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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + +

SUBCOMMITTEE ON DOSE RECONSTRUCTION REVIEWS

+ + + + +

MONDAY

DECEMBER 19, 2011

+ + + + +

The Subcommittee convened in the 

Brussels Room of the Cincinnati Airport 

Marriott, 2395 Progress Drive, Hebron, 

Kentucky, at 9:00 a.m., Mark Griffon, 

Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

MARK GRIFFON, Chairman

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

DAVID B. RICHARDSON, Member

WANDA MUNN, Member
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

KATHY BEHLING, SC&A*

DOUG FARVER, SC&A

STU HINNEFELD, DCAS

JENNY LIN, HHS

JOHN MAURO, SC&A*

MUTTY SHARFI, ORAU Team*

SCOTT SIEBERT, ORAU Team*

JOHN STIVER, SC&A*

BRANT ULSH, DCAS

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

Welcome and Roll Call / Introductions...... 4

Discussion of dose reconstruction cases under 

review (sets 7 - 10)

Set 7 .............................. 102

Set 8 .............................. 105

Set 9 .............................. 268
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

2 9:05 a.m.

3 MR. KATZ: Good morning everyone 

4 in the room and on the line. This is the 

5 Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health 

6 Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee. 

7 Just getting started here and we 

8 will begin with roll call beginning with Board 

9 Members in the room.

10 (Whereupon, the roll call was 

11 taken.)

12 MR. KATZ: Okay, a small group but 

13 I think that takes care of it. We can get 

14 started. There is an agenda, it's on the Web 

15 page. It's everything everybody's familiar 

16 with. We have sets, I think, 7 through 9 to 

17 complete, right? And 10-year review follow-up 

18 on DR issues.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Yes, I 

20 think in preparation for this meeting I was 

21 reviewing the July transcript so we haven't 

22 met in awhile but I think a couple of main 
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1 things. I mean, I know this is a tough week 

2 to have meetings but I at least wanted to 

3 touch base and see where we stand and at least 

4 get a path forward for some of this QA/QC, 

5 some of the QA/QC issues. I'm looking back 

6 and I'm going to need help from everyone in 

7 the room but I'm looking back at the 

8 transcripts and there is, you know, some 

9 items. The last meeting we discussed some 

10 possible options for how to, really they were 

11 how NIOSH or ORAU could modify their QA/QC 

12 system to do what we're terming reworks of 

13 cases, reruns of cases and whether it made --

14 different models, different options made 

15 sense. 

16 The other, I guess some of the 

17 more mechanical things, I know we had, SC&A 

18 had generated several of our findings from the 

19 early sets of cases on QA/QC and I think there 

20 was a follow-up that NIOSH was going to do on 

21 those. In the last meeting, Stu, you 

22 indicated that you kind of had wrapped that up 
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1 but not released it to the Subcommittee yet. 

2 It was in final reviews or whatever. Do you 

3 remember what I'm referring to?

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It's the --

6 yes, yes.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I remember.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So that's one 

9 data point. I'm not sure if that will help 

10 shed some light on a path forward or not, but 

11 that's one thing. I'll just bring up a couple 

12 of things and then we can discuss it. 

13 The other thing we were trying to 

14 grapple with was, you know, just this path 

15 forward and the problem we seem to be having 

16 constantly as this DR Subcommittee is that 

17 we're looking at cases that are often quite 

18 old, so the question comes up that we say 

19 well, we found this sort of, maybe not a trend 

20 but we found some pattern of some problems and 

21 then we talk to NIOSH and ORAU and it's quite 

22 obvious that that has not -- it's different 
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1 now, it's done different now. And then we ask 

2 well, you know, I think we talked around this 

3 issue for awhile at the last meeting too was 

4 well, what's the benchmark. You know, are you 

5 tracking this and have your changes actually 

6 reduced the rates of these sort of

7 occurrences. And I'm not sure internally 

8 whether we ever heard whether ORAU had some 

9 good benchmarks or whether, you know, you were 

10 just making some common sense changes that 

11 made sense. You saw some errors but there 

12 wasn't necessarily any documentation of where 

13 you started and where you're at now and that 

14 kind of thing, so.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I think it 

16 would be -- I don't think we would be able to 

17 over history track a -- follow a track of 

18 these errors were being made and identified in 

19 a quality review, this review or some other 

20 review, and therefore it's fed back and we 

21 made these specific changes. It's going to be 

22 hard to resurrect a record like that. My 
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1 recollection from the analysis that SC&A have 

2 done of QC and QA errors and it was, you know, 

3 that we had gone through that. We'd done some 

4 preliminary, yes, we agree these are findings 

5 and I agree. My memory is very much like 

6 yours that our discussion here was those dose 

7 reconstructions were done so long ago that 

8 many of these things aren't done this way 

9 anymore and essentially the question is moot. 

10 And so we said at that time that let's, in 

11 order to get a better feel for this let's look 

12 at the most recently reviewed ones that we 

13 have. And since a specific finding in the 10-

14 year program review or a specific 

15 recommendation in the 10-year program review 

16 was that if in fact there are mistakes coming 

17 out in dose reconstructions that are found in 

18 review like by this Subcommittee why is it 

19 that all this quality, what we say we're doing 

20 quality isn't finding those errors. And in 

21 order to get the best take on that we wanted 

22 to look at some of the most recently completed 
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1 dose reconstructions that had been reviewed in 

2 order to have a more current view than what 

3 was comprised in the SC&A review. So we have

4 done that. 

5 We have taken, at the time we made 

6 that decision the most recently delivered, the 

7 latest review set we had was the 12th set. We 

8 took the five individual dose reconstructions 

9 from that set that had the latest completion 

10 dates and we looked at the SC&A findings for 

11 those five cases and then made the evaluation 

12 of looking for QA/QC errors. So we had our 

13 contractor ORAU do that task, provide us a 

14 report. We then kind of reviewed that report 

15 and have a preliminary judgment of what we 

16 feel are QA/QC errors. There were still some 

17 there. And we fed that back to, and we're 

18 starting, just now starting the analysis of 

19 those errors and to figure out what is it 

20 about our QA program that wasn't there that 

21 should have been that would have caught these 

22 errors. And so that analysis is underway now 
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1 but we don't have that. 

2 We do have I believe a summary --

3 we haven't really reviewed this for the 

4 purpose of sharing it and so it may be a 

5 little rough and it may be the opinion of the 

6 people who did it rather than the office 

7 opinion, but we do have that intermediate 

8 analysis that was done of here are the errors, 

9 these are -- this first analysis, what we feel 

10 are QA/QC errors. So we might be able to 

11 resurrect that and submit it to the Board 

12 Members today. But that's the last thing we 

13 have because the final piece, what about the 

14 QA/QC program didn't see these things. That 

15 part's not done yet. So we have done those 

16 things.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And that at 

18 least gives us some newer data. 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, and in fact 

20 even then -- the problem is we're always 

21 following because this Board reviews cases 

22 that are finally adjudicated. So that puts 
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1 you months downstream anyway from the time --

2 at the time they're finally adjudicated 

3 they're usually months downstream from the 

4 time we did the dose reconstruction. And so 

5 then you select them, review them, publish 

6 them, you know, you're probably always a year 

7 downstream. So that's always going to be a 

8 little tough.

9 Now if you recall at our last 

10 meeting one of the discussions about 

11 generating real-time data about what kind of 

12 quality, and we had a fairly extended 

13 discussion about duplicate analyses and is 

14 there a way to do a duplicate. We talked 

15 about several possible ways of having a bunch 

16 of dose reconstructors do the same one, and we 

17 felt like we couldn't do that not only for a 

18 resource reason but also because we just don't 

19 have that many dose reconstructors who are 

20 expert in a particular site. But we did agree 

21 that that was something we needed to do, some 

22 sort of duplicate as blind as possible. And 
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1 so we have started this.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: When you say --

3 I just want to clarify, when you're saying 

4 "we" is that your NIOSH staff? Is that NIOSH 

5 and ORAU, or --

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think 

7 it'll be clear when I'm further on. The 

8 decisions were made by NIOSH.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: The program was 

11 built by NIOSH. It's on our side of the, you 

12 know, all the claims.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I'm trying 

14 to clarify.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: All the claims 

16 move through the system in a -- by a 

17 computerized fashion. There's a computer 

18 application that allows -- the claim is 

19 submitted on, it's reviewed on, it's returned 

20 on, you know, all that occurs in this. None 

21 of that, from ORAU's view, none of that has 

22 changed, it looks exactly the same to them as 
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1 it always did. The review system, the 

2 duplicate review occurs on our side. Each 

3 week this program randomly selects two claims 

4 and puts them in the inbox for what we call 

5 duplicate review. This is as they come in, 

6 okay, this is new claims coming in. And then 

7 those are assigned to a health physicist on 

8 our side to do a dose reconstruction before we 

9 see the -- before the ORAU dose reconstruction 

10 gets to our side. As far as ORAU, no, there's 

11 nothing, when this case goes to ORAU it goes 

12 just like normal. They don't know that it's 

13 been --

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And two is sort 

15 of, you're getting about --

16 MR. HINNEFELD: It's like two 

17 percent a month. We figure 2 a week is pretty 

18 close to two percent. It's actually a little 

19 higher, it's a little higher than two percent 

20 because we don't really get 100 a week. So 

21 that system is built, and we have several of 

22 our dose reconstructions done. I checked 
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1 right before we went, right about the time of 

2 the Board Meeting which would have been a week 

3 and a half ago, and we had just received four 

4 of what I'll call the production dose 

5 reconstruction from ORAU. So we now have four 

6 instances where we have our dose 

7 reconstruction and the production and we can 

8 start analyzing.

9 Now the analysis isn't done. We 

10 get into this part and we're running into a 

11 holiday so we haven't done that. Like I said 

12 we have four of them. But we do want to 

13 start. So the next step will be to analyze 

14 the production dose reconstruction against 

15 ours, and if there's some done differently in 

16 some fashion then we need to understand why 

17 that is. Theoretically these should come out 

18 approximately the same. I don't know that 

19 we'd ever expect them to come out exact 

20 numerically the same. We think they should 

21 come out approximately the same.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Even with, I 
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1 mean we had this discussion at the last 

2 meeting too. Even with things like 

3 overestimating.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, that's 

5 always -- that's what's going to be different. 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. It 

7 seems like that could be --

8 MR. HINNEFELD: There's a lot of 

9 flexibility in how overestimate you go.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: And what you 

12 choose, and how you choose to overestimate. As 

13 long as everything else is right and you 

14 choose one or two, you know, you can have some 

15 flexibility in the overestimate. You know, 

16 what may appear most efficient or most easiest 

17 from our dose reconstructor may not be 

18 perceived, in terms of overestimating, may not 

19 be perceived to be easiest from the ORAU dose 

20 reconstructor. And so you may have different 

21 overestimating approaches and differences for 

22 that reason. I mean, that to me is an easy 
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1 evaluation to explain. 

2 What's not easy to explain is when 

3 people, we think people are doing the same 

4 thing and they get a different answer. Well, 

5 that says something about how clear your 

6 instructions are for dose reconstructors on 

7 how to do that thing. So that's what we 

8 intend to learn from this.

9 And so if we can't easily explain 

10 the differences because of, say, choices of 

11 different efficiency method then that would 

12 speak to something that sounds to me as if it 

13 needs to be fixed, that we need clearer 

14 instruction or better training or something. 

15 You know, one of the QA things that can fix a 

16 situation like that. Now, we can report back 

17 to that and we just couldn't have -- we only 

18 had four cases. That was a week ago, and I 

19 just noticed that we had four cases a week ago 

20 so we don't have anything today, but we could 

21 do it for the next meeting.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I'm also 
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1 wondering if it falls into one of those things 

2 that, you know, you're going to have a certain 

3 amount of mistakes, right? When you do a lot 

4 of cases.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So how do you 

7 know if it's something that needs to be fixed 

8 versus something that just happened. You 

9 know, acceptable level of error I guess, you 

10 know. 

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Again, we haven't 

12 worked out, you know. We're kind of going to 

13 learn this as we do it because it's hard for 

14 us to envision specifying some sort of, you 

15 know, all the criteria ahead of time. We're 

16 counting on learning about this and what works 

17 as we do it. 

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But that might 

19 even get into more of the ORAU's internal 

20 system, right? It would be, it might behoove 

21 us to look at that as well to see like what's 

22 their baseline and they can, you know, if they 
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1 can say well we get, you know, for these data 

2 entry type errors, you know, right now, or a 

3 year ago we were getting this many and we put 

4 so many things in place that now we're 

5 reducing those. This goes back to the 

6 discussion we had last time, you know, what's 

7 the benchmark. Are the systems that we think 

8 we're fixing actually improving the output.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, we did get a 

10 fairly lengthy document about what's being 

11 done now on quality assurance. And I don't 

12 recall right now, but we can -- I mean, and 

13 this came from the contractor. Part of it 

14 came from the contractor, you know, they gave 

15 us a fairly lengthy document about what 

16 they're doing and then we added some things 

17 that we do and that's been compiled, but I 

18 don't recall right now what it says. I don't 

19 even know that I even read it in detail yet. 

20 It just got compiled in the last few weeks and 

21 published for a meeting we had last week with 

22 our management, so.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, because I 

2 think, I mean it seems like there's only so 

3 much the smaller NIOSH staff can do. You're 

4 going to have to do a sample of some sort.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. Yes.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But ORAU should 

7 have some system in place to be tracking all 

8 of it, you know.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, they do 

10 quite a lot and I just am not familiar with 

11 how much they do. And the other question 

12 we're going to run into is inspecting and 

13 fixing sufficient, for instance. If you just 

14 inspect this item and fix this item, maybe a 

15 lot of what we're doing is that. And if you 

16 inspect this item and fix this item then you 

17 don't stop what caused that. You're not 

18 stopping the problem that caused that item to 

19 show up the way it did. So that's I think 

20 going to be the significant question going 

21 forward is our QA or QC too heavily dependent 

22 on finding and fixing, quote, the defective 
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1 item, as opposed to identifying the cause of 

2 the defect.

3 So we have a lot. We can talk 

4 about a lot going forward in this Subcommittee 

5 on quality I think. I'm convinced of that.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: So there's, I 

8 think it's a pretty rich ground. And of 

9 course all this effort is then effort we're 

10 not spending doing something else. You know, 

11 that's the hardest thing because it all, you 

12 know, in order to get to this which I agree is 

13 important there is other work that is also 

14 important that it competes with.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, the other 

16 thing I've been struggling with is how do we, 

17 I mean we want to stay relevant with our 

18 feedback.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: In other words, 

21 not commenting on the first hundred cases. It 

22 may not be as useful now since, you know.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: So, here's I think 

2 going forward what we need to do is make a 

3 point of -- I don't know that we can do it --

4 I know we can't do it today. Make some 

5 serious schedule milestones on these products 

6 we've been talking about. We can probably 

7 negotiate those with our contractor, you know, 

8 what does it mean overall to the project if we 

9 do this by this date and so on. And then as 

10 we get those, providing them to the 

11 Subcommittee Members rather than holding 

12 everything and waiting for a Subcommittee 

13 meeting. And that way the Members of the 

14 Subcommittee can be brought, you know, aware 

15 of what's going on and we can probably have a 

16 more useful conversation then when we do get 

17 together about the items that have been shared 

18 in the interim. So I would prefer to proceed 

19 more like that and provide more interim 

20 product and in fact if there are items that 

21 rise to attention we'd welcome feedback from 

22 individual Subcommittee Members as well.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And is there 

2 anyone, I mean I know -- and we may have even 

3 seen this documentation. I'm forgetting, but 

4 as far as ORAU's program. That was provided 

5 to the --

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, that was for 

7 our management.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We had the 

9 visit at the office.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Let's see. I 

11 think I can find it relatively easily. Have 

12 not reviewed it very much but -- okay, yes. 

13 What we provided was not completed. There are 

14 some sections at the end that had not been 

15 done yet. But I can send this. Are you at 

16 csb.gov?

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. If you 

18 would send that before I forget.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Brad, 

20 you've got an ICP address? Is that the one 

21 you're using?

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, David, you 

2 have apparently a CDC address?

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: If you can 

4 send it to the UNC address that would be 

5 easier.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. What's your 

7 UNC address?

8 MEMBER RICHARDSON: It's 

9 david.richardson@unc.edu. 

10 MR. HINNEFELD: How about you, 

11 Wanda? Which one do you want?

12 MEMBER MUNN: I'm on the CDC page 

13 right now.

14 MR. KATZ: John Poston usually 

15 uses his University of Texas one.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: He's J-poston is 

17 it?

18 MR. KATZ: At tamu, T-A-M-U.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: He's just J hyphen 

20 --

21 MR. KATZ: Yes. And Mike only has 

22 his Gmail account. He has not renewed his 
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1 security training to use online.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think I owe 

3 security training, too. That's all right, I 

4 owe one at CSB also.

5 MR. KATZ: It doesn't take long. 

6 Just bang it out in 15 minutes.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: This is something 

8 ORAU delivered to us and we put some more 

9 stuff on it. Grady put it together. Yes, I 

10 put Scott and -- put Mutty on there. Those 

11 were the two guys -- there was somebody else 

12 on the phone? 

13 DR. ULSH: Mutty. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay and there --

15 John Stiver was on the phone.

16 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. I 

17 just joined you.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: John Mauro's on 

19 the phone. I used their CDC addresses. Kathy 

20 Behling was one.

21 MR. KATZ: Yes, she has CDC, too.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, does it 
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1 follow the normal convention, Kbehling? 

2 Because I've got her SC&A email comes up. 

3 Kathy, does your CDC address follow the normal 

4 convention, Kbehling@?

5 MS. BEHLING: Yes, it does, too. 

6 Thanks.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: I've got 

8 everybody. I don't know if anybody wants to -

9 - I haven't even looked at this very much 

10 myself.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I mean I 

12 think realistically -- thanks for sending that 

13 out, but I think realistically maybe we --

14 MR. HINNEFELD: It's several pages 

15 long.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- on this 

17 agenda to sort of discuss and then the 

18 Committee Members can like read through it and 

19 maybe have some more precise questions. 

20 Because I think, I mean one of my concerns is 

21 what ORAU is doing internally and whether 

22 we're going to look at some small sample at a 
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1 later point and like you said, this be 

2 addressing one particular issue and not 

3 getting at the, you know.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think it 

6 might be more powerful to understand you know 

7 from their standpoint if they at least, even 

8 if they haven't had a benchmark from the past 

9 if they can at least initiate that now, you 

10 know, and then as we go forward we can see 

11 whether, you know, these modifications that 

12 are being made are making a difference or 

13 making improvements, especially -- and then I 

14 think it should probably be, I mean, we've 

15 brought this up in our discussions too but you 

16 know, the question of acceptable errors I 

17 think is different for the 45 to 50 

18 percentile, the cases that are close to 

19 compensable versus the very low. You know, 

20 you might have different levels of review, 

21 different -- so I sort of want to see what 

22 they have in place and then, you know, I guess 
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1 as importantly what they're finding. You 

2 know, how has it been working.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Now I missed the 

4 meeting that was at the ORAU office.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: I wasn't at that 

7 meeting, and I don't know what was covered 

8 there. 

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, they did 

10 walk us through their sort of process for 

11 handling cases. I'd have to look back at my 

12 notes on some of that but I don't know, David, 

13 if you remember?

14 MR. HINNEFELD: I don't know if 

15 they talked about data entry and data entry 

16 QC, if they did things like that. I don't 

17 know if they would have done some things like 

18 that or if they talked about feedback back 

19 into the operating system from inspection and 

20 identification of defects and things like 

21 that. I don't, since I didn't follow that and 

22 didn't pursue it when I got back I'm a little 
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1 --

2 DR. ULSH: We did have a 

3 discussion. We actually went to a workstation 

4 and had a guy pull up, you know, the data 

5 entry screen, showed us some of the procedures 

6 for that. I don't know about the feedback 

7 that you're talking about.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, most QA 

9 systems, the idea about a QA system is when 

10 you find a defect you figure out what was 

11 causing the defect and fix the cause of the 

12 defect.

13 DR. ULSH: Right.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: And so I don't 

15 know, you know, I'm really at a loss as to 

16 what they're doing.

17 MEMBER RICHARDSON: You know, I 

18 remain -- I have a better idea. We asked them 

19 for documents, I was hoping to get a full 

20 procedure on what that process was and they 

21 said, the document was all about human 

22 resources management. I mean as far as I 
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1 could tell that was, there was not a 

2 description of a process that was ongoing in 

3 terms of an assessment and identification of 

4 problems and documentation of improvement over 

5 time and quality of the product generated.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

7 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So I think we 

8 got a better understanding of the process of 

9 how they're operating. It seemed to me that 

10 there was an acknowledgment that there was not 

11 a in-house assessment of say a failure rate 

12 with generation of errors at different steps 

13 in that process. What they were doing was 

14 showing us sort of innovations and sort of 

15 tools, kind of data entry tools and management 

16 tools which a priori I believe plausibly would 

17 lead to an improvement in data entry, but 

18 there's no empirical demonstration of that 

19 because they've not generated, they don't have 

20 prior to implementing that tool here is the 

21 error rate for that keypunch on these items. 

22 We've implemented a tool and we got a 10 
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1 percent improvement. I would have thought 

2 that was fantastic.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.

4 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And so they 

5 agreed. And so I left sort of thinking like I 

6 still would like a 30,000 foot perspective on 

7 the process, not drilling down into as you're 

8 saying, this particular defect you know in 

9 this particular case. That's less interesting 

10 to me than how is the system operating and how 

11 is it evolving over time to get better and 

12 better every year that they maintain this 

13 contract?

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So that was 

16 kind of, that was my kind of snapshot 

17 impression --

18 DR. ULSH: So is it accurate to 

19 say that when you were there, you know, when 

20 we were at ORAU it appears that there doesn't 

21 exist the kind of document that you're talking 

22 about right now, and it would be nice to see 
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1 that.

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

3 DR. ULSH: Is that something we 

4 want to direct ORAU to do then?

5 MR. HINNEFELD: That is on our 

6 list of things to talk to ORAU about. When we 

7 -- when I direct ORAU to do anything that 

8 means that they're not going to do something 

9 else, okay? And so I think this is probably 

10 important enough that we want to do this. I 

11 just want to make sure what they don't do.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And then what 

13 is this.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: What falls off the 

15 list.

16 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I felt like us 

17 as a Subcommittee, it would be useful for -- I 

18 mean, I felt sort of strongly that that's 

19 something that needs to be in place. I mean, 

20 I, but I'm one person on the Board. I would 

21 like to see that there was some, any sort of 

22 guidance on what we should be providing to you 
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1 in terms of having left that site visit. Do 

2 you want a memo? Do you want, is this 

3 conversation sufficient?

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, the 

5 conversation will be on the record now so to 

6 me that's okay. It was, I forget when it was. 

7 I don't remember what the conflict was.

8 MR. FARVER: May 5th or 6th or 

9 something like that.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, May.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Oh, okay. Well, I 

12 know what my conflict was then. Okay. Okay. 

13 This conversation if that's, you know, if 

14 that's the important part of your feedback 

15 from the visit this will be sufficient. If 

16 you think, if there are other things like from 

17 your notes of the visit or something like 

18 that.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I mean I think 

20 that was the main takeaway.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: There was a lot 
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1 of things that were --

2 MR. KATZ: There's a transcript.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Basically 

4 computer innovations that took place that 

5 would likely have reduced --

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Is there a 

7 transcript --

8 MR. KATZ: Oh, we didn't 

9 transcribe.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: I don't think we 

11 transcribed it because it was going to be kind 

12 of mobile. 

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, we didn't 

14 transcribe that.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Well, and just 

16 looking quickly at the document you've just 

17 sent I see a lot of references to the 

18 procedures that were used but as David points 

19 out not any comment about how the use of this 

20 procedure rather than the preceding one may 

21 have changed the end result.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Alright.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think that 

2 was probably the biggest takeaway.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we'll get 

4 with ORAU about what can be done. You know, 

5 it seems like there is something that should 

6 be done.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I mean, do you 

8 know if they're collecting that kind of 

9 information now?

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Do I know?

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes.

12 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I think we 

13 asked explicitly several times about that.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, we did.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: It didn't seem 

16 like that sort of assessment was happening. 

17 And I mean, the reason it seems to me it's 

18 important is because a lot of, I would say a 

19 non-negligible portion of the findings that we 

20 have are these findings which are -- should be 

21 easily addressed by -- maybe not easily 

22 addressed, but are the types of kind of 
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1 quality assurance/quality control issues which 

2 could be addressed through process changes and 

3 that would minimize the number of findings 

4 that we have to deal with and -- that are more 

5 complicated. And there is some sort of 

6 multiple step evaluation going on and these 

7 minor things are going through, or continuing 

8 to go through.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.

10 MR. KATZ: Does the ORAU contract 

11 have provisions for a quality management 

12 system? It has requirements?

13 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

14 MR. KATZ: So they are supposed to 

15 have a quality manual and all those things 

16 that you have under ANSI?

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I forget 

18 what the standard is, but there is a 

19 requirement for a quality management system.

20 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And, Ted, as I 

21 said, when I reviewed it, it seemed to me 

22 there was a lot of boilerplate in there. It 
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1 was mostly about the appointment of somebody 

2 who's called a quality manager and it's like 

3 sort of the naming of, I'd say human resources 

4 people to positions. It wasn't a description 

5 of a process.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, it's 

7 authorities and things like that. 

8 MR. KATZ: Because normally you 

9 have categorization of error types and like 

10 you're saying, you track those.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, that's 

12 why I'm asking. Maybe we just haven't seen --

13 MR. KATZ: It's not --

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- information, 

15 but based on our meeting. So that would be 

16 the first step maybe, before you, you know, to 

17 know what they're doing now. Maybe they're 

18 doing something that we're not aware of. But 

19 it didn't seem like that in the meeting.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And I think 

22 that's the -- I mean, I guess that would be a 
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1 big question moving forward, you know, before 

2 we go any further on our side. I think you 

3 providing us, I think NIOSH's review of a 

4 percentage -- is that sort of where you've 

5 come out from the 10-year -- I missed the 

6 presentation on the 10-year review, but I 

7 mean, one thing that you're putting in place 

8 since the 10-year review is this idea that 

9 you're going to do two per week pulling them. 

10 Are there other --

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. Well, that 

12 came out of actually -- the 10-year program 

13 review recommendation is we should continue to 

14 work with this Subcommittee on DR quality. 

15 That was essentially verbatim what it says. At 

16 the last, I believe it was the July meeting, I 

17 think it was the last meeting of this 

18 Committee we had kind of a discussion about 

19 possible ways to get real-time information on 

20 it. And so the one we came up with was on the 

21 final output of dose reconstruction.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: That's what -- I 

2 guess we came up with that, NIOSH, not we the 

3 Subcommittee.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: But that was one 

6 of the items that was being discussed here in 

7 the Subcommittee. And so out of that 

8 discussion at the Subcommittee we built and 

9 coupled with the recommendations of the 10 

10 year program review we built this system for 

11 this duplicate review. So that's what, you 

12 know, that's sort of, that's an end point 

13 macro level, but it doesn't provide steps in 

14 the process kind of feedback like David was 

15 talking about.

16 MR. KATZ: If it ends up being 

17 helpful to you, NPPTL -- the national 

18 protective technology part of NIOSH, they 

19 have, you can speak to Roland, they have 

20 several people there who are very highly 

21 trained and accredited in quality management 

22 systems generically. And if you find that in 
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1 your discussions that you need some help sort 

2 of in terms of sort of theory and practice for 

3 quality management systems there are some 

4 great people. The one I know is David Book 

5 there, and he really knows inside and out 

6 quality management systems. He may end up 

7 being helpful just on a sort of a consultative 

8 basis if you get into discussions and you're 

9 trying to find a path forward for changes in 

10 that program as it's operating now.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So back to your 

13 sampling. When did you initiate this, Stu? 

14 How many weeks has it been?

15 MR. HINNEFELD: We've sampled for 

16 about seven or eight weeks.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Seven or eight 

18 weeks. So it's --

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Well no, not quite 

20 that many. When I went to the Board there 

21 were, I believe there were 12 that had been 

22 selected. So now it would be seven or eight 
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1 weeks. 

2 Now, there is one we did, the 

3 first two we selected we hit one of the 

4 possible glitches of the system. We selected 

5 cases that came in that were in Classes that 

6 we were in the process of recommending to the 

7 Board. And it was presumptive cancer. And so 

8 we said we should never get a production dose 

9 reconstruction for this claim. So we just 

10 rejected it and pulled another one.

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So you're 

12 pulling them and then they're going to ORAU 

13 and at some point somebody pulls the plug on 

14 that case and ORAU stops it?

15 MR. HINNEFELD: No, no. ORAU's 

16 dose reconstruction is the production dose 

17 reconstruction. They provide the dose 

18 reconstruction report just like they do on 

19 every other one. What we do, we don't write 

20 the entire dose reconstruction report. We do 

21 the arithmetic in the dose reconstruction, and 

22 then the comparison is between the arithmetic 
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1 we did and the arithmetic they did at the end. 

2 But the dose reconstruction that ORAU does is 

3 the one then that goes forward to the 

4 claimant, assuming there's no --

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: This one that 

6 was a problem, this one that you pulled that 

7 you said it's going to be within a Class, it 

8 was not going to go through ORAU or it was?

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I mean at 

10 this point it follows its normal path. So it 

11 would have gone to ORAU. But cases like that 

12 we tend to pend if we expect a Class to be 

13 added pretty soon. For instance, if we made 

14 the recommendation to add the Class or if the 

15 Board for instance has even voted to recommend 

16 adding the Class because it's, you've got to 

17 be pretty certain you're going to add it. But 

18 you know, we don't work on those claims. We 

19 pend those claims and wait for them to get 

20 paid through SEC. So in this case that, while 

21 that claim came in it's going to fit into a 

22 Class. That's my phone. We'll try that 
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1 later. Better than a ring.

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: But this is 

3 sort of an audit of the work that ORAU is 

4 doing for you.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So you would 

7 get the work that was done for you for ORAU 

8 for that case.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: No, that's the 

10 point, that we won't.

11 DR. ULSH: This is a case that's 

12 been referred to us by DOL. We've got the 

13 records from DOE. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Well actually, we 

15 started doing -- yes, we have to get the 

16 records from DOE in order to be able to do the 

17 case.

18 DR. ULSH: Right. So then we 

19 selected that to do what we're calling a blind 

20 DR. It's also going to ORAU. Ordinarily it 

21 would go to ORAU, it would work its way 

22 through the machinery over there and then come 
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1 over to us and at that time we would do the 

2 comparison. But in this case we reached into 

3 the cookie jar and pulled one out. We said 

4 oh, wait a minute, this is one that's part of 

5 a Class that is most likely going to be 

6 recommended. Therefore, it'll never go 

7 through ORAU's machinery, and we wanted --

8 MEMBER RICHARDSON: That's what I 

9 was asking. The one that's going to get 

10 pulled out, you pulled it and then the plug 

11 was pulled and it wasn't going to go to ORAU.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. They would 

13 never deliver a dose reconstruction. They 

14 would see that the claim came in, but they 

15 would never do a dose reconstruction. It 

16 would be an SEC pull.

17 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So the 2 per 

19 100 or whatever that you're pulling you're 

20 doing full DR -- you're doing a blind DR 

21 essentially.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: We're doing DR, 
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1 we're not just writing the dose reconstruction 

2 report. There's a lot of verbiage in a dose 

3 reconstruction report.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: That's great, 

6 I think it's --

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Well see, when we 

8 started to do the analyses if we start to --

9 pull our hair out when we try to compare these 

10 things then we'll think, holy cow, what kind 

11 of monster have we built here. I already 

12 think that every day.

13 (Laughter.)

14 DR. ULSH: I'm not surprised that 

15 you liked it because it was your idea. 

16 (Laughter.)

17 DR. ULSH: No, I mean you 

18 suggested that we do blind DRs, and we thought 

19 it was a great idea.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: It was the best we 

21 could do to implement the ideas we talked 

22 about. We worked really hard about how are we 
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1 going to keep this blind, and there's no way 

2 to have it blind on our side. Everybody on 

3 our side knows when they're doing this they're 

4 doing this for comparison to a production dose 

5 reconstruction. We can keep it blind on the 

6 production side.

7 MR. KATZ: That's all that 

8 matters.

