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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

 

 CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL 

+ + + + + 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY 

 AND HEALTH 

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ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND 

WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

 62nd MEETING 

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WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2009 

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 The meeting convened at 9:00 a.m. 

in the Holiday Inn Amarillo Hotel, 1911 I-40 

East, Amarillo, Texas, Paul L. Ziemer, 

Chairman, presiding. 

PRESENT: 

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Chairman 

JOSIE M. BEACH, Member 

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member 

MICHAEL H. GIBSON, Member (via telephone) 

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 

PHILLIP M. SCHOFIELD, Member 

THEODORE M. KATZ, Acting Designated Federal 

Official 
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REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS 

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH 

BRADFORD, SHANNON, NIOSH 

BRITTEN, BRENDA, PANTEX 

BROOKS, BRITTANY 

CONNER, A.K., MR. & MRS. 

ELLIOTT, CATHY 

FUNK, JOHN 

GILMORE, KAREN, PFW 

HAYES, BILL, PANTEX 

HILL, JR., ALVIN 

HOWARD, BARBARA 

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 

KLEA, BONNIE 

KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL 

LEWIS, MARK, ATL INTL 

LORD, DAN, IMAGE RAD 

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A 

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 

McCAMPBELL, DAVID, PANTEX 

MCFEE, MATT, ORAU TEAM 

McGOLERICK, ROBERT, HHS 

McGRUEN, BILL, PANTEX 

MORGAN, SUE, PANTEX 

PRESLEY, LOUISE S. 

RAY, SARAH 

RITTER, ERIN, PANTEX 

ROLFES, MARK, NIOSH 

SALAS, RICH, PANTEX 

SHAW, CARRIE 

SKINLEY, NORA, THORNBERRY 

TEICHMANN, PAUL 

VAUGHN, GLENN, PANTEX 

WILEY, FLOYD, PANTEX
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

AGENDA ITEM PAGE

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

Nevada Test Site Working Group 

 Update Report ............................ 5 

Status of upcoming SEC petitions ......... 52 

Subcommittee and Work Group Reports ...... 62 

Security Issues ......................... 175 

Letter to Senator Schumer ............... 222 

Public Comment

 Mr. Paul Teichmann................. 249 

 Ms. Brenda Britten................. 256 

 Mr. Floyd Wiley.................... 265 

 Ms. Sue Morgan..................... 279 

 Mr. David McCampbell............... 284 

 Mr. John Funk...................... 291 

 Ms. Bonnie Klea.................... 298 

 Mr. Glenn Vaughn................... 302 

Adjourn 

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

2 (9:07 a.m.) 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Good morning, 

everyone. We are ready to begin deliberations 

on the second day of this meeting, the 

Advisory Board on Radiation Worker Health 

meeting in Amarillo, Texas. 

 We thank everybody for their 

participation yesterday. I think we made good 

progress in staying on the agenda schedule. 

 We also had good phone lines, and 

we thank the group and the gentlemen who 

operated the phone lines for us; much better 

than the last time, and we appreciate that. 

 Let me ask our designated federal 

official, Ted Katz, if he has any preliminary 

comments for us today? 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. 

 Just a couple of things to note. One, there 

is another public comment session this 

afternoon. It's from 4:00 to 5:00. 

 And secondly, for the folks who are 

listening by telephone, please keep your 

phones on mute. If you don't have a mute 

button, use star six to mute it, and if you 

need to come back on to speak, press star six 
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again and that will give you the line again 

for speaking. 

 Thanks. That's it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. I should give 

my usual reminder that you should register 

your attendance with us today if you have not 

already done so. In the foyer there is a 

registration booklet. Also if any of the 

members of the public here wish to speak at 

the public comment session this afternoon, 

please sign up in the foyer as well. 

 We begin our session today with a 

report, an update, from the Nevada Test Site 

working group, and Mr. Presley, the Work Group 

Chair, will present that report. 

 The Chair will just comment, we do 

have at least one individual conflicted on 

Nevada, but we have no action item before us 

on this; this is simply a report from the Work 

Group. I don't believe the conflicted 

individuals need to leave the table. 

 Am I correct on that? Let me ask -

- is counsel here? Emily, is this considered 

part of the debate on the site? No, she has 
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indicated that this is simply information, and 

therefore, the conflicted individuals do not 

need to leave the table. 

 If a motion were to arise from this 

that would be different. I don't anticipate 

that, but who knows what will happen in the 

course of our deliberations. 

 Okay, let's proceed. Mr. Presley. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Thank you all. 

 First I'd like to thank Jim and 

Mark Rolfes for doing the slides. The reason 

I've been on the road for 12 days now, and 

talking back and forth, and Jim and Mark have 

taken my thoughts and the working group's 

thoughts and put them together and created the 

presentation that you see today. So I want to 

thank them. It would have been kind of hard 

for me to do this on the road. 

 As you see, the working group 

consists of myself, as chair; Brad, Wanda, 

Jim, Phillip, Mark Rolfes is the NIOSH lead, 

and Arjun is the SC&A. 

 And I'd also like to thank John 

Mauro for helping out. John has been very 
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good on helping out on this. 

 A little bit about our history. 

February, 2004, we had an approved NTS site 

profile that was released by NIOSH. 

 In December of 2005 SC&A issued a 

draft review of the site profile. 

 In the spring of 2006 the working 

group was formed to review the NTS site 

profile for accuracy and authenticity. 

 Things that we were tasked to do as 

a working group: may make recommendations to 

the Board for changes in the site profile as 

appropriate; and the working group should also 

strive for the development of recommendations 

to the Board on adding one or more classes to 

the SEC. And we will get into that later. 

 Some of the site profile issues; 

SC&A did their report at our first meeting. 

They had 25 findings. We started working 

through these findings. Some findings were 

determined to be appropriate. Changes to the 

technical basis document resulted. 

 Other findings required significant 

-- and I do mean significant, because this has 
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been going on almost four years -- resolutions 

of differing techniques, positions between 

NIOSH and SC&A. 

 The NTS site profile was updated to 

provide clarification for the issues of the 

technical information bulletins. And the 

working group reviewed these rewrites. 

 Some findings were found to be 

inappropriate -- or appropriate to other 

sites, and they were passed on to NIOSH and 

the Board with recommendations that the 

working group be appointed to look into these 

findings as a multi-site issue. Actually the 

-- I think the multi-site issues really came 

up probably from the results of what we did 

find out in the early years of NTS. 

 Our history was started out in 

2006. I won't go through this. You all can 

see it. If anybody has a question, let me 

know. We did, January 7, 2008, the working 

group was tasked to review the SEC petition. 

 What we did, we decided that rather 

than stop work on what we were doing, that we 

would go ahead and task SC&A with working on a 
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site profile and the TBD at the same time. 

And so we started working on the SEC petition 

at the same time. 

 We've gone through our last 

meeting, was this April the 23rd. We have 

resolved all but a couple of issues. We will 

go through these issues here in just a minute. 

 Some of the topics that we reviewed 

and discussed are the environmental internal 

dose reconstruction methodology; radiation 

monitoring practices; external coworker dose 

data; external exposure geometries; neutron 

photon ratios; time-dependent beta gamma 

ratios; internal coworker dose data; radon 

exposures; and Area 51. 

 And I will talk about Area 51 at 

the end. We want to make a statement and get 

it on the record. 

 Some of our major issues, complexwide, were dose reconstruction, covers a 

significant amount of radionuclides; that's 

not just at NTS, but most work areas have the 

same problem. Hot particle, internal and 

external; oral-nasal breathing and ingestion; 
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dosimetry limitations/reliability; missed 

dose; extremity monitoring; badging geometry; 

assumptions for unmonitored workers; and highfired plutonium. 

 Going back to a little bit of our 

history, December the 19th, 2007, the NTS 

working group reviewed all of 25 findings, 

NIOSH worked to resolve each finding and 

update the site profile as appropriate. 

 January, 2008, NTS working group 

tasked by the Board to review the NIOSH 

Special Exposure Cohort Petition Evaluation 

NTS SEC 0084. 

 January the 7th we reviewed and 

discussed open comments on the correction 

factors for external doses due to geometry or 

organ related to the location of the film 

badge. 

 Internal non-use of film badges -- 

the issue was resolved. NIOSH updated the 

site profile, and I must say that these two 

subjects have been gone through thoroughly. 

 As part of the SEC discussion NIOSH 

presented an extensive analysis of worker 
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affidavits, reentry access logs, external 

dosimetry records, and pocket ionization 

chamber data. 

 April, 2009, we had status of three 

most recent issues. They were: removal of 

dosimetry badges. We felt like this was an 

SEC issue, and NIOSH and the working group 

considered this issue closed in the NTS site 

profile and in the SEC analysis. 

 The environmental intake model was 

also a site profile issue. NIOSH proposed to 

-- a combination of air monitoring data with 

resuspension models for assigning internal 

doses to workers outside radiological areas 

and outside controlled areas. 

 And in coworker internal dose 

models was also an SEC issue. NIOSH proposed 

to use bioassay data from the 100 highest 

externally exposed NTS claimants to bound 

unmonitored workers for internal dose. 

 History of the working group 

activities: disposition on the top 100 

coworker model. In the SEC-0084 Evaluation 

Report NIOSH proposed using bioassay data for 
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the 100 highest externally exposed NTS workers 

to bound unmonitored workers' internal dose. 

 Much input on this would be -- much 

input on who would be in the most exposed 

group, who is the top 100 most exposed people 

at NTS. And that has been looked at very 

closely. 

 NIOSH has agreed to request 

additional bioassay data from DOE for a more 

defensible coworker model -- intake model. 

 Previous NTS SEC classes added. In 

April of 2006 NIOSH issued an 83.14 SEC 

Evaluation Report, Nevada Test Site Petition 

0055, the Department of Energy employees, DOE 

contractors and subcontractor employees who 

worked at the Nevada Test Site from January 

27, '51, through December 31, 1962, for a 

period aggregated at 250 day period. And this 

was added to the SEC in July, 2006. 

 Current SEC petition status: we 

have January 31st, 1963 through September 30, 

1962. In September, NIOSH evaluated -- or the 

Evaluation Report determined that sufficient 

information is available to allow dose 
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reconstruction to be completed with sufficient 

accuracy. 

 NIOSH says no dose reconstruction 

is being held up at this time for any ongoing 

SEC discussions. I wanted to get that in 

there; that was one of the things that we were 

asked -- were we holding anything up. 

 Path forward: topics for future NTS 

working group. NIOSH is developing a coworker 

internal dose model for the 1963- 1992 SEC 

issue. The ambient-environmental intakes are 

being updated by NIOSH, for a site profile 

issue. 

 Now one of the things that I would 

like to clear up. We have been asked, well, 

what about Area 51? How are the people at 

Area 51? 

 For the record, and Larry, Jim, 

make sure I'm right on this, for the record, 

if these people were NTS workers, working in 

Area 51, they are covered by this petition and 

site profile. Area 51 has its own SEC or 

technical data basis document that is tied to 

the Sandia site profile. Is that correct? 
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Mark, do you want to -- 

 MR. ROLFES: That's right, Mr. 

Presley, just to clarify, on one of the 

topics. Area 51 was added as a portion of the 

Nevada Test Site for the years of 1958 through 

1999. There is currently an SEC that has been 

added for Nevada Test Site workers from the 

years of 1951 through the end of 1962. 

 For individuals that worked for the 

Nevada Test Site and also did work at Area 51, 

those individuals would be included if they 

have the appropriate requirements for being 

added to the SEC -- those individuals that 

worked for Nevada Test Site and did work in 

Area 51 for the years 1958 through 1962, would 

be covered under NIOSH's 83.14 SEC, and I 

believe that was SEC 55. 

 And also to clarify on the Area 51, 

the portion of your discussion on Area 51, 

what is covered in the Sandia technical basis 

document is actually the Tonopah test range. 

That is covered in the site profile for Sandia 

rather than Area 51. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Thank you very much. 
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 I wanted to get that on record, because we 

have had quite a few questions about how the 

people up there are going to be covered, and 

what they are going to be covered under. 

 At this time I'd like to call on 

John Mauro. John is going to give an update 

from the SC&A side of the house. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Before John begins 

that, just two things very quickly. For the 

record, slide #14 dealing with SEC petition 

0084, I think your oral statement on the dates 

might not have been the same as on the slide. 

 And just for the written record, I think the 

dates are January 1st, '63, through September 

30th, 1992. I believe is the correct ones. 

 And then also if either Bob or 

Mark, help me understand on Area 51, are the 

Sandia employees that worked in Area 51 

covered the way you described? Or are these 

NTS employees who were in Area 51? Or both? 

I wasn't quite clear how you were specifying 

that. 

 MR. ROLFES: I do have in the 

EEOICPA circular from the Department of Labor, 
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and I can read the information from that 

circular if that helps. 

 This specific information to answer 

your question would be: DOE contractor 

employment in Area 51 counts for the 250 days 

needed for inclusion in the NTS SEC class. 

This means that any RICO, Bechtel Nevada, or 

other DOE contractor or subcontractor 

employment in Area 51 between the years 1958 

and 1962 counts towards inclusion in the NTS 

SEC class. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Is that cleared up? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Thank you, sir. 

John. 

 MR. MAURO: Thank you. 

 You may have received, you should 

have received last week, I emailed out what 

I'm calling now a one page -- it turns out to 

be three pages. But I tried to capture the 

sense of what transpired since the last time 

we met. 

 If you recall the last time we met 

I gave a briefing on where we were. I'd like 
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to basically go into some detail on where we 

were and where we are now, and what actions -- 

and this is really SC&A's understanding. 

NIOSH really hasn't had a chance to look at 

this, nor the Work Group, whether or not I 

captured all of these developments faithfully. 

 But I believe I did the best I can to do 

that. 

 The important point is that we have 

converged to a point where there are three 

issues. And quite frankly from our 

perspective two of them are for all intents 

and purposes really at a point where SC&A is 

not doing any additional work. And they are a 

matter where we have I guess reached a 

fundamental agreement and concurrence, the 

three issues being -- the first is the badges 

left behind issue. We talked about this last 

meeting; nothing has changed. It's exactly 

where it was before. The general consensus 

is, we completed our work, and there is 

nothing in the work that we have done that 

reveals that there was a badges left behind 

issue to the extent that it could undermine 
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the ability to build a coworker model. 

 We did find that there was quite a 

bit of badges left behind activity; there is 

no doubt about that, for a variety of reasons. 

 But we could not conclude on that basis that 

it created a situation where it was going to 

be difficult to reconstruct doses or to 

develop a coworker model. 

 So from SC&A's perspective our work 

on that matter is completed, and our position 

regarding these matters is on the record. 

 The second issue was an issue that 

has been resolved since the -- well, in 

principle. I hate to say resolved. 

Technically in principle SC&A and NIOSH are in 

agreement. I guess that is the best way to 

characterize it. And that has to do with the 

environmental doses. These are the doses that 

were experienced by workers out in the flats, 

but not in controlled access areas. These are 

people who were working in open areas where 

there was lots of dust being generated. 

 At the last meeting NIOSH's 

approach to dealing with those exposures was 
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to make use of air sampling data that was 

collected in the 1970 timeframe from air 

samplers sort of sprinkled around the site, 

and then use that information to back 

calculate what the exposures might have been 

in '63, '64, '65, to workers. 

 We wrote a White Paper with our 

position that we thought there was a problem 

with that, and I believe that NIOSH has 

accepted that, and yes, we understand those 

limitations, and have now offered up - and 

this was a very important outcome of the April 

20 workgroup meeting, the outcome being, well, 

yes, we understand those limitations. We are 

going to use a combination of the air sampling 

data where it's applicable, and that basically 

means areas really where there was not a lot 

of activity going on at the flats where lots 

of dust was generated, but more in areas where 

you are really looking more at background 

conditions, cafeteria and other non-active 

areas. And for the places on the flats where 

there was considerable movement of equipment, 

people were doing activities to prep for 
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various purposes, NIOSH decided to use the 

method that they proposed, it might have been 

about a year ago, which was based on the dustloading approach. 

 That approach is conceptually very 

simple, and also very conservative. Lots of 

good information on the activities and 

becquerels per meter squared in soil, 

isotopically throughout the site. 

 The assumption are made that 

whatever the activity is, in becquerels per 

gram, under your feet, we don't assume that 

the people working there are being exposed to 

airborne dust at five milligrams per cubic 

meter. Five milligrams per cubic meter is a 

very high dust loading, especially when 

thinking in terms of long term exposures, 

2,000 hours per year. Certainly there will be 

time periods where the dust loading could be a 

little bit higher. But most of the time it 

would probably be quite a bit lower. 

 So that fundamental approach, which 

by the way was offered up about a year ago, 

SC&A did find favorably with regard to that. 
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In fact, you can agree that yes, it was a 

conservative application of the problem. 

 It's our understanding now that it 

is NIOSH's intent to retrieve that method and 

reapply it and in principle we are in 

agreement with that. 

 So that is issue number two, and 

from SC&A's perspective we believe that when 

that White Paper is issued SC&A is probably 

going to find favorably, if it's fundamentally 

the same one we saw before. 

 The third item is the -- by far the 

most important item, and I think we are on a 

path to resolution. Let me explain. The most 

challenging issue related to dose 

reconstruction post-1962 is the inhalation of 

internal exposures to workers that were in the 

tunnels and for workers that worked in the 

flats, before shots, and after shots. 

 NIOSH has come up with a strategy 

which selected the 100 workers that had the 

highest cumulative external exposures, pulled 

them out, and they have the bioassay data for 

all those workers. And they say, okay, we are 
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going to use the bioassay data for those 100 

workers, and we talked about this at the last 

meeting, there is nothing new right now, but 

I'll get to the new stuff in a minute, we are 

going to use bioassay data to build a coworker 

model. 

 We at SC&A were given the mandate 

to look very closely at that, and we did look 

very closely at that, and we issued two White 

Papers, the first paper which was in fact 

available at the last board meeting, and a 

supplement which was relatively recent which 

adds a lot more material. 

 The bottom line is, we believe the 

100 workers that were selected have -- do not 

capture the full range of exposures that 

workers might have experienced at the site 

during that time period. A specific concern 

is overemphasis of workers that were in the 

tunnels, I believe it was in Area 15 -- I 

forget the area number, 12? -- represents 

workers that were involved in tests that were 

in tunnels. 

 It turns out that 95 percent of the 
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tests during that time period were in flats. 

And in addition the records reflect RAD safe 

workers, and not the myriad of other workers 

that were involved in a whole bunch of 

different crafts in the flats area. 

 So we have in our report, it goes 

on and on about all the different events that 

occurred. The general concept that during the 

below-ground testing period there wasn't very 

much above-ground activity, we're finding that 

is not the case. Our reports show that there 

was a lot of events took place, not only 

venting but deliberate activities that 

generated airborne aerosols. 

 So that coupled up with the fact 

that most of the tests by far, 90 percent were 

borehole or shaft tests that took place in the 

flats. We were concerned that the 100 workers 

that were heavily biased toward tunnels might 

be missing the high exposure folks. Because 

that is where the bioassay data was collected. 

 So the way we left it, and I think 

there is agreement that it is important that 

that issue be aired, one other thing that was 
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important, we found that the concept of 

picking the 100 workers that had the highest 

cumulative exposures, the philosophy was, 

well, if they had the highest cumulative 

external exposures, it probably meant that 

they had the highest internal exposures. 

 We did a fairly detailed analysis 

of that, a correlation, to see okay, these are 

the workers with the highest external, also 

have the highest levels of plutonium iodine, 

beta gamma emitters, in the urine, and we did 

not find a correlation in fact. In some 

places there was actually an inverse 

relationship for iodine for example. 

 So those findings left us in a 

position where we really were not comfortable 

with the group of 100. So the way it ended in 

fact -- Robert Presley sort of made this 

suggestion -- what do we do? And I think 

NIOSH has agreed to this it's my understanding 

a two-pronged approach to trying to close this 

down. One is a series of investigations be 

performed on what are the different scenarios 

whereby workers at the flats, in tunnels and 
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throughout the site from 1963 on could have 

been exposed to internal emitters. What type 

of events took place, what type of activities 

took place, where you could actually identify 

workers. Here we have a list of workers who 

did things that in principle would have 

resulted in considerable elevated internal 

exposure. 

 Independent of that, grab all the 

bioassay data you can grab, over and above the 

bioassay data that is for the tunnel workers, 

and then map the two together. And say okay, 

here are the workers that we think should be 

the ones in theory that had the highest 

potential for exposure. Let's map them back 

on all the workers that we have bioassay data 

for, and is there a pretty good linkage. 

 If it looks like there's a good 

linkage, you could make a compelling argument 

that the group -- that we do have the data to 

reconstruct doses to build a coworker model. 

 And it's my understanding that that 

is in fact the line of inquiry that NIOSH is 

performing at this time, and when completed 
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 I hope I have characterized that 

correctly. Jim, if it is somewhat different, 

please help me out. But that was my 

understanding of the path forward, and it's 

really a test. If it turns out they miss each 

other -- think of it like this, let's say you 

do that, and look for the -- and then you look 

at the bioassay data, and you can't connect 

them up. Well, you have a problem. How are 

you going to reconstruct the doses for the 

workers who you believe have a high potential 

for internal exposure but you don't have any 

bioassay data. So that fails the test. If 

there is an overlap, and here is a judgment 

call as always, if there is a degree of 

overlap one could argue, well, it looks like 

we have a tractable problem. We could somehow 

build a coworker model. And that is my 

understanding of where we are right now. 

 MR. PRESLEY: John, thank you very 

much. 

 Arjun? 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: Just one more thing. 
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didn't come up at the last working group 

meeting, but it came up the working group 

meeting before, based on our prior report in 

October of 2008. We had raised a number of 

questions regarding the quality of the data, 

and I'm presuming that NIOSH will address 

those as it goes through this new bioassay 

data. I just wanted to call your attention to 

it. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Thank you, Arjun. 

 Mark? Jim is going to discuss 

something first. 

 DR. NETON: Mark is going to 

address the bigger picture, but I just had a 

couple of comments relative to what John Mauro 

will summarize. 

 In general John was right on as 

usual with his characterization. But I'd just 

offer a couple of points of possible 

clarification. Relating to the environmental 

intake model, we now are in a position and are 

evaluating what I guess I would call the 

hybrid environmental intake model, which is a 
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combination of the mass, dust loading, versus 

the environmental air monitoring model. 

 How that came about though is sort 

of interesting perspective, is that we 

originally proposed the mass loading model to 

all people on the site. And SC&A believed 

that it was bounding but probably implausibly 

bounding; I mean too high to be used. 

 So we went about with some 

considerable effort to develop the 

environmental model based on air sampling 

data, generated that, at which point we were 

going to apply it to all workers. And then 

this is where the disconnect arose, well, that 

really doesn't apply to all people, because 

these were sort of environmental air station 

samplers, and where you have bulldozer 

activity and that sort of thing it might not 

be appropriate. 

 So that's when we decided, well, we 

will take the mass loading model and apply it 

in the environmental conditions that 

originally SC&A felt was too high to apply to 

all workers but I think now agrees that it is 
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appropriate to apply to at least workers in 

controlled areas that are disturbing soils. 

So just a slight point of clarification. 

 Related to the 100 worker issue, we 

did pull out these 100 workers that were tied 

to highest external exposure. One of the -- 

in my opinion one of the reasons that there 

was no correlation between the external 

exposure and the internal exposure was because 

the internal exposures were extremely low. In 

fact most of the results that we used in those 

100 workers or we identified were at or very 

near the detection limit. So in essence all 

that was proved through that analysis was that 

there was variability about the detection 

limit, and you can't generate a nice r 

squared, a correlation coefficient with the 

data. 

 I think that is going to be the 

situation by and large with most of the NTS 

workers for internal exposures in the 

timeframe we are investigating; exposures in 

general were pretty low, and we are having to 

go back, and I don't believe right now 
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necessarily that the coworker model we 

proposed for using the highest exposed RAD 

tests would be unreasonably unreasonable, and 

I think what is going to happen, as we 

typically, we need to go back and pull the 

thread, and collect more data as SC&A has 

suggested, and to at least demonstrate that 

what we propose is accurate or come up with 

possibly even a lower model. I don't know at 

the end of the day how it's going to come out, 

but I don't believe we proposed something that 

is totally out of line with what we believe to 

be the typical exposures at the test site 

during this time period. 

 I believe Mark is going to -- 

 MR. PRESLEY: Thank you, Jim. 

Mark. 

 MR. ROLFES: I just have a brief 

slide if you are finished. 

 MR. PRESLEY: I am finished. But 

I would like to -- when you get through I need 

to do some last minute things. 

 MR. ROLFES: Okay, if you want to 

take care of those. 
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 MR. PRESLEY: I was going to see -

- John, are you on the phone? John Funk? 

John? 

 MR. FUNK: Yes, I'm here. 

 MR. PRESLEY: All right. What I'm 

going to do is let Mark Rolfes give his ending 

presentation, and then we are going to give 

you a chance for a short discussion; how's 

that? 

 MR. FUNK: Thank you. 

 MR. PRESLEY: All right. Mark? 

 MR. ROLFES: Okay, thank you Mr. 

Presley and members of the advisory board. 

 I just wanted to provide a brief 

NIOSH update on the Nevada Test Site issues 

that we have been discussing for approximately 

the past three years. 

 The three main issues that we have 

been discussing as both part of the Nevada 

Test Site, site profile and also the SEC 

Evaluation Report include the non-use of 

personnel, external dosimetry. This issue has 

been resolved and closed based on a detailed 

analysis of affidavits, health physics 
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procedures, access logs, pocket ionization 

chamber data, and other dosimetry records. 

 The second issue is the 

environmental intakes in contaminated forward 

areas which were subject to soil disturbances 

Jim had mentioned, such as the movement of 

drill rigs, scraping of the soil with a 

bulldozer. 

 We are currently resolving this. 

The resolution is in process as Jim had 

mentioned. ORAU, NIOSH's contractor, is 

finalizing the draft model which incorporates 

resuspension -- the mass loading model, and 

the air monitoring data. 

 And the third and final main issue 

is the Nevada Test Site coworker intake model 

for the years of 1963 through 1992. And NIOSH 

has agreed that the path forward would be to 

request additional bioassay data to strengthen 

the coworker intake model. 

 And we have spoken once again with 

DOE Nevada to prepare a plan to recover some 

additional bioassay results, and should be 

sending that request pretty soon. 
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 I guess there were a couple of 

things that I did want to point out also in 

SC&A's update. I did want to mention that 

radiation safety staff were present on site 

during any operational activities. So they did 

cover both operations in the tunnels and in 

the flats. 

 So bioassay data from radiation 

safety personnel would be a good indicator of 

some unmonitored individuals' internal dose. 

 Another point I did want to make 

for clarification, the majority of the routine 

operational internal exposures which were 

incurred by Nevada Test Site employees were 

actually in the tunnels rather than the flats. 

 And as Jim had pointed out there 

was no direct correlation between the external 

and internal exposures, and because at NTS the 

external dose is a controlling factor, 

significant doses for an individual that has 

no recorded external doses, very unlikely. 

 Are there any questions? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Did you want to take 

questions now, Bob, or wait? 
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questions now. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Sure, okay. 

 Brad Clawson. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Mark, as we talked 

earlier, one thing that I wanted to make sure, 

especially with Area 51, we brought this in, 

but I really haven't seen any kind of data. 

And I was wondering I guess from SC&A, have we 

seen actual data from the Area 51 that we can 

correlate that? That says where they were at 

or so forth. 

 MR. MAURO: I don't recall ever 

collecting or reviewing data for Area 51. I'll 

ask Arjun, who is a little closer to it than I 

am, whether we have actually looked into that 

matter. 

 DR. MAKHIJANI: We compiled data 

for 220 workers, the 100 workers in Table 7-1 

of the Evaluation Report, and then the 120 

workers that we had selected at random. And 

if there was any data from Area 51 it would 

have been minimal. But I don't recall any 

actually. 
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 MR. CLAWSON: Well, and Mark, I 

know me and you have talked about this, that 

you can separate it out. But this still to me 

is an issue that we, we brought them in, but 

I'm just trying to figure out how we 

distinguish on the Area 51 issue. And we can 

work through that in another work group. 

