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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

 DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

 CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

+ + + + + 

 NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL 

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

 ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION 

AND WORKER HEALTH 

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 61st MEETING 

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TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2009 

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 The meeting came to order at 1:00 

p.m., in the Coral Room of the Doubletree 

Hotel Albuquerque, 201 Marquette Avenue 

Northwest, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Dr. Paul 

L. Ziemer, Chairman, presiding. 

 

PRESENT: 

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Chairman 

JOSIE M. BEACH, Member 

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member 

MICHAEL H. GIBSON, Member (via telephone) 

MARK A. GRIFFON, Member 

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member 

JAMES M. MELIUS, Member 

WANDA I. MUNN, Member 

JOHN W. POSTON, SR., Member 

ROBERT W. PRESLEY, Member 

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member 

PHILLIP M. SCHOFIELD, Member 

THEODORE M. KATZ, Acting Designated Federal 

 Official
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REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS 

ABRAM, J.T. 

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH CONTRACTER 

ABRYTA, MICHAEL 

AL-NABULSI, ISAF, DOE 

ARENDS, JONI, CCNS 

BARELA, JOE 

BARREYAS, ANDREA, LANL 

BARRITAS, BARBARA, LANL 

BARBOA, MARGARET, LANL 

BIERNACKI, STEVE 

BASTLINE, ROBERT, SC&A 

BLEA, RICKY, UA 

BONSIGNORE, ANTOINETTE, SEC PETITIONERS 

BRADFORD, SHANNON, NIOSH 

BREYER, LAURIE, NIOSH/OCAS 

BROEHM, JASON, CDC 

CANO, REGINA, DOE 

CHAVEZ, JUANITA, LANL 

CHAVEZ, LEE, LANL 

COHEN, SANFORD, SC&A 

CUREZZO, PHILIPPE, DOE 

CUSTER, T.L., SNL 

DEGARMO, DENISE, SIUE/DOW 

DOMINGUEZ, PATRICIA 

DOMINIGUEZ, SAMUEL 

DUGAN, DEAN 

EVASKOVICH, ANDREW, LANL 

FACULJAK, DEBBIE, LANL 

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A 

GOMEZ, LEO 

GRIMES, KIRK, SNL 

HAND, DONNA, NUCLEAR WORKERS 

HAYES, SAMMIE 

HAMERON, GARY, LANL 

HANSON, JOHN, SIUE/DOW 

HERBERT, SAM 

HERRERA, MARCELLA, LANL 

HERRERA, SYLVIA, LANL 

HESCH, VICTOR, LANL 

HESCH, YOLANDA, LANL 

HINNEFELD, STU, NIOSH 

HOMOKI-TIDUS, LIZ, HHS
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HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 

ISHAM, J. 

ISHAM, SUE 

JACQUEZ-ORTIZ, MICHELE 

JOHNSON, BARBARA 

JOHNSON, RICHARD 

JOHNSON, TRACY, DOL 

KNOX, WAYNE 

KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL 

KRAMER, SANDY, WESTINGHOUSE 

LECTOR, RACHEL, DOL 

LEWIS, MARK, ATL 

LOPEZ, MANDY 

LUJAM, JOE 

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A 

MAURO, JOHN 

MCFEE, MATT, ORAU 

MCKEEL, DAN 

MELLADO, THOMAS, DOL 

MERRITT, MAUREEN, ANWAC 

MILLER, MARLENE 

MONK, RICHARD 

NOGAR, MARCELLA 

ORTIZ, ANITA 

ORTIZ, LLOYD, LANL 

ORTIZ, ORLANDO 

OSTROW, STEVE, SC&A 

OZ, GABRIEL 

PADILK, RUBEN, SANDIA LAB 

PIERUCK, BARBARA 

PRIDDY, B., SNL 

RINGEN, KNUT, CPWR 

RODRIGUEZ, SYLVIA, STATE OF NEW MEXICO 

ROEGBAD, JANICE 

ROMERO, MICHAEL 

RUTHERFORD, LAVON, NIOSH 

SNODGRASS, ROGER, LANL 

STAFFORD, S.W., SNL 

STRASCINA, YVONNE 

STUDD, DAVID, CDC 

THUOT, MICHAEL, LANL 

TRUJILLO, REBECCA, JOHNS HOPKINS 

VARGAS, PEGGY 

VALERIE, LORETTA, STATE OF NEW MEXICO 
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VIGAL, ERNESTO 

VIRGIL, RONNIE, LANL 

WATERS, DAVID, LANL 

WORTHINGTON, PAT, DOL 

ZARCHERO, MARY JO, ORAU
NEAL R. GROSS

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T A B L E OF C O N T E N T S

PAGE

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

NIOSH Program Update........................ 7 

DOE and NIOSH Security Plans............... 43 

DOE Update................................ 151 

Department of Labor Update................ 163 

LANL SEC Petition (83.13)................. 187 

Public Comment

 Ms. Antoinette Bonsignore ........... 289 

 Ms. Maureen Merritt ................. 298 

 Mr. Richard Johnson ................. 308 

 Ms. Joni Arends 315 

 Mr. Knut Ringen 325 

 Mr. Michael Romero .................. 331 

 Mr. Wayne Knox ..................... 338 

 Mr. Steve Biernacki ................. 344 

 Ms. Marcella Nogar .................. 354 

 Ms. Marlene Miller .................. 364 

 Ms. Peggy Vargas .................... 374 

 Mr. Dan McKeel ..................... 379 

 Ms. Donna Hand ..................... 383 

Adjourn 
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 1:14 P.M. 

 MR. KATZ: Good afternoon. This is 

Ted Katz. I'm the Acting Designated Federal 

Official for the Advisory Board on Radiation 

and Worker Health. 

 And at this point, we're going to 

convene, in session. Dr. Ziemer, who chairs 

this board, is en route, and I believe will be 

here fairly soon, but let's get -- there's a 

lot we can get rolling, and hope he will come 

in shortly. 

 There are a number of Board members 

who are en route, actually. Same thing, a lot 

of travel difficulties today. So in addition 

to Dr. Ziemer, we have Phil Schofield. He's 

en route. He had something come up of a 

personal nature. Gen Roessler should be in 

shortly, Dr. Roessler, and Mark Griffon also 

should be in shortly in the next half an hour 

or so. 

 Dr. Lockey also has a tight 
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schedule, and should be in shortly, but we do 

have a quorum of the board. Let me check 

before we go further, with the phone. 

 First, Mike Gibson, are you on the 

line? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes, I'm here. 

 MR. KATZ: So Mike Gibson is on the 

line. And let me just take care of -- well 

first let me just say welcome, especially to 

everyone who's here in person associated with 

LANL or another site. We are very glad to 

have you. 

 I give you a warm welcome on 

behalf, not only of Dr. Ziemer, the ordinary 

Chair of the Committee, but also Dr. Christine 

Branche, who's the Acting Director of NIOSH, a 

welcome from her. She had hoped to be here 

today and couldn't make it, and also Acting 

Secretary of Health and Human Services, 

Charlie Johnson. He extends his welcome to 

you, as well. 

 So let me just check with the 
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people on the phone. A couple of notices: 

just please, everyone on the telephone, use 

your mute button or star six while you're 

listening, except when you're speaking to the 

Board, and please, if you need to disconnect, 

put your phone on hold, please. I mean, hang 

up, do not put your phone on hold, and call 

back in. If you put your phone on hold, it 

will disrupt the meeting, because the noise 

will come through the whole sound system for 

the meeting from your hold button. Thank you. 

 So we have -- first on our agenda 

is, I'd like to record the votes from the last 

meeting. We had several Special Exposure 

Cohort votes in the meeting in December in 

Augusta, and a couple of Board members were 

absent for some of those votes. So this is 

just to put those votes on the record. 

 And that is for December 17th, 

there was a vote to add metallurgical 

laboratories to the Special Exposure Cohort 

and for that vote, Phil Schofield, Mr. 
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Schofield and Dr. Lockey were absent. They 

have since -- on the 17th, I got a vote from 

Mr. Schofield, and on the 19th, I got a vote 

in favor of that addition from Dr. Lockey. 

 So the Board vote was unanimous for 

medical laboratory, and I should also update 

you to let you know that that special exposure 

cohort class has now formally, actively been 

added as of the 15th. That would have been 

Sunday. So they are now -- those individuals 

are part of the Special Exposure Cohort. 

 Then the following day we had vote 

to the Board on Vitro Manufacturing, and on 

Mallinckrodt 1958, for the year 1958. Both of 

these classes, the members present voted to 

add to the Special Exposure Cohort, and for 

those votes, Dr. Lockey was also absent, and 

he voted on the 19th in favor of that, as 

well. So those were unanimous votes to add 

those two classes to the Special Exposure 

Cohort, and those two classes have also now 

been officially added to the Special Exposure 
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Cohort as of Sunday, the 15th. 

 So that concludes the absentee vote 

recording. 

 So next on the agenda, to get 

rolling here, we have a NIOSH update. Just to 

make mention, Mr. Larry Elliott, who heads the 

OCAS program, is not well at the moment, and 

cannot be present for the meeting. 

 So we're going to have Dr. Neton 

make a few remarks that would have been at the 

outset of his program update, and then Ms. 

Laurie Breyer will follow up with the ordinary 

items of the update, and let's get rolling 

with that. 

 DR. NETON: Thank you, Ted. Larry 

was going to provide sort of a brief update of 

what he called a news brief with some status 

of some ongoing issues that are happening in 

real time before he got into the formal 

presentation of the program status. And so 

I'll just go through those briefly, and then 

Laurie Breyer will take over. 
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COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

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 First, we want to indicate that we 

received the signed paperwork from the 

Colorado Department of Public Health at the 

end of January. That was a signed agreement 

allowing NIOSH to take possession of the so 

called Ruttenberg data. That's the 

epidemiologic study of workers at Rocky Flats. 

 We shortly thereafter scheduled a 

trip to Denver, and I think last week -- yes, 

it was last week that we sent out 

representatives from OCAS to collect -- to 

review the data with Dr. Ruttenberg, and to 

collect it, and we brought it back to NIOSH 

Cincinnati office, and we are currently 

reviewing it. 

 We're going to do a thorough 

review, compare the full dataset against the 

information that's currently in our database, 

and we expect this to take awhile. This is a 

fairly extensive dataset collected over a long 

period of time, so it may take up to a couple 

of months to complete the full review. 
NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

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 After we complete the review, 

though, we do intend to provide a full report 

that will be distributed to the public via our 

website, as well as a copy to the Advisory 

Board. 