9 MEMBER RICHARDSON: That's who you 

10 want to be blinded anyway.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And then I'm 

12 wondering about the feedback of that 

13 information to the Subcommittee. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, part of what 

15 I was suggesting is that as we do these 

16 comparisons we have, like I said we have four 

17 where we could have done comparisons like a 

18 week or so ago. I don't know if we got any 

19 more in the meantime. But as we run through a 

20 group of these comparisons maybe we get four 

21 or five or whatever. I'm not planning to do 

22 like 50 of them before we send them to you. 
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1 Let's do a handful and then we'll have this 

2 intermediate product and we'll send it out to 

3 you. Theoretically if you do two a week, you 

4 know, ultimately you could have, you know, you 

5 would have a batch of eight pulled in a month 

6 roughly. And so you could do them sort of 

7 like that as a grouping. Now, they won't 

8 necessarily come in production-wise in 

9 sequence so as long as nothing goes too long 

10 you might wait for the first eight or 

11 something, the first month's pulls or 

12 something. Or we could start, you know, we 

13 started pulling I think in November, you know, 

14 once we get all the ones, the production ones 

15 for the ones that were pulled in November 

16 maybe we just put those together in some sort 

17 of summary report.

18 MR. KATZ: But what you'll share 

19 with the Subcommittee would be a report of 

20 those including a causal analysis for any 

21 differences?

22 MR. HINNEFELD: That would be my 
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1 expectation. That would be my expectation. We 

2 haven't done anything yet.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- some 

4 preliminary analysis.

5 MR. KATZ: That sounds good.

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I mean, one 

7 idea for us would be moving forward. I mean, 

8 we have this issue that we've been focusing on 

9 DRs for older cases, and as we think about the 

10 type of work that SC&A's doing one way would 

11 be to kind of incorporate their work moving 

12 forward into more of an attention to this same 

13 stream of contemporary cases that's been 

14 generated. And to help or to contribute 

15 another perspective on the analysis of these 

16 side-by-side comparisons looking for patterns 

17 or major trends in them. And I mean, that 

18 would be work that was really up to date on 

19 what was happening and maybe would help us, 

20 you know, give another perspective on as Ted 

21 was calling kind of causal explanations. 

22 We've talked some about, you know, 
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1 do we just continue doing these draws of 

2 historical DRs or do we kind of switch them up 

3 and maybe it would be useful also for NIOSH as 

4 you're going to have these side-by-side 

5 comparisons. There's a lot of analysis that 

6 could be done from the final decision on 

7 whether it's compensable or not to any of the 

8 comparisons of data points along the decision9 making process. 

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. And I 

11 mean, the other piece you mentioned was you 

12 pulled, what, five from the 12th set? I mean, 

13 that's a whole another initiative, right? 

14 That's separate.

15 DR. ULSH: Well yes, that was part 

16 of the 10-year review that we committed to do. 

17 We wanted to look at contemporary ones so we 

18 actually picked the five with the latest date 

19 from the 12th set and reviewed whether or not 

20 we agreed with the finding and whether or not 

21 we also considered a QA finding. I don't 

22 think that that initiative is part of an 
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1 ongoing thing that we're going to do at least 

2 at this point.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think we 

4 didn't commit to doing any more than that. 

5 Now, you could argue that the 10-year review 

6 doesn't expect a one-time look at that, but 

7 you should continue to do that. You know, it 

8 says if things continue to get through our 

9 what we consider QC process and are delivered 

10 with QC errors that that's something that 

11 could be continued. We kind of said -- before 

12 we commit to continuing it though, I'd like to 

13 know what we learned from the analysis and can 

14 we fix the things, is there something to fix 

15 about the process so that these things that we 

16 identify in this analysis wouldn't have, you 

17 know, don't occur anymore, rather than just 

18 say commit to continuing to do that. We can 

19 commit to doing every, you know, I don't know 

20 that I can do every good idea, we can't do 

21 every good idea that comes along. We just 

22 don't have the resources to do every good idea 
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1 that comes along.

2 DR. ULSH: And the point in the 

3 process where we are with that particular 

4 initiative is like Stu said, ORAU delivered 

5 their analysis, I took a look at it and added 

6 my own, so now we have the judgment at least 

7 so far of whether or not we agree with the 

8 finding and whether or not we agree that it's 

9 a QA. The next step in the process then for 

10 those subset of issues where we say yes, you 

11 know what? This is a QA issue. The next step 

12 is why did that happen, the root cause 

13 analysis. We haven't done that.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: When you say 

15 you took the 12th set, the five latest or most 

16 recent cases, were they the five most recent 

17 that had QA/QC findings by SC&A or just the 

18 five most recent?

19 DR. ULSH: I think they were just 

20 the five.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: They were the five 

22 most recent because there had not -- see, this 
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1 is from the 12th set. There has not been any 

2 analysis --

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, there 

4 hasn't? Okay. 

5 MR. HINNEFELD: -- of the 

6 findings. When SC&A writes a finding, I mean 

7 they sometimes will say it in there.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: They sometimes 

10 will say it, but I don't know -- all we did 

11 was let's look at the five most recent just 

12 for ease of selection.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Because I mean 

14 part of the discussion. I mean, SC&A's on the 

15 15th set, I think, now. Have you finished the 

16 15th set?

17 MR. KATZ: No.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: They're working 

19 on the 15th set.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: And they've 

21 delivered the 13th in the interim since we 

22 pulled out of the 12th.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And we're, as a 

2 Subcommittee here we're on the seventh, eighth 

3 and ninth. We're hopefully close to wrapping 

4 up the seventh I think, but anyway, the 

5 question was how can we get sort of ahead of 

6 the curve a little bit, you know. And one 

7 notion that we were talking about, just 

8 talking with Doug earlier, one notion was, you 

9 know, is there any way to sort of look at the 

10 SC&A ranked medium and high impact findings 

11 and sort of do a triage process ahead. But 

12 then I think you could also, in doing that you 

13 could lose sight of the littler ones which 

14 could often fall into those QA/QC kind of 

15 things, you know, like missed a year of dose, 

16 didn't impact the case overall, you know. So 

17 I think we want to kind of balance that. 

18 I mean, but that was one idea was 

19 to -- because we, as we talked about in the 

20 last meeting we have the QA/QC and the 

21 consistency/reproducibility question but we 

22 also have the overall charge of this 
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1 Subcommittee which is the dose reconstruction 

2 validity. So if there's bigger magnitude 

3 findings maybe we can high-prioritize those 

4 and then let SC&A summarize, give us summary 

5 tables of the QA/QC. If they're very similar 

6 to things we've seen before I think we want to 

7 tackle it on the broad level rather than just 

8 picking each one, you know, going down each 

9 matrix item, you know, and debating over one 

10 year's, you know, one year's missed record or 

11 whatever. I think it might be useful for us 

12 to see a summary from SC&A that says, you 

13 know, over the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th 

14 matrices you know we found this many QA/QC 

15 findings, they fell into this, most of them 

16 were low, you know, whatever. And then we 

17 have six or eight cases overall where we found 

18 bigger findings that might fall into the 

19 scientific validity question which we think 

20 the Subcommittee should prioritize ahead, you 

21 know, so we can be working on QA/QC as an 

22 overall thing and then focus more on some of 
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1 the technical issues and be more current with 

2 those I think is the hope. So I don't know if 

3 that makes sense.

4 DR. ULSH: Well, it does. My 

5 first thought on that, Mark, is just maybe a 

6 caution that at least taking those five as an 

7 example to the extent that you can generalize 

8 from that it's a mixture of cases, findings 

9 where we did agree with the finding and we did 

10 agree with the categorization of the QA, and 

11 then at the other end of the spectrum there's 

12 some where we didn't agree with the finding.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right, 

14 right.

15 DR. ULSH: So you can take the 

16 findings that SC&A has issued but at that 

17 point you won't have our responses to it, 

18 right? I mean, at some point you've got to 

19 get NIOSH's input whether we agree with the 

20 finding or we can explain it.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

22 DR. ULSH: So you've got to decide 
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1 kind of where in the process to make that cut 

2 to say here's the issue.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Where to do the 

4 triaging, yes, yes. That's a good point. I 

5 mean, part of the backlog I think is the 

6 Subcommittee itself but some of it's also on 

7 NIOSH's side because you're overwhelmed on SEC 

8 work and other, you know, obviously. So 

9 ideally it would be good to have all the NIOSH 

10 responses and then kind of, you know, pick out 

11 that way after we have all the responses, I 

12 agree. Just a thought.

13 DR. ULSH: You've also done the 

14 look back though for the first 100 cases where 

15 after all the dust has settled and we've come 

16 to an agreement about a disposition of a 

17 particular finding then you've gone back and 

18 said here are the ones that are QA issues. And 

19 I know that the concern there is that those 

20 are too old to be instructive now, but it 

21 could be a model perhaps that at some point 

22 once we all agree on a disposition of a 
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1 finding then we take another look back and say 

2 these are the ones where everyone kind of 

3 agrees were QA issues.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Yes. But 

5 the concern is getting up to this more current 

6 cases that were done.

7 DR. ULSH: And something -- you've 

8 got to take something away I guess.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

10 MR. KATZ: Just to add to this 

11 conversation, a little bit of a tangent but it 

12 relates to what David was saying. We're on 

13 the 15th set now at SC&A and you mentioned the 

14 distance between where the Subcommittee is on 

15 the sets and SC&A is. And David's suggestion 

16 that SC&A be looking at these blind cases 

17 alongside the Subcommittee. So I wonder if --

18 I mean at some point it doesn't make sense to 

19 keep stretching out the difference in this 

20 progress and maybe we should at some point, 

21 whether it's the 15th set or the 16th set we 

22 should stop progressing with those sets and 
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1 maybe do what David's suggesting, have SC&A 

2 focused on as you get these confined cases 

3 looking at those and preparing on those for 

4 when you have your meetings so that you can at 

5 least be doing that contemporaneous work. 

6 SC&A's not spending its time churning out new 

7 sets that are so far off really in terms of 

8 where the Subcommittee can get to. 

9 Because I think Brant's right, I 

10 mean until we have some back and forth 

11 response, the Board Members have to do their 

12 part with the dose reconstruction and so on 

13 you really, you just have SC&A's initial 

14 perspective. You don't have their final 

15 perspective even on those later sets, what the 

16 issues are with those sets until it's gone 

17 through its normal process. I wonder, I think 

18 you should think about that at least. Changing 

19 this process going forward in terms of adding 

20 on these sets.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, I agree, it 

22 doesn't make too much sense to get much 
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1 further ahead, I agree.

2 MR. FARVER: I suggest not cutting 

3 back completely but scaling back. Let's say 

4 we start scaling back on the 16th set or 17th 

5 set. Instead of 40 cases you knock it down to 

6 10 or something. And then I take the 

7 resources that I would use to do the other 

8 cases and put them doing the blind reviews. So 

9 while we're still moving forward on our DRs to 

10 take up anything big, and you might have to be 

11 more selective in your case selection. We're 

12 still looking at some to pick up issues but 

13 then we're also --

14 MR. KATZ: But the reality is, 

15 Doug, is that there's no action being taken on 

16 these late sets. I mean there's still --

17 there's no mechanism for action. They sit on 

18 the shelf until they go through the process. 

19 I'm not seeing a lot of benefit to that. I 

20 mean, I don't think it's an equivalent 

21 transfer of SC&A resources to the blind 

22 because we're not asking you to do de novo 
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1 blind dose reconstructions. I mean, DCAS is 

2 doing that. You don't want to duplicate that. 

3 Really what we want you to just use your 

4 technical eyes to sort of review that work, 

5 but it's not the same as actually you doing 

6 the dose reconstructions.

7 MR. FARVER: So we would just 

8 review their analysis of the --

9 MR. KATZ: And come to the table 

10 with the Subcommittee ready to discuss what 

11 you see there.

12 MR. FARVER: I misunderstood.

13 MR. KATZ: I think that's what 

14 David was suggesting.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: We need to 

16 look at them both side by side, figure out.

17 MR. KATZ: Right. So we have a 

18 fully productive Subcommittee discussion of 

19 those cases.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I still wonder 

21 if we can triage at an earlier point. I don't 

22 think we have to come to complete resolution 
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1 in our process on the Subcommittee in order to 

2 triage. I think if we got SC&A's findings and 

3 NIOSH did an initial review we can look at the 

4 matrix and then almost like our selection 

5 process we can go down and say, you know, 

6 finding 6, finding 10, finding 20 make sense 

7 to prioritize and we can vote as a 

8 Subcommittee and move those up in priorities. 

9 And then say the other ones seem to likely 

10 fall in the -- based on NIOSH's review and 

11 SC&A's even if there might be a slight dispute 

12 whether it's, you know, an accurate finding or 

13 not it seems to fall in the realm of QA/QC we 

14 can -- and everybody agrees it's a lower 

15 impact. Then we can kind of put that in that 

16 broader pot with the QA/QC question. Because 

17 I don't want to miss these other ones that, 

18 you know, and I think we're letting them sit 

19 on the shelf like you said. So I mean maybe 

20 that's a path forward to have SC&A, I mean 

21 they have their initial findings out to matrix 

22 14. If we can get NIOSH's responses, I think 
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1 you've done, have you done matrix 10?

2 DR. ULSH: We haven't given you 10 

3 yet. We've given you some from 9.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

5 DR. ULSH: And that's about as far 

6 as we got.

7 MEMBER RICHARDSON: By triaging 

8 your -- think about it once more. SC&A's got 

9 a series of findings and they fall into 

10 different types of findings, and you're saying 

11 some of them we may want to --

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Some of them 

13 are, you know, I guess they're ranking them on 

14 case impact I think. So some of them may be 

15 from a program standpoint these QA things, 

16 they serve that up and they could be a 

17 problem. But from the case standpoint there 

18 may be some issues that end up being --

19 MR. FARVER: Lower consequence.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Or I'm saying 

21 higher consequence. Those are the ones.

22 MR. KATZ: So you're basically 
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1 saying just ignore the set boundaries for some 

2 of these high-priority matters, right? Isn't 

3 that what you're saying? Go up through 12, 

4 13, 17.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We could be 

6 working on upwards from, yes, from 9 through 

7 13 or whatever and we'll --

8 MR. KATZ: And do them out of 

9 order --

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Out of order.

11 MR. KATZ: -- but on a theme 

12 basically and address them that way.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

14 MR. KATZ: And I think that'll 

15 work, we just have to be very organized so 

16 that we don't lose the rest for one, and also 

17 so that DCAS is supplied with the cases we 

18 want them to address first in an orderly 

19 fashion so they know what their returns, 

20 because they're not going to be able to double 

21 their volume of ones they're responding on.

22 DR. ULSH: And to be clear, I mean 
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1 at least after the past couple of meetings of 

2 this Committee my instruction to ORAU has been 

3 focus specifically on the oldest claims. We 

4 need to get those off the deck. It hasn't had 

5 anything to do with QA or impact, it's how old 

6 is it. That's the only thing I've been 

7 screening on.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

9 DR. ULSH: So this would be a 

10 change.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: We change what we 

12 tell them all the time.

13 (Laughter.)

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, I mean I 

15 think at our next meeting maybe we can come 

16 forward and I think we need to try this out 

17 but if we have the 10th set, if we have 

18 NIOSH's responses for all the 9th and all the 

19 10th I don't know if that's --

20 MR. HINNEFELD: I don't think 

21 we've got all of 10. I don't know if we've 

22 got all nine. I don't know, I'd have to go 
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1 see what we're talking about.

2 MR. FARVER: If you look at the 

3 matrix there is a column, I think it's column 

4 five, it says Site Program Rank. I think 

5 usually we leave it blank. We can always use 

6 that to prioritize.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. That's 

8 the one, the first 100 I was, the Committee 

9 was going through ranking those.

10 MEMBER RICHARDSON: The other 

11 option is with the first one is to sort of run 

12 these in parallel and continue forward through 

13 these sets of DR reviews just chronologically 

14 as we've been doing them and yet turn SC&A's 

15 attention moving forward more onto this kind 

16 of new duplicate estimate that's going on 

17 between ORAU and NIOSH. It's a question of 

18 are we going to introduce a lot of confusion 

19 by changing how we've been doing this.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, I think 

21 you're right, I think we've got to be very 

22 organized on how we convey this.
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: I guess I'm a 

2 little bit confused on what exactly we're 

3 looking forward there. We're looking at 

4 continuing on with pulling the reconstructions 

5 but take a section in time, say the ninth set 

6 and focus in on those and do a more in-depth 

7 look at the DR reconstructions?

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, I think the 

9 idea would be -- my contention is that 

10 they're, and I think we found this, that 

11 they're not all simply QA/QC. They don't fall 

12 into the QA/QC category. So I'm saying, but a 

13 lot of them do I think as far as our findings. 

14 So I'm saying, you know, if we can prioritize 

15 some of those ones that might be, you know, 

16 more important from a validity standpoint, 

17 from a scientific validity standpoint. In 

18 other words, if you're doing an internal dose 

19 reconstruction and SC&A has a very different, 

20 you know, perspective than what NIOSH came up 

21 with maybe that one wants to -- it's not a 

22 matter of they forgot a data point or didn't 
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1 get a year's worth of dose, you know, it's the 

2 basic approach to how they model the internal 

3 dose that there's a disagreement on. You 

4 know, we might want to raise that.

5 DR. ULSH: I think you've got, and 

6 Doug can correct me if I'm wrong, but right 

7 now the way SC&A categorizes these findings is 

8 impact on this particular case, either it has 

9 a big impact or it doesn't. It's not 

10 necessarily how many cases it might affect.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

12 DR. ULSH: I mean, it could be a 

13 small change.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Where we're 

15 using that other column that he was talking 

16 about where we tried to make a judgment of --

17 DR. ULSH: Yes.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- whether this 

19 was something I could carry through to a lot 

20 more cases.

21 MR. FARVER: And if you go back 

22 and look at those, I don't know, was it 100 or 
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1 so findings and identify it as QA, that 

2 initial set, many of those are under the low 

3 category because it impacted the case but it 

4 would not -- I mean, it would not impact the 

5 case much whether you missed an annual dose, 

6 but it could impact the program.

7 MEMBER MUNN: It's a programmatic 

8 issue.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, I think 

10 we're going to have to -- I mean, I certainly 

11 agree with the one perspective is having SC&A 

12 pick up on this new, these newly generated 

13 cases that NIOSH is going to review with their 

14 internal process. And we can run the other 

15 system parallel or we can try to pick off 

16 high-priority ones. I don't think we have to 

17 decide that today. If you have more, you 

18 know, as far as you get next time let's look 

19 at the ninth set and see if it makes sense if 

20 some jump out at us. And, again, you know, we 

21 have to be organized with it, but I think it's 

22 not that difficult to keep track of that, you 
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1 know. 

2 MR. KATZ: Well, we could, to tone 

3 down the sort of disruption we could do the 

4 two things we've just agreed on, process as it 

5 stands now and having SC&A look over, review 

6 the results from it. But then we could have 

7 SC&A just do some analytical work on the, you 

8 know, most current four sets or five sets and 

9 try to pick out, just bring to each meeting, 

10 you know, perhaps one category of issue they 

11 have that's sort of more thematic, in other 

12 words, systematic, science matter not a 

13 quality control matter necessarily, and bring 

14 that to the table just as a point of analysis 

15 that wouldn't have been the whole process but 

16 you could still have a discussion about the 

17 finding that they're proposing based on their 

18 analysis of those cases. So it would still 

19 sort of be bringing you to the future a bit 

20 but to kind of stay on a big issue without 

21 really disrupting the whole process. So you 

22 wouldn't be sending DCAS to have responses, 
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1 you know, on a whole bunch of cases or what 

2 have you, but you'd have this one theme, issue 

3 that you would be bringing to the next 

4 Subcommittee meeting and they'd, you know, 

5 have to have a chance to do their homework on 

6 that, but it wouldn't be the same thing as 

7 upsetting the whole apple cart in terms of 

8 reviewing cases.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Identify their 

10 theme issue by looking at their most recent --

11 MR. KATZ: Four sets or whatever 

12 and seeing what it might be. And maybe they 

13 pick out six or seven illustrative cases.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

15 MR. KATZ: And provide that to 

16 DCAS along with their concerns about what they 

17 think is sort of more a systematic problem.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's sort of 

19 another way to get at the same thing.

20 MR. KATZ: You wouldn't be 

21 upsetting, you know, just a small sample to 

22 illustrate their concern but it would be 
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1 bringing you up. Plus you'd be getting then 

2 something of sort of broader importance and 

3 bringing you up to current times as well, 

4 both. You'd be getting both of those out of 

5 this. 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: There might be 

7 another way to get at the same end point quite 

8 frankly because what I was thinking on my 

9 high-priority ones, I mean, if you look at the 

10 matrices from the past most times the medium11 and high-ranked findings are a handful and a 

12 lot of them fall into low, you know. So I 

13 think look amongst those, if there's themes, 

14 then --

15 MR. KATZ: Yes.

16 MR. FARVER: For example, I went 

17 back and looked at the 10th set, and there was 

18 one high and three mediums.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

20 MR. FARVER: In the 10th set out 

21 of 30-some findings.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And we don't 
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1 even know, is that four cases or four, you're 

2 not sure of that, right? 

3 MR. FARVER: I just did a quick --

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It might even

5 be two cases, you know, whatever.

6 MR. FARVER: But I can go back and 

7 look at the say top four sets. Like for the 

8 next meeting it would be 14, 13, 12, 11th set, 

9 and then pull out we'll say top 10 issues or 

10 something like that.

11 MR. KATZ: Well, I wouldn't cover 

12 the whole tray of them. I would really try to 

13 come with --

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Look at your 

15 higher ranked ones and see if they fall into 

16 certain themes.

17 MR. FARVER: I mean, I'm fine 

18 doing that but I probably wouldn't do any more 

19 than that. 

20 MR. KATZ: I was just thinking one 

21 or two really, actually. Here's a theme, we 

22 have five or six cases among these sets and 
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1 this, we think there's something to this in 

2 terms of science, validity.

3 MEMBER MUNN: My concern would be 

4 that in a sampling that small you, it would be 

5 very difficult to identify a theme unless we 

6 had a major problem of some kind which we have 

7 not seen.

8 MR. FARVER: With searching like 

9 that what you're probably going to find is 

10 something that's extremely case-specific. You 

11 know, it makes a big difference for this case 

12 where the employee worked, type of deal, but 

13 it's not going to affect -- that's not a 

14 programmatic error.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, that has 

16 been a theme. We noticed that theme on 

17 neutron dose reconstructions, employee 

18 placement, it's always been an issue. I mean, 

19 it's been a discussion around this table. On 

20 Y-12, I can remember a number, Savannah River, 

21 you know.

22 MR. FARVER: My feeling is the top 
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1 issues that I look at are going to be, that 

2 would have the most effect on a case are going 

3 to be very case-specific.

4 MR. KATZ: Right, I follow you.

5 DR. ULSH: So some of the more 

6 generalized that if it's a large number are 

7 going to be those lower.

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: So do we want you 

9 to focus on -- this is my question. Are we 

10 wanting you then to look at the findings and 

11 not case-specific or if they are, you know, it 

12 doesn't matter, that part doesn't matter. But 

13 programmatically will that affect. We want 

14 you to --

15 MR. FARVER: If we happen to find 

16 two big issues that are similar, or two cases 

17 that have the same issue you could group them. 

18 But --

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, the other 

20 judgment that can be made is that, you know, 

21 for example with the Y-12, you know, just to 

22 use that example, placement of employees 
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1 regarding neutron dose. You could argue that 

2 that could have a larger impact than on one 

3 case, right?

4 MR. FARVER: It could. I think in 

5 general we know that that's an issue and we 

6 know that the one at Savannah River, same type 

7 deal. Neutron dose.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So there's one 

9 theme right there. 

10 MEMBER MUNN: But that's an 

11 insoluble theme.

12 MR. FARVER: Correct.

13 MEMBER MUNN: That's an insoluble 

14 theme about which we can do nothing. And with 

15 respect to the QA and QC aspects of it.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, that's 

17 not a QA/QC issue I don't think.

18 MEMBER MUNN: No, it isn't. It's 

19 a scientific issue.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

21 MEMBER MUNN: But my point is it's 

22 a case of which we can do nothing. You know, 
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1 if there's an adequate amount of information 

2 to identify where the person worked then the 

3 issue doesn't arise.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. And if 

5 there's an inadequate amount then what? That's 

6 the question.

7 MEMBER MUNN: Then it's insoluble.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Why? Why, if -

9 - I mean we could have that discussion. If 

10 the program is supposed to be claimant11 favorable if you can't place an employee does 

12 NIOSH make a claimant-favorable assumption 

13 assuming they were in an area where they could 

14 have got exposed to neutrons.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Well, isn't that a 

16 policy that's already established pretty much?

17 DR. ULSH: Well, that's the 

18 procedure. We have discussions about, a lot 

19 of discussions about should we have done 

20 something differently.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: The question that 

22 comes to the level of evidence should be 
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1 required to make the decision. That's all of 

2 our discussions have always been what level of 

3 evidence and so there could be some advice on 

4 that. I'm not arguing, I don't want to argue 

5 one side or the other, but I don't know that 

6 it's clearly cut and dry, Wanda, the way 

7 you're saying. I think that there's room for 

8 discussion about the level of evidence that is 

9 sufficient to make a judgment that we do now 

10 know that where this person worked.

11 MR. KATZ: John, are you on the 

12 phone? Mauro?

13 DR. MAURO: Yes. I was going to 

14 step in a little bit. I have some thoughts on 

15 this too, if I may?

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Please step in.

17 DR. MAURO: It seems to me that 

18 right now sitting around the table we probably 

19 could -- you already started this -- identify 

20 what are the categories of findings at least 

21 that SC&A has made that fall within the realm 

22 of let's say recurring scientific, not quality 
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1 assurance. In other words your procedures 

2 were out there and we reviewed the case 

3 against the Site Profile, against your 

4 procedures, and basically we see if you're 

5 following your procedures. The real issue, 

6 and I think you've started it, is for example 

7 placing a person. That would be like one 

8 major area. Did they, was the proper judgment 

9 made regarding placing a person physically at 

10 a location.

11 The second thing right off the bat 

12 that strikes me is, and you mentioned it also, 

13 is okay, given that the person was properly 

14 placed physically at a given facility did they 

15 take into consideration all of the exposure 

16 scenarios including neutron dose, thorium, et 

17 cetera is the second one. That's like tier 

18 two. 

19 And then the third one is given 

20 that we placed them correctly and given that 

21 yes, we did assign them some neutron dose, the 

22 third tier is the coworker model that's 
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1 assigned to this person. That is, we assumed, 

2 we assigned the 50th percentile or the full 

3 distribution or the 95th percentile. So it 

4 seems to me in a funny sort of way we actually 

5 are at a place right now where at least right 

6 off the bat just from the conversation we're 

7 having now there are these three levels which 

8 are nested that we already can identify as 

9 fundamental conceptual technical issues where 

10 SC&A and NIOSH have had discussions regarding 

11 any of the recurring findings and from the 

12 point of view of let's say the 10-year plan 

13 one could ask the question what rigor can be 

14 brought, if any, to these judgments that would 

15 help alleviate, if in fact there are issues 

16 here, and what metrics can be used to judge 

17 progress in improving it. 

18 So in a way, I mean right off the 

19 bat those three seem to be, now there may be 

20 others, but I'm trying, while we were talking 

21 I was trying hard to think of other categories 

22 of technical issues that are sort of 
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1 crosscutting that are really the big effects, 

2 not the quality assurance issues, but you 

3 know. And also not comments on the Site 

4 Profile. For example, there are plenty of 

5 comments that are under debate on the Site 

6 Profiles and on the procedures and that's 

7 being dealt with elsewhere, but this is given 

8 the Site Profile, given the procedure these 

9 are where judgments are made. And I think 

10 this is where we find fundamental, you know, 

11 this is those three areas. I really can't 

12 think of others.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I'm trying to 

14 think. The only other one that I was thinking 

15 of, John, was on the internal dose side, the 

16 individual internal dose, you know, the 

17 assumptions made in that. That might be a 

18 more case-specific. 

19 DR. MAURO: So given that you 

20 place them correctly, okay, given that you've 

21 got the scenario down, given that you picked 

22 the proper coworker model for the person but 
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1 you're saying no. What about the person that 

2 you're not using the coworker model but you 

3 actually have the data for? What are the 

4 types of findings we have when that's done? 

5 I've got to say usually those are QA as 

6 opposed to fundamental science issues. Once 

7 you're actually using the real data for the 

8 person.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes, yes. 

10 Yes, I know we've had some questions on 

11 assumptions on intake. You know, the 

12 assumptions that were made in the internal 

13 dose modeling but they tended to be probably 

14 mostly case-specific, would you say that? Yes.

15 DR. MAURO: Anyway, I offer that 

16 up --

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The three you 

18 mentioned I agree with, yes.

19 DR. MAURO: Yes, we are well along 

20 in a position to actually start identifying, 

21 you know, strategies and maybe actually 

22 discussing what -- are there metrics that can 
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1 be used in the sampling that you're talking 

2 about that look for that and say did we do 

3 this, you know, has it happened. But of 

4 course, again, that's a judgment. You know, 

5 when you pick the full distribution versus 

6 when you pick the upper 95th percentile, and 

7 we always find ourselves in that position, 

8 it's a recurring theme.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. But 

10 those are the, Doug, I don't want to put you 

11 on the spot, but do you have anything to add 

12 to that? Because I agree with those three as 

13 sort of themes we've seen.

14 MR. FARVER: -- on the findings 

15 and see if there's anything that --

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think that 

17 might be a good action for the next meeting 

18 too for you to look at it more systematically, 

19 look at your last, up through matrix 14 and 

20 look for these kind of --

21 MR. KATZ: Case examples.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. And 
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1 themes and cases that fit into those themes.

2 MR. KATZ: Yes, and have a little 

3 report for that?

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes, a 

5 mini report.

6 MR. FARVER: Non-QA items?

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Non-QA I would 

8 say, yes.

9 MR. FARVER: Okay.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right.

11 MR. KATZ: It's just a, a 

12 discussion report, whatever you want to call 

13 it.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. What 

15 John defined as scientific, recurring 

16 scientific issues.

17 DR. ULSH: So in terms -- I know 

18 that this could change once we revisit this 

19 but going out of this meeting going forward I 

20 want to make sure that the priorities that I 

21 give to ORAU align with the Subcommittee's 

22 priorities. I'm still planning to tell them 
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1 focus on things up through and including maybe 

2 the ninth set.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I think

4 let's stick with the parallel processing like 

5 David described. And we don't have the other 

6 input from you guys yet so SC&A won't be 

7 reviewing, but once you have a group of those 

8 cases then --

9 MR. KATZ: You'll provide them to 

10 SC&A as well.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

12 DR. ULSH: Oh, the blind?

13 MR. KATZ: Yes.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The blind.

15 MR. KATZ: Once you have those 

16 sets. You'll funnel those to the Subcommittee 

17 --

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Whatever you 

19 feel is a good, you know, I don't know if it's 

20 six, eight, whatever, you know.

21 MR. KATZ: Yes.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I wouldn't wait 
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1 till you have 50.

2 MR. KATZ: Yes. So John and John, 

3 you folks would be tasked with just reviewing 

4 those blind cases, reviewing the review from 

5 DCAS in effect, and coming to the table ready 

6 to discuss what's there.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Why 

8 don't we -- I need a coffee break here so why 

9 don't we take, or Wanda, do you have something 

10 before we break?

11 MEMBER MUNN: No.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Why don't we 

13 take 10 minutes break and then we'll come back 

14 and maybe wrap this discussion up and then 

15 move more into some of the matrices. I'm not 

16 sure how much progress we have on past matrix 

17 items so --

18 DR. ULSH: Well, I think there was 

19 -- we delivered quite a large amount back in 

20 April, and I think SC&A, I don't know, I don't 

21 know what they've got on their report today, 

22 but.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So we have some 

2 on the table for discussion.

3 DR. ULSH: I think so, and then 

4 we've got just a couple more from the seventh 

5 and eighth sets, just a couple.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. 

7 MR. KATZ: Okay, so about 10:35, 

8 we'll --

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Reconvene.

10 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter 

11 went off the record at 10:24 a.m. and went 

12 back on the record at 10:44 a.m.)

13 MR. KATZ: Okay, so we're back 

14 online. Let me just check before we get 

15 started, do I have any additional Board 

16 Members on the line? Mike or John Poston? 

17 Okay.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. I'll 

19 make an attempt at summarizing where we're at 

20 from the morning discussion and then a few 

21 more items on this theme, and then we'll go 

22 into the matrices I think. I think the plan, 
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1 the path forward right now is to have a sort 

2 of parallel process with the matrix, the 

3 findings in the matrices and basically from 

4 the oldest to the newest as we've been doing 

5 and then to have NIOSH in their newly 

6 implemented process of selecting two cases and 

7 randomly doing the dose reconstruction along 

8 with ORAU, have NIOSH provide sort of interim 

9 reports on that to SC&A, and SC&A will review 

10 those, what NIOSH has done, what ORAU's done 

11 and NIOSH's sort of analysis of the issue. 

