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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 

+ + + + +

SAVANNAH RIVER SITE WORK GROUP

+ + + + +

WEDNESDAY

FEBRUARY 26, 2014

+ + + + +

The Work Group convened via 

teleconference at 10:00 a.m., Bradley P. 

Clawson, Acting Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Acting Chairman

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

JIM NETON, DCAS

TIM TAULBEE, DCAS

DEKEELY HARTSFIELD, HHS

MATT ARNO, ORAU

MIKE MAHATHY, ORAU

ROBERT BARTON, SC&A

HARRY CHMELYNSKI, SC&A

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

JOYCE LIPSZTEIN, SC&A

ARJUN MAKHIJANI, SC&A

JOHN STIVER, SC&A

BUCK CAMERON, ATL

DAVID ANDERSON

BOB WARREN
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T-A-B-L-E O-F C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S

Welcome and Roll Call ..................... 4

Mr. Ted Katz

Continued from February 5, 2014

Work Group Discussion-Status of Findings and 

path forward.

Neptunium Recap..................... 5

Findings 1 through 8................ 9

OPOS-related Comparisons

Deferred to SEC Work Group Findings 9, 10, 11

Findings 12 through 19............. 84

Work Group Discussion-Status of Findings and 

path forward.

Thorium Recap...................... 87

Finding 1.......................... 84

Finding 2......................... 153

Finding 3 ........................ 156

Discussion and Closure

Finding 4, Thoron................. 163

Findings 5B16, 19B23.............. 187

OPOS-related Comparisons

Deferred to SEC Work Group

Findings 17....................... 188

Discussion and Closure

Finding 18........................ 190

Findings 24-26.................... 204

Overarching Data Validation

Issue Remains, but Solubility

Issue Closed

Findings 27-32.................... 211

Closing Action Items.............. 214

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

2 (10:05 a.m.)

3 MR. KATZ: So let's get started. 

4 First of all this is the Advisory Board on

5 Radiation Worker Health, Savannah River Site 

6 Work Group.

7 And there is an agenda for today's 

8 meeting. It's the same agenda as was for the 

9 meeting earlier in February, because we're 

10 still going through that agenda. And we could 

11 just kick off, where we left off from the last 

12 meeting on there.

13 So there is also a document on the 

14 web site that is a Matrix of Issues that has been 

15 updated by SC&A so that we're abreast of 

16 current status on all the issues that we're 

17 working through. And I assume that will be 

18 used heavily today.

19 So let's do roll call. When 

20 speaking from specific sites, please speak to 

21 conflict of interest when you respond.

22 (Roll call)
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1 MR. KATZ: Okay then. Brad, you 

2 can kick it off. But really, I think it would 

3 probably be helpful if NIOSH or ORAU to tee up 

4 where we left off.

5 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, yes 

6 thanks, that's, like I say this is Brad Clawson. 

7 I guess we're going to start up where we left 

8 off. And I believe it was in NIOSH's court 

9 there. So I'll turn it over to either Tim, or 

10 who's going to respond?

11 Is that correct, or are we waiting, 

12 is it SC&A?

13 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. I guess 

14 I have a question for you as to how you want to 

15 continue on? We could continue on with where 

16 we stopped, which was issue or Finding Number 

17 4 from the thorium, our responses on the thorium 

18 issues of Addendum Number 3.

19 But I guess Joe Fitzgerald, he sent 

20 out a memo to the Work Group the other evening, 

21 that kind of summaries where we are at. And we 

22 can kind of I guess in a sense, instead of going 
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1 through line by line, kind of --

2 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes.

3 DR. TAULBEE: -- certain findings 

4 together. That seemed to make more sense, that 

5 we could discuss instead of going through the 

6 line by line of the thorium, and then into 8th 

7 Issues Matrix.

8 So Brad, I'm not sure which way you 

9 want to try and respond to this? So it's 

10 entirely up to you.

11 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, 

12 let me talk with Arjun or how, Arjun, how would 

13 you guys like to address this? I know that the 

14 memo was sent out on the thorium. Do we want 

15 to discuss that right now? Or what would you 

16 like to do?

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, Brad --

18 DR. MAKHIJANI: Well, Joe is my, 

19 the top manager and I think he sent out the memo. 

20 Maybe he should respond. I think maybe it 

21 might be good to start with the memo that he sent 

22 out.
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1 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, 

2 that sounds good. I'm sorry, Joe.

3 DR. MAKHIJANI: I think maybe Joe 

4 is most appropriate to respond.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, let me clarify 

6 just a little bit. Just taking off what Tim 

7 said. I thought it would be helpful given the 

8 fact we are continuing this several weeks 

9 later, to recap a little bit.

10 And we also as I had indicated two 

11 weeks ago, we did not have a chance for Joyce 

12 Lipsztein to provide her responses on some, a 

13 number of neptunium issues, as a matter of fact.

14 Because she was, you know she was 

15 out of the office during that time. So what I 

16 would propose is maybe we could back pedal a 

17 little bit. Go back into that neptunium report 

18 and start with, what I indicated, is Finding 9.

19 Kind of where we kind of jumped 

20 because we could not address those issues 

21 because she wasn’t available. And you know, 

22 start with item, Finding 9 and go from there. 
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1 And she is certainly on the phone and ready to 

2 do that.

3 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

4 That sounds fine with me. I’m kind of taken by 

5 surprise on this, so please forgive me if a 

6 little bit cumbersome. Who’s going to be 

7 running the Live Meeting? Are they going to 

8 put up any of these documents so that -- hello?

9 MR. KATZ: Brad, with respect to 

10 documents for a Live Meeting, I mean you have 

11 the matrix, you have the memo. The memo, I 

12 don’t know if it’s been put up on the web site 

13 yet. But I think it was, not sure whether it’s 

14 PA cleared yet.

15 MR. STIVER: I think, this is John 

16 Stiver, I can pull that up onto Live Meeting if 

17 you want?

18 MR. KATZ: Yes, if you would that 

19 would be great, John, that’s what I was going 

20 to say. If you just pull the memo up, that 

21 would be great.

22 MR. STIVER: Okay. Just give me a 
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1 minute here.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. While he’s 

3 doing that, yes, it did come in late Monday. So 

4 I realize this is really going to facilitate for 

5 the participants but, more so than anything 

6 else.

7 But Findings 1 through 8, we did 

8 spend a fair amount of time in the February 5th 

9 meeting. And I think there was some general 

10 agreement that many of those issues touched on 

11 the, so called, OPOS or statistical issues on 

12 comparison of two worker groups, NCW and CTWs.

13 And I think we could just certainly 

14 decide to defer the discussion to that forum. 

15 So we’re really kind of picking up on some of 

16 the first specific neptunium issues that we 

17 certainly could address in the Work Group.

18 And with that, Joyce do you want to 

19 start with Number 9, or do you need anything 

20 further on that?

21 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay.

22 MR. STIVER: Before we start, this 
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1 is John. Can everybody see the memo?

2 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, 

3 it’s just, thank you. I just hate jumping back 

4 and forth from these two when we have some of 

5 this stuff come up. So appreciate that John.

6 MR. STIVER: Okay, thank you.

7 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Should I start?

8 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, go 

9 ahead Joyce.

10 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay. I think I’m 

11 fine on Finding Number 9 there was some 

12 misunderstanding between SC&A and NIOSH 

13 because the response from NIOSH to our finding, 

14 didn’t answer our questioning.

15 So NIOSH has justified the use of 

16 iodine-131 region to quantify neptunium-237. 

17 SC&A doesn’t question the use of iodine-131 

18 region to calculate the protactinium-233, 

19 which is the daughter of neptunium-237, to 

20 calculate neptunium-237 activity in this item. 

21 What we were questioning was the 

22 choice of whole body counter geometry to 
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1 calculate the exposure, as opposed to chest 

2 geometry. Because we have reviewed data from 

3 several workers at that time period, which was 

4 the early 70s.

5 And we saw that many of the 

6 geometry that was used was chest count instead 

7 of the 40cm arc geometry. And specifically 

8 neptunium-237 and iodine-131 activities were 

9 often were both registered in the chest count 

10 geometry.

11 We agree with NIOSH that in the 

12 region that neptunium was quantified in this 

13 time period, it’s better to quantify it through 

14 iodine-131 activities.

15 We only question this stretcher 

16 method, and we saw, and we agree with NIOSH that 

17 it is only a question of calibration and the 

18 right calibration factor that should be used.

19 So what we question is, first, why 

20 not use chest count geometry as well?

21 Why, wonder why only counts from 

22 chest geometry, why were they discarded, if 
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1 they were discarded? Because if they were not, 

2 they should be used with another calibration 

3 factor.

4 And so what we, and there are some, 

5 also some countings that we did not see what, 

6 there was no specification if it was chest 

7 geometry that was used, or if it was 40 cm arc 

8 geometry. And we would like to know what was 

9 done with these, those countings, if there are 

10 discarded or not?

11 So we were questioning the 

12 calibration factor that was used and what was 

13 done with the chest geometry counts because 

14 it’s effective to take it away?

15 We also noted and we are going to 

16 discuss this later, that the intake rate that 

17 was derived for the 1970 to 1974 intake period 

18 was 93.5 dpm per day. While the intake rate 

19 immediately before this period, 1968 to 1969, 

20 was calculated as 1.79 dpm per day.

21 So it's a 50 times increase and we 

22 don't know why this, there is this huge 
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1 difference? Maybe a problem with the 

2 calibration factor, maybe it's not the right 

3 people that were counted. So there are many 

4 hypotheses on that. And we're going to discuss 

5 this a little bit later also.

6 So that's for Finding Number 9. Is 

7 there any question on what I said? Sometimes 

8 I don't get myself understood very well.

9 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. I don't 

10 have any questions, but I can begin a little bit 

11 of response or discussion about this if you'd 

12 like.

13 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay, please.

14 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. And I'm going 

15 to rely on Matt Arno, a little bit here coming 

16 up to give a little better explanation of the 

17 in-vivo counts as to what data we used 

18 associated with this.

19 But just to kind of back up a little 

20 bit, the reason that we, well there's three, 

21 there's two different geometries, three 

22 actually.
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1 Three geometries, you've got the 40 

2 cm arc, and then you've got the chest count 

3 which was done with phoswich detectors.

4 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

5 DR. TAULBEE: This goes up to about 

6 1974. Around 1975, is when we have a stretcher 

7 geometry where a series of sodium iodide 

8 detectors were placed in a concave pattern 

9 underneath the flat stretcher --

10 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

11 DR. TAULBEE: -- to give a kind of 

12 simulated 40 cm arc type of exposure geometry. 

13 And there's different calibration factors for 

14 both of those.

15 We were able to pull those out of the 

16 log, Jim Watson's lab notebook. So that's the 

17 calibration data that we used to do this.

18 And I guess the other point before 

19 I kick off here to Matt, to try and discuss which 

20 data we used -- which I believe to be just the 

21 40 cm arc and the stretcher geometries instead 

22 of the chest count data -- and that is to address 
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1 your comment on the 93.5 dpm from '70 to '74 and 

2 that 50 fold increase.

3 It's not a problem with the 

4 calibration factor, it's the change in 

5 methodology.

6 In the 1960s Savannah River, 

7 according to DPSOL 193-302, that's the Bioassay 

8 Control Procedure, was monitoring folks based 

9 upon urine bioassay for neptunium-237.

10 Since they had not seen any 

11 exposures of neptunium that did not have an 

12 equal amount of plutonium in them, they stopped 

13 doing a large quantity of neptunium bioassay, 

14 or urinalysis for the workers.

15 They went to kind of an incident

16 based monitoring system where if the plutonium 

17 was high, and they were in a neptunium area, 

18 then they would initiate the neptunium 

19 bioassay, which is why you don't have as many 

20 neptunium urinalysis results during that time 

21 period.

22 This changed in 1978 when they went 
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1 back to building 235, more to a routine 

2 neptunium-237 urinalysis program.

3 So that reason for that 50 fold 

4 increase has to do with the change in 

5 monitoring, or the change of the MDA method. 

6 That's the sole reason for it.

7 It's not due to in vivo counting 

8 calibration factors or anything like that. 

9 It's us changing our coworker model from 

10 relying on urine bioassay, to in vivo bioassay.

11 And then when the urine bioassay 

12 kicks in again, 1980, well actually '78 time 

13 period, we could use it there, but we continued 

14 on with in vivo through 1989. So that's the 

15 reason for that big jump that you see.

16 Even the 93.5, again, results in a 

17 very claimant-favorable approach. And we knew 

18 this. And that was illustrated in the 

19 presentation that I gave back on February 5th 

20 when showing the urine bioassay data that we 

21 have.

22 And the in vivo measurements being, 
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1 far exceeding it, but the bases are still 

2 relatively low. So we didn't feel like this 

3 was an unreasonably, or we had sufficient 

4 accuracy with the dose, with the dose estimate.

5 So with that Matt, can you touch on 

6 a little bit of the data that we used in the 

7 coworker model?

8 DR. ARNO: Yes. One of the issue 

9 there, is when we're doing the coworker 

10 modeling, we basically have to for any given 

11 time period, pick one type of data.

12 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

13 DR. ARNO: Either chest count data, 

14 whole body count data, urinalysis data as the 

15 case may be.

16 So in this early 1970s area where we 

17 have both. Some chest count results and whole 

18 body count results that Joyce was talking 

19 about, we can't combine the whole body count 

20 data and the chest count data for doing our 

21 coworker study modeling.

22 We have to pick one or the other. 
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1 And we chose to pick the whole body count data 

2 due to the preponderance of that data, and the 

3 fact that there is more of it to use.

4 As Tim discussed about the MDAs and 

5 the change in the intake rate, through all the 

6 coworker studies that we've done in all the 

7 sites, there's always a strong influence, 

8 there's a strong influence on the intake rate 

9 based on what the MDA is for the measurements.

10 Especially when you're dealing with 

11 data that has a fair amount of sensoring in it.

12 But if you change the MDA of, your 

13 method in terms of determining an intake, it's 

14 going to have a dramatic impact on calculating 

15 our intake rate. And that's what we have in 

16 this case.

17 The urinalysis method is much more 

18 sensitive so when we don't have that data, we 

19 have to rely on something else. The whole body 

20 count in this case.

21 And as Tim said, even though it's a 

22 dramatic increase in the intake rate, it still 
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1 results in doses which are reasonable and 

2 acceptable for the purposes of this project.

3 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay. I 

4 understand that. Just some more questions. 

5 So all the chest results were discarded when you 

6 did the in vivo. Is there any reason why you 

7 preferred the 40 cm instead of the chest?

8 And also on the next period one, 

9 there was the stretcher geometry. I know, I 

10 just looked at a sample of about 80 workers that 

11 we took by random sample. And all of them were 

12 measured using chest geometry instead of the 

13 stretcher geometry.

14 So did you have much more stretcher 

15 geometry than chest geometry, to just discard 

16 the chest geometry data?

17 DR. ARNO: I think some of those 

18 forms get a little bit confusing. Some of 

19 those forms report both whole body count 

20 measurements and chest count measurements on 

21 the same form.

22 Like one of the forms typically has 
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1 the top half of the page is reporting whole body 

2 count results, and then the bottom half of the 

3 page is recording chest count results.

4 So you have to be careful in looking 

5 at some of those forms. And they changed, even 

6 though it's the same basic form, they changed 

7 where on the page and whether or not it said 

8 whole body in one place, or chest count in 

9 another place.

10 But one of our basic reasons was, 

11 there was more whole body count data to use than 

12 chest count data. Especially looking at the 

13 gamma ray energy regions of interest that we 

14 were interested in. 

15 DR. NETON: Matt, this is Jim 

16 Neton, can I say something real quick here? I 

17 think, I don't think that they routinely 

18 quantified neptunium in the chest counts did 

19 they?

20 DR. ARNO: No they did not --

21 DR. LIPSZTEIN: No.

22 DR. ARNO: -- routinely continue 
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1 doing a lot of --

2 DR. NETON: And that's the problem 

3 Joyce, because I think the region that they used 

4 for americium which would have been the closest 

5 regions to the 86 keV P4 neptunium, they only 

6 integrated like between 48 and 68 keV. And so 

7 --

8 DR. LIPSZTEIN: No, Jim. Jim, just, 

9 that's after the 80s, before the 80s they have 

10 iodine-131 and chest. They have everything 

11 and chest.

12 DR. ARNO: One other important 

13 thing to keep in mind is that neptunium is a Type 

14 M material. It clears out of the chest into the 

15 whole body relatively quickly. So it's --

16 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Well, but, you 

17 know, if you measure it just after the worker, 

18 at least chest is a better measurement than the 

19 whole body.

20 DR. ARNO: Joyce --

21 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I don't think I 

22 even question that, I think it's okay. I'm 
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1 just curious why there are so many chest counts, 

2 so many chest monitoring that were not used. 

3 And they have all the regions on the chest on 

4 the earlier countings from 1970 until 1980.

5 They have everything on chest also. 

6 And they have some measurements that are only 

7 chest.

8 DR. ARNO: Okay, chest 

9 measurements are typically looking at the lower 

10 energy photons, and then you're recent memo

11 that came out, I guess last week, talking about 

12 this 86.5 keV photons --

13 DR. LIPSZTEIN: That's after the 

14 80s. Let's talk first before the 80s, after 

15 the 80s is another thing.

16 DR. ARNO: We're talking --

17 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Before the 80s 

18 because it's just that I found so many chest 

19 geometry countings and it's, I don't know.

20 DR. ARNO: I mean you can find over 

21 a hundred, but that's still less than the 

22 several thousand that we're dealing with for 
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1 whole body counts.

2 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay, maybe I'm 

3 just curious because from the '74 to '79 all the 

4 workers that I looked at, they all had chest 

5 geometry, not stretcher. That's, you know, 

6 maybe a coincidence but I got the 80 workers, 

7 and all of them had like that. But --

8 DR. ARNO: Yes, I think --

9 DR. LIPSZTEIN: -- that was --

10 DR. ARNO: -- part of that is the 

11 point I was making earlier, is that they're 

12 reporting chest and whole body counts on the 

13 same form. Like some of those forms will say 

14 chest count on them, but you'll see that they're 

15 reporting results for cesium.

16 Well they're not reporting cesium 

17 in the chest. They're reporting cesium in the 

18 whole body. Both types of data are on the same 

19 form.

20 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I saw --

21 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, if I can follow 

22 on there, Matt and Joyce. If you look at a 
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1 photo of the stretcher geometry, it becomes 

2 pretty clear.

3 We've got one that we've requested 

4 from the site during our recent data captures. 

5 And it shows an individual laying on the 

6 stretcher geometry, with the sodium iodide 

7 detectors beneath them. And then the phoswich 

8 detectors are positioned over top of the 

9 person's chest. So these 2 counts were done 

10 simultaneously.

11 The form may say chest counting, but 

12 as Matt was pointing out there, they're 

13 actually a dual count. With the sodium iodide 

14 being underneath with the whole body count in 

15 that concave shape, as well as the phoswich 

16 detectors positioned over their chest.

17 And they're all reported on the same 

18 form.

19 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay. If you go, 

20 then you, we were discussing after the 80s. 

21 After the 80s, they had, I found just one case 

22 because as I told you, we just looked at the 
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1 sample of the workers.

2 So after the 80s, when you go to the 

3 chromium, use the chromium to detect the 

4 protactinium-233. They had an accident in 

5 which they examined the 86.5 measurement of 

6 neptunium-237.

7 So I was wondering if you, at that 

8 time, when for sure the phoswich detector was 

9 used in the chest. You have both results as you 

10 say at that time. The whole body, the 40 cm 

11 geometry and you have chest count, if you can 

12 use also the 86.5 keV to calculate 

13 neptunium-237?

14 DR. ARNO: If you look at the gamma 

15 ray abundance data. You take the 86.5 keV 

16 gamma from the neptunium, and then any gammas 

17 in that same general area that would come from 

18 the protactinium-233. You wind up with a 

19 summed abundance that is 14 percent.

20 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay.

21 DR. ARNO: And that's on a chest 

22 count. You have to contrast that with our 
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1 whole body counts, have a summed gamma 

2 abundance of, I believe it's about 48 percent. 

3 So you're looking at a --

4 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

5 DR. ARNO: -- difference in your 

6 gamma abundance percentages. And then you 

7 factor into that the type M material going to 

8 clear to the body much quicker than what's going 

9 to remain in the lungs.

10 And you wind up with a whole body 

11 count that you can expect is going to be much 

12 more sensitive than the lung counts.

13 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, but then you 

14 have the prebenoff (phonetic) if you leave them 

15 that you don't have when you calculate 

16 neptunium itself. And it has an almost 12 plus 

17 percent.

18 DR. ARNO: Well regardless of what 

19 adjustments may or may not be need to be made 

20 --

21 DR. LIPSZTEIN: That's what we use 

22 now, is neptunium, right?
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1 DR. ARNO: -- factor of four, five 

2 or six or more that we're going to get by 

3 switching to the chest counts.

4 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, but then you 

5 have prebenoff (phonetic) if you leave them 

6 off, so that you don't have when you're 

7 measuring the neptunium. And if they were 

8 measuring americium, they surely can measure 

9 neptunium.

10 DR. ARNO: We'll also run into the 

11 issue that the americium measurements are going 

12 to be a compounding factor on the neptunium 

13 measurements.

14 Whereas the iodide, the amount of 

15 you know, compounding influence of iodine-131 

16 and the whole body counts is expected to be much 

17 less due the rarity of the workers actually 

18 having significant iodine-131 intake.