 My other issue was, Mark, was me 

and you have talked about this, John Funk has 

given us a lot of very valuable information, 

and I have not been able to see it. And you 

said that you did locate it. Has that been 

moved to the O drive? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yes, it has, Brad. 

To address the Area 51 issue, NIOSH has Area 

51 data for the individuals that worked for 

the Nevada Test Site and entered into Area 51 

to perform work. The monitoring requirement 

for individuals that entered Area 51, if they 

were employed by DOE, they were subjected to 

the same monitoring requirements as the rest 

of the employees on the Nevada Test Site. And 

we have always received, in our DOE response 

files for an individual's claim, we do receive 
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dosimetry results for that individual's work 

in Area 51. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, well, it was 

just interesting. We've tried to address this 

issue of Area 51. It's just been over the 

last year that we finally got it, and I just 

want to make sure that -- because I haven't 

seen anything on it, and I just wanted to make 

sure that we were incorporating it right. 

 MR. ROLFES: Yes, there was some 

uncertainty as to whether we had been 

receiving that data. However when DOE Nevada 

provides a DOE response file to us for a 

claimant that data is, and always has been 

included in the file. So we do in fact have 

it somewhere. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Melius? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yes, my question is -

- sorry if I missed it and you already said 

it, but what is the timeframe for this follow 

up activity that NIOSH is planning? I was a 

little taken aback to see that you were just 

now requesting the information, the data from 

the Nevada Test Site. So how long is this 
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going to take to evaluate and be put out as a 

report. 

 MR. ROLFES: As far as how long it 

might take DOE I do not know. I know there 

have been some funding concerns. I believe 

those have been resolved. There are several 

different databases however from which the 

bioassay data must be recovered, and that's 

why we are working with DOE Nevada to try to 

come up with a better idea of how long it 

might take, and how easy it might be to get 

the data. 

 DR. MELIUS: And then how long is 

it going to take you to evaluate the data in 

the way that you are proposing to do it? 

 MR. ROLFES: I would have to have 

the data in hand first and know how much data 

we have before I could answer how long it 

might take us to analyze it. 

 DR. MELIUS: Well, a decade, a 

year? Can you give us a ballpark figure? 

Okay, fine, the record will show that NIOSH 

has no ability to estimate how long this will 

take. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Lockey. 

 DR. LOCKEY: Mark, one question. 

You said in the borehole which you had tested, 

the dosimetry you were going to use was a 

safety officer personnel, right? 

 MR. ROLFES: I'm sorry, if you 

could repeat that, please? 

 DR. LOCKEY: You were going to use 

the safety officer personnel -- explain the 

rationale for that. 

 MR. ROLFES: Well, because all 

activities on the Nevada Test Site required 

that radiation safety staff be present for any 

operational activities where there was a 

potential for radiation exposure to employees. 

 Radiation safety was present, conducting 

monitoring. If you take a look at the 100 

highest externally exposed individuals in our 

claimant population, a great majority of those 

individuals are comprised of radiation 

monitors, radiation safety personnel, and 

miners. 

 The majority of those individuals 

in radiation safety, some of those individuals 
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have the highest numbers of bioassays, because 

they were routinely in operational areas 

monitoring workers. That is the basis for our 

bounding intake analysis. And we had used 

those highest 100 externally exposed 

individuals to give us an indicator that these 

individuals could have an elevated intake 

potential at the Nevada Test Site, and we felt 

that those bioassay data from those 

individuals could be used to demonstrate a 

bounding intake model. 

 We certainly realize that 

additional data would help us to refine our 

intake model, and that's what we have 

committed to do, is to obtain additional 

bioassay data. 

 DR. LOCKEY: Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Mark, did you have a 

question? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yes, I guess looking 

at your final slide here, Mark, is there an 

external dose -- I mean I'm not on the Work 

Group, and I'm conflicted on the Nevada Test 

Site, but I was just curious if there is an 
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external coworker model for the site? 

 MR. KATZ: Mark, can I just -- let 

me just say for the record, Mark, you have a 

potential for conflict with NTS. You are not 

conflicted in this situation, so you don't 

have to feel like you are on a tether here. 

You are not on a tether here. You are not 

conflicted at all in this situation. So I 

just want to make that clear. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Conflicted from 

voting I guess. 

 MR. KATZ: No, you are not 

conflicted for even voting on these issues at 

all. You have a very narrow conflict of 

interest with respect to NTS, but it doesn't 

apply to this situation at all. I just want 

to make that clear. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Thank you. The 

question still applies. 

 MR. ROLFES: Yes, Mark, one of the 

updates that we did put into the site profile 

as part of the working group review process 

and the NIOSH updates to the site profile 

included a method for assigning unmonitored 
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external doses to workers. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Unmonitored -- are 

you building a coworker model I guess is what 

I'm asking. 

 MR. ROLFES: We have addressed the 

unmonitored external exposures. If an 

individual was not monitored appropriately or 

had no monitoring data, we do have a method in 

the site profile that allows us to assign an 

external dose to that individual. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I guess I'm asking 

what that is, is it like an LOD over two 

model, or is it a coworker model? 

 MR. ROLFES: I believe right now 

it is a table of external doses received by 

all employees of the Nevada Test Site by year, 

and I believe the information is derived from 

that table. 

 MR. GRIFFON: That brings me back 

to my next question, which is that this 

database which Jim was sort of questioning 

about, Jim Melius was questioning about, I had 

excerpted version of this database 10 years 

ago when I was doing some research on the 
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site, and I'm shocked that you are just 

getting around to requesting this database. 

 But it does have external dose 

information as well, so I'm not even sure if 

you get this stuff when you are looking at the 

bioassay records and the external dose, are 

you going to want to consider that for your 

coworker model for external dose as well? 

 I'm not sure the door is closed on 

the external dose question is what I'm getting 

at. 

 MR. ROLFES: If you take a look at 

the external doses received, we did discuss 

this in quite a bit of detail at one of our 

previous working group meetings, and I'd have 

to refer back to the transcripts to figure out 

the resolution and see exactly what was 

discussed and what was agreed upon. 

 MR. GRIFFON: That's fine. I just 

wanted to get it for the record here, and the 

Work Group can consider it. 

 MR. ROLFES: If you take a look at 

the external doses that were received by 

employees of Nevada Test Site, roughly 99 
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percent of the recorded doses were less than 

detectible, or zeroes. And so if you are 

building a coworker exposure model from a 

bunch of zeroes, you are not going to have a 

large -- it's going to be driven by misseddose essentially. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Brad, did you have an 

additional question? Any further questions 

right now? 

 MR. CLAWSON: Yes, I think we 

talked about this earlier, but we are using 

the RAD safety because as we've said they are 

mainly out there, and we are going to use them 

as one of the higher exposed. But how many 

RAD site people were there to cover that 

entire site? I mean that would be there on an 

average day? 

 MR. ROLFES: Off the top of my 

head I couldn't answer. There are several 

pages listing names that we have received with 

radiation safety personnel, and I don't recall 

if that has been provided to the Advisory 

Board or not. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Perhaps we are ready 
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to hear from Mr. Funk then? John if you are 

still on the line do you have some comments? 

 MR. FUNK: Yes, I do, I have quite a 

few comments. 

 First of all I'd like to say when 

I'm speaking, I'm speaking with a voice of 

authority. I was there. I seen what happened. 

 As to these RAD safe monitors who 

were supposed to have been all over the place, 

if they were there I sure as heck never seen 

them. I was out on many sites when we were 

doing -- not scraping it down as Mark puts it, 

when we were doing deep excavation. And when 

I say deep excavation, we were knocking down 

four and five foot sand dunes, leveling it out 

so we could build a pad that would facilitate 

the coaxial cable and the test trailer. But 

this wasn't like scraping the ground; this was 

a heavy excavation. And as to the RAD safe 

monitors, they were rarely if ever a RAD safe 

monitor on the site when we were doing 

excavation work. 

 And the only time I ever seen a RAD 

safe in any force at all was when post-shot 
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was brought in and set up, I don't know how 

many times I'm going to have to say this, 

because I'm been harping on this from the 

beginning, when the post-shot was set up, 

which was well into six weeks after the 

reentries had started, there was a whole 

series of reentries. And it wasn't until the 

post-shot was actually set up, which we 

actually set up, was the RAD safe people come 

on board to that area. 

 So using RAD safe personnel for 

internal exposure is a very poor selection. 

I'd like to point out again the bioassay -- 

there was no bioassay done on the flats 

workers. And these 100 potential exposed 

list from the miners, Mark keeps pushing at 

us, are not the most exposed, and he has no 

proof to prove this because there is no 

information to back up what exposure the flats 

workers were exposed to. You didn't have 

bioassays. You didn't carry picks. And we 

damn sure didn't have the kind of monitoring 

he said there was. 

 And I'm glad Brad asked the 
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question about how many RAD safe monitors were 

on the Nevada Test Site. I've been asking 

that question for quite a length of time. 

There was nowhere near the RAD safe coverage 

that the Department of Energy has tried to 

portray throughout this program. If I seen a 

RAD safe person once a month, it was pretty 

often, in Area 3, and we covered quite a few 

areas. 

 The 100 -- I intend to give a list 

to the working board of flats workers. If 

they could find bioassay on them then I'll go 

away, but I'm sure you are not going to find 

it. So I'm going to turn the list over to 

John Mauro and to the working board, SC&A, 

just as soon as possible. 

 I'd like to make one last point in 

closing. It seems that because NIOSH or the 

Department of Labor anymore with issues, 

nobody ever returns your phone calls. It's 

almost as if everybody was on vacation since 

the new president has taken office, and I 

don't know what's going on back there. But 

I've had a phone call into Larry Elliott for 
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over a month, and I still haven't received a 

phone call. And I don't think this is any way 

for us to be conducting this investigation of 

the site, just to freeze people out. 

 Thank you. 

 MR. PRESLEY: John. John? Thank 

you very much. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we are getting 

a little feedback here. Thank you for those 

comments, John. 

 Let me see if there are any more 

questions or comments from the Board members, 

or do you have any final statement? 

 MR. PRESLEY: Well, I'd like to 

say that all of John's input has been put on 

the O drive and updated. I have it, have gone 

through it. I think back in the early days 

when John was sending that in it was already 

known to the working group people. So it is 

out there for everybody to look at. 

 Does anybody have anything else? 

Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. 

 And we will expect some updates on progress 
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on this most recent issue that has been 

outlined, and perhaps a little better idea of 

a timetable after you get a look at that 

information. 

 Next we are going to have an SEC 

petition update to cover concurrent and 

upcoming SEC activities. And LaVon Rutherford 

will give us that summary, and I believe you 

probably have copies of the presentation also 

on your memory stick. 

 Wanda, did you have a question 

first? 

 MS. MUNN: No, I didn't have a 

question; I had a comment to make there on one 

of the items that has to do with an SEC 

petition. I wanted to point out that Josie's 

comment yesterday was correct with respect to 

the status of the Blockson SEC -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, the Blockson -- 

 MS. MUNN: It is on the table. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It is on the table 

and would require a motion to untable it. 

 MS. MUNN: That is correct. The 

motion we voted on at the previous meeting was 
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a motion to table, and it was a split vote. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'm going to give 

the status of the upcoming SEC petitions. We 

routinely make this presentation to provide 

the Board an update on the current SEC 

petitions we're working on, and it allows the 

Board to prepare for future work group 

sessions and future board meetings. 

 As of April 21st we had 141 

petitions which we now have 144 as of today. 

We had four petitions that are in the 

qualification process; 75 petitions that 

qualify. Of those 75 seven are in the 

evaluation process, and 68 we have completed 

our evaluation. And we have 16 petitions of 

those 75 that are with the Board for 

recommendation; actual 15 since you cut away 

one of them yesterday. And then 57 petitions 

did not qualify. 

 The petitions that are currently in 

the evaluation process at this time, 

Brookhaven National Lab, I think we talked 

about it a little bit yesterday. We have had 
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difficulties with data capture, with PII, as 

well as DOE funding. We hope to have a report 

ready in July, but based on recent activities 

I really believe it will not be until the next 

meeting after July when we will be able to 

present that evaluation, which will actually 

work out okay if we are doing the Board 

meeting on Long Island. 

 United Nuclear Corp., we are -- we 

did exceed the 180 days on this evaluation as 

the Board is aware, and sent a letter to the 

Board and the petitioner. We had -- the site 

had a number of documents, 600 plus boxes of 

documents that we were unable to get to during 

the evaluation process. There was some 

litigation concerns at the site. In March of 

this year the site had decided to allow us 

access to those 600 boxes. We were working 

some issues, so we did get that information. 

We have completed that data capture, and the 

evaluation is almost complete, and we 

anticipate that report being out in June, and 

we'll present it at the July meeting. 

 At Piqua Organic Moderated Reactor, 
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we did complete that evaluation in May. 

However we completed it too late in May to 

really -- for this board meeting, and actually 

too late for this board meeting. And with the 

Board meeting in July being in Cincinnati, we 

felt it appropriate to make that presentation 

there. 

 Bliss and Laughlin, we were moving 

along with this Evaluation Report, and we were 

on track for completing within the 180 days. 

However, we came up during the evaluation with 

some issues concerning the covered period. We 

are waiting right now for a response from the 

Department of Labor on the covered period. We 

believe it's actually different than what is 

currently identified on the DOE facility aid 

based website. 

 Assuming that we have that 

resolution, we will be able to complete that 

report in June. 

 Baker-Perkins, we are on track to 

completing that report in June. 

 And Electro Metallurgical, we are 

on track to completing that report in August. 
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July, but we believe we may have that report 

completed a little sooner than that. 

 So if you look at it, actually the 

number of petitions we have prepared to 

present at the July meeting looks like Lindy, 

which we have tabled and haven't presented at 

the petitioner's request. Possibly 

Brookhaven, however, I don't think that will 

happen. Piqua Organic Moderated Reactors, 

United Nuclear, Bliss and Laughlin, BakerPerkins, and more than likely Oak ridge 

Hospital. 

 In addition we plan on presenting 

possibly three to four 83.14s as well at that 

meeting. 

 Okay, we have some petition 

evaluations that are with the Board for 

recommendation. Chapman Valve, we believe we 

completed all actions. There was a suggestion 

by Dr. Lockey at the last board meeting that 

we take a sampling of the contracts, Navy 

contracts, to look through for potential 

activities involving enriched material. We 
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felt that that wouldn't be a very productive 

exercise, and we are not moving forward with 

that activity. 

 Blockson Chemical, that discussion 

occurred yesterday, and we presented a White 

Paper on the radon yesterday, and that 

activity is continuing. 

 Feed Materials Production Center, 

with the Work Group, research and discussion 

continue. 

 Bethlehem Steel, we completed all 

actions, and it's with the Surrogate Data Work 

Group, waiting for recommendation. 

 (Audio interference) 

 I think it's my Blackberry going 

off. I felt this vibration. 

 All right, Hanford, there are a 

number of White Papers that we are working on 

and NIOSH is working on, and that we will have 

out into the Work Group very soon, for 

research and discussion with the Work Group. 

SC&A continues at Hanford. 

 The Nevada Test Site, we just got 

the update from Mr. Presley on that, and work 
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continues. 

 Mound Plant, there has been a 

number of work group meetings, papers that 

have been generated by NIOSH, activities back 

and forth with SC&A and the Work Group 

continues. 

 Texas City Chemicals, there was a 

work group meeting last week in which Texas 

City Chemical was discussed. When we had 

issued our Evaluation Report for Texas City 

Chemical, right after issuing that report or 

at about the same time we received a number of 

documents that provided us additional details 

on the operation links and such. We felt 

after discussions at the Work Group meeting 

last week we feel it's appropriate that we 

will revise our Evaluation Report to address 

that additional documentation, and there is 

one other issue associated with Texas City 

Chemical with the radon modeling for that 

site. 

 Area IV Santa Susana, we did 

provide an updated Evaluation Report to 

address the Class definition change. We 
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discussed it at this board meeting. Research 

and discussion: there are a number of issues 

that are still on the table with Santa Susana 

that the Work Group, SC&A and NIOSH, are 

working through. 

 Dow Chemical, we recently, I 

believe it was last week we received SC&A's 

response to our resolution to their issues 

they had initially provided based on their 

review of our addendum two. We are going to 

review their responses, any actions, and 

provide an update as necessary. 

 Pantex, again research and 

discussion with the Work Group, SC&A continues 

at this site. 

 Savannah River Site, they are early 

on with that group right now. There is some 

work that we are working on right now. NIOSH 

as you know, in December we committed at the 

Augusta board meeting that we had not made a 

feasibility concerning thorium exposure during 

the early years at Savannah River site. We 

are working on a resolution to that issue. We 

had hoped to have that issue resolved by now, 
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but we ran into a little bit of data capture 

difficulties. We anticipate though that that 

issue will be resolved in the July-August 

timeframe. 

 General Steel Industries, that is 

with the Work Group awaiting recommendation. 

I'm not sure -- I don't recall that we have 

any activities that NIOSH -- has NIOSH 

committed to -- I do apologize, we do have a 

couple of things that we are working on for 

GSI. 

 LANL, research and discussion with 

the Work Group continues on that site as well. 

 Standard Oil Development, we have 

presented that report yesterday, made a 

recommendation for a class. The Board 

concurred with that. 

 Then Linde Ceramics, which we have 

completed that evaluation before -- back in 

November. We would have typically presented 

that report at the next board meeting. 

However petitioner had determined that they 

wanted more time to review. We pushed that 

out a few times, and we now plan to present 
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that report at the July meeting. 

 However, since that, I think the 

last board meeting the Work Group has been 

reestablished, and SC&A is reviewing that 

Evaluation Report. 

 And that's it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you, 

LaVon. 

 Any questions concerning the SC&A 

activities that are before us or upcoming? 

 Clearly a large number of SEC 

activities, and these need to move along. We 

have a number of work groups involved, so 

these activities will by their very nature 

have pretty high priority in what we do and 

what we task our contractors to assist with. 

 So questions? Comments? Okay. 

 I think we can probably begin our 

subcommittee/work group reports. I think we 

will probably begin with our two 

subcommittees. And Mark has a report from the 

Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee. We were 

just looking at whether or not the Board 

members had the backup information. I think 
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Mark distributed everything electronically, so 

perhaps, Mark, unless we need to make copies 

we can proceed. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think we are okay 

with proceeding. If everybody has the two 

things I'm referring to, the first 100 cases 

report, it should say, Rev. 8. Yes that is 

the 8th revision of that report. And then 

there is another file called attachment, and I 

think that is Rev. 3, and that is the 

attachment that goes with the report, SC&A put 

together some descriptive statistics of the 

cases that we reviewed, the first 100. If 

everybody has those? Okay. 

 Let me just back up for a second 

and give a little overview of what the dose 

reconstruction subcommittee has done so far 

since the last Advisory Board meeting. 

 We had a few meetings. We had a 

meeting on April 16th in Cincinnati, our 

normal meeting location. And we also had a 

phone call meeting last week, May 6th. And 

that was just to wrap up some final items, 

this report I just mentioned actually. 
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 As far as the normal work, the case 

resolution process, we have been working on 

the sixth set of cases and the seventh set. 

These are basically groups of 20 cases, for 

those who have not been following this 

discussion that closely. And we are also into 

the eighth set now of cases on review. 

 As far as the resolution goes, the 

sixth and seventh sets have not totally been 

closed out. But I think there is a handful of 

findings remaining that we have an outstanding 

action either for NIOSH or for SC&A. So we 

are very close to finishing the sixth and 

seventh case matrices. 

 And the eighth set we went through 

I think we got through the entire eighth set 

one time; that's about as far as we've gotten 

on that one. We might not have even made it 

through that entire matrix. But that is a 

work in progress. 

 But we are almost ready to close 

out this sixth and seventh set of cases. And 

just for a point of reference, SC&A is working 

on the 11th set? Is that -- 11th set of cases 
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now in their hands, and I think they have 

probably contacted the individual teams on the 

Board to go over their individually assigned 

cases. 

 So that process is working fairly 

well. The resolutions sometimes are a little 

slow, but we are getting through, and we are 

getting resolutions. Like I said, we are 

almost ready to close out the sixth and 

seventh, so we are catching back up to SC&A's 

work. I'll talk more about that case 

selection stuff in a second. 

 I guess the primary item that this 

subcommittee has before the Board today is the 

first 100 cases we did a roll up report, and 

we actually brought a version of this to the 

last meeting in Albuquerque, and I think the 

Board tasked the Subcommittee to go back and 

put a little more into the report I guess, a 

little more front end, a little more bottom 

line kind of conclusions, and we made an 

attempt to do that, and that is what you have 

before you on your computers, Revision 8. 

 The Subcommittee, it was still a 
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little rough in the April 16th meeting, so I 

took comments in the April 16th meeting. I 

made some revisions and emailed it out, and we 

scheduled a May 6th conference call to go over 

the final revision, and at that point the 

Subcommittee -- not all members were present, 

I should say; Bob Presley I think was 

traveling, and Dr. Poston as well I think was 

on travel -- we did have Mike and Brad and 

Wanda and myself, and the Subcommittee was in 

support of this aside from some grammatical 

corrections. 

 I did make some grammatical 

corrections in this version that is before us 

now, but the Subcommittee is bringing this 

report forward as a recommendation I guess to 

send to the secretary as a summary report for 

our first 100 cases that we reviewed, and I'll 

leave it there. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And that 

recommendation constitutes a motion to the 

Board, and if the motion is adopted the report 

would go forward to the Secretary of Health 

and Human Services with the report as 
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prepared. 

 So this motion is open for 

discussion. Wanda. 

 MS. MUNN: Mark has really done a 

yeoman's job putting together this executive 

summary up front of this, the previous three 

reports that have been put together. As you 

know I am one of those people who are 

continually urging everyone to shorten their 

material, because I genuinely don't believe 

most people read more than the executive 

summary. 

 This executive summary has done an 

admirable job in my view. I had told Mark 

earlier than I -- in reading through it after 

we had worked on it at considerable length in 

committee, I found myself adding commas and 

changing one or two words, which I had not 

cleared with him. But if you would like me 

to, I would be glad to go over this for the 

Board's four statements. 

 My attempt here is to avoid any 

bias word that might change a view or in a 

couple of cases to clarify by the addition of 
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a single word. 

 If you would like me to go through 

those, I'd be glad to. I don't want to hold 

up the train because there is so much work 

going into this, and I consider it -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: I think we can go 

through those, Mark. 

 MS. MUNN: The wording changes, 

again, on page two, that would be the third -- 

fourth paragraph I guess. The third sentence 

there begins, first of all -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Are you in the 

primary -- I'm not sure. 

 MS. MUNN: I'm in the Introduction 

and Executive Summary. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

 MS. MUNN: Fourth paragraph. 

 MR. GRIFFON: How does that 

paragraph begin? 

 MS. MUNN: There were 76 cases 

completed -- and the third sentence reads: 

“First of all, in all the cases reviewed NIOSH 

has used this overestimating approach for 

eight cases that were,” I suggested the 
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addition of the word, later, “compensated.” 

 MR. GRIFFON: That were later 

compensated? 

 MS. MUNN: Yes, to clarify that 

they weren't immediately compensated. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Weren't they finally 

adjudicated, cases that they were reviewing? 

I guess I'm fine with that. 

 MS. MUNN: But this was a -- I 

suggested the use of significant quality 

assurance finding rather than rather serious, 

because rather serious does have a very strong 

connotation to it, and I recognize we are 

implying that, a strong connotation, but would 

suggest the word, significant, instead of 

that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, I'm not sure, 

that does downgrade it a little in my opinion. 

 So maybe we should -- I don't know if others 

have a thought on that. 

 MS. MUNN: It does, but the rest 

of the paragraph is about that. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yes, I know. 

 MS. MUNN: And so since the rest 
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of the paragraph -- 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yes, I know, it does 

ratchet it down a bit though. I just wonder 

if others -- I mean I chose those words on 

purpose. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The word, later, 

seems like a friendly amendment. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Later is fine. 

 DR. ZIEMER: This may have some 

connotations, so let's see what the consensus 

is. Everybody see where we are? Rather than 

saying, “this is a rather serious quality 

assurance finding,” Wanda is suggesting “this 

is a rather significant quality assurance 

finding.” Either way you are going to define 

what it means. 

 MS. MUNN: And the rest of the 

sentence says, this brings into question the 

fairness of the overall programs. That is the 

sense of the meaning of the sentence I 

believe. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, perhaps we 

should get some input to see what the 

consensus is. Jim and then Mike. 
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 DR. MELIUS: I mean I think it is 

a serious quality assurance finding. I think 

it's accurate and reads well as it is. I'm 

not sure it's worth making changes at this 

point. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Michael. 

 MR. GIBSON: I agree with Mark. I 

think that “rather serious,” it draws 

attention -- although the rest of the 

paragraph defines what the finding was, the 

opening sentence draws attention to 

potentially stop the Secretary so he would pay 

attention to what the issue was rather than 

perhaps maybe missing it if we ratchet it 

down. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Other comments on 

that one? 

 MR. GRIFFON: I mean that was my 

reasoning for those words, just to make sure 

we didn't downgrade it and we did draw the 

attention of the reader. And I thought -- 

instead of serious, I chose “rather serious,” 

so I thought I ratcheted it a little bit. 

 MS. MUNN: And my point was that 
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the entirety, the bulk of that paragraph 

repeats, and delineates exactly what the 

concern is, so if anybody is going to be 

reading it, they are going to be fully 

apprised of the rest of the paragraph, with 

the extent of the effect. 

 That was my suggestion. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I don't hear -- I've 

heard several that have indicated they would 

like to leave it. I don't know if we need to 

go into a formal debate on this particular 

one. I think either way the rest of the 

paragraph delineates what is meant in any 

event. So I'm wondering perhaps we should 

just leave it. 

 MS. MUNN: Please leave it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MS. MUNN: The second sentence 

after that one, which begins, “one such 

consequence is -- the claimants were diagnosed 

with additional cancer after a decision has 

been made, and are therefore eligible to 

resubmit a claim.” 

 I would like to insert the word, 
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“may receive a lower overall dose,” because 

they don't always receive an overall dose. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So add the word "may" 

before the word "receive." 

 MS. MUNN: Correct. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yep, that's fine. 

 MS. MUNN: And in the very lat 

sentence, I would suggest using -- starting 

with the word, article “A,” rather than 

“another,” because we have already enumerated. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Instead of saying 

“another similar misunderstanding,” just say 

“a similar misunderstanding?” 

 MS. MUNN: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: That's fine. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MS. MUNN: And the other words 

that I had was in the primary findings, under 

one case review methodology; and the second 

sentence of the first paragraph, the two 

sentences -- the first and the second sentence 

together -- 

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second primary finding? 

 MS. MUNN: No, I'm on the primary 

findings, large item Roman numeral I, Case 

Review Methodology. The first sentence reads, 

“This report summarizes the findings of the 

first 100 dose reconstruction cases. This is 

a summary of the findings outlined in three” - 

I would suggest using “previous” rather than 

“separate” reports, because they have gone in 

earlier. 

 MR. GRIFFON: That's fine. 

 MS. MUNN: And those are the only 

words that I suggested. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's helpful. 

 Other comments or questions on this 

debate? We have a motion before us to adopt 

the report which has been amended in a 

friendly manner. 

 Now I want to pose my original -- I 

mean one of the reasons you had it sent back 

was the chairman was concerned that we had not 

addressed what is the sort of bottom line of 

why we do these dose reconstruction audits. 

And that is to attest to the scientific 
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validity -- I forget the exact wording -- of 

the dose reconstruction process. And I think 

the Subcommittee was perhaps struggling with 

what words could be said to address that 

within the context of pointing out some flaws. 

 Would they be able to attest that there was 

some degree of validity to the process while 

pointing out the shortcomings that were 

identified? 

 And Mark, you had some -- I'm 

trying to go back to the summary, because you 

had added some words. And I just want to 

identify where those were. I thought I had 

found them when I originally read this report, 

and I think it's in the Executive Summary. 

 MS. MUNN: The last of the primary 

findings, the last paragraph under five. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I think he is 

actually looking at the Executive Summary. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Is that where I want 

to be? 

 MS. MUNN: Yes. 