12 SC&A will review that report and come back to 

13 this committee to be prepared to discuss it. 

14 So those things will be sort of parallel 

15 tracks.

16 The other action that we've asked 

17 for is for SC&A to look at, I guess, the 10th 

18 or 9th, whatever is outstanding, 9th through 

19 the 14th.

20 MR. FARVER: Well, it'll probably 

21 be the 11th and the 14th will be done by then.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.
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1 MR. FARVER: It should be -- it's 

2 at least the 11th through the 13th, but 

3 probably through the 14th.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. 

5 Let's say 11th through the 14th set of cases 

6 and look for these sort of scientific issues 

7 and try to bin them into certain themes, bring 

8 them back to the Subcommittee and then we can 

9 decide if we want to try to tackle all of them 

10 or certain ones. So you identify the themes 

11 and then try to also tell us which cases or 

12 findings belong in those themes, you know. 

13 That way we can get a sense of the breadth of 

14 what we're trying to tackle. 

15 And we haven't completely decided 

16 on whether to go down that path. We've all 

17 discussed the potential pitfalls of tracking 

18 that because we'd be doing things a little bit 

19 out of order if we decide to go that path. 

20 But at least let SC&A take a look at it, bring 

21 it back to us and we can talk about it at the 

22 next meeting to see if it makes sense to move 
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1 in that direction. And that's sort of where 

2 we're at. 

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I was 

4 wondering if at the next meeting -- there were 

5 two other things that were raised, and I think 

6 they would just be asks for information if 

7 NIOSH could share with us. One is the report 

8 on the five most recent cases drawn from the 

9 12th set.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Thank you, yes.

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And to give us 

12 a summary, whatever is available at the time 

13 that could be shared with -- about that 

14 review. And the other one is the suggestion 

15 that NIOSH would follow up with ORAU about 

16 their QA/QC process and if they learned more 

17 about that from conversation, if that could be 

18 shared with us. 

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, just a 

20 report on that and sort of what they currently 

21 are doing.

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: What they have 
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1 in place.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, what they 

3 have in place. And if that includes documents 

4 that would be great. I mean, if there's 

5 procedures or other things that we haven't 

6 seen, you know. Yes, thanks.

7 So I think that's where we stand. 

8 Brad, does that make it muddier than ever or 

9 clarify it a little?

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: We'll work into 

11 that.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright.

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: I just want to 

14 make sure we're, that I had an understanding. 

15 Because part of my issue was, and we've talked 

16 earlier, is we've been looking at these 

17 earlier cases and many times they say they've 

18 corrected this QA problem. I just want to 

19 make sure that we take the latest that we have 

20 and kind of hold them in time there and do a 

21 more in-depth.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. And 
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1 part of these blind reviews by NIOSH we're 

2 hoping will get to that end, yes. Okay. The 

3 other thing, before we move on to the matrices 

4 I just wanted to bring up from the last Board 

5 Meeting we said that, or I think our Chair has 

6 assigned follow-up to different committees 

7 from the 10-year review on some of the action 

8 items that NIOSH has proposed. And, Stu, I 

9 think you said four fall in, were sort of 

10 assigned to this Subcommittee?

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Right, four areas.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And I just 

13 wondered just for the record if we can get 

14 them on there. And we'll pick up our 

15 discussion with them at the next meeting but.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: One is what we've 

17 been talking about with the dose 

18 reconstruction quality.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: And continue to 

21 work on that. The second one was consider the 

22 elimination of overestimating approaches. The 
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1 third is to quantify the amount or the extent 

2 of claimant-favorability in the current 

3 program approaches, the methods we use now. 

4 And the fourth is to continue to be aggressive 

5 in terms of timeliness objectives for dose 

6 reconstruction. So the last one I said, you 

7 know, we feel like we kind of have that in 

8 hand having finished up the backlog, getting 

9 things out within nine months and applying, we 

10 have a mechanism, a working mechanism in the 

11 contract to incentivize timely completion of

12 dose reconstruction. We've been doing that 

13 for awhile. We think that is, we kind of have 

14 a handle on that, but certainly the Committee 

15 can be as involved as it wants to be. So 

16 those were the four areas.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. And I 

18 think, you know, we'll, I guess we'll bring 

19 those up on the agenda moving forward as they 

20 make sense to bring them up. I mean, I think 

21 that last one might at first blush involve 

22 NIOSH just sort of presenting what you're 
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1 doing, where you stand and you know.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: We've done, on the 

3 thought process about eliminating 

4 overestimates we have done some, we do have 

5 some cost estimates on that. It's pretty 

6 expensive if we eliminated them entirely, 

7 really expensive. But we are pursuing though 

8 a partial measure that we don't think is going 

9 to cost very much, at least not cost us very 

10 much and that is to -- we have a series of DOE 

11 sites who don't provide medical X-ray 

12 information routinely as part of the exposure 

13 history request. But if we ask for it later 

14 on as a supplemental request then they can 

15 provide it. So that puts us in the position 

16 of usually at those sites of doing essentially 

17 an overestimated medical estimate just based 

18 on annual PA exam. And then when you get into 

19 the band close to the decision point then

20 we'll ask the site for the actual X-ray 

21 information, or if we get a rework for 

22 instance we may ask the site.
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1 So just for timeliness I said 

2 well, why don't we approach these sites. We're 

3 going to actually approach DOE headquarters so 

4 we can approach them all essentially together 

5 and see if we can't, since they have the 

6 records of X-ray exposure how about just 

7 providing them routinely when you get a 

8 request for exposure history. That way it 

9 eliminates that supplemental request later on, 

10 and it eliminates the temptation to do an 

11 overestimating approach because you've got the 

12 actual X-ray records in front of you. And you 

13 just stop doing overestimates on X-rays from 

14 those sites.

15 DR. MAURO: Stu, this is John.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

17 DR. MAURO: During -- I know we 

18 don't want to deal with this in detail, but 

19 during the meeting when you addressed the 

20 subject you also brought up an idea. Because 

21 we all recognize the advantages of the 

22 bounding approach which is certainly 
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1 compatible and consistent with the regulations 

2 to try to move through the process quickly. 

3 You had mentioned something that the dilemma 

4 you run into is that the second cancer comes 

5 up and then, you know, you go to a realistic, 

6 a more realistic analysis. 

7 You pointed out something that 

8 struck me was that you see this mostly with 

9 skin cancer. That is, you find yourself, the 

10 ones that you come back later and have a 

11 second cancer that then you have to go back 

12 and redo it is skin cancer. Did I hear that 

13 correctly? Because that might, you know, that 

14 might be a compromise, that is limit the 

15 realistic analyses to the skin cancers as one 

16 of the recurring ones. Is that what you --

17 you said that very quickly during the meeting, 

18 and it hit me really hard. I think that's 

19 something worthy of discussion perhaps at the 

20 next meeting.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: It certainly would 

22 be something we can talk about. It is a fact 
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1 that skin cancers are often recurrent. You 

2 get additional skin cancers and we get those 

3 back. They are certainly well -- it's a big 

4 portion of our returns, I don't know if it's a 

5 majority. I'm just, and this is sort of 

6 anecdotally reported. I haven't run the 

7 statistics. But it becomes a matter, John, of 

8 balancing the cost against what -- and since 

9 we have to spend, if we spend then, how much

10 cost do we want to spend on doing skin cancers 

11 all best estimate, and when we spend that 

12 money doing those then we don't have that 

13 money to do something else. And so is it more 

14 important programmatically to eliminate these 

15 overestimate. We aren't going to eliminate 

16 the reworks, we're just going to eliminate the 

17 confusion that arises by putting out an 

18 accelerated, you know, overestimate and then 

19 later on doing a best estimate. So is that 

20 worth whatever work has to fall off the table 

21 because we're spending more money doing only 

22 best estimates?
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1 DR. MAURO: But the idea that you 

2 put forward was this is one way to constrain 

3 the number of realistic estimates that you 

4 might do, rather than completely abandon.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we've looked 

6 at several varieties. We've looked at only do 

7 best estimates because sometimes we have 

8 serial returns, you know, reworks. You know, 

9 we'll work it again and then it'll come back 

10 again. And so if, you know, we've looked at 

11 well, what happens if the first time we get a

12 rework we're doing best estimates. You know, 

13 all the overestimate approaches are out --

14 DR. MAURO: Oh, okay.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: So we've looked at 

16 that. We've looked at doing all skin cancers 

17 as best estimates. So there are a number of 

18 things that we've looked at in this one 

19 report, and I don't know that there's any 

20 reason why I can't share that. It's a cost 

21 analysis of those various steps. Okay.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And if you have 
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1 something, I mean, preceding our meetings if 

2 you have something that you want to add to the 

3 agenda that you have enough there for us to 

4 discuss I think, you know, providing it in 

5 writing and letting us mull over it a little 

6 bit before the meeting would be good.

7 MR. KATZ: Okay, so are you going 

8 to be sharing that?

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, unless 

10 somebody tells me I can't. I don't know who 

11 would tell me. Jenny hasn't said anything to 

12 tell me I can't. I don't know who else would.

13 MR. KATZ: You could just leave 

14 the cost information out.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, that's kind 

16 of the key. That's why we had them do it. So 

17 what's it cost to do this.

18 MR. KATZ: Right.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: That was our 

20 question. What would it cost to do this.

21 MR. KATZ: You may need to speak 

22 with your contract officer about that, about 
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1 releasing the cost information. Because there 

2 is a proprietary aspect to that.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Because it -- yes. 

4 There's a manpower number in there, too.

5 MR. KATZ: Yes.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: If I took out the 

7 cost but left the manpower in that would work.

8 MR. KATZ: And I think it's 

9 partially up to your contractor what they are 

10 comfortable --

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Sharing.

12 MR. KATZ: -- putting on the 

13 table.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, so I may 

15 not, I may not be free to share it.

16 MR. KATZ: You just have to look

17 into that.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

19 MS. LIN: Maybe we can look at it 

20 in draft form.

21 MR. KATZ: So with these I just 

22 want to be clear what, for the next meeting 
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1 you would like to hear something about the 

2 current status of timeliness?

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, I'm just 

4 not sure.

5 MR. KATZ: No, I'm just -- of 

6 these various things. Timeliness you'd like 

7 to sort of see what the landscape looks like 

8 right now, is that correct? As part of a 

9 presentation.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, let me 

11 ask what NIOSH thinks they're most prepared to 

12 sort of discuss. I mean, it sounded like 

13 timeliness was reasonable to -- you could 

14 provide it in a timely manner.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, we can run 

16 those statistics prior to the meeting. We can 

17 always pick some cutoff date, we'll say cases 

18 delivered in the last month or the last two 

19 months, here's the average age and if we get 

20 some aberration. One thing that happens once 

21 in awhile is you'll clear out some really old 

22 ones, you know, like that's likely what will 
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1 happen with Clarksville and Medina just 

2 speaking among friends. That's what will 

3 happen with that. Now, that's not a ton of 

4 them but they're going to be pretty old and so 

5 it kind of screws up your average when you do 

6 something like that so you've kind of got to 

7 footnote things like the average age of cases 

8 but we should be able to come up with 

9 something that kind of indicates how we're 

10 doing on timeliness just as a routine matter. 

11 Get it out to the Board or to the Subcommittee 

12 before a meeting.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And the other, 

14 I mean the consideration of overestimating, if 

15 you can provide this report you talked about. 

16 I mean if that's possible.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: I will have to 

18 work with the contractor to see what, or in 

19 what form. You know, if we take out some fee 

20 information we may be able to --

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And that last 

22 one, we're obviously going to continue our 
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1 discussion on the QA issues, but the other one 

2 I'm not sure how far along.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: We're not far 

4 along at all.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Quantify.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: We are 

7 conceptualized.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right, 

9 right.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: That's actually, 

11 Jim Neton is leading the plan on that.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

13 MR. KATZ: Is that claimant14 favorability you're talking about?

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. 

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Quantify the 

17 degree of it.

18 MR. KATZ: Right.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Jim has a plan, he 

20 has visualized something that he hopes to do 

21 but that's from the sciences issues part of 

22 the program review. And so, and he's, along 
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1 with several other things that are in that 

2 group. So I'm not exactly sure when we'll 

3 have something on that. I wouldn't expect it 

4 at the next meeting.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright, yes, 

6 so it sounds like we'll have updates at least 

7 on two of those other items.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, we should 

9 have them.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So we'll put on 

11 the agenda for next time. Anything more on 

12 that? Because I think we can move on to the 

13 matrix work and push through as much of this 

14 as we can get through. Somebody just dialed 

15 out, right? Good timing.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: That was my brain.

17 (Laughter.)

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The seventh set 

19 I have, and I had emailed it I think the day 

20 of the meeting last time, July 15th. So I 

21 think I have the most recent, at least, you 

22 know, that we finished as of July. It won't 
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1 include SC&A's or NIOSH's latest inputs but 

2 this is where we left off I believe. And I 

3 think, well open items. I mean, I think 121.1 

4 the first one was still.

5 DR. ULSH: This is an Aliquippa 

6 Forge case. Scott, do you want to maybe just 

7 give a brief summary of what the issue was and 

8 then I'll jump in with status?

9 MR. SIEBERT: That was me that 

10 actually clicked out. Actually, Mutty, do you 

11 think you might be able to do -- tell us a 

12 little bit more straightforward that I 

13 probably can since this is Aliquippa? Sorry, 

14 we're going to throw the ball around a little 

15 here.

16 MR. SHARFI: I mean, right now the 

17 only thing --

18 DR. ULSH: Well, how about I 

19 rescue you guys a little bit. We're at the 

20 stage in the seventh set where the remaining 

21 issues, there aren't many but they're the 

22 really tough nuts to crack so they're very 
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1 resource-intensive. I went back and looked at 

2 the discussion that we had at the last 

3 meeting, looked at the transcripts, just to 

4 try to get a feel for the issues. I mean, 

5 this is one of those really old ones that goes 

6 back to even before I was involved with this 

7 Subcommittee. 

8 The bottom line is I think it has 

9 to do with residual contamination, external 

10 dose, how we calculated it during that time 

11 period unless I'm confusing it. And basically 

12 I looked at the Aliquippa TBD, the latest 

13 revision of it, and it was dated back in 2005. 

14 So it hasn't been touched since then. Given 

15 the Working Group, or the Subcommittee's 

16 concern about this particular issue in 

17 Aliquippa I asked ORAU to pick up that TBD 

18 again and bring it up to the contemporary way 

19 that we do things, not just limited to this 

20 particular issue but as long as we're going to 

21 be reexamining it anyway to make sure that all 

22 the pieces are up to contemporary standards. 
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1 So I think that once that happens that will 

2 address this issue.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Now, this was one 

4 where we had, it was like the mini-TBD review 

5 on this one, is that right? So there's a set 

6 of findings at the back of the report, right? 

7 Isn't that right, John?

8 DR. MAURO: Not Aliquippa.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Not Aliquippa? 

10 Does that start later?

11 DR. MAURO: No, Aliquippa was not 

12 one of the three.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So that 

14 must start the eighth set then.

15 DR. MAURO: I'm looking at, you're 

16 talking 121.1?

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

18 DR. MAURO: And I'm looking at 

19 this. It seems to me as I'm looking at it a 

20 lot of it was the old OTIB-70 issues and, 

21 OTIB-70 and TIB-6000 all of which have been 

22 resolved. I'm not in specifics, there may be 
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1 aspects to this --

2 MR. HINNEFELD: John, I think that 

3 kind of falls into what Brant was saying is 

4 that the Site Profile for Aliquippa Forge was 

5 written before any of those things.

6 DR. MAURO: Yes.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: And so what our 

8 activity now is, let's go back and look at the 

9 Site Profile for Aliquippa Forge to make sure 

10 it incorporates the technical decisions we've 

11 come to in the last six years. Put those in 

12 the Site Profile. Once you do that then you 

13 evaluate all the claims that were done at 

14 Aliquippa Forge to see if anything's going to 

15 change. If anything changes then we let, you 

16 know, well we know we evaluated it anyway, but 

17 if anything changes we can reopen it, open it 

18 back up. So that I would think would, I don't 

19 know any other findings on this Aliquippa 

20 Forge case that didn't fall into that kind of 

21 category.

22 DR. MAURO: I see one.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Is that the one 

2 about the 95th percent versus 50th percent, 

3 John?

4 DR. MAURO: The 20 film badges, 

5 yes.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

7 DR. MAURO: It goes to that, 

8 exactly right.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

10 DR. MAURO: And that's separate 

11 from the OTIB-70, TBD-6000 issue. It really 

12 has to do with this particular worker and 

13 where he physically was located. This is one 

14 of those first items I mentioned earlier, you 

15 know, and it does the default approach, the 

16 judgment made. This would be an example of 

17 where you place the person and as a result of 

18 that where you assigned the coworker, the 

19 model, whether you use the full distribution 

20 or the upper end. So it goes toward that. And 

21 therein lies a judgment call that -- so I 

22 think that's, I'm looking at this right now on 
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1 the screen and that's the only thing that 

2 struck me as something that is specific to 

3 this case.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, John, I think 

5 that what will happen in the rewrite of the 

6 Site Profile is that will be clearly laid out 

7 that either you're going to have this 

8 bifurcated case where job category puts these 

9 people at 95th percent and these people at 50 

10 percent, or full distribution, or you're going 

11 to say to make sure we're claimant-favorable 

12 to everybody we're going to choose a level 

13 that's favorable to everybody.

14 DR. MAURO: Yes.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: So I think the 

16 rewrite of the Site Profile will address that 

17 one as well although it is, as you said, a 

18 different issue than the others that we 

19 mentioned.

20 DR. ULSH: I could speak a little 

21 bit more about that but I don't know if that's 

22 what you want to do.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think we're 

2 really not going to get anywhere until we see

3 the rewrite, right?

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That makes 

6 sense. It's 121.1 through 3, right? That 

7 would be all three of them?

8 MR. KATZ: Do we have a time frame 

9 for the rewrite?

10 MR. HINNEFELD: No, we just sent 

11 them the --

12 MR. KATZ: Oh, just recently?

13 MR. HINNEFELD: -- the go-do-this. 

14 We just sent them the go-do-this. So they've 

15 got to fit it into the other stuff they're 

16 doing.

17 MR. KATZ: Thanks.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Somebody 

19 can help me along if they know where the next 

20 one is. 122.1, okay. 

21 DR. ULSH: This is a Simonds Saw 

22 case. Scott or Mutty, do you want to 
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1 summarize this one? Let me make that not in 

2 the form of a request. How about Scott?

3 MR. SIEBERT: Okay. Let's see 

4 here. The first one has to do with, just like 

5 John was talking about with the previous one, 

6 it's 50th versus 95th percentile discussion. 

7 That really goes back to coming up with a 

8 process for that specific site as to whether 

9 we need to update, whether 50th percentile 

10 with distribution or some bifurcation like Stu 

11 was talking about doing a 95th percentile. 

12 That's where we are on that specific finding. 

13 That's .1. 

14 DR. ULSH: I think the issue for 

15 .3 is the same.

16 MR. SIEBERT: .3 I think is a 

17 billet and rod issue.

18 DR. MAURO: Yes. Yes. Your 

19 generic approach used a 50/50 split between 

20 the billets and rods and I believe this 

21 person's job category -- this goes specific to 

22 this case now, not any overarching issue -- it 
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1 turns out he would have been more likely 

2 associated with I forget which one it was, the 

3 billet or the rod, but the one that was the 

4 exposure field that was more limiting. And as 

5 a result if you assign him 100 percent of his 

6 exposure to the more limiting geometry he 

7 would have gotten somewhat higher exposure. 

8 So this again was, well I don't 

9 know what you would call this in terms of 

10 those categories we discussed. Here's a case 

11 where you assigned a generic approach for 

12 Simonds Saw regarding the split but for this 

13 particular worker, that particular split may 

14 not really be claimant-favorable. 

15 DR. ULSH: So is it fair to say 

16 that this is an issue with directions provided 

17 in the TBD rather than the way it was?

18 DR. MAURO: Yes, I think that's 

19 fair to say because the TBD did not provide 

20 any discretion by the dose reconstructor on 

21 when and when not to use the 50/50 split.

22 DR. ULSH: Right.
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1 DR. MAURO: It's universal. And I 

2 believe that in our -- so this might be more, 

3 well, we only became aware of it when 

4 reviewing the case that well maybe it's 

5 important to make that distinction and take 

6 exception. But I think that goes across the 

7 board. I mean, in all of your exposure 

8 approaches on these AWEs you come up with, you 

9 know, some degree of granularity. Sometimes 

10 it's very simple and sometimes it's a little 

11 bit more complex. And the only time, let's 

12 say it's relatively simple and we review it 

13 and gee, this particular case, I've seen it 

14 before. It looks like that you followed your 

15 approach but I think that the approach needs a 

16 little more greater resolution because there 

17 are people based on their job categories that 

18 one could easily argue you're really not being 

19 fully claimant-favorable for this particular 

20 person, and I think that's what happened here. 

21 So is this a Site Profile issue or an exposure 

22 matrix issue, you know, it falls in that gray 
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1 area.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And was the 

3 first one, if I understood Scott correctly the 

4 first one fell into that revision of the Site 

5 Profile question. Yes.

6 MR. SIEBERT: Well, the second one 

7 also kind of does because what John was 

8 saying, that you know, it's built generically 

9 with billets and rods half and half whereas, 

10 you know, if you could have the option of 

11 picking one or the other it may be more 

12 claimant-favorable. It's the same decision 

13 thought process I believe.

14 DR. ULSH: I have not yet given 

15 ORAU the direction to pick up the Simonds TBD 

16 again. I've checked and the latest revision 

17 was earlier this year but I don't think it was 

18 for the purpose of reviewing this particular 

19 issue.

20 MR. SHARFI: It was just the new 

21 SEC branch. This is Mutty.

22 DR. ULSH: Right, so that was sort 
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1 of like the SEC. I think in order to resolve 

2 this particular finding I will on Wednesday 

3 when I meet with Scott direct ORAU to pick up 

4 the Simonds TBD again and look at this 

5 particular issue in particular.

6 DR. MAURO: By the way, SC&A's in 

7 the home stretch of finishing up our review of 

8 the Simonds Saw Site Profile. I don't know. 

9 John Stiver, are you on the line? I'm not 

10 sure. John has sort of been spearheading 

11 that. And I know that we're pretty close to 

12 having a draft. The only reason I bring it up 

13 is that might be helpful if you folks are also 

14 in the home stretch of reviewing it and 

15 perhaps editing it.

16 DR. ULSH: Well, it might be, 

17 John, or it might be premature for me to tell 

18 ORAU to pick it up until we have your findings 

19 so that we can take those into account as 

20 well.

21 DR. MAURO: That's why I bring it 

22 up because we're real close. We were hoping 
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1 to --

2 MR. STIVER: This is John Stiver. 

3 I was on mute there. Yes, Bob Barton is 

4 heading that up and he should have a draft 

5 ready within the next few weeks, probably 

6 around the first of the year.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Is that being 

8 picked up under another Subcommittee, part of 

9 the --

10 MR. STIVER: It's a Site Profile 

11 review.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It's a separate 

13 Site Profile review?

14 MR. STIVER: Yes, it's a separate 

15 Site Profile review.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Is a Work Group 

17 assigned to that? I don't think so.

18 MR. STIVER: I don't know if there 

19 actually is.

20 MR. KATZ: It's not in a Work 

21 Group.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. I'm just 
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1 curious.

2 MR. STIVER: It was kind of an 

3 oddball situation. The SEC was actually 

4 approved before the Site Profile review was 

5 complete. For whatever reason a formal Work 

6 Group assignment was not made yet. 

7 DR. ULSH: So I don't know how you 

8 want to reflect that.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It would 

10 definitely make sense to wait for SC&A's 

11 review obviously, I'm just trying to think of 

12 if there was a Site Profile Work Group we 

13 could refer this, you know, to the Site 

14 Profile Work Group. That was my initial 

15 notion.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: I think I'm 

17 outside Wanda's arm reach here but it's a 

18 Technical Document review.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh yes, so it 

20 is Procedures.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: It hasn't been 

22 assigned and I don't make assignments but 
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1 logically.

2 DR. MAURO: Stu, this is John. The 

3 reason all of a sudden the Simonds Saw came to 

4 the forefront in our case for the Site Profile 

5 was I believe that there was an SEC in the 

6 mill. I don't know if that Evaluation Report 

7 has been acted on. I have to say I'm not 

8 quite sure of the status of the SEC on 

9 Simonds. I remember though that SC&A was 

10 asked to sort of put the Simonds in the front 

11 of the queue because of this SEC or pending 

12 SEC. 

13 MR. STIVER: John, I believe the 

14 SEC was granted based on the inability to 

15 reconstruct thorium doses.

16 DR. MAURO: Okay, thank you. 

17 MR. STIVER: I don't recall the 

18 exact dates off the top of my head.

19 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

20 MR. STIVER: So we're basically 

21 looking at the residual period for the most 

22 part.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, I mean I 

2 think it's worthwhile checking with the team 

3 to see about the Site Profile update, but I 

4 would also put an asterisk saying that I think 

5 it makes sense for you guys to wait for SC&A's 

6 review. I'm just not sure where that review 

7 goes to at this point, where SC&A's review is 

8 going to.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, they'll 

10 deliver it to us.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, right, but 

12 I mean on the Board.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: What Subcommittee?

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

15 MR. KATZ: Yes, I mean this is one 

16 where we could start a new Work Group.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. But it 

18 doesn't fit under one of the TBD-6000/6001. It 

19 doesn't fit under --

20 DR. MAURO: No, it's standalone.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Standalone, 

22 yes. Right. Okay.
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1 MR. KATZ: So it would be good to 

2 speed that along, the SC&A report, as much as 

3 it can be since we know.

4 DR. MAURO: We're in the home 

5 stretch.

6 MR. KATZ: Yes, that's good. 

7 Thanks.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, apparently 

9 the Board made its vote in Santa Fe.

10 MR. KATZ: Yes.

11 DR. MAURO: Ted, this is one of 

12 those four or so Site Profile reviews that we 

13 did slow down last year for budget reasons.

14 MR. KATZ: Right.

15 DR. MAURO: But then we brought it 

16 back up again quickly when it got, you know, 

17 the SEC process began.

18 MR. KATZ: Right.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Now, moving on 

20 to 122.7, this is about thorium internal dose. 

21 Is it for the residual period though? I don't 

22 know. Because I mean, the SEC was approved 
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1 for this very reason, right? So I don't know 

2 how much further we would have to go on this.

3 DR. MAURO: It sure sounds that 

4 way, Mark, that this was what triggered it. As 

5 John pointed out maybe something that we could 

6 take a quick look at it, see if in fact this 

7 issue, you know, in effect was resolved when 

8 the SEC was granted.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And I guess the 

10 question would be for this particular case is 

11 this person in the SEC or is it residual 

12 period, yes. Because we approved the 

13 residual.

14 DR. MAURO: Yes, that's a good 

15 point.

16 MR. SIEBERT: Let me bring this up 

17 real quick. If they're rolling, they would 

18 have to be doing the operations --

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: This looks like 

20 -- yes, yes, looks like operational, so. 

21 MR. SIEBERT: It wouldn't be a 

22 furnace operator if it was during residual.
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1 MR. STIVER: Yes, I believe the 

2 residual was 1957 and beyond. 

3 MR. SIEBERT: '58 and beyond. The 

4 SEC is '48 to '57.

5 MR. STIVER: Up through '57, yes, 

6 because there was some question about what was 

7 going on in that last year.

8 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, and the date 

9 given here is '52. So it's definitely inside 

10 the SEC. 

11 MR. KATZ: So that's one you can 

12 probably close then, right?

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I think 

14 so. But okay, I'm just asking 122.1.3, it 

15 seems like those still need to be addressed as 

16 concepts in the -- yes. But in the residual 

17 period would they have, I don't even know if 

18 the, you know, billets would be an issue in 

19 the residual period. All the main materials 

20 would be removed, right? Yes. So that 

21 wouldn't be a question any further either, 

22 would it? 
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1 MR. SIEBERT: It would only be 

2 during --

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: During 

4 operational, right? 

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, during the 

6 operational period for people without SEC. 

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh yes, without 

8 presumed cancers, okay. So I think we should 

9 --

10 MR. KATZ: Or without 250 days, 

11 right?

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, or 

13 without 250 days. So the, I mean a lot of 

14 times why we're capturing these, right, is 

15 because it's a Simonds Saw issue, not just a 

16 particular claim issue.

17 DR. MAURO: Maybe I can help out a 

18 little bit. I'm looking at these 122.3.4 

19 where we're talking global issues for Simonds 

20 during the residual period. The only thing I 

21 can say right now is that there has been 

22 general agreement, this goes back to OTIB-70, 
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1 that -- and TBD-6000. There was some 

2 discussion where we had some concerns on 

3 residual period which are crosscutting for 

4 just about all sites, and those issues had 

5 been largely resolved when we resolved TBD6 6000 and OTIB-70. So what I'm saying is that 

7 if it's NIOSH's position in their SEC review 

8 that the SEC was granted for thorium during 

9 operations but they say they can reconstruct 

10 thorium internal doses for the residual period 

11 we would agree in principle if in fact the 

12 approach that was selected for the residual 

13 period followed the protocol as we've all 

14 agreed upon in principle and the OTIB-70 and 

15 TBD-6000 Work Group. There's a process of 

16 reconstructing exposures and there's agreement 

17 across the board. Those issues have all been 

18 resolved. It's just a matter of is that in 

19 fact the way in which the residual period is 

20 being handled at Simonds.

21 MR. STIVER: This is John Stiver. 

22 I know that was one of the issues Bob Barton 
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1 was looking into in developing this review.

2 DR. MAURO: Okay. So that would 

3 be very helpful.

4 MR. STIVER: This is the Site 

5 Profile that was put together back, you know, 

6 around the 2005 time frame. So there may very 

7 well be something that's kind of the lag that 

8 we were looking at before in this case.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I'll go back to 

10 my simpler solution which I made earlier but 

11 now I think it's more justifiable which is 

12 let's throw this to the Site Profile group, 

13 because I think these two issues are still 

14 issues but not really in this case. I mean, 

15 this is an SEC case. So especially 122.1.3 

16 and .7, the general concept of thorium 

17 reconstruction during the residual period 

18 would come up, but they're all Site Profile 

19 issues and I think --

20 DR. MAURO: And we'll all be in a 

21 better position to discuss it once we have our 

22 report out.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right, 

2 right.

3 DR. MAURO: Very good.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So does that 

5 make sense, Brant? I mean, you know, I think 

6 they're going to be on the table as general 

7 issues in the Site Profile discussion. This 

8 is an SEC claim at this point, right?

9 DR. ULSH: We've still got to 

10 address it.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We've still got 

12 to do it one way or the other, I know, I know. 

13 I'm just, I don't want to be having both 

14 groups working, you know. 

15 MR. KATZ: We don't have a second 

16 group right now but --

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We will.

18 MR. KATZ: We can ask for one.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. I'm 

20 assuming that we'll set up. Because we don't 

21 have enough Work Groups.

22 MR. KATZ: We don't. Only 26.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. 

2 MEMBER MUNN: We need one for 

3 every available site, right?

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So I'm going 

5 to, as disposition I'm going to put moved to 

6 Simonds Saw Site Profile Review Work Group 

7 which doesn't exist but I'm assuming Ted will 

8 make that.

9 MR. KATZ: I'll send a message to 

10 Jim because he's got to do a number of Work 

11 Group assignment matters anyway.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. Okay.

13 MR. KATZ: Add this to his pile.

14 DR. MAURO: In concept, by the 

15 way, this would fit very well with 6000. Even 

16 though it's not one of the original 

17 attachments to 6000 the issues themselves that 

18 are of concern here, you know, metal-working, 

19 is very consistent with the kinds of problems 

20 we've engaged for the sites that the Site 

21 Profile -- I'm sorry, the TBD-6000 Work Group 

22 has been working.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, that's why 

2 I asked. I thought it was an Appendix 

3 approach. Okay, moving on then. 

4 DR. ULSH: I think that might be 

5 all.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Is that it? I'm 

7 going to send it through, yes.

8 DR. ULSH: It's worth double9 checking but I think that might be it for that 

10 matrix.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I'm relying on 

12 my yellow highlighting. I don't see any.