19 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, that's the 

20 other question. Why did you use chromium-51 

21 instead of iodine-131 in this?

22 DR. ARNO: When they switched, in 
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1 the 80s they switched to a different reporting 

2 style and they switched the energy ranges that 

3 they were attributing to given radionuclides. 

4 The chromium-51 labeled region of interest 

5 overlapped the region of protactinium-233 

6 gammas where located.

7 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay.

8 DR. ARNO: A change in how SRS 

9 reported in their delineation of the regions of 

10 interest.

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay. I still 

12 think that maybe the neptunium would be better, 

13 like we do now. Nowadays we use neptunium-237 

14 because they don't know they can leave them off 

15 neptunium and protactinium, but --

16 DR. ARNO: Ideally that would be 

17 good, but it's very hard to do what we can do 

18 these days, with you know, germanium detectors 

19 that have very good resolution and sensitivity, 

20 and apply those same techniques to historical 

21 data gathered with sodium iodides that we --

22 DR. LIPSZTEIN: No, yes, but --
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1 DR. ARNO: -- play with.

2 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Anyway, the 

3 phoswich I think is -- and going back to that 

4 difference in the urine. I saw from one of your 

5 slides, I was also not in the other meeting.

6 I saw in one of those slides, I'm 

7 going to Finding 18 and 19 when we are comparing 

8 the drop from, when it goes, you have the 50th 

9 percentile intake rates for neptunium for '68 

10 to '69 was 1.79 dpm per day.

11 And it increased 50 times from, in 

12 1970 to 1974 it was 93.5. I agree with you 

13 that's the difference between the two methods. 

14 I agree with it, and I know it is because of 

15 this.

16 But as the method that was used is 

17 not a typical method to have the neptunium 

18 activity in the body. And you have for some 

19 period of time, you have many urine data after 

20 '69.

21 In the 80s you have urine data. 

22 Several years you have a lot of urine data. Can 
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1 you do a comparison what you would have for 

2 those years, what you got with the whole body 

3 counter?

4 Because we see urine, we know it's 

5 neptunium. But with the whole body counter, we 

6 never know if it is neptunium or another nuclide 

7 and also we have the problem of equilibrium with 

8 protactinium.

9 It's just three years you have a lot 

10 of counts with, that you have a lot of urine 

11 data. Can you compare them to know how fair we 

12 are with this method, with urine data?

13 DR. ARNO: We have done that 

14 comparison and that was, Tim Taulbee presented 

15 a plot in the February 5th meeting showing that 

16 comparison.

17 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, that was only, 

18 that was claimant-favorable. I want to know, 

19 because I mean 50 times to be 

20 claimant-favorable is for me --

21 (Simultaneous speaking.)

22 DR. LIPSZTEIN: -- is okay, it's 
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1 claimant-favorable. I don't know if it is 

2 scientifically correct. So I wanted to know 

3 when you have the same year, if you can compare 

4 those? Give SC&A the data, not just say it's 

5 claimant-favorable, so that we know how we 

6 stand on?

7 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim, Joyce. 

8 If I'm understanding what you're asking here, 

9 is that we take the neptunium data that we have 

10 and we compare that to that person's in vivo 

11 data? Is that correct?

12 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes. It's just 

13 three years that you have a lot of urine counts 

14 and you have whole body counts at the same time.

15 And I saw in your presentation, you 

16 probably have this data ready because it said 

17 it's claimant-favorable. I want to know how 

18 claimant-favorable it is?

19 What's the difference between the 

20 two? So that we can see where we stand for.

21 DR. ARNO: We'd obviously have to 

22 run those calculations. But in the late 60s,
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1 when we switched from urinalysis to whole body 

2 counts, the factor of 50 jump in the calculated 

3 intake rate.

4 But when we get into the 80s, and 

5 when we transitioned from the 80s to the 90s, 

6 the change in the intake rate is only about 10 

7 percent.

8 So we're looking at a much lower you 

9 know, overestimate if you will, in the 80s 

10 compared to what we would -- if we had enough 

11 data to do that.

12 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I understand, no. 

13 That's not what I'm talking. For example, in 

14 '84 you had a lot of urine samples, what I'm 

15 seeing from the, from your, from the slides. 

16 And in '82 also there are a lot of samples, and 

17 in 1980 you also have a lot of urine samples.

18 So if you take those three years, 

19 give what would be, what was the intake based 

20 on those on the urine data, 1980, 1982, and 

21 1984, and compare it with the intake rate that 

22 you derived from in vivo.
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1 Because then you have the same year, 

2 and then you can, and you know that urine 

3 samples is neptunium, and you want to compare 

4 it to, with the whole body, so we can say, oh 

5 it's 10 times, it's two times, it's only so we 

6 know where we stand for.

7 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. This is 

8 something we can certainly do. It's going to 

9 require us to do some calculations, but we can 

10 do that.

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay, great. 

12 Because I don't have the data, so I can't do it. 

13 I don't have the urine data.

14 DR. NETON: Hey, Tim. This is Jim. 

15 Isn't there a potentially better way to do this, 

16 using the plutonium to neptunium ratio that 

17 you've established?

18 DR. TAULBEE: Well that is another 

19 issue, Jim. But let me finish this right here 

20 with Joyce, and then I'll address yours.

21 DR. NETON: Hey, Tim could you turn 

22 up your phone a little? Because I'm having 
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1 trouble hearing you.

2 DR. TAULBEE: I'm sorry. Is this 

3 better?

4 DR. NETON: That's better.

5 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. I just moved 

6 it closer to me, that's all.

7 If you look at that chart that I put 

8 up, Joyce, from my presentation, of the 

9 neptunium urine data.

10 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

11 DR. TAULBEE: There’s -- it's going 

12 to be this difference in comparison. It's not 

13 comparing the intake. It's actually just 

14 comparing the urine data.

15 What we did here, or what Matt did, 

16 was he calculated based upon the in vivo 

17 takes, the intakes. What the urine 

18 concentration would be for a worker in those 

19 time periods?

20 Those are the red dots on that 

21 particular plot. The bar charts are the actual 

22 urine data that we have, and the, box plots 
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1 rather, I'm sorry.

2 And if you look at it in the time 

3 periods you're talking about, 1980, 1982, and 

4 1985. You'll see that the, our, with the 

5 exception of 1980, always above the 75th 

6 percentile of the data. The actual urine data 

7 that we have.

8 Now we can compare the intakes to 

9 give you the field that you're talking about. 

10 This factor, I mean on this plot of the urine 

11 data based upon the in vivo data, in vivo, and 

12 the actual urine data that we've got samples 

13 for.

14 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, but then we 

15 know where we stand at those times.

16 MR. BARTON: This is Bob Barton. 

17 Can I ask you a clarifying question here? Do 

18 we have a feel for how many of these urine 

19 samples of people who were actually monitored 

20 via urinalysis for neptunium, that would also 

21 be included in the in vivo records that are 

22 being proposed to use to reconstruct neptunium?
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1 Because that might be a more direct 

2 comparison. I think maybe what was done is we 

3 looked at it by year. And grouped the samples 

4 together, and put it to a distribution like is 

5 normally done.

6 But you get better information if 

7 you can actually look at individual workers, 

8 and say well they got monitored both methods.

9 And if we were going to reconstruct 

10 their doses using both methods, you know, how 

11 do they stack up with one another? I don't know 

12 how possible that is.

13 If we have a feel for how much 

14 overlap there might be? And if that, that type 

15 of comparison to me is a little more helpful 

16 because you're looking at individual workers 

17 who if they submitted urinalysis samples they 

18 probably were exposed.

19 So let's take a look and see based 

20 on their records, their in vivo records, and the 

21 urinalysis through to calculate their intakes 

22 both ways. How does that compare? So I guess 
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1 I'd pose the question, is that even a 

2 possibility?

3 DR. TAULBEE: Yes that is a 

4 possibility. The only difficulty is on the 

5 current NOCTS data, we have so few claims.

6 Where if we could do this on a few number of 

7 workers?

8 We could do it for everybody that we 

9 have it for, that's possible. But a lot of the, 

10 or some of the neptunium data that we got came 

11 out of logbooks and from other sources, where 

12 we don't necessarily have an in vivo count 

13 associated with them.

14 Without going back to the site to 

15 get more data, which is of course possible but 

16 much more time consuming and a much longer time 

17 period.

18 MR. BARTON: I understand, so the 

19 urinalysis data covers more than just the 

20 claimant population. Whereas the in vivo data 

21 is strictly for the claimant population that we 

22 have. I understand that.
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1 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Correct Matt, 

2 correct?

3 DR. NETON: Right.

4 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I'm curious about 

5 Jim's question now.

6 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, one of things 

7 that I indicated during our February 5th 

8 meeting, was that there's, the site was using 

9 plutonium as the basis.

10 Kind of for their monitoring to 

11 cause the additional neptunium monitoring 

12 during this time period of 19, I think it's 

13 about 1970 through 1978.

14 And this is based upon the 

15 contaminant of plutonium-238 in the neptunium. 

16 And so that is another method of estimating this 

17 particular dose. Is to use a ratio off of that 

18 methodology.

19 Chose not to use that because at the 

20 time, we didn't have complete data, 

21 contamination ratio. And in fact today we've 

22 seen the data, we've requested the data, but we 
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1 still don't have it in house.

2 Something else that we could 

3 compare, to give you all a feel of what the, I 

4 guess what the neptunium exposures would be, 

5 would be to look at the plutonium and go off with 

6 that ratio.

7 And the, I guess the true measure in 

8 that time period, the early 1970s where we don't 

9 have a lot of neptunium bioassay data. Does 

10 that answer your question, Jim?

11 DR. NETON: Yes. Yes, I think it 

12 does. I mean if I recall correctly, the 

13 plutonium was much more predominant in the mix 

14 than the neptunium, right? I mean even under 

15 some very conservative circumstances.

16 That would be one way of bounding 

17 these exposures using, you know, the urine data 

18 developed, not relying on the in vivo count.

19 I think what we have here, is we've 

20 got a couple approaches. And I don't hear 

21 anyone really arguing that none of these 

22 approaches are valid. I think we're kind of 
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1 arguing about technical details here.

2 It almost seems to me that this 

3 problem's more of Site Profile issue than an SEC 

4 issue, but that's just my impression, unless 

5 you appear to have another thought.

6 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, I have 

7 problems also with using the protactinium to 

8 measure the activity of neptunium. I'm well 

9 aware that it's used, but you have to have 

10 neptunium in equilibrium with protactinium.

11 And we don't know about it. And I 

12 don't think NIOSH comment on this was 

13 appropriate because it was saying about making 

14 assumption of, on the time pattern of intake. 

15 About assuming a chronic intake during a period 

16 of time.

17 I think this doesn't have anything 

18 to do with the time of the measurement and the 

19 equilibrium between neptunium to 

20 protactinium-233 proportion.

21 The proportion of protactinium-233 

22 to neptunium-237 is only at the time of the 
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1 measurement. Is only related to the age of the 

2 neptunium first, and also on how long after the 

3 exposure the worker was monitored. So how much 

4 has decayed inside the body also.

5 Doesn't have anything to do with 

6 assumption about the intake model that was done 

7 after you have the 50 percent, the 84th 

8 percentile, the 95th percentile of the log 

9 normal distribution of the in-vivo data of all 

10 workers.

11 It has to do with what was the 

12 proportion at the time of the measurements. So 

13 this an uncertain effect. And also I was not 

14 happy with NIOSH response that a GSD of three,

15 or over three would resolve everything.

16 No, the GSD of three or more than 

17 three, has to do with the log normal 

18 distribution of all the workers. Nothing to do 

19 with individual measurements that is one point 

20 in the log-normal distribution.

21 So one thing is the time of the 

22 measurement, and the measurement you get for 
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1 one person. And the other thing is the 

2 coworker distribution that has to do with the 

3 log-normal distribution of all the results of 

4 the workers.

5 So I think the proportion of 

6 protactinium-233 to neptunium-237 is also an 

7 important point to consider when you have the 

8 measurements.

9 DR. ARNO: The ratio is important, 

10 but it's also important to keep in mind you do 

11 have to maintain a consistent set of 

12 assumptions.

13 You cannot completely segregate the 

14 methodology used to determine equilibrium for 

15 the whole body count. And then the methodology 

16 to do the intake modeling.

17 The intake modeling is based off of 

18 a chronic intake which is used as a surrogate 

19 for either, A, an actual chronic intake, or B, 

20 a series of relatively small acute intake, 

21 which is another valid and common exposure 

22 scenario.
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1 We will never know the length of 

2 time between an intake or the point of 

3 measurement --

4 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I'm not --

5 DR. ARNO: -- regardless of chronic 

6 intake, or the age of the neptunium to which the 

7 person was exposed. And even if we know the age 

8 of the cans the person was working with, the 

9 contamination in the lab or along the line, may 

10 be from previous runs.

11 You will never know that 

12 information.

13 DR. LIPSZTEIN: So that's a big 

14 point, because if you never know this 

15 information, it might have been monitoring 

16 someone that was exposed to fresh 

17 neptunium-237. And so the protactinium won’t 

18 reflect what was the neptunium exposure.

19 DR. ARNO: Even if you can never 

20 know the precise number for a specific 

21 measurement, it is possible to make some 

22 reasonable assumptions about what people would 
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1 be exposed to. There was a known minimum decay 

2 time between when the neptunium was purified 

3 and when the work was done on it.

4 In the context of a chronic intake, 

5 and knowledge about how often people were whole 

6 body counted you can make reasonable 

7 assumptions, especially in the context of the 

8 assumption of a chronic intake.

9 You're thinking about a huge --

10 DR. LIPSZTEIN: No, no. I think 

11 you are mixing one thing with the other. 

12 Forget the chronic intake. So that, the intake 

13 is calculated for the 50th percentile count, or 

14 with monitoring results from the whole 

15 population of workers in that year.

16 I'm talking about each measurement 

17 that is a point in that log-normal 

18 distribution. Each measurement if you have 

19 one worker, he is measured. He was exposed to 

20 freshly monitored neptunium. You are 

21 underestimating the neptunium content in the 

22 body.
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1 So you have, it is at the time of the 

2 measurement. Nothing to do with intake 

3 assumptions. It's the amount of neptunium at 

4 the time of the measurement that you are 

5 measuring for protactinium.

6 So if you have many workers exposed 

7 to freshly neptunium-237 with no protactinium 

8 in it, you are underestimating the neptunium 

9 quantity in the body.

10 MR. BARTON: If I could just add on 

11 to what Joyce just said. This is Bob Barton. 

12 I think you know, as you said Tim, you know at 

13 some point you just don't have the information 

14 to do it perfectly.

15 I mean we'd all like to, but I think 

16 what Joyce is saying is the assumption on 

17 equilibrium we're essentially, the assumptions 

18 that have been laid out according to it being 

19 in equilibrium at the time of the measurement.

20 Now we know that's it's probably 

21 somewhere in between the freshly separated, and 

22 in equilibrium between the Pa-233 and 
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1 neptunium.

2 So I guess, you know, where I come 

3 out on this is you sort of stated your 

4 assumptions in the response. You know, you 

5 said usually there was a 25 day period before 

6 irradiated, you know, billets were actually 

7 handled and processed.

8 And then you provided some rational 

9 then, well you know, a lot of the exposure would 

10 come from the, you know, contamination in the 

11 plant.

12 I guess we would kind of like to see 

13 that substantiated a little bit more. I mean, 

14 you know, it sounds fairly reasonable. But you 

15 know, you stated that it's 25 days, but then 25

16 days doesn't bring you to equilibrium.

17 So you know, I guess we'd like to see 

18 that rationale flesh out a little bit more with 

19 some actual sited references. And steps to 

20 really build the case that, you know, since we 

21 don't know, equilibrium is going to be the best 

22 answer versus some other adjustment factor.
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1 DR. ARNO: The problem here is 

2 assuming that this is a measurement made after 

3 an acute intake. Our coworker intake model for 

4 calculating the intake has to be consistent 

5 with how we interpret the bioassay data for 

6 determining the log-normal distributions.

7 And that is based off of a chronic 

8 intake. And we were assuming that the bioassay 

9 measurement is midway in that chronic intake.

10 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, but the --

11 DR. ARNO: We need to keep status --

12 (Simultaneous speaking.)

13 DR. NETON: This is Jim --

14 DR. ARNO: -- consistent, if you 

15 don't you're invalidating the way you're doing 

16 the analysis.

17 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Not, I --

18 DR. MAKHIJANI: That's exactly why 

19 --

20 DR. ARNO: Come on in.

21 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. 

22 Could I say something? This is Arjun.
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1 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

2 MR. BARTON: Actually, I think Jim 

3 was trying to say something first.

4 DR. NETON: Yes, let me just, I was, 

5 can I suggest that, you know we have that 

6 plutonium ratio data now. Could we not use 

7 that to sort of validate some of, not validate 

8 but evaluate the appropriateness of the whole 

9 body counts?

10 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Would be great if 

11 you'd do it.

12 DR. NETON: I don't know, you know, 

13 because we know this is a maximum or 

14 conservative ratio and then you do a, you look 

15 at a whole body count and you say is that 

16 consistent with what we, you know, with what 

17 we're assigning. Because many of them are 

18 going to be based on MDA.

19 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

20 DR. NETON: But we know, no, 

21 protactinium there at all. Is that a 

22 possibility Tim, or am I off base?
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1 DR. TAULBEE: No, I think it is a 

2 possibility. We haven't done that yet because 

3 I don't have the, all of the ratio data yet. 

4 But we can certainly do that.

5 DR. NETON: I think that we need to 

6 go back and we have this ratio data which can 

7 do a lot for us. I think we need to, I would 

8 say that NIOSH probably needs to go back and 

9 look at that.

10 And it can either bolster some of 

11 these issues, or supplant some of them in 

12 certain situations. So I think it's not going 

13 to be fruitful here to debate whether 

14 protactinium is in equilibrium or not at this 

15 point.

16 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

17 DR. NETON: So I think -- 

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Just to reaffirm 

19 that, I think what you're saying is basically 

20 it can be used to both, either validate the 

21 current approach or supplant it, if it turns out 

22 that there's some issues. 
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1 Certainly it offers a more data 

2 based --

3 DR. NETON: Right.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: -- way of doing the 

5 estimate.

6 DR. NETON: Exactly and Tim pointed 

7 out correctly. We didn't have this data until 

8 a while ago. And we still don't even have them 

9 physically.

10 We became aware of them and I think 

11 there's a lot that can be done with this to 

12 address the issues that are being raised here, 

13 in my opinion.

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: Could I say a 

15 couple of things? This is Arjun.

16 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sure 

17 Arjun, go ahead.

18 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, just two 

19 things. In regard to the equilibrium 

20 question, I think in real life there's going to 

21 be a distribution of, you know, protactinium in 

22 relation to neptunium, from fresh to fully in 
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1 equilibrium.

2 And we don't know that distribution 

3 until you establish what kind of activity has 

4 happened, which is going to be quite hard.

5 I mean actually to, in relation to 

6 the time of measurement and the time of exposure 

7 and so on. So that's, I think that's a very 

8 important thing. So, because it makes a lot of 

9 difference to what dose you come up with.

10 And regarding the point that was 

11 just being made, with plutonium and neptunium 

12 ratios, I think we do have to establish the dose 

13 enough, plutonium contamination in all the 

14 exposure situations, or essentially the major 

15 exposure situations at least.

16 That we weren't dealing with near 

17 pure neptunium targets as they were being 

18 fabricated. And to exclude the idea that there 

19 was something close to pure plutonium, that we 

20 have the necessary ratios.

21 I know the difference in, there's a 

22 big difference in half-life and specific 
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1 activity but still we do need to establish the 

2 purity of neptunium and it was not dominant in 

3 some situations.

4 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim, and this 

5 comes from that data that Joe looked at, at the 

6 same time we were capturing it there in the 

7 vaults.

8 Where we have virtually month by 

9 month contamination, plutonium contamination 

10 measurement values for both the HB line and then 

11 the oxide coming out the other end, which is 

12 effectively purified, cleaned up more than what 

13 coming off the frames in the canyon.

14 We had both ratios of data available 

15 to us and so I think that's pretty well 

16 established that plutonium is a significant 

17 component of this exposure throughout the 

18 monitoring time period.

19 (Simultaneous speaking.)

20 DR. TAULBEE: I'm sorry, whoever 

21 spoke after me.

22 (Simultaneous speaking.)
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1 DR. NETON: Yes, this is Jim. I 

2 mean that's why they decided to stop monitoring 

3 for neptunium in the first place. Because they 

4 realized that the neptunium was a better 

5 indicator of intake than the, that the 

6 plutonium was a better indicator of intake than 

7 the neptunium.

8 I think we'll proceed. And I'd 

9 like to proceed, as I suggested and that we go 

10 back and take a look at that and see what the 

11 path forward is for either validating, 

12 verifying, or supplanting using some of this 

13 plutonium data that we have.

14 It makes a lot of sense, to me I 

15 mean, to me it's a good source of information 

16 that we could take advantage of.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: And for reference 

18 sake Arjun, this is in the, and correct me if 

19 I'm wrong Jim, it's in the Works Technical 

20 Reports. The monthly reports that were 

21 generated up through the 80s I believe.

22 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct. We 
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1 only, I believe, we only have data in those 

2 reports up through 1983 possibly 1984, but 

3 that's 1984 is when they stopped manufacturing 

4 the neptunium targets. So they kind of end 

5 about the same time.