 MR. GRIFFON: If you go to the 

front. 
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 MS. MUNN: Right under the 

Executive Summary, the primary findings, and 

the very last sentence in that section says, 

“The Board feels that the audit and the 

finding resolution process whereby the Board, 

NIOSH and the Board's contractor --” 

 DR. ZIEMER: Got you. 

 MS. MUNN: “-- collectively 

resolved the findings, has been an effective 

means of improving on NIOSH dose 

reconstruction program.” 

 MR. GRIFFON: And that was 

speaking to that the process was working 

basically. But I thought to answer the 

question that the Board sent down to the 

Subcommittee, really I tried to put in the 

Executive Summary the breakout of the types of 

cases we reviewed, the best estimate, the 

over-estimate, the under-estimate, and say, a 

little bit of inclusion on how we felt about 

each of those types of cases, instead of 

saying here is how we felt about the overall 

100 cases, we decided to break it out because 

we didn't do many best estimates, even though 
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it ends up being I think seven out of 100, we 

were targeting in our sampling roughly 40 

percent to be in the 45 to 50 POC range. So 

we didn't as many of those types of cases as 

we would like to do in our -- or we had 

planned to do in our audit process. 

 But we did want to at least give 

some conclusionary remarks. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And I appreciate 

that. I want to re-express my concern, 

however, on what the charge is to this Board. 

 And I know this has been a bit of a struggle 

to determine how to say this or convey this in 

a way that can satisfy all the members. 

 But we are charged with advising 

the Secretary on the scientific validity and 

appropriateness of the procedures used in dose 

reconstruction; that is the charge. 

 And in my mind we have not been 

able to state that that measure has been met. 

 Now if we are unable to state that, that's 

fine; we won't state it. But I just want to 

point out to the Board that we -- this report 

does not tell the Secretary that the program 
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has met that level. 

 And if you do not believe we are at 

the position of saying that, that's fine; we 

will send the Secretary what we have, and what 

our evaluation is at this point. I don't 

object to doing that, but I do want to point 

out that the actual charge, in my mind, we 

have not been able to address. 

 MR. GRIFFON: That's true. And 

that -- I mean that was our feeling that 100 

cases in I don't think we are ready to make 

that final bright line test, or response. I 

think we chipped away at the edges of it in 

that introductory section. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And I would agree 

that this is better than the previous report. 

 I just want to make the Board aware of that, 

that ultimately that is what we are charged to 

do. And you know, the bottom line may be no, 

it may be yes, or it may be somewhere in 

between, we think that this does at least get 

at the impact of doing this, and if the 

improvements hadn't occurred and so on so it 

is helping the process. So I think that is 
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fine, and we can go forward with this. 

 I am not telling you this to 

object. I am not objecting to the report. I 

simply want the Board to be aware of what we 

ultimately need to be able to state or 

explicitly address at some point. 

 So I have that in the back of my 

mind. Wanda. 

 MS. MUNN: I think many members of 

the Subcommittee feel that we haven't had 

enough of best estimate cases in the pipeline 

for us to be able to make that kind of a clear 

statement one way or the other. I think that 

is what Mark was trying to imply in his 

wording here with respect to the small actual 

number of cases. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes but let me add, 

though, however, I don't think that it's 

dependent only on best estimate cases. The 

methodology covers all the ways that dose 

reconstruction are done. So we should not 

put our hats on saying, best estimate cases 

are the test. If the overestimates and the 

underestimates are not scientifically 
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dependable ways of doing dose reconstruction 

then we have to say that. If they are, in my 

mind, we should say so. That's all I'm 

saying. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And I just think, we 

broke those out on purpose and we wanted to 

chip away at that question but we were not 

ready to go to that final extent. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm okay with that. 

I just want to keep the ultimate goal in our 

minds as we move towards it. It won't be long 

before we'll have another 100. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Right, and we've had 

a lot more best estimates. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And we're moving 

along. 

 Incidentally, this doesn't speak to 

the motion, but I'm not sure that we have the 

teams on the 11th set yet. We just finished 

the 10th set. 

 MR. MAURO: I'm sorry, that's 

correct. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And John, I believe 

we just finished doing the reviews of the 10th 
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set. And I'm not sure we have -- I don't 

think I've seen the 11th set yet, the team 

assignments. 

 MR. MAURO: We're halfway through 

the 11th set. The 10th set has already 

completed action in there. So that is done, 

all the one on one discussions behind us, all 

the divisions in light of that. 

 Just to let you know that the next 

set of -- to get to the next team, just to let 

you know by the time of the next meeting in 

July we certainly will be ready to fill up the 

pipeline again. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 Back to this motion on the report 

to the Secretary, Wanda, did you have an 

additional comment, or any other comments? 

Anyone wish to speak pro or con? I haven't 

heard any cons other than perhaps my own 

words. And they were not intended to be 

against the motion as I pointed out. I 

support it. 

 Are we ready to vote then? If the 

motion carries, this report will be prepared 
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for the new Secretary of Health and Human 

Services. We do have some new rules 

apparently on how these are transmitted, and 

we will work with Ted and Nancy to get this 

transmitted. 

 I don't think this is quite in the 

category of the SECs with the 21-day limit, 

but this will go forward as soon as we get the 

clean copy of the report, and the appropriate 

-- I may need a cover letter, a transmittal 

letter, which I would add to this just to 

transmit it to the Secretary. And if that's 

agreeable, I don't see any reason to return 

the cover letter report -- or the cover 

letter, or the transmittal letter, to the 

Board. It would simply be, here is the 

report, sort of thing. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay, just before the 

vote, I know Jim had a quizzical look about 

the new rules. Just to explain that the -- 

we've just got -- I just got as the DFO a note 

from CDC -- and this doesn't apply to our 

board uniquely; it's to all FACA committees -- 

there is a new process in place for how 
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committees communicate with the Secretary of 

HHS, and there is more process I think than I 

was aware of. But as I understand from Nancy, 

in effect, it's not that dissimilar from how 

things are done now. But there is a process 

for all the communications that come from the 

committee to go through the agency before they 

go out to the Secretary. I don't need to get 

into the details of that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We will take care of 

that. 

 Okay, we are ready to vote. Let's 

do a roll call vote. 

 MR. KATZ: So Brad Clawson. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Griffon? 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston. 

 Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler. 

 DR. ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Ziemer. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield. 

 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Presley. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn. 

 MS. MUNN: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey? 

 DR. LOCKEY: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Gibson. 

 MR. GIBSON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach. 

 MS. BEACH: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: That's all. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The motion carries. 

Thank you very much. 

 We are going to take our break. 

No, Mark -- you got five minutes, Mark. 

 MR. GRIFFON: The other item that 

we had before us from the Board actually, and 

we ended up discussing it at the April 16th 

meeting and the phone call meeting, was 

reexamine the case selection process. 

 And I think the Board asked us -- 
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you know, we are 11 sets in -- is this working 

appropriately? Can you examine it? 

 And the bottom line, after quite a 

bit of conversation on our subcommittee, and 

with SC&A's input as well, we felt like it is 

working pretty well. 

 We had a breakout, NIOSH's Stu 

Hinnefeld provided us a case breakout on what 

our targets were versus what we actually had 

done, and also SC&A's Kathy Behling they've 

developed a database now similar to the one 

used in the Procedures Subcommittee, where we 

are beginning to -- it's in draft form, but we 

are starting to looking at tracking the cases. 

 And that also allows for sort of statistics 

reports to come out. 

 But we looked at -- a couple of 

items we looked at. One was the overall 

number of cases that we should review. And 

we've been working on this 2.5 percent. It 

was the number from the previous audit of the 

other program. And you know that would 

roughly get us, it's a moving target because 

more pieces are coming in, but roughly 500 to 
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600 total cases for the review. Right now we 

are a little over 200 -- that's right, isn't 

it? -- yes. So you know we are on target. 

 Then the other question we looked 

at was, do we need to -- and we have certainly 

been targeting the best estimate cases. We 

were projecting 40 percent of our cases that 

we audit, that we review, would be in this 45 

to 50 percent range. And right now the 

problem with that is that those cases aren't 

available in the final adjudicated hopper so 

to speak, so that pool has been sort of -- 

that has been sort of the plug in our case 

processing. We can't really add more cases 

without having a bigger pool of cases there to 

get those best estimate cases up. 

 The interesting fact, though, is 

that Stu looked, and we asked him, look at the 

overall cases that you've done dose 

reconstructions on, how many of those were 

best estimate cases? And he said roughly 8 

percent; it wasn't a perfect number, he 

admitted that, but roughly 8 percent of the 

20,000 at that point when we asked the 
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question were best estimate type cases. That 

would be about 1,600, and if we -- based on my 

numbers, if we went our 40 percentile, we 

would be looking at 200 to 240 cases in the 

best estimate territory. 

 I think they are there, and out of 

1,600 that's close to 15 percent of the 

overall cases in the hopper so far for NIOSH. 

 So and to process faster I think 

the -- really we can't process much faster 

because we have to wait for that pool to fill 

up with final adjudicated. Because I know Jim 

is going to tell me something about that pool. 

 DR. NETON: Well, I just have a 

question. I don't know whether Stu broke out 

the ones that were truly best estimates, or 

were they, a lot of those cases, the one-sizefits-all dose reconstructions where there 

really is not what you said are traditional 

best estimates. 

 MR. GRIFFON: We did ask for truly 

best estimates. 

 DR. NETON: It sounds a little on 

the high side. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: I can show you what 

Stu sent us, but yes, we did ask that. We 

said we didn't want the one-size-fits-all 

included. 

 DR. NETON: We can work through 

that, but I just had that question. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And we thought -- we 

also agreed that, let's touch base on this 

issue again in six or 12 months and see if we 

may come to a different -- if we are not right 

on those number of cases we may have to 

adjust. But right now we felt it was working 

reasonably. All the other targets that we 

were looking at targeting, the distributions 

were actually fairly good. We were getting 

the right number of cases for decades we 

wanted to sample. We were getting probably a 

higher percentage in the high number of years 

worked, but we were pretty reasonable in our 

other sort of breakouts of the selection 

criteria. And we saw at this point really no 

need to change that approach. So I guess I 

will leave it there, and others on the 

Subcommittee can comment. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, separate 

comment? 

 DR. MELIUS: A separate comment. 

I think one is our new communication 

procedure. I just would like to be assured 

that on all our communications, when they are 

mandated by the Act, which this one is as well 

as our SEC evaluations, that however it is 

being communicated through does not delay them 

inordinately, and remind them that this is an 

independent function that we are mandated to 

do. 

 MR. KATZ: That is absolutely my 

concern. I will assure you, that will work. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And I might add to 

that, I'm aware of the Health and Human 

Services and CDC committee structures. And we 

are quite unique both in our makeup and our 

activities. So the other groups are pretty 

much across the board appointed by HHS, and 

are within HHS' regular reporting structure. 

 So we need to be assured for 

example that if there is a CDC review of 

things that it doesn't get bogged within the 
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agency for some reason. 

 DR. MELIUS: Then I have a second 

item I'd just like to suggest as an agenda 

item for the next meeting. Whether it's a 

significant or a serious quality assurance 

issue, I'd like to have -- is it possible to 

include that on the agenda for the next 

meeting so there'd be a briefing from NIOSH on 

what their procedures are, and so we can sort 

of see what progress. I mean these are the 

first hundred cases. I mean there are issues, 

whether they are significant or serious, 

whatever. I think it behooves us to get an 

update from them and discuss this issue at the 

Board level. I think it's been awhile since 

we discussed this issue. At one point a long 

time ago there was a committee that looked at 

this, or excuse me, work group. So that's 

all. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Let me just go back 

to the case selection thing a little bit. I 

know it's a little bit drier topic. But I 

guess I would offer that I know you don't have 

all the data in front of you here. The other 
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thing I would offer is that if we don't -- I 

think there should be changes, and I don't 

think the Subcommittee thinks we should change 

anything now. But I could offer that maybe 

not at every board meeting, but maybe at every 

other -- or maybe at every board meeting, once 

we have this database up and running, I can 

sort of give the -- the statistical reports 

will be easy to generate, and we can give an 

overview of where our projected versus what we 

have so far. And that will give the Board a 

sense of how we're doing in our case selection 

process. You will have more data in front of 

you to look at while we are discussing this. 

And I will commit to doing that at every board 

meeting or every other, which ever you choose. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let's go ahead 

and take our break now. 

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went 

off the record briefly.) 

 DR. ZIEMER: If you would please 

take your seats. We have one additional item 

from the Subcommittee on Dose Reconstruction. 

 Mark Griffin. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: Yes, I just have one 

final item on the report from the 

Subcommittee. And I consider - I mean this 

has been one of my things ongoing for awhile, 

so it's kind of important to me. But this 

question of -- and in our letter report it's 

actually highlighted as number two in the 

primary findings of the case files should 

include internal guides or instructions used 

by the district instructor, and should include 

supporting data analysis. 

 I haven't fully inspected the 

transcripts, but I know that over a year ago 

we had these discussions and I was surprised 

to find out at the April 16th subcommittee 

meeting that NIOSH was still not doing this. 

I know we had the discussions on the Board as 

well, and I thought we had a commitment from 

NIOSH to do this to include where they were 

used, and we understand they are not used on 

every site on all cases, to include these DR 

instructions in the case file. 

 And I mean the reason -- and I also 

compromised, and I think all of us kind of 
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compromised on this -- was that it might be a 

major effort to go retrospectively to do this, 

because they would have to find these -- these 

are not controlled documents, these DR 

guidelines that they use, so to find the right 

revision that was used during a certain case, 

when the case was done, would be very 

difficult retrospectively. 

 But we said going forward, we 

totally expect these to be used. And this is 

well over a year -- I'm guessing almost two 

years ago that this initially came up, and 

they are still not being put in the case 

files. 

 Now Stu gave me another of what I 

thought was a commitment at the last 

subcommittee meeting. But I'm not sure that 

we don't need a formal motion here, a 

recommendation from the Board, that NIOSH do 

this. This has been one of the problems, 

especially in the best estimate cases, one of 

the problems we've had reviewing the cases is 

we don't know -- it's sort of like the showyour-work thing in school. If we don't have 
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all the work there to review, it's harder for 

us to do our audit function. And a lot of 

times in the best estimate cases, we were 

getting our response from NIOSH at the 

meetings that well, we think what this dose 

reconstructor was doing in this situation was, 

he selected this value because -- you know, 

and it sort of seemed like after their 

response, explanations of how and why and what 

was done, and we thought it would be really 

beneficial to have a little more of the 

thought process right in the case file. And 

the DR guidelines there, and the dose 

reconstructor was following it or was not 

following it, then it is there and we can 

track along and see. 

 So the guideline along -- and we 

have also talked about this show-your-work, if 

you do several -- a lot of times with internal 

dose estimates they will go through a series 

of trials. And we have talked about that, and 

I think they have been better at adding some 

of those trial runs. If they end up using 

class M, but they tried -- they ruled out 
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other possibilities as the most claimant 

favorable, show it right in the file. 

 And I think they have been better 

at doing that lately, but these guidelines 

have not yet been included. 

 And I just wanted to be maybe even 

more clear at this meeting that I think they 

should be included. I don't know if we need a 

formal recommendation from the Board. I hope 

NIOSH gets the message and starts doing that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, of course this 

Board does not task NIOSH. We can request 

things, and often they are agreed to. We 

normally don't like to get to the level where 

we have to make a recommendation to the 

Secretary to invoke some pressure. 

 But maybe we could hear from NIOSH. 

 Is this something that there is a plan to do, 

or it got overlooked? Do you need something 

more formal from the Work Group or the Board 

to delineate more exactly what -- this comes I 

would say in the form of a friendly request, 

really, and we're wondering if it can be done 

readily and so on. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: Less friendly than 

it was two years ago. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It's getting less 

friendly every minute. But you understand 

what I mean by that. We are not tasking 

NIOSH. 

 DR. NETON: I don't think we 

necessarily need to have a formal motion from 

the Board to check this. I need to go back 

and check with Stu. Apparently Mark is under 

the understanding that Stu made a commitment 

that we would start doing that proactively 

from here forward, and if Stu committed to 

that we certainly would follow up and do that. 

 If I find out something different though, and 

there is some rationale why it's not possible, 

we would certainly be happy to come back and 

communicate that to the Board and discuss it 

further. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, that's what we 

had done -- I'm having a little deja vu here 

because that is what we did two years ago, and 

Stu reported back that it would be very 

difficult for the contractor to go back. And 
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that's when I thought we decided that going 

forward that would be done, but going 

backwards was too much of a burden. And I 

don't have a problem with that. 

 DR. NETON: This is not something 

I have been intimately involved with. But I'd 

be happy to go back and discuss this with Stu 

and report back to the Board as to our status. 

 I suspect it's going to be that we committed 

to do it, but until I talk with Stu about it 

in some detail I can't commit. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm going to suggest 

that it be reported back to the Work Group, 

the status of that. 

 Is Stu entirely clear on what it is 

that we are requesting? If there is any 

ambiguity we can get it spelled out. 

 DR. NETON: I think one of the 

issues may be there are different flavors of 

these guidelines and instructions, and some 

are more formal than others, and to what 

extent we need to sort of memorialize these 

documents which really are not what I would 

consider to be control documents in the sense 
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that they are numbered and signed off 

completely by NIOSH; they are more informal 

guidelines. 

 I will go back and we will research 

that, and can get back to you with our 

finding. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And then if we are at 

a point where we need something more formal 

action-wise, the Work Group can recommend 

that. But perhaps we could also add to the 

agenda to at least have a report on that. 

That will spur us to make sure that it is not 

falling between the cracks, and ask Ted to 

specifically ask for an update on the status 

of that item for the next board meeting. 

 Thanks, Mark. 

 Phil, did you have an additional 

comment? 

 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yes, I'd like to 

back Mark's comments. We had some 

modifications that none of us could figure out 

what the -- how they did anything without the 

documentation in there. We were all at a 

loss. And in one case in particular that was 
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just -- couldn't understand how they got to 

that point. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. 

 Okay, then we can proceed with our 

other subcommittee report. Wanda, do you have 

any update for us, status report? 

 MS. MUNN: The Procedures 

Subcommittee is continuing to meet 

approximately every month depending on the 

schedule and the Work Group load that the 

parties involved and the agency and the 

contractor have. 

 We are maintaining the extensive 

electronic database that we need to track and 

archive the procedures, the large number of 

findings that are generated by the SC&A 

reviews. The overall process is continuing to 

function very well. We have occasional 

challenges with it, but for the most part it 

does well. 

 If you will excuse me a minute, I 

will go up and punch up the slide that will 

show you the summary report of where we are 

right now. 
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 No magic has occurred. And again, 

F8. Voila. I hope you can all see it all 

right. I know it's difficult for those of you 

back up against the wall. 

 You'll notice that these are 

segregated into groupings by date. That's the 

way we've chosen to approach them. In the 

database itself as you probably all know by 

now the procedures, the individual procedures, 

are listed alphabetically. We find it easier 

to get to them, but when we actually start to 

work with them we segregate them into groups. 

 We have three separate groups there, and the 

dates that show in between, with only one or 

two procedures involved were additional 

procedures that this body has for some reason 

or another chosen to insert into our database, 

to SC&A's review, at a time other than the 

grouping that we normally go through. 

 The total number of findings as of 

the first part of this month, as of our last 

meeting, was 538. The number that are open is 

154. I think we have all told you before what 

open and in progress and in abeyance and 
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addressed and transferred. I'm going to talk 

a little more about transferred later. But 

our open items total 154; in progress, 

actively working right now, 28. We have 75 in 

abeyance; 15 that are addressed in some other 

finding other than the one that we're working 

on; 29 that have been transferred; and 237 

that are closed. 

 You can see the percentages there 

for yourself. And get some feel for where our 

current numbers lie. 

 I'm going back to my chair. 

 Our ability to work with these 

findings on a real-time basis in our sessions 

has been very helpful for all of us. It helps 

keep the database quite current, and being 

able to filter whatever parameters we want 

from the O drive keeps all the Board members 

and the personnel that are involved able to 

obtain specific information that they want 

very quickly from anything that's been 

selected for review. 

 The bulk of the Subcommittee effort 

during this year has centered almost entirely 
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around requested revisions to the letters, and 

reviewer script, questionnaires that were used 

for the energy employee and survivor CATIs. 

 As you know that has been a major 

topic for the full board, and has been in our 

area of responsibility, so we've been working 

that extensively. Each one of those documents 

has been scrutinized at considerable length 

and discussed extensively. 

 We've suggested a number of wording 

changes incorporated into the active draft 

that NIOSH is working with at this moment for 

consideration. Our remaining suggestions for 

changes are relatively minor in scope, and we 

have clearly identified what they are. At our 

next meeting, scheduled in Cincinnati on June 

9th we expect to complete those proposed 

subcommittee revisions incorporating all the 

comments that have been brought forward, so 

that NIOSH will have our suggestions ready for 

you before very long. 

 The subcommittee is requesting the 

agreement of the full board on a proposed 

process to eliminate some duplication of 
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effort and to clarify areas of responsibility 

with regard to procedure reviews. We have 

mentioned a couple of times in the past how we 

should proceed with respect to transferring of 

items. We have asked our contractor to 

segregate some specific procedures for us that 

are site-specific in nature. It's very clear 

to us that when we have tasked SC&A with 

reviewing procedures that are site-specific, 

if we are working those findings they are 

findings which may be affecting the activities 

of the Work Group as well. We would make 

these suggestions in the hope that we would 

not find ourselves in a position where both 

the Procedure Subcommittee and the Work Group 

would be dealing with the same issue oblivious 

to the actions of the other. 

 So our subcontractor has provided 

for us a list of known procedures which are 

site-specific in nature. I did not make a 

slide of them, but I will read for you the 

number of outstanding issues that we have that 

are related to site-specific procedure. 

 For Y-12, we have seven; for 
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Savannah River Site, five; Rocky Flats, five; 

Hanford, two; K-25, two; X-10, two; Bethlehem 

Steel, two; Paducah, one; Pinellas, one; 

Mallinckrodt, one; and General Steel, one. 

I'm sorry I don't have that list of actual 

procedure names for you, but those are the 

numbers. 

 What we are proposing is that when 

a site-specific work group has already been 

appointed for one of these procedures, it will 

be the responsibility of the chair of the 

Subcommittee to notify the chair of the Work 

Group and the Board probably by email that the 

responsibility of resolution of those findings 

is being transferred to the Work Group. 

 It was the feeling of our 

Subcommittee that it was the logical 

responsibility of the Work Group to be dealing 

with those findings directly. The entire 

procedure will then show on our subcommittee 

master database as transferred, and it will 

stay there as transferred. 

 As those findings reach closure 

within the Work Group we would anticipate that 
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the Work Group chair would notify the 

Subcommittee chair and the Board that that 

particular item had been closed, and the 

circumstances over which it had been closed. 

 Then the master database being 

maintained here will reflect those changes and 

show the item as closed. 

 In cases where the Work Group 

doesn't exist, the Subcommittee might, 

depending on how extensive the findings are, 

might request that the Board assemble a work 

group for the specific purpose of addressing 

those findings if nothing else. But that 

would depend upon the circumstances. 

 And the Subcommittee will continue 

to do what it is doing, and will be very 

pleased to hear comments from the Board, and 

their reaction to our suggestion with respect 

to this process. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Wanda. I 

think what you have described as a suggested 

procedure; I don't know that it requires 

necessarily formal board action unless there 

are concerns about it. But basically what the 
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Subcommittee is saying is that if there are 

procedures that they are reviewing that are 

site-specific, say for General Steel 

Industries, then they will transfer that with 

notification to the appropriate work group, 

that they believe that that work group should 

deal with that issue since it is a sitespecific issue. 

 So I think we would want to have 

some discussion on this to see if there are 

some concerns about doing this, or whether or 

not that seems to be a good way to approach 

those procedures which are clearly sitespecific. 

 MS. MUNN: We are open to 

suggestions. 

 DR. MELIUS: I agree with the 

general procedure. My only cautionary note, 

and I think this would be the responsibility 

of SC&A would be the best way of handling 

this, is that you make sure that we retain 

some consistency in terms of how we are 

reviewing the site specific procedures. 

Because often I think there is sort of a 
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subpart of another set of procedures that may 

apply to other sites and so forth, so they 

don't exist in isolation all the time -- some 

do, but some don't, and I think we need to 

make sure that there is some consistency from 

site to site in terms of what we are 

recommending, and what changes we recommend to 

NIOSH and so forth. 

 So I think as long as SC&A can keep 

track of that for us, I think that is probably 

the best way of handling it. And again there 

may be issues where it is a concern, we could 

refer it back to the procedures committee, or 

communicate with the Procedures Subcommittee 

in a way that would deal with that issue. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, it's a good 

point, and I think the Procedures Subcommittee 

has thought about that as well, because there 

are indeed procedures that are more complexwide, and Wanda, you can speak to this, but I 

believe they have made an effort to identify 

those. For example, it might arise, such as 

the high-fired oxide issue, at one site, and 

then there is a recognition that it is more 
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broadly applicable, so we would have to deal 

with those on a case-by-case basis. But 

perhaps the chair could comment. 

 MS. MUNN: I would be challenged 

to do the math right here, but needless to say 

the numbers that I did not read to you with 

respect to the number of procedures that we 

have that are site-specific are the numbers 

which we have deemed to be more generally 

applicable across the Board. 

 Of course as Jim points out there 

are some procedures which have a finding or 

two that may apply to a specific site only, 

but for the most part what we are trying to do 

is segregate those site-wide -- I mean 

complex-wide -- procedures from the sitespecific procedures, and those that are 

clearly site-specific, address them that way. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 Other comments? Then I believe if 

there is no objections your Subcommittee will 

proceed along those lines and make the 

appropriate contacts as you identify those 

procedures which are indeed site-specific and 
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which can best be handled by the appropriate 

work groups. 

 MS. MUNN: We will attempt to do 

that at our next meeting, and several of the 

Work Group chairs can anticipate getting 

communications from me, as will the rest of 

the Board and Mr. Katz. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, Josie, sorry I 

missed you. 

 MS. BEACH: Oh, no, I just put it 

up. I'm just curious of what timeframe you 

are thinking that might take, Wanda, not to 

put any pressure on you. 

 MS. MUNN: No, we expect -- we are 

going to be meeting in Cincinnati in June as I 

said, on June 9th, and that's when we expect 

to do this. We already have numbers; all I 

have to do is identify the specific work 

groups that are involved. 

 MS. BEACH: You expect to be done 

with that by the first meeting in June? 

 MS. MUNN: Oh, we anticipate -- it 

is fairly direct. I don't anticipate any 

complications. Yes, we expect to do that. 
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 MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Then I think we are 

ready to proceed with updates from the various 

work groups. And Ted, perhaps we can just go 

down the list, indicate either that there is 

no action to report, or that you give us an 

update on when and where there is going to be 

a meeting or any specific action items that 

you think the Board needs to be aware of. 

 MR. KATZ: Sure, Dr. Ziemer, the 

first is Blockson. And I just wanted -- I 

don't know if there needs to be clarification 

for the record. You know this was discussed 

yesterday, Blockson. And there was agreement 

I think that Mark would receive from material 

from OCAS to review, and Mark was questioning 

whether there needs to be -- if there needs to 

be any kind of process involved with respect 

to work group and so on, so I don't know if 

you want to address that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: On Blockson, I 

believe that the information was going to be 

provided for Mark. And I see no particular 

reason for it to go back to the Work Group. 
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It's not obvious to me that it would need to 

be returned to the Work Group, but Mark would 

have the opportunity to review that. Mark is 

not here; I was going to ask -- oh there he 

is, okay. Mark, we certainly need to have a 

way of sharing the outcome of that with the 

full Board. 

 MS. MUNN: And I would have a 

request with respect to specificity. We asked 

the last time at our last meeting when we were 

addressing Blockson issues, we asked to be 

very clear about what exactly was wanted. And 

it had been the assumption that what Jim Neton 

brought to us would fulfill the requested 

information. But since they are asking for 

more, real specificity would be greatly 

appreciated. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And I think we had 

previously agreed that it didn't need to go 

back to the Work Group, did we not? 