 Second, just an update on the 

Government Accountability Office assessment 

that's currently ongoing within OCAS. I 

think Larry mentioned at the last meeting that 

we have a GAO assessment going on. It's 

looking at several areas of our program, 

primarily related to claims processing times, 

costs of the program, quality control issues, 

and in our case, our worker outreach claimant 

assisting issues. 

 We had a preliminary kickoff 

meeting with the GAO, answered some questions. 

 We received a revised set of questions from 

them fairly recently, and NIOSH staff are in 

the process of responding to those questions. 

 Third, the ongoing ORAU contract 

extension is still ongoing. They have been 
NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

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extended now until March 31st, and until the 

contract gets awarded, we'll continue to 

extend their contract to ensure that we have 

continued productivity and consistency within 

our program. 

 And finally, the new security plan 

that has been created has been put up on our 

website. There are three documents that have 

been added to that site. These include a data 

access and interview procedures, a DOE 

classification review of documents of 

procedure, and the handling and control of 

unclassified information procedure. 

 Those three documents were issued -

- signed, issued, and put on our website for 

the public to view them, and I believe that, 

after the program update, there's going to be 

a special session here on the security issues 

that includes participation from Department of 

Energy and NIOSH, and Stu Hinnefeld will be 

providing NIOSH's input into that presentation 

in Larry's absence. 
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COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

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 So that's all I have. And then I 

think Laurie will come up and provide the 

program statistics update. 

 MR. KATZ: Do we have any questions 

from the Board members for Jim? Thank you, 

Jim. 

 MS. BREYER: Good afternoon. Like 

Ted and Jim introduced me, my name is Laurie 

Breyer, and I am going to be doing the program 

staff's presentation in Larry's absence. 

 Most of the presentation that I'm 

going to be speaking about today is 

information that at least the Board has seen 

regularly. There's not too much new in the 

presentation, but really an update on what 

we've completed since we spoke to you in 

December, although we do have a new slide on 

here, the OCAS web updates page. 

 And I wanted to briefly discuss 

this, especially as, like for example, the new 

security documents are up, that the Board 

knows where they can find documents when 
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they've recently been added to the website. 

 And one thing about our website is 

that we have a lot of information on there. 

In fact, one of the largest complaints we hear 

is there's a ton of information, it's almost 

hard to navigate. 

 And so the reason why we have a lot 

of information on there is we try to be as 

transparent as possible, releasing as much 

information as we can within the confines of 

the law, so that interested parties and 

members of the public can view the documents 

and have the access to the information that 

the Board is deliberating, or that NIOSH uses 

to complete dose reconstructions. 

 Whenever something new is out on 

the website - let's say you're waiting for a 

security document to come out, or you're 

waiting for a TBD to come out - on the right 

hand side of the web page, you'll see on the 

screen where it says, find it, that's what we 

call the navigational bar. 
NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

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 On there, there is a link that 

says, latest update to OCAS website. If you 

click on that link, it will take you right to 

this page, and this page will list anything 

new that has been added to the website. 

 So if you're trying to find 

something new that's newly been added, and 

you're not sure how to navigate through the 

site, that's the easiest way to do that. 

 Now I think most Board members, and 

a lot of people from -- members of the public 

are on our automatic e-mail distribution list. 

 So if we add something to the website, you 

should be getting an e-mail that says this 

information has been added to our website, and 

it lists the information. 

 So if you're not getting those email updates, please see me after the meeting. 

 We can make sure to get you on there. There 

have been a couple e-mail addresses that we 

get messages back saying that the e-mail is 

undeliverable, but when we check the e-mails, 
NEAL R. GROSS

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it seems to be the right e-mail address. 

 So if after this meeting you're 

having problems, you're not getting those emails, let us know, because that will also 

keep you informed of when anything new is 

added to the website. 

 Now onto the regular program staff 

that we present at the Board meetings. We've 

had 28,735 cases referred to NIOSH for dose 

reconstruction. Of that, we've completed 

about 80 percent of the cases and returned 

them back to DOL, totaling 23,111 cases. Of 

those, 23,013 have been submitted with a DR 

report, 824 have been pulled from dose 

reconstruction by the Department of Labor, and 

2,274 have been pulled from the dose 

reconstruction process for SEC consideration, 

and have been sent back to DOL. 

 We currently have 5,150 dose 

reconstructions or claims remaining at NIOSH 

for dose reconstruction, which is 

approximately 18 percent, and there are 
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another 474, or two percent, that have been 

administratively closed. 

 Now again, administratively closed 

means that we completed a dose reconstruction 

for the claim, and asked the claimant to 

return an OCAS-1 form which they need to sign 

for us to move forward to sending the final 

dose reconstruction to Department of Labor. 

 If the claimant never returns that 

OCAS-1, then the case is administratively 

closed. Of course, they can always be 

reopened if the claimant chooses to do so. 

 This slide really is just a visual 

depiction of the slide I just presented. You 

can see that the blue represents cases 

completed, which is 20,013 of the cases. You 

can also see that the cases at NIOSH are the 

yellow and the green, which are the active 

cases and the pending cases. You can see that 

we have 3,951 are active; 1,199 are pended. 

 We were asked a couple of meetings 

ago to be able to break down why some of these 
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cases are still pended at NIOSH, the active 

cases, anyway. So of the 1,199 pended cases 

at NIOSH, we've put together this slide, which 

kind of has the top six reasons. 

 This isn't a comprehensive list, 

but at least gives you an idea of what some of 

the top reasons are for the majority of the 

cases at NIOSH, and you can see that the main 

pended reason for cases are TBD modification 

issues. So we have 537 of the 1,199 pended 

cases at NIOSH are waiting for a TBD 

modification. 

 We're not going to do a dose 

reconstruction for a claim if we know that the 

TBD might change. If we're going to change 

the way we do a dose reconstruction for a 

site, we'll pend that case until the issue is 

resolved, and then go and do a dose 

reconstruction for that claim. 

 The next category is SEC issues, 

and that is for when cases fit into a newly 

added SEC class, but they don't meet the 
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criteria, such as having 250 days or an SEC 

cancer. 

 So we have to pend those cases to 

determine how we're going to go back and be 

able to do a dose reconstruction for the 

claims that fit in the class, but don't have 

the SEC cancer or the 250 days, or they're 

pended because maybe the Board has voted to 

add the class, but it hasn't gone through the 

final designation yet. It hasn't gone through 

the Secretary and Congress, so we'll pend it 

before we send it -- until it becomes final 

before we send it to DOL. 

 Now some of these cases in the 

first two categories, TBD and SEC issues -- 

some of those are repetitive. So some of the 

537 may fall in the 376 and vice versa, 

because it may first get pended for a TBD 

issue. The class then gets added as an SEC, 

and then it also gets pended for non-SEC 

methodology. So some of those are a little 

bit repetitive, but not many of them. 
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COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

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 And then you can see some of the 

other categories we have: incorrect employment 

information, incorrect cancer information or 

ICD-9 code, we're awaiting additional 

information from DOE or an AWE site. 

 And to point out, that is not the 

initial request for DOE information or AWE 

information. That means that we've gotten 

their initial request, but then maybe there's 

new information that's added to the claim. 

For example, the claimant says I worked at Los 

Alamos, but I went to a lot of other sites as 

part of my job. And so we submit a second 

request to DOE asking for maybe visitor logs 

or visitor records or something. 

 So this isn't the initial request. 

 These are ones that are pended, because we'd 

get additional information and have to put a 

second request in to get information for a 

worker. 

 And the last category is 

incorrect/missing claimant or survivor 
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information, and these are the majority. 

There are also some miscellaneous ones, like 

people who are asking for an extension for 

returning their OCAS-1. Those claims will get 

pended until we receive the OCAS-1. 

 Now of the 20,013 dose 

reconstructions we sent back to DOL for final 

adjudication, 6,491 of them, or 32 percent, 

had had a PoC greater than or equal to 50 

percent; 13,522 or 68 percent of the cases had 

a PoC less than 50 percent. 

 Now again, Department of Labor will 

run the final PoC calculation and determine 

eligibility, but when they left NIOSH, this is 

what the PoCs were at. So you can see, 6,491 

were greater than or equal to 50 percent. 

 And then two slides back, there 

were also the 2,274 that fit into the SEC. So 

if you add those numbers together, then that'd 

be approximately 39 percent that either had a 

PoC greater than or equal to 50 percent, or 

would be eligible under an SEC. 
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 And this slide, just again, is a 

visual depiction of where most of the cases 

fall out of those 20,013 claims within the PoC 

scale. So you can see the 6,491 that are 

greater than or equal to 50 percent, and then 

the majority of them fall within 40 percent or 

less. And you can see there are a few that 

fall in that 41 to 49 percent range. 

 Now of the active cases remaining 

at NIOSH, again the 5,150, there are 2,058 of 

them that are in the dose reconstruction 

process, meaning they've been assigned to a 

health physicist or about to be assigned to a 

health physicist. 

 Seven hundred and fifty-seven of 

them have had an initial draft dose 

reconstruction sent to the claimant, so 

approximately 15 percent of the 5,150 active 

cases have had an initial dose reconstruction 

done and are in the hands of claimants, but 

since they haven't been sent to DOL yet, 

they're still considered active cases, but we 
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have made progress on 15 percent of these 

cases as far as having an initial draft dose 

reconstruction sent out, and 2,335 are in the 

development to begin the dose reconstruction 

process, meaning that we have done a CATI 

interview, an introductory interview with 

them, and we have requested information from 

the Department of Energy. And a lot of the 

pended cases would fall in this category, as 

well. 

 And then we have 3,177 cases, or 62 

percent of them, are older than a year. In 

December, we had reported that there were 

3,406 cases that were older than a year. 

Since December, we have been able to decrease 

that number by 229 cases, to bring that number 

down some, because we do realize that we need 

to get some of these cases out, or that's our 

goal, to get them out in less than a year. 

 Now in the efforts to complete 

first 5,000 cases, we reported this at 

probably several Board meetings now. And just 
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to keep you up to date, there hasn't been too 

much change. We've had 3,802 final dose 

reconstruction reports to DOL, and you can see 

where else they fit into the categories as far 

as status goes, the two main ones being the 

ones in red at the bottom, the DOL returned 

cases, which means that we've done an initial 

dose reconstruction for them, sent the final 

dose reconstruction to DOL, and they have been 

sent back, but they have had work done on 

them. 

 And then they could be sent back 

maybe for a PER issue or a change in TBD, but 

they have had a final dose reconstruction sent 

out at a point. 

 There are 24 that are currently, 

though, waiting dose reconstruction. Those 

are the 24 that have not had initial dose 

reconstruction done for those yet. Of those 

24, they represent 18 distinct sites. So it's 

not that it's 24 claims all from the same site 

that are all on hold. They represent quite a 
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few sites. 