6 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So first 

7 of all, Ted, I don't know whose taking minutes 

8 on this because I have no access to this, but 

9 it sounds like NIOSH is going to go back and 

10 according to Jim, and we're going to use the 

11 plutonium ratio, to be able to look at this, is 

12 that correct, Jim?

13 DR. NETON: Well Brad, I think 

14 we're going to look at that and see how that 

15 might play out for us. I'm not saying we're 

16 going to fully use plutonium ratios but we're 

17 going to see what use we can make of it, under 

18 what scenarios.

19 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And I 

20 understand. But personally, thanks everybody 

21 for giving me a headache right off the bat, at 

22 the beginning of trying to follow this, but that 
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1 sounds good to me.

2 But I do have one question and that 

3 was back on the Findings, well 1 through 9. One 

4 of my questions was, and I understood in there 

5 that there was an americium difference back and 

6 forth.

7 But that we couldn't, I got from it, 

8 that we could not tell what kind of, if it was 

9 a chest count or if it was a genomic issue? 

10 Because they were both reported on the same 

11 form.

12 And the only way we'd be able to know 

13 what type of process, what they were looking for 

14 is by looking at what they were, the detector, 

15 or what they were looking for? I didn't 

16 understand that.

17 I thought and maybe I'm just 

18 misunderstanding this. But I thought that I 

19 heard NIOSH responding that the only way, they 

20 were both on the same form.

21 And you'd have to look at what they 

22 were, the radionuclide they were looking for to 
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1 be able to determine what, if they were doing 

2 it in a genomic, well what, is that correct?

3 I was trying to, we kind of jumped 

4 into 18 and 19, and I just wanted to clarify this 

5 back on 1 through 9. Is this correct? That 

6 when they were doing these --

7 DR. TAULBEE: I'll --

8 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Go 

9 ahead, Tim, I'm sorry.

10 DR. TAULBEE: I'll take a stab at 

11 that. From 1974 through the 1980s there was a 

12 dual count that was conducted when the person 

13 was laying on the stretcher.

14 There was a phoswich detector over 

15 top of their chest, and then there's a series 

16 of sodium iodide detectors underneath their 

17 body. As they were laying on this bed, this 

18 stretcher bed.

19 And the results are reported on the 

20 same form, for both the phoswich, which is 

21 considered a chest count. And for the whole 

22 body count, which is the remainder of the body 
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1 from the sodium iodides underneath them.

2 When you look at the form, you can 

3 look at the top part, and you can tell that these 

4 are off of the stretcher geometry.

5 And then at the bottom you'll see 

6 where it says chest count, and you'll see where 

7 they're given the x-rays for plutonium, for 

8 americium and enriched uranium at times.

9 Those are the chest counts coming 

10 from the phoswich detectors. So when you look 

11 at the form as a whole, you can see both counts 

12 on them. Does that help, Brad?

13 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, but 

14 sometimes, it's only chest. And sometimes 

15 it's only whole body.

16 DR. TAULBEE: That --

17 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Sometimes it's 

18 only chest.

19 DR. TAULBEE: Is that post-1975? 

20 Is that, because I'm thinking that's pre-1975?

21 DR. LIPSZTEIN: There are some

22 post-1974 too, but many are between '70 and '74, 
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1 but many after '74 until the 80s. And then on 

2 the 80s then you have both on the same.

3 DR. TAULBEE: Now --

4 DR. LIPSZTEIN: After the 80s then 

5 you have both, always. Before the 80s 

6 sometimes you have just chest, but as I 

7 understood you are not considering the ones 

8 that are only chest. Right?

9 DR. TAULBEE: That is correct. 

10 You know, looking at the different forms here. 

11 The, let's see, that, okay a 1978 one here. 

12 Okay, you know, as Matt was discussing, well now 

13 even the 1978 here, there is both chest and the 

14 whole body.

15 And then the 1980 form here, I'm 

16 looking at an example, it's both chest and whole 

17 body. They're there. They're not labeled 

18 explicitly, but if you look at the channels, the 

19 regions of interest, the channel count data, I 

20 guess the channel numbers in a sense, you can 

21 tell whether it's chest or whether it's whole 

22 body.
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1 Well we have a report or well it was 

2 an internal document that was written that kind 

3 of goes through each of these different forms 

4 and explains the different regions of interest. 

5 And how we calculate the activities.

6 I think I guess we could form, turn 

7 this into a report, if this would help you all 

8 understand the data that we're using here. We 

9 could certainly do that.

10 MR. BARTON: This is Bob Barton, 

11 you just kind of mentioned a form, I think where 

12 Joyce's observations are coming from, were 

13 actual, the actual claimant files. So --

14 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

15 MR. BARTON: -- I don't know. I 

16 don't know if this is a possibility that maybe 

17 you know, they use the same form, but they 

18 didn't always fill out you know the counts in 

19 each, because maybe they weren't doing both 

20 style counting at the same time in every case.

21 Or you know, I mean if it's, I guess 

22 I need clarification was it a standard form you 
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1 were just referring to? Or I mean are you 

2 looking at actual applications of that form as 

3 they appear in the claimant files?

4 DR. TAULBEE: These are the forms 

5 as they appear in the claimant files. Looking 

6 at post-1975, it's always an electronic 

7 printout.

8 Now sometimes they've written on 

9 the electronic printout, but the printout will 

10 have channel data associated with it. If you 

11 read the form, the printout, I'm sorry.

12 But prior to 1975 there is more hand 

13 written forms and what you'll see in the NOCTS 

14 files is you'll see one page, it'll say whole 

15 body counted data, and the next page it might 

16 say chest counted data.

17 In reality, that chest data is on 

18 the back of that whole body count data form.

19 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I agree with that, 

20 I saw all of this, but I also saw many reports 

21 that were written chest, and some '74, '79 

22 especially. There was, most of the forms I 
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1 took the data from NOCTS, from claimant files.

2 And it was like as I said, was a 

3 random number of workers that I looked at. 

4 What called the attention to me, is that all of 

5 the ones that I looked were written chest on 

6 them.

7 So it was not theoretical, but I 

8 think that we are reaching an agreement that you 

9 were going to look at this data as compared to 

10 the plutonium, right?

11 DR. TAULBEE: Yes. Could you send 

12 me the list of those claimant files that you 

13 looked at? And we can certainly take a look at 

14 it and then, and instead of trying to talk in 

15 the abstract here, we can actually?

16 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay, I'll do it.

17 DR. TAULBEE: I'll appreciate it.

18 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I'll put it on the 

19 O: drive, okay?

20 DR. TAULBEE: I'm not sure I have 

21 access to your O: drive.

22 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Oh, okay, I'm 
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1 sorry. Okay, I'll see which people of SC&A 

2 that you get it.

3 MR. KATZ: Tim, you have access, 

4 it's your O: drive. So you have access to 

5 everything SC&A has.

6 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Does this 

7 appear under the Advisory Board, Radiation 

8 Worker Health Directory?

9 MR. KATZ: Tim, that's where I 

10 think she'll put it.

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

12 DR. TAULBEE: If you put there 

13 under the Savannah River Site SEC, then I should 

14 be able to find it.

15 MR. BARTON: Could I ask an 

16 overarching question because I agree with 

17 Joyce. I think Jim Neton has given us a really 

18 promising path forward with the plutonium ratio 

19 comparison.

20 And I pose this question, if you 

21 had, had this data that was just recently 

22 captured prior to formulating the current 
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1 coworker model, I mean would you have used that 

2 plutonium ratio data instead?

3 I mean do you feel it's a more viable 

4 and scientifically defensible way to go than 

5 what was currently proposed?

6 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, I do.

7 MR. BARTON: Well then, so we 

8 actually do --

9 (Simultaneous speaking.)

10 DR. NETON: That's why I'm 

11 suggesting we go back and look at this and see 

12 to what extent it's useful. And it may be the 

13 best set of data that we could use.

14 MR. BARTON: Okay, and then so then 

15 I think that's really the path forward, and but 

16 I would just reiterate Arjun's caution that we 

17 need to make sure that when we're looking at 

18 these ratios, that these ratios do capture 

19 situations where maybe the neptunium is a 

20 little purer, and there might not be as much 

21 plutonium there.

22 And it sounds like Tim said, that, 
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1 that's definitely the case. That we have that 

2 data, it's solid, it's going to be 

3 representative of all the situations we need to 

4 cover.

5 And so I would say, you know, be 

6 explicit when you guys do that analysis. But 

7 listen, these really are the bounding ratios, 

8 and you know, when we look at these bounding 

9 ratios we look at this coworker model, you know, 

10 however it pans out.

11 But I think we need to keep focused 

12 on that we're not missing any situations where 

13 there isn't that plutonium ratio data where 

14 there could be a significant exposure to 

15 neptunium.

16 So I would only caution that, but it 

17 sounds like a really good plan to me.

18 DR. TAULBEE: Now let me throw out 

19 a little bit of a caution on that, because some 

20 of those values of the plutonium ratio are less 

21 than. Where the plutonium contamination was 

22 less than .05 for example.
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1 So you know, that would be the 

2 average for example and they give a minimum and 

3 a maximum, and we have an estimate of the number 

4 of samples.

5 So it's not that every single one 

6 there is, you know, the average is showing that, 

7 you know, the plutonium contamination is .1 or 

8 something like that.

9 There are months, especially you 

10 get into the later 70s, where that ratio does 

11 begin to decrease a bit. And so it goes into 

12 a non, I don't want to say non-detectable type 

13 of scenario, but the values that they're 

14 reporting were a less than value.

15 So it does play a little bit back 

16 into you know, what Arjun was mentioning of 

17 dealing with really pure neptunium if you will, 

18 and that was our whole, one of our main reasons 

19 for going with the whole body count initially 

20 early on. Was we didn't know how that value 

21 changed over time.

22 Right now I just have a general feel
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1 of how it changed, based upon looking at the 

2 reports, and the data that we captured.

3 But we don't have that data in hand 

4 to actually have the analysis and to be able to 

5 trend it and see what is actually happening with 

6 it.

7 But I do agree this is the way I 

8 would, if we had the data early on, we would have 

9 gone down that path of the plutonium 

10 contamination methodology. And as I clearly 

11 was monitoring based upon plutonium because 

12 they felt that, that was the most accurate as 

13 well.

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. 

15 Can you hear me?

16 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

17 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

18 DR. MAKHIJANI: One thing for this 

19 less than, if you have a positive neptunium 

20 result above the MDA, and less than plutonium 

21 results. This is going to be a big 

22 methodological problem.
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1 Of course if most of the 

2 measurements are positive for both, then you 

3 don't have a big problem. But if you have many 

4 measurements of plutonium, less than and 

5 neptunium less than.

6 Or plutonium less than and

7 neptunium positive, this of course would not 

8 allow us, you know, would create difficulties. 

9 I just want to put that on the record.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, you're correct 

11 there, Arjun. The scenario where this falls 

12 apart is where you have a positive neptunium and 

13 a negative plutonium. And we do recognize 

14 that.

15 I have not seen that, I'm not saying 

16 it doesn't exist, but that's not something that 

17 I've seen yet.

18 And from the cases where I've seen 

19 people having exposure, neptunium exposure 

20 where they had a nasal smear that came up 

21 positive and they did follow up bioassay, then 

22 the cases, the case that I was looking at 
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1 yesterday for example, the plutonium was on the 

2 order of like 5 dpm and the neptunium was 

3 non-detected.

4 So you know, that plays into the 

5 opposite role of where this plutonium 

6 methodology works and is far more sensitive.

7 DR. MAKHIJANI: Right, I just want 

8 to yes, I just want to raise that flag and then 

9 we'll, you know, I'm not disagreeing with 

10 anything that's being said in terms of going 

11 ahead. And John, you can put me on mute.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Jim, Joe. What, 

13 I know this data was collected last fall. Is 

14 there any sense of when it might be available?

15 DR. TAULBEE: I had conversation 

16 with Savannah River yesterday about this to try 

17 and get that data. Because they have not, our 

18 notes from our classified vault visit, they 

19 haven't even begun reviewing MD2 funding 

20 issues.

21 I'm currently trying to get those 

22 bumped up from a priority standpoint to where 
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1 they will release some funds to the 

2 classification reviewers, so that they can 

3 review them, and we can get the data, at least 

4 from that standpoint.

5 I'm hoping in the next few weeks 

6 that we can actually get the data in-house from 

7 our notes. Which is where we extracted all 

8 that data, Joe, if you recall?

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

10 DR. TAULBEE: So that's what I'm 

11 hoping for right now.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: All right. 

13 Thanks.

14 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, I 

15 guess I'd like somebody to, Joe, possibly you 

16 can help me out, let's just summarize our paths 

17 forward on this so that we understand what we're 

18 doing.

19 I'm, Jim, I appreciate what you've 

20 put out there because I personally think that 

21 will help a lot too. But we also need to get, 

22 we need to get this data in hand so that the 
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1 people evaluating this can be seeing the same 

2 information, that all of will be seeing the same 

3 stuff.

4 So what's the path forward on this, 

5 Joe? And Jim, I guess, or Tim.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think you 

7 know, Joyce and Matt and everyone else has 

8 certainly identified some of the questions that 

9 we're having relative to validating the in vivo 

10 versus the bioassay.

11 And I think what Jim has offered is 

12 a pathway which would be much more, perhaps 

13 efficient, than going back and you know, doing 

14 some de novo analyses between the urine and the 

15 in vivo, going a little bit further into 

16 individual data comparisons.

17 And in this case, as Tim noted, we 

18 collected or observed a lot of very specific 

19 Pu/neptunium ratio data that's in the monthly 

20 technical reports.

21 So assuming that data will be 

22 available I think that would be the comparison 
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1 that would be most useful to do at this point. 

2 And I think I like the perspective that once 

3 that data is available it can be used to do the 

4 kind of validation we're talking about, much 

5 more readily and credibly.

6 And if that validation demonstrates 

7 that the approach falls short, then I think 

8 what Tim and Jim have said is it would offer an 

9 alternative methodology that would be in fact 

10 more advantageous in modeling respects than the 

11 one that had been used from a couple years back.

12 So this is responsive I think. And 

13 maybe Joyce can help me. I think we've kind of 

14 bridged between several findings in the 

15 neptunium arena, you know, 9, 10 and 11 at 

16 least. Maybe even further.

17 And this would offer some of the 

18 validation that we lack and that we're raising 

19 questions about relative to the current 

20 approach for using the in vivo, in vitro, the 

21 different methodologies and how they compare.

22 Joyce, I know you covered a lot of 
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1 ground. Is this path responsive to at least 

2 the issues in 9, 10, 11? I know we kind of moved 

3 forward along that line.

4 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, I do. I think 

5 it goes, I think all the issues that I had, it 

6 covers it.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: All right. So 

8 Brad, I think this would be the path forward, 

9 and the action. We, SC&A as Joyce offered 

10 would put the sampling that she did on the 

11 individual claimant files up on the O: drive for 

12 Tim and his crew.

13 And NIOSH would await receiving the 

14 ratio information from Savannah River, at which 

15 point they would, as I understand it, would 

16 assess, you know, what would be appropriate in 

17 terms of analyses. And then would go forward.

18 And I don't know Brad, whether the 

19 Work Group would want some kind of indication 

20 from NIOSH at that point, what that decision 

21 would be?

22 In other words now that the data is 
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1 available and they have a chance to look at it, 

2 what specific they would do in terms of an 

3 analysis of some sort?

4 With the Board meeting coming up, 

5 that might be a useful, you know, feedback, 

6 given the fact that the analysis itself might 

7 take some time.

8 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. 

9 I'd just like to say one more thing. That the 

10 issue that we've discussed today relate to the 

11 procedure for dose reconstruction. Basically 

12 using all worker data, mostly non-construction 

13 worker data.

14 And but you know, we've also raised 

15 a number of issues regarding whether than can 

16 be used for construction workers, that are 

17 quite separate than this. And still need to be 

18 resolved.

19 DR. TAULBEE: And along those 

20 lines, this is Tim. And along those lines on 

21 this, we're you know, been using the plutonium 

22 data we have a lot more plutonium data for 
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1 construction trades workers than we have 

2 neptunium data for them. So yes --

3 DR. MAKHIJANI: Maybe this will 

4 address that, Tim. I just wanted to remind 

5 people that, yes, both those issues do need to 

6 be taken into account also before this can be 

7 resolved.

8 DR. TAULBEE: And well I do have one 

9 other thing I'd, just, I had two tasks listed 

10 down for us. So one is to develop a model based 

11 upon the plutonium contamination that Jim was 

12 indicating there.

13 Do we still want to do, because the 

14 other task I have is the comparison of the 

15 neptunium urine bioassay for the few workers 

16 that we do have that for, and their in vivo 

17 counts.

18 Do we still want to do that 

19 particular comparison? And illustrate, I 

20 guess the order of -- or the increase of using 

21 the whole body count in vivo data in our 

22 protactinium equilibrium assumption.
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1 I think we still want to do that 

2 case, is that correct?

3 DR. LIPSZTEIN: That would be great 

4 if we can. It's just three years that you have 

5 enough data, right?

6 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

7 DR. LIPSZTEIN: That'll be great.

8 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Those are the 

9 only two tasks that I have listed here. Is that 

10 everybody's understanding as well?

11 MR. BARTON: Tim, this Bob Baron. 

12 When you mentioned that second task just now, 

13 are you talking about comparing individual 

14 workers? Is that what we're referring to?

15 DR. TAULBEE: Actually, yes. In, 

16 the few individual workers we have, that was my 

17 thoughts. But now that I think about it a 

18 little more, of what Joyce just said.

19 I think she's wanting us to compare 

20 the entire distribution as well for in vivo for 

21 those years. And the combined bioassay where 

22 we have a lot of data as well. So maybe this is 
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1 two parts?

2 MR. BARTON: Okay, I thought that 

3 the distribution clearance, and the 

4 distributions had already been done. And that 

5 was within the February 5th presentation.

6 DR. TAULBEE: It had not been done 

7 for intakes.

8 MR. BARTON: Okay. I understand.

9 DR. TAULBEE: We did for the actual 

10 urine data, but not actually documenting, 

11 showing the intakes. I mean Matt's already 

12 done the calculations effectively, it's just 

13 we've got to pull from a different place and 

14 write it into a report.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: So you're saying 

16 it would be a two part to that?

17 DR. TAULBEE: There would be two 

18 parts to it, but it would all be in one, I think 

19 in one report.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

21 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes. I 

22 guess, this is Brad. Does that sound good to 
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1 everybody?

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

3 (Simultaneous speaking.)

4 MR. FITZGERALD: With the proviso, 

5 I think it would be very helpful for the Work 

6 Group to know when NIOSH actually receives the 

7 data and makes some kind of, and this is what 

8 Jim was saying, some kind of decision based on, 

9 you know, again the data has not been available 

10 yet.

11 But to review that data and decide, 

12 you know, what makes sense as far as analysis. 

13 Just sort of a milestone for the Work Group so 

14 there's some indication of where this is going.

15 Because this would pretty much wrap 

16 around most of the remaining neptunium issues. 

17 Not all of them but most of them.

18 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

19 Well does this, I guess the Board Members, does 

20 this sound okay with you? Phil?

21 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Brad, this is 

22 Phil. That sounds like a good idea.
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1 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, 

2 well. I guess my question is here, Ted and I 

3 want to make sure this gets documented, so I 

4 just --

5 MR. KATZ: Brad?

6 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes.

7 MR. KATZ: This is Ted. Yes, this 

8 isn't a problem. So we can have, you know, Joe, 

9 at the, once the meeting is closed you know, 

10 tomorrow or the next day or whatever.

11 When you can get to it, Joe will just 

12 send out a brief synopsis of the action items 

13 on the table so that everybody is clear about 

14 what's coming.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I've been 

16 taking notes and I will circulate that and 

17 people can check and make sure I got the nuances 

18 correctly.

19 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

20 This is what I wanted to make clear because I 

21 think this is a good clear path. And I'm with 

22 you, Joe. I'd like to know when NIOSH finally 
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1 does get this data.

2 Now SC&A also has action items for 

3 Joyce to be able to give them their, this, where 

4 her information comes from, the files. And so 

5 I, with that I think we're pretty well done with 

6 these until we get this other information back. 

7 Is that correct?

8 MR. FITZGERALD: That's correct. 

9 Tim could you repeat your two part, I mean I got 

10 some of it, but not all of it?

11 DR. TAULBEE: After I get off of 

12 mute, sure, sorry. The first part will be 

13 comparing the distributions of the intake 

14 values that we come up, from the in vivo data 

15 for 1980, '82 and '85 I believe.

16 And we'll compare that to the intake 

17 that we get from the urine bioassay 

18 distributions for those years where we have 

19 sufficient urine bioassay. So that's part A.

20 Part B, would be to take the few 

21 workers we have in NOCTS that we know worked 

22 with neptunium and had neptunium bioassay and 
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1 compare their in vivo data to their neptunium 

2 urinalysis data.

3 And calculate the, I guess the 

4 intake? Is that correct as to what you were 

5 looking for there, Bob and Joyce?

6 MR. BARTON: Yes, this Bob. I 

7 think that's pretty much what we're looking at. 

8 The only thing I can add, is I don't think you 

9 have to necessarily restrict it to only those 

10 that have neptunium urinalysis and the whole 

11 body counts.