13 MR. FARVER: So for 122.7 which 

14 was the review of the HASL data, are we going 

15 to close that and keep the other 122.1 and 3 

16 open? 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I think 

18 so, because that's operational data, right? 

19 MR. FARVER: Okay.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I don't know if 

21 it would play into the residual model but 

22 they'll pick it up if it does, right?
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1 DR. ULSH: So you're going to put 

2 matrix 122 and -3 not closed but referred to 

3 whatever this group.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 122.1 and .3 as 

5 referring to the Site Profile group. 122.7 

6 we'll close. Right.

7 DR. ULSH: Okay. All right, 

8 that's it.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So moving on to 

10 the eighth matrix is there a lot of new stuff 

11 in there?

12 MR. FARVER: No. Last meeting we 

13 stopped at, well we finished with the 153 

14 case.

15 DR. ULSH: Actually that's the one 

16 I think we just delivered a new --

17 MR. FARVER: That's correct.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So anything 

19 before 153 there's no real updates. It's not 

20 worth walking through all these?

21 MR. FARVER: No, I don't think so.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So I'll 
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1 leave my yellow highlighting as is for the 

2 others? Because there are a number of ones 

3 that are still.

4 MR. FARVER: Yes. 153.6 and 153.7 

5 they provided a response. 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Those are the 

7 first two, Brant? Is that? 

8 DR. ULSH: Yes, I think so.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right, so 

10 153.6.

11 MR. FARVER: 153.6 is --

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Whoever wants 

13 to introduce the case.

14 MR. FARVER: I can go ahead. This 

15 is a Savannah River case and the finding says 

16 the DR report does not account for all 

17 recorded or modeled neutron dose. And this is 

18 one of these cases where it has to do with 

19 where the employee worked and how they're 

20 placed because in the time period of '78 to 

21 '82, get my years right, it looks like the DR 

22 assumed the worker worked in, and I'm still 
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1 getting the location, okay. 

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I just want to 

3 make sure I'm looking at the latest version 

4 too because I have as the last action in this 

5 in the yellow I have from 4/18. I don't see 

6 anything in July. And it was, "SC&A will 

7 review NIOSH response." Was there an action 

8 after that in July?

9 DR. ULSH: I think so.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Do you have the 

11 matrix open? Is there?

12 MR. FARVER: Yes, July we had a --

13 well, I'm not sure if we got -- we did get to 

14 it.

15 DR. ULSH: There is a July. NIOSH 

16 further reviewed this case looking at the 

17 guidance available at the time which is pre18 OTIB 7.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, so I'm not 

20 looking at the -- the copy I have open isn't 

21 the most current copy of the matrix.

22 DR. ULSH: That's yellow highlight 
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1 for 153.6 that I have in the matrix I have 

2 open.

3 MR. FARVER: Yes.

4 MR. SHARFI: It moved to another 

5 page, at least on my version.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

7 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So what's your 

8 version titled?

9 DR. ULSH: 8-30 Case Matrix 

10 Working Draft July 15th, 2011 is the one I 

11 have. It's 114, sorry, 107 pages. 

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And I see mine 

13 is labeled April, yes. 

14 MEMBER MUNN: April.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh here, I have 

16 the other one.

17 MEMBER MUNN: I don't.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Do you want me 

19 to email those? Do you have, can you? Well, 

20 if you have the whole list, Stu, do you have 

21 the eighth one that you could forward to 

22 people?
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, it was in an 

2 email that Ted sent in late July and it was 

3 with the seventh.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Does it have 

5 the eighth?

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, it has them 

7 both.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It should have 

9 been on July 15th, right? Or July 16th.

10 DR. MAURO: The title has July 

11 15th in it.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, and I 

13 found my right one now, yes. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: What was the 

16 date? 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Was it sent on 

18 the 16th?

19 MR. HINNEFELD: It was sent on the 

20 --

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Twenty-first?

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Hang on a minute.
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1 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, the 21st 

2 here. It was the July 15th document.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, it was sent 

4 on July 21st and it is, the filenames have 

5 July 15th in the filenames. Now, who needs 

6 it?

7 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I have it now, 

8 thank you.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I have it. 

10 Wanda, do you need it or have you got it?

11 MEMBER MUNN: I'm looking.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, that 

13 makes more sense. There's the July 15th 

14 action. Okay. 153.6. So you should have a 

15 7/15 action.

16 DR. ULSH: If yours is 107 pages 

17 long like mine is it's on page 14.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Top of page 14, 

19 yes.

20 MEMBER MUNN: This is the eighth

21 set, right? 

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Eighth set, 
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1 yes. What threw me off is they were both 

2 saved on July 15th on my computer, so. 

3 Everybody got them? Brad, have you got the?

4 MEMBER CLAWSON: Trying to.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Can you 

6 just resend them to?

7 MEMBER MUNN: There it is.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, you've got 

9 it?

10 MEMBER MUNN: This is for the 

11 seventh and eighth I think. I think that's 

12 it.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: July 21st 

14 email, is that what you're looking at?

15 MEMBER MUNN: No.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, I've resent 

17 it to Wanda and Brad, Jenny.

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: Stu, did you send 

19 it to my CDC account?

20 MR. HINNEFELD: I sent it to your 

21 ICP account.

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: ICP?
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

2 MEMBER CLAWSON: Oh, that's my 

3 government.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Do you want it on 

5 your CDC account?

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: If you would, 

7 please, yes. I didn't get the one this 

8 morning either, that's what I was kind of 

9 looking for. 

10 MEMBER MUNN: Might as well send 

11 it to me too.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think he did.

13 MEMBER MUNN: And there it is. 

14 There it is, the 21st. Finally. I guess it 

15 doesn't get translated in the mail to where I 

16 want it. It's a puzzlement.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We're on 153.6. 

18 MR. FARVER: Are we ready?

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I think 

20 we're ready. Yes. Go ahead and pick it up. 

21 So we had an action on 7/15 at NIOSH, a 

22 further review of this case looking at 
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1 guidance available at the time. 

2 MR. FARVER: Okay. The time 

3 period in question is 1978 to 1982. The 

4 employee was assumed to have worked at 221 FB 

5 Line, Savannah River. What NIOSH did is 

6 assigned him a neutron dose in '78 and '81 

7 which were the years when the neutron dose was 

8 recorded. So no unmonitored and no missed 

9 neutron dose was calculated for the remaining 

10 years. And in our original finding we site 

11 TIB-7 Section 3.1 which talks about non12 routine workers from 1971 through 1989 and it 

13 lists specific criteria about work location, 

14 job description and photon exposure. And we 

15 believe that the employee met those conditions 

16 and should have been assigned a neutron dose 

17 from the other years, other than '78 and '81. 

18 And NIOSH response, to tell you 

19 the truth I really didn't understand the 

20 response completely. It starts off by saying 

21 yes, it could be, you could look at it that 

22 way, you know, that we should assign dose for 
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1 those years and it talks about it, and then I 

2 believe at the end after the case has been 

3 reworked for Super S. It kind of lost me here 

4 and I'm guessing that you're saying if you 

5 rework it and add in the missing dose then the 

6 PoC drops and I got confused there.

7 DR. ULSH: Well, I think the 

8 important point from our latest response is 

9 when SC&A issued the finding they cited OTIB-7 

10 and I think we've been down the path now where 

11 we figured out that OTIB-7 was not in place at 

12 the time that this dose reconstruction was 

13 originally done. However, a lot of the 

14 predecessor guidelines that became OTIB-7 we 

15 were still operating under. The bottom line 

16 from the latest response is this basically 

17 comes down to a matter of professional 

18 judgment and I think at the end of the day we 

19 by and large agree that we probably should 

20 have assigned neutron dose for all of the 

21 years in question. We also in our response 

22 talked about in addition to the original dose 
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1 reconstruction this particular DR had been 

2 reworked for Super S and that's not the one 

3 that SC&A reviewed because this came after 

4 that. So we talked about both the original 

5 and the Super S. But at the end of the day I 

6 think the take-home message is yes, I think we 

7 agree -- it comes down to professional 

8 judgment. We think it's probably reasonable 

9 to assign a neutron dose.

10 MR. FARVER: And this is one of 

11 those issues where, where did the employee 

12 work, where we could assign them or if we 

13 can't assign them what information we have on 

14 where they worked. And it comes down, it's 

15 important for Y-12 and Savannah River mainly 

16 under neutron dose, missing and unmonitored 

17 neutron dose.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Can I ask, 

19 Brant, did it result in any changes in your 

20 guidance? I mean, it seems like it still is 

21 left up to the -- a little bit of judgment, 

22 right?
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1 DR. ULSH: Yes. I mean, I don't 

2 think that we changed the Savannah River Site 

3 Profile in response to this. I mean, you can 

4 never prescribe guidance for every 

5 professional judgment case that comes up. I 

6 think the impact of this particular one was 

7 pretty minimal but, I don't know. Mutty, do 

8 you have anything further to add, any other 

9 pertinent details?

10 MR. SHARFI: I do not.

11 MR. SIEBERT: This is Scott. No, 

12 you pretty much hit it on the head. There are 

13 some years in the middle such as 1980 that 

14 really don't fit the definition even under 

15 TIB-7 assuming that the person was exposed to 

16 neutron. But as Brant said, we talked about 

17 it and walked through all the different years 

18 and it would be a reasonable professional 

19 judgment that even though it doesn't meet the 

20 spirit of the letter of TIB-7 for specifically 

21 1980 it would be reasonable to assign neutrons 

22 during that time frame. 
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1 So like Brant said, what we did is 

2 we reviewed the original assessment and the 

3 Super S rework assuming that neutron exposure 

4 occurred during all those years, determined 

5 whether there was a difference in 

6 compensability or not and the PoC really 

7 didn't change much. Compensability certainly 

8 did not change.

9 DR. ULSH: So Scott, I don't --

10 let's just say for the sake of discussion at 

11 this particular point in time that everyone 

12 agrees up to this point. That may not be the 

13 case but let's just say that. Then Mark's 

14 question is given the resolution of this where

15 it appears that we have a situation where the 

16 guidance, the Savannah River TBD and whatever 

17 applicable procedures come into play do we 

18 need to make them more prescriptive to cover 

19 this situation? Is it going to be something 

20 that's common enough that we want to edit that 

21 or is this one of those things that you just 

22 kind of have to say, you know, it's a one-off 
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1 or two-off. 

2 MR. SIEBERT: I would tend to say 

3 this is an unusual one because there are, you 

4 know, there's time frames during those years 

5 where it's clear that we should be assigning 

6 neutrons such as when there are neutron badges 

7 or when there's an incident report saying he 

8 was in FB line. Then the fuzzier things are 

9 years where it doesn't meet the requirements 

10 of TIB-7 such as there's no plutonium

11 bioassay, the shallow-to-deep ratio does not 

12 come all the way up to 1. So I think it's 

13 more of a one-off situation than something 

14 that you can generically prescribe.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I guess 

16 that would be my question is if it didn't meet 

17 those requirements do those requirements need 

18 to be modified slightly or whatever. I don't 

19 know. But it sounds like you said probably 

20 not in this instance.

21 MR. FARVER: No. I can look at 

22 it. I can see it completely different because 
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1 under Section 3 which talks about non-routine 

2 workers for '71 through '89 it doesn't mention 

3 anything about plutonium bioassay, it doesn't 

4 mention anything about neutron-to-photon 

5 ratios. It is strictly based on work 

6 location, job description and did he have 

7 previous positive photon exposure. 

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So you think 

9 under that they should have --

10 MR. FARVER: I think under that 

11 it's quite clear.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

13 MR. FARVER: Now, if it was --

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Because this 

15 person was a laborer, right? Is that correct? 

16 MR. FARVER: I believe so.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But a non18 routine.

19 MR. FARVER: It was non-routine 

20 monitoring. Because if we only had two years 

21 I call that non-routine, so...

22 DR. ULSH: Okay, so I guess we're 
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1 in agreement that for this particular dose 

2 reconstruction -- because we've basically 

3 agreed with your position.

4 MR. FARVER: Yes. The other 

5 question I have, this is another case where 

6 the dose goes up and the PoC goes down.

7 DR. ULSH: Scott, is that 

8 something that can be explained easily? Is 

9 that?

10 MR. SIEBERT: I think that's based 

11 on the fact that, you know, you're not adding 

12 -- I mean realistically the neutron doses 

13 we're talking about during that time frame, 

14 you're not adding much. And we're at the, you 

15 know, we are right at the 45-ish percent point 

16 and things are going to go slightly up or 

17 slightly down. In this case it went slightly 

18 down.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. I mean, 

20 I'm looking at the table that was in our 

21 response and I don't want to get too specific 

22 but the dose for the one organ went, it was 
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1 less than, it was about one-third of a percent 

2 in PoC. In the other organ it was about one3 third of a percent, so it didn't change much. 

4 It's in that area where, you know, this is a 

5 statistical process.

6 DR. ULSH: So I think for this 

7 particular DR we're in agreement. The 

8 remaining question on the table is do we need 

9 to change any guidance documents, either SRS 

10 TBD or procedures. Doug, you mentioned that 

11 we didn't say anything about plutonium 

12 bioassay is a signal for a neutron dose. Yes, 

13 I mean in general someone working with 

14 plutonium or has a potential exposure we would 

15 consider --

16 MR. FARVER: For that one section 

17 of the TIB it does not specify. Now, in the 

18 other sections where it's talking about I 

19 think routine workers and other things, yes, 

20 it does mention that's one of the criteria and 

21 also about the neutron-to-photon, or the 

22 shallow-to-deep ratio. But not in the section 
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1 talking about non-routine workers from '71 

2 through present. 

3 DR. ULSH: So I guess what I'm 

4 trying to get a handle on is it SC&A's 

5 position that we do need to change those 

6 guidance documents or not?

7 MR. FARVER: No, I think that the 

8 guidance document is fine, I just don't think 

9 that section was followed.

10 DR. MAURO: So Doug, you're saying 

11 this is a QA issue as opposed to a personal 

12 judgment issue where some additional guidance 

13 might be needed?

14 MR. FARVER: Yes, I believe the 

15 section as it's written was not followed 

16 correctly. 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Or else our 

18 guidance wasn't clear enough. You know, 

19 that's the other question, right? Because it 

20 sounds like Scott's reading that differently.

21 MR. FARVER: Well, I think he was 

22 looking at a different section.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

2 MR. FARVER: I mean Section 4 

3 talks about clarification of the neutron-to4 photon ratio and then if you move up to 

5 Section 2 that talks about work potential 

6 prior to '71 and it talks about the work area 

7 and you should have --

8 DR. ULSH: Is it important that we 

9 come to resolution on this last little piece 

10 at this meeting?

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, no. Because 

12 I also think that Savannah River has had this 

13 -- we've got several cases on this, right?

14 MR. FARVER: Yes, yes.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So I think 

16 it'll come back and if we think in this case 

17 it was just a matter of not following what was 

18 there then that's fine. But I think other 

19 ones might come up with the broader question 

20 of, you know, do you need to revise. I mean, 

21 I think that's going to come up again, right? 

22 MR. FARVER: Oh, I'm pretty sure 
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1 it'll come up again.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Is my sense, 

3 yes. So for now I think we close this one 

4 out. This didn't have a big effect on this 

5 particular case.

6 MR. FARVER: You might want to go 

7 back and look at the Section 2 and Section 3 

8 because, you know Section 2 does talk about 

9 your shallow-to-deep ratios and plutonium 

10 bioassays but then Section 3 doesn't. And I 

11 don't know if they want to go back and revise 

12 that or just look at that. 

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. 

14 DR. ULSH: So between the last 

15 meeting of this Subcommittee and this one 

16 we've now talked about the things that we've 

17 delivered that are new. There might still be 

18 some things that are, that we delivered back 

19 in April but we haven't talked about, I don't 

20 know.

21 MR. FARVER: Correct. So if we 

22 start with 154 then --
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So there's 

2 nothing new on 153.7, is that what you're 

3 saying?

4 MR. FARVER: 153.7 and 153.6 were 

5 what we just --

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, they're the 

7 same. Okay, you're right, got it, got it.

8 MR. FARVER: And we go to 153.8 

9 and I believe that is our issue on fission 

10 products. And I believe we resolved that at 

11 the last meeting: failure to account for 

12 internal dose from all fission products. Sound 

13 familiar?

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Sounds familiar 

15 several times, yes. 

16 DR. ULSH: Yes, it looks like that 

17 was resolved.

18 MR. FARVER: I believe that was 

19 resolved.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, that's 

21 closed out, right? Look at that. So then 

22 we're up to 154.1 like you were saying.
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1 MR. FARVER: Yes.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So who's 

3 up?

4 MR. FARVER: 154.1 and 154.2 are 

5 NIOSH will review.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

7 MR. FARVER: So we don't have any 

8 information on that. 

9 DR. ULSH: Yes, I don't think we 

10 have anything to report on that at the moment.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright.

12 MR. KATZ: So will that be next 

13 meeting? 

14 DR. ULSH: I'm putting it at the 

15 top of the list. These are now the oldest 

16 findings, so.

17 MR. SIEBERT: Well, correct me if 

18 I'm wrong but they are, the comment is NIOSH 

19 will review and determine the nature of the 

20 error and how to prevent this in the future. 

21 Doesn't that fall under the QA/QC process 

22 review?
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1 MEMBER MUNN: It should.

2 DR. MAURO: Sounds that way. It 

3 sounds like we're in agreement here, that you 

4 agree that this error that was made was in 

5 fact an error.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right. 

7 Yes, so this falls -- yes, you're right. It 

8 falls into that QA/QC grouping if we're 

9 continuing to track the QA/QC cases, right?

10 DR. ULSH: From our standpoint, 

11 from the NIOSH/OCAS/DCAS standpoint we still 

12 need to answer. It's just a different 

13 context.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Right. 

15 Now, do we -- I don't see much highlighting 

16 beyond this but I don't know that we got 

17 further than this.

18 MR. FARVER: Oh we did at the last 

19 meeting but we -- NIOSH did provide some 

20 responses even through set 9 I believe from 

21 April.

22 DR. ULSH: I think that's the 
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1 case.

2 MR. FARVER: So we can keep moving 

3 on.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So are those 

6 closed, 154.1 and 154.2?

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, they're 

8 under the QA/QC umbrella, that's the problem. 

9 Yes. How do we want to handle those, that's 

10 the question. I mean, we've got this 

11 outstanding group that SC&A forwarded to NIOSH 

12 for consideration, right? And that was from 

13 the older sets of QA/QC.

14 MR. FARVER: I think you may want 

15 to leave those two open until they look into 

16 them. And then they could come back and say 

17 we looked into them and close them.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I think 

19 they have to stay open.

20 MEMBER MUNN: Are we going to try 

21 and track -- is this body going to try to 

22 track these things that we're putting in the 
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1 QA/QC box in some way other than our broader 

2 matrices?

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, we 

4 haven't in the past, but. I mean, track them 

5 separately. 

6 DR. MAURO: This is John. From 

7 the point of view of this particular issue we 

8 have agreement that this is something that 

9 needs to be fixed, you know, agrees that 

10 there's a QA problem, whatever, QA, they 

11 didn't exactly follow the procedures. So from 

12 the point of view of what we've historically 

13 done in the matrices was, okay, this would 

14 have been closed. You said yes, we agree, and 

15 NIOSH will take action. I don't know what 

16 action NIOSH would take to see if it has an 

17 effect on the outcome or not but, you know, we 

18 agree with the resolution on how to resolve 

19 this issue. I guess we're creating something 

20 new now in terms of okay, we're collecting, 

21 you know, quality assurance issues and now it 

22 becomes a matter of, okay, what protocols are 
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1 being put in place to catch these types of 

2 quality assurance deviations and take some 

3 action I guess to get to the root cause, 

4 whatever, which is really something different 

5 than what we're doing right now in going 

6 through this matrix.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think you're 

8 right, John. Yes.

9 MEMBER MUNN: It's entirely 

10 different but then up until today we did not 

11 have a directive with respect to the 10-year 

12 report. We now have a directive with respect 

13 to the 10-year report and it appears to me 

14 that that places an additional burden on us to 

15 do something in terms of categorization.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think what 

17 makes most sense to me is to close it out here 

18 and then when we finalize these matrices we 

19 should fill in those blank columns which would 

20 identify this as a QA/QC finding and then we 

21 do like we did with the first five sets, we 

22 sort of do an aggregate report of what we have 
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1 for QA findings, stuff like that. And then, 

2 you know, the ultimate resolution is your 

3 response to the QA/QC aggregate issues that 

4 have been identified, not each one in 

5 particular. 

6 MEMBER MUNN: They clearly go in 

7 the category.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

9 DR. MAURO: Maybe some words that 

10 say transfer to the overarching QA issue or 

11 something like that?

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, I think 

13 that'll be understood. I mean, any QA/QC ones 

14 we have we're going to transfer. 

15 MEMBER MUNN: Or just mark them, 

16 essentially.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, mark them, 

18 label them QA/QC. We'll have to go through 

19 the matrices from --

20 MEMBER MUNN: We can track that 

21 easily under Category.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.
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1 DR. ULSH: So in the context of 

2 this matrix then you're going to change it to 

3 say that these two issues are closed?

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Closed.

5 DR. ULSH: No action from us 

6 required.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, not in this 

8 context of the matrix, right. 

9 DR. ULSH: Not right now.

10 MEMBER MUNN: It said closed, 

11 under category it says QA/QC. 

12 MR. KATZ: Yes, so it seems to me 

13 DCAS when they're looking at the QA/QC system, 

14 they're going to want to compare all these 

15 examples against that system to see that 

16 they're all being addressed similarly for the 

17 Subcommittee down the road. 

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

19 MR. KATZ: They'll want to see 

20 those matters.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Exactly. 

22 MR. FARVER: And just so you know,
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1 this has to do with incorrectly calculating 

2 the low photon over the -- yes. 

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

4 MEMBER CLAWSON: Those have been 

5 corrected for this dose reconstruction? Or 

6 are we worried about that, Mark?

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, we 

8 concluded that it wouldn't likely affect this 

9 case I think, right? At least that's what our 

10 summary says.

11 MEMBER MUNN: That's correct.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think we 

13 looked at it at least enough to know that it 

14 wasn't likely to --

15 MR. FARVER: It could be a

16 workbook issue or something like that where it 

17 could affect many cases.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

19 MR. FARVER: It just has to do 

20 with the incorrect equation.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. But for 

22 this case we're closing it, yes. It wasn't 
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1 going to make a big difference.

2 MEMBER MUNN: And in the Category 

3 box we're saying QA/QC, right?

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. And I 

5 want to look back at my first -- I'll try to, 

6 as homework I'll try to go back if it's 6, 7, 

7 8 and try to categorize these things like I 

8 did last time. We can bring them back to this 

9 Committee.

10 MEMBER MUNN: In your copious free 

11 time.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: In my free 

13 time. Actually I'm going to be here tonight 

14 so maybe Wanda can help me tonight.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Thanks a lot.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright, where 

17 do we stand on time? We're getting -- anyway. 

18 Alright, let's just move down and try to --

19 DR. ULSH: The next yellow 

20 highlighting I see is 160.1 unless I missed 

21 any. Which is page 33 of 107.

22 MR. FARVER: And Tab 160 in 
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1 general is a rework case that we are to 

2 provide a review of the reworked case and the 

3 original case.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Can I ask, just 

5 -- I hate to go back but looking at 155.2 

6 which we did close out, I'll give you that, 

7 but I'm interested in our answer here. SC&A 

8 understands what NIOSH did and believes it's a 

9 subjective call. This is a work location 

10 thing again. I think it's Savannah, is it 

11 Savannah River? 

12 MR. FARVER: Yes.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

14 MR. FARVER: This is professional 

15 judgment.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So in this case 

17 you accepted their arguments on the subjective 

18 call I guess, right?

19 MR. FARVER: This is one, it could 

20 go either way.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, okay.

22 MR. FARVER: We don't necessarily 
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1 agree with it but we understand what they did 

2 and why it was done that way.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. Well, 

4 that gets me back to if you don't agree with 

5 it.

6 MR. FARVER: I wouldn't do it that 

7 way but I understand how they came up with 

8 their numbers. 

9 MEMBER CLAWSON: Aren't we going 

10 to be getting a clarification on professional 

11 judgment? Isn't that in the 10-year review? 

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Something did 

13 come up about professional judgment.

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: I thought Stu or 

15 Jim was going to go kind of clarify that. I'm 

16 waiting to see how that comes out but --

17 MEMBER RICHARDSON: But this is 

18 number one of the three nested issues --

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: Are they placed 

21 correctly.

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Placing people 
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1 and what sort of metrics could be developed so 

2 that we could assess whether these judgments -

3 -

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Were claimant5 favorable.

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- robust and 

7 that those judgments could be improved over 

8 time. I think this would fall in that 

9 category, that major category. I mean, we 

10 could look at this as one of these examples 

11 again. Because you're imagining a different 

12 way of doing this than somebody else imagined 

13 how to do it.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Presumably 

16 there is some gold standard out there about 

17 where the person actually was. I mean, if 

18 you're trying to think about what the metric's 

19 going to be you would want to start by finding 

20 someplace where you actually agreed that 

21 somebody was there. And then you would go 

22 back and use the records, find a living 
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1 worker, maybe take their word as where they 

2 were and then run their location. 

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right.

4 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I mean, I was 

5 just trying to think through how you'd start 

6 to validate how we're placing people and what 

7 locations. It's going to have to be something 

8 like that.

9 MR. KATZ: And where the facts run 

10 out is where you go to claimant-favorability 

11 as a policy.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

13 MR. FARVER: See and I think 

14 that's where I have the issue with this. I 

15 don't think what they did was entirely 

16 claimant-favorable. 

17 MEMBER MUNN: But there's always 

18 that tension between claimant-favorability and 

19 reasonable assumptions.

20 DR. ULSH: Well, there's a -- I 

21 mean, this appears to be one of those cases 

22 where we've hashed around, hashed around. At 
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1 the end of the day NIOSH and SC&A just can't 

2 come to an agreement.

3 MR. FARVER: And I think what it 

4 comes down to in this case is the PoC is so 

5 low that we finally said well, you're not 

6 going to --

7 DR. ULSH: So I guess you guys 

8 need to maybe say, okay, we've got two 

9 differing opinions, what do we want to do with 

10 this. That's where we are, right?

11 MR. KATZ: I agree.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, we let it 

13 go at one point in this particular instance, 

14 but I mean I don't think -- I think we've got 

15 enough of these that, you know, it's going to 

16 come up several times more, so.

17 MEMBER MUNN: But especially in 

18 cases where you have two not necessarily 

19 opposing, but differing approaches that can be 

20 taken and in both cases there is a non21 compensable claim in front of you. Then this 

22 is one of those times when it would appear I 
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1 think reasonably that arguments about which of 

2 the two is claimant-favorable is moot. 

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, I mean I 

4 agree with that.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: For this 

6 particular case, yes.

7 MEMBER RICHARDSON: In particular, 

8 but the kind of general issue --

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

10 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- this is a 

11 recurring issue where it affects 

12 reproducibility of results. If we can clarify 

13 a procedure that would be useful.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It would 

15 improve reproducibility, yes. But I think we 

16 can let it go on this case. It just caught my 

17 eye.

18 MR. FARVER: And this, it's pretty 

19 detailed. This is back to where you're 

20 looking at the actual DOE records for the 

21 certain dosimeter cycles and it's marked, you 

22 know, Area 3F or such and such so you would 
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1 put them in F area and that would be I believe 

2 a neutron dose. Anyway, it goes all back to 

3 it's looking at their dosimeter records and 

4 where they were assigned the dosimeter. And 

5 I've got to tell you, even where they were 

6 assigned the dosimeter is not going to be very 

7 accurate depending on what their job function 

8 was.

9 MEMBER MUNN: No.

10 DR. ULSH: Is this -- I wasn't at 

11 the last Work Group Meeting -- sorry, the last 

12 Board Meeting. I know you guys acted on the 

13 Savannah River petition. Did that action not 

14 supersede this but kind of make it moot? You 

15 guys have already weighed in on it. 

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, it was on 

17 worker location related to thorium, but yes.

18 DR. ULSH: I don't know if the 

19 years.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The years I 

21 don't know about, yes, yes. Right.

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I don't know 
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1 if it makes this moot. That had to do with 

2 definition of a Class but it was over the same 

3 issues of how well could you place people.

4 DR. ULSH: Right. The Class 

5 definition that we proposed was based on 

6 placing people but you guys waited.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, this is 

8 1985 though. We went through '72 so it 

9 wouldn't completely, you know, resolve that, 

10 but anyway.

11 DR. ULSH: All right.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. I mean, I 

13 feel like we closed that one so I don't want 

14 to reopen issues at this point. We do have 

15 the overall theme, it's going to come up again 

16 so we won't lose it. We know particularly for 

17 Savannah River and Y-12 and a couple of others 

18 it's come up many times, so let's just move on 

19 I think at this point.

20 Alright, where was the next?

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: It's your 

22 fault. You jumped back to it.
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1 (Laughter.)

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I totally take 

3 the blame. All right, I'll make up for it. 

4 How about we break for lunch now?

5 MEMBER MUNN: Very good. Excellent 

6 plan.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Why was I 

8 looking at non-yellow items, you know? 

9 MR. KATZ: It's noon, so I guess 1 

10 o'clock.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

12 MR. KATZ: Thanks everyone on the 

13 line. We'll be back at 1.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: John Mauro, you 

15 should stay on the line, please.

16 DR. MAURO: No lunch for me.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No lunch for 

18 you. No soup for you.

19 (Laughter.)

20 MR. KATZ: Thanks everyone.

21 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter 

22 went off the record at 12:00 p.m. and went 
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1 back on the record at 1:12 p.m.)

2 MR. KATZ: Good afternoon, this is 

3 the Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee. We're 

4 back. Sorry we're a little bit late. I think 

5 we're ready to go.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It said 12 

7 parties.

8 MR. KATZ: Let me just check about 

9 do we have any Board Members on the line? Mike 

10 Gibson or John Poston? No. Okay.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright, we're 

12 back on the matrix work. And just for 

13 people's schedules I think we'll probably try 

14 to break around 4. I mean, I think usually by 

15 then we're fading out anyway so if we can go 

16 through till 4 we're doing pretty good I 

17 think.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: I have to sit out 

19 for a phone call at 3:30. I was going to do 

20 that anyway and Brant can cover. I mean, he 

21 can take care of stuff.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright, I know 
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1 there's some flights that, you know, I just 

2 want to -- I think by 4 we'll be toasted 

3 anyway. So back on the matrix, 160.1 -- well, 

4 that's actually closed. Oh no, it's not. 

5 160.1 is our next one I guess. 

6 MR. FARVER: Is that a fission 

7 product? Oh, this is a case that's been 

8 reworked and we are going to provide you a 

9 report on this case, 160, comparing the 

10 original and then the reworked case to see 

11 what changed. And also it's going to be down 

12 on Tab 175, I believe. 

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So you haven't 

14 done this yet, right?

15 MR. FARVER: Have not. This is 

16 two reports that we owe you, or one report on 

17 two cases. 

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Does this cover 

19 all the findings on 160?

20 MR. FARVER: Yes.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It carries 

22 through, right?
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1 MR. FARVER: It'll just be to show 

2 what the differences were between the cases.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright.

4 MR. KATZ: Will we have that at 

5 the next meeting?

6 MR. FARVER: It depends how much 

7 other things you want. Possibly.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It's an action.

9 MR. FARVER: Yes, it is.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Alright,

11 161.2, I think, is the next one. 

12 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So then this, 

13 I'm sorry, 160.1 gets flagged in that category 

14 again? 

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, 161 is just 

16 a carryover. SC&A is still reviewing it.

17 MEMBER MUNN: But 161.1 is one of 

18 those QA.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, I see. I 

20 didn't even look at the particulars because I 

21 think they're going to look at the whole case 

22 again, right?
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1 MR. FARVER: Yes.

2 MEMBER MUNN: Maybe this would be 

3 a good opportunity to stick QA in that 

4 category box.

5 MR. FARVER: You could.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 161.2 you mean?

7 MEMBER MUNN: 161.1 is shown 

8 closed.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, got it, 

10 yes. I see what you're saying.

11 MEMBER MUNN: As long as we've run 

12 across it.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. It is 

14 identified as a QA.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And that was 

16 the same with 160.1 also.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

18 MEMBER MUNN: And point 3. 

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, yes. I 

20 still want to go through the whole matrices 

21 and see what we can categorize. And some it's 

22 going to be easier than others it looks like.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: Let's do the easy 

2 ones if they already say so.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 161.2 then? 