 MS. MUNN: Yes, we did. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, and so Mark 

hadn't had the opportunity to look at that 

dataset. 
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 MR. GRIFFON: I was just wondering 

just in terms of process if I get the 

analytical file and have some questions on 

parameters, do I -- can I email directly to 

NIOSH, and should I cc all the Board members? 

 I just don't know how to -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, let me suggest 

something. 

 MR. GRIFFON: If I just hold all 

my questions until we meet again then we could 

be in the same position. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me suggest the 

following. This is top of the head, but if 

you have questions, direct them to NIOSH; 

share them with the Board. And then I guess 

whatever responses are generated could be 

shared equally. 

 MR. NETON: I guess that sounds 

fine to me. Just for completeness I was going 

to distribute this file to the entire Board, 

just in case Mark raises issues they can at 

least open the file and see which parameters 

or such that he is concerned with. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That makes sense. 
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 MS. MUNN: It makes perfect sense, 

especially since this entire debate is now at 

the Board level. I'd appreciate having all 

board members advised simultaneously. 

 DR. ZIEMER: That way when we 

return for our next meeting, hopefully we will 

have seen not only that information from 

NIOSH, we will have seen the questions and 

whatever responses there are, and perhaps be 

in a position to take some action. 

 MR. GRIFFON: So this would be on 

the agenda for the July meeting? And then I 

guess I just have to ask the question then 

since the Work Group isn't operating any more, 

do we need to sustain the Work Group? 

 DR. ZIEMER: I suppose we should 

sustain the Work Group until there is a final 

action on Blockson. 

 DR. MELIUS: Purgatory. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm not sure you want 

that in the record, but go ahead. 

 MR. KATZ: So next on the list then 

is Chapman Valve. 

 MR. POSTON: There has been no 
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action on Chapman Valve. Does Dr. Lockey know 

that we are somewhat surprised that NIOSH is 

not following the recommendation? Until today 

we didn't know that there was no action. So 

we hadn't been doing anything. I'll try to 

get the committee together for the next 

meeting. 

 MR. KATZ: Then we heard yesterday 

from security. But there is more to discuss 

on that that Jim raised. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, the security 

document is with the DOE, and we had a motion 

yesterday on that. And I think we keep the 

Work Group -- it's an ad hoc work group but 

keep them in place until the final adoption. 

But I think we are hopeful that that will take 

effect in a couple of weeks. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Right. We have the 

pending -- we already voted on it pending 

everything? 

 DR. ZIEMER: That is correct. 

 DR. MELIUS: Excuse me. I raised 

an issue yesterday and I don't know if we want 

to discuss it now, or we want to discuss it at 
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some later point today. But I think at least 

in my mind it needs to be discussed, and that 

is sort of the larger question, how are we 

going to deal with the issue of classified 

information in terms of this program, and 

really our activities, our review of 

information from these sites, our presentation 

of this information either in terms of work 

groups, in terms of board actions, in terms of 

communication with the petitioners and so 

forth. And I don't think we can postpone -- 

the other one with that issue would be 

authority as I understand led to some 

decisions by NIOSH in terms of not holding 

work group meetings, or at least not calling 

them work group meetings. And this is all 

very confusing to people. And I think it 

really comes down to that issue which we 

talked about a long time ago with the Iowa 

site, which was how do we handle those types 

of sites in terms of the SEC. I mean come up 

with a site profile too, but really the SEC. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, actually, I 

have that down as a separate item, because it 
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wasn't in the purview of this particular work 

group to deal with that, so if there is no 

objection we will just finish the Work Group 

reports, and then that is the next thing. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay, so Fernald; Mr. 

Clawson. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Okay, with Fernald 

Work Group we've met five times, if my figures 

are right. We are still reviewing readiness, 

reviewing completeness of data accuracy for 

the urine bioassay validation of the HIS-20 

database. The recycled uranium white paper 

that was dated on March 3rd. We are reviewing 

radon breath data for adequacy. The K-65 

radon emission issue, the breathing zone 

general air sample data associated with the 

daily weight of the average thorium-232 

intake. 

 And NIOSH has given us a White 

Paper on that, and we are reviewing that at 

this time. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Brad. Any 

questions for Brad? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yes, are you still 
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waiting for data from Fernald? Or is that 

taken care of? You went through this 

quickly, and I thought the report that SC&A 

prepared for updating us on Fernald was long. 

 I mean there were lots of issues; I don't 

think you need to go through all of them. But 

I am just trying to understand where are we 

overall with this. Is this going to resolve 

soon? Is this going to take a lot of time? 

It appears to me to be a number of significant 

issues to be resolved there. 

 MR. CLAWSON: Personally, just 

being the Work Group chair, I think we've got 

several issues that are going to take some 

time. John is the head for SC&A, he can kind 

of give a rough estimate of where we are at. 

It's like at almost every site we are looking 

at data integrity, and also the -- how much 

data we really have. 

 MR. MAURO: I will try to give it 

the 30-second sound bite to each of these six 

issues. 

 The first issue has to do with 

sampling plan. There is an enormous amount of 
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bioassay data from the workers, urine samples 

where they measured uranium in urine. 

 And there is a coworker model that 

has been developed by NIOSH for reconstructing 

the doses to those workers who were not 

bioassayed or inadequately bioassayed. 

 The question becomes how do we know 

that the coworker model will in fact be 

appropriately bounding for all the workers. 

We, SC&A, did a lot of work looking into this 

issue. And where we came out was an 

interesting place. Effectively we found, we 

looked at all the different buildings, all the 

different categories of workers, all the 

different time periods, and there is a lot of 

data. 

 I guess you have to get the essence 

of it. The essence of it is, are there 

workers out there who don't have bioassay data 

that there is reason to believe they may have 

experienced exposures that are higher than 

what would be assigned by the coworker model? 

 And that is really the essence of the 

question. 
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 And Jim, during the Work Group 

meeting, said, no, we will look at that. We 

will go and grab data from workers who were 

not bioassayed; it's only a small fraction. 

And we'll see whether or not there is reason 

to believe these workers who weren't monitored 

may very well have experienced exposures that 

would be underestimated because of the nature 

of their work and where they worked and when 

they worked by the coworker model. So that's 

how item one is. So the action item now is, 

and the first bullet -- I assume everyone got 

my email -- the very first bullet, that is 

with NIOSH right now. They are looking into 

that. 

 The second has to do with 

validation of the HIS-20 database. This is a 

relatively easy problem. The first one Jim 

probably has a better sense of the time 

schedule to do that. The second item is in 

SC&A's hands. The HIS-20 database is an 

electronic database that was compiled going 

from hard copy to electronic. NIOSH performed 

a very comprehensive audit using MIL-Spec 
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procedures, for sampling the hard copy to see 

how faithfully it was transferred into 

electronic copy. Got a big report out there. 

We have been mandated to review it. Our 

statistician is purely looking at, did they 

implement the MIL-Spec standard in a way and 

come to conclusions that say, yes, the data 

that was in hard copy was in fact faithfully 

transferred into electronic copy. 

 The ball is in our court. A couple 

of weeks of work. 

 Third item, recycled uranium; big 

item. Don't know, right now you saw our 

summary; we have a number of issues that we 

are concerned about. I'm not going to go into 

details. 

 There is basically a fundamental 

approach that NIOSH has adopted. Bottom line, 

100 parts per billion plutonium and 

radionuclides, and we were not able to 

independently verify that that in fact is 

bounding. And we are in the midst of 

discussion on these matters. And SC&A is 

basically through with our investigations to 
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the extent that we could, and it's really a 

bunch of questions that we have posed to 

NIOSH, and I believe to the extent to which 

those questions can be answered will be a 

subject at the next work group meeting. 

 The next item is radon breath 

analysis. We did not discuss that at the last 

meeting on the 22nd, the 23rd. We have a 

report, where we performed a review of the use 

of radon breath sampling to determine body 

burdens of radium, from workers at Fernald who 

handled radium and thorium. 

 We have a number of observations 

and findings in that report. However, that 

report has not yet been discussed at the Work 

Group. It is one of the subjects that just 

didn't make it to the table, nor into the last 

Work Group meeting. So that is still very 

much a subject for additional discussion. 

 Finally, K-65 silos, we discussed 

that at length at the last meeting. SC&A and 

NIOSH have a big difference of opinion on this 

one. In effect we believe the radon release 

rates from the silos have been underestimated 
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by at least a factor of 10, and we are in the 

midst of some technical discussion on these 

matters. Jim is looking at it, maybe has 

something new to add. But when we left the 

meeting we agreed to disagree. 

 And finally on that end the ball is 

in NIOSH's court on the radon emanation. We 

posed our questions and concerns; they have 

it. 

 The last item is in our ballpark, 

namely, there is a set of data and a coworker 

approach to reconstructing thorium-232 

inhalation rates. There is a lot of data. 

All of that data has been loaded up on the O 

drive, and NIOSH has been given -- NIOSH, I'm 

sorry, SC&A has been given the responsibility 

to look at that data, sample the data, and 

convince ourselves that in fact that data is 

of sufficient adequacy and completeness to 

allow you to reconstruct and place a plausible 

upper bound on the inhalation doses of all 

workers from thorium-232. 

 And the way we look at as always is 

by time, location and job category. So we're 
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in the process right now of looking at that 

data, and the ball is in our court to prepare 

a report to the Work Group. 

 DR. ZIEMER: A couple of questions 

here. Mark and then John. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And I knew there was 

a reason I should have looked at John's report 

before the meeting. But I think one of the 

biggest items that's an SC&A action item is 

missing on that, and maybe I'm wrong. But and 

it might be just a complete disconnect, 

because we have discussed this topic at 

length. But it is the data completeness 

question related to the individual case files. 

 In other words -- did you cover 

that in there? 

 MR. MAURO: I covered it in here, 

but I overlooked it. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, then that is 

different than the coworker models. 

 MR. MAURO: Absolutely. It's in 

the write-up, but I neglected to mention it in 

my oral presentation. 

 Yes, we are currently looking at -- 
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we have downloaded the 15 cases that we have 

already audited, during the DR process, the 15 

Fernald cases. And we are pulling another 15, 

so we have a total of 30, and we are going to 

write a report to folks about the completeness 

of the data for those 15 cases. And we feel 

that that is a very good place to get a 

snapshot, you are absolutely right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim. 

 DR. NETON: I can just offer a 

brief update to a couple of items that John 

mentioned. 

 The first one, Mark Rolfes has just 

informed me, we have competed our analysis of 

the unmonitored worked at Fernald, and out of 

something in excess of 1,000 cases we have 

identified 80 cases of workers who have no 

bioassay monitoring data, and we will be 

prepared to provide a report on the status of 

those workers and the type of jobs they 

performed, that sort of thing, at the next 

work group meeting. So indeed it is a very 

small fraction of the Fernald workforce, which 

is not surprising in light of the fact that I 
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believe there is something in the order of a 

half a million bioassay samples for uranium 

that were taken over the history of the plant. 

 The second issue relates to John's 

discussion of their belief that the radon 

emanation rates from the silos were off by an 

order of magnitude. That was not our opinion; 

that was the report that was issued by John 

Till of Radiological Assessment Corporation 

who evaluated the Fernald offsite emissions. 

It was a report that was reviewed by the 

National Academy of Sciences, and was reviewed 

by the National Academy as being 

scientifically valid and accurate. 

 SC&A has identified an interesting 

twist and analysis of the data by Hans Behling 

that we are looking into, and we will be 

prepared to report on that at the next 

meeting. 

 However, I would say that I think 

we somewhat agree that this is not necessarily 

an SEC issue, it's a matter of whether the 

doses on site are an order of magnitude higher 

or not. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: John, did you have a 

comment? 

 MR. POSTON: Not now. Jim 

answered my question. I think everybody is 

aware of the number of calculations of 

emanations from the silos. This is not 

something new. And as Jim pointed out, it's 

even been reviewed by the National Academy of 

Sciences. It sorts of begs the question, what 

are you going to do to make it any better. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Any other 

comments on Fernald? Brad, did you have an 

additional comment? 

 MR. CLAWSON: Yes, I've heard the 

Academy of Science and all these wonderful 

people and so forth, don't those things ever 

change. So many of them do change as they 

find new information where they get a new 

process. I don't want us to hang our hat on 

that, because I do agree. And I appreciate 

Jim, because I was very impressed with his 

research into this, but I think that John has 

brought forth a very interesting -- Hans and 

so forth, I thought it was very interesting. 
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 DR. NETON: I'm sorry; I didn't 

mean to imply that we are not taking their 

analysis seriously. I just wanted to put it 

in context; it's not a NIOSH-derived model. 

It's a previous model that had been thoroughly 

deeply vetted. We are looking into it. 

 MR. CLAWSON: And I want to tell 

you right up front I appreciate that, because 

I appreciate your interest into the actual 

science of this. I watched Jim really 

fervently working, and it did, it brought up 

some interesting points. 

 DR. NETON: Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Okay, 

let's go ahead. 

 MR. KATZ: Hanford. 

 DR. MELIUS: At Hanford our work 

is at a standstill now waiting for NIOSH which 

has been -- had to obtain a lot of data, 

mostly on neutron exposures, from Hanford. We 

talked about it here before. There have been 

significant delays with DOE. I think that is 

to some extent has been worked out. 

 But then secondly for NIOSH to then 
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redo their neutron exposure models. That work 

I understand is underway and at least some of 

that work is expected to be finished within 

the next month or two. Arjun and I had a call 

with Sam Glover a couple of months ago, and 

that was his estimate at that point in time. 

So Arjun and I, and it did make sense, do we 

need to take any more action on the part of 

the Work Group until that activity was 

completed. And Arjun and I plan to do a 

conference call with Sam hopefully within the 

next week or so, and sort of figure out what 

the schedule would be for NIOSH to complete 

their reports in order that the Work Group 

would have -- or SC&A would have something to 

review on this issue, and secondly then the 

Work Group could proceed. 

 I don't know if Jim or Larry have 

anything to add in terms of timing or anything 

on how that is proceeding, but I know it's 

underway and I haven't heard otherwise. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I think you have 

accurately portrayed the situation. And I 

don't have anything to add other than we are 
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very concerned about where Hanford is at and 

how much time has been expended and how much 

more time is needed. 

 It's not clear to me though that we 

have all the data yet, so I'm asking Sam, and 

I will be on the call with you next week. 

Because I need to understand exactly where 

we're at on this one. 

 DR. MELIUS: I mean it's the 

situation we thought we had before, you don't 

know until you're actually working, looking at 

what you have received and what you haven't 

received, and start to work on the actual 

model, do you have enough. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And right now we 

have hundreds of claims pended for this site 

for this reason. 

 DR. MELIUS: No, it's a serious 

issue. Well, we'll be following up and then 

reporting back at our July meeting. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you. Brad? Oh 

no, sorry, Phil. Idaho? 

 MR. SCHOFIELD: Okay, on the Idaho 

National Labs, SC&A just did a site profile 
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review on it. We will be having a meeting on 

that on June 10th. And then I'll go ahead and 

do Pinellas at the same time. On the 11th we 

will be looking at the SEC for Pinellas. We 

have had a hold up there until we were able to 

meet with DOE about some security issues, 

about what we could discuss, and I think we 

are set to go forward. 

 MR. KATZ: Any questions? Thanks 

Phil. Linde. 

 DR. ROESSLER: The Linde work 

group along with NIOSH and SC&A has completed 

the evaluation of the site profile. We 

announced that at the last meeting. With 

regard to the SEC I'll remind you that class 

was added to the SEC status. This was the 

October 1st, 1942 to the October 31st, 1947 

operating period. So what the Work Group is 

ready to address is the January 1st, 1954, 

through July 31st, 2006, the residual 

radiation period, which has qualified for 

evaluation. 

 We had hoped to get right at that 

and have a report by this meeting. But for 
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two reasons we have been delayed. SC&A have 

not completed the evaluation of the NIOSH 

report, and also the petitioner asked that we 

delay so that the petitioner has time to 

review the document. So we are now hoping to 

give a report at the July meeting. We're 

hoping we can convene the Work Group soon. 

And we are waiting now for SC&A to tell us -- 

and John, it's looking like he's saying yes -- 

to give us their evaluation of the NIOSH 

report, and then we'll get to work on that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: While we are on the 

topic of Linde Ceramics, I think it would be 

appropriate for me now to mention the letter 

from Senator Schumer of New York, a copy of 

which was placed on your table and a copy of 

which was distributed electronically to the 

Board a little over a month ago. This letter 

came to us after our last meeting. Under the 

Board's rules replies to congressional members 

have to be -- need to be approved by the 

Board. I have drafted a potential response 

which I would like to put before the group 

now. 
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 Basically Senator Schumer's letter 

as you look at it indicates that he supports 

an SEC class for the later time period which 

is currently under consideration. And he also 

mentions keeping the petitioner in the loop; 

that would be [Identifying information 

redacted]. And the response letter I put 

before you, it's a straw-man letter, basically 

it acknowledges in the first paragraph, it 

acknowledges receipt of his letter and also 

acknowledges his concerns about the SEC period 

or potential SEC coverage for the period 1954 

to 2006. It also points out that we now have 

the Evaluation Report; it was received in 

November. It has not been formally presented 

by the way; it's the one that Jim just 

mentioned. But the Board has the Evaluation 

Report; that we have passed the contractor to 

review that, and that at the request of the 

petitioner we have delayed the discussion 

until the July meeting. So basically it says 

what you just told us, Jim. 

 And then it indicates that we will 

indeed keep [Identifying information redacted] 
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apprised of progress and actions of the Work 

Group. So if it would be appropriate to have 

a motion to approve this letter or some 

version of it. 

 DR. ROESSLER: Before we do that, 

I think it might be appropriate to bring up 

one sentence in his letter that I don't think 

you have addressed. 

 In his third paragraph -- first he 

talks about agreeing to review the SEC 

petition for those who worked at Linde between 

1954 and 2006. Then he continues, he says: I 

continue to urge you to qualify the SEC 

petition for those who worked at Linde between 

1947 and 1953, and I don't think you addressed 

that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You are quite 

correct. That was an inadvertent omission. 

We can have a friendly amendment to the letter 

if it becomes a motion. 

 Dr. Melius? 

 DR. MELIUS: I was just going to 

ask for some clarification from NIOSH. Just 

the Linde petition issue. 
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 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay, we had two 

petitions, one for the residual period, and 

one for the operational period. The 

operational period we did not qualify because 

it indicated that there was no personal area 

monitoring. We had personal area monitoring 

data. We went back and forth a number of 

times with petitioner trying to get that basis 

to qualify it, and we couldn't get that. 

 Ultimately we did not qualify the 

petition. It went to the administrative 

review panel, and they concurred with our 

findings. 

 And again, so we qualified the 

residual period. The reason we qualified the 

residual period was because it was supported, 

the basis was supported, a lack of monitoring 

data for that period. But the operational 

period from '48 to '54, whatever it was, was 

not supported. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, of course, this 

Board does not qualify the petition. To 

address that I need some additional sentences, 

you are quite right. I actually overlooked 
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that. But if we had a motion to put this on 

the floor we could certainly amend it in some 

appropriate way. But I feel like we do need 

to respond to the Senator's letter, so this 

would be a starting point. We can completely 

redo it, but at least you have a straw man to 

work from. 

 MR. PRESLEY: So moved. 

 DR. ROESSLER: Second. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, it's moved and 

seconded to consider this response. Now it 

would be appropriate for someone to move to 

amend. And if necessary actually perhaps in 

the interest of time we could defer action on 

the motion until after our lunch break, so we 

don't have to wordsmith here. I'm sorry, it 

was an oversight on my part, I simply missed 

that part. 

 Is there any objection simply to 

defer action on the motion until we have a 

chance to allow someone to make an appropriate 

amendment? 

 There appears to be no objection. 

And that will also give you a little more time 
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to digest the letter. But I did want to get 

it out so you could have a look at it. 

 We will proceed. 

 MR. KATZ: Los Alamos. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Very very quick 

update. The Los Alamos Evaluation Report was 

completed and NIOSH presented on it. And 

there are a couple of areas where they are 

continuing to either to try to get additional 

data or to supplement the report; I forget how 

it was phrased. 

 In the meantime SC&A has been 

tasked to look at the Evaluation Report, and 

I've talked to them. And they are getting 

underway with their Evaluation Report review, 

along with the -- their evaluation process for 

any full review of an SEC Evaluation Report. 

That would include interviews and the things 

they do along with the actual written reports. 

 Of course, I guess, I cautioned 

SC&A that if there are these areas that are 

sort of held in ongoing research, I don't want 

to get into this situation where SC&A is 

reviewing something that is being modified by 
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NIOSH, so they are going to kind of put holds 

on those items that continued research is 

ongoing. 

 Once I'll be in touch with NIOSH as 

well as SC&A, once we're at a point where we 

have enough to bring to a work group, I will 

schedule a work group meeting. 

 MR. KATZ: Any questions? 

 Mound. 

 MS. BEACH: At this time Mound has 

a work group scheduled for a two day meeting 

for May 27th and the 28th. We do have a 

number of topics to discuss in those two days. 

 It's looking like it's going to be a very 

full two day schedule at this point. We are 

going to cover White Papers from both SC&A and 

NIOSH, some of those include neutron doses, 

high-fired Pu-238, radon, quite a list. I 

believe everybody got the one-page brief. And 

that is all I'll say at this point. Hopefully 

we will be able to close a couple of the items 

during that work group meeting and get to the 

bottom of some of these during that timeframe. 

Thank you. 
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 MR. KATZ: Any questions? 

 Okay, and then NTS has discussed 

already, reported. And Pantex. 

 MR. CLAWSON: At this time the 

Pantex work group has not met yet. We have 

been trying to do some security issues up 

front before we get into it. One of our big 

issues is how to be able to take care of this 

classified information in a public setting. 

 We have made one trip to Amarillo 

where we did try to take care of some of these 

issues, but due to things beyond our control 

we weren't able to do that. We were able to 

speak with petitioners and learn a little bit 

more information. We have tomorrow scheduled 

a security briefing with Pantex, and DOE 

headquarters personnel, to be able to deal 

with this. SC&A has issued their report. We 

are still waiting for a report back from NIOSH 

on their SC&A report. At this time we don't 

have a work group scheduled yet. 

 MR. KATZ: Questions? 

 DR. MELIUS: Just a quick 

question, I think you've done this, but just 
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for the record, there were some issues raised 

by the petitioners last night about 

communication and being unaware of activities 

of the Work Group and so forth. And I believe 

you have talked to them, but if you just want 

to update us. I just want to make sure that 

they are aware of what is going on and 

understand and will be going forward. 

 MR. CLAWSON: One of the 

petitioners I was given her email, and so I 

let her know that I was the Work Group chair 

and this is what is a little bit troublesome 

to me is that no notification went out to 

them. So and I know that there are 

disconnects and so forth like that. And I 

just wanted to -- we will take that and go on 

from there. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Larry. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I spoke with 

[Identifying information redacted] last night, 

and she had been contacted. She admitted that 

she had been contacted about the Redondo Beach 

meeting. She admitted that she had been 

contacted and consulted about the petition in 
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the qualification process. But she failed to 

recognize that that is part of the interaction 

that we have with folks. 

 It is our responsibility, I feel, 

to make sure that through our SEC counselor 

that we contact these petitioners and that 

they are notified as to when a work group 

meeting is going to be held. So that is on 

us, I feel, and we have been doing that. 

 And I took a little issue with 

[Identifying information redacted] last night 

about the fact that she articulated that she 

had not been contacted. But she has. And she 

told us she could not be available for the 

Redondo Beach meeting. She would prefer that 

the meeting was held here, of course. It was 

explained to her at the time that the Board 

set the agenda on where they hold their 

meetings, and that they can't hold meetings at 

every location where there is an SEC petition 

that is going to be discussed at that point in 

time. She understood that; she accepted that 

last night. 

 So I just wanted for the record, we 
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think we have an obligation to talk to the 

petitioners, and we do. And we will make sure 

that the petitioners know about the Work Group 

meetings, when you schedule it. Mr. Wiley is 

interested in knowing when this work group 

meeting gets scheduled, and I'll make sure 

that he knows. 

 DR. CLAWSON: And Larry, that was 

one of the questions that I was kind of 

wondering about, whether it fell into worker 

outreach or what. It's like having this 

meeting here in Amarillo, many of the people 

last night were saying that the reason they 

found out about it was because it was on the 

news. And I thought -- and this may be my 

mistake -- but I thought that when we had 

petitioners like Pantex or so forth like that, 

be it they had been not compensated or 

whatever, that they were notified of the 

meetings and so forth like that in the area. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Let's be clear. We 

do send letters to all active claimants. We 

told them about this meeting. They have a 

letter. We told them who to contact if they 
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wanted more information about the meeting. 

Laurie contacted the SEC petitioners that had 

a stake or interest in this meeting, and told 

them what was on the agenda. And since it's 

in Amarillo, she called and talked to 

[Identifying information redacted]. The Board 

chair wants to know which petitioner is going 

to be available for which session, and that's 

part of Laurie's job is to feed that 

information to the Board chair so he knows who 

is going to be available and when. And so we 

are making those things happen. I'm sorry if 

people on the outside feel that we need to do 

a better job, and we will try. But I don't 

know how much more I can do. 

 DR. CLAWSON: And we understand 

that. It's just like anything, when anybody 

makes a comment about us we try to follow up. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: As I do too, you see 

me pull them out and see if I can find out 

what the root cause is because I want to cure 

it. And in this instance all I can say is, we 

made the contact. We will continue to try to 

improve and make more -- we sent out a media 
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announcement, we put it in what we thought, we 

were told, would be the right local media to 

present that in. We talked to reporters 

before we came down here. 

 You saw me yesterday. I understand 

my face on the TV gets people in the room. I 

don't know why. Maybe they want to take a 

poke at me. But you know we are happy to do 

that, and we want to make sure folks know that 

you guys are meeting. So we are trying to do 

all of those things. If you have ideas or 

thoughts on where we can improve let me know. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Robert. 

 MR. PRESLEY: It was in the 

newspaper. We were here a couple of days 

early, and we saw it in the newspaper. They 

had a big article in the newspaper about the 

meeting. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We can proceed. 

 MR. KATZ: Rocky Flats. 

 MR. GRIFFON: The Rocky Flats work 

group hasn't met, and one item that is sort of 

outstanding on the Work Group's agenda is the 

Ruttenber Database. Larry gave an update 
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yesterday on that. And all I would ask is 

that once the NIOSH report is finalized that 

they bring it to the Work Group. I did commit 

to the petitioners and congressional staffers 

that we would discuss it in the Work Group. 

So once that product is final we will call a 

work group meeting, either by phone or in 

person, and look at that, look at what's 

resolved there, and we may or may not have to 

go further than that. 

 We haven't asked SC&A to look at 

that database yet, but it is on the O drive. 

I've tried to familiarize myself with it, but 

I haven't gone further than that. I might ask 

SC&A to do the same before our work group 

meeting certainly. We'd ask them to look at 

NIOSH's report, but that is down the line. So 

I guess that is what we are waiting for that 

product, and I understand it's pretty close to 

being ready. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Larry? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Just to be clear on 

the process we intended to send the report to 

the whole board, and you guys in the Work 
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Group decide what you are going to do with it. 

 But we were going to give the whole board the 

chance to review the whole report. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yes, distribution is 

fine. Yes, send it to the whole Board, that 

is fine. I just wanted to honor my agreement 

to have a work group discussion of it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 We are going to go ahead and take 

our lunch recess at this point. We are past 

the appointed hour. I would like to encourage 

us to be back by the appointed time. That 

leaves us one hour and 15 minutes. Do we need 

that long? Okay, I guess we do. 

 Okay, we will recess for lunch. 

Return promptly so we can start at 1:30. 

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off 

the record at 12:17 p.m. and 

resumed at 1:30 p.m.) 

 DR. ZIEMER: We are ready to 

resume our deliberations. Just for the record 

Dr. Lockey had to leave, so -- but of course 

we still have a quorum so we are able to 

proceed. 
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 We are going to finish up the Work 

Group reports; there's only a couple left to 

do. Then we will move immediately to 

discussion of the security issues that have 

been raised earlier by Dr. Melius, and we want 

to have those while we still have the DOE 

staff people with us this afternoon. 