12 Because you could still offer up 

13 some weight of evidence, arguments if you just 

14 have the neptunium urine bioassay. You can 

15 calculate an intake based on that.

16 And then you can go and compare it 

17 to what the coworker model would have assigned 

18 to these neptunium workers, had they not been 

19 monitored. Which is really to me kind of the 

20 end game there.

21 I mean if we have a bunch of 

22 neptunium workers, we know were probably the 
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1 highest exposed to neptunium and we have some 

2 records for them, we can reconstruct their 

3 intakes and compare it to what that coworker 

4 model says they would have gotten.

5 And that can go a long ways toward 

6 putting a lot of these issues to bed.

7 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, so you want us 

8 to focus on the claims where we have neptunium 

9 bioassay data, and then I'd compare them to the 

10 current coworker model. Correct?

11 MR. BARTON: I think that would be 

12 beneficial. I don't know how cumbersome that 

13 would become if you have you know, if you have 

14 a very large subset that had both the urinalysis 

15 and whole body counts, you know, maybe we can 

16 focus on that.

17 But I mean I don't think we have to 

18 necessarily be restricted by it. I think 

19 simply comparing your analysis versus the whole 

20 coworker model could offer up some decent 

21 evidence as well.

22 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.
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1 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, 

2 well I guess my question is, does anybody need 

3 to take a break yet? Or do we want to proceed 

4 on?

5 I'm not hearing that anybody wants 

6 a break. I guess we'll go on to Finding 12. Is 

7 that the, or is that, that's got the neptunium 

8 too, so.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Joyce, I know you 

10 kind of skipped ahead a little bit. I think 

11 we're on 12, but maybe you can advise us on that?

12 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I think we covered 

13 everything. Because we were discussing 

14 everything at the same time. So I think we 

15 covered everything on neptunium. I don't see 

16 anything that we didn't. I think that we 

17 covered everything.

18 MR. BARTON: Yes, this is Bob 

19 again. I think really that path forward kind 

20 of covered the bases on a lot of these 

21 neptunium, maybe even all of these neptunium 

22 findings.
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1 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

2 MR. BARTON: Insofar as we have to 

3 wait to see what that plutonium ratio analysis 

4 will bring, but you know, most of these findings 

5 are technical concerns that may be obviated by 

6 the path forward that we've just chosen.

7 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, we discussed 

8 everything. Because we started discussing and 

9 we went all along, all the findings, so.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, as far as 

11 the other SC&A folks on the phone, before we 

12 move on from neptunium to thorium, anything 

13 else that needs to be said?

14 Okay, Brad, I think we can --

15 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes. Hi, this is 

16 Arjun. I think, I don't know how we kind of 

17 threw thorium in there also. I thought we had 

18 moving on from neptunium there are quite a lot 

19 of thorium specific issues.

20 I don't know that we discussed them 

21 all in preparation for this call. And I didn't 

22 see anything from Joyce, going --
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1 DR. LIPSZTEIN: No, no I thought we 

2 were finished with neptunium, not thorium.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: No, we're talking 

4 about --

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- there a lot of 

6 thorium related issues that are very specific 

7 to thorium. And that will not be covered by 

8 this ratio approach, because --

9 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes.

10 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- thorium dose 

11 reconstruction is proposed along completely 

12 different lines. At least after 1990 or 1989.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Arjun, we are 

14 about to get into thorium.

15 DR. MAKHIJANI: Oh, we're about to, 

16 sorry. I misunderstood you.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. No, I'm 

18 just trying to make sure we can close out the 

19 neptunium findings.

20 DR. MAKHIJANI: Oh, okay.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: But I'm hearing 

22 that --
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1 DR. MAKHIJANI: I misunderstood.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: -- everybody 

3 feels satisfied that the path forward pretty 

4 much envelopes those issues and we can just move 

5 on to thorium now.

6 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay, I'm fine. 

7 Yes.

8 MR. FITZGERALD: All right.

9 MEMBER LOCKEY: Hey, Ted, Ted Katz.

10 MR. KATZ: Yes.

11 MEMBER LOCKEY: This is Jim Lockey, 

12 I was able to join you now.

13 MR. KATZ: Okay, thank you, Jim. 

14 Thanks for signing up, signing in. And Jim, 

15 for the record has no conflict, correct?

16 MEMBER LOCKEY: That's correct.

17 MR. KATZ: Okay, carrying on. 

18 Yes, I guess Joe you can move into thorium 

19 business now.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, yes. And 

21 Tim was correct that we got as far as I believe 

22 through Findings 3. I guess we didn't quite 
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1 get into all of Finding 4. We did touch on 

2 thoron a little bit.

3 What I'd like to do because it has 

4 been several weeks just for continuity sake. 

5 Bob Barton, could you, you were on the February 

6 5th call as well, could you recap where SC&A 

7 stands, starting with Finding 1 and 2? Just to 

8 make sure that as we move forward that, that 

9 doesn't get lost.

10 MR. BARTON: Sure Joe. Finding 1 

11 essentially regarded the source term for 

12 thorium at SRS. Originally in our review of 

13 Addendum 3, we felt that maybe the focus had 

14 been too narrow, perhaps only focusing the 

15 coworker model to assigning doses in the 773-A 

16 Building.

17 Now since then NIOSH has revised 

18 OTIB-81 which is their, I guess you call it the, 

19 General Coworker Document, which contains the 

20 coworker models for you know, uranium and 

21 plutonium, as well as the intake values for 

22 thorium and neptunium.
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1 And I think that's maybe where to 

2 start, with Finding 1 because that's really the 

3 name of the game there, as far as who are you 

4 going to be assigning these coworker intakes 

5 to?

6 And are you covering the correct 

7 locations? And so maybe the best thing to do, 

8 I've never used Live Meeting before, but let me 

9 see if I can get OTIB-81 up there so that 

10 everyone can see it. Let's see.

11 DR. ARNO: Which revision of 

12 OTIB-81 are you trying to post?

13 MR. BARTON: This would be Revision 

14 2, it was released this past December. Let me 

15 see if this works. 

16 Can anybody see a change there? 

17 It's just at Table 5-1.

18 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, I can see it.

19 MR. BARTON: Okay, so that worked. 

20 Okay, so here is essentially in my mind the real 

21 road map to how these different coworker models 

22 are to be applied. And that includes the 
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1 neptunium and thorium coworker models that 

2 we're discussing today.

3 And what you can see here, is in this 

4 left column, we have a list of facilities at the 

5 SRS site. And then columns 2 through 5 we have 

6 different time periods.

7 Obviously these last three refer to 

8 the SEC period so they're kind of more pertinent 

9 to today's discussion.

10 And then the final column you have 

11 here are the radionuclides of concern. 

12 Essentially the radionuclides that you're 

13 going to assign to these different areas.

14 And obviously those time periods in 

15 the middle of this table you see for instance, 

16 if you had a dosimeter code in the 1973 to 1990 

17 of 1C through 6C, then you would essentially be 

18 assigned to the reactor areas.

19 And you would be assigned to warrant 

20 a tritium and fission products coworker intake.

21 Now one thing I want to note, that 

22 it was very difficult and almost bordering on 
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1 impossible for SC&A to actually go in and verify 

2 the accuracy of these codes as they're applied 

3 simply because they're not really annotated or 

4 cited.

5 So, I mean to do it, during the 

6 February 5th meeting it sounded, or my 

7 impression was, that this table was essentially 

8 a conglomeration of different resources.

9 Be it operating procedures, other 

10 types of reports, interviews perhaps and maybe 

11 even just some experience working with the SRS 

12 claimant files or documents.

13 So we can't really comment on 

14 whether 1C, you know, does that actually refer 

15 to the reactors? I'm sure it does.

16 But I mean it would be nice if NIOSH 

17 could pull together sort of a reference list or 

18 you know, annotate these different dosimeter 

19 codes so we can kind of see how they arrived at 

20 these different assignments.

21 Because like I said, this kind of is 

22 the name of the game of who you're going to 
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1 assign these different coworker models to.

2 So I don't know if that's something 

3 that can be pulled together rather quickly, but 

4 it would certainly help us in reviewing this 

5 table. I don't know if NIOSH really wants to 

6 comment on that?

7 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, this is Tim. We 

8 have from the various reports and other health 

9 physicist files from the Savannah River, we 

10 have compiled a history if you will, of these 

11 dosimeter codes over time.

12 We have a breakdown of them from 

13 1959. We have the breakdown from 1972 into 

14 1973 where they list the old codes and then, the 

15 new codes. And then we have additional 

16 documents later in time for these codes, from 

17 1977, 1984, and then 1991 time frame change as 

18 well.

19 MR. BARTON: Okay. It would be 

20 very helpful to us if you know, could pull 

21 together I guess a list of SRDB numbers, or 

22 whatever form sort of those references are in.
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1 I assume they're annotated 

2 somewhere. That would be very helpful for us 

3 if you could pull that together.

4 But beyond that, a couple of 

5 concerns that we noticed with this table. 

6 Essentially what we, went in and we just pulled 

7 you know, a handful of claimant files.

8 And said, all right, let's see what 

9 these dosimeter codes actually look like in the 

10 actual claimant files. How would this table 

11 actually apply to the different claimants?

12 And one of the concerns we have and 

13 this may be obviated once we get to look at the 

14 sort of the source of all this, is you see there 

15 are numerous dosimeter codes for some of these 

16 areas.

17 I mean for example, let's scroll 

18 down here a little bit. Central shops, I mean 

19 there's a ton of different codes.

20 So that kind of gave me pause and 

21 there's never really, not really a clear 

22 pattern in my mind as to why all these different 
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1 numbers and letters would refer to the same 

2 location?

3 And beyond that, you'll notice that 

4 as you inspect this table, and let's see if I 

5 can find a good example here. All right for 

6 example let's take the code 5F here.

7 Code 5F could refer to the unknown 

8 facility. F-Area, A-Line, which if you look at 

9 F canyon again 5F is there. The 221-F, B-Line 

10 and 5F. The plutonium field fabrication and 

11 experimental facility, and the 235 Vault.

12 So that's essentially six different 

13 areas that could be assigned based on a similar 

14 dosimeter code. And if you look at those six 

15 different areas, they all have different sort 

16 of mixes of radionuclides that you could 

17 assign.

18 So I guess that's one question we 

19 had, is how this table would apply in that kind 

20 of situation?

21 I would assume that in that 

22 situation you would essentially apply the full 
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1 mix, essentially every radionuclide that 

2 appears in those six areas, you have to assume 

3 they could have been exposed to. Am I 

4 interpreting that correctly?

5 DR. ARNO: Need to clarify that a 

6 little bit, this table is an aide to the dose 

7 reconstructor. The dose reconstructor is 

8 going to have other information from the 

9 claimant's DOE, and DOL files as well as the 

10 record of a telephone interview.

11 So they will use data from all of 

12 those sources to assign the individual to a work 

13 location. And then base the intakes off that 

14 work location.

15 MR. BARTON: Okay, I understand 

16 that. As far as location information goes, one 

17 thing that would kind of give me pause, I mean 

18 you mentioned the CATI report which is a very 

19 useful tool to the dose reconstructor.

20 But really when I look at this table 

21 and to kind of emphasis my point, I'm going to 

22 scroll down here to the very bottom where we 
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1 have the, not identifiable or unknown facility.

2 So in a situation where you really 

3 can't establish where they are, you essentially 

4 are assigning the entire mix of coworker 

5 radionuclides.

6 So when I look at the table what I 

7 really see is sort of a, I like to call it a table 

8 of exclusion. Because if you can find, you 

9 know, establish a worker in a specific 

10 location, you know, they get whatever mix of 

11 radionuclides is there. But I mean if you 

12 can't, you're getting the full mix.

13 So really what we're saying is if 

14 you have a dosimeter code that appears in this 

15 table, you might get less of the coworker 

16 intakes than if you did not have a dosimeter 

17 code that was in this table, or we don't know 

18 what the code meant, or there was just no, the 

19 dosimeter code was blank.

20 So a lot of these concerns relate to 

21 that uncertainty of how you're going to 

22 actually apply this table to a claimant. And 
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1 I wanted to say that's an implementation issue.

2 And what I want to get into next is 

3 we did in fact observe gaps in the dosimeter 

4 codes in the few claimant files we did look at. 

5 This was especially true in the 1973 to 1981 

6 period --

7 DR. TAULBEE: Bob, can I --

8 MR. BARTON: -- when the primary 

9 source is the HPRED database.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Bob, can we --

11 MR. BARTON: -- and from what we 

12 observe there just simply aren't dosimeter 

13 codes included there. I mean the field is 

14 there, but it's blank.

15 DR. TAULBEE: Bob.

16 MR. BARTON: Now we also observed 

17 this to a -- go ahead.

18 DR. TAULBEE: Bob, this is Tim. 

19 Let's first focus on the first part here because 

20 there's some other things I wanted to mention 

21 here about this table, to expand upon that. 

22 And then we can go into the issue that you have 
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1 identified with HPRED, okay? Is that all 

2 right?

3 MR. BARTON: Sure.

4 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. The use of 

5 this table as Matt was pointing out, is just one 

6 part of the tools for the dose reconstructor. 

7 In many cases for people like working in the 

8 F-area, you'll notice that plutonium is listed 

9 there for, as part of the mix.

10 Well most of the people that worked 

11 in that particular facility, actually had 

12 plutonium bioassay as well. So we wouldn't be 

13 applying the coworker model to them.

14 So one thing to keep in mind, this 

15 is a case where we have a person who is 

16 monitored. We have a dosimeter code so we know 

17 that they worked in, in the case of 5F for 

18 example, in that '73 to 1990 time period.

19 They could have worked in the F 

20 Canyon, they could have worked on the FB-Line, 

21 they could have worked on 235-F in the vault 

22 area, or they could have worked in the 235-PuFF 
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1 facility.

2 If they don't have any bioassay, 

3 then yes, we will apply a plutonium coworker 

4 model, or uranium coworker model, a neptunium 

5 coworker model, an americium, curium, 

6 californium, thorium coworker model.

7 So that's the use of this particular 

8 table. Is to help the dose reconstructor if 

9 they have no other information about where this 

10 person worked. They'll look at that dosimeter 

11 code and then assign based upon their 

12 particular scenario. So that's how this table 

13 is being used.

14 One other thing I'd like to point 

15 out is that the time periods are critical for 

16 evaluating this. Because the codes were 

17 reused in other time periods and it means a 

18 totally different facility.

19 So you really have to look at the 

20 dosimeter code at that particular time period 

21 of when that measurement was, to make this 

22 determination of which facility, and then which 
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1 coworker model. Does that make sense?

2 MR. BARTON: Sure, I understand. 

3 And to point out that example that I gave of one 

4 dosimeter code for six different facilities, 

5 that's just for a single time period.

6 I'm not trying to compare dosimeter 

7 codes across these different time periods that 

8 are established here.

9 But I guess the second thing is the 

10 point was made that there would be other 

11 location information that could be used to 

12 establish where the worker was.

13 Well in my experience, the only 

14 other really location information that we have 

15 is based on internal dosimetry. Now there's 

16 the CATI report.

17 But are we going to start using the 

18 CATI report to apply to this table to sort of, 

19 and again you'd be using that CATI report to 

20 exclude claimants from being assigned certain 

21 intakes. You see what I'm saying? I mean --

22 DR. TAULBEE: Not to exclude on 
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1 the, it's more to get a feel for where this 

2 person worked and were they exposed to this 

3 particular material in that time period?

4 MR. BARTON: Right, but if you 

5 cannot not establish with reasonable accuracy 

6 for a certain time period where that person was, 

7 it essentially falls into that last bin in the 

8 table where you're getting assigned 

9 everything.

10 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct.

11 MR. BARTON: Right, so I mean this 

12 is all about when you have gaps in those 

13 dosimetry codes, you know, how do you deal with 

14 that uncertainty?

15 And when you don't quite know where 

16 they were. And these instances can span many 

17 years, even in the SEC period where you don't 

18 know where they were. They would have to fall 

19 into that bin.

20 Now I mean, am I hearing that when 

21 you have gaps like that, you would look at a CATI 

22 report and use that information to try to place 
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1 them into one of these categories?

2 DR. TAULBEE: Well no, not 

3 necessarily. I mean CATI is just one piece. 

4 We wouldn't use that exclusively. We would use 

5 the whole weight of evidence effectively to 

6 place where this person conducted their work.

7 So there isn't one piece that's 

8 used. Unless it's the only piece that we have, 

9 in which case, yes, they generally go into that 

10 final category.

11 And this is where it gets into what 

12 we call claimant-favorability. Of we've got 

13 equal evidence of they either worked in the one 

14 area versus another, we don't know. And so we 

15 assign a claimant-favorable approach which 

16 would be all of the coworker.

17 MR. BARTON: No, I understand and I 

18 completely agree when you don't know, you have 

19 to assign all of the coworker.

20 I guess my point was, based on our 

21 very limited, again, you know, hand full, less 

22 than 10 claimants we looked at, it looked like 
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1 to me on the full weight of evidence.

2 Now again, I don't think you can 

3 look at internal dosimetry files and say, oh 

4 well, we're going to use those to fill in gaps 

5 for coworker intakes because this is the whole 

6 point, they don't have the internal dosimetry 

7 files.

8 The CATI report I don't think can be used 

9 to exclude a worker, that's essentially, since, 

10 if you don't know where they are, they’re 

11 getting the full work up.

12 If you use a CATI report to fit them 

13 into one of these categories, what you're 

14 essentially doing is going to be taking away an 

15 intake from a certain radionuclide based on 

16 what Table 5-1 prescribes. You see what I'm 

17 saying there?

18 DR. TAULBEE: I think so, but let me 

19 give you an example of let's say a CATI report 

20 says that they were a forester. And was 

21 working in the outside areas of the site.

22 We wouldn't necessarily assign the 
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1 full coworker model to this particular person. 

2 And if we don't have any monitoring data, well 

3 they weren't expected to have been monitored.

4 MR. BARTON: I understand that, 

5 that kind of situation. Or if the CATI report 

6 said they only worked in an administrative 

7 building that was across the street and they 

8 never had to enter the plant. That's kind of 

9 the special cases.

10 But I'm talking about when you have 

11 radiological workers who were badged, but you

12 see their badging records don't contain those 

13 area codes. Well now you're left with, you 

14 know, you're left with putting them in the not 

15 identifiable column, and giving them the full 

16 work up.

17 And again, our concerns revolve 

18 around really the potential for a great many 

19 number of workers who need the coworker model 

20 applied are going to fall into that bin.

21 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, this is a 

22 perfect segue into your next question, where 
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1 you noticed that in HPRED sometimes the area is 

2 not listed. One of the things in the memo that 

3 was stated here, is that the primary source of 

4 external dosimetry information is the HPRED 

5 data base.

6 I don't consider that to be the 

7 primary source of dosimetry information. That 

8 was a database that's been created based upon 

9 quarterly dosimetry reports and logs. And a 

10 series of tapes that they've rolled in 

11 together.

12 If you go and look at the quarterly 

13 dosimetry reports, the area information is 

14 listed there. So even though you found some of 

15 these I guess, blanks from the claimant files.

16 And it's, it may not be in the 

17 claimant file, but if you go to the quarterly 

18 dosimetry reports, you can find which area they 

19 worked in.

20 I did a case, I helped a dose 

21 reconstructor review a case earlier this week 

22 where that was the case. The area wasn't 
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1 listed there.

2 We went to the quarterly reports and 

3 it was listed there for every single quarter 

4 that they were exposed, that particular area. 

5 And we were able to identify that.

6 So if you've identified these gaps, 

7 let's work together on them, and I'll show you 

8 where these quarterly reports are and how to use 

9 them. And you can go through and you can find 

10 which areas people worked in.

11 MR. BARTON: I'm completely with 

12 you Tim. I understand the quarterly reports. 

13 I would say that in my observation, sometimes 

14 that it's the case like you just said. The 

15 quarterly reports are all there. They're log 

16 books with many other workers, and you could use 

17 that to fill in the gaps.

18 But in some cases all you have in 

19 that time period is the HPRED. And we've, 

20 that's all that's there currently in the NOCTS 

21 database. Now I don't know if you have those 

22 additional log books somewhere else?
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1 If they don't appear all the time, 

2 in NOCTS, for your claimants, but I no, I did 

3 look at the full file. I didn't just look at 

4 the first readouts of dosimetry data.

5 A lot of times those files were 

6 missing.

7 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, we have --

8 MR. BARTON: Again this is a very 

9 limited sampling.

10 DR. TAULBEE: We do have a complete 

11 set of those quarterly reports. Where, what 

12 you're seeing in the files where there is 

13 additional files from NOCTS are added, is where 

14 we went through and did a, oh gee, what's it 

15 called? Word identification, I'm missing a 

16 term there.

17 Oh, OCR, Optical Character 

18 Recognition, and for the people that we 

19 identified who were NOCTS claimants, we pulled 

20 out those pages and put them into the claimant 

21 files.

22 There are some of the forms that it 
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1 didn't pick up the person's name. The letters 

2 were too close together. But we do have the 

3 complete set of those forms. So I can show you 

4 where they're at in the SRDB, and provide you 

5 that information so you can do some of this 

6 additional digging if you want as well.

7 MR. BARTON: Okay, so what I'm 

8 hearing is you're saying that, you know, where 

9 I saw there were gaps in the actual quarterly 

10 log books, that, that information is all in the 

11 SRDB.

12 And so if you had to apply this 

13 coworker model, you could easily go in and pull 

14 those additional log books to fill in some of 

15 these gaps.