4 DR. ULSH: Well, the latest I see 

5 is that's a NIOSH follow-up and we have not 

6 done that yet.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright, how 

8 about 161.3? It says QA concern.

9 MEMBER MUNN: NIOSH action.

10 DR. ULSH: No, we haven't done 

11 that yet.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. And 

13 moving on down. 

14 DR. ULSH: What's the next one?

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I'm just 

16 scanning some of the non-yellow ones. What is 

17 the next one?

18 MR. FARVER: 165.3.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 165.3, yes. And 

20 --

21 MR. FARVER: NIOSH was going to 

22 check the workbook, see why it was dividing by 
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1 1.6.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Examine 

3 the tool that determined why the factor of 1.6 

4 is used.

5 DR. ULSH: Wait, that was 7/23 and 

6 under that there's another entry 4/18/11.

7 MR. FARVER: Right.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, at the 

9 very bottom of that last entry it says NIOSH 

10 will examine the total to determine why the 

11 factor 1.6 is used.

12 DR. ULSH: That's not in yellow.

13 MEMBER MUNN: No, it isn't. It 

14 doesn't count, not in yellow.

15 (Laughter.)

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Sorry. Good 

17 point. Alright, we'll skip that one. No. I 

18 didn't carry through my yellow, sorry about 

19 that.

20 DR. ULSH: Looks like that's 

21 another outstanding. 

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's still 
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1 outstanding, is that what you're saying?

2 DR. ULSH: Yes.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. I 

4 mean, is there an easier way to do this? Do 

5 you know any coming up that do have? Oh okay, 

6 you've got, okay. 165.4?

7 MR. FARVER: 165.4, okay. This 

8 was an INEL case and the finding concerned the 

9 neutron missed skin dose calculations were in 

10 error. We've been through a couple of 

11 iterations of this and I believe this is a 

12 workbook issue. And --

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So you're 

14 saying you reviewed, the last part says NIOSH 

15 and SC&A will review to see if it's case16 specific or workbook, right? Or broader 

17 potential.

18 MR. FARVER: My notes here says 

19 it's the workbook and the correction factor 

20 was only applied to the skin dose and was not

21 used for the bladder dose. 

22 MEMBER MUNN: This is in the best 
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1 estimate complex-wide external dose tool. 

2 Looks like everybody needs another look-see.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Are you saying 

4 this is your update, Doug, that you looked at 

5 it?

6 MR. FARVER: Yes. And, well, one 

7 part of it is that, let's see. Yes. If you 

8 look up in there the one response, the latest 

9 response SC&A points out that I believe the 

10 correction factor was not applied to the 

11 bladder. That's kind of what it comes down 

12 to. It was applied to the skin dose, was not 

13 applied to a bladder dose. 

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I don't see 

15 that.

16 MR. FARVER: Well, in other words 

17 they didn't apply the correction factor to 

18 both doses.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, I 

20 understand what you're saying. I don't see it 

21 in the matrix though.

22 MR. FARVER: It's up there.
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1 DR. ULSH: Page 53 of 107. I 

2 think.

3 MR. FARVER: 165.4.

4 MEMBER MUNN: On my copy it starts 

5 on page 50 and then goes to page 51.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 165.4 this is.

7 MR. FARVER: Yes.

8 MEMBER MUNN: -E-3-1.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I see the entry 

10 on 4/11 that I have is NIOSH determined that 

11 it should use the correction factors from 

12 missed doses and measured dose. See TBD. 

13 MEMBER MUNN: Keep going.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: SC&A points 

15 out... Okay, I didn't see bladder in there. 

16 Okay, sorry. So you think that they didn't, 

17 it's not in the tool itself is what you're 

18 saying. The correction factor.

19 MR. FARVER: Correct. I believe 

20 it's a workbook error.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

22 MR. FARVER: Now, we probably 
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1 should both take a look at it again.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

3 MR. FARVER: I would --

4 MEMBER MUNN: NIOSH is saying they 

5 got it out of the best estimate -- complex6 wide external.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I mean, Scott, 

8 you don't have anything on this, do you?

9 MR. SIEBERT: We're, Matt Smith 

10 and I are actually going back and forth 

11 looking at this and I think we need to, I 

12 think we have an idea as to what the actual 

13 issue is but I don't want to speak on it, I 

14 want to go ahead and hammer it out before the 

15 next meeting. We'll have something for the 

16 next meeting.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Fair enough. 

18 Alright, so I said NIOSH and SC&A will look 

19 further at this.

20 MR. FARVER: Okay.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. Then 

22 next, you tell me the next one you have 
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1 something on, either one of you, NIOSH or 

2 SC&A. 

3 MEMBER MUNN: The very next one.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Next one? Okay.

5 DR. ULSH: It says NIOSH to 

6 provide final PoC determination to 

7 Subcommittee along with all 30 IREP run 

8 values. Scott, did we do this?

9 MR. SIEBERT: I can't speak to 

10 that because you guys handled the 30 run 

11 stuff. Sorry.

12 DR. ULSH: All right. We'll get 

13 it for you for the next meeting. 

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Did you receive 

15 this? Do you know, Doug, yet?

16 MR. FARVER: No.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, all 

18 right. So that's still outstanding. All 

19 right, how about 166.6. 

20 MR. FARVER: NIOSH will verify all 

21 doses, verify that all additional doses 

22 identified in the case planning were addressed 
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1 and whether outcome was affected. I don't 

2 think they have a response yet on that one. 

3 And that would bring us down to 167.3.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

5 MR. FARVER: Which comes back to 

6 unmonitored neutron doses again. We've been 

7 through this several times as you can see in 

8 the resolution column. And NIOSH provided a 

9 response in April and I reviewed that and I 

10 concurred with their response.

11 MR. SIEBERT: I'm sorry, this is 

12 Scott. Doug, I can barely hear you.

13 MR. FARVER: That's because I'm 

14 just playing out and I'm really quiet. I'll

15 speak up.

16 (Laughter.)

17 MR. FARVER: Basically you folks 

18 gave a response back in April and then I 

19 reviewed it and I agree with your response 

20 from April.

21 MR. SIEBERT: I like to hear that. 

22 Which number was it?
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1 MR. FARVER: Oh yes.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 167.3.

3 MR. SIEBERT: Okay, thank you.

4 MEMBER MUNN: And E-2-3.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Now, can you 

6 explain was this a worker location thing?

7 MR. FARVER: I'm trying to find 

8 out which site it was.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. It's not 

10 obvious which site.

11 MEMBER MUNN: Just failed to 

12 consider unmonitored neutron dose. 

13 MR. FARVER: I thought it would be 

14 a Savannah River. 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: It's Savannah 

16 River. 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It is Savannah 

18 River. I mean, is this another subjective 

19 sort of, or was there firm evidence in this 

20 case? I think we need to.

21 MR. FARVER: Okay. You want more, 

22 okay.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

2 MR. FARVER: Well, without going 

3 back and finding out exactly what their 

4 response was. 

5 DR. ULSH: So it's 167.3?

6 MR. FARVER: Yes.

7 DR. ULSH: Scott, do you recall 

8 what our response was on 167.3? Do you have 

9 it handy, by chance?

10 MR. SIEBERT: I'm actually digging 

11 for that right now. Just a second.

12 DR. ULSH: Okay.

13 MR. FARVER: I mean, it's one of 

14 these having to do with worker location.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Partly.

16 MR. SIEBERT: I have 166 and 168. 

17 Can we just average those?

18 (Laughter.)

19 MEMBER MUNN: It's partly that but 

20 not, not specifically that. 

21 DR. ULSH: It looks like we 

22 provided it on April 15th if that helps.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: It's unmonitored 

2 neutron dose.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So this TIB-7 

4 goes back to the one we were discussing 

5 earlier, right?

6 MEMBER MUNN: Right.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

8 MEMBER MUNN: Missed dose was 

9 greater than the recorded photon dose which 

10 would indicate the employee was not routinely 

11 exposed. Then it's saying missed neutron dose 

12 would be excessively unrealistic. It wasn't 

13 signed in accordance with TIB-7. 

14 MR. SIEBERT: For some reason I'm 

15 not seeing it either. I'm with Brant and 

16 Doug, I know we did and I know Doug was going 

17 to look at it and I just can't put my finger 

18 on it at the moment.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I think we 

20 need to at least explain your difference in --

21 because your position's pretty strong here in 

22 the, you know. Based on the location along 
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1 with the CATI information SC&A believes 

2 unmonitored period should be assigned. 

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, I've got the 

4 April 2011 response we sent. I can read it.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Sure.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. The 

7 assignment of neutron dose for early years of 

8 employment at SRS often requires some judgment 

9 on the part of the dose reconstructor. The 

10 decision to include or not include neutron 

11 dose is based on many factors including but 

12 not limited to the employee's occupation, work 

13 location, dosimetry records and guidance in 

14 the Technical Basis Document and Technical 

15 Information Bulletin. 

16 In general, the guidance of OCAS 

17 TIB-7 is followed when making this 

18 determination as it was created specifically 

19 to help the dose reconstructor determine when 

20 to apply neutron dose when no dosimeter 

21 results are available. The latest SC&A 

22 response indicated that OCAS TIB-7 was issued 
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1 two years after the dose reconstruction was 

2 completed. However, it was the revision that 

3 was issued two years after the dose 

4 reconstruction. The original version was 

5 issued 9/17/2003, well before the assessment. 

6 The sections addressing the action areas were 

7 consistent between revisions. As stated in 

8 the SC&A response OCAS TIB-7 indicates that a 

9 claimant-favorable approach with particular 

10 attention to the information in Section 2.2.1 

11 should be applied. None of the conditions 

12 specified in Section 2.2.1 are met for this 

13 claim in that there is no neutron monitoring 

14 in 1971 or later, no documentation of use of 

15 the 17 keV calibration curve for shallow dose 

16 and no neutron monitoring in any of the 

17 dosimetry records that are available. The 

18 potential for neutron exposure therefore 

19 relies on the employee's work location/job. He 

20 was apparently employed at the P-reactor for 

21 some or all of his employment and the reactors 

22 are known to be facilities where workers can 
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1 potentially receive dose from neutron 

2 radiation. 

3 Section 2.2.2 of OCAS TIB-7 

4 discusses the potential for neutron dose at 

5 specific areas of Savannah River Site 

6 including the reactor facilities. It 

7 describes the types of occupations for which 

8 neutron dose should be assigned. These 

9 occupations are maintenance crafts or 

10 individuals responsible for radiation 

11 monitoring in the workplace such as 

12 radiological control technicians. As an 

13 engineer, the employee's occupation does not 

14 match the types specified in OCAS TIB-7. The 

15 work he noted in his CATI related to technical 

16 engineering of uranium slugs. Electroplating 

17 is mentioned. This does not seem to indicate 

18 exposure to neutrons in the reactor area. 

19 Therefore, since none of the criteria 

20 specified in Sections 2.2.1 and 2.2.2 are met 

21 neutron doses are not indicated for the 

22 employee even though he worked in a facility 
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1 where the potential for neutron dose existed.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think this is 

3 a great example. I'm wondering if we're being 

4 too prescriptive in, or NIOSH is being a 

5 little too prescriptive in their guidelines. I 

6 mean, you have an individual that worked at 

7 the facility who apparently would have a 

8 recorded photon dose and you're trying to 

9 determine who within that facility had the 

10 potential?

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I'm not an 

12 expert in Savannah River but as I understand 

13 it the operation, the reactors as they sit 

14 there and ran, you know, they're water15 reflected. Not necessarily heavy water, but 

16 they're water-cooled and water-moderated 

17 reactors. There's essentially by the design 

18 of the reactors essentially no neutron dose 

19 around an operating reactor unless you're in 

20 an exposure port or something like that. And 

21 that there was a particular bay where it was 

22 constructed such that there was some neutron 
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1 exposure in that bay and that's where the 

2 maintenance crafts worked. And then the 

3 people who would survey for maintenance would 

4 do that as well. And so I remember TIB-7 is 

5 pretty specific about yes, there were 

6 reactors, of course there were neutrons in the 

7 reactors but there really wasn't neutron 

8 exposure potential in the bulk of the 

9 workforce. There was just this one area where 

10 the maintenance guys worked where it was and 

11 that's why maintenance people and people who 

12 do radiation surveys made it in here because 

13 they would be there measuring radiation levels 

14 and maybe working in that area. But other 

15 people who may have worked on the reactor 

16 would have been in the other part of the work 

17 area and not exposed to neutrons. That's the 

18 reasoning in TIB-7. I only know it because I 

19 read TIB-7. I've got no prior knowledge about 

20 the situation at Savannah River. And I 

21 believe that's what was presented.

22 MR. FARVER: That response is very 
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1 thorough and follows, you know, TIB-7 exactly. 

2 In that instance they follow it exactly so 

3 that's why we agree with their response.

4 DR. MAURO: This is John. Do we 

5 have a Site Profile issued here whereby we may 

6 not agree and that the exposures are that 

7 constrained?

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, it would be 

9 a TIB-7 issue.

10 DR. MAURO: Oh, our TIB-7 issue. 

11 That might be what we have here. I can't 

12 speak to the status of our review of TIB-7 and 

13 whether this issue came up or not. But it 

14 does sound like that, you know, if there's 

15 reason to believe that it's not that 

16 constrained you could see why one person would 

17 make one judgment and another a different one. 

18 Anyway...

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I was also 

20 thinking of that whole issue of placing 

21 people. I mean, if an engineer as defined by 

22 that job type would have never been in those 
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1 locations, you know, Stu's argument seems 

2 reasonable, you know. But I'm wondering how 

3 much we can rely on the job titles. Maybe in 

4 this case we can.

5 MR. FARVER: According to TIB-7 

6 there's just certain occupations that would be 

7 in the area and that's not one of them.

8 MR. KATZ: They had the interview 

9 too. I don't know what the interview results 

10 were. Is this an employee or a survivor case?

11 MR. FARVER: I'd have to go back 

12 and find the CATI. 

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It seemed to 

14 say, the CATI, if I heard Stu's reading of 

15 that answer correctly was saying he worked in 

16 other areas, right? Based on the CATI I 

17 thought it said something about --

18 MR. HINNEFELD: The CATI talks 

19 about electroplating of uranium metal slugs 

20 which I would think would be 300 Area but I 

21 could be wrong.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So it's silent 
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1 on this.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

3 MEMBER MUNN: I would imagine with 

4 that much detail in all probability it's a 

5 living claimant. 

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Actually, John 

7 Mauro, the TIB-7 did in fact review this.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I was going to 

9 ask that, yes.

10 MEMBER MUNN: I was going to try 

11 to find that. I thought we'd looked at TIB-7 

12 very thoroughly.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: It did and made a 

14 finding saying that guidance does not specify 

15 all occupations that may involve neutron 

16 exposure at SRS which seems to be the exact 

17 issue --

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So it's already 

19 on the table, right?

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, the finding 

21 is closed.

22 MEMBER MUNN: I think we closed 
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1 it. We referred it back.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The Savannah 

3 River group. No, I'm just teasing.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, here's the 

5 thing. The finding of -- the resolution of 

6 the finding was to revise TIB-7 to clarify or 

7 cancel TIB-7 and provide a new program for the 

8 TBD. So in other words, revise TIB-7 to make 

9 it clearer or cancel TIB-7 and put that 

10 guidance in the Site Profile.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Site Profile, 

12 right.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: And then the 

14 closing statement is SC&A's review of Rev 1 of 

15 TIB-7 found that NIOSH satisfactorily 

16 accommodate SC&A's finding, no further action 

17 is required. So Rev 1 --

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So you accepted 

19 the way they clarified.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Now, I don't know 

21 what rev I remembered from and I don't know 

22 what rev this dose reconstruction was done 
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1 with. And I don't know if we prepared this 

2 dose reconstruction to Rev 1. So I mean, to 

3 be consistent if we were going to say well, 

4 Rev 1 has been deemed okay, you know, the 

5 thing now would be to say was this DR done 

6 with Rev 1 or was it done with Rev 0 in which 

7 case you would have to see if it's still okay 

8 with Rev 1. Does that make sense? It's 

9 making my head hurt.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You don't know, 

11 Doug, which one this fell under by any chance?

12 MR. FARVER: No, but I could go 

13 back and check the files and see what one was 

14 referenced. 

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: You don't know 

16 what the changes to OTIB-0007 were?

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I see what I 

18 can find. I have a wealth of information at 

19 my fingertips if I can figure out how to get 

20 there.

21 MS. BEHLING: Excuse me, Kathy 

22 Behling. This dose reconstruction was done --
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1 or NIOSH did the dose reconstruction in 

2 December of 2005 and the OTIB-0007 was revised 

3 in October of 2007. So this was not done 

4 under Revision 1. And the description for 

5 Revision 1 says, "Clarification of locations, 

6 occupations and time periods for which this 

7 TBD applies."

8 DR. MAURO: This is John. I would 

9 like to add an overarching issue which I think 

10 goes to our opening discussion, and it could 

11 be very important. When you get to the point 

12 where trying to resolve something at this 

13 level of precision and it goes against the 

14 claimant I think this really gets to the heart 

15 of some of these fundamental concepts and 

16 concerns raised in the 10-year review. You 

17 know, do we want to operate at a level of 

18 assumption regarding job title, job location, 

19 et cetera, et cetera that goes to this level 

20 of granularity? And I think that is really 

21 the core question here because when you get to 

22 this point where we are now you're really in 
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1 an impossible situation. Certainly both the -

2 - do you look for weight of evidence that is 

3 overwhelming, that no, it's really out of the 

4 question that this person could have ever had 

5 some neutron exposure. If you're looking for 

6 that then you sort of have to assign this 

7 person some neutron exposure because, you 

8 know, it's a fine judgment we're making here. 

9 Anyway, I bring this up only because I think 

10 this goes to the heart of one of these 

11 overarching issues that we've been talking 

12 about.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, no, this 

14 definitely is the overarching issue, but I 

15 also get the sense that in this particular 

16 case it was fairly well defined. I mean, I 

17 don't dispute that that issue still exists, 

18 but in this case it seems like a pretty strong 

19 rationale.

20 MR. FARVER: The rationale they 

21 gave which is from Rev 1 of TIB-7, I believe, 

22 was what was done. Now, I don't have Rev 0 of 
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1 TIB-7 so I don't know what was in TIB in the 

2 Rev 0, but according to the current TIB-7, it 

3 was done under that guidance.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right. 

5 MR. HINNEFELD: If you want to do 

6 that analysis, I can find it and forward to 

7 you the Rev 0 if you would like. I don't 

8 think we should do it in a meeting.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think we have 

10 to close this one. And I don't, I'd be 

11 shocked if this issue doesn't come up again so 

12 I think we need to close it for this specific 

13 case. Hearing no other objections, I'll close 

14 it.

15 MR. FARVER: In this case, they 

16 may not have followed the exact wording of Rev 

17 0 which, to correct it, you would add more job 

18 titles and so forth which apparently is what 

19 was added to Rev 1.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Right. 

21 That would be the action anyway, so yes, yes.

22 MR. FARVER: Yes.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So I don't 

2 think leaving it open gets us anywhere so I 

3 think we close it. Yes.

4 DR. ULSH: 167.3 is --

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Closed. Now 

6 that next one is just probably a note from me 

7 on where the response is. Check CDC email. So 

8 I'll make that clearer. Not yellow. All 

9 right, 168.7.

10 MR. FARVER: 168.4, don't we -- or 

11 is that closed?

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I have that 

13 closed unless I made a mistake.

14 MR. FARVER: Okay. 

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Do you have it 

16 open?

17 MR. FARVER: I'm in the wrong 

18 spreadsheet. I'm in the wrong matrix. 

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright, 168.7. 

20 Looks like a Mound.

21 DR. ULSH: T-building, must be 

22 Mound.
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1 MR. FARVER: We reviewed their 

2 April response and we agree with what they 

3 did, which, we should have their response 

4 there. So we're in agreement with the April 

5 response. 

6 MEMBER MUNN: That it can be 

7 closed.

8 MR. FARVER: Yes. 

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Can you just 

10 tell us what this was about real quickly?

11 MR. FARVER: Briefly, this goes 

12 back to when they did their dose assessments 

13 at Mound previously, and instead of doing a 

14 detailed assessment for everyone I think they 

15 went in and used a sample result equal to the 

16 decision level and calculated a minimum dose 

17 from that and assigned it. So I do not 

18 believe this employee actually did have a 

19 plutonium sample, it was just one that was 

20 assigned for dose assessment. Scott, was it 

21 something to that effect?

22 MR. SIEBERT: Yes, that sounds 
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1 about right.

2 MR. FARVER: So, it wasn't that he 

3 worked in a plutonium area and had a plutonium 

4 bioassay and all this; it just was a method of 

5 expediting their dose assessments back when 

6 they did them, the '80s? '90s?

7 MEMBER MUNN: Eighties, I thought, 

8 but maybe not.

9 MR. FARVER: So that can close.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So, I mean, 

11 well, this may be drilling down a bit far but 

12 why were they assigning plutonium dose then 

13 with the previous method? There must have 

14 been some rationale.

15 MR. FARVER: There was some letter 

16 stating due to the scope of the project, 

17 exposure investigations were not conducted as 

18 part of these assessments. I think it was 

19 just a way to get through it quickly.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. But 

21 you're okay with what the --

22 MR. FARVER: Yes.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- their 

2 explanation. Anybody follow up on that one? 

3 MEMBER MUNN: Looks like it's 

4 covered.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think I'm 

6 okay with it. I mean, I do remember the DR 

7 project and they did do some screening, right? 

8 MR. FARVER: Yes.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So I could see 

10 that.

11 MR. FARVER: So this was mid-'90s.

12 MEMBER MUNN: Was it?

13 MR. FARVER: I think so.

14 DR. ULSH: Oh, are you talking 

15 about the MJW pre-1989 dose requirements?

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

17 MR. FARVER: Is this the pre or 

18 the --

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

20 MR. FARVER: The dose is from pre21 1989.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: The dose is from 
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1 pre-1989. They did it I think in '90.

2 MR. FARVER: Yes. 

3 DR. ULSH: The late '90s and I 

4 think it was issued in 2000.

5 MR. FARVER: I believe that's what 

6 all this was from.

7 DR. ULSH: Alright, I don't know 

8 that I have a more clear answer for you.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We really 

10 should know what the report is, yes. 

11 MEMBER MUNN: 170.2?

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Where are we, 

13 Wanda, 170.2?

14 MEMBER MUNN: I believe.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. 

16 MR. FARVER: Okay, let's see if I 

17 can explain this one. Started off with a 

18 finding of failing to consider or assign 

19 unmonitored and missed neutron doses for 1947 

20 to '51 and '62 to '88. And this is going to 

21 be X-10. 

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And Y-12 or
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1 just X-10? I see both mentioned.

2 MR. FARVER: I see both names. 

3 Okay. You can go down and read through the 

4 NIOSH responses there in yellow, and when you 

5 get down to the last one which was in April 

6 and NIOSH concludes, the individual should not 

7 have been assigned neutron dose. Guidance

8 included in ORAU OTIB-23. 

9 And I went back and looked at 

10 OTIB-23 and they did follow that guidance. 

11 However, there is, from Section 6 of that OTIB 

12 it also says, if the above condition is met 

13 concerning the missed dose not being assigned, 

14 then dose reconstructors should include 

15 appropriate explanatory language in the dose 

16 reconstruction report. This should include a 

17 discussion in the DR report of the available 

18 information regarding work locations and the 

19 rationale for the conclusion that neutron 

20 doses could not have exceeded incidental 

21 levels. In other words, if you're going to 

22 claim it's OTIB-23 and there was no potential 
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1 then you have to put that explanation in there 

2 for that assumption, which was not done, but I 

3 mean it's good, it's a good thing to do. So 

4 that was my only comment on the response. They 

5 did follow OTIB-23 except for the section that 

6 says if you're going to not assign the missed 

7 dose then you better explain why. 

8 DR. ULSH: So with the further 

9 explanation that was not included in the DR 

10 that we provided and you are in agreement with 

11 our decision not to, but we should have put 

12 that explanation in the DR?

13 MR. FARVER: Yes.

14 DR. ULSH: Okay.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Then it can be 

16 closed.

17 MR. FARVER: And actually I think 

18 that's probably a good practice for a lot of 

19 these cases on this neutron dose was to write 

20 down your justification for not doing it.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

22 MEMBER MUNN: Put the statement 
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1 in.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

3 MEMBER MUNN: 171.2?

4 MR. FARVER: Yes. 

5 MEMBER MUNN: More unmonitored 

6 missed neutron dose.

7 MR. FARVER: More unmonitored 

8 neutron dose. NIOSH failed to assign 

9 unmonitored and missed neutron dose for 1965 

10 to '89. 

11 MEMBER MUNN: An overestimating 

12 practice.

13 MR. KATZ: Is this 171.4?

14 MR. FARVER: 171.2.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Can I say for 

16 that last one, I was still typing on that last 

17 one but that NIOSH agrees that the information 

18 should have been included, the extra 

19 information? I mean I think that's, just so 

20 we can close it. The decision was right but 

21 they should have had the explanation. Yes, 

22 alright.
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1 MR. FARVER: And for 171.2, the 

2 employee was the senior engineer draftsman in 

3 design technology at ORNL from '56 through 

4 1989. Various work locations throughout ORNL. 

5 And neutron dose was assigned, or missed 

6 neutron dose was assigned for the period up 

7 through 1974 but not for the period after.

8 MEMBER MUNN: It's an 

9 overestimate.

10 MR. FARVER: And that was 

11 basically the finding that they did not assign 

12 it for the years of the after-74.

13 MEMBER MUNN: From '74 to '89.

14 MR. FARVER: Through '89. 

15 MEMBER MUNN: And they say that it 

16 wasn't included because of the work location 

17 and no positive data. 

18 DR. ULSH: Well, it looks to me 

19 like we did assign it up through '74.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Up through '74, 

21 right.

22 MR. FARVER: Up through '74.
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1 DR. ULSH: I think SC&A's 

2 question, if I can paraphrase --

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. Why 

4 before.

5 MR. FARVER: Why not after.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

7 DR. ULSH: And our explanation, 

8 such as it is, says that this was an 

9 overestimate and you shouldn't take, more or 

10 less, evidence having -- you shouldn't take 

11 the fact that we assigned it prior to '74 as 

12 evidence of neutron exposure. That was an 

13 overestimating thing that we did. Is that, 

14 does that sound like what we're saying here?

15 MR. FARVER: Yes.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

17 DR. ULSH: Now, that brings us to, 

18 do you agree with that.

19 MR. FARVER: No. I mean, if it is 

20 an overestimate and if there is still some 

21 discrepancy about the work locations after 

22 that time period, why won't you go the 
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1 claimant-favorable route and say well, you 

2 know, he should be assigned something through 

3 here? I don't think it's exactly clear where 

4 the employee worked when. I think there is 

5 some question about work locations, but the 

6 work locations that are mentioned are --

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The same before 

8 and after that time period.

9 MR. FARVER: There are ones that 

10 could have neutrons, potential for neutrons. 

11 And in our original review, we put a table in 

12 there from, it looks like it's the TBD, 

13 listing places that should have neutron doses 

14 and when they have them. So, our feeling is 

15 if the employee's time period fits into that 

16 table that's already published then you should 

17 go ahead and assign a neutron dose for that 

18 period. 

19 MEMBER MUNN: And it looks like 

20 the NIOSH position is, if I can paraphrase it, 

21 that job description and lack of any neutron 

22 monitoring would lead one to believe --
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1 DR. MAURO: This is John. To 

2 close the circle on this I guess we would have 

3 expected some language saying what changed 

4 after 1974 that said well, we'll grant them 

5 something pre-'74 but it would be pushing it 

6 to its extreme to go post-'74 and I guess 

7 there's no language in here explaining what 

8 might have changed.

9 MR. SIEBERT: Well, this is Scott. 

10 In the response we gave in April, it stated in 

11 the final paragraph in this response the 

12 reason the missed neutron dose was not 

13 assigned starting in '75 is because all photon 

14 doses were zero, no neutron monitoring was 

15 performed and the EE's job description would 

16 not support neutron exposure or monitoring.

17 DR. MAURO: And that was different 

18 than what was pre-'74.

19 MR. SIEBERT: Pre-'74, if I 

20 remember correctly, I'd have to go back and 

21 look, but there, I believe there were positive 

22 photons so the dose reconstruction just said 
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1 we'll just kind of overestimate and throw it 

2 in there, if I remember correctly.

3 DR. MAURO: Well, that seems to be 

4 the key. I mean, what I just heard was there 

5 was a rationale for making that switch at that 

6 date, and it is written up. Doug, I hate to -

7 - I mean, it sounds like there is some 

8 justification. Would you feel that that 

9 justification does the trick?

10 MR. FARVER: Gosh. I remember 

11 reading it and I remember thinking that's not 

12 very good, but --

13 DR. MAURO: No, that's important, 

14 you know. We have to be comfortable with 

15 this.

16 MR. FARVER: I'll work on number 

17 two, so.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Do you want to 

19 look at the 4/15 response? I mean --

20 MR. FARVER: That's what I've got 

21 here. It pretty much says what Scott did.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.
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1 MR. FARVER: It wasn't in the job 

2 description and --

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But were the 

4 buildings different or the same?

5 MR. FARVER: And I can go back to 

6 the original report that we wrote and it says 

7 the DOE records nor the CATI were very time8 specific concerning work locations or job 

9 functions.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

11 MR. FARVER: Now, we can go back 

12 and say that this person was a senior engineer 

13 draftsman in design technology, yes, 

14 technologist. Now, does that fall into one of 

15 these people that should be going into these 

16 reactor areas?

17 MEMBER MUNN: No.

18 DR. ULSH: Well, it seems to me 

19 that certainly a draftsman could go into those 

20 areas. I mean, it's a generic category. The 

21 question is, could a draftsman with no 

22 recorded gamma dose plausibly make the case 
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1 that he should have been assigned a neutron 

2 dose. That seems to be the crux of our 

3 argument and I don't know how you guys feel 

4 about that.

5 MEMBER MUNN: If you don't have 

6 any photon dose then how can you work on the 

7 assumption that you need to be assigned a 

8 neutron dose?

9 MR. FARVER: Okay. I will go back 

10 and give a better response on that one.

11 MEMBER MUNN: Okay.

12 MR. FARVER: Just because what I

13 have written here seems like I was pretty 

14 convinced at the time that I didn't agree with 

15 it.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Okay. 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright, 171.3.

18 DR. ULSH: It looks -- I mean, I'm 

19 just reading what's in the matrix here, 171.3. 

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, that's the 

21 full case we're asking for, right? So I think 

22 there's agreement on this specific finding.
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1 MR. FARVER: Yes.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But then we're 

3 asking for the impact on the overall case from 

4 all the findings. I think that was the 

5 action, Brant.

6 DR. ULSH: Okay, well unless Scott 

7 corrects me, I'm pretty sure that we have not 

8 done that, but what I'm wondering is, doesn't 

9 171.2 need to be resolved before that can be 

10 done?

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

12 MR. SIEBERT: Yes, I would say 

13 everything we've done up till this point --

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You've done 

15 what you can do.

16 MR. SIEBERT: -- everything. But 

17 unless, if 171.2 gets resolved differently 

18 then presently, at best that throws what we 

19 did out the window.

20 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. 

22 MR. FARVER: That depends on --
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I think this 

3 again is a QC category. 171.3 is omission of 

4 entering data.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Right, 

6 another QA/QC. Yes. All right, 171.4. 

7 DR. ULSH: Sorry, my computer's 

8 acting up. I hope you're not waiting on me.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: This is a long 

10 one. NIOSH provided a response 4/15. SC&A 

11 will review. And the answer is?

12 MR. FARVER: Let me go back to 

13 original finding. 

14 MEMBER MUNN: Didn't assign 

15 coworker doses correctly for unmonitored 

16 years. 

17 MR. FARVER: You know, for some 

18 reason, I've missed these 171s. Not all of 

19 them, just some of them. 

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So it's a 

21 question of coworker versus environmental 

22 being assigned during some years, right?
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1 MR. FARVER: Yes, it gets kind of 

2 messy. I guess it comes down to, when do you 

3 use coworker data. This is going to be a 

4 question of when to use coworker data. And in 

5 the response that NIOSH gave for this finding, 

6 they quote a sentence out of OTIB-34 that 

7 says, in such cases, data from coworkers may 

8 be used to approximate individuals' possible 

9 exposure. The word may allows the DR to 

10 subjectively make a decision to apply or not 

11 apply the coworker intakes according to other 

12 information. So, this comes down to, well, it 

13 depends on the person looking at it.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

15 MR. FARVER: Do you apply coworker 

16 data or do you just go with environmental 

17 data? 