 And of those 24, 16 of them are in 

pending status, and the reasons are listed 

here. Three of them are pended for DR 

methodology, because they do not fit into an 

SEC class. So that means we've added an SEC 

class, but these three cases do not fit in 

there. They don't have 250 days or an SEC 

cancer. 

 Four of them are pended awaiting 

SEC designation. That means there's an SEC 

class that the Board voted on probably in 

December that has gone to the Secretary, or is 

waiting to become final, and again, these are 

as of January 31st. Ted announced that some 

had become effective on the 15th, but this was 

as of January 31st. So these cases were 

pended waiting final designation of an SEC 

class that they could be evaluated under. 

 Eight of them are pended for TBD 

modification issues, and one is an SEC 

petitioner. We will pend their claims as the 
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SEC is going through the process, and the 

petitioner is actually going to be one of the 

SEC petitions we're discussing at this 

meeting. 

 Eight of the 24 are in active 

status. Two of those eight have been paid 

under the SEC, meaning they fit into an SEC 

class, they went to DOL, and they were paid. 

However, they have non-SEC cancers, as well, 

and so they came back to NIOSH for a dose 

reconstruction for medical benefits for the 

non-SEC cancers. So it's waiting for a dose 

reconstructions to see if the dose 

reconstruction will come out compensable to 

pay medical benefits for that non-SEC cancer. 

 Four of them are NUMEC Apollo 

claims that were non-SEC claims, and they were 

recently unpended as we determined the 

methodology to complete the dose 

reconstructions for those. 

 One was unpended per DOL. It was 

an employment date that was waiting to be 
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verified, and that's now active. 

 And there's one, again, that 

employment was verified as less than 250 days 

at Y-12 in the SEC class, and it's now 

currently awaiting a DR. 

 Submittals versus production: 

again, you all should be very familiar with 

this graph. It hasn't changed much. At the 

bottom, where it says quarter 1, 2009, it 

looks like it drops off there, but really the 

only reason it does that is this graph is run 

based on data from each quarter, and since 

we're still in quarter 1, then it looks like 

it drops off because not all the data is there 

to report. So it's not run by month, or else 

it would look consistent there. 

 So, but you can see, as of the end 

of quarter 3, 2008, that the green line and 

the red lines, which are draft reports to 

claimants into DOL, are a lot higher than the 

blue line, which is cases coming in, which is 

allowing us to get the dose reconstructions 
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done for some of the older claims, as well. 

 Again, this is another visual aid 

just to kind of help you see where the cases 

break down by tracking number. The blue is 

the completed cases. Really, the main thing 

to look at here is that kind of mustard yellow 

color, and then the gray color at the top. 

 Those are active cases and pending 

cases. So those are what NIOSH still has work 

to do on cases within those tracking numbers. 

 Here's the rework slide. It stays 

pretty consistent. You can see a spike 

starting around quarter 3 of 2007, and those 

are resulting from the reworks of PERs that 

came back for program evaluation reports, but 

they stay pretty consistent. Some of those 

reworks are because of that. So that's why 

you see that spike. 

 Here again is the new slide that 

Larry presented at the December Board meeting, 

and so we kind of tweaked it a little bit to 

add in some milestones, so to speak. 
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 You can see where we received our 

first claim on October 11, 2001, at the very 

tip of the graph. Then you can see where we 

got the first draft DR to the claimant on May 

31 of 2002, the ORAU contract awarded on 

September 11, 2002. Then you have the first 

TBD approved in March of '03. 

 And you can just see, as we reach 

some of these milestones -- the vertical line 

shows days, the horizontal line shows tracking 

numbers, but you can see that, as we reach 

some of these milestones, that the time to do 

a dose reconstruction goes down. 

 You can see that trend starting to 

move down, and then you see a little spike 

kind of in some of the later claims, and 

that's because it was taking longer to do some 

of the initial DRs as we had to go back and do 

some of the PER returns. 

 So you see a little spike there, 

but this just kind of gives you a quick 

snapshot of the processing of claims over the 
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last seven years, eight years. 

 Here's another graph which gives 

you an idea of the time frame for processing 

claims. You can see that, overall, this shows 

the time it takes to process claims for 

initial draft dose reconstructions. So that 

means, to get the first draft dose 

reconstruction to the claimant. 

 The overall time is 677 days. And 

then we put on here, starting in 2005 where 

you can see the time was 918 days, all the way 

down to 2008 where that number is almost in 

half by 484 days. So you can see that, over 

time, that that number is decreasing. 

 And then this slide right here 

shows the average days for all sites to get a 

final dose reconstruction to DOL. So the 

previous slide was for initial dose 

reconstructions to the claimants. This slide 

gives you an idea of the time for processing 

claims for final dose reconstructions to DOL. 

 And you can see again that the 
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overall time was 722 days through 2008 where 

the number came down to 537 days as the 

average number of days to process claims that 

year. 

 The DOE response to requests for 

exposure records, which we report normally in 

program stats, there is currently 278 

outstanding requests and 150 outstanding 

requests that are greater than 60 days. 

 The program assessment rating tool 

or PART goals, you know, Larry discussed in 

the December Board meeting, and this is just a 

recap of that in a table for our PART goals 

for FY 2009. 

 And in the first column, you'll see 

the goal objectives. So OCAS' goals are to 

complete 35 percent of initial cases within 

six months of receipt, meaning we get them in 

and get them out the door within six months. 

 You can see our baseline goal for 

FY08 was 31 percent, was what we met in FY08. 

 Then you can see in FY09 our goal is to 
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complete 50 percent of legacy cases, and you 

can see that the FY09 goal is 50 percent. The 

baseline in '08 was 54 percent. 

 Our third goal is to complete 40 

percent of DOL returns within six months of 

receipt, and the goal is again 40 percent, and 

we'll set the baseline this year, or in FY09. 

 And then the fourth goal is to 

complete 60 percent of SEC evaluation reports 

within 180 days for 83.13 petitions. Again, 

the goal is 60 percent. The baseline will be 

set in FY09. 

 SEC classes: Ted reported some 

changes today, but these numbers are as of 

January 31st. Thirty-five SEC classes have 

been added, 20 of those through the 83.13 

process, or approximately 57 percent. Fifteen 

of them have been added through the 83.14 

process, or approximately 43 percent of the 

SEC petitions for the newly added classes. 

This represents classes of workers from 29 

sites, and 2,274 potential claims. 
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 And now we have a few slides from 

some of the sites that are relevant to where 

we're meeting this week. For Los Alamos 

National Lab, NIOSH has received 1,011 Los 

Alamos cases. Four hundred and seventy-three 

have been completed and submitted to 

Department of Labor. One hundred and thirty 

of those, or 27 percent, had a PoC of greater 

than or equal than 50 percent, and 343, or 73 

percent, had a PoC of less than 50 percent. 

 The next bullet shows that 271 have 

been pulled by DOL. If you remember, there is 

an existing SEC class for LANL pre-1975. So 

those 271 cases are cases that were pulled 

predominantly for the SEC, which also could 

affect the bullet, the sub-bullet for PoCs 

less than 50 percent. 

 So for anybody who worked prior to 

1975 who did not fit in the SEC class but had 

a dose reconstruction done, they only would 

have received a partial dose reconstruction. 

So that can be looked at when you're looking 
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at the sub-bullet on 343 had a PoC of less 

than 50 percent. 

 And the last bullet on here is 267 

active LANL claims are at NIOSH currently. 

 Again, here is just the PoC or the 

distribution of PoCs for LANL claims, just to 

give you an idea, a snapshot, of where most of 

the claims fell in the dose reconstruction 

process. 

 And then Sandia National Lab. We 

have 289 Albuquerque cases referred to -- or 

Sandia National Lab-Albuquerque cases referred 

to NIOSH. Sixty-three percent of them have 

been completed and submitted to DOL for a 

total of 183. Twenty-nine had a PoC of 

greater than or equal to 50 percent, and 154 

had a PoC of less than 50 percent. Nineteen 

have been pulled by DOL, and 87 of the cases, 

which is about 30 percent, are active 

currently at NIOSH awaiting dose 

reconstruction. 

 And then again, their last slide is 
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the distribution of the PoCs for the Sandia 

National Lab-Albuquerque site. 

 And that's the end of the 

presentation. I'd be happy to take any 

questions that the Board may have. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Laurie. I 

should at this moment recognize that several 

Board members, including our Chair, have 

joined us, Dr. Ziemer. And I'll be turning 

the reins over to Dr. Ziemer, and also Mark 

Griffon and Bill Schofield, and then at this 

point I'll let Dr. Ziemer carry on. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you all for 

coming. I think we should go ahead and start 

the meeting, don't you think? 

 I flew in on Continental, and was a 

little nervous when I learned that there was a 

gas valve that wouldn't close this morning. So 

I was happy that they delayed the flight to 

fix the gas valve, but it did result in 

missing a connection and scrambling in. I 

just barely beat Mark Griffon here. So I felt 
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good that I wasn't the last one at least, Mark 

and Phil. 

 Gen Roessler also will be joining 

us. She had similar very close connections, I 

understand. So we may even have a quorum 

before the afternoon. Well, we do have a 

quorum, but you know. 

 Anyway, thank you very much, and we 

appreciate the presentation. Laurie, I wanted 

to start with one question, which might have 

caused some confusion to people. It was the 

production by quarter. 

 And the slide shows that each year 

has three quarters. I have figured out that 

that doesn't work very well, so you need to 

clarify that for the folks here. There's a 

reason for that, but you need to perhaps 

clarify it. 

 MS. BREYER: Okay. And we've been 

talking about kind of re-tweaking some of our 

slides. You know, it's easy to stick to the 

ones you have and kind of fill in numbers, but 
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that is something we'll try to figure out a 

way to explain better. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, I think the 

slide is probably right, but they weren't able 

to work all the labels in there. 

 MS. BREYER: Exactly. I think to 

get in here, like you see at the beginning, 

you see quarter 1 and quarter 3. You don't 

even see 2 or 4. And then you have quarter 1, 

quarter 3 again, quarter 1, quarter 3, and it 

just kind of goes quarter 1, quarter 3. I'm 

not sure why those two were the ones picked. 

And then it ends with quarter 1 kind of 

dropping off here. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, less people 

think that we left out the non-productive 

quarters; I think the data is all there. Just 

the labels didn't work out very well. 

 MS. BREYER: Right. And we don't 

want people to think that. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: But it probably 

would be good if we got a uniform axis on 
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there. Let's see if we have other questions. 

Jim, were you going to address that? Jim has 

a better explanation. 