 So Ted, where are we on the Work 

Groups? 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, we are up to Santa 

Susana. I don't know, Mike, if there is 

anything to add? I don't think so. Then 

Savannah River Site. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Yes, Savannah River 

is in a similar situation as LANL that I 

reported earlier, that the Evaluation Report 

was presented by NIOSH. And there are a 

couple of areas that are sort of reserved for 

further research, specifically the issues of 

thorium especially in the early years; pre1960, I believe. And then neutron dose 

reconstructions, how they are going to 

approach neutron dose reconstructions. 

 I've asked -- and we have tasked 
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SC&A with reviewing the Evaluation Report. 

Same sort of process as LANL, review the 

Evaluation Report, conduct interviews that you 

would normally do for the follow up for our 

evaluation process, but in these areas where 

NIOSH says they're still developing it doesn't 

make sense to -- for SC&A to spend resources 

in those areas obviously. 

 One concern I just wanted to raise, 

I got an update from Tim Taulbee on the status 

sort of in preparation for this meeting. And 

in his email he indicated to me that due to 

the quote perceived low priority of this 

Savannah River petition resources have been 

pulled. So he wasn't sure how quickly these 

coworker models and other things would be 

developed. 

 He also put in here that data 

access was a challenge. There was a slow 

down--and this might have been the site 

resource issue. So I don't know if NIOSH can 

speak to either one of these. I mean if it is 

perceived that it is a low priority from the 

Board, I don't think it's true. I haven't had 
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a work group meeting, but it's only because we 

don't have these things completed. And I just 

wanted to make sure that the resources are 

being dedicated to this so we can finish up. 

 DR. NETON: I think they are. I 

saw Tim's email as well, and have not had a 

chance to talk to him about it. I am not sure 

where that phrase is coming from, low priority 

of this project; I don't view it that way. 

 MR. RUTHERFORD: Actually, Stu had 

said he had talked to you, and this is -- I'm 

just relaying how the priorities kind of 

shifted a little bit. Stu had indicated that 

he had talked to you; that you weren't in a 

big hurry at the time because there were so 

many other things on the plate right now you 

weren't in a big hurry to convene that work 

group. 

 Now if that was misinterpreted, 

that's no problem. One of the things that we 

have done is, some of the resources that we 

are working on, the data capture and the data 

coding, had shifted to the Hanford to close 

out a couple of those issues, since Hanford 
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has been on an out for quite some time. So we 

shifted those resources to lock down a couple 

of those things, and then that would only 

delay the work at Savannah River for a couple 

of weeks. 

 So I don't think there is a huge 

delay. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And it might have 

been. I mean I did talk to Stu; this was 

probably at a DR Subcommittee meeting or 

something. But I expressed the concern that 

from the Board's standpoint, that's where it's 

a little bit of a disconnect, but from the 

Board's standpoint I think I was talking about 

we need to prioritize, because I feel like we 

come back to work groups and we rehash issues 

that we have been to at the last meeting, 

because they are so far apart we have to sort 

of review. And I was just talking that maybe 

we should prioritize, Fernald and Mound and 

some other ones were probably furthest along 

and we should probably try to close them out. 

 But that wasn't any official board 

position, and I would hope it wouldn't in 
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anyway tell NIOSH to hold off on doing this 

work. So anyway. 

 MR. KATZ: SEC Work Group. 

 DR. MELIUS: Our Work Group has 

not met. We should be setting up a meeting 

shortly. SC&A just finished up a week or two 

ago on a response to NIOSH on the Dow site. 

Hopefully we are making progress on 

[Identifying information redacted] FOI 

requests and other information requests, and 

think it will be timely there. 

 We also at the same meeting would 

need to deal with the 250-day issue. We need 

to meet. But I think now with the -- 

relatively shortly should be the time for 

that. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay, and I can just -- 

on the question of the Dow, the FOIA, I know 

the last bits there were a couple of documents 

that DOE needed to review, because they had 

never been reviewed -- the DOE documents had 

never been reviewed under the current 

clearance process, and they have been reviewed 

just recently. So you should be getting the 
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last bit of that, which is great. 

 TBD 6000. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The TBD 6000/6001 

work group met on March 11th, and the main 

focus there is on Appendix BB, which is 

basically General Steel Industries. 

 We are dealing with the Landauer 

film badge data. SC&A has provided some 

input, and we've had some input from 

[Identifying information redacted], and NIOSH 

is reviewing that data, and we still have some 

issues to resolve. But many of the issues at 

General Steel revolved around the film badge 

data as well as exposure to unbadged people. 

 So we are still dealing with those issues. 

We will be meeting again very soon. 

 MR. KATZ: That concludes I think 

-- oh no, I'm sorry, Worker Outreach, Mike. 

 MR. GIBSON: Oh, nothing new to 

add other than we have a work group meeting 

scheduled June 16th in Cincinnati. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay, and I left out -- 

skipping here -- Surrogate Data, too, which is 

also -- 
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 DR. MELIUS: You would think that 

Surrogate Data would have no information -- 

only to report from other committees. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Can I just ask a 

question on the worker outreach before we go 

into surrogate data? 

 On worker outreach, I asked this 

question of Mike during one of our breaks, but 

from what I understand, there used to be at 

least on the O drive a database with all the 

comments and stuff. Can someone give me an 

update on that? I don't seem to find the 

database on the O drive that has the collected 

comments from all these worker outreach 

meetings. I thought that existed, and then I 

heard there was an updated version of it or 

something. Has anybody -- maybe you can get 

an answer back to us or whatever. 

 And sort of as a -- maybe -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: The whisper database 

doesn't exist anymore; it's gone. And it's 

been consumed in another ORAU software 

program. I don't know if it's on the O drive 

or not. The ATL outreach efforts that are 
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summarized in summary minutes of those 

interactions are on the website. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Well, that's all 

fine and good, but is there a database? That's 

what I'm asking. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: There is. I don't 

know if it's on the O drive. I don't know 

where it's at. I'll have to get that info for 

you. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Because part of the 

question is to have it in the database to see 

if there are similar comments, and also to see 

what happens with these comments. Those are 

some of the issues we have. So I was just 

wondering. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, there is a 

tracking system. That's what you want to see; 

that's what you're asking for. The tracking 

system, I'm sure you all have been given that, 

but we will reissue that to you. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Maybe I just don't 

know where it is. It might be that I'm not 

finding it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim. 
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 DR. MELIUS: Does this database 

include comments that people submit in the 

public comment periods at the Board meetings? 

 I thought at one point ORAU had been tasked 

to collect that information and provide some 

sort of record, possibly -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: No, ORAU had not 

been tasked to do that. ORAU was at one point 

in time, on their own initiative, they were 

tracking those kind of things for their own 

management of their other tasks. And that got 

generated into this whisper database that was 

just unsearchable and unusable. It was an 

application that we did not ask for. The 

government doesn't hire contractors to develop 

these applications; we want to give them an 

application. So we couldn't accept that 

application. 

 The Board public comment period is 

only kept in the transcript record at this 

time. There is no concerted effort to tease 

out from board public comments issues that 

need to be followed up on. We follow up on 

those, you see me do it here at the meetings. 
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 It's not a formal documented process. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And just a related 

question, it's maybe a little off topic, but 

there also exists at least I understand there 

exists a questionnaire database that has all 

the CATI questionnaires in it. Is that on the 

O drive? I haven't been able to find that 

either. Maybe it doesn't exist? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: CATIs are kept 

within the claim files. So each claim file 

has a CATI for every claimant that is 

interviewed. There is no compilation of 

those, and I'm not going there because DOE 

wants to review every one of those, and I'm 

not going to let them, flat out. I'm just 

going to be that candid about it. No. If 

they were in a compilation they would have 

access to them. If they are contained within 

the individual specific claim file, we've 

convinced them that they don't need a security 

review. 

 MR. GRIFFON: Oh, I see. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay? This is one 

of the things I fought hard for, and I'm not 
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willing to relinquish, and I think rightfully 

so for the claimants. 

 MR. GRIFFON: I understood it 

existed, so I must have misunderstood that. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Unless I am speaking 

out of my hat. The CATIs are kept within the 

claim files. That's where you are going to 

find them. You won't find a compilation of 

those in a relational, searchable database. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay then Surrogate. 

 DR. MELIUS: At last. 

 The Surrogate Data Work Group -- 

I'll remember this next time -- Surrogate Data 

Work Group did meet. We had a little 

difficulty organizing a meeting just because 

of everyone's calendar and other conflicts, 

and Dr. Lockey was out of the country for an 

extended period. So we postponed trying to 

deal with sort of the general criteria issues 

related to the use of surrogate data until we 

had a full work group meeting or at least a 

more complete work group meeting, more people 

definitely would going to be available. 

 We did spend time reviewing the 
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Texas City Chemical's SEC because that is 

based on largely on surrogate data, and heard 

from the petitioners about any issues they 

raised; heard from both NIOSH and SC&A on the 

status of their review on it. 

 And my understanding, which has 

been somewhat confused by LaVon's report 

today. So I'll ask for an update. But there 

 -- and then I can -- maybe after this we can 

talk more about where we go from here. But 

NIOSH has, after the Evaluation Report was 

received, had obtained some additional 

information from DOE about the site. And that 

has never been incorporated into an Evaluation 

Report, and would need to be because it could 

potentially change the current NIOSH 

evaluation and what would happen to the site 

significantly. 

 SC&A has never had the opportunity 

to review that information also, so it's not 

incorporated into SC&A's review of the 

Evaluation Report. The Evaluation Report was 

issued in December or January of '08 I 

believe. The SC&A report in July of '08. Now 
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what I'm a little confused on is where NIOSH 

is in terms of planning to do a revised 

Evaluation Report. At the Work Group meeting 

we were told that they wanted to wait until 

after the Blockson issue was addressed, 

because that is also an issue that would come 

up with Texas City. And then LaVon seemed to 

imply in his report that no, they were going 

to go ahead and do the revised Evaluation 

Report. 

 Now maybe I misheard or whatever, 

but if someone could just provide an update. 

 MR. RUTHERFORD: I-- I don't know 

how I came across it, but we are -- we all are 

waiting on the radon issue to be resolved as 

well. Now there is additional documentation 

that we have to update the Evaluation Report 

to include that documentation. But finalizing 

that radon model still is on the plate if I'm 

correct. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay, because one of 

the difficulties we've had here, and I'm not 

sure how it occurred, but the information that 

was received from DOE if I understand 
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correctly has only recently been made 

available to the Board. The letter, if I 

understand this right, was put on the O drive, 

but the actual information from DOE wasn't -- 

I'm not even sure it still has, so SC&A was 

not aware of it. It's even more confusing, 

Jim did mention -- Jim Neton did mention it in 

his I believe April 2008 presentation to the 

Board, though reviewing the transcript I 

became even more confused. 

 DR. NETON: Yes, it's true. I 

mentioned the existence of those new data, the 

new references, during my presentation of the 

Evaluation Report in Tampa I believe is where 

that was. And it is true that we posted the 

letter from the Department of Energy, the 

transmittal letter which included the 

attachments which were those documents. And 

for some reason we only -- there was a mix-up 

within our office -- we only posted the letter 

and not the attachments that went along on the 

O drive. That has since been rectified, and 

all the documents are on the O drive, and I 

think an email went out to all the working 
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group members at least indicating where they 

are located on the O drive, and SC&A was also 

copied on that email. So everything is out 

there now in the open, and we are starting to 

move forward with the revision of the ER based 

on that new information. 

 But as LaVon suggested, we do feel 

it's important for a complete document to have 

some approach for the radon reconstruction 

which would be not dissimilar to what we are 

proposing for Blockson Chemical. 

 DR. MELIUS: So a couple of things 

follow from this. One is, I think it would be 

-- and I haven't talked this over with other 

work group members -- but I think it would be 

helpful if SC&A reviewed the new information, 

at least became familiar with it, even though 

it's not in an Evaluation Report yet, I think 

it'd be helpful in our overall thinking about 

how to proceed. It's out there, and they 

actually commented on this issue in their 

report; it has something to do with how much 

information is available regarding production 

periods at this pilot facility. 
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 So if the other members -- if 

that's okay with the other members of the Work 

Group I'd like to proceed with that. I don't 

think it's a big task, but it'd be worth 

doing. 

 Secondly I think it does sort of 

change how we've been approaching the overall 

surrogate data issue. We had been hoping to 

use some examples such as Texas City as one 

where -- as an example of surrogate data. I 

think the problem is to use the current Texas 

City Evaluation Report and look at that in 

terms of surrogate data doesn't make sense, 

because it's really not a complete report, 

until we get the new information that was 

added to it. 

 And I think a lot of the judgments 

that are made on the use of surrogate data 

depends on how much information is available 

on a site. And the less information, in some 

sense, the less -- the more justification one 

needs for using surrogate data, or how do you 

tie the surrogate data to the site is limited 

by that. So I don't think that makes sense 
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going forward. 

 So one approach, I think the 

surrogate data working group will need to meet 

again. We need to talk about the general 

criteria, perhaps also think of some other 

approaches that we can use to come up with 

some examples. I'm reluctant to use Bethlehem 

given our long history with that, but at some 

point we also need to deal with that site so I 

don't want to put it off too long. 

 But I think we first need a meeting 

to talk about the general criteria, and then 

we'll move from there. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. I'm not 

sure whether we need formal tasking on what 

you suggested. It's not a great effort, but 

I'll ask Ted, do we need to task SC&A on that 

issue. 

 MR. KATZ: I think they are so 

tasked. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Under the existing 

task you are saying? 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, fine, I just 
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wanted to make sure. I think that completes 

our work group reports. 

 I'd like to have us move now to the 

-- 

 DR. MELIUS: Can I make one other 

comment? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, you are eating 

into your security time. 

 DR. MELIUS: I know, but this 

includes sort of self criticism also. But I 

think it also points out the need to do at 

least periodic communication between work 

group chairs, SC&A and NIOSH on where things 

stand. Because this went on -- everybody 

thinking it was on the O drive. Everybody at 

NIOSH thinking they had told people about it, 

et cetera. And I think if we had done what we 

are doing for example like at Hanford trying 

to do at least, even when there are delays, 

some periodic quick technical calls, whatever 

you want to call them, just to keep updated, I 

think it would have been better for all of us. 

 And I'm not faulting anybody per 

se. All of us I think are equally guilty in 
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this. But it's a difficult situation and I 

think we should try to avoid it in the future. 

 When there are these things we sort of delay 

ourselves thinking we are waiting for 

something else to happen. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Right, and SC&A is 

before each meeting has been preparing a kind 

of summary of where we are on things. I don't 

know to what extent that would cover some of 

your concerns, but nonetheless it's a good 

suggestion. 

 MR. MAURO: A couple of 

observations. The ground rules we've been 

working on is, once we deliver a work product 

to the Board, we stop all work until the Work 

Group forms or until the Work Group gives us 

direction. For example this action item 

related to following up on Texas City, that 

would not be something we would automatically 

do until the Work Group told us. So for all 

intents and purpose, we have just been given 

that mission. 

 The second item you had mentioned -

- I just lost my train of thought. 
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 DR. ZIEMER: The summary? 

 MR. MAURO: The summary material. 

 When I prepare the summary material, I 

usually limit my -- for example in this 

particular meeting I limited it to Mound, 

Fernald and NTS. It's basically a judgment 

call when there has been a lot of activity, 

lots of work group meetings, lots of White 

Papers going back and forth, lots of direction 

given, I will submit a summary on that. I 

don't submit a summary on everything. 

 And it's really right now a 

judgment that I make. However if you feel 

that a summary of that nature is appropriate 

for all active work groups certainly we could 

do that also, probably a lot briefer than the 

ones I send. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I would say for 

now we will put the burden on the Work Group 

chairs to make sure the coordination is 

carried out. They can sort of monitor their 

own work groups. I don't see the need to task 

SC&A at this time with additional things. I 

think Jim has pointed out the potential 
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problem we have of thinking that someone else 

is doing something. So I guess right now it 

would just behoove the chairs to continue to 

track with their contact, or both contacts, 

SC&A and the NIOSH contact, and make sure that 

things are on track. Thank you. 

 MR. KATZ: And can I just add to 

that? And I'd encourage all the chairs to 

copy me when you are doing that, these 

communications, because then I can sort of 

help out in the tracking process. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Now let's move to the 

issue of security, particularly with respect 

to the issues that Dr. Melius raised earlier 

in the meeting. 

 DR. ZIEMER: As I've thought 

about this and others have probably thought 

about it too, it seemed to me that to get 

underway we need to identify the kinds of 

issues that would arise. And I think Jim, you 

sort of delineated some of them, somewhat 

broadly, but in certain cases with more 

specificity. And think about what kind of 

problems could arise with respect to the 
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handling of classified information. For 

example, to point out an example, how can the 

Work Group function if they are dealing with 

classified material? Or how does the Board 

function if there is classified material 

involved? How do we involve the petitioners 

which normally have free access to our work 

group meetings and so on? 

 So one of the things we need to do 

is identify those potential problems. It may 

be that we don't have a full grasp of what 

kind of problems could arise until we actually 

get into it, but certainly the DOE folks here 

and others who have been dealing with the 

classified material can help us define that, 

and also I think I'd like to get a feeling for 

whether or not we are going to need to think 

about having a subset, a work group, look in 

greater detail than we might be able to get 

into at this meeting or at a regular board 

meeting in terms of what the issues are, and 

how one might deal with them. 

 Are there some policy things that 

need to be determined in terms of whether or 
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not we will have to meet full disclosure of 

information to the full board in order to make 

decisions on, for example, SECs? 

 So with those kinds of background 

comments, Ted, you have some additional ones, 

and then we'll get some others after that. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, just to preface 

this discussion, let me just explain a little 

bit about at least what has come up to this 

point with my involvement. As has been 

mentioned there's been issues with Pantex, 

with Pinellas, with a few sites where we have 

sensitive information and concerns about this. 

 And what we have done so far, we 

have not -- we have not had working group 

meetings regarding those sites, regarding 

those issues. But what we have done is sent 

members of the Working Group as well as 

members of the SC&A staff and members of OCAS 

to meet with the security experts at DOE 

responsible for those facilities to have 

serious discussions not about any 

deliberations with respect to the Board on the 

petitions or what have you, the site profile, 
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what have you, per se, but only to have 

discussions about process in terms of how can 

we have the discussions that we need to have 

as a working group while maintaining 

protection of classified and sensitive 

information. And they have been -- so they've 

been sort of explaining to the DOE security 

people this is the nature of information that 

we really need to have debates about on the 

Board to be able to come to understanding 

about what our position is with respect to 

this petitioner site profile. And then giving 

it -- giving DOE with that understanding an 

ability to give them guidance as to how can 

you present this information without it posing 

security problems. And that -- so that has 

been the full nature of the interactions with 

DOE as I understand it, at least in terms of 

the guidance I've given them in terms of 

having these meetings with them, so that they 

could pave the way for having -- because the 

goal is certainly to have work group meetings 

and board meetings where everything that needs 

to be discussed is discussed in the open, not 
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a closed classified meeting which legally is 

possible, but that is not our aim on this 

board to have anything behind the curtain in 

effect that has to be debated and discussed to 

come to a conclusion. So that is where we are 

coming from at least, and that's what's 

happened to date. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Phil, did you have a 

comment at this point? 

 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yes. Joe 

Fitzgerald, who was along with Brad and Bob 

and Josie, attended the meeting in D.C. with 

the security people. And they gave us kind of 

general guidelines, what we can and cannot say 

and do. It is going to have an impact on 

several of the sites. Because there were 

several things, they gave us more leeway than 

we had before. But we still -- there are some 

things that we just will not be able to 

discuss except in very generic terms. But -- 

I don't know if everybody on the Board got his 

notes from that meeting which are pretty good. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, maybe we could 

hear from NIOSH and also DOE if you have some 
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comments for us at this point would be good 

also. Larry. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: It is important for 

the Board to be comfortable in understanding 

what information is behind the curtain. But I 

think we want you to understand that we see it 

starting with our work in researching whatever 

the issue is, developing the site profile, 

evaluating a petition and understanding what 

it is we can say about it, what we can't say 

about it. 

 So when we bring something to the 

table, our goal is that it -- unlike I think 

we learned out lesson in the Iowa experience. 

 We are not going to come to this board with a 

proposal on how we are going to handle 

something that we can't talk about in public. 

 I can't say it any clearer than that. We 

are going to bring something that we can talk 

about in public. 

 That doesn't mean that there might 

be information that is behind that that the 

Board wants to become familiar with and 

understand. But our goal is to bring 
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something to the table that has not been 

classified, not in any way sensitive 

information. 

 In our discussion in Germantown we 

talked about, I talked about the fact that 

some of the information that was of concern 

for that day was not necessarily an SEC issue 

in our mind but really an implementation issue 

of within a site profile, and how we implement 

that, and the Board would need to see that, 

and we would perhaps say how we were going to 

do X differently at different sites, because 

of the constraints in classification at 

different sites. 

 But it is still our goal not to 

bring anything to the Board that can't be 

discussed in public. But I understand and I 

appreciate the Board's interest to be 

comfortable in knowing what is behind that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Greg or Gina, do you 

have any comments at this point? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Greg. 

 MR. LEWIS: Sure, thank you, Paul. 

 I would say we have general 
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comments. We agree with what Larry said as 

far as the history and what we have done to 

get here. And we have the same goal. We want 

to allow you to discuss the things that you 

need to discuss to be able to make your 

decisions and we'd like to be able to discuss 

it without getting into territory that can't 

be aired in public, and there are a number of 

tools that we can provide to do that, both 

these briefings that give you some guidelines 

about what to say. We also review documents, 

if there are ever statements you'd like to 

prepare we can review that, specifically 

language-wise to get a very detailed specific 

statement that you can read in front of the 

public. 

 So there are a number of different 

tools that we are prepared to provide, and we 

are willing to work with you to get the 

information you need in the manner that you 

can use it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Larry, additional 

comment? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I think it is 
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important to note for the record that the 

Board and SC&A have more Q-cleared people than 

ORAU and NIOSH/OCAS have. And I just think 

that is important to put on the record so that 

folks in the audience and folks in the public 

understand that you are taking this serious. 

We understand how serious you are taking it. 

But there are more cleared people on this 

Board and in SC&A than there are at OCAS and 

ORAU collectively. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The issue is not 

going to be access to the information, it's 

going to be how we are able to deal with it in 

a public forum in a manner that provides the 

proper protection yet is sufficiently 

transparent so that all Board members and all 

members of the public have some level of 

confidence in how the material is handled and 

how decisions are made. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Wanda Munn, then Dr. 

Melius. 

 MS. MUNN: Doesn't our concern 

here really at the base become whether or not 

any of these sites have such inadequate 
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bioassay and dosimetry data that we have to 

use extraordinary methods of dose 

reconstruction? At base isn't the question 

whether we have adequate personnel records for 

these? 

 DR. ZIEMER: I guess you are 

asking do we need to go to process and source 

term information that might jeopardize the 

classification issues. I don't know the 

answer to that. Is that the question? 

 MS. MUNN: Well, that's almost the 

question but not quite. The real question is, 

are we certain to begin with that the sites we 

are concerned with do not have adequate 

personnel data for us to make the dose 

reconstructions? Because if the records exist 

then the number of secure meetings or secure 

documents that we might have to see might be 

very small. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I don't know that we 

know the answer to that. But in almost every 

case, even where there is a plethora of 

dosimetry data there seems to always be a 

subset where some sort of cohort or coworker 
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dataset or other estimating methods have to be 

used. 

 Larry. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I think the answer -

- I would frame it as a slightly different 

question. It does go back to the touchstone 

for an SEC situation: can we effectively bound 

dose. Or more precisely estimate dose. And 

so when we get into that for an SEC question, 

are there things that weren't monitored or 

aspects of the process that yielded exposure 

or dose that can't be accounted for in the 

monitoring process? 

 And if we've got to speak about 

that in a classified setting, I'm telling you 

we are not going to come to the table with 

that. To me, I'm going to say that's an 

83.14, we're just done. We can't talk about 

it in public; we're just done. Okay? But 

that doesn't cure your problem, because there 

are situations, we can come to the Board and 

we can say, we can effectively bound the dose 

for this site, for that issue. And we'll be 

using words that we have been able and 
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approved to use that won't violate national 

security, but there will be information behind 

that that you may want to see, individual 

board members may want to see. 

 Does that help? Yes, it does. The 

touchstone here is, can we effectively bound 

dose. Can we sufficiently reconstruct dose? 

And if we get into situations like we 

attempted to do at Iowa, which was not a well 

designed or a well envisioned modeling effort, 

I'll give you that. We missed the boat there. 

 We don't want to come to this table and say, 

here's the way we have modeled that dose, but 

we can't tell you what the parameters are 

because they are classified. We are not going 

to do that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim. 

 DR. MELIUS: I actually agree with 

both Wanda and Larry, and I think the issue is 

not going to come up if we just simply accept 

what NIOSH has proposed. But when we have 

questions about it, and -- or when the 

claimants or petitioners have questions about 

it. 
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 And I think, thinking back to last 

night, I think we heard lots of issues that 

were process and procedural issues, and so 

forth, at Pantex, that the claimants and 

petitioners were concerned about and that they 

raised. 

 And I question whether we are going 

to be able to handle those in the same manner 

that we handle them now. Again it's all well 

intended, and I think it is necessary to do to 

try to see what we can talk about and so 

forth. But not everybody on the Board is Qcleared, not everybody in the public 

petitioners are Q-cleared, and we have not 

operated in a Q-cleared setting for the 

actions and activities of the Board. And that 

would be a major change in the Board and how 

the Board's activities were perceived, because 

people, petitioners and so forth, are very 

skeptical of this program, and very concerned 

about it, as we heard at length last night. 

 And I just don't see a very good 

way of doing this. And I see us very quickly 

on Pantex or one of these other sites running 
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into a situation here I ask a question or 

somebody else on the Board asks a question 

saying, okay, show me, why is this? Or why 

are you proposing this way? Or what about 

this? Or trying to link something that a 

petitioner or a claimant said to understand it 

in the context of what's being proposed. And 

that is going to raise a security issue. Then 

what are we going to do? And am I going to 

feel comfortable -- you say, I'm sorry, we 

can't talk about that. Or two or three of us 

have to go off in a closed room and talk about 

that and come back and say whatever. I think 

that -- certainly it's a major change in the 

program, and I think we have to decide how far 

we want to go one doing that, and also what 

level of resources we are going to spend in 

doing that. Because we could spend an awful 

lot of time trying to figure this out and 

still might not get a resolution. We already 

have enough problems resolving issues on SEC 

evaluations without adding another problem to 

that list, and to that. At one point we also, 

and I think I hear Larry talking differently 
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now on behalf of NIOSH, but at one point we 

were told that security could not be the basis 

for making something an SEC. That was sort of 

a mysterious legal opinion that we never could 

get much follow up on. But I think that is 

still relevant, basically relevant to how we 

should have to decide how to proceed here and 

so forth. But I just am very skeptical that 

we are going to be able to move forward on a 

site like Pantex or some of these other sites 

where it seems the security issue is also the 

key issue related to the Special Exposure 

Cohort for that evaluation. And it's a 

problem. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other 

comments? Ted? 

 MR. KATZ: I would just suggest, I 

appreciate fully what you said, Jim. I guess 

I would just propose that we give this -- now 

that there are several work groups that are 

sort of on the brink of this, of sort of 

trying to go forward this way, that we give it 

a run for its money, and if we -- when we 

actually bang our nose up against the wall if 
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we do, we can then evaluate how do we deal 

with this. 

 But I think it's hard to deal with 

it in the abstract, not actually knowing 

exactly whether these problems can actually be 

mechanically fixed a piece at a time as they 

occur, or whether we do really run into a 

situation where we can't operate with 

transparency the way we want to. 

 DR. MELIUS: And I think we 

already have an example, which is Pantex, 

which is already causing problems. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I think it's 

appropriate for the Board to call attention to 

this, but it's not a change. This is not a 

change. We have been operating like this; you 

just didn't realize it. We have not brought 

anything to the table that you had brought 

question on that resulted in going behind the 

screen. So we have done effectively what I 

have been relating to you as our goal. But 

you are right, Dr. Melius, in the example of 

Pantex, we are dealing with a whole other 

kettle of fish. And it could go awry, and so 
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I think it's good to call attention to it. 