18 MEMBER MUNN: Do we have NIOSH's 

19 response to that?

20 MR. FARVER: That was NIOSH's 

21 response saying that they could use when they 

22 choose to.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: On the 15th.

2 MR. FARVER: And they chose not 

3 to. 

4 MEMBER MUNN: That's their April 

5 response.

6 DR. ULSH: Well, it's not quite 

7 that --

8 (Laughter.)

9 MR. FARVER: Well, I didn't say 

10 you didn't have reason for not doing it, I 

11 just said you chose not to.

12 MEMBER MUNN: Do we have your 4/15 

13 response?

14 DR. ULSH: Yes, it's in the 

15 matrix.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Oh, is that the 

17 14th? Oh. Way, way down. The very last 

18 thing.

19 DR. ULSH: Oh, it says NIOSH's 

20 response.

21 MEMBER MUNN: It says you provided 

22 a response on 4/15 but --
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1 DR. ULSH: You're right.

2 MEMBER MUNN: And that SC&A would 

3 review it, but.

4 MR. SIEBERT: And this goes back 

5 to the later response that we gave in April 

6 which Doug is looking at.

7 MEMBER MUNN: Doug's looking at it 

8 but I'm not because it's not on the matrix.

9 MR. FARVER: Well, I'll go on with 

10 what they were stating. They, based on the 

11 EE's job description, it is unlikely that the 

12 EE had more than a low potential for exposure 

13 to airborne radionuclides in the workplace. I 

14 don't know. The DR made a decision to apply 

15 internal dose based on the EE's exposure 

16 potential, not a gross overestimate of the 

17 intake for the entire employment period. I 

18 don't know. 

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I guess your 

20 point is that it's perhaps not prescriptive 

21 enough guidance.

22 MR. FARVER: Well, if you --
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It leaves it 

2 open-ended for the NIOSH dose reconstructor.

3 MR. FARVER: I kind of look at it, 

4 if you look at the beginning, it says this is 

5 an overestimate of the employee's dose. But 

6 clearly, you know, I don't think this is. I 

7 don't think this is an overestimate. I don't 

8 say it's claimant-favorable. I think there's 

9 a lot of questions as to exactly where the 

10 employee was when, and I think on those 

11 occasions, you need to err on the side of 

12 claimant-favorability. So that's my point, I 

13 mean, that's my view. 

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So the response 

15 provided on 4/15 didn't give you any further, 

16 you didn't feel any better about the --

17 MR. FARVER: No.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright, okay.

19 DR. MAURO: This is John. Just to 

20 help you out a little bit, as I recall the 

21 philosophy behind the procedures when making 

22 these decisions is, if there's very little 
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1 potential that a person received any, whether 

2 it's external or internal exposure, you go 

3 with environmental. When it appears that 

4 there was some potential, some potential, 

5 maybe not a lot but some potential that the 

6 person had a location or job description that 

7 he could have experienced some exposure but 

8 not, you know, you go with the full 

9 distribution. And when it looks like, yes, he 

10 had a job where he was expected to get some 

11 exposure and if you're missing some data or he 

12 was not monitored, you assign the upper 95th 

13 percentile. In this particular case it looks 

14 like that there were time periods where you 

15 decided to assign environmental, and is that 

16 where the issue lies?

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

18 MR. FARVER: Instead of --

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Instead of 

20 coworker.

21 MR. FARVER: -- coworker.

22 DR. MAURO: Instead of -- I call 
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1 coworker the full distribution, but it could 

2 also be the upper 95th percentile.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

4 DR. MAURO: So what I'm hearing is 

5 the issue has to do with assigning 

6 environmental when we felt perhaps the full 

7 distribution should have been assigned, the 

8 coworker model.

9 MR. FARVER: Yes.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's right, 

11 yes.

12 DR. MAURO: Okay. So here we have 

13 a judgment call.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

15 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Now, I mean I 

17 guess, I get back to this question of, on this 

18 kind of thing, consistency, like from one DR 

19 to the other, how would you expect to have 

20 the, you know, without a little, maybe you 

21 need more guidance on how someone defines 

22 environmental versus coworker for ORNL, you 
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1 know. And I know you can't be completely 

2 prescriptive.

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So it's 

4 interesting because it's -- I think maybe, 

5 it's not just for ORNL but maybe there is, 

6 there is a way of being prescriptive about the 

7 overestimating approach if that's going to 

8 continue to be used. When doing an 

9 overestimation, you would take, you would use 

10 the coworker model when you're in the 

11 situation.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's another 

13 side of it, yes.

14 MEMBER RICHARDSON: To approximate 

15 individuals' possible exposures.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, that could 

17 be another way to look at it, yes, yes.

18 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And then a 

19 best estimate would require you to make this 

20 argument that, based on their occupation and 

21 other information, if you were going to refine 

22 this, you would use something else. 
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

2 DR. MAURO: I think we have, and 

3 I'll certainly be corrected on this, a bit of 

4 a difference of opinion on when we talk about 

5 an overestimate or realistic. I believe a 

6 realistic has to provide a level of assurance 

7 that you're not underestimating the person's 

8 dose. 

9 MEMBER MUNN: Or overestimate.

10 DR. MAURO: Realistic? No. I'm 

11 thinking the other way. Historically when you

12 used what I would call a bounding estimate 

13 that would always be done simply to assign the 

14 highest possible, if not impossible, dose to a 

15 person so that, and when you do that you deny. 

16 And everyone, you know, we've always been 

17 comfortable with that. Listen, it's just a 

18 quick way to move this thing through. But 

19 then you move into this gray area and I'd 

20 certainly like to hear a little bit about 

21 this. When you're doing, like the person we 

22 have before us here, and you assign 
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1 environmental to this person because, well, it 

2 appears whatever, for your reasons that the 

3 most likely scenario here is that he got 

4 environmental. I don't, see, I don't consider 

5 that claimant-favorable. I would sooner, it's 

6 always a semantics or philosophy. I would say 

7 well, listen, if there's a possibility that he 

8 might have experienced some exposures that 

9 were greater than environmental because of 

10 uncertainties regarding what he might have 

11 been doing and where he might have been, I 

12 consider it to be realistic but claimant13 favorable to assign him the full distribution. 

14 I mean, and I think this is where perhaps the 

15 philosophy between how we look at things and 

16 how you look at things might differ a little 

17 and is worthy of some discussion when we get 

18 to this overarching-issue discussion. 

19 DR. ULSH: Have we said what this 

20 guy's job title was?

21 MR. FARVER: This is the draftsman 

22 technologist engineer. And the time period is 
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1 '56 through '89, a long time. So he probably 

2 had many different titles.

3 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

4 DR. ULSH: So it seems like the 

5 current status is we put a response on the 

6 table and that didn't satisfy Doug's concerns. 

7 So the question going forward is, are we at a 

8 point where we just have to agree to disagree, 

9 or do you want us to do something, or --

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, I think, 

11 you know, I think there's two sides to this. I 

12 don't know if we agree to disagree and put it 

13 in an overarching, you know, because this will 

14 continue to come up, I guess. That's one 

15 possibility. But I mean, you know, I wonder, 

16 you know, David's point that I think there's 

17 two things here. One is the sort of site 

18 guidance but the other is -- which would be 

19 one type of guidance. The other might be a 

20 broader policy guidance which is, as he said, 

21 you know, if you're doing overestimating, you 

22 know, by default you always use the coworker 
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1 model, you don't use the environmental. Some 

2 kind of decision like that that NIOSH could 

3 put into place. That's a question to throw 

4 out there.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: It might be worth 

6 a project discussion about how fine a line do 

7 we want to draw on these decisions about 

8 exposed and unexposed. I mean, really what 

9 level of evidence do we expect in order to 

10 conclude unexposed? Because the burden really 

11 should be on -- I kind of agree with John 

12 Mauro to an extent that the burden should be 

13 to prove the unexposed nature in a situation 

14 like this where was the person really not 

15 exposed. You know, prove that environmental 

16 is the right one rather than that there was a 

17 potential for exposure and we should be at 

18 coworker. 

19 So, I mean it might be a basis for 

20 discussion along those lines just in general 

21 from starting with our contractor to kind of 

22 get a full picture for what kind of level of 
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1 evidence do we think is the right level of 

2 evidence and why, and then have a discussion 

3 when we're prepared to have that discussion. 

4 Today we're not really prepared to have that 

5 discussion, but we could have that discussion 

6 with the Subcommittee at some time when we're 

7 prepared to have it. And you know, we have --

8 rely on Jim Neton for questions of technical 

9 sufficiency so we want to get him engaged in 

10 that part of that discussion as well, and 

11 other folks on our staff as well.

12 MEMBER MUNN: This is kind of 

13 skirting around the issue of quantifying 

14 claimant-favorability. This is coming very 

15 close to that.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: It bumps into it, 

17 yes. I'd say it bumps into it. This is a 

18 piece of it that I can feel -- I can kind of 

19 elucidate this one, you know. 

20 MEMBER MUNN: Right.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: The entire issue 

22 of extended claimant-favorability is kind of 
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1 large and amorphous but this is a piece of it 

2 I can get kind of get my head around.

3 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

4 DR. MAURO: This is John again. 

5 I've always been thinking like if you have to 

6 make a decision regarding, you know, assuming 

7 environmental versus some distribution, I 

8 would be looking for affirmative evidence that 

9 I should give them the environmental. And if 

10 I don't have -- I think you said it also very 

11 well, Stu. Lacking affirmative evidence, you 

12 automatically -- the realistic analysis, the 

13 claimant-favorable but realistic analysis is 

14 to give them the full distribution and the 

15 coworker dose. 

16 So I get the sense that what's 

17 done here is one where, if I have affirmative 

18 evidence that he was exposed then I will give 

19 him the full distribution. I would sooner say 

20 no, the philosophy, and this is certainly a 

21 subject for, you know, this higher level 

22 discussion. I would say no, no. Only when 
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1 you have affirmative evidence that he was not 

2 exposed or unlikely to be exposed for a 

3 variety of reasons do you go with the 

4 environmental. It's almost a difference of, 

5 you know, your decision criteria. What do you 

6 require? Lacking affirmative evidence then 

7 you automatically shift to giving the benefit 

8 of the doubt to the worker.

9 DR. ULSH: Well, okay. I don't 

10 necessarily disagree but I guess I would like 

11 to bring this into practical terms because it 

12 sounds in general like what we're saying here 

13 is we have to prove a negative, prove that he 

14 wasn't exposed, and that concerns me. But 

15 John, maybe you could give me some idea of an 

16 example of what you would consider affirmative 

17 evidence. Or maybe we want to postpone that 

18 discussion.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think we'd 

20 want to have it as part of the project 

21 discussion. I guess the thing that kind of 

22 gets my attention about this is apparently 
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1 this person wore a dosimeter during this 

2 period of time when they gave him 

3 environmental internal. The reason I say that 

4 is because we say, well, he wasn't 

5 accumulating any dose on his dosimeter during 

6 that time. So, you know, I can understand, 

7 okay, well he wasn't accumulating any dose on 

8 his dosimeter which would indicate maybe he 

9 wasn't heavily engaged in radioactive 

10 material, but on the other hand he was wearing 

11 a dosimeter so apparently he had access to 

12 areas where radiological materials were used. 

13 So you know, that kind of, you know, where do 

14 we come down as a project in a situation like 

15 that. Whereas if a person had no evidence of 

16 monitoring, you know, no evidence of 

17 monitoring record of any kind and had a job 

18 title that certainly looked like an 

19 administrative job title and was at a site 

20 where we know there were administrative areas 

21 it would seem to me that there you've got a 

22 fairly good burden, you know, you've got a 
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1 pretty good set of evidence that indicate well 

2 this person probably should get environmental. 

3 When we get into the mixed-mode stuff that it 

4 gets a little more complicated.

5 DR. ULSH: So is the path forward 

6 then that we need to have a talk with ORAU and 

7 then report?

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I think it's 

9 kind of a little bit of a summit, you know, 

10 with Jim and probably Dave Allen.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think also, I 

12 mean, I don't want to speak for David but I 

13 think he was making the slightly different 

14 point that if you're defining something as an 

15 overestimating maybe that's another layer that 

16 you can look at. Like if we are saying this 

17 is overestimating then by default we should 

18 just use coworker and not even consider 

19 environmental models in those cases, you know 

20 what I mean? You know, then everything else 

21 you said I agree with, but this is another 

22 level of if we're already saying we're doing 
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1 an overestimating case why should we try to be 

2 that fine.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, why start 

4 doing that if you're overestimating. There's 

5 really only a legitimate argument for 

6 overestimate if what you're doing makes it go 

7 faster. I don't know how it would make it go 

8 faster to do a part of it a particular way and 

9 a part of it another way. I don't know how 

10 that makes it go faster.

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, that's 

12 what I was wondering because this opens up 

13 kind of, you're at some decision-tree point 

14 and if you're going to go down the line of 

15 justifying why you're want to use 

16 environmental as opposed to coworker data I 

17 would think it requires the person who's doing 

18 the dose reconstruction then, what you're 

19 proposing is that they write a justification 

20 for kind of why they're limiting the dose in 

21 this way. 

22 MEMBER MUNN: It is very 
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1 disturbing to hear over and over again that we 

2 have badged individuals with long-term 

3 monitoring records whose record is not being 

4 accepted as adequate. And that as I 

5 understand is the basis of what we have here. 

6 We have a monitored individual.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: We have -- finish 

8 your --

9 MEMBER MUNN: No, go ahead.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: The monitored --

11 this person has a record of being monitored 

12 for external exposure.

13 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, and so the 

15 question is being asked about what about 

16 internal exposure. And so is it a fact, then, 

17 that we feel like the person was sufficiently 

18 monitored externally, like they hung a badge 

19 on this person, gave him access to various 

20 parts of the plant. Is there a high level of 

21 confidence that they have an internal 

22 monitoring record, or that there was zero 
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1 potential for any intakes. I mean, a 

2 potential for intake that is below the 

3 monitoring threshold for, at the time for 

4 internal monitoring probably is higher than 

5 the environmental exposures at the time.

6 MEMBER MUNN: Probably so.

7 DR. ULSH: Well, it's somewhat 

8 site-specific. Like I remember at certain 

9 time periods at Rocky Flats the dosimetry and 

10 the security badge were combined. So that 

11 everybody onsite had it and that shouldn't be 

12 taken to indicate that they went into rad 

13 area.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's true. 

15 And that's the case here at Oak Ridge and that 

16 would be something to know in this case.

17 DR. ULSH: Yes. I mean, it seems 

18 like, just stretching the example, at Rocky, 

19 Mark, remember when we -- SC&A identified 

20 periods when there were no, there were gaps in 

21 the monitoring record and then NIOSH went in, 

22 NIOSH and ORAU went in and examined that to 
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1 see if there was a reasonable explanation for 

2 those gaps or if it looked like, hey, this 

3 person should have been monitored and we just 

4 don't have the records. Remember we did that 

5 exercise?

6 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

7 DR. ULSH: I wonder if that could 

8 be done here in this particular case. That 

9 doesn't solve the overall general issue, it's 

10 just this particular case.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Let me just 

12 sort of go back to the, you know, if it's an 

13 overestimating approach.

14 DR. ULSH: Well, yes.

15 MR. SIEBERT: Wait a second. 

16 Brant, I want to point out this individual did 

17 have internal monitoring for some years. It's 

18 not like he didn't have any monitoring 

19 whatsoever.

20 DR. ULSH: Okay.

21 MR. SIEBERT: He did have internal 

22 monitoring from '65 through some time in the 
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1 early '70s.

2 DR. ULSH: All right.

3 MR. SIEBERT: And if I remember 

4 correctly the way it was assessed was coworker 

5 was used up until the time he actually had 

6 monitoring, used the actual monitoring until 

7 that stopped and then it was environmental 

8 past that point, based on the thought process 

9 that they stopped probably, I'm assuming, 

10 since I did the case, they stopped monitoring 

11 him internally because there was no reason to.

12 DR. ULSH: Well, without knowing 

13 the particulars of this case and I don't, I 

14 would come down on John Mauro's argument that 

15 we need to provide an explanation if we're 

16 going to -- if the guy was monitored and then 

17 all of a sudden he wasn't monitored then we 

18 need to show that that was because he became a 

19 secretary or something. And I don't know if 

20 we did that. Maybe we did.

21 MR. SIEBERT: All right. 

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Somebody else 
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1 can talk to me. My view -- who has a 

2 different perspective on this. I said during 

3 lunch I think to Mark that the participation 

4 in the internal monitoring program is partly 

5 driven by radiological considerations but is 

6 partly driven by sociological considerations. 

7 I mean, that's always been my perception, 

8 particularly in the Oak Ridge data. You see 

9 strong selection into that program. I mean, 

10 it's actually an indication of kind of some 

11 factors reflecting status and prestige that 

12 are related to kind of good health. Those who 

13 were selected into an internal monitoring 

14 program are different than the general 

15 workforce. And you see social dynamics over 

16 time of people from different professions, of 

17 different races, of different sexes moving 

18 into the internal program. I won't say that 

19 the dynamics of somebody going in or out of 

20 that program in the absence of a job title 

21 change means that there was a judgment solely 

22 that they no longer had potential for exposure 
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1 because there were fluctuations in it that are 

2 historical in some bigger sense than just the 

3 kind of, the potential for exposure in a given 

4 year in a given job. 

5 DR. MAURO: This is John again. 

6 Wasn't it also one of the criteria -- I 

7 remember there were certain guidelines at 

8 least on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

9 side when you trigger bioassay programs. I 

10 assume that, as you go back in time, the 

11 philosophy of who is bioassayed and who's not 

12 bioassayed is based on what fraction of an ALI 

13 or an MPC was the expectation for a particular 

14 worker and the kind of job he has. So, it's 

15 not that he wasn't, the expectation was he was 

16 going to get no exposure, but the expectation 

17 was it's unlikely that he would be in excess 

18 of some fraction. And I think it might be 10 

19 percent or 25 percent of a DAC or an MPC at 

20 that time. In those days it was an MPC. So, 

21 I think that's at play here also.

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes. I mean, 
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1 until someone can explain to me why there are 

2 differences in stroke mortality by selection 

3 into the bioassay program. I mean, there's 

4 something, I mean, something else going on. So 

5 you get these, that's not -- it wasn't 

6 selection by, I mean the stroke-mortality 

7 differential is one of the things. Or 

8 actually homicides, accidental causes. I mean 

9 things that are reflected to, that are 

10 determined by strong social conditions which 

11 were not radiation-related ones which, I mean, 

12 that become, you know, really obvious when 

13 you're looking at the mortality trends here. 

14 Anyway, I'm sorry. It's sort of a sideline 

15 except that it's -- it's as though we're 

16 reading participation in those programs as 

17 being kind of solely objective markers of 

18 whether that person was in an area with a 

19 particular hazard. And I would need to be 

20 more strongly convinced that that was, that 

21 those decisions were purely objective in that 

22 sense.
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1 DR. ULSH: Alright, I hear your 

2 concern. I think -- so what we have on the 

3 table right now is that we're going to have a 

4 conversation with ORAU about that general 

5 question of when we assume someone was 

6 unexposed versus exposed, and therefore 

7 whether to assign environmental versus 

8 coworker. And then I think it's fair to think 

9 that we'll go back to you on that once we've 

10 had that conversation. So that's the general 

11 issue. 

12 On this specific case it's pretty 

13 clear to me that we're not going to close this 

14 today so I've already got an appointment to go 

15 over and talk to Scott on Wednesday. We'll 

16 take a closer look at this case and talk about 

17 the particulars and see whether we can do 

18 anything to allay Doug's concerns or, if not, 

19 we'll just report the status back to you, 

20 Mark. Does that sound reasonable?

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I think 

22 so. Yes.
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1 MR. KATZ: When you say report 

2 back, do you mean at the next meeting or an 

3 email?

4 DR. ULSH: Yes. I can see Scott 

5 and Mutty and I having a conversation about 

6 this one in particular on Wednesday and 

7 they'll say, here's why we did what we did, 

8 and I'll say either I'm convinced or I'm not. 

9 And if I'm convinced that I agree with them 

10 then I'll just report back to you that look, 

11 that's our best and final offer after I talk 

12 to Stu and Jim to be sure that we're --

13 MR. KATZ: You'll send us an 

14 email?

15 DR. ULSH: Yes.

16 MR. KATZ: Okay, good.

17 DR. ULSH: Or I'll overturn it and 

18 say no, change it.

19 MR. KATZ: Yes. Whichever way it 

20 comes out, it's just -- that'll be nice.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Why don't we 

22 take 10 minutes and then we'll have our last 
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1 hour and a half or so run to the finish line.

2 MEMBER MUNN: Very good.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So 10-minute 

4 break on the phone and then we'll come back. 

5 And we'll go through till about 4 p.m. today.

6 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

7 matter went off the record at 2:29 p.m. and 

8 resumed at 2:44 p.m.)

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We'll start up 

10 again for our last segment. Another hour and 

11 15 we can get in. All right, we left off on 

12 171.5, I believe and I documented Brant's 

13 course of action for 171.4 so I think we're 

14 okay with that. So 171.5.

15 MR. SIEBERT: This is Scott. Can 

16 I ask a question? 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Too early for a 

18 question. Go ahead.

19 MR. SIEBERT: The question I have 

20 is why the hell am I asking questions that I'm 

21 entirely -- never mind. Move on to 5.5. 

22 Sorry.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, 171.5. 

2 MR. FARVER: Okay. The finding 

3 was NIOSH failed to address different 

4 solubility types. This has been going back 

5 and forth a couple times. And I believe, in 

6 their April response, it came down that there 

7 was a problem accessing the files that had to 

8 do with the solubility. It's not that they 

9 didn't do it, it was a, either you couldn't 

10 access them or the files weren't included at 

11 the time. Is it something like that, Scott?

12 MR. SIEBERT: Yes. The files were 

13 run, I just think you guys couldn't open them 

14 was the problem.

15 MR. FARVER: Okay. Anyway, so 

16 that has been taken care of and I looked at 

17 those so we can close that finding.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. 

19 MR. FARVER: Yay.

20 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Was that like 

21 the IMBA runs or something like that?

22 MR. FARVER: It was spreadsheets.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: And so you did or 

2 did not review the provided workbook?

3 MR. FARVER: They were there but 

4 not accessible.

5 MEMBER MUNN: Okay, so --

6 MR. FARVER: Once they were 

7 accessible I looked at them and they were in 

8 fact, they checked the different solubility 

9 types.

10 MEMBER MUNN: And so we're okay 

11 with that?

12 MR. FARVER: Yes.

13 MEMBER MUNN: We're done?

14 MR. FARVER: Done.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Done.

16 MR. FARVER: Not done, just 

17 finished with that one.

18 MEMBER MUNN: Well, closed for 

19 one. I'm trying to close one here. 

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Closed, yes. 

21 MR. FARVER: Okay. I don't know 

22 if we want to do this next one. Okay. This 
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1 has to do with information in the CATI report. 

2 NIOSH failed to completely address the 

3 contamination incident reported in the CATI 

4 report. This person worked at ORNL and it was 

5 a time period when there was, was this the 

6 release over at 3019?

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

8 MR. FARVER: Yes. And this was, 

9 the employee worked in building 3022. So was 

10 3019 close to 3022? If so, what happened? And 

11 I know NIOSH provided files on this back in 

12 April that I reviewed and -- what they say is 

13 true, you know, it is bounding. Well, if you 

14 do an acute intake in 1959 or the '70 to '72 

15 chronic they're essentially the same. The 

16 point is, unless you go back and look for this 

17 information about the building and about the 

18 incident you're not going to know that. In 

19 this case, they just happened to turn out to 

20 be very close. 

21 MEMBER MUNN: So it's six of one 

22 and half a dozen of another.
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1 MR. FARVER: Yes. My point is 

2 that you don't know till you look.

3 MEMBER MUNN: Well, you've looked 

4 and there's no longer any question.

5 MR. FARVER: No, so we can close 

6 this one, Wanda.

7 MEMBER MUNN: We can close it. 

8 Good.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Does that mean 

10 the general point you're making is that the 

11 CATI reported this. They never really 

12 assessed it, they just kind of got lucky.

13 MR. FARVER: Yes. They probably 

14 should have looked into it more since it was 

15 mentioned in the CATI report.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think this 

17 gets into another of those tough ones that 

18 we've -- because a lot of times we've --

19 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry to interrupt 

20 but someone on the line hasn't muted your 

21 phone and you're banging around a lot and it 

22 doesn't bother us so much but it might the 
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1 other folks who try to listen by phone. So, 

2 someone needs to mute their phone. Thanks. 

3 Sorry.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I was just 

5 wondering if this is a question of, a lot of 

6 times we get into this mode of assuming that 

7 the chronics are going to cover any acute 

8 incident, you know. And I wonder if there's, 

9 you know, I mean at what point, I've always 

10 sort of wondered this. At what point if an 

11 incident's documented in the CATI does NIOSH 

12 investigate, you know. I remember, the DR, 

13 you added a section that basically states that 

14 NIOSH considered all incidents mentioned in 

15 the CATI and the approach is bounding but I 

16 was never comfortable with whether NIOSH 

17 actually investigated any of those incidents 

18 or just determined as a general principle that 

19 these chronic approaches are usually bounding 

20 of acute exposures.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think 

22 you've got a mixed bag. There are some cases 
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1 where people will remember events that were, 

2 you know, fairly significant during their 

3 history of being monitored. As a matter of 

4 course those are pretty much going to be 

5 covered by assuming a chronic intake. This is 

6 a little different cat we're talking about 

7 here. We're talking about a specific event 

8 that was related in CATI. Certainly really 

9 out of the ordinary. But it seems like from 

10 our initial response that the judgment was 

11 that the person was largely unaffected by the 

12 event. Wouldn't you say that was the position 

13 of the original response? Because they were 

14 in a different building.

15 MR. FARVER: Correct. Because it 

16 was a different building, it did not affect 

17 them, I think was the premise.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: I'm not saying 

19 it's true. I'm saying the judgment of the 

20 original dose reconstructor. 

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That was the 

22 judgment of the original dose reconstructor or 
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1 the judgment of our process?

2 MR. HINNEFELD: According to our 

3 initial response it depicts that as the 

4 judgment of the original.

5 MR. FARVER: What prompted us to 

6 look at it was well gee, 3022, is that close 

7 to 3019 because I know that whole area was 

8 affected.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: There was, yes, 

10 there was plutonium outside on the streets, 

11 there was, you know. So it got outside the 

12 building. So that's the question.

13 MR. FARVER: And then it just went 

14 from there. Well, where is 3022. Well, it's 

15 no longer there, it's been torn down. Well, 

16 where was it and that's how we started looking 

17 into that.

18 DR. ULSH: And this was an 

19 incident that occurred with plutonium. And 

20 the person had plutonium bioassay?

21 MR. HINNEFELD: It was years 

22 later, wasn't it? 
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1 MR. SIEBERT: Yes, it was years 

2 later. Correct. And we actually had assigned 

3 coworker during the time frame as well, not 

4 just a chronic over that time.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: During the time he 

6 was monitored?

7 MR. SIEBERT: Prior to the time he 

8 was monitored.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Including the time 

10 of the event?

11 MR. SIEBERT: Correct.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Oh, okay.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I didn't know 

14 that.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: I didn't either.

16 DR. ULSH: Well, yes. Two 

17 questions. Number one, did the methodology 

18 that we used adequately estimate or 

19 overestimate the exposure he could have gotten 

20 from this incident? Sounds like we're saying 

21 yes.

22 MR. FARVER: Yes.
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1 DR. ULSH: But another question 

2 would be in the dose reconstruction report did 

3 we acknowledge this incident that was reported 

4 in the CATI and explain why, what we did?

5 MR. FARVER: You acknowledged it 

6 in the CATI and said we should be covered with 

7 your -- or how was that phrased?

8 DR. ULSH: Yes, is it that 

9 standard boilerplate language that we use 

10 where?

11 MR. FARVER: The claimant12 favorable assumptions used in this dose 

13 reconstruction adequately account for any dose 

14 received from this event. 

15 DR. ULSH: Scott, did you want to 

16 --

17 MR. FARVER: It's a more detailed 

18 write-up of the CATI report than a lot of 

19 them.

20 MR. SIEBERT: Right, it does say, 

21 it mentions the explosion in adjacent 

22 building. No information found in the DOE 
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1 records. The interview process, there wasn't 

2 a time frame where it was mentioned in the 

3 CATI although we reviewed it later on and 

4 figured out it was in 1959 probably. 

5 DR. ULSH: Mark, I know your 

6 programmatic concern that we sometimes don't 

7 take CATI seriously. It sounds like in this 

8 case we did.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I understand it 

10 that way.

11 MR. FARVER: I think more of the 

12 concern in this case was, gee, since it wasn't 

13 the big 3019 incident, you know, is there 

14 anymore information available. Or, you know, 

15 would it affect this building of 3022 to begin 

16 with, that was our first question. And it's 

17 just one of those things.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I actually 

19 thought initially that it was just given the 

20 boilerplate treatment. 

21 MR. FARVER: No.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It sounds like 
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1 they went further, so that's good. I'm 

2 reassured. And given that, I don't have the 

3 programmatic concern here and it sounds like 

4 the case specifics closed, right?

5 MR. FARVER: Yes.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. We're 

7 closing all kinds of fun these days. Haven't 

8 given any to Wanda's subcommittee either so 

9 let's work on that.

10 MEMBER MUNN: That's all right. 

11 It's late in the day, you don't need to 

12 disturb yourself at all.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, moving 

14 on.

15 MEMBER MUNN: 172.1 is a QA 

16 concern.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 171. I'm not 

18 sure why I used the aqua color. Does anybody 

19 know?

20 MR. FARVER: In one of your blue 

21 moods.

22 MEMBER MUNN: I think that was a 
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1 no further action, case-closed flag that we 

2 started off with a long time ago.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think that 

4 can be removed. 

5 DR. ULSH: The next one I see with 

6 yellow is 173.2.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I know why it 

8 wasn't removed, because I try to remove it and 

9 I can't.

10 MEMBER MUNN: That's a good 

11 reason.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's some 

13 reason. Anyway, we'll go on to 173.2. 

14 MR. FARVER: Still stuck in 171. 

15 Hold on.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I can't 

17 clear it. It might be because they copied it 

18 from another matrix and it had the blue. I 

19 don't know. It's weird. Okay. 

20 MR. FARVER: 173.1, recorded 

21 photon dose uncertainty factor is inconsistent 

22 with the Technical Basis Document. A little 
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1 background. This comes from Los Alamos and 

2 the employee worked there from '73 to 2000 as 

3 a mechanical technician.

4 MEMBER MUNN: Wait.

5 DR. ULSH: 173.1 is closed.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

7 MR. FARVER: Oh.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 173.2.

9 MR. FARVER: Well, it's still from 

10 Los Alamos.

11 (Laughter.)

12 MEMBER MUNN: So there.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You were just 

14 giving us background, right?

15 MR. FARVER: Okay, I've got 

16 another finding. 173.2, take that. Failed to 

17 properly account for all the reported neutron 

18 doses. Gee, what a surprise.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Sounds 

20 familiar.

21 MR. FARVER: While verifying the 

22 input data it was discovered that the 
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1 dosimeter neutron dose for 1993 was missing in 

2 the calculations. 

3 DR. ULSH: You're talking about 

4 neutron dose. Is that 173.3 that you're 

5 looking at?

6 MR. FARVER: Okay.

7 DR. ULSH: That's photon doses.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's photon, 

9 yes.

10 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So 173.1 and 

11 .2 and .3 are all just QA/QC, right? 

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: They do seem 

13 like QA, yes.

14 MR. FARVER: Okay. I was looking 

15 at our draft report that does not have that. 

16 MEMBER MUNN: So the new 

17 calculation didn't affect these.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, we had an 

19 agreement on this and then they checked it but 

20 there was further action here.

21 MS. BEHLING: This is Kathy. I 

22 believe for 173.2, the greater than 250 keV 
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1 missed dose was calculated improperly, but I 

2 think we were concerned with just a work 

3 locator.

4 MR. FARVER: Yes.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And would it be 

6 carried through, right.

7 MEMBER MUNN: To see if the error 

8 could have resulted in --

9 MR. FARVER: I don't know. 

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So I'm assuming 

11 both --

12 MR. FARVER: Both parties should 

13 check workbook.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, okay.