 DR. NETON: You got it exactly 

right, Dr. Ziemer. There just wasn't enough 

room on the X axis to put it all the way that 

needs to be there. So the data are plotted 

properly. It's just the designators aren't 

all there. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. Jim 

Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Thank you. I have 

several questions. Thank you for the more 

detailed update on the first 5,000 cases. 

 I found it a little puzzling why 

there were so many reworks coming back from 

DOL. It seemed like a high percentage, given 

the amount of time that's been passing. It 

was 496 out of the 5,000 were returned cases. 

I mean, I would just be curious what -- are 

those SEC? I mean, what's -- 

 MS. BREYER: I'm thinking some of 
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them are probably SEC. I'd have to go and get 

them to run a query on that, but SEC and PERs. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Let's see if Stu 

Hinnefeld can clarify that. Stu? 

 MR. HINNEFELD: I can suggest some 

things that probably contribute to that, is 

that the case -- if the case was returned to 

us recently, even though it was really filed 

long ago, and it's been fairly recent that we 

had a very large number of cases returned for 

PER purposes, program evaluation purposes, and 

so I would guess that a big chunk of those 

came from the first 5,000. And so that's why 

-- 

 MEMBER MELIUS: So they have been 

completed, come back, and -- 

 MR. HINNEFELD: They were 

completed, yes. Everything in that 496 number 

had a final dose reconstruction done once at 

least, and it was sent to the Department of 

Labor. It was subsequently then returned to 

us, either because of, like I said, a PER 
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issue, or there may have at some point been 

found maybe an additional cancer developed, or 

something like that. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. It would be 

interesting to have a breakdown for that, just 

out of curiosity. 

 My second comment's just a 

suggestion, is that you try to move on to the 

second 5,000. Those cases are, my guess is, 

five years old, or something of that length of 

time, or should be, you know, I think people 

are equally frustrated with that time period, 

and it would be interesting to see where they 

are and what falls into those. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Let me interrupt 

just a minute. I'm assuming your question 

deals with reporting to us. I think they are 

working on them, but you want to know what 

they're -- what's happening, yes. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: It would be good to 

have an update on those. 

 MS. BREYER: So I'd like to change 
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this to summary of efforts on the first 10,000 

cases, or between five and ten? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Or five and five 

would be good. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Five and five I 

think would be a better suggestion. 

 Third, and I think I made this 

comment to Larry last time or whoever was 

presenting last time. Some of your 

statistics, I think, are very misleading, 

because you report average time to complete a 

dose reconstruction as bigger than in the last 

year. So that's sort of a falsely low number, 

because it does not reflect all the people 

that are in the tale unless you're reporting 

it differently than you indicate on your 

slides. 

 DR. NETON: Yes. I think maybe we 

could do a better job explaining that. I 

don't think it's a falsely optimistic number. 

The idea is that, if the case comes in today, 

we have all of the tools, or most of the 
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tools, we believe, in place to process the 

case, and that really shows in those new ones 

that come in after, say, 20,000. 

 That doesn't account for the fact 

that there's some recalcitrant type cases that 

are out there that have been on the books for 

a long time that skew the averages. And I'd 

be the first one to argue that using an 

average for a distribution is not necessarily 

normally distributed. It's a very misleading 

number in itself. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: In fact, my next 

recommendation was to use something like a 

median or something that would better reflect 

your actual performance like that -- right, 

that the outliers don't -- 

 DR. NETON: If you have a case out 

there for 20,000 days, it's going to skew the 

entire distribution. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Exactly, and you're 

not -- for 2007, `06, I mean, as you go back 

in time, you're capturing more of those in the 
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average, the mean number that you're using, 

and I mean, I'd be curious. 

 I have no doubt that you're doing 

it quicker. It just, I can't tell that. I 

have lingering questions if you're just 

reporting it the way you're reporting it. 

 DR. NETON: Well, I think it does 

report out the fact that, if a case -- when 

new cases come in, we can process those fairly 

rapidly after they come in, because we've got 

the tools in place. 

 There are always going to be that 

small percentage of cases that are going to 

remain on the books for a while because of 

some special issues. They're difficult cases, 

the employments are at many, many sites, or 

they're at AWEs, where we don't have models 

available, that sort of thing. 

 I agree. I think we could do a 

better job explaining what those figures are. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Stu, did you have 

an additional reply? Okay. Jim, additional 
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questions? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I think I've run 

out. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. Okay, 

Wanda Munn? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Laurie, a really 

simplistic question. How long do our recent 

additions to the website stay up as recent 

additions? 

 MS. BREYER: Well, that's a good 

question. I'm not -- 

 MEMBER MUNN: Because sometimes I 

think, oh, I saw that just a little bit ago, 

maybe it's still on the easy to find spot, and 

find that it's gone, and I've never had a feel 

for whether those were changed as a function 

of how many new additions are made, or as a 

function of time. 

 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I don't know 

that, but I had to find it out just now. That 

is right now a fixed length list. And so when 

a new addition goes on, it goes to the most 
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recent, it goes at the top, and the bottom one 

drops off. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Okay. That's what I 

needed to know. Thank you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Any 

further comments or questions on the update? 

Okay, thank you again, Laurie. We appreciate 

the input. 

 MS. BREYER: Thank you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Our next topic of 

discussion is the DOE and NIOSH security plan. 

 We're going to hear from Dr. Worthington. I 

think we'll hear from someone from NIOSH, and 

Ted, I don't know who that is. Is Stu doing 

the triple duty today? Okay. Sorry to learn 

that Larry was not able to be here, but we're 

pleased to begin with Dr. Worthington. 

 And Board members, after we have 

both presentations, I want to have us discuss 

whatever issues are of concern to you. 

Actually, perhaps what we'll do is we'll have 

some discussion of the DOE plan immediately 
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after Dr. Worthington's presentation, and then 

the NIOSH. But we can include -- as we go to 

NIOSH, include DOE, as well, because they're 

inter-linked. 

 And it's my intent that, if 

necessary, we will carry over issues into our 

work time later in the week, particularly if 

we have items that we want to develop in terms 

of recommendations, or if we need further 

information, or if we need to develop wording 

on anything. 

 So we're not going to be limited to 

the one hour we have today. If necessary, we 

will extend the time as needed. So Pat, we're 

pleased to have you with us again today, and 

look forward to hearing your remarks on this 

new phase of the security plan. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: Good afternoon. 

Can everyone hear me? I certainly sympathize 

with individuals that had some travel 

difficulties. I don't know if you remember, 

the last meeting I was stranded in Atlanta, 
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because Augusta was fogged in. So there seems 

to be a fog over us sometimes when we're 

trying to get here, but again, I'm glad to see 

all of you. 

 As you know, this program is very 

important to us. I have a number of people 

here from Department of Energy today that are 

related to this program and supporting me. 

And so they may be involved in some 

question/discussion later on. I want to make 

sure you're aware that they're here. 

 Regina Cano is here and Greg Lewis, 

and we have from our security side of the 

house, Guy McDowell, who is also available. 

Again, this program is very important to Mr. 

Pedonski. He certainly made sure that 

resources across our organization from 

security to ES&H -- they were made available 

to help develop the plan that was issued under 

Glen's signature on the 23rd of January. 

 It certainly was a very long 

effort, and we certainly apologize for the 
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length of time, but we certainly needed quite 

a bit of interaction between the government 

agencies, between Department of Labor and 

NIOSH, in coming up with what we viewed as a 

consolidated plan regarding the Federal 

organizations to bring that to you for further 

discussion. 

 Again, this program, this plan that 

you've seen and that we'll discuss today, is 

intended to provide some institutionalization 

for the security requirements that have 

already been on the book to formalize and 

document the requirements for there, and to 

make things more transparent into more 

accountability performance with regard to DOE 

itself. 

 Certainly, again, these are not new 

requirements. They've been on the book, but 

this was an opportunity to do the things that 

I just mentioned, so that, as we continue with 

this program, and we envision that it will be 

on for a long, long time, that when players 
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change, that it's always clear in terms of 

what the roles are, and what the requirements 

are with regard to security. 

 There have been some incidents 

where there was disclosure of information. 

Just because there's an incident, it doesn't 

mean that the organization associated with the 

incident has, in fact, violated security. It 

could be a situation where it was a person, 

procedure, or practice. 

 If it was a person that was 

involved, we certainly wanted to make sure 

that those individuals are aware of what 

caused that inadvertent disclosure. If it was 

a procedure or practice, we want to make sure 

that it's revised or rewritten or issued so 

that similar incidents don't occur. 

 And so I want to, you know, again 

now talk a little bit more in detail about the 

plan, and to make sure that, as we go through 

the discussion here today, that it is clear 

that there's never an intent to deny access. 
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That certainly is to put some process in place 

that would ensure that we'll be able to do 

that. 

 Okay. I missed the first task, 

which was going to the next slide. 

 This is sort of the outline for the 

presentation this afternoon. And we wanted to 

use this outline to make sure that we were 

able to present a broad overview of all the 

things that we're trying to accomplish in this 

plan. 

 And I just want to bring attention 

to everybody here today that there are things 

that we've been doing all the time in this 

program. Could we do them better? Could we 

be more transparent? Certainly, we could do 

that. 

 And so I want to talk a little 

about the purpose of the plan, what it is that 

we're trying to do, and the key elements of 

the plan. Personnel security certainly is 

critical. Badging: We've been offering 
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badges for a number of people, and we continue 

to do that, and we want to outline how that's 

done. 

 Site visits: Again, this program 

will work only if people that need to can get 

to the sites and get the information that they 

need. 

 Interviews: And I'll spend some 

time talking about that, because that's 

critical, because typically, we're talking 

about interviews of workers, and they're a 

very important part of this process, and how 

can we facilitate that, and make sure that 

things are available that workers are able to 

talk in an environment that's appropriate for 

what they want to say. 

 Document reviews, and certainly 

there is a need for document reviews with 

respect to security at various junctures along 

the way. We want to talk about those, and 

kind of where we are as we go on through this 

process, and how we believe that the timing 
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for doing these things are greatly improved. 

And to talk about revisions, because there's 

never a perfect plan. 

 You want to be as close as you can 

to delivering a plan that will meet the 

objectives of all the parties, but certainly, 

there's a time appropriate from time to time, 

and you can't predict that, but a need for 

revisions. So I want to talk about that as we 

go through the program. 

 Again, a little bit more about the 

overall purpose, and again, to get back to the 

notion that this plan is intended to 

facilitate access to the material that's 

needed by individuals in order to be able to 

carry out this work. 