16 DR. TAULBEE: That is correct.

17 MR. BARTON: Okay, well that 

18 certainly alleviates a lot of the missing data, 

19 I'll call it, as far as what we witnessed in the 

20 claimant files.

21 One other thing, now let me ask you, 

22 it seemed to me that when I was looking even at 
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1 the quarterlies, that what's reported there was 

2 only if there was a positive dose reported. So 

3 I assume the full data set would have those zero 

4 records too?

5 DR. TAULBEE: That is correct.

6 MR. BARTON: Okay, again that's the 

7 --

8 DR. TAULBEE: That is the case of 

9 the claim I was working on earlier this week. 

10 Is they had zero dose and so that the file 

11 actually only showed the last one, that 

12 illustrated they had zero dose.

13 But if you went back to each of the 

14 other quarters, in the previous year and a half, 

15 you could find the location for all of the zero 

16 doses as well.

17 MR. BARTON: Okay, that's really, 

18 really good to know that, that information is 

19 out there to fill in those gaps.

20 I guess the last concern I just want 

21 to point out, is what we also noticed. And this 

22 wasn't necessarily a specific claimant record, 
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1 but that the dosimeter codes in Table 5-1, do 

2 not appear to be complete.

3 In that there are, we identified, 

4 you know, over 20 codes that just don't appear, 

5 you know, in this table. And I don't know how 

6 many more there are, but you know, when you look 

7 at this table you see there kind of, you know, 

8 sort of put in sequence.

9 For example the 7 series, I'll call 

10 it. So 7A, 7B, 7C in 1973 to 1990, you know, 

11 I mean if you were going to fill in sort of the 

12 alphabet there, we'd certainly observe some of 

13 the ones that weren't included in this table. 

14 But again that was only in a limited claimant 

15 sampling.

16 So one concern is that the actual 

17 dosimeter codes as you can use them to apply to 

18 a certain location don't appear to be complete, 

19 and there may be very many, significantly more 

20 dosimeter codes that would again fall into that 

21 not identifiable bin.

22 DR. TAULBEE: Can you give me an 
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1 example of some of the codes that you've 

2 observed that may not fall in there?

3 MR. BARTON: Sure. Let's see 

4 here. Here's the 7 examples. So all I did 

5 here was just list them straight. Can 

6 everybody see this? See the Excel file?

7 DR. TAULBEE: Actually I can't.

8 MR. BARTON: Okay, well I'll guess 

9 I'm off of Live Meeting, but anyway for example 

10 7A and 7B were associated with the Central shops 

11 in Table 5-1. 7C was not observed in the table 

12 at all.

13 7D and 7E weren't in the Table, but 

14 we observed them in the claimant files. 7F and 

15 7G, you know, it goes on like that. That sort 

16 of thing.

17 So I mean it appeared to us based on 

18 a very limited sampling that there may be very 

19 many codes out there that haven't been 

20 established or associated with a particular 

21 facility.

22 I can certainly put out a list of 
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1 what we've found so far, but again that's only 

2 from a handful. We really don't know 

3 quantitatively how many more might be out 

4 there.

5 Did I lose everybody?

6 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: No. 

7 This is Brad. I'm just trying to follow you, 

8 and I understand where you're going on that, 

9 Bob.

10 And I just want to put one thing out 

11 to Tim on this, because, being from the Dose 

12 Reconstruction Work Group, I hope that when the 

13 dose reconstructor, and I understand that they 

14 use several different items here, I hope that 

15 he's making it known how this information would 

16 come.

17 Because this would be very, very 

18 hard for our side to be able to review something 

19 like this because I think he could get 

20 information from so many different areas.

21 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, yes. I guess 

22 --
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1 DR. ARNO: Tim, this is Matt, I 

2 mean, is there a way for --

3 DR. TAULBEE: Let me see if I can't 

4 pull up one of these TLD badge code location 

5 documents to show you what it is that I'm 

6 looking at here, Bob. Maybe this will help 

7 some.

8 MR. BARTON: Sure.

9 DR. TAULBEE: Bear with me here as 

10 I try -- actually, Ted, or somebody can you help 

11 me in using Live Meeting? How do I select me 

12 as the document person?

13 MR. KATZ: Tim, you don't have to 

14 select yourself. You just need to go to 

15 content and share something and you'll take 

16 over.

17 DR. TAULBEE: Okay.

18 DR. ARNO: This process is very 

19 similar to what's done in Hanford quite 

20 frequently in applying coworker intakes at that 

21 facility. Hanford is very similar to Savannah 

22 River in terms of the activities going on and 
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1 things of that nature.

2 There is information in the 

3 external dosimetry files that provide where a 

4 worker was located. It is quite common for 

5 workers to be assigned, basically, the coworker 

6 intakes for all the radionuclides. Either 

7 because the person -- there's good information 

8 on why that person is not known, or simply as 

9 an overestimate method if the claimant's, you 

10 know, not of the verge of going compensable.

11 This is not that different from 

12 what's done at Hanford and other sites.

13 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, I'm just going 

14 to try and share my desktop here for a minute. 

15 Can you all see the TLD badge coded location 

16 document?

17 MR. KATZ: Yes, Tim.

18 DR. TAULBEE: There you will see --

19 and this is probably where you're seeing other 

20 codes, Bob, that you know are not listed there 

21 in the table. And you'll notice many of these 

22 7s are from the A Area. Being there's 7-19, 
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1 7-20, 7-22 type of scenario. I think this is 

2 what you're talking about. And you'll see this 

3 is the HP location from the 1977 version that 

4 has this.

5 The previous one, this would be 

6 1959. And off to the left is the HP Area codes 

7 listed there. If I scroll down here, you'll 

8 see that these are the department codes 

9 associated with the April 1977 version.

10 And, you know, here, if you look at 

11 an HP Area code in a claimant file and it says 

12 -- oh, let me pull up F, here. If I can find 

13 it, 200-F. Yes, the 200-F, the code would be 

14 2F, for example. And then if they were working 

15 in, say, 235 Building or PuFF, the department 

16 code would be 205. 

17 And so this is the 1977 version. 

18 Here is the 1984 version. And you can see that 

19 some of these codes, like 9F, for example, 

20 aren't listed in our table, I'm sure because 

21 it's a firehouse.

22 And so not all of the codes, you are 
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1 correct in your observation, are listed there 

2 in the Table 5-1, but we do have what locations 

3 these are. 

4 And so this is the 1990 version of 

5 the old codes and then the new codes. And you 

6 can see there's many places where the dosimeter 

7 badge racks were held.

8 MR. BARTON: Now, when you say 

9 badge rack, I envision that's when the 

10 dosimeter’s dropped off. Correct?

11 DR. TAULBEE: That is correct. 

12 That is where they kept their badges at night.

13 MR. BARTON: So we're going to 

14 assume that that's going to be directly 

15 associated with the area of work?

16 DR. TAULBEE: It is for most places 

17 except for Central shops, who could have worked 

18 pretty much anywhere. Which is why you'll see 

19 in Table 5-1 we account for them being able to 

20 tasked out of Central shops and going to the 

21 canyons, or going to the reactors.

22 Which is why in Table 5-1 we have 
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1 that kind of a large quantity of things there 

2 for construction trades workers who were out of 

3 Central shops.

4 MR. BARTON: Okay, I understand 

5 that. I guess a follow-on question to what you 

6 stated before, in that you kind of gave the 

7 example of the firehouse. I mean, is it 

8 NIOSH's position that any code that's not in 

9 Table 5-1 is really just a non-radiological 

10 area? And so, you know, it would be 

11 inappropriate to assign a coworker intake to 

12 those workers who were, you know, badged in 

13 these areas that don't appear in this table?

14 DR. TAULBEE: It would be one that 

15 I would go and look at more closely as to what 

16 they did. In some cases, I'm recalling a case 

17 from a few years ago, one person was working out 

18 at the A Area. He was working out of the power 

19 plant, out of the utility.

20 When we read his CATI, he talked 

21 about going to the reactor areas, to the power 

22 plant component of that, and he had some 
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1 positive dose.

2 And so, as a result, we would assign 

3 tritium and mixed fission products to that 

4 individual. Even though he was badged out of

5 another area.

6 So this is a case where we’re not 

7 necessarily excluding somebody because of, you 

8 know, them being in a non-radiological area 

9 where they might have gotten their badge, or 

10 where they kept their badge. But we look at all 

11 the information in what is said.

12 MR. BARTON: Well, in that example 

13 you said he was badged out of A Area. What 

14 potential radionuclides of concern might have 

15 been present in A Area?

16 I mean, if it's more than tritium 

17 and plutonium, you're kind of in trouble there 

18 because, again, in that specific case, you 

19 know, you'd be assigning only those 

20 radionuclides when the only basis for saying he 

21 was in an A Area was he said in his CATI report 

22 he went to the reactor areas.
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1 Do you see where I'm coming from 

2 there?

3 DR. TAULBEE: A little bit, but I 

4 guess I'm looking at kind of the whole weight 

5 of the evidence associated with this. And, you 

6 know, A Area was a big area, okay?

7 You've got 773 Area, which is the 

8 Technical Laboratory, and there we have, you 

9 know, that's one of them listed there in Table 

10 5-1.

11 But across the street from the M 

12 Area, there's a whole series of facility 

13 services, if you will, that have dosimetry 

14 badges associated with them because they could 

15 be dispatched to other areas.

16 And at that point, we begin to look 

17 at other scenarios. And, you know, and looking 

18 at the dose of the badge as well. We use that 

19 as well. If somebody's got some positive dose 

20 and they're saying they went to the reactors, 

21 and they were in the reactor building.

22 MR. BARTON: Well, how do you know 
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1 they couldn't have been somewhere in the A Area 

2 where they could have received that?

3 I guess what I'm saying here is when 

4 you have that sort of uncertainty, you know, 

5 obviously we're limited by the information of 

6 how accurately we can place workers.

7 I guess I'm concerned that certain 

8 information, such as the CATI report, or the DOL 

9 files, which to my knowledge is largely 

10 provided by the claimant as well, that in the 

11 face of that uncertainty, I would think you 

12 would want to sort of give them the benefit of 

13 the doubt and assign, you know, as many of the 

14 radionuclides that apply to that area.

15 In the case that you just gave, if 

16 for instance there were areas in the A Area 

17 where they assign more than you would assign in 

18 the reactor areas. You know, if it were me, I 

19 would think you would want to give them the 

20 benefit of the doubt, that, hey, listen, our 

21 evidence says he could have been somewhere in 

22 A Area. His CATI says that he went to the 
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1 reactor area, so maybe we don't know when, there 

2 may not be any temporal specification there.

3 I guess, you know, for me, I think 

4 you'd have to err on the side of the claimant 

5 in the face of that kind of uncertainty and 

6 inability to always pin someone down to a 

7 certain location.

8 DR. TAULBEE: I think this is a case 

9 of a dose reconstruction type of review. And 

10 not really an SEC from this standpoint as to how 

11 this goes. This is a general method.

12 There's going to be different cases for every, 

13 you know, every single scenario. I can't give 

14 you a blanket, yes, we'll always assign 

15 plutonium here. I can't do that.

16 MR. BARTON: No, I understand you 

17 can't, but I think, you know, a document like 

18 this, which is essentially giving instructions 

19 to the dose reconstructor, could tell the dose 

20 reconstructor, you know, I mean, it wouldn't 

21 have to say every single case, but, you know, 

22 when there is doubt or, you know, uncertainty 
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1 in where they were, you sort of have to err on 

2 the side of, well, they could have been in one 

3 of these really nastier areas. And maybe it's 

4 appropriate to assign all of the radionuclides 

5 to that area.

6 And, you know, I hear you that 

7 that's sort of a dose reconstruction review 

8 standpoint. But in my mind this is the sort of 

9 thing that should be included as specific 

10 instructions to the dose reconstructor and not 

11 leave it sort of up in the air for an individual 

12 to make that call.

13 I mean, instructions don't have to 

14 be, if you see this code, then, you know, you'll 

15 assign this, this, and this. It could be you 

16 see this code, then apply it to multiple 

17 facilities and give them the benefit of the 

18 doubt. Give them whatever mix is the 

19 combination of those two facilities.

20 DR. TAULBEE: I believe we do that. 

21 And I don't -- when there is doubt, significant 

22 doubt, and we believe this person was exposed 
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1 to the different materials, we do assign the 

2 full complement there, if we don't know.

3 But there are scenarios where 

4 somebody was a secretary, as I was saying, where 

5 we would not assign the full complement even 

6 though, you know, there is a dosimeter issue 

7 from one of these other administrative or 

8 service facility areas.

9 MR. BARTON: And I certainly 

10 wouldn't want to argue that. I know there are 

11 situations where you can clearly delineate who 

12 was a radiological worker and where they might 

13 have gone. And would have been severely 

14 limited in which locations, you know, they 

15 could have gone. I certainly agree with that 

16 example. I'm talking more the uncertainty in 

17 a radiological worker.

18 And I guess it also becomes sort of 

19 a judgment call. And you say if there is 

20 significant enough uncertainty then you assign 

21 the full compliment.

22 Well, what is significant enough 
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1 uncertainty? I mean, is it -- yeah, that comes 

2 down to a judgment call. I mean, it seems like 

3 the temporal gap issue may be rather moot. I'd 

4 certainly like to look at that a little more.

5 But when you have uncertainty, say, 

6 you know, with the dosimeter code, if it turns 

7 out we really just don't know what that 

8 dosimeter code is, you know, I think then that 

9 would fall into sort of that last bin of, you 

10 know, if you really can't pin them down, you 

11 kind of have to assume they were in the worst 

12 areas.

13 MR. KATZ: Bob, this is Ted. I 

14 just think -- I mean, I think you've made your 

15 point very clearly. And I think Tim has made 

16 his point clearly too. And it is a dose 

17 reconstruction issue. But I don't think 

18 there's much to be gained by beating this thing 

19 to death at this point.

20 I mean, I think, you know, if there 

21 are comments about how their dose 

22 reconstruction methods should be -- how 
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1 specific they should be, I think that can be 

2 addressed further in writing, but, I mean, it's 

3 very clear and we're not getting anywhere.

4 MR. BARTON: Okay, I guess the only 

5 thing I'd add to that that could potentially be 

6 a SEC issue would be the plausibility aspect of 

7 it.

8 I mean, if it turns out if you did 

9 sort of a study and you found, you know, all the 

10 workers that require a coworker intake. Well, 

11 if there's so much uncertainty where they were, 

12 you have to apply, for instance, the thorium to 

13 them.

14 That could potentially be a 

15 plausibility issue since we know thorium 

16 operation were restricted to a small 

17 population. That's the only comment I would 

18 make that could still sort of be in that SEC 

19 arena.

20 But I agree the rest of it, as far 

21 as instructions to the dose reconstructor, is 

22 really I guess a Site Profile issue on the 
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1 implementation.

2 But if it turns out you'd have to 

3 apply thorium to, you know, thousands of 

4 workers at the site, and, you know, we know 

5 that's clearly not plausible.

6 I mean, one could question that, and 

7 of course it would be a judgment call for the 

8 Board, but I guess, in an SEC context, that's 

9 the only thing I can say about it.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: I guess, 

11 listening to this, I sort of had the same sense 

12 that the only way you -- this is almost an 

13 empirical thing. The only way you would really 

14 know whether the instructions, judgments and 

15 the information that was available to the dose 

16 reconstructor enabled the assignment based on 

17 location would be almost a survey of what's been 

18 done already.

19 I mean, there's no way of knowing if 

20 in fact the information's sufficient to make 

21 those assignments without just simply knowing, 

22 you know, what the experience has been to date.
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1 I mean, Tim, is there any way to know 

2 that based on the dose reconstructions that 

3 have been done? Whether or not, you know, 

4 there's been any problems?

5 I mean, if it in fact always goes --

6 or often goes to default, which means you assign 

7 everything, then that would raise some 

8 questions about the plausibility along the 

9 lines of what Bob said.

10 But if it turns out to be the 

11 exception, then I would say it's probably not 

12 an issue.

13 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. This is 

14 going to sound really interesting --

15 interesting at least to me -- in my response 

16 here. We actually have not used OTIB-81 yet. 

17 And the reason is, is the SEC is open still.

18 And so the way that this is planned 

19 to be applied is once the SEC is closed, and if 

20 OTIB-81 is agreed to by the Work Group and the 

21 Board from that standpoint, then we will 

22 implement it. And we'll go back and re-look at 
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1 all of the -- we'll do a large Program

2 Evaluation Report and re-look at all SRS 

3 claims.

4 We've not done that yet because we 

5 don't know for sure that you all are in an 

6 agreement for us to even do dose reconstruction 

7 effectively at Savannah River for this whole 

8 time period.

9 The two radionuclides that I can see 

10 us going back and making changes to a 

11 significant fraction of dose reconstructions 

12 are to thorium in the earlier years, and then 

13 the thorium from 773-A in the '74 to '89 type 

14 of time frame. 

15 And then neptunium as well. 

16 Neptunium is probably going to be one of the 

17 coworker models we end up applying to a lot of 

18 people, especially from the 200-F Area.

19 Other than that, virtually every 

20 other claim that we have for radiological 

21 workers, we have monitoring data for them. So 

22 we have internal monitoring data.
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1 If you recall back when we did this, 

2 the initial presentation on the Evaluation 

3 Report, almost 80 percent of the SRS claimants 

4 have some internal monitoring data as part of 

5 their NOCTS file.

6 So those bioassay control 

7 procedures I was showing you on February 5th 

8 were implemented. So we don't need a coworker 

9 model, we have their individual plutonium 

10 bioassay.

11 The people in 773-A, from the 

12 chemistry department, from the high-level 

13 caves, we have americium, curium, californium, 

14 thorium data. So we wouldn't be applying this 

15 coworker model to them. We will use their 

16 data.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: And Tim, that's 

18 helpful because I think, Bob, just to clarify, 

19 it sounds like it comes down to whether the 

20 operational and the facility-specific location 

21 information is sufficient for 

22 thorium/neptunium. And of course I know 
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1 that's a lot of what the data capture's been 

2 about for the last six months.

3 But doesn't it come down to that? 

4 Whether there's sufficient information to know 

5 what facilities and to tie those facilities to 

6 workers?

7 I think what you were coming to is, 

8 on some of the construction workers where 

9 perhaps there is no specific tie in, they would 

10 by default get the thorium/neptunium, and if 

11 that's a large population then you're raising 

12 that question of plausibility.

13 But it sounds like it comes down to 

14 whether the information where the operations 

15 were and tying that information to the workers 

16 is the bottom line.

17 MR. BARTON: Yeah, I agree with 

18 that. It's an issue of how sufficient is this 

19 information for tying workers into individual 

20 areas. And when you go to do that, is it 

21 plausible that, for example, all these workers 

22 were exposed to thorium?
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1 And it sounds like from, Tim's 

2 comments, is maybe that would be difficult to 

3 do since they haven't actually applied this 

4 method yet.

5 I guess one way to wrap your head 

6 around it would be to do sort of a pilot study, 

7 a claimant sampling of more than just the 

8 handful that we looked at.

9 And also I'd like to add on to that, 

10 Tim's additional information on what records 

11 are out there that aren't currently in a NOCTS 

12 file goes a great deal to alleviating the 

13 concerns we had that you would really just have 

14 a lot of workers falling into that 

15 you-don't-know-where-they-are bin.

16 So, I mean, perhaps it's something 

17 worth looking into just so, you know, we could 

18 see where these extra files are, and that, yes, 

19 they are complete. And, yes, if need be we 

20 could always pull those records and know where 

21 the worker was. That's very important.

22 And I guess the other side of that 
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1 is, I mean, I'd personally like to take a look 

2 at some of these records that show what codes 

3 apply to which area. And see how some of the 

4 ones we've identified that aren't in Table 5-1, 

5 you know, what areas did they actually refer to? 

6 And if it turns out that, yeah, they referred 

7 to non-radiological areas, that's another very 

8 powerful piece of evidence.

9 DR. LIPSZTEIN: May I speak? May I 

10 say something? I think that also you say that 

11 you have a lot of people with data on thorium, 

12 americium and plutonium. It's true you have a 

13 lot of data on plutonium and americium or 

14 curium. But you don't have the data really on 

15 thorium.

16 What you have is a method where you 

17 were trying to apply the results from americium 

18 and curium to thorium because you say they were 

19 expected together. But you have to know to 

20 whom applied those data.

21 Because there were many people that 

22 were not exposed to thorium, but were exposed 
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1 to americium and curium. So you have really to 

2 know exactly to whom applied those data to 

3 thorium.

4 DR. TAULBEE: Joyce, this is Tim. 

5 That is not correct, in that the americium, 

6 curium, californium, thorium bioassay, urine 

7 bioassay method, is a gross alpha count. Okay? 

8 That is what it is. It incorporates all four 

9 of those radionuclides.

10 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I agree with you. 

11 Okay.

12 DR. TAULBEE: I'm sorry?

13 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I agree with you in 

14 that.

15 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, so now you've 

16 got workers in 773-A in the 1972 through 1989 

17 time period that were working in individual 

18 labs. Some of them were working with 

19 americium. Some were working with curium. 

20 Some were working with thorium. Some were 

21 working with all three of them. Some were 

22 working with plutonium.
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1 And so we're taking that gross alpha 

2 count for that worker, that 

3 americium-curium-californium-thorium count, 

4 and we are estimating the dose based upon what 

5 their cancer was, which is the most 

6 claimant-favorable to them. What would result 

7 in the highest dose?