15 DR. ULSH: Scott, we haven't done 

16 our part of this, have we, where we review the 

17 workbook to see if it could have resulted in a 

18 broader problem?

19 MR. SIEBERT: I'm looking at it. I 

20 don't believe we reviewed the workbook from 

21 that time frame.

22 DR. ULSH: Okay.
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1 MR. FARVER: And the same goes for 

2 173.3. 

3 MEMBER MUNN: Same issue.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

5 MR. FARVER: 173. Where are we 

6 at?

7 MEMBER MUNN: 173.5.

8 MR. FARVER: Looks like that's 

9 closed.

10 MEMBER MUNN: That's actually 

11 closed even though it's still yellow.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right, I'll 

13 get rid of the yellow.

14 MR. FARVER: Some yellow from an 

15 earlier meeting.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. Some Old 

17 Yeller.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh my gosh.

19 MEMBER MUNN: Sorry.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Have that 

21 stricken from the record.

22 (Laughter.)
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 174.1. 

2 MR. FARVER: This is another 

3 workbook to review. There's no specific tool 

4 for Portsmouth so they used a K-25 tool with 

5 modifications. So, what was the original 

6 finding? DR overestimates the recorded 

7 prostate dose.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Overestimates.

9 MR. FARVER: Overestimates. So, 

10 basically they just took an air calculation 

11 workbook and modified it with the Portsmouth 

12 parameters.

13 MEMBER MUNN: So have you guys 

14 taken another look at it?

15 MR. FARVER: No.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Okay.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So it 

18 remains your action. Alright, is that it? 

19 175.1.

20 MEMBER MUNN: 175.1.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That might be 

22 it for what we have responses for.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: All missed neutron 

2 dose. Not accounted for. That's that older 

3 building.

4 MR. FARVER: I don't have that 

5 marked.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So did -- do I 

7 understand this correct? Did NIOSH have 

8 previously unavailable information, they 

9 reworked this and now SC&A's reviewing the 

10 reworked case?

11 MEMBER MUNN: That's what it says.

12 MR. FARVER: That's it, that's 

13 what we're doing. This is the other case, 160 

14 and then 175.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh right, you 

16 mentioned the other. Yes.

17 MR. FARVER: Yes, so all this 

18 under 175 is basically where we're going to 

19 compare the reworked case with the original 

20 case and then report back on what the changes 

21 were.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.
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1 MR. SIEBERT: So that's still an 

2 SC&A task, is that what I hear correctly?

3 MR. FARVER: Correct.

4 MR. SIEBERT: Okay. Thanks, Doug.

5 MR. KATZ: So will that be ready 

6 for the next meeting?

7 MS. BEHLING: This is Kathy. I'm 

8 assigned to that one, yes. I apologize.

9 MR. KATZ: Thanks, Kathy.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright.

11 MR. FARVER: And then we are into 

12 attachments and I believe they only responded 

13 back to Bridgeport Brass which would be 

14 Attachment 1.

15 MEMBER MUNN: 175, that's all 

16 under that old. Attachment to Bridgeport 

17 Brass.

18 MR. FARVER: Is that what you 

19 believe, Brant? That you responded back just 

20 to the Bridgeport? That's the only one that I 

21 could find.

22 DR. ULSH: That's the only one I 
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1 know of.

2 MR. FARVER: Okay. And I don't 

3 believe I have responses to those, but I will 

4 by next meeting.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: What is this 

6 one for? I was updating the last one.

7 MR. FARVER: This is one of our 

8 mini-profile reviews.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh yes.

10 MR. FARVER: That we did, one of 

11 three.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

13 MR. FARVER: And this one was for 

14 Bridgeport Brass.

15 DR. ULSH: So Attachment 1 is 

16 Bridgeport Brass and then there are findings, 

17 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, several findings on Attachment 

18 1 related to Bridgeport.

19 MR. FARVER: Number 2 is Harshaw.

20 DR. ULSH: Well, the Finding 1.

21 MR. FARVER: Attachment 2, sorry.

22 DR. ULSH: Finding 1 looks like 
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1 that's a NIOSH item, right?

2 MR. FARVER: Well, I have the 

3 response from April. It says NIOSH agrees 

4 that there is limited data prior to 1960. 

5 However, based on 1960 HASL report the later 

6 date issued bound the earlier production runs.

7 DR. ULSH: Oh okay, so maybe the 

8 matrix is -- because that's not in the matrix 

9 right now, is it?

10 MEMBER MUNN: No, it isn't. 

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: But it's in 

12 this document called Bridgeport Mini TBD 

13 Review. 

14 MR. FARVER: Your response is in 

15 the matrix for April 2011. The copy that I 

16 have, the July 2011 version.

17 MEMBER MUNN: I've got the July 

18 2011 version. It's not in there.

19 MEMBER RICHARDSON: It's not in 

20 the July 15th, 2011.

21 DR. ULSH: Right, that's what I'm 

22 looking at and I don't see it.
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1 MEMBER RICHARDSON: But it's in 

2 this other document.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, they're 

4 separate documents, right? Because I probably 

5 didn't --

6 DR. ULSH: Separate TBD review.

7 MR. FARVER: It's in my document. 

8 DR. ULSH: Okay, so we have 

9 provided a response and SC&A needs to review 

10 it then for Finding 1, Attachment 1?

11 MR. FARVER: Yes.

12 DR. ULSH: Okay.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I'll add those 

14 things into the matrix just so we have them 

15 all in one spot. I think we were working 

16 from, you know, we started going to that other 

17 separate document.

18 DR. ULSH: Okay, got you.

19 DR. MAURO: Mark, this is John. I 

20 have to say I did the original reviews of 

21 these three attachments. I have to say I 

22 don't recall reviewing the responses that may 
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1 have come in. When did those responses come 

2 in to these concerns?

3 MR. FARVER: April.

4 DR. MAURO: In April? Yes, you 

5 know, you may have sent them to me but I have 

6 to say I may have looked at them, I don't 

7 recall, or maybe someone else did.

8 MR. FARVER: That's okay.

9 DR. MAURO: So whether or not we 

10 have a position regarding each of these 

11 responses or not. I'm really not in a 

12 position to say. 

13 MR. FARVER: I think what we'll do 

14 is we're just going to try to respond to these 

15 today for these attachments.

16 DR. MAURO: Okay.

17 DR. ULSH: Just so I understand 

18 the status, for Attachment 1, all the findings 

19 associated with Attachment 1, is it true that 

20 NIOSH has provided responses and SC&A has to 

21 review them?

22 MR. FARVER: Let me get back to my 
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1 responses that don't exist here. 

2 MR. HINNEFELD: I don't see a 

3 response for Finding 3.

4 MR. FARVER: Not for Finding 3.

5 DR. ULSH: So that's a NIOSH 

6 action.

7 MR. FARVER: Finding 5, 4, 5A.

8 MR. SIEBERT: I'm looking at what 

9 we sent over April of '11 and I've gotten 

10 responses for all four findings. 

11 MEMBER MUNN: There are six 

12 findings. Finding 5A.

13 MR. SIEBERT: I can only say 

14 that's what I sent over I think to Brant. They 

15 may have changed from that point, I'm not 

16 positive.

17 DR. ULSH: So in other words Scott 

18 might have sent it to me and I might not have 

19 sent it on to you is what he's saying.

20 (Laughter.)

21 MR. SIEBERT: No, I think you 

22 forwarded it on, I just, I don't know if you 
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1 made some changes along the way, removing one 

2 of the responses, something like that.

3 DR. ULSH: I'm not sure.

4 MR. FARVER: Okay.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Can you both 

6 send me the latest and greatest and I'll merge 

7 them into the matrix of sort of a path forward 

8 on this?

9 MEMBER MUNN: I think that's a 

10 good idea.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And if you 

12 have, I mean, I don't quite understand who --

13 if it's for me to decide right now, I don't 

14 know who had the last response, so.

15 DR. ULSH: It sounds like we may 

16 have responded on some of these but I don't 

17 know about all of them.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right, all 

19 right. 

20 MR. FARVER: And that was the only 

21 attachment that I believe we got responses to.

22 DR. ULSH: And there are how many 
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1 attachments, two or three?

2 MR. FARVER: Three.

3 DR. ULSH: Three attachments. So 

4 we still owe you responses on the Attachment 2 

5 findings and the Attachment 3 findings.

6 MR. FARVER: Yes.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And then if you 

8 could forward your responses to Attachment 1. 

9 You have those, Doug, you said? 

10 MR. FARVER: Well, at least I have 

11 some of them.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Just 

13 forward them to all of us so, and then SC&A, 

14 you can work on them and I can populate the 

15 matrix with them and be up to date.

16 MEMBER MUNN: There's Attachment 2 

17 here. I have all these notes that Mark 

18 Griffon needs additional time to consider. 

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's in your 

20 private matrix?

21 MEMBER MUNN: It says right here.

22 (Laughter.)
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1 MR. FARVER: Okay. 

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So that's where 

3 we'll leave it, right? I mean, we'll forward 

4 the most recent version. We'll repopulate the 

5 -- I'll update the matrix with the most 

6 current version. You're going to -- NIOSH is 

7 going to respond to Attachments 2 and 3.

8 DR. ULSH: Yes, correct.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And then SC&A 

10 will respond to NIOSH's response for 

11 Attachment 1.

12 MR. FARVER: Yes.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The outstanding 

14 actions. Okay. Then that's it for this 

15 matrix, right?

16 MR. FARVER: Yes.

17 DR. ULSH: Before we do whatever 

18 it is we're going to do next, it's my 

19 intention to direct ORAU for the next meeting 

20 to focus their efforts on the remaining items 

21 from this matrix. We closed the seventh, 

22 right? There's no outstanding items in the 
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1 seventh, is that correct?

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think there's 

3 one but I think we couldn't do anything with 

4 it immediately, right? If I recall. 

5 DR. ULSH: That might be. I might 

6 be misremembering. 

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I mean, the 

8 Aliquippa Forge thing. It says rewrite the 

9 Aliquippa Forge Site Profile. 

10 DR. ULSH: Okay.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We don't really 

12 have a Site Profile Committee for that so I 

13 think we've got to keep it here.

14 DR. ULSH: Okay.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But that's --

16 so essentially it's closed, right. 

17 DR. ULSH: All right. 

18 MR. KATZ: There's the Simonds Saw 

19 item, too.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, but that 

21 we referred to the Site Profile Committee that 

22 doesn't exist.
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1 MR. KATZ: Oh, that's true.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes. 

3 DR. ULSH: So at the next meeting 

4 we'll start with the eighth matrix?

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

6 DR. ULSH: So I'll tell ORAU to 

7 focus their efforts on the items in the eighth 

8 matrix.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That makes 

10 sense, and those attachments -- including 

11 those attachments.

12 DR. ULSH: Right, including those 

13 attachments.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think if we 

15 got through that that would be progress.

16 DR. ULSH: Right.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright, so are 

18 we closing this for now?

19 MR. FARVER: Yes.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And moving on 

21 to the ninth or does it make sense at this 

22 point? Are we just going to be spinning our 
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1 wheels? I mean, we don't have to go through 

2 till 4 if we can't be productive.

3 MR. FARVER: No, I've got --

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You've got 

5 some?

6 MR. FARVER: If you just want to 

7 bounce around and want to close some.

8 DR. ULSH: Okay. I don't have the 

9 ninth, well maybe I do. I've probably got it 

10 somewhere.

11 MS. BEHLING: Before we start the 

12 ninth, can I ask a question? Kathy again. I 

13 believe at the last Subcommittee Meeting and 

14 forgive me because I haven't been as close to 

15 this for a while. Didn't we select cases for 

16 PER 12 for the, you know, high-fired 

17 plutonium?

18 MR. KATZ: Yes, we did.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

20 MS. BEHLING: Has SC&A received 

21 those cases yet from NIOSH? Just looking at 

22 it or working on them. I haven't seen them. 
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1 MR. KATZ: I don't know who's 

2 interacting with DCAS on that but that should 

3 be done directly between SC&A and DCAS, 

4 acquiring the cases. I believe the cases were 

5 selected and -- yes, DCAS selected the cases 

6 and gave you references for the cases I'm 

7 pretty certain. 

8 DR. MAURO: This is John. I think 

9 the ball is in our court on that. 

10 MS. BEHLING: Okay, so we're just 

11 supposed to go into NOCTS and pull out all of 

12 the information that we need?

13 DR. ULSH: Oh wait, I thought we 

14 collected them and --

15 MR. HINNEFELD: No, that was the 

16 15th set, wasn't it?

17 MR. KATZ: At the last meeting, 

18 you definitely selected the cases for this. So 

19 how, the mechanics after that, I have no idea, 

20 but the cases were selected.

21 MR. FARVER: Is there a directory 

22 under the DR Subcommittee on the O: drive?
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1 MS. BEHLING: No, I didn't see 

2 anything in there and I just wanted to be sure 

3 we didn't drop the ball on that.

4 MR. FARVER: Is there a directory 

5 there for PER 12? PER something?

6 MS. BEHLING: I did not see it.

7 MR. FARVER: Okay. I saw one 

8 somewhere but it could have been anywhere.

9 DR. ULSH: Well Kathy, I recall 

10 collecting, you know, a bunch of folders and 

11 giving them to you but I can't swear that that 

12 was related to PER 12. I might be thinking of 

13 something different.

14 MS. BEHLING: You did do that. I 

15 thought that was for the 15th set.

16 DR. ULSH: Could be.

17 MR. FARVER: Yes, I think that was 

18 the 15th set. And remember, we selected the 

19 ones for PER 12.

20 DR. ULSH: Right.

21 MS. BEHLING: And I guess my 

22 question was, do we just go into NOCTS and 
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1 gather the files or should there be a folder 

2 put out there. I just didn't, you know, 

3 because I don't believe SC&A has started 

4 working on those. Am I right, Doug?

5 MR. FARVER: No, you haven't.

6 DR. ULSH: Well, in the past we 

7 have collected them for you and put them in a 

8 specific location.

9 MS. BEHLING: Yes.

10 DR. ULSH: If you want to follow 

11 that protocol then that's I guess what we 

12 would do.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: There is a PER 12 

14 folder but it gives the identification of the 

15 claims that were selected but it does not 

16 include the NOCTS files, it looks like.

17 DR. ULSH: So it looks like we 

18 need to collect the NOCTS files.

19 MR. KATZ: Is there a big 

20 difference between you collecting those and 

21 them going into NOCTS? They have the files.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, the 
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1 efficiency is our computer people can do it 

2 automatically, put them all in one place.

3 MR. KATZ: Okay.

4 MS. BEHLING: It's always helpful 

5 for us.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: If you're coming 

7 in through, as SC&A does, you come into the 

8 system through CITGO, it's not the quickest 

9 responder. So, it would probably take -- I 

10 hated to break your bubble there.

11 (Laughter.)

12 MR. HINNEFELD: There actually are 

13 better systems out there. But it would, I 

14 think it would work better. They still come 

15 in through CITGO but they wouldn't have to, 

16 it's still quicker to just be able to pick up 

17 the file. So okay, you've got that one? Okay. 

18 Because they're identified in that folder but 

19 the NOCTS files aren't there.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Thanks, Kathy, 

21 for keeping us on the ball on that one.

22 MS. BEHLING: Thank you.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. Now, 

2 for the ninth set are we working from this 

3 latest matrix? Does it finish with 11/8/10? 

4 That's the latest version I seem to have. 

5 November.

6 MR. SIEBERT: That's the latest 

7 version I see as well, Mark.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, all 

9 right. Just wanted to make sure we're all on 

10 the same --

11 MR. HINNEFELD: I sent that to the 

12 Subcommittee on, let me think. I think I did 

13 on July 15th. July? Yes, 7/15 I sent I 

14 believe the one we're talking about. I 

15 actually attached the email that Scott sent to 

16 me.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But the name of 

18 the file was still --

19 MR. HINNEFELD: The name of the 

20 file is ninth set, and ninth is 9t3 instead of 

21 9th, Case Audits Issues Matrix, 11/08/10.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Ten, right. 
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1 That's the one I have too. So as of in 15 

2 minutes, this will be slightly revised. 

3 MEMBER MUNN: It would really be 

4 helpful to get current updates of all these in 

5 one place.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That would be a 

7 good idea.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: You ought to use 

9 the procedures application to put your 

10 databases in. It could be adapted.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I know, 

12 we've heard. All right, Doug, start us down 

13 one matrix.

14 MR. FARVER: Let's see, the 

15 opening number that we -- the first NIOSH 

16 response comes from 180.1. 

17 MR. SIEBERT: This is Scott, I'm 

18 sorry. I thought we did send a response to 

19 179.2 which is also the same issue of 183.3. 

20 It's the PFG.

21 DR. MAURO: This is John. Yes, I 

22 have that on my screen right now, 179.2.
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1 MR. FARVER: Just trying to jump 

2 ahead. You caught me. This is Ashland Oil 

3 and the finding is medical doses are 

4 understated because they did not follow PFG 

5 exposure guidelines, yada yada yada. It was 

6 talked about this for AWEs and PFG exposures 

7 and this should be closed, or we're going to 

8 close this because there is -- I swear we 

9 closed this the last time.

10 DR. MAURO: Yes. This is John. 

11 Yes, we discussed this before.

12 MR. FARVER: Yes.

13 DR. MAURO: And we accepted this 

14 answer. The only thing I guess that might 

15 remain is OTIB-0006 could use a little 

16 language making the distinction between when 

17 you use -- why PFG is assumed prior to some 

18 date in 1970 for DOE sites, but why it is not 

19 automatically assumed for AWE sites. I think 

20 the rationale for that decision which is the 

21 way in which NIOSH does its AWE medical X-ray 

22 calculations is valid. However, in the OTIB-
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1 0006 it's silent regarding that matter.

2 MR. SIEBERT: Just a quick point 

3 here. I'm looking at it. We just revised 

4 OTIB-6 between the last two meetings. I'm 

5 checking to see if it's now officially in 

6 there or not. 

7 DR. MAURO: But we are in 

8 agreement in principle regarding this matter.

9 MR. SIEBERT: Correct.

10 MR. FARVER: Yes.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Perhaps the 

12 only reason we left it open was to wait till 

13 you made the changes or whatever. I don't 

14 know. 

15 MR. FARVER: So we can close 

16 179.2.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, we're 

18 waiting for Scott to look that up.

19 MR. FARVER: Oh.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But yes, I 

21 essentially closed it.

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So would this 
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1 be a regional thing? I mean, just out of 

2 curiosity. Like the background document. 

3 Would an early AWE site in a large 

4 metropolitan area, is it possible that local 

5 clinics would have been set up for TB screen 

6 whereas in, you know, in smaller areas, they 

7 wouldn't be doing fluoroscopy?

8 DR. MAURO: David, this is John. I 

9 remember the conversation we had and it had to 

10 do with the contract. That is, though the 

11 standard practice at DOE facilities to use PFG 

12 often prior to a certain date, when an AWE was 

13 brought aboard it actually had a contract with 

14 the Atomic Energy Commission or the Manhattan 

15 Engineering District and if the contract did 

16 not call for annual chest X-rays or PFG in 

17 particular, it was assumed that it was an 

18 annual chest X-ray. Even though there may not 

19 be any affirmative evidence that that was the 

20 case in the contract, they do as a matter of 

21 standard practice assign a chest X-ray to the 

22 AWE workers upon, you know, when work began 
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1 every year. But they do not automatically 

2 assume a PFG unless there's affirmative 

3 evidence that there was a contract to do so or 

4 the workers actually have the PFG, I guess, 

5 film in their record. And we discussed this 

6 and we found that argument compelling.

7 DR. ULSH: I should mention to you 

8 that OTIB-6 is one of the documents that the 

9 Procedures Subcommittee has under review.

10 MR. SIEBERT: And I have reviewed 

11 it. It's at the very end of Section 7.2, the 

12 most recent version which was I believe this 

13 summer. And yes, it does state, because PFG 

14 was primarily a mass screening technique most 

15 suitable to large populations and therefore 

16 unlikely to have occurred on a mass scale at 

17 AWE sites, PFG should not be assumed to have 

18 occurred at AWE sites unless there is 

19 evidence. So, it's in there.

20 DR. ULSH: So I think the specific 

21 answer to your question, David, is no, we 

22 didn't take into account.
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1 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes. I mean, 

2 the argument makes sense to me in general. I 

3 was imagining like, you know this place in 

4 Brooklyn or whatever, right? That was, you 

5 send your worker -- if what they're saying is 

6 in these places you might send them to a local 

7 clinic in Brooklyn.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: In that instance 

9 the X-ray has to occur at the covered facility 

10 in order for us to include the dose because of 

11 drafting. It's a --

12 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: It's a quirk of 

14 the drafting of the language, to construct the 

15 dose at the facility. And so in the case they 

16 went to an offsite clinic that was set up, we 

17 wouldn't count it.

18 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's true. 

20 Okay. Well, I think we're closed on this one 

21 then, right?

22 MR. FARVER: Okay. Next NIOSH 
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1 response was 180.1. This is a Bridgeport 

2 Brass case. And the finding says reviewer 

3 questions the accuracy of the employment 

4 period identified by NIOSH slash DOL. And 

5 John, if you want to pull this one up or if 

6 you have any input on this, this is Bridgeport 

7 Brass and the question --

8 DR. MAURO: The Seymour facility.

9 MR. FARVER: Yes.

10 DR. MAURO: I do not have anything 

11 to add at this time.

12 MR. FARVER: Okay.

13 DR. MAURO: I see the response, it 

14 has to do with these dates. And this 

15 particular worker apparently left one facility 

16 and went to another one.

17 MR. FARVER: Now, you know, the 

18 NIOSH response, determination of the dates and 

19 facilities of employment are the 

20 responsibility of DOL. NIOSH assessed a claim 

21 per the information forwarded by DOL. The 

22 only question I have with their response is 
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1 now, what's the resolution to this or is there 

2 one. We run into this occasionally where we 

3 come across dates that don't match up with 

4 what DOL establishes.

5 DR. ULSH: I can tell you that in 

6 general when we, in a dose reconstruction, 

7 when we're doing it and we look into the 

8 records, and say for instance there's a 

9 dosimetry result that's outside the period of 

10 covered employment for that worker, we have, 

11 as a practice we notify DOL of that so that 

12 they can handle it. I don't know the 

13 particulars of this specific case but I mean 

14 we do do that.

15 MR. FARVER: Okay.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So how did this 

17 Seymour facility come up? Was it in the CATI 

18 interview? The individual identified that

19 they were transferred and DOL's records don't 

20 confirm that, is that, am I understanding this 

21 correctly?

22 DR. MAURO: I think the answer to 
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1 your question, Mark, is yes. We found some 

2 evidence that there was reason to believe 

3 that, after leaving Bridgeport Brass, if this 

4 is still Bridgeport Brass, I'm not sure.

5 MR. FARVER: Yes.

6 DR. MAURO: He went on to another 

7 facility, another AWE facility where he could 

8 have experienced additional exposure, and that 

9 was not taken into consideration. And we 

10 stopped there.

11 DR. ULSH: If that's the case then 

12 I don't really like our answer. I mean, if 

13 there is in fact evidence of additional 

14 employment.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Then that 

16 should be turned over to DOL and they should 

17 look at it.

18 DR. ULSH: NIOSH should notify DOL 

19 and they should.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. So you 

21 want to look into it and see what? I mean, 

22 right now it says both SC&A and NIOSH are 
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1 going to review, right?

2 DR. ULSH: I see that.

3 MR. FARVER: Where does it say 

4 that?

5 DR. ULSH: In the NIOSH 

6 resolution.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: In the yellow.

8 MR. SIEBERT: What might be 

9 helpful for us is to specifically 

10 documentation-wise -- SC&A to that 

11 determination.

12 DR. MAURO: Scott, I agree. We 

13 owe you, I think that was the genesis of this. 

14 We owe you some statement of why we raised the 

15 issue.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

17 DR. MAURO: Where in the record 

18 does this Seymour Specialty Wire come into the 

19 picture.

20 MR. SIEBERT: Yes, that would be 

21 very helpful.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So 
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1 really this is on SC&A to review further.

2 MR. FARVER: SC&A to provide data.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The next step 

4 might be for you to go back to DOL but we 

5 don't know yet. Okay, all right. 

6 DR. MAURO: My guess is there was 

7 probably something in the CATI or somewhere. 

8 You know, we would not have come up with 

9 Seymour Specialty Wire.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

11 DR. MAURO: Unless there was some, 

12 you know, rationale for it. But we can try to 

13 track it down and give that to you.

14 MR. FARVER: Sometimes the people 

15 that do these AWE cases are not very thorough.

16 DR. MAURO: You better be careful 

17 what you say. Remember who you're talking 

18 with.

19 (Laughter.)

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Or timely for 

21 that matter, you know?

22 (Laughter.)
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1 DR. MAURO: That's for sure.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, thanks 

3 John.

4 MR. FARVER: So the next one I 

5 have a response to is 183.1. This is a Harry 

6 Hall Marvin Safe Company case.

7 DR. ULSH: How many of those can 

8 there be?

9 MR. FARVER: Just one of two 

10 approximately. The finding was modeled. 

11 External photon dose appears to be bounding 

12 but transparency is lacking regarding 

13 calculational details in the DR and in OTIB-4. 

14 NIOSH responds that NIOSH agrees on the lack 

15 of clarity in the OTIB and on how the DCFs 

16 were applied to develop the dose in the dose 

17 table. It agrees with SC&A that the dose is 

18 bounding. The next version of the OTIB did 

19 not have organ DCFs already built into the 

20 dose tables so this issue has already been 

21 addressed. NIOSH does not agree that the 

22 organ selection was unclear. The end of the 
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1 second paragraph of dose reconstruction 

2 overview section states, "The external dose to 

3 the kidney was determined by using the dose 

4 calculated for the liver." The only concern I 

5 have is I didn't find the word "liver" 

6 mentioned in the DR report so I didn't find 

7 the wording they had quoted as being in that 

8 DR report. 

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's curious.

10 MR. FARVER: Which is probably why 

11 we sent it to match up. 

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So what is the 

13 next step here? NIOSH has to show you where 

14 they found the findings?

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: They're 

16 explicit here. They're saying the end of the 

17 second paragraph of a section. Do we have it?

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We can just 

19 look it up right now. 

20 DR. ULSH: Scott, why don't you 

21 pull it up in parallel if you can.

22 MR. SIEBERT: Yes, I'm pulling it 
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1 up. I'm not seeing it which is kind of 

2 annoying me here. 

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So is that --

4 regardless of whether it appears, it's sort of 

5 -- this is an issue of kind of documentation 

6 and clarity in the report is primarily what it 

7 is?

8 MR. FARVER: Probably more of a QA 

9 if it's not in there.

10 DR. MAURO: Using the liver as a 

11 surrogate for the kidney for an external dose 

12 certainly is reasonable. I guess, I mean from 

13 a technical perspective the fact that you're 

14 making that case, you know, we agree. I guess 

15 it wasn't necessarily in the DR report.

16 MR. FARVER: Correct.

17 DR. ULSH: I don't know if I agree 

18 with the QA on that one. I agree that it's a 

19 clarity issue. I mean, if we did the right 

20 thing but we just didn't give enough 

21 explanation that seems to me to be --

22 MR. FARVER: Yes, I guess it would 
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1 be a QA if we put the wrong organ in.

2 DR. ULSH: Right.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. But did 

4 you find the statement in the DR? It sounds 

5 like it's not in there. That's odd.

6 MR. SIEBERT: No, and I'm not real 

7 happy at this moment.

8 MR. FARVER: And usually they will 

9 put something in there saying they're using 

10 the liver as a surrogate for the 

11 reconstruction.

12 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Can we change 

13 the yellow, I mean put something underneath it 

14 which says that we kind of agree that it was a 

15 reasonable estimation but disagree that that 

16 text is there? 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Close it out.

18 MR. FARVER: I have no problem 

19 closing it.

20 DR. MAURO: Yes. Because you're 

21 correct, in all of the DR reports I ever 

22 reviewed whenever you used a surrogate organ 
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1 there was very clear explanation that that's 

2 what you did.

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Did I hear 

4 someone say that was closed?

5 MEMBER MUNN: We're closing it.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I guess the 

7 only QA issue in this case is how did you put 

8 that in your response. We'll let Scott think 

9 about that one.

10 (Laughter.)

11 MR. SIEBERT: Yes, my wheels are 

12 turning over here.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We would never 

14 make that mistake.

15 MEMBER MUNN: No. Merry 

16 Christmas, Scott.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right, 

18 moving on.

19 MR. FARVER: Moving on, 183.2. 

20 Single-pairing all safe case. Reviewer 

21 questions whether OTIB-4 should be used in 

22 this case as compensated and there's a lengthy 
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1 explanation there by NIOSH. And we agree with 

2 that, that was --

3 DR. MAURO: I think that's closed.

4 MR. FARVER: That was that short 

5 time period. Yes, so we closed that one.

6 MR. SIEBERT: Okay, it's double 

7 closed now.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, it was 

9 closed before. No further action. That 

10 should put SC&A agrees but no further action.

11 MR. FARVER: Okay.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Double closed.

13 MR. FARVER: Double closed.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 183.3 then.

15 MR. FARVER: PFG exposures.

16 DR. MAURO: We just did that one. 

17 I mean before.

18 MR. FARVER: This is the same as 

19 the AWE one before about PFG exposure?

20 MR. SIEBERT: Like 179.2, correct.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So that's 

22 closed as well?
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1 MR. FARVER: Same as 179 --

2 MR. SIEBERT: The assumption of no 

3 PFGs at AWEs.

4 DR. MAURO: Yes. We recommend you 

5 close. In light of the fact that that new 

6 language is now in OTIB-006.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. Okay. 

8 Look at this, making progress at the end of 

9 the day.

10 MR. FARVER: Well, we'll see what 

11 we can do to slow things down a little.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right, 

13 thank you. We'll see if MCNP, if it slows 

14 right down.

15 MR. FARVER: Well, not too much 

16 because the action is for us to provide you 

17 our SC&A calculations and we didn't do that.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

19 DR. MAURO: Doug, I remember on a 

20 number of occasions Bob Anigstein providing 

21 his MCNP calculations for a variety of issues. 

22 Perhaps we did not do it on this one.
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1 MR. FARVER: I don't believe we 

2 did on this one, John.

3 DR. MAURO: We've got to take care 

4 of that.

5 DR. ULSH: 185.2, thanks. I 

6 recall Bob Anigstein and MCNP and the exchange 

7 of files in relation to OCAS TIB-10 in the 

8 Procedures Subcommittee. That might be what 

9 you're thinking of.

10 DR. MAURO: Yes, yes.

11 DR. ULSH: Never mind.

12 MR. FARVER: Some of these we'll 

13 close but some of these we won't, how's that?

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Some of these 

15 we just have no NIOSH response though, right?

16 DR. MAURO: Yes.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

18 MR. FARVER: So are we up to date 

19 now? Are you ready to go? 185.5 was the next 

20 response. And post-operational intakes and 

21 intakes from ingestion were not explicitly 

22 included. And I'm going to have to defer this 
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1 one later to Dr. Mauro because I don't have 

2 the answer to this, so.

3 DR. MAURO: Yes, I didn't look at 

4 this.

5 MR. FARVER: I know, John. It's 

6 my fault, I didn't tell you about it.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I'm just going 

8 to highlight it. This should have been 

9 highlighted from before I guess. So I'll 

10 leave it as an action for SC&A. 

11 MR. KATZ: Next meeting?

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Next meeting.

13 MR. FARVER: 186.1, internal doses 

14 are likely to have been understated. The 

15 claim was compensated based on the dose 

16 assigned so there was no need to determine if 

17 additional exposure may have occurred. I 

18 guess the response is true, you know, they had 

19 enough dose. The only comment we have is that 

20 the assumed limiting dust exposure of 33 MAC 

21 in the TBD may not have captured the upper 

22 bound of the airborne dust exposure at the 
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1 Linde site from '47 onward, but this has been 

2 noted in the SC&A review of the TBD. So this 

3 is just a comment.

4 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So is that 

5 closed?

6 MR. FARVER: It's closed. We 

7 can't do anything more with this.

8 DR. ULSH: And there is a Linde 

9 Work Group, so.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

11 MR. SIEBERT: Was that 186.1?

12 MR. FARVER: Yes.

13 MR. SIEBERT: Thank you.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And was that 

15 period just voted in the SEC? Yes, the 

16 period, I forget what the period was. Anyway.

17 DR. MAURO: All periods now have 

18 SECs I think.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: For Linde?

20 DR. MAURO: Yes. All three 

21 periods.