 It was an ongoing effort, as I 

said, across the different organizations to be 

able to come up with this security plan that 

we'll talk about, and that we hope that the 

plan will do what it was intended to do, and 

that was to eliminate confusion. 
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 What do you need to do and how do 

you need to do it, and how do you set those 

processes in motion, and that it would 

establish expectations, and again, the idea of 

expectations; they're not just for the people 

that are on board today, but so there's 

continuity in the program, that it's clear, 

people can go and read it. They can 

understand what they need to do, and if they 

don't, there's an avenue to ask questions on 

how to implement that, and that ultimately 

that there aren't unnecessary delays in 

getting the information where you want to do 

it. 

 So again, we want to further 

identify the roles and responsibilities of all 

the organizations, and to set forth the 

practice and protocols that will be needed. 

 Reference: I think that many of 

you have seen the plan already, but here is 

the way to get to the plan. It's the website 

where the plan will be located. 
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a little bit about personnel security. And 

again, this is something that we've been doing 

for some time in this program. 

 Clearances are certainly in the 

security -- to meet security requirements, we 

wanted to make sure that people were cleared 

to receive the information that they are 

looking for, and that we want to manage those 

clearances. 

 And part of that process in terms 

of managing the clearances, we wanted to make 

them available to you, but also to do training 

and refresher courses, so when you go through 

the plan, you'll see information, and then 

we're holding the agencies and organizations 

responsible for making sure that these 

refresher courses and training -- they're not 

long. They're not, you know, days upon days, 

but as we go through and implement the 

requirements in the plan, from time to time we 

do need a refresher. 
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 We need to step back and say, you 

know, am I implementing it as required, and 

here are the things that I need to do, and 

maybe to realize that as they go through the 

refresher, that maybe as you implement it over 

a period of time, there may be a need for some 

revisions, or questions, or interactions. 

 Reinvestigations: Certainly 

there's a period for clearances, and so 

reinvestigations are required. Tracking, 

updating, notifications are important. 

 There are certain things that may 

happen in your life that will require updates 

of the clearances. One is that, if you are 

leaving the country, sometimes we do need to 

go to other countries for personal or for 

business, and you're required to notify us 

that you're doing that, and that will be 

reflected in the clearance. 

 And if you're no longer working on 

the program. For some reason, some of us, 

from to time, we move on to other things, or 
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we retire, or get other positions. And so 

that would need to be factored into whether 

the clearance was still needed, or if it's 

being held by the new organization where 

you're going. 

 Badges: I want to talk a little 

bit about badges. That's been an area of 

frustration, I think, over the last year. 

Part of that may have been the fact that the 

government, not just Department of Energy, but 

government-wide, they have gone to the HSPD-12 

requirement. 

 And for that requirement, you would 

not be issued a permanent badge, and that's 

different. And so sometimes when things are 

different, it's a source of confusion. 

 The badges, if you're cleared, 

you're still a cleared individual. It's in 

the computer. The information can be readily 

pulled up, but you actually get sort of a 

temporary badge when you're at the site, and 

that actually is critical in terms of making 
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sure that we're notified early enough that you 

need a visit, that we've prepared and allow 

enough time for you to be able to do those 

things. 

 Again, the DOE already facilitates 

temporary badges for visits. We've been doing 

that, and again, advance notice is critical. 

Again, this is nothing new. We've been doing 

-- issuing badges for the life of the program. 

 We'll continue to do that, and we'll try to 

expedite those things to the extent that we 

are able to do that. Again, in working with 

you in terms of as much advance notice as we 

can. So that's the critical part of the DOE 

role, which you'll hear more from Gina later 

on today about, sort of updates. 

 But the main role of Department of 

Energy is to facilitate things. And so we 

want to be able to facilitate getting the 

badges so that you get to the site soon and 

get to do what you need to do. 

 Appropriate clearances are in 
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place. I'll just spend a moment just talking 

about that. Typically, there are a number of 

individuals on the program that are Q-cleared, 

but depending upon the information, the type 

of activity that you want to look at, you may 

require some clearance above that. And so we 

wanted to make sure that we are -- Typically, 

we're talking about what we call Sigmas. We 

want to make sure that we're aware of that and 

we're able to facilitate that for you. 

 DOE -- one of the things we wanted 

to do is to facilitate NIOSH's examination of 

DOE's site documents. We wanted to make sure 

that you have the appropriate facilities; you 

have the right people available that can help 

clear those things. 

 And so again, facilitating getting 

it done, making sure that access is made 

available in the right places for getting 

information. 

 Security briefings provided by DOE 

sites officially at the site of each site 
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visit. That's a very important part of the 

process. I have been with Department of 

Energy now since 1991. If I go to any site, 

and I'm expected to spend time at the site, I 

also get a security briefing. It's certainly 

important, because there are some things that 

are site-specific. 

 There could have been changes in 

requirements of whatever it is, and it sort of 

puts you at the site. You're at the site, and 

you become more comfortable now with what you 

can and can't do, and where do you go for 

information, and how you can make sure you get 

the access that you needed. 

 So that is very critical. We 

wanted to make sure that that's planned, and 

it's talked about in the plan, and it's very 

important that you are able to get to a site. 

 Again, reading the paper is 

certainly a good thing to do, but the paper 

certainly is always more meaningful in some 

cases when you actually have a chance to walk 
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the spaces. So we want to be able to 

facilitate that. 

 Site visits: Access to site and 

subject matter experts. Subject matter 

experts -- that's certainly critical as you're 

trying to plan your process and to get started 

in the review or your review activity. 

 Sometimes there is a need to just 

meet and spend time with subject matter 

experts that are very familiar with that area, 

particularly as it applies to that site. 

Again, in the DOE's role as facilitators, we 

wanted to make sure that we're able to do 

that. 

 I'll talk about interviews on the 

next slide, because that's very, very 

important. Again, as I mentioned at the 

beginning of this discussion, there have been 

some incidents. We want to make sure that we 

minimize the number of incidents, and that 

requires reviews at certain junctures to make 

sure that we're not releasing information that 
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is critical. 

 Interviews: Again, I believe that 

we all view the actual interviews, 

particularly with workers, to be very critical 

to this process, and many of the workers that 

you come into contact with -- they may have 

retired, they may have left the organizations. 

They may have signed documents in terms of 

what they could not or could say once they 

leave the Agency. 

 So we wanted to make sure that we 

facilitate suitable locations for secure 

interviews where that's needed. That's 

certainly critical to bring people together, 

and then say, well, I am unable to discuss 

this in this environment. So we want to plan 

for those things, and make sure that you're 

able to talk to the workers and get the 

critical information that's needed. 

 And again, the plan lays out the 

process there, and it discusses this 

particular activity. And again, I want to 
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point out that the plan is about facilitating, 

making sure we're meeting the requirements, 

and that information is available where it's 

needed. 

 And so that's intended to protect 

both the interviewer and the interviewee in 

terms of if there's a need to have something 

in a secured area. It's not intended to 

disallow anything, but to make sure that, 

where needed, people can be more open about 

their discussion. 

 Document review: DOE is committed 

to providing unrestricted access to DOE 

information and documents. I want to keep 

coming back to that. And the critical point 

here is that we wanted to make sure that the 

individuals receiving that document were 

cleared to do so. 

 If there's ever a need for a 

redacted document, we want to make sure that 

the individuals on the team that need to see 

all the information that they're cleared at a 
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level to do that, and they're in a space where 

they can actually review the documents. So 

that certainly is very important. 

 And again, we want to minimize the 

number of reviews that we need to do, but 

certainly, in terms of -- I talked about 

transparency in performance and 

accountability. They're certainly on DOE's 

part, as well. And so we want to make sure 

that -- where it's appropriate, that we review 

final documents before public release. 

 I started out this discussion with, 

we've had some incidents, and we wanted to be 

more formal, and more transparent, and more 

consistent in our approach, and to develop a 

plan that would allow for that. 

 I want to put that aside for now 

and just take a window in time, because 

actually what you see in the plan is a result 

of making changes and trying to be able to 

deliver the right services in a more timely 

manner. 
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 So the window of time I want to 

look at is the time since the last Board 

meeting, and that was from December to 

February 9th. We actually reviewed 31 

documents that were submitted to DOE 

headquarters for review, and I want to talk 

about the time required for that. 

 I'm talking now about documents in 

terms of reports that are generated, and they 

come to DOE for review to make sure there 

aren't any classification concerns associated 

with those documents. 

 We're finding that, in that window 

of time, would you believe that we've improved 

our process by formalizing the things in the 

plan, and then executing those things in the 

plan. We now have an average of a little over 

five days in terms of -- this is the time for 

a classification review of the actual document 

itself. I'm not talking about the time 

required for us to receive the document, which 

would certainly be a couple of days, or time 
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afterwards that we've completed the 

classification review that we get the document 

back to the people that need to have it. 

 So we think that this plan has 

certainly offered many opportunities for 

delivering better services so that decisions 

can be made on behalf of the claimants. This 

includes evaluation reports, SC&A, white 

papers, and other NIOSH generated documents. 

 I want to point out that this is 

different from review of DOE source documents. 

Certainly, they would take longer. They 

typically are bigger documents, and so we want 

to make sure that the understanding about this 

streamlining -- even though we streamlined 

across the board, this example is intended to 

focus on the actual reports themselves. 

 And again, on a few occasions NIOSH 

has come to us for expedited reviews, and we 

tend to be able to do that if we need to. 

Clearly, every review can't be expedited, but 

if we need to do that, we look for ways to do 
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it. 

 We have dedicated now within our 

organization individuals that are in security 

that have to look at these reports, that 

they've been told, you know, by Glen, that 

this is the highest priority in his 

organization. So they make sure that, when 

documents come, that we are focused on trying 

to get this kind of turnaround time for those 

documents. 

 Revisions: Again, one could never 

issue a perfect plan. So we understand that 

adjustments, additions or changes to the plan 

may be needed. And certainly, the plan that 

you see, that you have before you, is the 

result of lessons learned from the things that 

happened during the time of this program. 

 And so, as we go forth and 

implement the plan, I'm certain that there 

will be opportunities for lessons learned and 

refinements and revisions. And so we 

certainly are open to being able to continue 
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to improve on this process for the workers. 

 And I am available for the many 

questions that you might have about where we 

are and the intent of this plan. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, thank you, 

Dr. Worthington. We'll have time now for a 

number of questions, and I think it also 

appropriate, if there are particular concerns, 

those can be raised, as well. 

 Let me begin by asking kind of a 

general question. It has to do with how the 

entities that are using the plan are 

identified in the plan. I'm concerned about 

the terminology and the consistency of it. 

 For example, on page six under 

Personnel Security, we talked about DOL, NIOSH 

employees, their contractors, and the special 

government employees. And I understand the 

SGEs to be this Board. We are in that 

category. 