But I just want you to understand, there is no 

change. We have been -- at NIOSH we have been 

operating this way to bring to the table a 

nonsensitive but sensible--I hope--approach on 

how we are going to handle the issue. If we 

can't do that, then we are going to add a 

class. I am not going to bring something to 

the table that I can't talk about in public. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Additional comments? 

You would have to wait until the public 

comment period, sir, sorry. 

 Ted has suggested that -- sort of 

pragmatically, that we face the issue or 

issues as they come with eyes wide open I 

guess or something like that. 

 I'm struggling in my own mind as to 

whether or not we could effectively develop 

any kind of policy in the abstract, not 

knowing exactly the nature of the hurdles that 

we would come to. 

 Larry, I guess what you are saying, 

and you have said that Pantex is a new kettle 

of fish and perhaps the security issues will 
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be more salient here than they were in other 

places, or more impinging on what we do that 

would I guess remain to be seen. But if at 

some point, even though one could discuss in 

open meeting how general approaches, if in 

fact board members, or members of the public 

could not gain information on how, for 

example, the coworker model would be either 

developed or applied or some sort of important 

parameter of dose reconstruction, are you 

telling us then that NIOSH would default to a 

position of saying that because we cannot 

disclose the needed information we would have 

to then defer to an 83.14? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I think that 

is the worst case scenario. I am not saying 

that is going to be the rule. I think 

actually that will probably be the exception. 

 But it is an option. It's an option that is 

based not necessarily on the fact that there 

is something behind the screen that we can't 

talk about. In my opinion it's an option that 

is based on, well, are we going to have to 

develop some modeling approach that we really 
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can explain in public to account for that kind 

of dose. And if that is the case I'm going to 

say no. I don't want to do that. I don't 

think that's right. If we scientifically 

can't explain how we're modeling this because 

there are parameters that we can't speak 

about, we're not going to do that. That's in 

83.14 in my opinion. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me just -- well, 

let me ask actually counsel to come to the mic 

to speak to this since there are legal 

implications here. 

 MS. HOWELL: With all due respect 

that is not a legal basis for moving for an 

83.14. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Which is what we 

bumped into in Iowa I believe. 

 MS. HOWELL: Right. I mean just 

because it can't be publicly discussed does 

not mean it can't be scientifically done by 

persons with the correct clearance. So I 

think that this is a little bit more of a 

thorny issue both legally and policy-wise, and 

it can be discussed further. We can look into 
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some things further. But I would hesitate to 

agree with what Larry has said. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And I appreciate 

that legal counsel. But I'm telling you, I'm 

not going to put something up here that's 

going to be something we can't defend 

publicly. So the lawyers can do what they 

want, and they can talk to the Secretary, but 

I'm not bringing that stuff forward. To me, 

that's where we're at. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It looks like there 

are probably two levels of this, one of which 

is a legal level, and that would have to be 

solved at the Agency level I presume. The 

other will be a practical -- yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- on 8313(b) and 

(c). And if we've got to go to extra extremes 

to try to research something and model it, I 

got a time element I can call. And that's 

what I'll do. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. 

Josie. 

 MS. BEACH: I personally would 

like to see maybe further exploration of this 
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in a work group possibly. Because waiting 

until it hits us I don't think is a good 

method. I've already come across it with 

Mound, and I don't really have any clear 

direction on the one item we have to deal with 

how we are going to discuss it. So I would 

like to propose that maybe we get a work group 

together. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We need more work 

groups, right? 

 Brad, do you have a comment and 

then Phil. 

 MR. CLAWSON: I understand what 

Josie is talking about, because we are both 

stubbing our noses right now. And this has 

been the concern from the beginning. I have 

no problem with proceeding forward. But I 

have a problem with when do we get to that 

wall and how far do we push it and so forth 

like that. 

 And this is a very complex 

question. How do I come back to the Board and 

say, we've addressed this, we've addressed 

this, and then certain questions come into it 
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that I can't. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Phil? 

 MR. SCHOFIELD: Some of these 

questions that we're going to run into are the 

key to a lot of these sites. Pinellas is one 

that if we can't deal with these in some 

generic way, we're sunk. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Robert. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Get Wanda. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Wanda. 

 MS. MUNN: Again I have to point 

out, if we are dealing with a black box 

situation where we cannot publicly discuss 

what's inside the black box, if the employees 

who were inside that black box have adequate 

bioassay and monitoring data for reasonable 

dose reconstructions to begin, then it should 

not be necessary for anyone to explain what 

went on in the black box as long as we have 

the data. 

 If we don't have the data, then 

that's an entirely different question. But 

I'm hearing the assertion if not the basic 

assumption that that kind of data is not 
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likely to exist inside these very sensitive 

areas. And I don't know that we have a basis 

for making that assumption. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Robert. 

 MR. PRESLEY: Well, I've kept my 

mouth shut. This is what I do for a living. 

 One thing that I think this Board 

ought to understand is, we have people on this 

Board that are competent. We have working 

group leads that are competent on these areas 

where we are going to have classification 

problems. 

 Now if these working groups and the 

people cannot get together to have a Qclearance and come up with a recommendation 

back to the Board, that is unclassified, then 

we really have a problem. The Board ought to 

be able to accept a decision of the people 

that are on these working groups that have the 

classification and the knowledge to make a 

decision on this stuff. 

 The other thing is, every site that 

we are going to go to has a classification 

office. When you get to an area and need 
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something that is more than, say, a urinalysis 

report or something like this, or there's a 

document that mentions a material that is 

unmentionable, then those documents can be 

redacted hopefully to a point where the Board 

can get them, and if they would be 

unclassified. 

 I can see very, very, very few 

instances where things could not be redacted 

down to a Board level. 

 Now it may take awhile to do that, 

and it's going to end up having to go through 

headquarters in Washington to be done, but it 

can be done. People don't realize that the 

areas we are getting into today are national 

security, still national security. So we are 

going to have to work with it -- you don't 

work around it, you are going to have to work 

with it. But there are ways that it can be 

done. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Brad, 

additional comment? 

 MR. CLAWSON: And I agree with 

that to a point. But back to what Wanda was 
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saying about the black box, as we've got into 

every one of these sites there is partial 

information, which is subsidized with other 

information, and a lot of times one 

information isn't classified, the other isn't, 

but when you put them together, they become 

that. And that's -- the urinalysis and so 

forth like that, there's holes just like any 

other site, and I'm speaking of Pantex and 

with Mound. But part of what a work group 

chair that we are getting into -- and don't 

let me speak for Josie -- but we've still got 

issues that we are trying to have certain 

meetings to talk about stuff, and we can't 

really hold it as a work group, because we 

want to hold the transparency of what the Work 

Groups are, but talk about tritium, it's one 

that we've got to get out of the way and 

stuff, and we can't really meet at a work 

group. And this is why it's getting kind of 

frustrating as a work group chair. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Let me give an 

example based on what Brad just brought up, 

tritium. Highly soluble in tritium, highly 
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insoluble tritium compounds. I can say that. 

 But there are other things I can't say. 

 I can say that at Pinellas it's not 

a big issue. We heard that from DOE. That's 

what we heard; that's not what the public has 

heard yet. That's why the Board's process is 

so valuable and the transparency, so that the 

public can understand that the Board has been 

engaged in this and has heard what they needed 

to hear. 

 So at Pinellas, highly insoluble 

tritium compounds are not an issue per se from 

a dose. Also highly insoluble tritium 

compounds we must recognize have a primary 

effect on respiratory tract, not the rest of 

the cancers -- lung and respiratory tract. So 

we've got to keep that in mind. 

 And with that we've got to look, 

okay, given that side of Pinellas, it may not 

be a big issue; but at Mound it's a different 

story. Savannah River is different than 

Mound. Pantex is different than Savannah 

River and Mound. At Mound we may be able to 

say -- this all goes back to TIB-66, how are 
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we going to implement highly insoluble tritium 

compounds at different sites. 

 I say that's a site profile issue; 

it's not an SEC issue. We say we can bound 

that dose. And we're not bounding it based 

upon a model that has parameters that we can't 

talk about in public, and we are not 

implementing it at a given site unless we can 

talk about how we are implementing it and use 

the right words. 

 I don't know if that helps, but I 

hope it helps the public understand what we 

are talking about here. This is a critical 

example because it cuts across by my count 

five sites. And each site is different. 

Mound is probably on one end of the spectrum 

the biggest, baddest actor, and we have to be 

very careful about what we say and how we dose 

these compounds. Pinellas is at the other end 

of the spectrum. And then we got the three 

sites in the middle. 

 So that's an example, and we plan 

to come forward and tell the Board and the 

public and the petitioners, this is how we are 
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working at Pinellas. This is how we are 

implementing TIB-66 at Pinellas. And the site 

profile, this is what it's going to say. 

 Mound is going to be an entirely 

different situation. We will tell the Board 

something entirely different than what we are 

doing at Pinellas. But it's going to be 

something we can say in public. 

 MR. KATZ: Can I just add a 

thought that Larry raised in my mind that may 

make a difference in this situation too is 

that I think that between the SC&A Q-cleared 

staff and the OCAS Q-cleared staff and Board 

members who are particularly versed in dose 

reconstruction, those individuals -- I mean I 

think there will be a difference in -- I 

understand Brad and Phil's concerns because 

they are just looking at all the information 

that can't be spoken. 

 But only certain of the information 

is necessarily going to be germane for how to 

do dose reconstructions, I think. And that's 

why I think practically going forward I think 

a lot will be learned from the SC&A staff and 
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the OCAS staff and the Board members who are 

health physics trained in terms of really what 

information is absolutely necessary to be 

discussed in the public forum, versus the 

larger scope of information, and clearly a lot 

of that will never come out from behind the 

curtain and shouldn't. But if it needn't, 

then it won't necessarily be an issue. 

 So I can see that it's sort of an 

imposing -- it looks like a high hill for now, 

but I do think that some experience with this 

will be very illuminating in what the real 

problems are. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Greg. 

 MR. LEWIS: I just wanted to 

reiterate there are a number of tools that we 

are willing and able to provide that will 

allow you to talk about these in terms of the 

briefings so you can discuss in public; also 

reviewing any documents or statements you'd 

like to prepare and read to the public, as 

well as setting up secure space to do work. 

So if somebody would like to prepare some 

documents in a secure area there are members 
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of the Board, SC&A, NIOSH, OCAS, that all have 

access to a secure area so they can prepare 

certain statements and documents that we will 

then review and determine exactly what you are 

and aren't able to say, hopefully leaving in 

the information that you feel is important 

while keeping out the things that we need to 

keep out of the public domain. So I just want 

to reemphasize that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim. 

 DR. NETON: We want to make this 

practical, then, with what was just suggested, 

does that mean that I would submit a question 

in writing, I would hear a presentation, I 

would submit the question in writing. Because 

the answer would need to be reviewed. And 

either they would -- DOE would either have 

somebody on site here at the Board meetings to 

review that which I am skeptical of or that 

they would be sent and we would then wait 2-

1/2 months to the next board meeting and I 

would get an answer, and then I would ask the 

follow up question, and then the follow up 

question would go on. That is my first issue. 
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 My second practical issue is when 

are we going to have a work group meeting on 

Pantex, and how is that going to operate? 

 MR. KATZ: So can I just respond a 

little bit to this? 

 So on the first point the folks 

that are involved on the Board and SC&A and 

OCAS are getting guidance about parameters -- 

general guidance too, not just specific to the 

issue that they may have at hand, but so that 

when they come to a public forum and are 

having a discussion they have a decent 

understanding of their working parameters. 

 So I imagine some of the questions 

you might raise they will already be prepared, 

what can I say, what can't I say. You may 

raise a question that they are not prepared 

for or that they feel like they're on the edge 

with that, in which case I'm sure they would 

refrain. And you may be in exactly that 

situation where there needs to be feedback 

from DOE before they can go forward. 

 But at least to some extent I think 

there will be work done to try to anticipate 
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what are the questions that might be raised 

and how can I deal with this in a public 

forum, or at least that's the hope. 

 The second question was Pantex, 

when will it get going. And again as far as 

preparations to date there are a number of 

board members who are going to be visiting 

Pantex for just this kind of briefing 

tomorrow, and SC&A staff and OCAS staff for 

exactly this, to get this guidance so that 

they can get this -- go forward with this. 

They had hoped to go forward earlier. They 

had -- as Brad mentioned -- they had gone to 

Pantex, a number of these individuals earlier. 

 There was a misfortunate with the scheduling 

with other things going on in Pantex; they 

couldn't do all of what they wanted to do. 

But presuming that this meeting is effective 

tomorrow, then there will be coming a time 

when they can schedule a work group meeting 

and get going. 

 DR. MELIUS: So that work group -- 

is that a public work group meeting? 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, that is a public 
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work group meeting, absolutely. That is the 

whole idea. 

 DR. MELIUS: With a public 

transcript? 

 MR. KATZ: With a public 

transcript, absolutely. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Josie and Brad, and I 

think Phil had expressed a felt need to have a 

work group deal with some of these things in 

more detail. 

 One thought I had, Brad, would be 

to simply keep the Security Work Group in 

place for a time, and if you felt the need to 

discuss and develop both concerns and 

resolutions on some of these, perhaps that 

could be handled. 

 I'm somewhat reluctant to set up a 

new work group because in my mind, although 

we've discussed a lot of things, the 

parameters are still pretty fuzzy in terms of 

exactly what will or will not take place. We 

do need to gain some experience; perhaps this 

week's experience at Pantex, because I think 

Pantex and Pinellas have exemplified this and 
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Mound and Fernald to some extent as well. But 

as we gain a little experience that might 

delineate in more detail exactly where the 

glitches will be if there are to be any, or 

whether or not we will see a clear path. 

 And I'm just wondering if that 

wouldn't be a way just to keep the Work Group 

in place and give you the prerogative to, as 

you see some of these issues emerging, to call 

the group together and deal with it in more 

detail, and perhaps develop recommendations 

for the Board if you deem it necessary. 

 MR. CLAWSON: I think that's a 

good suggestion, actually. Because it'd be 

the same people if we made another work group. 

 DR. ZIEMER: But you are the folks 

who are the present time are dealing with the 

security issues on behalf of the Board. Most 

of the folks involved I think all have 

clearances and have dealt with the issues, so 

you certainly have a better feel for it if 

there are going to be problems. 

 You also understand what NIOSH is 

doing in terms of minimizing the impact of the 
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security issues on our ability to have 

transparent meetings. So I think we'd be in a 

position to at least evaluate and recommend if 

necessary to the Board. 

 John, do you have some wise words 

for us? 

 MR. MAURO: I don't know about 

wise, but a few words. 

 SC&A is an interesting microcosm of 

the problem you are discussing on a higher 

level. I don't have a Q clearance. I am 

responsible for the technical quality of all 

our deliverables. Before our work products 

leave our house, I read everything -- usually 

a team of people read everything. And I have 

to understand that what we are delivering to 

you makes sense to me. And if it doesn't make 

sense to me I'm not happy. 

 Now I'm going to know, because this 

happened in Iowa, I'm going to know when the 

piece of information we are about to deliver 

has in it -- trust me, I can't tell you about 

it but this is okay. I'm going to be almost 

like the first line of defense from SC&A's 
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perspective, you can think of it that way. 

That is, any work product that SC&A is working 

on in any capacity eventually comes out as a 

White Paper or an official report regarding an 

issue. And I'm sort of like the first barrier 

to that. And I -- if it's any help I'm the 

first place where that is going to be tested; 

that is, are we delivering a product that I 

don't understand the reason, the rationale 

behind it, because there is some information 

in it that cannot be explained to me. 

 I just wanted to leave you with 

that thought, because there are I guess 

filters, and I'm one of the filters. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, and that is 

quite analogous to the situation I think Mr. 

Presley described to some extent, that if you 

have that you have a set of folks who are 

cleared and a set of uncleared, and you get to 

a point where you say how comfortable are the 

uncleared folks in simply saying, yes, we will 

agree to this even though we don't know what 

it is. Sometimes we are comfortable doing 

that, and other times we are not so 
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comfortable. So that is part of the dilemma. 

 And certainly if we are not comfortable, you 

can figure what the general public is going to 

- they're going to be mighty uncomfortable. 

They are not so comfortable with it to start 

with. 

 Mike has got a comment here, and 

then -- 

 MR. GIBSON: That is just what I 

was going to say. What about the plants 

sitting out there, who have basically this 

process through administering instructions, it 

will take due process, and they are just going 

to be left holding the bag if we're saying, 

trust you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, and I think 

Larry has expressed to us the desire on the 

part of NIOSH to try to avoid that having to 

be the case, that everything that they -- that 

they would need to know about how things are 

done is transparent. In the event it isn't 

then we certainly have a problem. 

 Phil. 

 MR. SCHOFIELD: First I would like 
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to let Greg Lewis know that we really 

appreciate all the work he's done on this 

issue for us in helping us get things done. 

 At the meetings in Germantown they 

gave us a lot more leeway than we used to 

have; they moved a lot of barriers. But I've 

already seen some questions that are very 

specific, and this is because some of the 

workers, this is what they did everyday. So a 

lot of things are going to have to be -- some 

of the things are going to wind up being 

answered in a more generic sense or 

terminology, but we can still deal with those 

issues. We just have to be aware of what we 

say. We can't control what they say, but in 

some of Larry's comments, and a lot of 

comments I agreed with him. It is an issue 

that we need to be aware of as a board. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm going to suggest 

as a path forward if it's agreeable that we do 

give our Security Work Group the flexibility 

to continue to look at this issue, to report 

back to us at the next Board meeting, 

particularly as you look at the outcome of the 
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Pantex review that occurs this week and any 

follow ups as well as your own work groups, 

report back to the Board if you have either 

particular concerns or particular issues that 

you have identified. I think we need to be 

monitoring this. I don't feel that we're in a 

position today to come up with either policies 

or directives as to how we will proceed. I 

think the problem has been identified; we 

thank Dr. Melius for raising the issue. And I 

think we have people who can now monitor this 

and keep us apprised of how we should proceed. 

 Mike, do you have an additional 

comment on this? No? 

 Would that be agreeable as a path 

forward so that we continue to look at this 

issue? 

 MR. CLAWSON: I just have one 

question as the Work Group chair for the 

Security Group. Are we just going to be 

monitoring this? Or are there issues that we 

have to handle or look into for these? I 

guess this is my issue. I guess I'm wondering 

what we are tasked with. Because we have 
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already been told that we cannot hold a work 

group that is not open to the public, and 

being the Security Work Group if it's a 

classification issue then we would need to 

handle it -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: As I see it right now 

you would be discussing conceptually the kinds 

of problems you are running into; you would 

not be discussing particular data at 

particular sites, other than to say, at Pantex 

we have this kind of problem. You understand 

what -- what I think I'm saying. I don't 

think I even have a good enough feel for this 

to know more precisely how to task this, other 

than to ask the group to monitor it and as you 

identify concerns that you raise those to the 

Board. And if in relation to those concerns 

you have suggested solutions, you raise those 

to the Board. 

 This again is kind of top of the 

hat. I'm certainly open to those more 

experienced to help us. Robert. 

 MR. PRESLEY: I see items coming 

up in the future where a security work group 
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would look at a given piece of paper and say 

yes, this piece of paper we do need for dose 

reconstruction. Then they would then ask 

whatever site they're at to have their people 

look at that to see if it can be redacted down 

to where it can be let out unclassified. And 

then if it can't, if they say no we can't do 

that, then we are going to have to go back and 

look again and say, do we really need to do 

this, or is there some other way we can get 

around this? 

 Like I said a minute ago, I don't 

see many many cases where we cannot have 

something redacted down that could be used for 

dose reconstruction. And that's what I -- I 

see this work group running into items, 

reports, procedures, papers, things like that 

where they would have to look at it and make 

the decision on, yes, this is needed, or this 

is not needed for dose reconstruction. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And that indeed might 

be part of the responsibility down the line. 

It's probably not there yet. 

 Gina. 
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 MS. CANO: Dr. Ziemer, sorry, I just 

wanted to make an official statement. DOE is 

committed to work with the Board. We have 

been working with the Board, I think we have 

made some progress I guess in the past couple 

of years in regards to providing the necessary 

information. We don't want to withhold 

information, and there have been many 

instances where we have actually recommended 

alternate wording for reports. 

 So our classification officers will 

work with the Board, or those that are Q 

cleared, to make sure that you are saying what 

you need to say but in an unclassified manner. 

 So our classification officers are 

taking this seriously, and they know that this 

is an important program, and they are 

committed to assist you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, and we 

certainly do recognize that commitment and we 

have seen it at work in the last two years as 

your crew has been aboard, and we do 

appreciate that, and that will be very helpful 

as we move forward. 
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 Brad. 

 MR. CLAWSON: And I wanted -- in 

no way, shape or form I wanted to give the 

impression that DOE had not been working with 

us. Because DOE, I want to thank Greg or 

Gina, Pat, everybody, because they have gone 

to great lengths, and they don't know how much 

it has helped us like with Germantown, with 

the headquarter declassifiers and so forth, 

that they have also offered to be able to, if 

there are issues at certain sites that we can 

contact them and they can help us through 

this, they are making great leaps and bounds 

to be able to do this. I wanted to tell them 

thanks personally. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Larry. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: If I could be so 

bold to suggest that I think it's a good idea 

to have the Security Working Group at the 

ready. I think it's beneficial because those 

members of that security working group, are 

they work group chairs for the sites that have 

the most imminent issues? And so as those 

chairs of those respective work groups deal 
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with those issues, I would envision that in 

certain instances they are going to want to 

share across to the other chairs if not to the 

Security Work Group and say, at this site this 

is how -- or we are seeing that issue dealt 

with. And we know that NIOSH is dealing with 

it differently at that site. And I think that 

kind of coordination will help if you have 

that group in place. So I just applaud that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Very good. Thank you 

for that. 

 If there is no objection we will 

proceed on that basis, and appreciate the 

Security Work Group being willing to take that 

responsibility and help guide the Board as we 

move forward in that area. 

 I'd like to return to an item that 

we postponed from before lunch, and that is 

the letter to Senator Schumer. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We didn't table the 

motion. The chair simply deferred action by 

concurrence with everyone. So I simply 

declare that the motion is now before us, and 

the motion was to approve the draft letter 
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that the chair had prepared as a response to 

Senator Schumer. And also we recognize that 

there was a need to address some information 

regarding the earlier period for which a 

petition was not qualified, and so it would be 

in order to have a motion to amend. And the 

chair recognizes Jen Roessler. Oh, I 

recognize you. 

 DR. ROESSLER: I move to amend the 

motion that we made earlier with regard to the 

letter to Senator Schumer about the Linde 

petition, particularly addressing some changes 

in the letter. Perhaps the best way would be 

to read the letter with the changes in it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, and I think we 

have prepared copies. Zaida was going to 

provide us copies of your amendment. 

 DR. ROESSLER: So as soon as we 

get it, this will then address -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: And this is a markup 

copy that has the original letter with the 

inserted changes which address the issue of 

the unqualified years. 

 DR. ROESSLER: So Board members 
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are getting copies and then we will read it 

into the record. 

 (Pause) 

 I'll start reading: 

 “Dear Senator Schumer, this will 

acknowledge receipt of your letter of March 

23rd, 2009, concerning a Linde Ceramics SEC 

petition. 

 In particular you expressed your 

support for SEC coverage of Linde workers for 

the period from 1954 to 2006, and concern that 

the petition for the 1947 to 1954 period 

failed to qualify for review.” 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, what has 

happened here in this next one is just that 

for some reason the spacing changed. It's all 

one paragraph. 

 DR. ROESSLER: Oh, I got it. 

“With respect to the 1954 to 2006 period the 

Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health 

received the Evaluation Report (ER) from NIOSH 

concerning the Linde Ceramics petition in 

November, 2008. And in February, 2009 the ER 

was assigned to the Board's Linde Ceramics 
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work group for review. 

 “The Board also tasked the Board's 

contractor, SC&A, to assist the Work Group in 

their review of the ER. 

 “At the request of the petitioner 

the Board has deferred the formal presentation 

of the NIOSH Evaluation Report and the related 

recommendations of the Work Group to the July 

 2009, Board meeting. 

 “At that time the Board expects to 

have more detailed deliberations on the Linde 

Ceramics petition, the Evaluation Report and 

the SC&A review. 

 “Regarding the 1947 to 1954 period, 

the Advisory Board does not have the legal 

authority or responsibility to qualify 

petitions. That responsibility rests with 

NIOSH. Thus the Board is unable to take 

specific action on qualifying the earlier 

period. 

 “As you suggested we will continue 

to keep [Identifying information redacted] 

appraised of the schedule of work group 

activities and board progress concerning the 
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Linde Ceramics petition. 

 “Thank you for providing your 

comments and concern regarding the Linde 

Ceramics workers.” 

 DR. ZIEMER: So that is the motion 

to amend. Is there a second? 

 MS. MUNN: Second. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So we have before us 

the amended letter. 

 DR. MELIUS: Can I raise a 

question? 

 DR. ZIEMER: You certainly may. 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay, this is for 

counsel. The new paragraph on the qualifying 

petitions, I thought I recalled that in the 

Act the Board could -- did have the right to 

review or to qualify petitions. We had put in 

the regulations that we were not involved with 

it, at one point in the drafting of the 

initial regulations -- it was before your time 

 working with us -- we were considering 

whether the Board should be involved in the 

initial review of incoming petitions and the 

qualification form. And I think it has the 
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same effect, but I just wanted to make sure 

that, since Senator Schumer is on the 

Judiciary Committee, that we be correct 

legally. Because I think that under the Act 

he may be able to -- the Board may be able to, 

could have reviewed petitions. We decided we 

didn't want to be involved in that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I don't honestly 

recall that. And are you suggesting that we 

modify this for example leave out the word, 

legal, and simply say we don't have the 

authority or responsibility? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yes, I would say the 

authority to qualify or review petitions. 

 MR. KATZ: If I could suggest, you 

could certainly say that under the 

regulations, you don't have a role, and that 

way sort of skirt this trouble. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: So then, does not have 

legal authority or responsibility to qualify 

petitions under the existing regulations? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I will take that. 
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 DR. ROESSLER: What about the 

word, responsibility? Does that stay in? 

 DR. ZIEMER: The typographical 

"concerning" would be just changed to 

"concern" in the last paragraph. 

 Any other comments or suggested 

amendments? 

 If not, we'll just take a voice 

vote on this. If the motion to amend passes, 

the amended letter becomes the letter. If it 

fails we return to the original version. 

 We are voting on the motion to 

amend the letter, and if that motion carries 

it becomes the letter. 

 Are you ready to vote? 

 Okay, all in favor of the motion to 

amend say aye. 

 (Chorus of ayes) 

 DR. ZIEMER: And the opposed, no? 

 (No audible response) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Any abstentions? 

 The motion carries. Thank you very 

much. 

 We also have as a carry forward 
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from yesterday we had approved the wording of 

the Santa Susana Petition, but we did not have 

the final wording on the Standard Oil 

development company petition; is that correct? 

 DR. MELIUS: Vice versa. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm sorry, just the 

other way around. Okay. 

 I had a 50-50 chance of getting it 

right. 

 MR. KATZ: Can I -- I don't know 

which order this needs to go in, but also I 

think counsel just needs to give us some edits 

on the motions themselves. I think there was 

some discrepancy that needs to be corrected. 

 MS. HOWELL: For both Santa Susana 

and the Standard Oil SEC the language of the 

Class definition in what the Board -- in the 

Board write-ups is not the same as the SEC 

Evaluation Report from NIOSH and the language 

needs to track. And part of that was because 

one of the presentations, the slide had 

different language than is in the actual 

Evaluation Report. 

 But if they could both be changed 
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to reflect what's actually in the NIOSH 

Evaluation Report. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Can you give us -- 

let's take the one that we had already 

approved, which was Standard Oil. 

 MS. HOWELL: Okay. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It's the definition 

of the Class itself which is in the second 

paragraph? 

 MS. HOWELL: Yes, and I also had a 

couple of other grammatical -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Could you read for us 

the correct definition? 

