25. 

 So we might want to think at least 

in the future Board meeting about whether we 

need a new work group or two to start taking 

on any of these. I know the Board has a lot 

of work. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. And, of 

course, we have a number of big sites that 

already are a little behind the eight ball as 

far as our ability to conduct work group 

meetings. But certainly we want to prioritize 
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these. 

 Probably K-25 will be the next one 

that we will have to form. And even if we 

formed it now, I can't imagine any of our 

folks are going to be able to do anything 

about it before our next meeting in terms of - 

- we have some big site groups that need to 

meet. We have Los Alamos. We have Savannah 

River. We have Hanford. So those are all 

kind of in the queue as well. 

 One final comment? 

 MR. KATZ: All right. So one last 

notice is that there was a person, a former 

Fernald worker, who couldn't make it the first 

two days for public comment who provided to 

the Board, provided to all the Board members a 

letter, in effect, from the former worker. 

 It relates to breast cancer and the 

site and studies of breast cancer around the 

site and sort of a difference, at least she 

sees, between compensation for breast cancer 

versus elevated rates in the area. There has 
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been no study of the workers themselves with 

respect to breast cancer, I am told. 

 Anyway, so this is just to let the 

public know as well as note that the Board 

members have received this letter. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Just for the 

record, there have been studies of Fernald. 

And breast cancer rates were not increased. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: There has been a 

study around Fernald. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Breast cancer rates 

were not increased in Fernald. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And Dr. Lockey is 

reporting that -- what study was that? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I can bring it next 

time. There were two articles that we used 

when we looked at the Fernald compensation 

program. No. Let me take that back. I'll 

retract that statement. They did not look at 

breast cancer because there were not enough 

numbers there. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. Okay. This 
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may be the concern that is being raised here. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I take that back. 

There were not enough numbers. That is 

correct. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

 And let the record show that all of 

the Board members have received a copy of this 

letter, which comes from a former Fernald 

worker. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Are you going to 

put the letter into the transcript? No? It 

won't become part of the transcript? 

 MR. KATZ: They can request it. I 

am not going to read it into the transcript, 

but it is available. I have made note of it 

here. So anybody who would want it from the 

public I would provide it to them. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 

much. 

 I believe that that completes our 

business for this Board meeting. I thank 

everyone for their attendance and 
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participation. And we stand adjourned. 

 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

 matter went off the record at 

 12:59 p.m.)