 And so it seemed to me that that's 

a fairly inclusive statement. However, when I 
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go back to the earlier part of the document, 

for example, under Item 3(a), the major roles 

and responsibilities, it refers only to DOL 

and NIOSH employees and their contractors. 

 And this may be an oversight, but 

I'm kind of wondering, if the intent there is 

to be more inclusive, why would not the SGE 

component be included there, and likewise - 

and that's in Item 1 under 3(a) - and a 

similar comment on Item 4 under (a): And 

there in Item 4, the contractors are not 

mentioned either, only DOL and NIOSH. 

 So I'm sort of wondering if this 

was just an oversight, or if there's some 

particular way that this was being interpreted 

that is not necessarily clear to me. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: I believe that 

it's intended to be more inclusive. I don't 

know, Guy, if you or Gina would want to 

comment on that. I don't have the plan up 

here with me, but I can get that, was making 

notes. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: So probably the 

terminology should be consistent whenever that 

arises. And might I ask, for interpretation 

purposes, is the Board's contractor, SC&A, 

considered in this document to be a NIOSH 

contractor? 

 MR. McDOWELL: They would be a -- 

we lump all of them, for lack of a better 

term. But in other words, you're either going 

to be a government agency, or you're going to 

be a contractor supporting a government 

agency. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Do you 

have an additional comment on that? 

 MR. KATZ: Ted will clarify this. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: That microphone 

is not working well. 

 MR. KATZ: That microphone is not 

working well. People are not hearing. 

 Let me just clarify. The SC&A 

contract is a contract with CDC. That is sort 

of the parent agency. NIOSH is a part of it. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: That is the 

reason I asked the question. I want to make 

sure the document is clear on who is covered. 

The intent, I believe, is to include SC&A, but 

I am simply pointing out that the language may 

not be correct technically. 

 I know the intent was to include 

them. So I am suggesting that -- 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: And that is an 

excellent comment. We appreciate that, 

because one of the intents was to not confuse 

but to clarify, and it is intended to be more 

inclusive. So we want to work on that. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And it might be 

appropriate -- we think of them as the Board's 

contractor, although we don't come up with the 

dollars to pay them. The intent is quite 

correct. Technically, they are contractor to 

NIOSH's parent agency, not to NIOSH directly. 

 All right. Good. Other questions? 

 Jim Melius, and then we will hear from Brad. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Just to follow up 
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on that. As I have said before, I think it 

was a fundamental problem the way that these 

agreements were negotiated and developed that 

the Board was not involved, and I think it is 

a fundamental failure of these documents to 

recognize the Board's independent 

responsibilities for oversight for major parts 

of this program. 

 I really think that the documents 

need to be rewritten in order to recognize 

that role, and then in accordance with that, 

the recognition that SC&A is the contractor 

that has responsibilities to the Board, not to 

NIOSH. 

 Now most of my concerns about that 

are with the NIOSH documents, but I think it 

also gets into the DOE documents, much as De. 

Ziemer has raised. But I would just go 

further, and I think that these documents will 

be much improved if they recognized these are 

sort of tripartite agreements or whatever that 

would recognize the independent oversight role 
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of the Board, not make the Board subservient 

to NIOSH, which is implied, maybe not 

intended, in the DOE documents but certainly 

is implied. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: Thank you for 

that comment. Again, one of the purposes of 

the plan was to offer further clarification. 

We need to listen to the comments and go back 

and look for ways to further clarify, and 

again it was intended to be a document that, 

if there are any changes in players, that new 

individuals could pick it up, and would 

understand it. 

 So we want to look for 

opportunities to do that. Your comment 

regarding the agencies involved in developing 

the plan and sort of the timing, which was not 

your word but sort of the timing of when we 

would come before the Board for comments -- As 

I had mentioned, I think, in the December 

meeting that we wanted to come before the 

Board with a consolidated, sort of 
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comprehensive plan that reflects sort of the 

agencies involved in this, and then to hear 

from the Board, rather than to try to resolve 

any initial inputs from the agencies at the 

same time that we would be receiving the 

comments from the Board. But we are certainly 

here today, and we are listening and very 

thankful, actually, for the comments that we 

are getting. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. Brad? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I would just like 

to back up what Jim had said, because what I 

am seeing when I am going out to the sites or 

whatever like that, SC&A is basically being 

just as another contractor. They are just 

another one of NIOSH's contractors. They have 

nothing -- you know, it is just another -- it 

has nothing to do with the Board. The 

independence really is not there anymore. 

 We have been to two sites already 

that I have seen this, and it is creating a 

little bit of, well, you've already got this 
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information; NIOSH has got this information. 

SC&A is gathering separate information, and 

they are being portrayed as just another 

contractor of NIOSH. And that is not right. 

 Another thing I want to talk to, 

and I don't know, Pat, if you are the one, is 

the badging issue. One of the things that I 

have been seeing is there is quite a bit of 

confusion. Savannah River was a prime 

example, so forth, of it. 

 We did not know -- I knew that I 

was going to be able to get in, but we got 

there that day, and our contractors did not 

know if -- there was questions if their 

clearances were RRI. They weren't. 

 Gina and Greg really worked with us 

and helped us and stuff like that, but somehow 

-- and this is just my suggestion -- that our 

contractors should have their clearance for 

the length of the contract that they have with 

us, so that each time we go to a site there 

isn't a question if it's happened or if it is 
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in limbo or whatever like that. 

 I think -- and I know you guys are 

trying to get away from badging them and so 

forth like that, but it would sure make things 

an awful lot easier to be able to do that. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: I think some 

people are walking up to the mike. I wanted 

to make a comment as they are coming forward. 

 There were some nuances associated 

with, I believe, what occurred at Savannah 

River in that what you describe as the life of 

the contract, that the contractors would have 

the clearances for that time period, unless, 

of course, it was somehow another conflict 

with the need for reinvestigation. 

 I believe that some of the 

contracts were being extended during that time 

period. So that meant that the time it was 

initially entered into the computer regarding 

the length of time for the contract, if it was 

an extension, that is a different action. So 

some of those things had to be addressed, and 
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that caused some nuances. 

 We are aware of that now, and while 

technically what happened was correct, we will 

be watching for those things, because we are 

aware -- it's a small group of us here -- that 

we are aware if there are extensions going on 

or whatever, and we want to be more proactive 

in helping to address those things, and this 

timeliness of your request is also more 

timeliness for us in terms of looking for 

those kinds of things, anything that would 

create a wrinkle associated with that 

activity. 

 So, again, I believe that we can do 

better on those in the future, even though 

technically that was the case. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: One thing I want 

to make you aware of, we sent all the 

information that had who was going to be 

there, who was going to be everything. For 

me, it took four and a half minutes to go up, 

show them my badge. For five other people, it 
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took two hours and 25 minutes. 

 I was timing it for a reason, 

because I wanted to make sure. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: I understand, and 

that is good. We need to hear that, so we can 

work on it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Greg? 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: Greg, you have 

some specifics? 

 MR. LEWIS: Yes, and I think, to 

address that -- 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: Can you all hear? 

 Okay, good. 

 MR. LEWIS: To address that point, 

that had to do mostly with the new HSPD-12 

requirement. Again, that is not a DOE rule. 

We are not trying to limit the access to 

badges or limit who we supply badges to. Due 

to government regulations, we cannot supply 

non-DOE individuals with a DOE badge. 

 Just like what you said, you had a 

DOE badge, and it was easier to access the 
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site. The other four individuals did not. We 

are trying to work through that, and that is 

why more advance notice is required than we 

typically had before. The further in advance 

you can let us know that you are going to be 

visiting a site, for those individuals without 

DOE badges -- this will be most of you, unless 

you happen to also work at a DOE site -- we 

will be able to arrange for temporary badges 

and make sure the clearances, et cetera, are 

in place. 

 There were some issues at Savannah 

River. I would say I would hope that is due 

to growing pains with the new requirements and 

new regulations. So we are trying to get our 

process approved and make sure that you avoid 

those problems in the future. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: But we want to be 

more proactive as we are aware of the things 

that are coming up, and that we can allow more 

time for making sure that the plans are in 

place. 
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 Again, the HSPD-12 requirement has 

caused some nuances at the various sites, and 

some of them are further along in terms of 

being able to implement and be reactive to 

that process. So, again, we want to allow 

more time. 

 You had, I believe, a comment 

regarding at the site, if SC&A can receive 

documents and if there are any problems 

associated with looking for NIOSH instead of 

SC&A. I think that was sort of your comment. 

There was a comment on that. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, what came up 

about it was when we were reviewing these 

documents and so forth, it was portrayed that 

they were just one of NIOSH's contractors, 

that SC&A was just another one of their 

contractors. 

 So everything was going through 

NIOSH on this, and basically, no, they are 

not. We've got to have a degree of 

independence. 
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 DR. WORTHINGTON: And we want to, 

as always, look for process improvement. Over 

the years with this particular program, we 

are, in theory -- budgeting for document 

retrieval had not been done in previous years, 

and the cost continues to go up. 

 We have been looking for ways to 

streamline the process to make sure that we 

don't have duplication of requests for 

documents, and that was happening across the 

board with different groups coming in for 

different activities. 

 We had asked for single point 

accountability in terms of a single point of 

contact for requests, which is a little bit 

different from not working directly with SC&A 

and others on the documents. I think we have 

been doing -- working quite a bit with them on 

those things. 

 So it was -- that particular piece 

is intended to have some coordination so that 

things that may have already been requested 
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from others that they are made available. But 

certainly, we are respectful of all of the 

groups, and we are working with all of the 

groups. 

 I don't know, Gina or Greg, if you 

have further clarification on that, but that 

is not the intent. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: And I understand 

it isn't. I just want to go on record of 

letting you know that there is an issue. I 

know that each one of these sites that we go 

are going to have their own little nuances, 

their little quirks that we are going to have 

to work through, and the point of contact is 

good to a point, but also, too, we need to 

keep the separation between the Board's 

contractor and NIOSH; because what happened 

with a lot of it is just all the paper goes to 

NIOSH. Then all of a sudden, well, no, this 

section of it was to come to SC&A, this is 

what they had reviewed. 

 Also getting into your reviews and 
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stuff like that, Savannah River is a different 

ball game, and we did just tag onto them. 

They had already asked for the 50 boxes and so 

forth, but also, too, it is going to come to a 

time with both points of contact. They have 

to be able to get their own information if 

they are looking into it. 