 MS. HOWELL: Sure. The Advisory 

Board on Radiation and Worker Health -- this 

is the language prior to the definition; there 

were two grammar changes -- the Advisory Board 

on Radiation and Worker Health (the Board) has 

evaluated SEC petition dash 00129 concerning 

workers at the Standard Oil Development 

Company in Linden, insert a comma, New Jersey, 

under the statutory requirement established by 

EEOICPA and incorporated into 42 CFR Section 

8313 -- there's an extra period there. 
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 And then this next sentence is the 

actual class definition. “The Board 

respectfully recommends a Special Exposure 

Cohort SEC status be afforded to all atomic 

weapons employer (AWE) employees” and the 

NIOSH Evaluation Report -- someone could be 

looking at it while I'm saying this to make 

sure I've got all of it -- the language "who 

worked at" is not in the NIOSH definition. It 

says, all atomic weapons employer (AWE) 

employees of the Standard Oil Development 

Company. So take out the words, “who worked 

at”, and insert “of”, “The Standard Oil 

Development Company in Linden,” insert comma, 

“New Jersey.” 

 Then insert the words, during the 

period before "from." And I think that will 

correct everything. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me ask, though, 

so under this revision a person could have 

been an employee of Standard Oil but never 

have been at the plant, never have worked at 

the plant but been on their payroll? 

 MS. HOWELL: That's right. Does 
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that create a problem for DOL? Because the 

other thing would be for you guys to keep your 

language and for NIOSH to revise their report. 

 (Off-mic comment.) 

 DR. ZIEMER: You have to come to 

the mike. You will need to be at the mike. 

 Maybe this would not be an issue. 

But as I hear what Emily read to us, it seems 

to me it's possible to have someone employed 

by them who doesn't physically work at the 

plant. I mean many plants have this. 

 MR. KOTSCH: Yes, one thing is, I 

can't recall what definition we saw when we -- 

you know, when the department approved -- 

basically said that is an acceptable 

definition for both of these things. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, I guess though 

we will need to have the language parallel 

what was in the Evaluation Report, which is 

what Emily read to us, and you will have to 

determine whether you can administer it. I 

think probably what they are saying is if a 

person was employed by Standard Oil you have 

no way of guaranteeing that they never were at 
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that plant, so therefore they would be 

covered. 

 It just struck me as a little 

strange. 

 Mike. 

 MR. GIBSON: It could also be read 

that if the vendor worked at the site, even 

though he wasn't a DOE employee -- or AWE 

employee -- would be covered. 

 DR. ZIEMER: It says atomic weapons 

employees. So I think that eliminates the 

Coke guy. 

 MS. HOWELL: I mean you can leave 

them different where NIOSH may determine that 

it needs to change theirs. But if you are 

more comfortable with this language, that's 

fine. It's something that we wind up having 

to make note of. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I don't think it was 

a comfort level. I think it was what was on 

the slide, and we need to track your report. 

 This may be a red herring. I'm 

just concerned that -- in reality, you want to 

cover the people who work there, regardless of 
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who -- 

 DR. MELIUS: Would it be proper, 

can we designate our chair to deal with this 

issue when he submits the final, after 

consultation with -- because we have 

essentially approved both versions. I think 

we just need to clarify with DOL, and it's not 

fair to Jeff. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. We have the 

two editorial changes, and then we will go 

with whichever version you say we should. 

 MR. KOTSCH: I don't think it's an 

amendment to our ER. I think we can -- you 

propose what you want to propose in your 

language. I don't see it as that much 

different, DOL saying they can administer 

either language, and we would take care of the 

designation package to the Secretary 

explaining why the words may not match up 

exactly. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Well, okay. I mean I 

don't see an ER amendment change on two words. 

 We'll be okay. So any other changes? 

 MS. HOWELL: To the Santa Susana, if 
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I can switch over to that for a second, in 

this one I do think is a little different than 

the Standard Oil one. The only distinction 

between your class definition and the NIOSH 

Evaluation Report, the word, or, that you guys 

used between DOE contractors "or" 

subcontractors who worked in any area of Area 

4, the Evaluation Report says "and." And I'm 

not as worried about that, but you also insert 

the location of Ventura County, California for 

Santa Susana, and that does not appear in the 

NIOSH Evaluation Report. And I checked with 

LaVon and he was uncertain as to whether there 

might be any portion of Area 4 that is in a 

different county. And I would just suggest 

that in order to avoid any potential problems 

that you eliminate that language since it 

doesn't appear in the Evaluation Report. 

 DR. MELIUS: Well, excuse me, but 

on page 18, top sentence, consists of 2,850 

acres and is located in the Simi hills of 

Ventura County, California; the first 

sentence. That's where I took it from. I 

mean you can still leave it out; it's not a 
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big deal. 

 MS. HOWELL: The issue is, it's not 

in the Class definition itself. So it may be 

nitpicking. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, but in the 

official definition as you gave it, the "in" 

Ventura County, California is left out. 

 MS. HOWELL: Yes. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And I see no reason 

not to -- so let's just exclude that. 

 And what was the other one? 

 MS. HOWELL: The actual definition 

has "and" DOE contractors "and" subcontractors 

as opposed to "or." 

 DR. ZIEMER: That's an editorial 

that is easily handled. 

 I don't know that we officially 

read this one into the record yesterday, this 

motion. We only did the Standard Oil, right? 

 Jim, are you willing to read this 

into the record? 

 DR. MELIUS: Like anyone's going 

to listen to it. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We won't guarantee 
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you we will listen. We're just asking you -- 

the court reporter will listen. 

 DR. MELIUS: Let me take out 

Ventura County. 

 By the way the "and" is in the 

first page of the Evaluation Report, or NIOSH 

proposed classes to be added to the SEC which 

is where I copied that part from. 

 (Off-mic comment.) 

 DR. MELIUS: Okay, the Board 

recommends that the following letter be 

transmitted to the Secretary of Health and 

Human Services within 21 days. Should the 

chair become aware of any issue that in his 

judgment would preclude the transmittal of 

this letter within the time period, the Board 

requests that he promptly informs the Board of 

the delay and of the reasons for this delay, 

and that he immediately works with NIOSH to 

schedule an emergency meeting of the Board to 

discuss this issue. 

 “The Advisory Board on radiation 

and Worker Health (the Board)has evaluated SEC 

petition 00093 concerning workers at the Santa 
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Susana Field Laboratory Area 4 under the 

statutory requirements established by EEOICPA 

incorporating 42 CFR Section 8313. 

 “The Board respectfully recommends 

Special Exposure Cohort (SEC) status be 

afforded all employees of the Department of 

Energy, its predecessor agencies, and DOE 

contractors and subcontractors who work in any 

area of Area 4 of the Santa Susana Field 

Laboratory for a number of work days 

aggregating at least 250 work days from 

January 1st, 1955 through December 31st, 1958, 

for in combination with work days within the 

parameters established for one or more other 

classes of employees in the SEC. 

 “This recommendation is based on 

the following factors. Number one, the Santa 

Susana Area 4 facility was involved in the 

development and testing of nuclear reactors 

and related research. 

 “Two, NIOSH found that there was 

insufficient monitoring data or information on 

radiological operations of these laboratories 

in order to be able to complete accurate 
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individual dose reconstructions involving 

internal and external radiation exposures for 

Area 4 workers during the time period in 

question. The Board concurs with this 

conclusion. 

 “Number three, NIOSH determined 

that health may have been endangered for 

workers exposed to radiation in Area 4 during 

the time period in question. The Board 

concurs with this determination. 

 “Based on these considerations, the 

discussions held at our May 12th and 13th 

2009, Advisory Board meeting in Amarillo, 

Texas, the Board recommends that a special 

exposure corps petition be granted. The Board 

notes that NIOSH is continuing to evaluate 

information on exposures at this facility 

during later time periods, and will make a 

recommendation regarding this -- these time 

periods sometime in the future. 

 “Enclosed is the documentation from 

the Board of meetings where this Special 

Exposure Cohort class was discussed. The 

documentation includes transcripts of the 
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deliberations, copies of the petition, the 

NIOSH review thereof, and related materials. 

If any of these items are unavailable at this 

time they will follow shortly.” 

 Just one other editorial note. I 

believe we had discussed this in earlier 

meetings, the CDC website was down when I was 

writing this so I couldn't get access to the 

website to check it out. But hadn't we talked 

about this and then reported it back? I 

couldn't remember. Maybe I'm wrong, but -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: No, there was the 

discussion and agreement that the later years 

-- but that doesn't need to be part of this 

letter per se. 

 I did have a question between what 

I'm seeing and what you read, in the second to 

last paragraph on the front page, the last 

sentence, will make a recommendation regarding 

this time period or these time periods? 

 DR. MELIUS: These time periods. 

During later time periods. It reads wrong. I 

was going to give you the correction. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Regarding -- 
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 DR. MELIUS: -- at this facility 

during later time periods. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Later time periods. 

 DR. MELIUS: And will make a 

recommendation regarding these time periods 

sometime in the future. 

 If you want to be also 

grammatically correct, I believe the second 

bullet down is, there was insufficient -- it 

really should be, there were insufficient -- 

 DR. ZIEMER: Data were; yes. 

 MS. BEACH: If you want a couple 

more, in the first bullet there is an extra 

period, and there is an extra space between 

Susana and Area 4. 

 MR. CLAWSON: I would like to tell 

you all, I apologize for my emails. 

 (Laughter) 

 MR. CLAWSON: And future emails. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Nancy Adams will be 

assisting us in getting the formal copies out, 

so we need to make sure that she has an 

electronic version. Nancy, is Nancy here? 

 DR. MELIUS: She's in the hallway? 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, I will touch 

base with her. 

 DR. MELIUS: It is also my claim 

to find another DOE facility some place else 

and rename it Santa Susana Laboratory Area 4, 

so then it will automatically be eligible, 

since location doesn't appear to matter. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, some other 

county. 

 We have another issue regarding our 

calendar -- 

 MR. POSTON: Mr. Chairman, could we 

take a time out? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Time out? Yes. 

 MR. POSTON: It's 10 after 3:00. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You mean a break time 

out? Okay, while you are taking a break, why 

don't you look at your calendar for July, and 

see whether or not you can -- 

 DR. MELIUS: Is this our last 

item? 

 DR. ZIEMER: This is our last 

item. 

 DR. ROESSLER: What about Biloxi? 
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 DR. ZIEMER: I thought we were 

done with Biloxi. 

 MR. POSTON: Well, then, let's 

proceed. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Ted has a comment. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, so for scheduling. 

 So right now we are scheduled for July 27th 

through 29th, which is a Monday through 

Wednesday. You can tell from this meeting 

that there is a lot on the agenda, which means 

it's going to be three very full days. And 

someone may have had a conflict at one point, 

but everyone I've asked doesn't seem to. We 

could shift from the 27th to the 29th of July 

over to 28th to 30th July, that would mean no 

one would have to travel on Sunday, which 

would be a good thing, unless someone has a 

conflict with that. 

 MS. MUNN: I have family 

commitments on the evening of the 30th. So do 

whatever you want. 

 DR. ZIEMER: You would have to 

leave early? 

 MS. MUNN: I would have to leave 
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early on Thursday. I made that commitment 

based on our calendar here in July. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Are we certain we 

have a full three days' worth of stuff? 

 MR. KATZ: It sounds like we do, 

but I wouldn't shift it and lose a board 

member doing that. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. I believe 

that's all of the items that need to come 

before us today. 

 We will have a break, and then we 

have a public comment period at 4:00 p.m. 

 Thank you. 

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off 

the record at 3:53 p.m. and resumed 

at 4:02 p.m.) 

 DR. ZIEMER: We are ready to begin 

our public comment session of our advisory 

board meeting. 

 The public comment session, I'll 

provide just a couple of guidelines here. 

 Number one, we ask that you limit 

your remarks to no more than 10 minutes. Also 

there are some policies related to both 
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freedom of information and Privacy Act issues, 

and Mr. Katz, our Designated Federal Official, 

will go over those rules with us here briefly. 

 MR. KATZ: Welcome, first of all, 

to anyone who is new, who has just come for 

this public comment session. 

 And I just want you to understand, 

we have a transcript being made of this public 

comment session, a verbatim transcript, so 

everything that you say, if you come up and 

want to give comments, will be recorded, it 

will end up in a transcript that will be put 

on the Internet, on the web, on the NIOSH 

website so that other people can read and see 

what people had to say here. 

 So if you give your name, for 

example, you don't have to, but if you give 

your name, that will appear in the transcript. 

 A couple of things will -- some things will 

be redacted though. Any personal information 

you give about yourself will be included. If 

you give medical information about yourself 

that will be included, and so on. 

 But if you discuss other people, 
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third parties, then their names and 

identifying information about those 

individuals will be redacted. 

 So when you see the transcript 

ultimately on the NIOSH website, it normally 

takes about 45 days or so for the transcript 

to appear. But their names will be blacked 

out or any other truly identifying information 

will be blacked out. But the statement you 

make about them generally otherwise will still 

be in there. 

 So you need to understand that. If 

you want more detailed accounting of these 

rules there is out on the table there is a 

sheet, a Redaction Policy that explains this 

in detail. And that is also in detail on the 

Internet, on the NIOSH web page, OCAS web 

page. 

 That's it, thanks. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. 

 We have several individuals here 

this afternoon that wish to address the 

assembly. Also we may have folks on the phone 

lines, as soon as we hear from the folks 
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assembled here we will open the opportunity to 

those of you on the phone who wish to comment 

as well. 

 I'm going to just proceed with the 

names here in the order in which you signed up 

for public comment beginning with Paul 

Teichmann. 

 Paul, you may proceed. 

 MR. TEICHMANN: Good afternoon, 

gentlemen. To introduce myself I am Paul 

Teichmann. I have been a worker at Pantex for 

over 35 years. 

 I claimed thymus cancer sometime 

back, and as far as I know my claim has been 

denied. Anyway I do have a statement, and I 

will give the Board a copy of the statement 

along with some attachments. 

 Now one of these attachments may 

have some sensitive information so you can 

protect that as well. It won't be read here 

for the comments. 

 First of all I wanted to thank the 

Board, especially for coming to Amarillo. I 

know you have worked hard, and we appreciate 
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the economy of those that y'all brought to the 

site. Also I want to thank the DOL and NIOSH 

for their work. 

 Any comments I make I hope the 

people at NIOSH won't take negatively or 

personally. 

 I do know that they have been given 

a job. In fact my notes here say the 

reconstruction is a monumental task if not 

impossible. 

 And I say that because of the 

armchair quarterback approach that they have 

taken. They cannot get to the truth or what I 

understand is the truth of some of the 

problems that I have noted at the site. 

 Practices are much looser since-- 

or excuse me, practices prior to the Tiger 

Team findings at Pantex were much looser, as 

was the reporting, the event reporting. So 

since the Tiger Team things have tightened up 

considerably. 

 And my contention is that possible 

exposure to whatever at Pantex could have been 

greatly exaggerated prior to Tiger Team 
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coming. 

 My interview with NIOSH went very 

well except for the fact that the interviewer 

did not understand an air-handling unit. 

 Now all the buildings at Pantex 

have environmental control, and all that air 

is passed through an air handling unit where 

it is processed for heating, cooling, 

dehumidification and primarily air filtration. 

 My contention is that any 

contaminants in that facility would be 

concentrated on the air filtration system. 

Now we got into a long discussion about some 

of the constituents may or may not be. But -- 

okay, maybe those constituents were plated out 

or had an affinity for the water on the air 

conditioning coil. So I think that was a 

gaffe in the NIOSH reconstruction area. 

 Uncle Sam dangled this carrot in 

front of us, yet it is our responsibility as 

workers to prove to NIOSH and to whomsoever, 

at least my experience has been, that our 

illnesses are work related. Amarillo is kind 

of a small town. And the doctors here depend 
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very much on the workers at Pantex for their 

business, and Pantex as an employer with their 

fine insurance for their cases. And it's 

difficult for one to crawl out on a limb and 

say, yes, that particular problem was caused 

by that particular exposure at that site. 

 Now it may not have that problem in 

large cities where only a few clientele of the 

medical community comes from the general 

public, or wherever. 

 The process of application is easy, 

but the burden of responsibility falls 

squarely on the applicant, if there is any 

questions at all. 

 In keeping up those to correspond 

with has been a problem, at least for me, and 

I do have noted here, mystery. I quit 

reporting my skin cancers for that very 

reason; I'm not sure who to send the 

information to next. 

 There are four times I've been 

discouraged by my government. First of all 

was when the USS Pueblo was captured. 

Secondly the treatment of the returning 
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Vietnam vets. Thirdly, the treatment of the 

Cold War workers. And I'm not going into 

number four. 

 Without such investigation alluded 

to above, I would suggest that the taxpayer 

money be shifted from paying to theoretical 

possibilities, to aiding the Cold War workers 

who are suffering. 

 If you want to call it a Stimulus 

Package, call it a Stimulus Package. 

 There was a recent article in the 

paper about a shipment that went to New 

Mexico, and it was found to be contaminated. 

And the paper also said that no one at the 

origin of the shipment was contaminated. Hm. 

 Was that container damaged in shipment? 

 The -- now I know better than to 

believe everything in the newspaper -- but how 

was contamination determined at the receiving 

end but not at the shipping end unless it was 

damaged in shipment? 

 It looks like someone's monitoring 

needs to be questioned. 

 I have attached in my handout, and 
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if you will tell me who to give it to at the 

end of the presentation I'll do that, five 

different attachments. One is called "Horror 

Stories". Now these horror stories I have no 

proof of. All I know is, whenever I was 

investigating or talking about my situation 

with other employees, I heard stories, stories 

that did not set right. And my personal 

experience with whistle blower program made me 

very nervous. And I can easily see why people 

that I spoke with wanted to remain anonymous. 

 So there are very few names mentioned in my 

notes here, but those with the exception of 

one has agreed to respond to any questions. 

 My second attachment has to do with 

a narrative of radiation exposure. And while 

I was writing this up a few minutes ago I 

didn't see a particular interest of mine. 

When they tore down the old boiler house at 

Pantex, a facility I spent quite a bit of time 

in, they kept the boiler tubes for -- to be 

shipped off to a waste site. And my knee jerk 

reaction was, why did they cap those tubes? 

If it was a water tube boiler, and I assumed 
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that contamination was from the natural gas 

and on the outside of the tubes. 

 Now maybe some radiological people 

may know the affinity of water and such 

contaminants, and the fact that it may have 

been indeed in the water tubes and that's why 

they capped them. 

 The -- my type cancer is thymus 

cancer. And how many of you have heard of 

thymus cancer? It's apparently pretty rare; 

is that what you understand? 

 At the time I looked at the 

registry at the Harrington Cancer Center, and 

I was the first case; since there has been one 

other. 

 The cause of thymus cancer on the 

first brochure I got from the American Cancer 

Society was unknown; possibly exposure to 

radiation. Very weasel words there; possibly. 

 The first question Dr. Perryman 

asked me at the Cancer Center was, where were 

you exposed to radiation? I told him where I 

worked; the subject was never broached again. 

 And I think that I've said probably 
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enough, and who would I present this to? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Mr. Katz, thank you 

sir. 

 The next person we will hear from 

is Brenda Britten. 

 MS. BRITTEN: I was going to tell 

you about some incidents that I was in at 

Pantex. I was working on the swing shift. I 

think it was about 1989, but y'all can verify 

this with the Tiger Team reports. I was 

working at 1226 on the swing shift. I was 

working in a bay with one other person, 

[Identifying information redacted]. They had 

open bays, and the bay next to us had a 

tritium alarm that went off. And we shut the 

operation down and stepped out in the hall 

like we were supposed to -- out of the bay 

like we were supposed to with everyone else 

with their bays. And a supervisor came down 

on a bicycle, and he said, hey, y'all go back 

to work, that was a false alarm. 

 So we went back in the bay, and we 

were running units that were really, really 

loud with high hoists, so unbeknownst to us it 
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was a real alarm and they evacuated the 

building. 

 So [Identifying information 

redacted] and I were working. About an hour 

and a half later, some doors opened at the end 

of the building, and some guards came in on 

bicycles and when they opened the doors and 

saw us, they just froze. And they said, what 

are y'all doing in here? And we said, we're 

running 83s. What's the problem? 

 And they said the building has been 

shut down for about an hour and a half; two 

hours. It's been airing to the outside. It's 

a tritium alarm. And we were locked in the 

building. So we were escorted to medical 

where we discovered that all the other people 

had been over there being monitored and being 

watched, in medical, on swing shift, they only 

had one nurse. He had not been trained on 

what to do with a tritium accident. He did 

not know what to do. He was frantically 

calling the doctors in town who were telling 

him what to do. Engineers had to come from 

town; they were so ticked off that they had to 
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come out there at 10:00 or 11:00 o'clock at 

night. They were angry at us. 

 So after the evening evolved they 

just told all of us they need urine samples 

and told us that none of us were exposed to 

anything. 

 And the year the Tiger Team came -- 

like I said, I can't remember the exact year 

they came -- I called to make a report. It 

was the very last day they were there. And we 

were so -- most of us were so afraid to call 

and make a report. Everybody was terrified; 

it was the first time anyone had come in like 

that to make a report and follow up on things 

that had been called into Washington about 

problems. And people were afraid to make a 

report, and they were angry that anyone else 

that made a report for fear that they might 

lose their jobs. 

 So on the very last day they were 

there, I went to another area outside my work 

area on my break and made a call because I was 

so afraid that my peers would hear me make a 

call and there would be retaliation against 
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me. 

 And a man thanked me for calling; 

he took my information. And I talked to him 

on the phone from home several other times. 

And he said other people had made -- coworkers 

had made reports on that. And he told me that 

when they went to medical and checked on the 

accident that [Identifying information 

redacted] and I were in on that night, there 

were no medical records on it; there were no 

records anywhere in that plant on the fact 

that [Identifying information redacted] and I 

were left in that building and totally 

exposed. There were no records in medical; 

there were no records in our personal files. 

And he said that was one of the things that 

they really talked to the medical director 

about, was how they pulled files, people's 

medical records and data that looked bad for 

them. 

 I think it was about a year and a 

half later that [Identifying information 

redacted] started showing up with cancer, and 

he suffered terribly. He had bladder cancer 
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and colon cancer and bone cancer. And he 

never told his family anything about what 

happened. He was an old military retired guy 

that just toughed out everything, and never 

accused anyone. 

 I believe that was in '89, and by 

'90 I was in -- I was becoming increasingly 

ill. And by September of '90 I was in 

Houston, Texas, at Baylor Medical Center with 

a doctor, Dr. Bernard Patton, who was a 

tenured professor there. And he worked with 

me for a week doing testing. And he was 

pretty sure that I had ALS. All the tests 

came back negative, and he was puzzled. So he 

tested me again and again, and he tested me 

for MS and all the other neurological -- 

myasthenia gravis. And he was very puzzled. 

And so he kept me there a second week, and he 

began doing more complex tasks. And he did a 

lot of horrendous testing, one of which was -- 

they did muscle biopsies to the bone with my 

laying there awake, they gave me no medicine, 

no pain killer, not even a Valium, because 

they didn't want to disrupt the values they 
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were going to find in the biopsy. They did a 

nerve biopsy on my ankle where they cut it and 

pulled a nerve, and at that point three 

medical guys that were there, students, lay 

their body across me that way, and three lay 

their body across me that way, while they 

jerked a nerve out with no anesthesia. I tell 

you it was pretty horrendous. 

 And from that data he could see 

antibodies attacking the nerves, the muscles, 

the fascia in the vascular system throughout 

my body. And he said, he had no explanation 

except for where I worked. And of course I 

couldn't talk about it. And he said, but I 

can look -- I can study what Pantex is and 

what they do. And he said the government has 

never admitted what they expose y'all to. And 

he said, it's what you work with. He said be 

careful when you go back to work because they 

will be trying to fire you. 

 So I thought that was strange, but 

I went on back with my medical records, and I 

had taken two weeks vacation by the way, 

because I was so terrified of what medical 
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would do with me when they saw where I had 

been outside the community to different 

doctors. 

 Anyway when I got back, medical 

pulled me from the line, pulled me from 

working on the line. They gave me written 

restrictions that I could no longer work with 

toxic chemicals, MOCA or HE. They pulled me 

off the line, had me working away from any of 

those chemicals. And after about two years 

they called me into medical one Friday 

afternoon just about 3:00 o'clock, kind of a 

strange situation, called me over there, and 

the medical director said, what are your 

restrictions? And I said, I can't work around 

any toxic chemicals, MOCA or HE, and I wear 

brown coveralls because I'm allergic to the 

blue dye in the blue ones. And he said, no, 

you can't wear the blue coveralls, but you 

have no other restrictions. 

 And I said, oh yes I do, and he 

said, no, that never happened. And I said, 

excuse me. He said that never happened. 

 And so after about 30 minutes of 
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him telling me that that never happened, I had 

to go back to my work place, because it was 

about time to close up. So I saw my 

supervisor, and I said, [Identifying 

information redacted], what are my 

restrictions? And he said, oh you have no 

restrictions except wearing brown coveralls. 

And he said, by the way, we are moving you 

back to the line next week. And all those 

documents disappeared from all files, 

personnel files, medical files. They said it 

never happened. 

 So that's just another situation of 

how documents could disappear, just on a whim 

or whatever they decided. Like I said, even 

my supervisor said, oh you've never had any 

restrictions. That never happened. And that 

was just another situation where a supervisor 

would look me straight in the eye and lie 

about something he said the day before. 

 I'm not the only one that 

experienced things like that. I found from 

the time -- especially from the time I was 

diagnosed in Houston, I found my experiences 
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at Pantex to be a delicate dance because I 

never knew what was going to be the truth from 

day to day, which supervisor was going to 

change an attitude or a rule or a regulation, 

including written documents. 

 Thank you for listening. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. 

 Then Floyd Wiley. 

 MR. WILEY: Gentlemen, I've enjoyed 

being here today, and glad to see all of you, 

because I've seen all your names on the 

Internet and I read all your reports that you 

write. 

 I appreciate you letting me sit in 

here today because I realize now how much 

you're working, how hard you are doing, what 

you do, and how much you would like to help us 

but you are handicapped considerably. 

 As you know this security business 

came up today and it made me feel like it 

wouldn't have happened if I wouldn't have been 

here, and I was the only one here; nobody else 

here. Well, tonight, there's nobody here, but 

there is certainly some people that are sick. 
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 There certainly some people that haven't been 

claimed. There certainly dozens of them that 

have been turned down on data that's not 

valid. The site profile looks like it was made 

up. I don't know who in the world went 

through there, but they didn't know much about 

the assembly bays. They probably were given a 

dog-and-pony show just exactly like I gave the 

congressmen when they come down. We'd give 

them a dog-and-pony show and show them what we 

wanted them to see and took them out of there. 

 If they kicked up a fuss, well, you 

don't have any need to go in here. You're not 

even cleared. You're lucky we showed you this 

business. And you know I disagree with the 

records, the dose reconstructions records. The 

primary reason that I disagree with them is 

because no one that I have talked to other 

than the few people who went down on the audit 

understands that each bay is an entity in 

itself, and it could have no units in it, it 

could have one unit it, and it could have 

units that overcome the limits that's allowed, 

provided that the foreman wasn't watching. As 
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a foreman I followed the rules. I made my 

people follow the rules. 

 There's one of my boys here right 

now, and he will tell you that I never once 

told him to violate a rule; never. And -- but 

you know they took my dose reconstruction, 

took the first one and gave me a 43 percent 

probability. They took the second one, same 

data, data ain't any good. I can show you -- 

or I could; I put it back in my car -- I can 

show you what data that they used. It don't 

have my name, my badge number on it, no 

dosimeter badge number on it. It's made up 

data. Because we didn't wear dosimeters until 

somewhere in the late '60s and then it was 

film badges, and there wasn't a true dosimeter 

in Pantex until somewhere in the mid-'70s, I 

don't know when because that kind of stuff 

didn't register up here. 

 But my job, and building bombs, 

that registered with me, and we built a lot of 

them; you don't even have a clue. But the 

newspaper published that they had authority to 

have 20,000 pits out there in storage right 
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now, and they were going to have to up that. 