8 So we're not trying to distinguish 

9 whether they were an americium worker, or a 

10 curium worker, or just a thorium worker, or 

11 whether they worked with all of them, or 

12 plutonium.

13 We are -- I shouldn't have confused 

14 it there with plutonium, but of those count, or 

15 of those workers, we're going to just simply 

16 assign the one that results in the highest dose 

17 that's the most claimant-favorable.

18 This again gets back to that 

19 approach of equal evidence. If we know 

20 somebody just worked with americium, then we're 

21 going to assign the americium. If we know 

22 somebody worked with just thorium, we're going 
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1 to assign the thorium. If we don't know, we're 

2 going to assign the most claimant-favorable.

3 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I understand, but 

4 the problem is that sometimes you have -- when 

5 you use the coworker model and use it for 

6 thorium, then you have -- even for one person, 

7 if you don't know where the person works, and 

8 if you make the assumption that he worked with 

9 Type S thorium, for example. And instead he 

10 didn't work with thorium but he worked with Type 

11 M americium, you wind up calculating a dose that 

12 is almost 100 times higher than what he really 

13 was. It is claimant-favorable, but is it 

14 scientifically okay to do this?

15 DR. TAULBEE: I think it is from the 

16 claimant-favorability standpoint of equal 

17 evidence and the unknown. In our federal 

18 regulations, we talk about that when there is 

19 a benefit of -- or when there is doubt as to what 

20 the exposure was, we will give the benefit to 

21 the claimant.

22 And that is the perfect example that 
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1 you just gave. Yes, somebody worked with 

2 americium, we didn't know that, they could have 

3 worked with thorium, they could have worked 

4 with curium.

5 We went ahead and assumed, based 

6 upon their cancer and which radionuclide 

7 concentrates there, we assigned the highest and 

8 most claimant-favorable. We gave that benefit 

9 of the doubt of the dose estimate to that 

10 worker.

11 If we have evidence that says they 

12 didn't work with thorium, they worked with 

13 americium, we'll use the americium. But that 

14 changes, all things being equal, giving the 

15 benefit of the doubt.

16 DR. LIPSZTEIN: So you think that 

17 assigning a dose 100 times higher than he really 

18 had, it's okay?

19 DR. TAULBEE: I do think it's okay, 

20 if we don't know whether they worked with 

21 thorium or americium. Yes. If I can't tell 

22 whether they worked with one or the other, then 
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1 yes. I'm okay with assigning that higher dose.

2 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yeah, because you 

3 know that americium is tight. It's like, for 

4 example, if you assign for the same urine 

5 excretion, it's not only a 100 times, more than 

6 a 100 times.

7 The same excretion results for 

8 americium would result in a lung dose of .25 

9 rem. If you assigned that to thorium Type S, 

10 it's 80 rem. So that's a huge difference. I 

11 don't think --

12 (Simultaneous speaking.)

13 DR. LIPSZTEIN: -- it's 

14 scientifically. Yes, okay. I'm hearing.

15 DR. NETON: I can give you multiple 

16 examples of where this type of issue resides in 

17 our program. I mean, we, for example, if a 

18 person is monitored for 20 years for plutonium 

19 and never had a positive plutonium result, 

20 we're going to assume that person was exposed 

21 and they were excreting uranium, or plutonium, 

22 equal to one half the MDA for their entire 
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1 career.

2 I mean, and the fact may be that the 

3 person never inhaled one atom of plutonium. 

4 So, you know, I understand what you're saying, 

5 that these values can vary, but the fact is if 

6 you don't know, you don't know.

7 I mean, you have to make some type 

8 of an assumption. And when we do, we err on the 

9 side of the claimant. 

10 (Simultaneous speaking.)

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I've been working 

12 with thorium for a long time and I know that if 

13 a worker is exposed to a Type S thorium, it's 

14 very, very, very difficult to see something in 

15 urine.

16 So if you have something in urine, 

17 of course with the extraction method of the 

18 time, of course not with using the other methods 

19 that we use today. But using gross alpha, or 

20 even alpha spectrometry, you have to have a 

21 very, very, very high exposure to thorium Type 

22 S to see something in urine.
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1 (Simultaneous speaking.)

2 DR. LIPSZTEIN: So, no, what I'm 

3 saying is that if you assign those -- if you see 

4 something in urine and you assign it to Type S 

5 thorium exposure, it's going to be 

6 unrealistically high because it's very, very, 

7 very rare that someone exposed to thorium Type 

8 S you would see something in urine using alpha, 

9 total alpha or alpha spectrometry.

10 (Simultaneous speaking.)

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: But I'll accept 

12 what you --

13 DR. NETON: And Tim has done the 

14 calculations and they're not that different 

15 than what you see with other actinides for Type 

16 S.

17 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Oh, yes.

18 DR. NETON: The actinides are 

19 higher, for example --

20 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Like plutonium, 

21 but not americium Type M. So you'll see a lot 

22 more in urine. But if you are okay with this, 
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1 I think it's scientifically, for me, that I work 

2 with thorium for my whole life, so I think 

3 through --

4 (Simultaneous speaking.)

5 DR. LIPSZTEIN: -- and it's very 

6 weird to have a high dose of thorium, but 

7 anyway, it's okay. I understand what you are 

8 saying.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, this is Jim, 

10 let me interject. I think this is one of those 

11 issues that I referenced in my little note a 

12 couple days ago, that we -- and I'll defer to 

13 Brad and the Work Group, but perhaps we owe 

14 NIOSH and the Work Group a somewhat more 

15 detailed treatment of this. Just to make sure 

16 that, you know, these questions are unpacked a 

17 little bit more. 

18 And maybe as part of that, as Bob was 

19 pointing out, propose a path forward, whether 

20 it be a little bit of a sampling or whatever for 

21 the Work Group to consider.

22 I don't think we're going to resolve 
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1 anything today on this issue, but I think we do 

2 owe that to the Work Group. Is that 

3 reasonable, Brad, Ted?

4 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I think 

5 so. I actually have a more specific -- I'd like 

6 to see something in writing myself, actually, 

7 so that NIOSH has something to be able to 

8 respond to, which is correct, and what our exact 

9 issues are.

10 We can debate this for hours if we 

11 wanted, but I'd rather get on to some other 

12 things. If we're not going to be -- I can see 

13 both sides on this. And I think that would be 

14 positive to do, Joe, thanks.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: And I think, as 

16 NIOSH has pointed out, we ought to take a look 

17 at the standard practice at other sites, like 

18 Hanford, and compare that with the methodology 

19 here.

20 Because I think, in fact, if it's 

21 standard operating procedure, or standard 

22 practice, then, you know, then we ought to be 
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1 fully aware of that in this context. Bob, is 

2 that reasonable?

3 MR. BARTON: Yeah, Joe, that sounds 

4 good to me. I'd also add that, you know, coming 

5 into today I had significantly more concerns. 

6 Now Tim has presented some information, such as 

7 the additional data sources, which will, you 

8 know, greatly go to alleviate that.

9 And I'd like to work with Tim to sort 

10 of see if we can fill in some of these gaps. 

11 And, you know, just resolve that, yeah, we're 

12 comfortable that we can place people where they 

13 should be for the purposes of assigning 

14 coworker.

15 And I think taking a closer look at 

16 the claimants is the way to do that.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: So, Brad, I would 

18 --

19 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. 

20 Could I say a couple of things? Hello, can you 

21 hear me?

22 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, 
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1 Arjun. Yes, Arjun, go ahead.

2 DR. MAKHIJANI: Just a couple of 

3 things. I wanted to respond to a comment that 

4 Jim Neton made earlier about plutonium and 

5 using MDA over two. 

6 Presumably people were monitored 

7 for plutonium because they were in plutonium 

8 areas. And using MDA over two when you get a 

9 less than detectable result seems a very 

10 reasonable thing to do, because there is 

11 nowhere else to place that. You could use a 

12 distribution, but more or less the same thing.

13 I think this thorium, using 

14 americium for thorium when you get more than two 

15 orders of magnitude difference in the dose is 

16 a completely different thing. And as I 

17 understand the situation, the dose estimates 

18 have to be scientifically reasonable.

19 And if you don't know and are simply 

20 assigning thorium instead of americium and you 

21 have an uncertainty of more than two orders of 

22 magnitude, I think this is -- I mean, maybe this 
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1 is a question that the SEC Work Group should 

2 take up, as to whether a two orders of magnitude 

3 or a factor of 300 uncertainty is a reasonable 

4 thing to do.

5 DR. ARNO: This two orders of 

6 magnitude is very common at other sites as well. 

7 Especially when you're dealing with gross alpha 

8 data. And when you're dealing with any 

9 nuclides that have solubility that vary from F 

10 to S, two order of magnitude difference in 

11 doses.

12 DR. LIPSZTEIN: This time you are 

13 going to much more than two orders of magnitude, 

14 it's from .25 to 80. And between Type M and 

15 Type S is about 40 times thorium.

16 But if you go to americium, then 

17 it's -- because it's 80, then two for Type M, 

18 and then .25 for americium, the dose’s 

19 difference.

20 My biggest problem is that I don't 

21 really believe that data above the detection 

22 limit could be from thorium without people 
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1 knowing that the worker was really heavily 

2 exposed to thorium Type S.

3 But that's a problem, that's a 

4 problem with thorium monitoring. It's in 

5 every place, that's the same problem.

6 DR. ARNO: Yes, I mean, if you 

7 compare a Type F plutonium dose to the --

8 DR. LIPSZTEIN: No, Type M and Type 

9 S. No, there is no thorium.

10 DR. ARNO: But you said two orders 

11 of magnitude is unusual, and I'm saying it's 

12 not. When you go from plutonium Type F or M, 

13 all the way up to Type Super S, you can get three 

14 orders of magnitude in the difference in the 

15 dose assigned.

16 Especially when you start talking 

17 about the lungs or the thoracic lymph nodes.

18 I mean, the way we apply claimant-favorability 

19 in this project results in many orders of 

20 magnitude difference in dose depending on what 

21 assumptions you make regarding the 

22 radionuclide that was in the intake and what 
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1 solubility you assign.

2 MEMBER LOCKEY: Hi, this is Jim 

3 Lockey. You know, I think, as a Board Member, 

4 our direction is to be claimant-favorable, and 

5 the approaches that are being taken are very 

6 claimant-friendly and -favorable. I don't 

7 have any problems with that. We're not doing 

8 a scientific study. These aren't being used to 

9 design an epidemiology study, this is health 

10 outcomes.

11 Our directions is to provide a 

12 matrix to be claimant-friendly. And I think 

13 the approach is appropriate.

14 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, 

15 Joe, I'm going to -- and thanks, Dr. Lockey, for 

16 your input. I think this whole thing comes 

17 down to it is claimant-favorable as long as you 

18 can put the information in there and the people 

19 can be assigned to the right areas.

20 But there's some underlying 

21 questions here, and as Joe has stated earlier, 

22 I believe it would be beneficial for us to be 
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1 able to put these issues down in writing so that 

2 we know exactly where we're at on it and proceed 

3 on from there.

4 Is there any issue with proceeding 

5 on like that? Because I don't think we're 

6 going to be able to get this resolved today.

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yeah, I agree, we 

8 should put down something in writing so we can 

9 look at it again so that we know what the issues 

10 are.

11 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Does 

12 that sound all right with -- oh, I'm sorry, I 

13 stepped on somebody. Go ahead.

14 MR. KATZ: Oh no. I was stepping 

15 on you, Brad. I'm sorry. I was just going to 

16 suggest -- that all sounds good. I was just 

17 going to suggest, it's 12:30 now and maybe 

18 this is a good place to take a lunch break?

19 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Oh, I was 

20 going to stop for breakfast, but okay. Yeah, 

21 if that's all right with everybody, why don't 

22 we do that and we'll show back up at 1:30?
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1 MR. KATZ: Yeah, that sounds great. 

2 I mean, we can do it shorter if everybody wants 

3 to do it shorter, that's fine too. Whatever is 

4 good for everyone else is fine with me. 

5 Everybody fine with an hour break? Anybody 

6 want to shorten that?

7 DR. TAULBEE: An hour sounds good 

8 to me.

9 MR. KATZ: Okay. Very good, then 

10 we'll reconvene at 1:30?

11 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

12 Ted, just a quick question. Are you in your 

13 office, or would you be by your cell phone?

14 MR. KATZ: Yeah, cell phone. You 

15 want to give me a ring?

16 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yeah, 

17 I'll call you in just a minute here, okay?

18 MR. KATZ: Okay, thanks.

19 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, 

20 we'll see everybody back at 1:30. Thank you.

21 MR. KATZ: Thanks, everybody.

22 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 
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1 matter went off the record at 12:29 p.m. and 

2 resumed at 1:33 p.m.)

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15 A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N

16 (1:33 P.M.)

17 MR. KATZ: Okay. So we're ready 

18 and we can carry on from where we left off.

19 Joe, maybe you want to lead the way?

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, let me 

21 recap. I mean, I think we certainly have 

22 chewed on this quite a bit. So I think it lends 
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1 itself to SC&A providing more specific details 

2 in written form on where we're coming from on 

3 some of these plausibility questions. And this 

4 is, again, directed at Finding 1 on the thorium.

5 And we were asked to look at 5.1, 

6 Table 5-1, in more detail on the February 5th 

7 meeting. And so I think, from what we've 

8 discussed, it looks like we need to do a little 

9 more analysis, and I know Bob wants to look at 

10 some of these quarterly reports that Tim was 

11 referring to.

12 And so we need to do more on this, 

13 and we'll get something back to the Work Group 

14 hopefully within the next several weeks just to 

15 put this in more specific form. And maybe 

16 identify sort of a path forward to resolving the 

17 question, at least as far as any necessary 

18 review. So that's what we'd would offer on 

19 this first thorium item.

20 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Does 

21 that sound good with -- this is Brad. Does that 

22 sound good with the Board Members and also with 
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1 NIOSH?

2 MEMBER LOCKEY: Jim Lockey, that 

3 sounds great.

4 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: I'll write this up 

6 very specifically in my notes I'll be 

7 circulating by tomorrow.

8 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

9 Well, we can proceed on to the next one. I'm 

10 just trying to bring up media here so that I can 

11 see what the next one is.

12 Joe, why don't we go -- you've 

13 probably got the papers right in front of you. 

14 Why don't you go ahead and just go on to the next 

15 issue?

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think 

17 Finding 2, I think NIOSH's response or concerns 

18 on thorium after -- what was it, 1970? No, I'm 

19 sorry, after 1990, certainly what was provided 

20 was, to us, a new approach based on using --

21 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Hi, Brad. I'm 

22 up there.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Hello?

2 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

3 Thanks Phil. Go, go ahead.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, using a 

5 derived air concentration value of two times 

6 ten to the minus 13. And using that as a basis 

7 for looking at dose estimation after 1990.

8 And I think what was in the NIOSH 

9 response, and Tim can clarify, that's going to 

10 be treated perhaps in more detail in a follow 

11 up review or report or OTIB or something.

12 And so what we have right now is what 

13 was in the response that was given, but not much 

14 more in the way of details or references and 

15 what have you.

16 So I guess that sort of puts us in

17 a position of, if there is going to be a follow 

18 up OTIB or report, we probably would want to 

19 look at that, rather than try to do a review at 

20 this point. We really don't have many of the 

21 specifics or the references or anything else.

22 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. That's 
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1 correct. I mean, our approach was to first 

2 present this to the Work Group and kind of get 

3 some feedback as to what questions you have so 

4 that we could kind of flesh those out a little 

5 more in the reports.

6 And so we kind of got a little bit 

7 of feedback during that February 5th meeting, 

8 so we'll draft up a report here of what our 

9 approach is and we'll get that out to you all 

10 so that you all can chew on it.

11 Basically it's going to take a lot 

12 of this same information that I walked through, 

13 kind of the weight of evidence approach that I 

14 went through on February 5th, and just 

15 formalize, document it, in a sense.

16 There won't be any new information 

17 from that standpoint, that wasn't in the 

18 presentation. But it will be more in a written 

19 form, so that you can, I guess, if you have 

20 questions or develop comments from that

21 standpoint. Does that sound okay to you, Joe, 

22 Brad, other Members of the Group?
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1 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That's 

2 fine.

3 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yeah.

4 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: That's good.

5 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: This is 

6 Brad. That sounds good. Mark, did I hear you 

7 come on the phone? 

8 (No response.)

9 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

10 Yes, that sounds good to us, Tim. And I agree 

11 with what you had to say and we'll proceed on 

12 from that one.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Unless Bob has 

14 something else to offer, Bob Barton, I would go 

15 to Finding 3, which I think we touched on as well 

16 at the --

17 MR. BARTON: I agree, Joe, I think 

18 we have to wait and sort of see the full package 

19 before we can comment on the new approach to the 

20 post-1990.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, we did have 

22 some discussion last time, as we did with 
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1 Finding 3. Finding 3, quite frankly, and we 

2 had some original issues as to whether or not 

3 all the incidents had been identified, and were 

4 they in fact available in databases.

5 And NIOSH has done additional 

6 review and has pretty much confirmed this is 

7 pretty much what is available. We have not 

8 found any evidence of additional information, 

9 so that's, you know -- without doing additional 

10 site data capture, I guess we would ask the Work 

11 Group, how do you want to proceed?

12 I mean, as far as whether all of the 

13 available incidents information had been 

14 identified, we don't dispute what NIOSH has 

15 done. The original question was whether it was 

16 complete enough or not. And that's kind of 

17 where we're at, at this point. So I guess we 

18 would defer that to the Work Group.

19 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, 

20 Joe, help me understand this, I'm trying to 

21 think back to when we got into this. It was 

22 that they didn't have enough data for this? Or 
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1 just run through the issue again. I'm trying 

2 to picture what we have here.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the 

4 question was whether or not, you know, the full 

5 body of information available for incidents, as 

6 reported to Savannah River that might have 

7 involved thorium, whether it was in fact 

8 encompassed in the review that NIOSH had done 

9 for the Site Profile, and then the SEC.

10 And in light of further data capture 

11 and the discussion we had -- well, actually, the 

12 NIOSH response to this particular finding, I 

13 guess we've just come to the conclusion we can't 

14 identify any additional sources.

15 And, you know, certainly the data 

16 capture's been fairly complete on the point. 

17 So what we're saying is without doing any 

18 further review, we think, you know, this is it. 

19 I mean, I think this is all the information we 

20 have at this point.

21 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

22 And, Joe, part of the issue on this was getting 
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1 you guys into Savannah River and being able to 

2 look at some of these documents, wasn't it? 

3 This was part of the issue of the problem with 

4 Savannah River Site of not being able to get 

5 into the data.

6 And since that time, you have made 

7 a trip down to Savannah River, and also has Tim, 

8 is that correct?

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, we've been a 

10 couple times and we've interviewed a number of 

11 workers. And that included any instances of 

12 unreported incidents. You know, we're relying 

13 on the database, the so-called Special Hazards 

14 Investigations Database. That's what's 

15 referenced in the Addendum 3.

16 And our question was, how complete 

17 is that? There was some evidence that it did 

18 not in fact encompass all the kinds of events 

19 at the site. It’s just the major ones.

20 And what we wanted to do was 

21 establish whether there were other incidents 

22 that may have not got into that database that 
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1 had occurred involving thorium.

2 Now, you know, it's like proving a 

3 negative. We have not found anything that 

4 suggested that, to date. And we've looked at 

5 least twice now onsite.

6 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, 

7 you know. Go ahead, I'm sorry.

8 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. If I 

9 could just add, this kind of goes back to that 

10 discussion that I gave on February 5th of 

11 there’s a tiered structure to the incident 

12 reporting.

13 The Special Hazards 

14 Investigations, and then there was the 

15 Facility-Specific Incident Reports which are 

16 DPSP reports, or DPST reports. And then 

17 there's the Health Physics Logbooks. And then 

18 inside the Monthly Works Technical Reports are 

19 incidents listed as well.

20 But the main source from the dose 

21 reconstruction standpoint, for us, for 

22 incidents, is in the claimant files. And we've 
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1 cross-checked to where people who were involved 

2 in some of these incidents, at all three stages 

3 of that, that I just listed there: Special 

4 Hazards, Facility, and then the Health Physics, 

5 you see that information within their records, 

6 within their individual files within NOCTS.

7 And so this is -- you know, we went 

8 through them, we've looked for thorium 

9 incidents, and frankly we really haven't found 

10 any in this time period. Mostly because, in 

11 the 1972 to 1989 time period, you're dealing 

12 with very small quantities of thorium, and 

13 there just haven't been any known incidents to 

14 this.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. And just, 

16 again, we did want to talk with some of the 

17 identified thorium workers, former thorium 

18 workers, going back into the 70s just to more 

19 or less validate that. People who actually 

20 handled thorium, whether there were events that 

21 may or may not have found their way into any of 

22 these databases and what not. And we found no 
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1 evidence of that. So I just wanted to make sure 

2 that was clear to the Work Group.

3 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, 

4 you know, we can only do so much. I don't know 

5 if I can act for Mark or anything else on this 

6 like the Chair, but as far as I can see, if we 

7 can't find any more data on this, there is 

8 nothing more that we can do.

9 We've done our due diligence to 

10 this. And we've uncovered every stone that we 

11 can. So I'd basically say that this one would 

12 be closed. Other Board Members can voice their 

13 concerns.