 We will have to work through that. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: And we 

understand. Like I said, we will continue to 

look for ways for process improvement, because 

we are the facilitators. We want to get the 

documents to the right people, the right 

places, have them in the right environment for 

review, clear additional individuals if we 

need to do that, have higher level clearances 

if we need to do that. 

 So we really are looking for ways 

to continue to facilitate getting the 

information to the right people. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: You also had 

another point back there of 5.4 days to be 
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able to turn the white paper around. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: Yes. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Now you clarified 

that that was only a certain section of it. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: That was for the 

-- the 5.4 days is for the documents that were 

generated at the different sites, key reports. 

Reports is the word I want to use, reports 

that are generated. They are not DOE source 

documents. Certainly, those things take 

longer, because they are bigger, but when 

reports are generated by the teams. 

 We give high priority when they 

come into DOE, there are people that know, 

that drop things that you are doing and get 

these reports out. Those reports right now, 

that window from our last meeting, you know, a 

little over five days. 

 So again, not accounting for the 

time to get it back and the time for it to 

come in, but to actually be by the 

classifiers. We believe that that has really 
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been a significant improvement. 

 That is our target, you know, to do 

it as quickly as possible and to get it back 

out, because many of these team members are 

working on other things, too. They want to 

complete that and be able to move on to other 

actions or whatever. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: And I do 

appreciate that, and we do see that it is 

important. But what I have been seeing is a 

little bit longer time on that. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: Again, but we 

want to talk about that window between the 

last meeting and now, because all of us know 

that it has been a struggle on everybody's 

part to recover from things that had occurred, 

to define the process, to document it, to make 

it easier for people to read and understand. 

 So we have to sort of put that 

marker behind us and say that this is what we 

have done; is it effective? Is that plan and 

the process defined in there? Is it going to 
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work? What are you seeing now, and can you 

continue to do that or to improve on that; 

because that was the whole purpose of the 

plan. 

 MR. KATZ: Pat, let me just get 

your confirmation or clarification on another 

point that Brad raised, the point of the 

badging and he made the comparison of how 

quickly he could come through versus the 

Board's contractor's, SC&A members. 

 I understand that CDC is in the 

process -- well, I do know CDC is in the 

process of implementing sort of this modern 

day badging system. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: HSPD-12? 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, exactly. So even 

NIOSH employees at the present time -- most 

NIOSH employees don't have these state of the 

art badges. But as I understand it, once that 

is implemented and we will have those badges 

as well for SC&A, the contractors that should 

speed the process enormously. Is that 
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correct? 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: I think Gina 

wants to offer some additional clarification. 

 MS. CANO: In regard to those HSPD12 badges, unfortunately, once the CDC 

receives those badges, or HHS, we won't be 

able to accept those badges at a DOE facility, 

because they are your employee. 

 What is difficult and challenging 

is that we have to verify that they are indeed 

a DOE -- that they have rights to be on site. 

Unfortunately, it is going to be challenging, 

and that is something that DOE is kind of 

working through right now as well. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: But we will 

continue on our part to make sure that people 

are cleared within the DOE system and that 

they are able to do the things they need to 

do. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, Josie 

Beach, and then Jim Melius. Oh, I missed 

Phil. Okay. Phil, you were first. 
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 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I have a 

question. If I want to go up to Los Alamos, 

go to Sandia, I don't have -- like Brad, I 

don't have current badge, because I am not 

actively employed at either facility. But I 

need to go look at a document. 

 Can you give us an estimation how 

long it would take for us to make arrangements 

to go in and do that particular document that 

has to be viewed in behind the controlled 

area? 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: Are you -- some 

of the other individuals can come up and give 

some more specifics. But are you a current Qcleared individual? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, I am. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: So, Gina, do you 

want to -- or Greg, if you want to talk about 

the scenario, his question is, if he wanted to 

go to Los Alamos or Sandia, for example, and 

he wanted to go to that site and review a 

document in a cleared area, how much time 
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would it take him to do that, based on the 

system that we are operating under today? He 

already has a Q clearance. He wants to go to 

Los Alamos or Sandia to review a document in 

the appropriate environment, whatever that is 

for the document. 

 MR. LEWIS: To be honest, it would 

depend on the time to get the necessary 

clearance or whether -- typically, we have 

been able to do this most times within a week. 

So, a week advance notice, we will typically 

be able to do it. However, the more advance 

notice you can give us, the easier it will be 

for us to facilitate that visit with 

appropriate access. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: Again, we are the 

facilitator. The earlier we can hear about 

it, we will start working with the site to try 

to make that happen. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Josie? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. My comment, 

you already touched on it with Brad's 
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question, but I did want to further clarify 

under Rules and Responsibility, Number 4, the 

timely return on classified information. 

 Right now, we have a document out 

for my Work Group, Mound. It took five weeks 

to get back. Notes, we are having still 

difficulty with notes. When we finally did 

get some notes back -- and I know you are 

aware of this -- they were un-legible. 

 Also, for a work group, if I am 

trying to set up a meeting, I would like to 

have some way of knowing where my documents 

were in the system. Is there anything in the 

works to be able to go and look up documents? 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: Again, I will ask 

Gina or someone else to come up from the group 

to talk about that, but there is a NIOSH 

tracking and a DOE tracking of documents and 

the status of where those documents are. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Who has access to 

them? 

 MS. CANO: We have access to that 
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information at Headquarters. So we work with 

NIOSH as well and provide the information to 

them with regards to the status of the 

document. So you can always contact us 

directly, and we provide you that status. 

 We would just check with our office 

classification and figure out where it is in 

the queue, but we can also -- we can always 

provide you status. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: And we have been 

meeting at least monthly with our counterparts 

with NIOSH and SC&A on the status of 

outstanding documents and where they are, and 

the next steps in terms of moving them 

forward. 

 MS. CANO: Also an important point 

is that classifications offices out in the 

field as well are aware of the security plan 

and their role and the importance of working 

with SC&A, the Advisory Board and NIOSH, and 

to provide timely responses. 

 So if you are running into 
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problems, please let us know. You know, we 

ask that you do, and we will work with that 

particular site. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: I believe that 

the comment regarding the illegible document, 

Gina, was one that was discussed in a recent 

meeting, and the original document that was 

provided was also almost impossible to read. 

But I believe that we are looking into a way 

to see if we could enhance it or something. 

Is that correct? 

 MEMBER BEACH: And five weeks for 

document turnaround -- can you give me an idea 

of maybe in the future? Are we looking at 

something quicker than that? 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: Are you talking 

about an actual -- 

 MEMBER BEACH: It was a white 

paper. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: A white paper. 

 MS. CANO: It depends on the 

document and the circumstances surrounding the 
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document. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: If there were any 

circumstances around the document, then that 

creates additional concerns. Again, we 

believe that the review processes that we have 

in place for documents would minimize those 

kinds of things and make things better. 

 MS. CANO: Then it also depends on 

source documents versus white papers. 

Sometimes source documents do take a little 

bit longer time to review, because they might 

be lengthy. May have to go back to old guide, 

so forth. So it may take some additional 

time, but we do put the documents report, 

white papers as a priority. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: They are the 

highest priority versus source documents. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And let me 

suggest that, on particular issues that we 

have currently, maybe we can work on those 

separately and then more focus on the document 

here. Greg, did you have an additional 
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comment? 

 MR. LEWIS: One more comment. 

There have been documents that have fallen 

through the cracks, so to speak. To that end, 

to address those, we have had two meetings. I 

think we are planning on meeting on a monthly 

basis with someone from NIOSH and from SC&A in 

a secured setting in our headquarters in 

Washington to address such issues, both 

documents outstanding, you know, where it is, 

we haven't seen this one. 

 So we go through document by 

document what is going on and make sure that 

there is nothing -- make certain there are no 

issues, and there is nothing forgotten about. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Or no lost notes? 

 MR. LEWIS: Certainly not. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Not to beat this 

issue up, but when you're waiting weeks and 

weeks for documents or notes, and then you get 

them and we can't read them, I would imagine 

someone would look at those before they ship 
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them off. Hopefully, in the future that won't 

happen again. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: Certainly. 

Again, we are in the process improvement 

business right now in terms of a little better 

product, and again I know there was a lot of 

debate -- not debate, but a lot of discussion 

about that document that was very difficult to 

read and how we could improve on that. 

 So maybe the first thing was to get 

it back and to say we will continue to work on 

that. I need to clarify that, but we were 

aware of that and trying to, I think, work 

through that issue. 

 MR. LEWIS: Also to clarify, that 

particular document had been redacted, and a 

full version is in a setting where it can be 

reviewed by people. The document we had was a 

copy of a copy of a copy and so on. It was 

redacted and made one more copy, and it was a 

little tough. We are going to try to do what 

we can to make that better. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Let's go back to 

this side, and Jim Melius. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Along those lines, 

to me, I think that one way of stopping this 

is if DOE had a transparent tracking system 

that would log and identify, keep track of all 

documents that are in review, and there would 

be a way of doing an inquiry into that system 

that, if a document is delayed, someone could 

get an estimate on how long it will take to 

clear a particular document. But I think it 

needs to be transparent to NIOSH and 

transparent to the Board and to the Board's 

contractor what the status of documents are. 

 Also, I think if we kept track, 

then we would avoid, you know, how long is 

something taking, and is it getting better, is 

it getting worse, are there problems, and 

reassure everybody that DOE is committing 

appropriate resources to this effort. 

 Invariably, it is going to delay 

the process. I think we just want to be able 
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to minimize any inappropriate delays by 

documents being misplaced, lost or not being 

appropriately tracked through the system. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: And again, I want 

to reiterate that we are on a regular basis 

now going through each document, making sure 

that things aren't lost. 

 In terms of the transparency -- and 

I may need Security to help me out here -- we 

have been having open dialogue in a secured 

setting with SC&A and with NIOSH and DOE 

regarding where we are with each and every 

document. 

 I don't know if there are some 

security reasons that would prevent the entire 

tracking thing from being transparent to noncleared individuals. 

 MR. McDOWELL: That would have to 

be done independently. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: Right. 

 MR. McDOWELL: Based on its own 

merits. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Can you come up 

to the mic, so we can get it recorded here. 