They are going to build a new facility, $175 

million underground. What have we been doing 

with those 20,000 pits all this time? We 

build them right there in the base. Of course 

there weren't all 20,000 there at once, but 

there were a size and amount of them that you 

don't even have a clue. See, I can't even 

tell you how many kilograms of plutonium was 

allowed in a bay. I'm afraid to. Nothing 

secret about that. You know how many 

kilograms of plutonium is liable to go 

critical. You know that if you put so much 

plutonium here side by side it'll go critical. 

And the closer you get it together the higher 

the radiation hits. If you got one pit in 

there, you're not getting much radiation. You 

got five pits in there you're getting more 

radiation. If you got 20 pits in there it'll 

run off the scale; it might even go critical, 

I don't know. We did have records, but when I 

first went to work out there, there was no 

such thing as a KG requirement posted on the 

wall. Didn't exist. I didn't know what a KG 
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was. Nobody ever told me what a KG was. They 

didn't even tell me what plutonium was; wasn't 

allowed to. Because I was just an operator. 

I had a clearance, but I didn't have a Q 

clearance. But when I was a supervisor then I 

got a Q clearance. Well, then I could find 

out anything from anyone that I worked with. 

And I learned plenty because I worked five 

years developing the 68 with [Identifying 

information redacted] who has already been 

compensated because he has beryllium -- I mean 

he tested positive for beryllium. He's 

healthier than I am, but that is neither here 

nor there. I worked with him on the 57. 

Started the 57 from day one. We built every 

one of them. This boy here helped me; he 

worked for me. And we were only working on 

them for a year, and Burlington took them, 

because we had more work here than we could 

take care of. We had the 58 program coming, 

and several other programs coming, and we 

didn't have but six cells and 36 bays in 26, 

and 1241, what we called the snake pit where 

we inserted squashes. Squash used to be a 
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classified word; I don't know why, because you 

eat squash all the time. But anyway, if you 

call the FBI on that, that was a little slip. 

But you know, that's damn foolish of me, I 

lost my train of thought, as I'm 83 years old, 

I'm lucky to be alive. 

 But what I'm trying to get at is 

that you can't take one shoe, it don't fit all 

any more than these one-size-fits-all socks. 

You can go buy them, but they are not as 

comfortable as if you buy a pair that fits 

you. Same way with underwear or anything 

else. One size don't fit all, and one foreman 

might stay in one cell, which one of them did. 

He's dead now, one of my very best friends. 

As a matter of fact he worked for me before he 

was promoted. He was promoted and worked on 

the program on handling the nuclear components 

of the 68 and I was handling the mechanical 

build of it, mechanical and packaging. He 

worked in there 18 years in that one cell; had 

two or three people. I worked 20 or 30 units 

all over the building. See, you're going to 

measure his, compare his radiation to mine. 
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You are going to compare mine to him? Well, 

he got probably 100 times more than I did 

because he was in there with the bear pits day 

after day after day doing his thing without 

any problems. He was one of the men who was 

in the cell five or cell six. Everybody is 

telling me it was cell six, but I remember it 

was cell five; but it doesn't matter, when 

they had the plutonium spill, he was in there. 

Well, he's dead now. I don't know why he 

died. His wife wouldn't even call me. She's 

afraid to even talk to me. And there's dozens 

of others like that. Very few of them would 

ever call me, because they don't trust me. 

They think that foreman there, he don't care 

about us. He just worked the whey out of us. 

Badgered us every minute of every day to get 

one more unit, and build five, and then you 

ought to build six. But you do it by 

following the rules. But in the early days we 

didn't have standards. There was no such 

thing as an overnight standard, and we learned 

to build them in our heads. One boy taught 

the next one, and if you couldn't learn to 
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build one of them, why, you went somewhere 

else. 

 We had secret documents, but we 

couldn't put a secret document up on the wall. 

 Somebody walk in that doesn't have access to 

see it. You see, you have to be cleared to 

see some documents. There are a lot of them 

that lay around there that are classified, and 

in later years we let classified materials lay 

out all the time because the buildings were 

secured. But in the early days you couldn't 

leave OUO laying out; you'd get a security 

infraction. 

 And I worked out there 34 years, 

and handled millions of classified parts, 

secret parts, and never lost but one, and we 

found it at the Nevada Test Site because an 

engineer carried it out in his suitcase, 

instead of putting it -- letting my boys put 

it on the unit. 

 And I got one security infraction 

because I left one door open that could be 

unlocked from the outside in a building that 

is secure with alarms on it. It had something 
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like 90 or 100 doors in it, and we had to 

check them, every one, every night, and sign a 

slip that we checked them and call security 

and say, "Set the alarm". Well, the alarm set 

up fine, but the guard came along about 

midnight and said he found that door open. 

And he gave me a security infraction, the only 

one that I got in 34 years. 

 And I really thank this security 

thing we you people is classification -- I 

don't see how you can make any kind of a 

judgment as to how much radiation one man gets 

when you don't even know what he worked on, 

how many units he had in the bay. I mean 

every time you bring a unit in, the radiation 

goes up; you know that. In the 48 program you 

had to put one of them over in this corner, 

one over in that corner, and one in that 

corner, and one in this corner; and you could 

have two out in the middle to work on, and 

that was all you could do. And three of them 

had to be in the refrigerator all the time. 

We have one of the highest radiation units 

that was built out there. Whenever they had 
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to rework them, they started trying to rework 

them, couldn't it under the rules, so they 

done them in Germany; sent a team to Germany 

to rework them, and foreman who went over 

there, he'd do anything in the world to get 

one of them fixed as quick as he could. He's 

the one -- I'm not going to name any names 

because he is still alive. But he is the one 

that I came into the work bay one night and 

all the boxes that holds the tritium balls 

were full, and had to be carried on a special 

cart, and the cart was gone home, so I had to 

call the man out to come get the bottles out 

of there before I could go to work. We had to 

open them to see the bottles in there. And we 

opened one container, and it had three of them 

in there, and it had melted the foam. 

 Now there was a guy that told me, 

you're lying. Those tritium bottles don't get 

hot. Well anybody that has ever worked one of 

them will tell you, put two of them close 

together and it gets so hot you can't pick it 

up. 

 We kept them on the same plane in 
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the cell; we kept them on the same plane; we 

kept them scattered out. And Ms. Britten, she 

worked for me, or rather I supervised her a 

time or two. She'd be working the swing; a 

good operator. She's not going to lie to you 

about that tritium spill. I didn't know 

anything about that tritium spill, but I'll 

bet you $50 it happened, because she wouldn't 

lie about it. 

 But we had T289S, and they would 

alarm just all the time. When they alarmed my 

people would evacuate as quick as they could. 

We called safety. Safety come down there with 

an old T1-90, a hand-held tritium monitor, and 

me and him would put on safety masks and go in 

there, and he'd sit the old T1-90s doing knobs 

on it, I don't know what he was doing, and 

walk in there and say, there ain't no tritium 

in here. Let's get back in here boys and go 

to work. Set the old monitor down on the 

floor and call maintenance to come and check 

the tritium monitor. This would happen time 

and time again. The old T289s would cost me a 

million hours in production time, because they 
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were undependable. 

 They started the Mark 58, this is 

the hottest program we ever worked on, and 

when I say hot I mean high radiation. It 

didn't have as much radiation as the 48, but 

it was a high one, and we could only work in 

there, we could only keep a man in there three 

weeks, and then we had to rotate him out for 

that quarter. We could put him in there for 

three weeks in a quarter. And I'm trying to 

meet a production schedule and rotate people 

every three weeks. Some of them didn't even 

know what the program was. Usually we'd train 

people on a program and they stayed on it, you 

know, until everybody worked through and they 

all got trained. But we couldn't do that on 

the 58 because we had to work everybody in the 

plant three weeks at a time. 

 And Pete Looney is dead now. He 

got a year's radiation which at that time was 

2-1/2 rem -- well, actually in the early days 

we worked under five rem per year; that was 

the rules was five rem per year. He got 2-1/2 

rem in three weeks. They pulled him out of 
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there for a year. He started losing weight, 

and he was a great big old boy, he began to 

lose weight. He got down, it looked like he'd 

lost about 100 pounds and I thought I'd killed 

him. But it turned out he was going through a 

divorce, and he wasn't eating very much. He 

did get fat again. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Floyd, I need to have 

you wind it up if you could. You've gone 

considerably over your time here. 

 MR. WILEY: All right, I'm sorry, 

and I do appreciate y'all -- I understand what 

you are going through, and I certainly 

understand what Larry was talking about when 

he was telling you that he was saying he 

wasn't going to approve something he couldn't 

stand behind. I'll be just like him. 

 Thank you much. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. 

 I wanted to check with people on 

the line here. Do we have any folks on the 

telephone that wish to make public comments? 

 MR. FUNK: Dr. Ziemer, this is John 

Funk. I've got a couple of things I missed 
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this morning. I have a few phone calls. You 

could save me a spot at the end of the 

session. 

 MS. KLEA: This is Bonnie Klea. 

I'll wait until the people there in your 

audience are done. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. And anyone 

else? 

 Okay, I've got two more folks here 

that we want to hear from. Sue Morgan. 

 MS. MORGAN: My name is Sue Morgan, 

and I left Pantex in 1986 because I was ill. 

 None of the doctors in Amarillo 

would even approached the subject of my 

exposures, and so I spent several years with 

health food stores, home remedies et cetera, 

trying to detox myself from radiation. 

 My time on the line began over in 

research and development, one day my partner 

and I were packaging high explosives which 

were in talc form with no protective 

equipment. We had to stop and go up to the 

division manager's office, and he was giving a 

talk about carcinogens, known carcinogens. 
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And he mentioned the explosives we were 

working with right at that moment. 

 My partner and I had that talc all 

over us -- in our hair, in our coveralls, et 

cetera. And he said that we were not to work 

on those explosives without protective 

equipment, and that included respirators. 

 So when we went back to work we 

requested protective equipment and 

respirators. We were given white paper suits 

and a pollen mask. I transferred over later 

to -- well, I was an inspector, and I worked 

mostly in building 64, and 23, which was on 

the 68 program. 

 And I was exposed to various 

chemicals, toluene -- I never have been able 

to pronounce it -- and beryllium. 

 Now today -- well, years ago I 

checked out to being beryllium sensitive. The 

first time I went to Denver to the hospital 

for a checkup, the doctor tore the lining in 

my lung, my right lung, so he couldn't get an 

accurate count of the beryllium, so there was 

no sediment. 
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 Since then I have been several 

times and they have refused to do one biopsy; 

still no settlement. I now have emphysema. I 

have never smoked; never will smoke. But I 

have emphysema, and I am very sensitive to 

beryllium, according to the test. 

 The doctors, I have made the 

comment more than once, the doctors have the 

attitude that they are working for the company 

and not for the court, which I don't like. 

It's the wrong attitude in my opinion. 

 I went to my -- my doctor sent me 

to a specialist for -- I guess unknown 

diseases. He was a high powered 

rheumatologist, and he ran all these tests, 

and he came back and told me, he said the only 

thing I can tell you is that all -- everything 

you have today, all of your conditions can be 

attributed to your exposures. 

 And we don't have any help for it. 

 You are going to have to treat symptoms, and 

you are going to have to live with it. 

 Today I am supposedly in my golden 

years. Because I left Pantex early, I didn't 
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get a retirement. I am running out of money, 

and I am ill. I spent the last 2-1/2 years 

pretty much in bed; I'm a semi-invalid. And 

the doctors did admit -- the ones here that 

will admit -- the ones in Houston out and out 

say, you know, you have this and this and 

this, and you just have to live with it; there 

is no help for it. 

 So my wonderful golden years that I 

worked 50 years for are controlled by the 

conditions of my health, and those conditions 

are painful; they are not pleasant. And I 

resent it, because I have been a good hard 

working member of society, and here I am now 

68 years old, running out of money, with no 

settlement to which I am entitled. So far 

there has been no cancer, nothing that I can 

directly necessarily attribute to radiation. 

That came out several years ago that daily 

ongoing doses of low level radiation are more 

dangerous than one high exposure. 

 At the time I was working there, if 

you are on the last day of the month, if your 

dosimeter indicated the limit you could have 
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so many REM per month, if it indicated the 

limit, and the next day was the first, then 

that just rolled over and you went right back 

in the cell and went right back to work, and 

that did happen to me. 

 I read -- I don't know how true it 

is, but I kind of think it's true -- that when 

all of this started, and the lawsuits with the 

unions started, that they found 80 boxes of 

medical records which were buried at Pantex, 

and my record was one of them, and that person 

that told me that was in a position to know. 

 Thank you for your time. 

 DR. ZIEMER: And thank you for 

coming today. 

 Next we will hear from David 

McCampbell. David, it looks like we'll have 

to raise the microphone. 

 MR. McCAMPBELL: Looks that way. 

 My name is David McCampbell. I am 

speaking on behalf of my father, Elvin 

McCampbell. And he would love to be here, but 

he died in 2002 of renal cancer which was 

attributed by the surgeons and the doctors in 
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Wichita Falls, after all their tests, that it 

was probably related to radiation exposure. 

They had heard of Pantex, and they knew all of 

these stories. So Dad can't be here. 

 But he worked out there form '70 to 

'84. He filed all the paperwork in about 

1999. He was denied in 2002. The reasons for 

which only a physicist or a biochemist or an 

industrial hygienist or somebody of that 

nature would understand all the paperwork that 

was included. 

 As I said he died in 2002 of renal 

cancer. Since that time, on behalf of my 

mother, I have continued to work to try to get 

a resolvement out of this situation, primarily 

because I worked out at Pantex from 1969 to 

1974, as a training specialist in 1215, a lot 

of the stories these people are telling you, I 

personally during that period of time know 

what they are talking about, because we would 

bring people up to the line, I mean to 1215, 

we would have the engineers come in and the 

quality people, and we would sit and write 

standards. The assembly workers would learn 
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to do the assemblies, then we would shift 

every thing down on the line. I worked on 

about seven programs during that particular 

period of time. 

 The thing that bothers me most is -

- and this is just an anecdote I thought up 

while the person was mentioning the tritium -- 

my boss in the training center was a man by 

the name of [Identifying information 

redacted], who had been with Pantex or Mason & 

Hanger forever, because he transferred from 

Medina, he had a badge number like 

[Identifying information redacted], or 

something like that. And we were talking 

numerous times about what do we do, or how do 

we train people for when a tube breaks. And 

he said, well, the ongoing story is that you 

take duct seal and you put it over the tube, 

and then you go home and you drink eight or 10 

beers and flush it out of your system. 

 This was kind of the mentality that 

existed at Pantex during that particular 

period of time whenever there were really no 

definitions given or -- about the dangers or 
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the true hazards. The first one I know about 

was '73, something like that. I was asked to 

develop a series of programs called Atomic 

Weapons Familiarization. And in that by that 

time the cloak had fallen to some degree, and 

we brought all of the operators up and put 

them through that program, talking about how 

an atomic bomb worked, what the components 

were, what chemicals were, what explosives 

were made up of, how it all went together, how 

it detonated, and everything else. 

 And at that time I remember very 

clearly a lot of guys coming up and saying, 

you know I've worked here for 10 or 15 years. 

 Nobody has ever -- nobody ever put this kind 

of a presentation to us. That program was cut 

out about a year later because people in 

management decided we were telling too much. 

 So it gives you some idea again 

about the state of mind at Pantex. 

 My dad, according to the last 

denial by NIOSH or whoever has got these 

forms, said that he had a 37.61 percent chance 

of developing cancer based on his film badge, 
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and again it was a film badge, it was not a 

dosimeter or anything else. 

 The point simply is this: how many 

of you in your present jobs would accept that 

job if you knew you had a 37.61 percent chance 

of getting renal cancer? The point being 

these things are hidden, and that's what these 

folks are hurting about. That's what my 

mother is hurting about because she lost her 

husband. 

 Now I have been involved in 

discussions with the U.S. Department of Labor, 

filled out all their forms. I have talked to 

the Energy Employee Compensation Resource 

Center. I think -- I don't know when that was 

-- maybe a year ago; they came in, gave me a 

new set, because my dad was turned down under 

the radiation portion because he was only 

37.61 percent. But toxic side they decided, 

and we got a letter shortly after, that they 

were reconsidering his case and had sent it 

all to NIOSH. 

 Now I have also worked with people 

over in Albuquerque. They know me. It's 
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gotten to the point where the first thing they 

tell me is, I'm sorry we understand your case. 

 We hear it from others. And they keep -- I 

keep calling and say you told me -- this was 

around Christmas -- you told me I would have 

information within three or four months, and 

it'd been six months, and she said, I'll 

check. 

 She called back, said, I talked to 

the people in Colorado. You will have -- his 

file was in on somebody's desk and they moved 

it to the top. That was at the first of the 

year. I called again last month. I don't 

know where the file is, but anyway, supposedly 

it has all been sent to NIOSH, because now 

they have decided that he may be eligible 

because he was exposed to toxic chemicals. 

 Now I know for a fact that he was 

exposed to toxic chemicals because I trained 

him in the training bays. The methyl ethyl 

ketones, right now I can't even recall all the 

chemicals. We just kept them all in a big 

cabinet. We had no idea, or any toxicity 

reports or anything else about any of these, 
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and we trained in using the actual materials 

that they would be using down on the line. So 

I know for a fact that his time out there, his 

hands, sometimes they wore rubber gloves, 

sometimes they didn't. They didn't wear 

respirators; they didn't wear masks. 

 So I know that his exposure, he was 

exposed heavily, and I put that in the letter 

I sent this last time, last summer I guess. 

 The point again, I appreciate your 

time. But I would really like to say that 

nine years that this has been going on without 

a definite answer or without something 

legitimate understandable conclusion is very 

frustrating. 

 My mother is [Identifying 

information redacted] years old. She is on 

Social Security. I have to help her when I 

can money-wise. I don't expect anything. I 

figure it will probably be denied, because 

that is the way everything has gone. And 

these people, they all tell you the same 

thing. 

 But that is not right. Like I said 
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my five years out there were fascinating; I 

enjoyed it. But it didn't take me long to 

figure out I had to get out of there, because 

I watched people die. Now I'm not a doctor, 

but it doesn't take one when you start looking 

at the mortality rate. 

 So anyway, I did have a Q 

clearance. Anything they talked about, I 

wrote standards, I worked on standards. 

Believe me, they were not the safety issues 

addressed that needed to be addressed. 

 I do appreciate your time. Thank 

you very much. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you 

David. 

 We are going to go to the phone 

lines now. Let's see, [Identifying 

information redacted], I believe you were 

first on the line. 

 MR. FUNK: Yes, Dr. Ziemer. If you 

will give me a second I will get my paperwork. 

 MR. FUNK: I believe a statement 

was made this morning that the Nevada Test 

Site was a low exposure area. I'd like to 
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bring it to the attention of the Board that 

millions of dollars were spent out there 

plowing under the entire testing area. And to 

date about 60 percent of that site is fenced, 

and no access is granted. This is hardly a 

place where you would call low exposure. 

 Now later on after the comment 

period, a couple of the people who were in the 

know were also claimants, and they brought it 

to my attention that Mr. Rolfes had said 

there was a database with the highest 

exposures on the test site. 

 Now if there is such a database I'd 

sure like to see it, because I've been asking 

for it. 

 I've been told that there is a 

database for exposures period. There is no 

database for highest exposures, lowest 

exposure, for medium exposure. This was an 

incorrect remark made by Mark Rolfes that said 

that there was a database of highest exposure, 

because there isn't any such thing. 

 And I'd like to get into something 

else. Last working board meeting I thought we 
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were in agreement that I was supposed to help 

NIOSH by supplying them a list of name for 

flats workers who they were going to pull 

their film badge records and their records and 

see if any of them had bioassays or PIC 

readings or full body scans, and if they 

didn't have then they agreed that they were 

going to move on in a different direction. 

 Now it seems like we went right 

back to the 100 selected random workers. Now 

they're saying they are the highest exposed. 

Now I challenge that thinking because there is 

no comparison. How can you say this is the 

highest, that the tunnels were higher than the 

flats, when there is no information on the 

flats to compare it with? 

 If you don't have the information 

you can't compare. And I'd like to take this 

time to address all the Board. I think you've 

done a very good job, and I apologize for some 

of my caustic attitude toward you in the past. 

I don't mean that personally. It's a very 

hard thing for the job that we have to do. We 

don't have the access at NIOSH. We've got 
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sometimes very frustrating, and I would like 

to say that this board has done a very good 

job, especially a few of you, you all know who 

you are, you've been very good to me. And I 

appreciate everything Mr. Katz has done as 

well, too. 

 I would like to also point out that 

before we go anywhere on the site profile and 

everything, some of the supporting documents 

are still inaccurate. There is still no 

discrimination between a drill shaft and a 

mine shaft, and this does relate to exposure, 

to site profile, the SEC and everything else, 

because it relates to the people, the 

different types of people who did the 

different types of work. 

 And I think that we are a long way 

from closure on coming up with a program on 

the Nevada Test Site. 

 Dr. Ziemer, you and one -- at a few 

of the meetings in the past you asked for 

other sites that had not been mentioned. I'd 

like to point out that there is auxiliary test 

sites in Nevada. There is Double Tracks, 
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there is Clean Slate and there is FAULTLESS, 

and some of them people have come to me 

wanting to file claims. I found out that 

there was no film badges issued to some of 

these people; there wasn't even a badge period 

for access. Some of these places were so 

remote that everybody knew everybody that they 

didn't even bother with security or a RadSafe 

monitoring for that matter. 

 And there was one more site I 

wanted to bring to your attention. It's not 

the Nevada Test Site. It's in Salt Lake City. 

It's on 59th and State Street. It was a 

uranium processing plant was not mentioned 

yet, so I'd like to see what they could do 

about getting that one designated as a site 

too. 

 And I'm not real happy with this 

film badge investigation. I think it needs a 

bit more looking into. A lot of the 

interoffice memos were not addressed. 

 Just to show you how bad 

information was out there I want to give you 

one quick example from the Glenn Clayton 
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report. I know this may not relate to film 

badges or exposures, but it just goes to show 

you how the left hand didn't know what the 

right hand was doing. 

 There was an incident up there, a 

test, where they had a slug of gold inside of 

a lead shield that was fastened to a cable. 

And it was described to the miners during the 

reentry to look for a four-inch cable with a 

40-pound lead cast with an eight-pound gold 

slug in it. 

 Turned out it was a three-quarter 

inch cable. It had a 200-pound lead cask, 

with 40 pounds of gold in it. 

 So this goes to show you that the 

information that is out there is really -- I 

don't know how you can get that far off, 

especially with that much gold. 

 And once again I'd like to say, I 

don't see how anyone can say the tunnels were 

the highest exposure, because as I mentioned 

time and time again the tunnels and all the 

mine shafts only constituted one percent of 

all the tests on the Nevada Test Site, and I 
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could hardly see how you could take one 

percent and extrapolate back to the other 99 

percent. 

 That's all, thank you very much. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, and for the 

record that was John Funk representing the 

Nevada Test Site. I had thought initially 

that it was [Identifying information redacted] 

from the General Steel Industries that was on 

the phone, but that was John Funk. Thank you, 

John. 

 And Mr. Presley, the chair of that 

work group, has heard your comments as well, 

as did the other work group members. 

 Then I think we had another person 

on the line as well that wanted to comment. 

 Bonnie, are you still there? 

 MS. KLEA: Yes, I am. Thank you 

very much. And I'd just like to thank the 

Board for all the work you've done so far on 

the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. And for 

those who don't know that laboratory was in 

California, and we had 10 experimental nuclear 

reactors with one large failure in 1959; 
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actually they all failed because they were 

experiments, and they were powering them to 

see how high they could go before they failed. 

 But anyway I have a question and a 

comment about the tritium. I've heard it 

mentioned that people have seen only the 

widows getting paid. Now I think I've heard 

from NIOSH that you are giving priority to 

paying the widows over the workers. Is this 

true? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Your question was, is 

NIOSH -- 

 MS. KLEA: Do you have a policy of 

compensating the widows before you would 

compensate the workers? 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'm certainly not 

aware of such a policy. I'll ask Mr. Katz is 

he can address that? 

 MR. KATZ: Well, just for 

clarification, NIOSH doesn't compensate or 

decide compensation for anybody. They do dose 

reconstructions. 

 But there is no priority given to 

one group over another in terms of whose dose 
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reconstructions get done first according to 

whether you are a survivor or an energy 

employee. 

 MS. KLEA: Okay, because I thought 

at one of the meetings where the Department of 

Labor and NIOSH were in California that I 

heard that mentioned. 

 DR. ZIEMER: We are not aware of 

such a policy. And compensation decisions are 

actually not made by NIOSH. They are made by 

the Department of Labor. 

 MS. KLEA: Okay, also I'm very 

intrigued by the mention of the tritium. As 

you know we have a very large groundwater 

tritium plume at Santa Susana. And throughout 

the years Rockwell was asked if they had ever 

tested for tritium releases, and they said oh 

no, there is no need to. 

 Well, when EPA in 1999 took some 

samples themselves they found tritium 

everywhere. And even today we have -- I think 

it's measured at 119,000 picocuries per liter, 

and it's been estimated that had this happened 

in the '60s there would have been 199 million 
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-- I think it's picocuries per liter, or is it 

parts per billion, I don't know. 

 But anyway you mentioned highly 

insoluble compounds. So this will be something 

I'll be exploring with my own work group. I 

have data from former workers who are deceased 

on tritium and tritium alarm systems, and I 

found that all the buildings, all the work at 

Santa Susana with tritium releases, they had 

tritium leak into the ground from broken 

pipes, then it was saturated in the 

foundations. And they also released it 

through the cold traps, ventilated it, and the 

cold traps were only 15 percent effective. So 

that will be an issue I'll want to go into 

with my own work group. 

 And thank you again for all your 

work. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. And 

Mr. Gibson has made a note of your comments. 

He's the Work Group chair for Santa Susana. 

 MS. KLEA: Right. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Were there others on 

the phone lines that wished to make comments 
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this evening? 

 (No response) 

 DR. ZIEMER: Let me ask if there 

is anyone else here that didn't get a chance 

to sign up that wishes to make a comment, 

please approach the microphone and give us 

your name for the record. 

 MR. VAUGHN: My name is Glenn 

Vaughn. I'm one of Floyd's boys as he calls 

me. 

 But I'd just like to say that I 

agreed with what everyone has said, that I 

don't see how they can accurately go back and 

reconstruct the records from times that you 

didn't wear badges, and being out there 43 

years, and like Floyd said, first 15, 20 years 

we didn't wear badges; if we did it was just 

the film badges. And also the cell five 

incident that Floyd mentioned, I would like to 

know if there is any record of this incident, 

and if there is and where you can find out the 

information about it. 

 I was in on the cleanup. One of my 

best friends was in the cell when it happened, 
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and he's not longer with us. And I feel sure 

that was it, because he got the full dose 

right in the face. 

 And I'm sure that all this has been 

advertised -- information put out on it, but 

we were watching the news last night, and 

that's the reason we are here today. And I 

would like to have come and participated more, 

or listened more to what's going on. 

 Another thing, I don't know if this 

is strictly radiation, but I feel like the 

chemicals is as much a problem there as the 

radiation. You make up concoctions of 

formaldehyde and acetone and toluene, in the 

early years we'd take that toluene, throw it 

out of the floor and scrape the floors and 

reseal the floors. It helped to open the 

doors, or you'd get so high that your head 

would just swim. 

 And I feel like my wife came out to 

a retirement party, she said, does everyone in 

your department shake? And as you know, maybe 

it's age, but I've been old quite awhile if 

that's what it is, but now I have to use two 
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hands, most of the time, to write my name. 

 And I do appreciate the opportunity 

to talk, and appreciate what y'all are doing. 

 Thank you again. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very, very 

much. 

 Let me ask, do we need to have him 

spell his name, or did you catch it? Could 

you spell your name for the court reporter? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Your last name is 

spelled? V? V-a-u-g-h-n? Thank you. 

 Are there any others that wish to 

make comment now? 

 If not, we thank you all very much. 

 This actually concludes the Board's meeting 

here in Amarillo. 

 We certainly appreciate the 

hospitality that has been shown to the Board 

by the local folks here as well as the 

participation of many of you in our sessions 

both yesterday and today. 

 Thank you all very much. 

 (Whereupon at 5:16 p.m. the 

proceeding in the above-entitled matter was 
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adjourned.)