14 MEMBER LOCKEY: Jim Lockey. I would 

15 agree with you. You've done everything you can 

16 do to find additional data. It's not there, so 

17 there's nothing left to do. I think we can 

18 close it.

19 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

20 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I agree, Brad. 

21 I think we should close it. I mean, they're just 

22 beating a dead horse if they keep looking more.
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1 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, 

2 well, with that said, I'd say that this one is 

3 closed. And we can continue on to the next one 

4 unless anybody, NIOSH or SC&A, has any other 

5 issues with that.

6 Hearing none, I'd -- did somebody go 

7 ahead or was somebody trying to speak?

8 (No response.)

9 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, 

10 with that said, we'll continue on, Joe.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: I think this is 

12 about where we left off on the 5th, which was 

13 a discussion on thoron. And I don't -- you 

14 know, we sort of segued into a couple other 

15 subjects at the same time. So I'm not sure we 

16 actually did close out the discussion.

17 So I want to just open it up to my 

18 colleagues, particularly Bob Barton. Is there 

19 anything more? I mean, you certainly have the 

20 response on thoron, particularly as it relates 

21 to the tank farm.

22 But is there any other questions? 
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1 I think we had some clarifying questions 

2 regarding whether all the sources of thoron 

3 were accounted for.

4 MR. BARTON: Yeah, Joe. This is 

5 Bob Barton. Essentially what we were looking 

6 for with this finding was to see if NIOSH, you 

7 know, what their plan was. If they intended to 

8 address the issue of -- sort of the thoron 

9 source term leaking form areas of the site that 

10 had significant thorium storage areas.

11 And one of them that was identified 

12 and NIOSH mentions is the Tank Number 15. I 

13 think another one might be the Tank Number 12, 

14 but, you know, I really don't think we got into 

15 it much.

16 I'd kind of like to hear, because I 

17 don't recall actually hearing it, if NIOSH 

18 intends to -- what, if anything, they intend to 

19 do about potential exposure to thoron?

20 So I guess I would turn that back to 

21 NIOSH to kind of have them present their 

22 position and then we can go from there.
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1 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. Our 

2 general position is that, with regard to the 

3 tank farms and the venting of the thoron coming 

4 out of those, Savannah River has done an 

5 analysis of what those thoron concentrations 

6 are.

7 So people who were working in the 

8 tank farms, that would be something that we 

9 would just take what those doses were that they 

10 measured coming from that, and assign it.

11 For the other areas, in particular 

12 773-A, there is lots of air sample data in the 

13 post-1990 time period. Well, actually, even 

14 all the way through there is initial count data, 

15 there's 24-hour count data, six-hour count 

16 data, 24-hour count data where we could go 

17 through and estimate what the thoron 

18 concentration is, or a component of that radon, 

19 of that total radon, if you will.

20 But I guess my question to you all 

21 would be for that time period where we're 

22 dealing with only, you know, 100, maybe 150 
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1 milligrams of thorium in the building of 773-A, 

2 is this something that you want us to go back 

3 and look at from the Advisory Board, I guess, 

4 the Work Group Members here? 

5 It’s something we could do. It 

6 would involve capturing more data from that 

7 earlier time period of '72 to '89. It's 

8 certainly doable, but again we just don't think 

9 the source term is really large. Certainly, 

10 the source term coming out of the tanks would 

11 be bounding for that area. At least in my 

12 opinion.

13 But to prove that would take effort. 

14 And we can do that, but it certainly would just 

15 take time and effort. So I'd like to get 

16 feedback from Work Group Members as to whether 

17 that's something you want us to pursue.

18 MR. BARTON: This is Bob Barton. 

19 Maybe I can add -- our original concern really 

20 was related to those tank farms. And can I ask, 

21 though, you'd mentioned sort of the survey --

22 DR. MAKHIJANI: Bob, this is Arjun. 
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1 Could I just add one more thing?

2 MR. BARTON: Please.

3 DR. MAKHIJANI: I think we had 

4 mentioned the storage areas of thorium, so I 

5 think Tim is right about that. And it might be 

6 useful to have at least some check on whether 

7 the tank farm thoron measurements are bounding 

8 or not.

9 MR. BARTON: Yes, Arjun. Yeah, I 

10 agree. And that's exactly where I was going 

11 to. I think the intent of our original finding 

12 was really related to those tanks: was it a 

13 significant source term of thorium that 

14 produced thoron? 

15 And I guess I’d kind of ask Tim. You 

16 had mentioned that, you know, you have survey 

17 data. Are you referring to the reports from 

18 the mid-90s? Because I do remember seeing 

19 those references. They did some survey work 

20 around definitely the Tank 15, and also Tank 12, 

21 between 1995 and 1997, to sort of you know 

22 characterize it.
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1 And actually in those reports they 

2 talk about some modifications that could be 

3 made and whether you should have workers in the 

4 area when they are actually purging those 

5 tanks. And I guess I'm asking is that the 

6 resource that you're looking to use to bound the 

7 thoron potential at those tanks?

8 DR. TAULBEE: That is correct, yes.

9 MR. BARTON: Okay. And I guess 

10 then my only question would be, is there any 

11 reason to think that that would not be 

12 appropriate to use for the earlier parts of the 

13 SEC?

14 Because, like I said, I think those 

15 analyses were done in the mid-90s. And I don't 

16 know if there were any modifications to the way 

17 they would do the purgings. Or the way they 

18 had, you know, the stack height or whatever it 

19 is that would make the earlier period 

20 different. Or if there is actual survey data 

21 out by those tanks that sort of verifies the 

22 larger project that was done in the mid-90s. I 
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1 guess that would be my only question.

2 DR. MAKHIJANI: If I might add 

3 something to that. I know in the 80s sometime 

4 maybe they changed their maintenance 

5 procedures about the tanks. Maybe late 80s. 

6 So they may have changed their ventilation and 

7 maintenance procedures. I'm not 100 percent 

8 sure about that. But I think that happened 

9 there. So this point may be fairly material. 

10 And it would be useful to compare this source 

11 term with wherever the maximum storage of 

12 thorium was, as a check.

13 DR. TAULBEE: Well, the amount of 

14 thorium that's in those waste tanks far exceeds 

15 any other storage area onsite.

16 And correct me if I'm wrong on that, 

17 Mike or Matt, but I'm believing it's somewhere 

18 around 30,000 kilograms or something like that?

19 The next closest source would be 

20 the RBOF Building, which is the spent fuel, and 

21 there the thorium is stored under water, and 

22 it's sealed in fuel elements. So there is no 
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1 potential for exposure to thoron there.

2 And so then you're dropping from 

3 30,000 to 8,000 kilograms of thorium in the 

4 RBOF. And the other area would be the 773 where 

5 you're all the way down to 150 kilograms.

6 So clearly the tanks would be, in 

7 my thought, the largest source term of thorium 

8 that would be available for an exposure. As 

9 we're looking at the other --

10 (Simultaneous speaking.)

11 DR. MAKHIJANI: -- attenuated by 

12 the liquid in the tanks?

13 DR. TAULBEE: Well, that's a hard 

14 question to answer, but yeah --

15 DR. MAKHIJANI: That's sort of a 

16 little bit what's behind my concern here, is 

17 that we need a little bit of a demonstration 

18 that these source terms are, you know, that the 

19 right source term in being used. And that the 

20 right periods are --

21 DR. TAULBEE: I mean, if we're 

22 going to go through that type of effort, I would 
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1 just go back to the original air samples that 

2 are in the building and use that.

3 I mean, that's the actual data, and 

4 so the actual exposure would be dropped 

5 tremendously. So if you want us to do, you 

6 know, an evaluation of it being bounding, it's 

7 just as easy to go get the original data and come 

8 up with another model for the buildings, which 

9 would be a --

10 DR. MAKHIJANI You know, it's not 

11 for us to say, but I'm just raising a point of 

12 scientific correctness here.

13 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: This is 

14 Brad. One of my questions is -- this is for 

15 SC&A. Have we reviewed the data and this 

16 information -- I guess, Bob, this more directed 

17 towards you or Arjun. Have we reviewed the 

18 data on this and evaluated? Have we taken a 

19 look at it for its accuracy and so forth?

20 MR. BARTON: We have not directly 

21 evaluated it as far as comparing the air 

22 sampling and potential thorium areas which is 
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1 the tank farms.

2 That was sort of where my question 

3 was directed towards NIOSH as to it feels like 

4 we're kind of hanging our hat on the analysis 

5 done in 1995 and again in 1997, which identified 

6 that with the current configuration, they 

7 didn't want workers up on the catwalks around 

8 those tanks when they were being purged.

9 As much -- because of the 

10 topographical data. Tank 12H was kind of 

11 surrounded by a berm and a little bit lower and 

12 -- so, I guess, you know, it’s just sort of a 

13 new issue as far us discussing it. Because we 

14 really didn't get to it last meeting.

15 And it sounds like NIOSH's position 

16 is to use the data from the tank farms to bound 

17 thoron exposures sitewide. Am I correct in 

18 that assumption?

19 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, I mean, that was 

20 my approach to it. But, again, if that isn't 

21 reasonable, we can always go get the data and 

22 analyze it.
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1 MR. BARTON: Okay, I mean, that's 

2 maybe a question for discussion. I mean, 

3 logically I would think that those tank farms, 

4 as you purge them, would represent the bounding 

5 source term. But that argument certainly 

6 needs to be buttressed by more than my opinion.

7 And the other facet with that was, 

8 you know, the reports that we're kind of 

9 referring to occurred in the mid-90s. And I'm 

10 not saying the source term was appreciably 

11 different but perhaps the actual configuration 

12 around the tanks where those catwalks were or 

13 the size of the stack, might have been 

14 different.

15 So I think that would be a line of 

16 investigation that would be worth taking as 

17 well. Just to make sure that when we're using 

18 sort of, for lack of a better word, surrogate 

19 data from the later years to apply to potential 

20 thoron exposures in the earlier years, to 

21 assure that we're not missing something that 

22 was materially different in those earlier 
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1 years.

2 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. Just 

3 want to follow up on that. That thorium had 

4 been in the tanks since the late 1960s up 

5 through about 1971 -- about 1971 was the last 

6 bit that was sent to those tanks following the 

7 U-233 campaigns.

8 So it's been in there the entire 

9 time period of evaluation. It hasn't changed.

10 MR. BARTON: Well, sure. I said 

11 that. I don't think the source term materially 

12 changed. But did sort of the exposure 

13 configuration? Because what we see even in the 

14 1997 report when they, you know, did a fairly 

15 extensive review of the potential for a thoron 

16 problem, they gave recommendations on how they 

17 should either change the stack height or limit 

18 worker access to the catwalks around the 

19 different tanks. I believe it was like 9 

20 through 13.

21 And so, you know, they were looking 

22 at improvements then. And do we have any 
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1 evidence? I don't know that there is any that, 

2 you know, improvements were made even earlier 

3 that would sort of make it difficult to use that 

4 mid-1990s data as a bounding source of 

5 exposure.

6 DR. TAULBEE: I don't have any 

7 evidence of changes, but that doesn't mean they 

8 didn't occur. If you want us to go to that type 

9 of level to go back to drawings and see if there 

10 was changes to the stack height or the venting 

11 procedures and so forth, it's just as easy for 

12 us to go get data from the site within the 

13 buildings of interest that handled thorium as 

14 well. Mainly 773, and just recalculate a new 

15 thorium model or a new thorium dose based on 

16 those.

17 MR. BARTON: Sure. I was actually 

18 more referring to changes in exposure potential 

19 to the actual tank farm workers who were out 

20 there when purges were occurring. Not 

21 necessarily whether that data would properly 

22 bound exposures to people who were inside the 
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1 plant. But actually to worker who might have 

2 been up around those catwalks or, you know, in 

3 and around the purge section of the site when 

4 it was happening. I guess that was our --

5 (Simultaneous speaking.)

6 MR. BARTON: -- that was my point 

7 anyway.

8 DR. TAULBEE: -- farms as well.

9 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: What was 

10 that, Tim? I didn't hear that.

11 DR. TAULBEE: There's air sample 

12 data for the tank farms as well.

13 MR. BARTON: Okay, so that goes 

14 back to the earlier 70s as well? And we can 

15 look at that and use that.

16 DR. TAULBEE: We could, but we have 

17 to go capture it first.

18 MR. BARTON: I see. Well, that's 

19 kind of where we're at on that. I mean, we have 

20 a good characterization of those tanks where 

21 the majority of thorium was.

22 Again, in the mid-90s, the source 
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1 term probably didn't change very much, but 

2 maybe the configuration changed. You know, 

3 with the current information, we can't really 

4 go much further than that.

5 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, 

6 this is Brad. I understand where we're at on 

7 this issue but part of my problem is that I'm 

8 having trouble following where we're at.

9 NIOSH has put out a way that they 

10 figure they'll be able to do it. And to be able 

11 to justify it, we've got to be able to evaluate 

12 the data.

13 But what I hear Tim saying is, is, 

14 well, if we're going to do that, then we're 

15 going to change the process of how we're going 

16 to do it.

17 My question is, do we have a 

18 established method right now that NIOSH has 

19 proposed to us to be able to do? And that's 

20 correct, isn't it, Tim?

21 DR. TAULBEE: Well, we're going to 

22 be using the concentrations from these ventings 
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1 as a bounding approach. And that was our 

2 approach.

3 But SC&A is bring up all these other 

4 issues that it seems like you want us to go and 

5 try and track down. And if that's the case, I 

6 mean, I feel that the ventings are by far the 

7 most significant exposure to it.

8 But, I mean, that's just my 

9 professional opinion. If you want me to prove 

10 that, then why don't we just go and capture the 

11 actual air sample data and demonstrate what the 

12 actual concentration was?

13 So, yes, we would be changing our 

14 approach if we have to go and try to justify our 

15 current approach as bounding. I think it's 

16 bounding just based upon my experience, but 

17 others might disagree with that.

18 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, 

19 and understand, we're -- and I guess I'm looking 

20 at this from a Board Member, Tim. I'm not ever 

21 questioning your professional judgment or 

22 anything else like that.
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1 But to put some of the data out 

2 there, I want to make sure that we have all the 

3 data that we have used, and that we can actually 

4 justify and prove to anybody looking in from the 

5 outside of it, that this is bounding, this is 

6 the best that we've got. And from SC&A's 

7 standpoint, that they have justified all of the 

8 information and the data, and we've run this to 

9 ground. This is just part of the process that 

10 we're in.

11 And I guess my conundrum here is on 

12 one hand you've got something set out here for 

13 us. But if we're going to make you justify this 

14 information, then you're going to change it. 

15 That's where I've got my issue at.

16 I guess what I would like from --

17 you're going to have to justify it no matter 

18 what. We're going to have to make sure that 

19 this is the proper information that we've got, 

20 that we've got adequate information to be able 

21 to make this kind of a judgment. So my question 

22 to you is, we're going to have to do that, so 
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1 you're thinking of changing the process and 

2 just go pull all the sample data from the -- the 

3 air sample data from the stacks? Correct?

4 DR. TAULBEE: No. Yes and no.

5 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Oh, 

6 okay.

7 DR. TAULBEE: The final part 

8 there, pulling it from the stacks, no. There 

9 is air sample data not from the stacks that is 

10 there in the workplace area. And they were 

11 doing other sampling and other tasks.

12 When they did those other tasks, 

13 for the workers standing on top of the tanks, 

14 they would take an initial count for 

15 radon-thoron. And they would do a measurement 

16 of that. That is the data I'm talking about 

17 going to get. 

18 The only reason I'm suggesting to 

19 do that and change our approach, which I 

20 understand you're concerned with, is that 

21 frankly I believe it's easier and faster to go 

22 get that data than it is to try to demonstrate 
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1 that there weren't any of these other changes 

2 that changed that plume, venting from the 1990s 

3 measurements. I simply think it's an 

4 efficiency standpoint.

5 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And I 

6 understand that. And I guess from -- I know, 

7 as a Board Member, where I'm at now, I would tell 

8 you that, well, okay, then we need to be able 

9 to look at this data. And we need to be able 

10 make sure.

11 Because I don't want to be put up 

12 in front of the people and say, well, how come, 

13 how can you just take this as this. We need to 

14 be able to run this in.

15 So if you're going to pull this 

16 data, this is my understanding, and forgive me, 

17 I didn't mean to misrepresent you there. I just 

18 kept hearing the stack and the air sample data 

19 and stuff like that and probably got confused. 

20 Then basically this comes down to this is back 

21 into NIOSH's court. And they are going to 

22 proceed with a different path forward and 
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1 they'll get back with the Board on this.

2 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, I agree to 

3 that. Thank you.

4 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Any of 

5 the other Board Members feel any differently? 

6 And feel that they need -- Jim?

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: Jim Lockey. 

8 What's going to be the NIOSH path forward, then, 

9 so I understand?

10 DR. TAULBEE: Our path forward 

11 would be for us to go to the site and take a 

12 representative sampling of air samples over 

13 time from the tank farm area and evaluate those 

14 initial counts, the six-hour counts, the 

15 24-hour counts, and come up with what the thoron 

16 component of the total radon would be. And 

17 that would be the dose we would assign to the 

18 workers in that area.

19 MEMBER LOCKEY: You're going to go 

20 back to the site and actually do air sampling?

21 DR. TAULBEE: Actually get air 

22 sampling data from the 1970s up through the 
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1 1990s.

2 MEMBER LOCKEY: So then you're 

3 going to retrieve that data, okay.

4 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, we'll do a 

5 sampling. We won't capture it all. Because 

6 it's hundreds of thousands of pages.

7 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Tim, is 

8 this electronic or is this all paper?

9 DR. TAULBEE: It's a mix.

10 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: It's a 

11 mix.

12 DR. TAULBEE: Yeah. Well, it's 

13 not electronically available from a database 

14 standpoint. But some of it is available 

15 PDF-wise to where Joe can look at it now and I 

16 can look at it now.

17 And then others we'll actually have 

18 to pull some boxes, especially back in the 

19 earlier 70s through probably the early 80s.

20 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

21 Dr. Lockey, does that answer your question?

22 MEMBER LOCKEY: It did, thank you.
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1 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: What's 

2 your feelings on it, Jim? You know --

3 MEMBER LOCKEY: What are my 

4 feelings about it?

5 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yeah, do 

6 you agree with me that basically we've got to, 

7 if this is what we're going to do, we've got to 

8 review the data and go from there.

9 MEMBER LOCKEY: I think looking at 

10 the data is always the best approach on 

11 anything. I don't know enough about it to say 

12 what the probability of what SC&A is saying in 

13 regard to perhaps a exposure level that’s not 

14 represented by the bounding limits that NIOSH 

15 is already using.

16 I don't know that probability. 

17 Whether it's a ten percent probability or 50 

18 percent probability. Not knowing that, I 

19 always say go look at the data, and the data will 

20 tell you where to go.

21 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

22 Phil?
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1 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: No, I agree 

2 that we've got to get all of that data for them 

3 to look at to verify what the model is.

4 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right. 

5 Well, Bob, is this going to -- you know, you're 

6 going to have to review this, you or Joe, or any 

7 of them. Is this a good enough path forward? 

8 You think this will satisfy the issues that 

9 you've raised?

10 MR. BARTON: Yeah, Brad, I think 

11 that is probably the best path to go with. I 

12 mean, just as a general philosophical point, I 

13 think anytime you're going to use situations 

14 from a later time period and apply them 

15 beforehand, you kind of have to have some 

16 connection to say that conditions were 

17 sufficiently the same, that it's fine to go 

18 ahead and use, you know, the mid-90s evaluation 

19 for the earlier years.

20 And, to me, what I'm hearing, I 

21 mean, I think this is probably the best way to 

22 do it. I mean, as Tim said, just from an 
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1 efficiency standpoint, I mean, you can go in and 

2 look at structural drawings to see what the 

3 height of the catwalks was.

4 But, I mean, even then, you know, 

5 what's the connection to how that affected the 

6 exposure potential? I think getting the air 

7 sampling and comparing it to what NIOSH is 

8 proposing for the thoron issue, is the way to 

9 go.

10 And there hasn't been a formal, 

11 necessarily, write-up on -- or has there? I 

12 mean, maybe Tim can remind me, is there an 

13 official write-up on how NIOSH currently 

14 proposes using that mid-90s evaluation to bound 

15 the thoron exposure?

16 DR. TAULBEE: I'm actually not 

17 sure. I'd have to go back to ER Addendum 3 and 

18 dig out what it was that we said about the thoron 

19 there. I couldn't answer that off the top of 

20 my head. Sorry.

21 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, 

22 well, then with that said, then, this one will 
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1 fall to NIOSH, and we'll proceed on. Joe?

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yeah, I think 

3 going from -- that was Finding 4. Really, the 

4 vast majority of the next, I guess almost 15 

5 findings, from 5 to 23, had to do with 

6 OPOS-related, or NCW versus CTW comparisons.

7 Which, I think, in the last Work 

8 Group meeting, I think it was everybody's 

9 consensus that that would better deferred to 

10 the SEC Work Group review of that report, which 

11 by the way was just issued. SC&A did send that 

12 out. I guess it was Friday, late last week.

13 And we did make a comment, though, 

14 that quite apart from the question of applying 

15 OPOS, we do have some very fundamental concerns 

16 over the comparison between the NCW and the 

17 construction trade worker groups in terms of 

18 data accuracy standpoint.

19 Though OPOS is the methodology, but 

20 I think we still have very much site-specific 

21 concerns about whether that's feasible or not. 