22 MEMBER MUNN: Pretty much.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So even if it's 

2 in the Site Profile. Yes, right. Right. But, 

3 so what am I saying to close this out?

4 MR. FARVER: You can just close it 

5 out.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And the broad 

7 issue is being considered by the Site Profile?

8 MR. FARVER: Yes. 

9 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So can I ask 

10 you about rows in the table like 188, 189, 

11 190? 

12 MR. FARVER: Yes.

13 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Where it says 

14 no findings and N/A. 

15 MR. FARVER: We do not have any 

16 findings for those reviews.

17 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Oh, okay.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, for 

19 those cases.

20 DR. MAURO: They were perfect.

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I've just 

22 never seen that before.
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1 (Laughter.)

2 MR. FARVER: We try not to put 

3 that in very often.

4 MEMBER MUNN: Rejoice. That's 

5 your Christmas present.

6 MR. FARVER: We send back people 

7 to scour over those.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Do we have 

9 anything on 187.3?

10 MR. FARVER: I'm trying to find 

11 it, yes. 

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Or was it NIOSH 

13 action?

14 DR. ULSH: Yes, it looks like 

15 NIOSH action. I'm not aware of any action on 

16 that.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. 

18 MR. FARVER: 187.3.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Looks like a 

20 DOL communication. 

21 MR. KATZ: Is that a next meeting?

22 DR. ULSH: Next meeting.
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1 MR. KATZ: Thanks.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So the next one 

3 I have is 192.2. 

4 MEMBER MUNN: Correct.

5 MR. FARVER: Okay, 192 is -- looks 

6 like a Fernald case. And the finding is basis 

7 for intakes not included in the records which 

8 basically, the IMBA runs are not provided 

9 showing the intake calculations is kind of 

10 what it is based on.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The IMBA runs 

12 weren't provided.

13 MR. FARVER: They were not 

14 included in the files.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, okay, yes.

16 MR. FARVER: That was part one, 

17 and then part two was that there was no 

18 uranium intake assigned for 1961 through 1965. 

19 And --

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's not 

21 really reflected -- yes, that's not really 

22 reflected in this.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: Doesn't say that in 

2 here.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Which is an 

4 important second part.

5 MEMBER MUNN: It is kind of an 

6 important second part.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Anyway.

8 MR. FARVER: So, you know, NIOSH 

9 gave their response that, you know, they 

10 basically forgot to include the IMBA files 

11 which is, you know, it happens.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But they don't 

13 respond to that other part you just mentioned.

14 MR. FARVER: Correct. And so, you 

15 know, our response is yes, we agree, you 

16 forgot the IMBA files but there's a dose of 

17 4,800 picocuries per day of uranium intake 

18 that was not included. 

19 MEMBER MUNN: None of that's 

20 captured in here.

21 MR. FARVER: Well no, because it's 

22 all in the original finding of the -- in the 
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1 report.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's the 

3 problem sometimes our matrix is --

4 DR. ULSH: So is this a NIOSH 

5 action item? We owe you something?

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I'm not sure.

7 MR. FARVER: Yes.

8 MS. BEHLING: However, wasn't this 

9 case compensated?

10 MEMBER MUNN: I suspect so. I'd 

11 be surprised if it weren't.

12 MR. FARVER: Yes.

13 MR. SIEBERT: The PoC is above 50 

14 percent.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

16 MR. FARVER: Which is okay but 

17 normally you would say we didn't need to do it 

18 because it already exceeded the dose or the 

19 PoC. 

20 MEMBER MUNN: It's another one of 

21 those extra words needed.

22 DR. ULSH: Yes, is it like that 
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1 earlier one where it's a clarity issue? I 

2 mean, I'm not sure. I'm not intimately 

3 familiar with this finding. It sounds like we 

4 included a uranium exposure but didn't provide 

5 the supporting IMBA file? Is that?

6 MR. FARVER: Well, first off the 

7 IMBA files were not included.

8 DR. ULSH: Right, I understand.

9 MR. FARVER: Okay. That was part 

10 of it. Now, the second part was apparently 

11 there was a uranium intake because it was 

12 recycled uranium and the contaminants that 

13 were based on that uranium value were all 

14 calculated intakes, and you have those values 

15 and assigned those intakes. You didn't assign 

16 the uranium. 

17 DR. ULSH: But what we did include 

18 pushed him over 50. So it sounds like what we 

19 should have said is uranium was not included 

20 because of --

21 MR. FARVER: Correct, if that's 

22 the reason. If the reason is you didn't 
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1 include it because it exceeded 50 that's fine. 

2 If the reason that you didn't include it was 

3 because you forgot then that's different. 

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Then it's a QA 

5 thing. I mean, it does seem like it should 

6 have been a best estimate. I mean, if you're 

7 doing 25 IMBA runs. Not necessarily I guess.

8 MR. KATZ: No, that's fine. You 

9 just need I think, like Doug's saying you need 

10 -- normally there's a statement at the end 

11 that says we curtailed research on this case 

12 because it's above the compensable level. 

13 There's no reason to do more work.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

15 MR. FARVER: It just kind of 

16 stands out because you talk about recycled 

17 uranium contaminants and you assign doses for 

18 them but there's no uranium. So it kind of 

19 makes you scratch your head.

20 MR. KATZ: I understand. So it's 

21 not a QA, it's really just a clarity.

22 DR. ULSH: Well, what he's saying 
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1 is it might be a clarity issue. It could be 

2 that we didn't mention it because we just 

3 forgot to mention it, or it could be that we 

4 didn't do it because oops, we forgot.

5 MR. KATZ: I know, but I'm just 

6 saying the part about saying this is not a 

7 complete dose reconstruction because we --

8 that statement is missing it sounds like.

9 DR. ULSH: So how do you want to 

10 proceed? Consider it as a clarity?

11 DR. MAURO: Brant, you can't do 

12 the recycled uranium without doing uranium. So 

13 I mean, the way in which you do -- I mean, 

14 John Stiver is very familiar with this. We 

15 spent a lot of time talking about this on 

16 Fernald. So in order to do the RU 

17 contribution which is what I'm hearing you 

18 must have done the uranium.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, they did 

20 the intakes of uranium. They didn't calculate 

21 a dose.

22 DR. MAURO: Yes, that's right. You 
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1 had to do the intakes of uranium in order to 

2 do the intakes of plutonium, et cetera. 

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. It seems 

4 a little strange that you wouldn't have the 

5 dose. But anyway.

6 DR. ULSH: So what do you want to 

7 do with it, Mark?

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I mean, either 

9 way it's closed, I just didn't want to figure 

10 out how --

11 DR. ULSH: I understand. The 

12 question is, is it a QA issue.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

14 DR. ULSH: I don't know the answer 

15 to that. 

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. 

17 DR. ULSH: I don't know that we 

18 could really get --

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I don't 

20 know that we'd have to exactly.

21 MR. FARVER: I don't know if this 

22 is a cut and paste where you're cutting and 
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1 pasting something into an IREP table and maybe 

2 the uranium part got cut off.

3 DR. ULSH: Or maybe we just didn't 

4 do it because it was enough. I don't know. 

5 MR. FARVER: I don't know. 

6 DR. ULSH: Is it worth it to you 

7 for us to go back and investigate this or do 

8 you just want to?

9 MR. FARVER: I don't know. Scott, 

10 what's it worth to you? It's Christmas, be 

11 generous to me and then you won't have to do 

12 it.

13 MR. SIEBERT: Well, I'm looking at 

14 the fact that it was September of 2005, so you 

15 know, trying to figure out the dose 

16 reconstructor's thought process six years ago 

17 may be a little difficult. 

18 MR. FARVER: I'm not sure there's 

19 that much you can do about it.

20 DR. MAURO: Well, Doug, do you 

21 know whether we were -- very often when we do 

22 a review of a case we try to match the numbers 
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1 first in other words to see whatever the organ 

2 is, see if we can -- see okay, we can match 

3 the numbers, we know how you did it, and then 

4 we move on to determine whether or not we 

5 agree that that's a good way to do it or did 

6 you follow your instructions. What I'm 

7 hearing here is that, you know, if we match 

8 their numbers that means, you know, that we 

9 figured out what the intakes were and matched 

10 their numbers.

11 And so I guess what I'm asking is 

12 does the doses that they actually calculate 

13 for this person that was compensated, did we 

14 match their numbers and was it only, you know, 

15 just the plutonium? I guess I'm having a 

16 little trouble understanding how we can get a 

17 finding on this without actually 

18 reconstructing their, you know, matching their 

19 numbers.

20 MEMBER MUNN: They said the 

21 results were recreated from the file.

22 DR. MAURO: Because very often, 
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1 you know, I know that when -- I will try to 

2 match their numbers and I won't even look at 

3 your IMBA runs. I will just say, okay, here 

4 are the assumptions and I'll, you know, go 

5 ahead and try to match your doses and I won't 

6 look at the IMBA runs. But you're saying the 

7 IMBA runs were lacking from this file.

8 MR. FARVER: Correct.

9 DR. MAURO: But we could, I know 

10 we often audit to see if, you know, look at 

11 their protocol that was described and the fact 

12 that the IMBA runs aren't there as part of the 

13 documentation, I guess that's a deficiency. 

14 It's nice to have that there but it's not 

15 essential for us to do our audits.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, but 

17 you're missing the one primary point, John, 

18 which is that they, everything was there 

19 except the uranium doses.

20 DR. MAURO: All the IMBA runs are 

21 there except.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, I mean, 
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1 even the -- I imagine even the uranium IMBA 

2 run was there but they didn't sum uranium 

3 doses. Is that what you're saying?

4 DR. MAURO: Oh, I missed the 

5 point. Okay. All right.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Maybe? I don't 

7 know. I don't know enough about -- I'm 

8 speculating here, but based on the little 

9 matrix items. I don't know the case 

10 intimately.

11 MEMBER MUNN: It says the 25 IMBA 

12 files were inadvertently left out of the claim 

13 file.

14 DR. ULSH: Right, but once we 

15 provided those the uranium is still not there 

16 I think is the situation, right?

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

18 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

19 DR. ULSH: And so the apparent 

20 situation is we have a dose reconstruction 

21 where we did the recycled, the contaminants in 

22 the recycled part and the case is over 50. The 
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1 question is did we also do the uranium and 

2 forget to put it in or is this a situation 

3 where we didn't need it so we didn't include 

4 it but we should have stated that. And going 

5 back six years.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, my point 

7 is that you would have had to do the uranium 

8 first, right? To get the intake anyway.

9 DR. ULSH: Well, that's what 

10 John's saying.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, not dose 

12 necessarily. 

13 MR. FARVER: Well and the problem 

14 that I have with it is everything's based on 

15 uranium.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's a 

17 separate issue. 

18 DR. ULSH: That's a TBD. Or maybe 

19 an SEC.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: SEC issue, 

21 right, right.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: They would have 
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1 had to do the uranium intake.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The others are 

3 based off the uranium intake, but you wouldn't 

4 have had to do the doses necessarily.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: What site is this 

6 from?

7 MR. FARVER: Fernald.

8 DR. ULSH: I should shut up too, 

9 I'm conflicted at Fernald too.

10 MR. SIEBERT: This is Scott. It's 

11 clear that the uranium had to have been -- the 

12 barium intake had to have been calculated 

13 because the recycled components are based on 

14 ratios from uranium.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Agreed, yes.

16 MR. SIEBERT: And there's no 

17 doubt. As to why the dose reconstruction did 

18 not include that, as soon as it hits 50 

19 percent if they specifically left it out they 

20 probably should have stated that.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

22 MR. SIEBERT: I agree 
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1 wholeheartedly. And I honestly don't think 

2 we're going to be able to figure out six years 

3 down the road whether they looked at it and 

4 said oh, well I don't need to assign it, or I 

5 do. I mean, that's too far down the road to 

6 get in the dose reconstructor's head.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think I agree 

8 with that.

9 DR. ULSH: So we'll make you a 

10 deal, counselor. 

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Possible QA 

12 issue.

13 DR. ULSH: We'll cop to the 

14 clarity issue.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Very good.

16 (Laughter.)

17 DR. MAURO: This is John. I do 

18 have a question for the Subcommittee. This 

19 record, the DR report and its associated 

20 records are really archives that represent, 

21 you know, a very important decision was made 

22 regarding this case. If there is confusion, a 
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1 lack of completeness or something about the 

2 archive that seems to be inappropriate or not 

3 complete it seems that for posterity purposes 

4 you try to do the best job you can and tell 

5 them your story. So the fact that we could 

6 sit here right now and sort of figure out, oh, 

7 it looks like everything's okay, is that good 

8 enough?

9 MEMBER MUNN: Is there any problem 

10 with an additional note being added to the 

11 file? Does that create a problem? 

12 MR. KATZ: I think the only 

13 problem is that they don't know exactly what 

14 the situation was and they'd have to go do 

15 research to figure it out, and they may not be 

16 able to figure it out, and is it worth the 

17 lift.

18 MEMBER MUNN: I don't see that you 

19 necessarily have to do that. All you'd have 

20 to do is say one of two things. Either there 

21 was a clerical error here or there was just 

22 simply a decision made, just it's an obviously 
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1 compensable claim and there's no point in 

2 going any further. That one of those two 

3 things happened does not in any way affect the 

4 compensability.

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So in terms of 

6 -- we've bumped up against something which is 

7 what we're trying to decide like is this a 

8 QA/QC issue and one of the questions is how 

9 broadly do we want to use the term quality? 

10 Does quality encompass the quality of the 

11 report and the clarity of the information 

12 transmitted by it, or are we thinking of 

13 quality issues as more omissions or errors 

14 here? And I don't have a strong opinion but 

15 that's the only thing I'm struggling with here 

16 is do you call this a QA/QC issue or is it a 

17 communication/clarity/style issue. I mean 

18 clearly we don't know what they did and 

19 because of --

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I don't even 

21 know which bin to put that in yet.

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Right. So --
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It's a separate 

2 discussion of which is QA.

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: As we kind of 

4 revisit what we're thinking about as QA/QC we 

5 might want to think about how large we want to 

6 cast that net and whether we want to pull in 

7 things like this.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Well and we may have 

10 items of this sort that don't clearly fall 

11 into either one.

12 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Right, I meant 

13 potentially, but I guess for myself personally 

14 I don't have a clear definition quite yet of 

15 how broadly we want to throw out quality. But 

16 I do think that this is -- we're not going to 

17 be able to go much further with this other 

18 than to say that it's unclear what was done. 

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: For now it 

20 could be a possible QA issue but not worth 

21 pulling the string any further.

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: I think part of 
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1 this comes back to earlier on in this 

2 Subcommittee of explaining their work and why, 

3 you know, that's basically what it just comes 

4 back to. And this is six years old and they 

5 have been trying to continuously improve so 

6 it's back to that situation.

7 MEMBER MUNN: I still don't have 

8 an answer to my question. Is it not just a 

9 simple matter to add a note?

10 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Well, to me 

11 that's fine, but that doesn't make any --

12 MEMBER MUNN: No, it doesn't help 

13 us in the decision. 

14 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Well, either 

15 the decision or to understand whether this is 

16 a problem with a particular case or whether

17 there's --

18 MR. FARVER: There's more like it.

19 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Whether you 

20 would want to kind of point this out as a 

21 process issue which when decisions are made 

22 they need to be documented. 
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1 MEMBER MUNN: I suggest we add a 

2 note to the file. It could have been this, it 

3 could have been this, we don't know six years 

4 later. But in any case.

5 DR. ULSH: When you say a note to 

6 the file, are you talking about putting it in 

7 the matrix or are you talking about going into 

8 the claim file and inserting in a note?

9 MEMBER MUNN: I was thinking the 

10 claim file since as we pointed out before 

11 these really do become archive documents. 

12 DR. ULSH: Can we do that?

13 MEMBER MUNN: And that's what I 

14 was asking, is it possible for us to do that.

15 DR. ULSH: It's a comp case. It's 

16 already been dispositioned.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we can put 

18 it on our side. It would be on DOL's side.

19 MR. KATZ: I don't see the point 

20 in it. 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: I really don't see 

22 a point. 
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1 MR. KATZ: If it were not a comp 

2 case and it could come back that would be --

3 for a case that's been comped.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: There's almost no 

5 --

6 MR. KATZ: No utility to it.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: -- practically no 

8 way that anyone will ever get this back out 

9 and worry about the completeness of the record 

10 of a compensatory case.

11 MEMBER MUNN: Then we should not 

12 as a very minimum explain it a little more 

13 thoroughly in our closure box here?

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Which we just 

15 did.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Thank you. Our 

17 Chair has taken care of the whole issue.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Absolutely.

19 MEMBER MUNN: I will now be quiet 

20 for the rest of the afternoon.

21 (Laughter.)

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You'll be quiet 
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1 for one more minute because I think we're 

2 going to close. I mean, we're on 192.2. I 

3 did say, I put in the explanation that it 

4 could have been a QA by omission, not doing 

5 the complete internal dose reconstruction, or 

6 it could have simply been an intentional 

7 decision by the dose reconstructor to stop the 

8 process without adequate clarification in the 

9 record. So it's one of those two and we'll 

10 just leave it at that. Yes. Alright. And, I 

11 mean the only thing I would ask is do we have 

12 any more on 192.2? I think there's just an 

13 observation.

14 MR. FARVER: No.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: There's nothing 

16 else to -- yes, observations. I don't even 

17 know what we're doing with observations.

18 MR. FARVER: We do not have to 

19 respond.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, the one 

21 says no further action anyway, right? So. And 

22 I would argue that this might be a good time 
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1 to stop, right? We, I think --

2 MR. FARVER: Unless you just want 

3 to go to 193.1 and 194.1 and say that we 

4 concur with their answers.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, you 

6 already did that. No further action, SC&A.

7 MR. FARVER: Gosh. Okay.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, wait a 

9 second, that's not true on --

10 MR. SIEBERT: 194.1.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 194.1, do you 

12 concur on that one?

13 MR. FARVER: Yes.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, so that's 

15 new. 

16 MR. FARVER: And then I would 

17 close.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Can you tell us 

19 what 194.1 is about before we close it?

20 MR. FARVER: We were basically 

21 unable to confirm the source of photon 

22 uncertainty applied to the skin cancer and 
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1 then they explained it. And I think part of 

2 this arises because this is an old case. And 

3 they used a combination of correction factors. 

4 And it just wasn't very clear how they came up 

5 with that correction factor of 1.43. That's 

6 because they combined a couple.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

8 MR. SIEBERT: Right. The normal 

9 correction factors we'd use were combined for 

10 a magical number without necessarily that 

11 being explained along the way. So it would be 

12 easy to understand why it wasn't seen easily.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So 

14 that's closed then. And unless Doug wants to 

15 continue.

16 MEMBER MUNN: 194.3?

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: He's hot, he's 

18 on a roll.

19 MR. FARVER: Let me look at my 

20 answer before I say I'll continue with it.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Follow-up on 

22 NIOSH response. Oh, you've got your answer.
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1 MR. FARVER: Okay, we'll concur 

2 with that one too. It's basically because 

3 there's just so much data that a day or two 

4 either way really doesn't matter. There's 

5 little change over the intake. We really are 

6 kind of quibbling about intake date.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

8 MEMBER RICHARDSON: What number is

9 this?

10 MR. FARVER: 194.3.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: This is on a --

12 MEMBER MUNN: Fernald.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It is still 

14 Fernald? 

15 DR. ULSH: 192 was Fernald. Is 

16 194 Fernald as well?

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I don't know.

18 MEMBER MUNN: It says 94 is 

19 Fernald.

20 MR. FARVER: Fernald.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, thank 

22 you.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: 94.4 says you may 

2 want to get guidance from the Fernald Work 

3 Group.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh.

5 MEMBER MUNN: Which makes me 

6 believe this is probably Fernald. 

7 (Laughter.)

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Thank you, 

9 Wanda.

10 MEMBER MUNN: Sorry, just a little 

11 parallel logic.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It's that time 

13 of day.

14 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

15 DR. ULSH: Maybe we should quit.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I know.

17 MR. FARVER: I don't know if we 

18 want to go into the Fernald thorium issue. 

19 MEMBER MUNN: Why not? The night 

20 is young. 

21 DR. ULSH: You've got no non22 conflicted NIOSH representatives here to 
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1 speak.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So wait, is 

3 that 194.3? Are you agreeing with 194.3?

4 MR. FARVER: I'm agreeing with 

5 194.3.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. That's 

7 on the uranium, right?

8 MR. FARVER: That's on the -- yes. 

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So unless I 

10 hear something else, I'm closing out 194.3.

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Can I just ask 

12 about, there was a decision that was made 

13 there at the end. There was the choice of 

14 calling the sample a false positive or 

15 assuming that it occurred close to the high, 

16 I believe the intake occurred the day before 

17 the bioassay result. And has that been 

18 formalized since this DR was done or does it 

19 still remain, sort of, again, one of these 

20 decision points that in a different case might 

21 have gone -- in the future would go a 

22 different way still? You know what my 
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1 question is?

2 MR. FARVER: Yes, I understand 

3 your question. Typically, you would use the 

4 midpoint between two samples and that would be 

5 your intake date, but in this case they went 

6 through the goodness of fit and they had a 

7 better fit if they put it the day before --

8 the intake the day before the sample, the high 

9 sample. And what brought it to our attention 

10 was that it wasn't even close to the midpoint 

11 date, it was several days off, so why did you 

12 do that? And but, your question is has this 

13 been formalized on a way to do things? I 

14 don't know that it's been formalized anywhere.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I would 

16 imagine not, right?

17 MEMBER MUNN: But this is 

18 claimant-favorable position.

19 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Right, and if 

20 it is, would it be useful to formalize as a 

21 claimant-favorable position to routinely 

22 implement or is this sort of an ad hoc-based, 
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1 something that's favorable for this claimant 

2 but not for other claimants?

3 MEMBER MUNN: I would suspect it 

4 might not be favorable for other claimants, as 

5 well. I would think this would be a case-by6 case.

7 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, well 

8 that's where I feel, you know, that's where it 

9 starts to get.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I mean, it 

11 was the intake date that fit the bioassay 

12 record, is that what it is?

13 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Fitted the best 

16 I guess, yes.

17 MEMBER RICHARDSON: But I mean, 

18 that's kind of the routine approach.

19 MR. FARVER: Well, I guess what 

20 brought it to our attention was it was, 

21 instead of taking a midpoint between the 

22 samples and calling that the intake date, you 
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1 know, one sample a month, another sample a 

2 month later, you split the difference and call 

3 it 15 days before. Instead, you just went to 

4 exactly one day before in the sample, the 

5 highest sample. And it was just kind of 

6 unusual that you would do that instead of 

7 taking the midpoint.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think only 

9 in the sense that it really is dependent upon 

10 the subsequent bioassay, you know, because you 

11 have an excretion pattern that you expect from 

12 the intake and if your subsequent bioassay, I 

13 mean, if at the midpoint, apparently if we had 

14 used that intake at the midpoint and in order 

15 to have the bioassay result we had on the 

16 bioassay date, you have this intake back here 

17 and on that excretion curve, presumably the 

18 next bioassay date would have been positive 

19 but was not. Is that what happened?

20 MR. FARVER: Well, I guess part of 

21 this case is there was so much bioassay data 

22 afterwards, it really didn't matter whether it 
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1 was one day or three days or five days, it was 

2 still about the same dose. So we were just 

3 curious why it was just picked exactly one day 

4 before, which is unusual.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think 

6 normally --

7 MR. FARVER: The reason you give 

8 is good but that's not what was in the -- it's 

9 not documented well in the report. 

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I would 

11 think that if you're fitting, if you're doing 

12 a fitted -- on a positive bioassay, if you're 

13 doing a fit, a fitted intake, that -- well, 

14 that person didn't like my argument. If 

15 you're doing a fitted intake -- either that or 

16 it's midnight and somebody turned into -- the 

17 moon came up and somebody turned into a wolf.

18 (Laughter.)

19 MR. HINNEFELD: If you're doing a 

20 fitted intake the fit very often, if you have 

21 a really robust bioassay record, the fit 

22 dictates the intake date because if you have a 
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1 lot of bioassay, the bioassay and what your 

2 later subsequent detection levels are and what 

3 your result is compared to detection level 

4 dictates your intake date. And the midpoint 

5 as a presumption is when there is not a 

6 bioassay point that would be essentially 

7 violated by having the midpoint as the intake. 

8 So in other words, if you've got, if your 

9 intake, put your midpoint -- intake at the 

10 midpoint and getting this bioassay result, and 

11 then as the next bioassay result is a non12 detect and your non-detect that's when you 

13 choose the midpoint. If you have an intake on 

14 a particular bioassay date and the next 

15 bioassay take is non-detect and the only way 

16 to get there is to have intake the day before 

17 the original bioassay date, then that's what 

18 we would consider a fit, fitting the bioassay.

19 MR. FARVER: I agree. I mean, I 

20 agree with fitting the data like that, I'm 

21 just --

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And I think the 
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1 argument was if the only way to get a 

2 reasonable fit for this one high -- otherwise 

3 to get a better fit was to drop the high 

4 sample.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, call it an 

6 outlier and not include it.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, call it 

8 an outlier. Right.

9 DR. ULSH: And the method, what 

10 Stu described is what we would do on any case, 

11 not just this one.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, not just this 

13 one. I mean, that is standard. The bioassay, 

14 the intake should fit the bioassay and that's 

15 a combination of magnitude and date. And then 

16 whatever your subsequent bioassay tells you 

17 about is there anything still around on the 

18 subsequent bioassay.

19 MR. FARVER: I mean, it's kind of 

20 a complicated case. You've got five acute 

21 intakes you're trying to fit over a period of 

22 five years. So it's -- with the best of 
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1 bioassay data. And our only question was why 

2 did you pick the intake the day before.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: It should be 

4 because that's what fit the data.

5 MR. FARVER: That's fine. It was 

6 not clear.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: And that is the 

8 standard. You know, it's not very often that 

9 we have to fit that many fitted intakes.

10 MR. FARVER: No, that's a messy 

11 one.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, that's why no 

13 one likes to do. Those are the ones that take 

14 over a week.

15 MR. FARVER: And those are the 

16 ones you can get into a lot of professional 

17 judgment on where they're kind of messy and 

18 there's a lot of intakes.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, best fits are 

20 always, even what is the best fit because the 

21 calculated best fit a lot of times doesn't 

22 look like the best fit.
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1 MR. FARVER: And one of the things 

2 I'm looking forward to seeing on your 

3 comparison is how you handle cases like this 

4 that are kind of messy and complicated, how do 

5 they come out compared to what ORAU does, what 

6 NIOSH does. Let's look and see what comes out 

7 of the numbers.

8 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So, the one 

9 thing would be the sentence in here that in 

10 NIOSH's response it says, NIOSH agrees that 

11 this is not considered a standard practice. So 

12 if that, I mean maybe that needs to be revised 

13 or else I'm not following.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: I sure had a good 

15 story going there, didn't I.

16 MR. SIEBERT: This is Scott. I 

17 believe that statement was put in saying that 

18 normally we don't have to fit the bioassay 

19 data that closely because they do fall below 

20 if we're doing with acute intakes like that. 

21 In a case where this, although we would look 

22 at that in all cases, it's unusual we have to 
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1 move from the midpoint because of the 

2 subsequent bioassay. That's probably the 

3 better way to put it. Maybe not.

4 MEMBER RICHARDSON: If there's a 

5 known intake then you would usually do a 

6 series of bioassays after it to establish the 

7 excretion.

8 MR. SIEBERT: Correct.

9 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So that would 

10 seem, that to me would be the standard, I 

11 would imagine.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: The best intake. 

13 The best instance is that there was a known 

14 event with an intake, you know the intake 

15 date. That's the best instance. But quite 

16 often with a positive bioassay, there is not 

17 that event. And so you have to decide when 

18 did it occur. Well, it occurred sometime 

19 since the last bioassay apparently.

20 MEMBER RICHARDSON: But even if 

21 you have a positive -- if you have a positive 

22 bioassay result you would usually follow up 
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1 with a series of other bioassays afterwards to 

2 help understand --

3 MR. HINNEFELD: To help understand 

4 the curve.

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- when it 

6 happened.

7 MEMBER MUNN: It's easy when you 

8 have a single incident. When you have 

9 multiple acute exposures over several years 

10 prior to this one --

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It's not always 

12 true that if you have a positive like at 

13 Fernald you wouldn't necessarily do follow-up 

14 because they had a fair amount of positives 

15 there, or you wouldn't do --

16 MR. HINNEFELD: There were sites 

17 where a positive meaning detectable --

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: -- was not an 

20 investigation point.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, that's 

22 what I was trying to say.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: That you could 

2 have a positive bioassay that would -- a 

3 positive bioassay. If it didn't rise to the 

4 investigation level there wouldn't be follow5 up. There were such like that.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. So it 

7 may not necessarily be the case then. Anyway, 

8 yes, I think that is confusing, that sentence 

9 in there, but notwithstanding that I think 

10 you're comfortable with the argument on this 

11 case?

12 MR. FARVER: Yes. It's an unusual 

13 case.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: That was the 

16 hardest case of agreement.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: We strenuously 

18 agree.

19 MEMBER MUNN: Closed.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right, so 

21 we close that and we close this meeting, I 

22 think. Is there anything else we want to --
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1 any other issues before we officially close 

2 the meeting? Okay. Then let's wrap it up for 

3 today. Before we wrap it up today, do we want 

4 to look at calendars and try to pick a --

5 MR. KATZ: Why don't we do that?

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- a next date. 

7 And a lot of it is going to be depending on 

8 obviously Brant's timeline for getting some of 

9 this work done and stuff. Other conflicting. 

10 January 1st is open. 

11 DR. MAURO: I'm going to break, 

12 everyone. Have a happy holiday.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Wait, John, we 

14 need your calendar.

15 DR. MAURO: I'll just wait to hear 

16 from Doug.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright.

18 DR. MAURO: Thank you. Bye bye.

19 MEMBER MUNN: Clever you.

20 MR. FARVER: Put me in charge.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, I mean 

22 realistically we're going to have to look at 
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1 least at sort of the -- well, the end of 

2 February is the meeting. I think we're at --

3 the full Board Meeting, right. Can we do 

4 something in the middle of February? Is that 

5 realistic to have? 

6 MR. HINNEFELD: That doesn't give 

7 us much time. I mean, this year's done pretty 

8 much. You know, there's not going to be a 

9 lot. So you're looking into January. 

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Middle of 

11 March?

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Middle of March is 

13 possible. 

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: End of March is 

15 better.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

17 MR. FARVER: Next Board Meeting?

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Twenty-eighth and 

19 29th of February and the 1st of March.

20 MR. FARVER: Because you'll 

21 probably be tied up with stuff for the Board 

22 Meeting.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: How about 

2 toward the end of March then?

3 MEMBER MUNN: How about the middle 

4 of March instead of the end of March?

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Why, are you 

6 conflicted at the end of March?

7 MEMBER MUNN: Kind of. There's a 

8 nice Wednesday, the 14th.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: There's a nice 

10 Wednesday.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Sounds like you're 

12 ordering wine.

13 MR. KATZ: The 15th is TBD-6000. I 

14 don't know if that really affects anyone.

15 MEMBER MUNN: That will affect me.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You don't like 

17 the 16th so much.

18 MEMBER RICHARDSON: The end of the 

19 week would probably be better.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Better for me, 

21 yes.

22 MEMBER MUNN: You like the 16th 
337

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 better than the 14th? I'll buy that. St. 

2 Pat's is the next day.

3 MR. KATZ: How's that with you, 

4 Brant? The 16th?

5 DR. ULSH: I don't think my 

6 calendar goes out that far right now. Let me 

7 look. I can't get to it right now. Let's go 

8 ahead and say it.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: There's nothing 

10 programmatically on the agenda, I don't think.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We can always, 

12 if something comes up we can change this, but 

13 say tentatively March 16th, yes.

14 MEMBER MUNN: Which means --

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: While you have 

16 the calendar out, though, what does the end of 

17 January look like?

18 MR. HINNEFELD: That'll be in19 person here I suppose, right?

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Is that it for 

21 us or do you have -- is this a separate issue?

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: No, I'm good. 
338

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

1 That's a separate issue.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. So 

3 March 16th and I'm sure we'll see each other 

4 before then but that is our next meeting. And 

5 I will also email these revised matrices out 

6 within the next 45 minutes, because if I don't 

7 do it now it ain't getting done.

8 MEMBER MUNN: That would be great. 

9 It really would be great. Good.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, thanks. 

11 Meeting adjourned.

12 MR. KATZ: Thank you, everybody. 

13 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

14 matter went off the record at 4:17 p.m.)

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