22 So I just want to throw that in.
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1 But for this discussion, for this 

2 Work Group, I would recommend we probably move 

3 beyond those findings.

4 Seventeen, we did touch upon last 

5 time, which was a question of whether chelation 

6 samples were included. And I think there was 

7 agreement. And NIOSH's response in the 

8 discussion was that they would not be. Did I 

9 get correct?

10 DR. ARNO: I guess just two things 

11 there. Within the bioassay records it's noted 

12 that DTPA had been administered. Those have 

13 already been removed. But we did not go back 

14 and look at the other information about who was 

15 given chelation therapy to exclude records on 

16 that basis yet.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: But I think in 

18 principle there's agreement that they would be 

19 excluded?

20 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, I believe 

21 that's the case.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think 
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1 that's where we came out. But --

2 DR. NETON: Yeah, this is Jim. We 

3 agree with that. Technically, it's not 

4 appropriate to use chelation data in a coworker 

5 model when you know it.

6 I mean, if it slips in there because 

7 you don't know it, as you indicate in your 

8 finding, that we be claimant-favorable. But 

9 where we do know it's a chelation person, it 

10 should be avoided.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: So then it just 

12 becomes a question of just verifying, 

13 implementation more than anything else. 

14 So, Brad, I don't think we have an 

15 issue on that. We seem to be in agreement on 

16 Number 17.

17 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, 

18 then. With the other Board Members’

19 concurrence, then we could close that one.

20 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I have no 

21 problem closing it.

22 MEMBER LOCKEY: Jim Lockey. No 
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1 problem.

2 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: That moves us 

4 swiftly forward to Finding 18, which actually 

5 Joyce has spent a considerable amount of time, 

6 as you probably can see by the attached 

7 spreadsheets. And I would not want to pretend 

8 I could describe everything that she's done in 

9 terms of her analysis. So, Joyce, are you on 

10 the phone?

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, I'm on the 

12 phone.

13 MEMBER LOCKEY: On Number 18, 

14 which gets to be a little complex, could you I 

15 guess slowly take us through, take the Work 

16 Group through what the issue is and what we 

17 would think the implications are?

18 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay. I'm not a 

19 chemist is the first thing I want to say. I'm 

20 a physicist, not a chemist. But I looked at the 

21 raw results, some americium, curium, which 

22 might have thorium in it.
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1 And I examined this raw data and the 

2 raw data is, as you can see by the table that 

3 we put on the spreadsheet, it comes like several 

4 discs.

5 There were ten disc results. You 

6 can see dpm for 1.5 liters and down. They are 

7 all different disc results for the same sample. 

8 And then you have the report value. Okay?

9 So I've noticed that in several of 

10 the discs the results were very different, one 

11 from the other. And I was asking how reliable 

12 are those results if they are so different one 

13 from the other?

14 So we got an answer that when you 

15 have results that are near the detection limit, 

16 you would find a lot of variability. And I 

17 understand that. But then I decided to divide 

18 the results in parts.

19 So first I made a table with all 

20 results that were greater than three dpm per 1.5 

21 liters. Why greater than three dpm per 1.5 

22 liters? Because the MDA of the method is 
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1 reported as .3 dpm per 1.5 liters.

2 On that range, from greater than 10 

3 MDAs, about 15 percent of the results are the 

4 green ones. They are results which I think 

5 have a great variability.

6 One example for that, if you take 

7 the third green results, one disc is 53, the 

8 other one is 23. And you get an average of 38. 

9 Then you have the 4th disc results. You have 

10 8.64. Then you have 6.79. Then you have 2.72. 

11 Then you have 15.3.

12 So you have a big variability 

13 between 2.72, which is almost three, to 15. It’s 

14 five times. So even in that range of results 

15 greater than 3 dpm per 1.5 liters, you have 15 

16 percent of the results that has this kind of 

17 uncertainty.

18 Then I went to look at the results 

19 that were between one dpm and three dpm per 1.5 

20 liters. So between 3.3 times the minimum 

21 detection activity and 10 times the detection 

22 activity.
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1 And, of course, as we expected, as 

2 you go down you have more variability. So we 

3 came up with 26 percent of the samples had what 

4 I call very high variability.

5 Then I have the results that were 

6 another table with results from .32 dpm per 1.5 

7 liters to .99 dpm divided by 1.5 liters per day. 

8 1.5 liters is the urine excretion in a day.

9 So these are results that are --

10 when the final result is above the detection 

11 limits, and between the detection limit and 

12 three times the detection limit. And I have 43 

13 percent of the results that have a lot of 

14 variability.

15 So I don't know if we should trust 

16 results that have a large variability of 

17 results. And what to do with those samples?

18 Then, as I looked at the table, and 

19 you can see, most of the results that are above 

20 3 dpm won’t be used anyway, because 90 percent 

21 of those results were from DTPA, when the DTPA 

22 was given.
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1 I don't know about, you know -- some 

2 of the results I don't have information, if DTPA 

3 was used or not. But 90 percent of the results 

4 we know that DTPA was used.

5 Then you go to the other range, from 

6 1 dpm to 3 dpm, then you have that 75 percent 

7 of those results were from the usage of DTPA. 

8 So most of the results were from results that 

9 were below .99 dpm per 1.5 liters.

10 That's where most of the results 

11 are going to come to do the coworker model. And 

12 they have a lot of uncertainty. So I don't know 

13 what is acceptable, what is not acceptable.

14 But if -- I don't know. I think 

15 that if I were in my lab, I would like to know 

16 what was happening that you have such high 

17 uncertainty on results from the same sample.

18 And then I went -- I know that it 

19 was told here on this conference call that the 

20 OTIB-81 was not discussed yet, but I'm looking 

21 at results that you used for the urinary 

22 excretion, the 50 percentile and 85th 
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1 percentile of the urinary excretion rate of 

2 americium, which will give us the data for 

3 thorium.

4 And from '72 on, that's the time 

5 period that we are looking at, they are all 

6 below the detection limits. So they are 

7 results with a high range of uncertainty. So 

8 I don't know if they can really be used like 

9 that, using the number itself that you got.

10 So I doubt very much those results 

11 that are well below the detection limit when you 

12 have such an uncertainty on the results. Can 

13 you get what I’m talking about?

14 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. I 

15 understand what it is you're talking about but 

16 I disagree with some of your conclusions.

17 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay.

18 DR. TAULBEE: Of the --

19 DR. LIPSZTEIN: So let me hear.

20 DR. TAULBEE: -- excessive 

21 uncertainty. A large number of this 

22 uncertainty can be explained by simple counting 
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1 statistics. Not all of it. I agree there are 

2 some other process things that were going on.

3 But I, in our response we're trying 

4 to point out that one of the major advantages 

5 of doing multiple counts on the same sample is 

6 you're getting more accurate answer. You get 

7 more towards what the true meaning is. And 

8 that was the goal here that Savannah River was 

9 doing.

10 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes. But would 

11 you trust the results like, you are well above 

12 the detection limits first. Not the bottom of 

13 detection limit. You have 63 and 23, then you 

14 have another one that has 8.6, 6.8 --

15 DR. TAULBEE: But that --

16 DR. LIPSZTEIN: -- 2.7 and 15.3. 

17 You have even some results that they sum a 

18 positive result with a negative results to give 

19 an average result. That's very strange.

20 DR. NETON: Tim, this is Jim. 

21 I've got a question, or two questions actually. 

22 Am I correct in understanding that they would 
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1 take a sample and split it and do four separate 

2 discs on one sample?

3 Or are, you know, multiple discs? 

4 Kind of unusual.

5 DR. TAULBEE: I don't know that for

6 sure --

7 DR. NETON: Are these individually 

8 separate counts on the same disc? I don't 

9 quite follow what they were doing here.

10 DR. TAULBEE: My belief is they 

11 were counting the same disc multiple times. 

12 But Matt can you shed some light on that?

13 DR. ARNO: No, I can't. It's hard 

14 to tell from available records whether they 

15 were counting the same thing multiple times. 

16 Or whether they actually had separate aliquots 

17 from one sample.

18 DR. NETON: It would be really good 

19 to understand that. I think Joyce raises an 

20 issue. And I think it deserves us to follow up 

21 a little bit further on, I think. The ranges 

22 are pretty large.
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1 The other thing that concerns me is 

2 the DTPA usage. These were Type M actinides, 

3 right? So these were being measured for 

4 americium, curium, and thorium came through as 

5 well, right?

6 And Californium. My understanding 

7 of exposures, at a facility like Savannah River 

8 was, you wouldn't have had a huge number of 

9 people chelated for those nuclides. It was a 

10 by and large chelation for plutonium. I'm a 

11 little --

12 DR. ARNO: A lot of times that's 

13 right. People were chelated to plutonium and 

14 americium contamination in the plutonium came 

15 out at the same time.

16 DR. NETON: Yes, that's true. 

17 Yes, because I was going to say if it's a 

18 chelation for plutonium, it would have been 

19 taken out as part of the other procedure.

20 But it is true that the americium 

21 would come through, but it certainly would be 

22 a trace amount compared to the plutonium.
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1 I think there's two issues here and 

2 I think we need to maybe follow up a little more. 

3 I'm not sure what we can do.

4 But I tend to agree that the 

5 variability seems, well I don't understand 

6 what's driving the variability, whether it's 

7 time and statistics or the chemical procedure 

8 itself.

9 Because if it's multiple aliquots 

10 it could be a chemical recovery issue. And 

11 that's being reflected in the samples. So I 

12 think we need to understand better what's 

13 driving that variability before I could even 

14 comment. And my --

15 DR. ARNO: We also need to put this 

16 in a little bit of perspective. A lot of these 

17 samples that Joyce identified, were for people 

18 that either had DTPA, which means they'll be 

19 excluded when we revise this data.

20 Or it was for a person that had some 

21 intake, even though they didn't receive DTPA, 

22 they were sampled extensively every single day 
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1 for a couple weeks. And that data all becomes 

2 one result when OPOS evaluation is done.

3 And even if we go away from the OPOS 

4 type process, that would still be a person that 

5 would be subject to some sort of exclusion or 

6 some sort of averaging of their results.

7 So even if there is a large 

8 variation from disc to disc, we're talking 

9 about averaging of that. And then multiple 

10 samples and averaging of that.

11 And when you get into looking at the 

12 statistics of, you know, a large number of 

13 samples, a large number of counts, the 

14 individual variability becomes much less 

15 important because you are looking at the 

16 average quantity.

17 DR. NETON: Yes, I realize. I 

18 agree with that. I think we do need to dig into 

19 this a little more. I was wondering if those 

20 individual discs weren't actual individual 

21 urine samples? I don't know. Do we know that, 

22 Matt?
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1 DR. ARNO: It's very clear that the 

2 discs were all from the same urine samples. 

3 Just not clear if the same disc was counted 

4 multiple times, or if it's multiple discs.

5 DR. NETON: Well, I think, I think 

6 I agree that we need to follow up on this. A 

7 little more detail to shed a little more light 

8 on it that we can. So I think we'll, our action 

9 item there is to dig into this a little more.

10 I do agree when you go from 

11 something like 15 to 50 that does give me a 

12 little concern. And I'm not saying it's not 

13 appropriate, I just need to understand a little 

14 better what's driving that.

15 MR. BARTON: Yes, Jim, this is Bob 

16 Barton. I'm in complete agreement there. 

17 This is really one of those things where when 

18 we started looking at the data, you just kind 

19 of scratch your head and say, well how were you 

20 arriving at these seemingly radically 

21 different results?

22 When there may be a very good reason 
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1 for that. And you know, it's fine to use these 

2 data as is. You know, I agree, I think we need 

3 to understand why there's that variation.

4 DR. NETON: Yes, a lot of the lower 

5 ones could be definitely accounted for by 

6 TIB-6. But if you have a detection limit of .3 

7 and you're up around 15 dpm, that result should 

8 not be quite as variable as is being reported, 

9 so. We'll go look at it and get back to the 

10 Working Group.

11 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, 

12 that being said. Is, not seeing anymore, that 

13 action item falls on NIOSH and we'll look 

14 forward to seeing what they have to come back 

15 with. Joe.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, the 

17 remaining set of very similar issues on 

18 solubility, 24, I put them together -- and I'm 

19 getting a lot of background noise. I don't 

20 know if somebody has their conference line 

21 open?

22 Oh, that's much better thank you. 
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1 Bob, I'm just trying to characterize our 

2 discussions on 24 through 26. I don't think we 

3 had any disagreements on how the solubilities 

4 were addressed technically.

5 But some question about what if 

6 some validation could be done on the coworker 

7 model? I guess my question is has that been 

8 subsumed by the earlier agreement to do, for Tim 

9 to do such an analysis? I thought the analyses

10 that was pertinent to the analysis that 

11 offered.

12 MR. BARTON: Yes, we actually did 

13 discuss that on the 5th with regards to the 

14 thorium issue. And then earlier today with 

15 regard to neptunium.

16 And I think it's the same line of 

17 discussion, that you have known thorium 

18 workers, you really want to go ahead and look 

19 and see, you know, A, are they included in your 

20 coworker model? At least to some part, some 

21 extent.

22 And these workers if, you know, you 
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1 have a list of, you know, 20 or so workers I 

2 think was said at the February 5th meeting.

3 Go ahead and look at their in vivo 

4 results if they are in the coworker model. And 

5 how do they sort of stack up against the rest 

6 of the population?

7 I mean one result of that might be 

8 see, well, hey, I mean they're right in the 

9 middle, you know. These thorium workers that 

10 we know were thorium workers are sort of 

11 subsumed into this larger coworker model.

12 Alternatively, you could see that 

13 they're much lower, or alternatively you could 

14 see, wow, their results are way at the top end 

15 of the tail. And then maybe we have more of an 

16 issue.

17 So I think and again I believe NIOSH 

18 agreed to this at the next meeting, that you 

19 know, that if they had a list of however many 

20 known thorium workers, they could take those 

21 names and look into this database and see where 

22 their results stack up.
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1 DR. TAULBEE: This is Tim. That's 

2 correct. I had that as an action item from the 

3 last meeting, and we have begun to schedule that 

4 particular work to be done.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: To sum up on that 

6 one, I thought that, you know, we had looked at 

7 the solubility and discussed that. And I 

8 thought we didn't really have any differences 

9 on the actual technical approach.

10 But we had that larger question 

11 which as Tim just noted, we thought that would 

12 be the more fundamental answer to that. And so 

13 Bob, I guess is there anything else on that 

14 particular set of issues?

15 MR. BARTON: No, that's really all 

16 I had on that. I mean we kind of discussed the 

17 use of different solubility types and how 

18 that'll affect the calculated doses before in 

19 this discussion.

20 And that was sort of an add-on to 

21 the discussion last week of, you know, it would

22 just really be a good idea and a good weight of 
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1 evidence argument to say, hey, look, you know, 

2 we know there are some thorium workers.

3 These are the ones that are in our 

4 distribution, and these are what the results 

5 look like. And in so far as you can tie those 

6 results to thorium activities, you know, that 

7 might get a little murky.

8 And there might be some caveats to 

9 that, but I think it's an effort that's worth 

10 doing that would not necessarily be all that 

11 cumbersome.

12 It would be something, you know, if 

13 you only have a handful of workers, you know, 

14 it wouldn't be too hard to look up those names 

15 in your electronic database and take a look at 

16 what their records look like in comparison to 

17 the coworker model as a whole. That's really 

18 all I had.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think 

20 we're okay on the solubility questions on 23 

21 through, I'm sorry, 24 through 26. And really 

22 the commitment that Tim was referring to. With 
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1 the bigger issue we thought was the more 

2 important pathway to resolution.

3 So I would leave it to the Work 

4 Group on those 3 findings, but we feel 

5 comfortable on the solubility issues.

6 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Joe, 

7 this is Brad. So you want to close the 

8 solubility of these issues, but these other, 

9 they still lap back to what Bob was saying about 

10 checking out, you know, checking the data out 

11 basically?

12 MR. FITZGERALD: There is some 

13 overarching questions that get to validating 

14 the data. And I think what NIOSH has offered 

15 as far as neptunium as well as thorium, would 

16 be in that direction.

17 So we would say that would be the 

18 pathway to go, and the specific questions we had 

19 on solubility, I think were answered on 

20 February 5th.

21 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, so 

22 with these, what is it, 23, 24?
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: 24, 25 and 26.

2 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, on 

3 these the solubility question of it is closed 

4 though. It got an overarching issue, but the 

5 solubility issue has been closed and you're 

6 satisfied with it, right?

7 MR. FITZGERALD: As far as I'm 

8 concerned and I think Bob has confirmed that. 

9 So I think we're okay on the solubility issues. 

10 Joyce did you have anything?

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: No.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Hello, Joyce.

13 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, but I think we 

14 discussed this already. I'm not completely 

15 satisfied but I'll accept it.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. So I think 

17 --

18 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Because I think 

19 that really when you have insoluble thorium, we 

20 won't see anything in the urine. Unless you 

21 had a big accident, and you would know that. 

22 But it's okay.
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1 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

2 Any of the Board Members have any objection to 

3 closing the solubility issue of this portion of 

4 this?

5 MEMBER LOCKEY: This is Jim 

6 Lockey, I'm fine to close this.

7 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: This is Phil, 

8 I'm fine with it.

9 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay 

10 with that we'll proceed on. Joe. And 

11 somebody thank you for forwarding the 

12 information, the Live Meeting. It was kind of 

13 back there a few.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Well I think 

15 we're done because really the balance of what's 

16 left, 27 through 32 refer back to the 1990 to 

17 2007 period, which is the approach based on the 

18 DAC, you know, the air concentration 

19 measurement.

20 This is the report that Tim briefed 

21 out on February 5th, which the Work Group asked 

22 NIOSH to go ahead and you know, draft it up for 
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1 review. And so these findings relate back to 

2 the, you know, those activity levels.

3 So I would say 27 through 32 refer 

4 back to Finding Number 2, which is the 

5 application of the DAC hours to 1990 and beyond.

6 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: So we'll await 

8 for that report, that draft report and SC&A 

9 would commit to reviewing that and providing 

10 any findings and issues back to the Work Group 

11 and NIOSH.

12 DR. MAKHIJANI: This is Arjun. 

13 Joe, I didn't quite understand that. This is 

14 Arjun. I, these particular findings relate 

15 to, you know, the compilation of the data, which 

16 hasn't been done.

17 And we weren't actually able to 

18 figure out whether, you know, what the merit of 

19 this approach was and the coworker model and how 

20 it was going to be assigned.

21 And that was part of it, the 

22 FASTSCAN data and whether they could actually 
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1 catch any thorium. And so we're sort of beyond 

2 the DAC hour question, I think.

3 Maybe Joyce can correct me if I'm 

4 wrong.

5 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I think because of 

6 DAC, I wasn't on the February 5th Work Group 

7 meeting, but I think that because you can't see 

8 with the FASTSCAN, that's why there was this new 

9 DAC method for assigning thorium dose instead 

10 of the whole body counter dose.

11 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay, so --

12 MR. BARTON: Yes, Arjun. This is 

13 Bob Barton we're essentially at a spot where we 

14 have a new paradigm shift. There's a whole new 

15 model on the table that NIOSH is proposing to 

16 reconstruct thorium doses in the 1990 and on 

17 period.

18 So we're kind of waiting --

19 DR. MAKHIJANI: Have we seen the 

20 compilation of that data? Not yet I guess?

21 MR. BARTON: Of the air sampling 

22 and such, no. We're sort of waiting on NIOSH 
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1 to put that package together.

2 DR. MAKHIJANI: Okay, sorry. So 

3 excuse me about that. Yes, sorry about that.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, again I 

5 think it was decided it would be better to see 

6 those details and to I guess defer any kind of 

7 judgment or analysis until we have full --

8 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, no I stand 

9 corrected, Joe.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

11 DR. MAKHIJANI: John, put me on 

12 mute.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: So Brad, I think 

14 that's just about it. And I'll do the best I 

15 can to put these notes together as well as the 

16 actions. And I'll lean very heavily on my 

17 colleagues to help me on some of this.

18 But make sure it's as detailed as 

19 possible and get it back to the Work Group 

20 hopefully by COB tomorrow.

21 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, 

22 and Tim you'll do the same with your action 
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1 items?

2 DR. TAULBEE: That's correct, 

3 although I'm not sure I'll have it done by 

4 tomorrow. But certainly early next week.

5 DR. NETON: I think, I thought Joe 

6 was going to collect them all and then we were 

7 going to --

8 MR. FITZGERALD: I'll volunteer to 

9 collect them all and I'll lean on Tim to edit 

10 at will. Some of these have nuances. Like I 

11 say, I was scribbling as fast as I could but if 

12 I missed anything, please feel free to edit 

13 this.

14 It will go back and forth until 

15 everybody's satisfied.

16 DR. NETON: Yes, I think that makes 

17 the most sense. We'll be happy to do that.

18 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, 

19 thanks. Is there anything else needs to be 

20 brought before the Work Group at this time?

21 Not hearing any, Ted, I move that 

22 we can adjourn.
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1 MR. KATZ: Yes, thank you, Brad for 

2 stepping in for Mark for one. And thanks 

3 everyone else. I think was incredibly 

4 productive and well done. So thanks for 

5 everyone's efforts going into this and during 

6 the meeting.

7 ACTING CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

8 Everybody have a wonderful day and until we hear 

9 or see you next time, bye.

10 (Whereupon, the meeting in the 

11 above-entitled matter was concluded at 2:38 

12 p.m.)

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