 MR. McDOWELL: It would have to be 

done independently. It would have to be 

looked at. I am not saying that all of them -

- you know, as far as the tracking system, you 

would have to understand what the basis was, 

what the documents are. I don't know. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: And it has been 

transparent to those organizations, to people 

from those organizations, from SC&A and from 

NIOSH and DOE. My commitment is to look at 

what can be transparent on a more -- on a 

wider range, and maybe some of those things 

would be -- 

 MR. McDOWELL: And on a general 

basis, they can't do that. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: We will look at 

that. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: And not getting 

into the details, but I would think there 

would be a way of labeling documents in a way 
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that would -- or it maybe, you know, Los 

Alamos Number 1 or something, you know, some 

number like that, so it doesn't identify a 

document per se, but -- 

 MR. McDOWELL: That is something we 

would have to review. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: We will look into 

that. Again, thank you for the comment on how 

to be more transparent. So we want to carry 

that back. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I have one more 

suggestion, which has to do with the interview 

process. Many of the people that have worked 

or work at the sites that are claimants in 

this program or involved in the petition and 

so forth are suspicious of DOE's intent 

regarding this program, and based on past 

history, that may very well be justified in 

many cases. 

 I think it would be important that 

there be some statement provided from DOE with 

this program, both to the people currently 
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working at the DOE sites and also to the 

interviewees, that when they are going in for 

a secure interview that, one, DOE is committed 

to the full disclosure of all information that 

can be revealed and so forth; and secondly, 

that there will be no reprisals against these 

people for that, for reviewing the information 

or having these interviews. 

 I think that would be very helpful. 

My past experience, many people are concerned. 

The one area I get concerned about with this 

program is that people will be intimidated by 

just the process itself, and by seeing this as 

some new process within DOE, a new procedure 

and so forth, even though it may just be 

institutionalizing and updating a process that 

is already in place. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: I certainly want 

to thank you for that comment. Actually, this 

morning with my team that I have here, we were 

talking about other ways that we could improve 

on the program, is there a need from the 
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highest levels of the Department, our goal but 

a specific statement, regarding things such as 

what you just said. So thank you for that 

comment, and we will look into how we might be 

able to do that. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

Additional comments? I have one additional 

question. This is for clarification or to 

help my understanding. 

 On page 16, and I think it occurs 

maybe also on 17, where after you have gone 

through the process where, for example, 

various drafts have been reviewed and the 

clearances have been obtained, and at some 

point there is a final report which has been 

appropriately scrubbed and so on. 

 Just on page 16, for example, just 

ahead of Item B, it talks about that final 

report and its distribution, and that it can 

only be -- it is talking about unclassified 

reports here -- can only be transmitted 

electronically with OMB approved encryption 
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software. 

 I guess I am wondering, first of 

all, why is that required? And number two, 

will that minimize or impede our own 

distribution of these final reports once they 

are out and ready to go? Perhaps I am not 

understanding the requirement. 

 MR. McDOWELL: If I am reading this 

accurately, this would be applicable to 

unclassified information, but sensitive 

information. The information -- or the old 

information still must be encrypted 

appropriately. You can't -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, at this 

point it is still -- 

 MR. McDOWELL: It is not 

classified. It is unclassified information. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: But it is still -

- okay. 

 MR. McDOWELL: You don't need a 

clearance to have it, and we can transmit it 

to you, but to get it to you, it would have to 
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be in this form. It is not necessarily public 

releasable, for example. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. I 

understand what you are saying. So it is not 

really - it is a final report from your 

employment view, but it is not from our 

perspective. 

 MR. McDOWELL: That would be the 

only requirement I would see up front that 

would require it to be encrypted. 

 MS. CANO: Once we release it -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: A little closer 

to the mic. 

 MS. CANO: Once we review the 

document, then -- 

 MEMBER MUNN: Can we please get 

that mic fixed? That is just dreadful. This 

afternoon we are going to have real trouble, 

if we have public comment and we don't have a 

mic that works standing here. 

 MS. CANO: The final reports, once 

we review it and release it to you, you can 
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distribute it openly, and that is not a 

problem. But looking at draft documents, just 

to protect the document, you know, we would 

request it sent through encryption programs. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: I think what I am 

hearing from Dr. Ziemer is that maybe we need 

to revisit the language in 16. It wasn't 

completely clear is what I think we heard. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I think I 

understand what the intent here is, and I had 

misunderstood it, but others may as well. 

Brad? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I agree with you, 

because I guess one of my situations that I am 

looking at is a final report. Say we go take 

some notes, some interview notes. Now we are 

trying to send all of those to DOE, everything 

else like that. But usually in the process, 

what they do is they take and review -- we 

send the notes off. You send them back saying 

it's okay. 

 They do a rough draft, but usually 
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they give those to the claimant to assure that 

this is what was said, but in this they really 

can't until they get the final draft to DOE. 

 DR. WORTHINGTON: We need to look 

at that to see if we need further 

clarification in that section. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 

much. Let's go ahead now and hear from NIOSH 

on their portion of the program, and Stu 

Hinnefeld is going to make that presentation. 

Then we will have the opportunity to discuss 

that as well. 

 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. As I have 

already been introduced, you all know who I 

am. I am sure Larry is very sorry he couldn't 

be here for this, and I am even probably more 

sorry. 

 I wanted to offer -- before I 

start, I wanted to offer one more perspective 

on the point that Brad made, and I see Brad -- 

oh, okay, he is still here -- the point Brad 

made about the work of both contractors or 
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NIOSH and our contractor and the Board's 

contractor all being at a site at the same 

time and how the SC&A worked through us and 

they weren't really being very independent. 

 Recall that we have engaged with 

SC&A at the request of the Department of 

Energy to try to coordinate our various 

information requests at these sites for 

efficiency reasons. 

 As Dr. Worthington said, there is a 

sort of a money issue here. There was not 

money budgeted for this. It is becoming more 

expensive. They only have so much money to 

get to the sites to assist in these document 

captures. 

 So from their standpoint, it is 

more efficient to have coordinated requests 

rather than us sending independent requests 

and then SC&A sending independent requests 

quite often for the same things or overlapping 

things. 

 So a part of that, our perspective 
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on that is we are fulfilling this coordination 

role that we would just as soon not have. Now 

we don't particularly like trying to do that, 

but we have done that for that purpose. 

 So in some instances, I'm sure it 

appears that way when we try to fulfill that 

coordinating responsibility. I am sure that 

may look like there is some problem with 

independence. I would hope that we have not 

in a meaningful way interfered with the 

board's contractor's activities, but maybe we 

have and I am just not aware of it. 

 As Jim mentioned earlier in his 

presentation, we have added three additional 

documents to the website that describe what we 

intend to do to comply -- to keep compliance 

with the Department of Energy security plan, 

the document that Dr. Worthington spoke about 

in the implementation of the EEOICPA program. 

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of the same comments in our documents in terms 

of referring to SC&A as a NIOSH contractor 
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that you had on the Department of Energy's, 

and I have noted those. So we will take those 

back to consider. In fact, they are a CDC 

contractor. 

 The documents -- we published a 

policy in two different procedures in order to 

try to document our approach to complying with 

the DOE security plan, the first document 

being Policy Number 1 which is titled Handling 

Controlled, Unclassified Information. 

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unclassified information, we have sort of two 

broad categories within that. One is 

unclassified control nuclear information, 

which is a particular marking that is placed 

on Department of Energy documents sometimes, 

and I will invariably refer to that by the 

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presentation, and the other category being 

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information that fit into what we consider 

controlled unclassified information and, 

therefore, that this policy describes 

requirements for, and it outlines the process 

of receipt, access and use of that 

information, in order to ensure that these 

records are created, received and are 

maintained in compliance with the requirements 

for this information. 

 These markings were generated by 

the Department of Energy. They are 

essentially their records. So as another 

Federal agency, we have agreed to essentially 

play nice and say, okay, we will comply with 

your rules in order to use your things, which 

seems to me kind of the reasonable thing to 

do. If we were using HHS classified materials 

-- and I believe there are such things, even 

though we don't use any in this program -- 

then I would expect HHS would have a series of 

rules, and other Federal agencies we would 

expect to play by our rules. 
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 This applies to all NIOSH 

personnel, and here we say including the 

Advisory Board and its contractors, NIOSH 

contractors and subcontractors. I should 

probably say the CDC contractors and 

subcontractors also who are engaged in the 

program, and it also describes some 

requirements for interviews. 

 Here is some additional description 

on types of information. The UCNI information 

is sensitive but not classified, and we do 

control the dissemination of that material. 

OUO information is not classified but may be 

exempt from public release under FOIA. 

 It includes another subcategory 

which is export controlled information, which 

we don't often encounter, but we have 

encountered, and there are DOE directives that 

describe how to handle OUO. There is 

actually, I believe, a section of the Code of 

Federal Regulations that describes dealing 

with UCNI material. 
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 Documents received from DOE 

facilities are marked in accordance with these 

sensitivity levels. So these are two of the 

markings on information we are liable to get. 

 Here is -- for access to UCNI 

information, employees -- it should be 

provided only to employees who are authorized 

for routine or special access and routine 

access during conduct of official business. 

In other words, you would need to have a need 

to know. 

 So if you have an assignment for 

this project that requires you to learn what 

you can about this site and there is this UCNI 

document that contains some of that 

information, then you have the need to know, 

and then you can do that. You don't need a 

security clearance in order to access UCNI 

information. 

 The authorized individual who has 

the UCNI information has to maintain physical 

control over it. We don't, as a matter of 
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practice, put UCNI information on the SRDB. 

We retain that in hard copy, and we will 

provide it to the authorized users who need to 

see it. 

 The information is stored to 

preclude unauthorized disclosure. Authorized 

individuals may reproduce but must mark and 

protect the copies. So there is not a 

restriction against copying, but you have to 

mark and protect them. 

 There are special requirements for 

destruction, including a cross-cut shredder, I 

guess, which is different than the one I have 

at home that just cuts it in a little line, 

and it can be transmitted only by means that 

preclude unauthorized disclosure or 

dissemination. 

 Reasonable precautions have to be 

taken to prevent access to documents that are 

marked OUO. Okay, now we are into OUO 

information, reasonable precautions to protect 

-- to prevent access to who are not required 
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to see that information to do their job. 

 The information must be stored to 

preclude unauthorized disclosure. Authorized 

individuals may reproduce, but must mark and 

protect copies. Destruction requires, again, 

a cross-cut shredder, and can only be 

transmitted by means that precludes 

unauthorized disclosure and dissemination. 

 The other -- I'm sorry. Now we are 

getting into one of the procedures, the second 

document of the three that we have published. 

 This document is our procedure number 10, and 

it is titled Data Access and Interview 

Procedures. 

 It provides general guidance for 

the coordination and submission of access -- I 

think that is access requests -- to sites and 

requests for information, also for the conduct 

of interviews of current Energy employees or 

former workers; outlines process to coordinate 

and submit data requests to DOE; outlines the 

process to conduct worker interviews; and 
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ensure protection of sensitive information. 

 So interviews become a little bit 

of a different case, because an interviewee 

may, in fact, provide information that, 

unknowing to the interviewee, is sensitive, 

would likely not be known to the interviewer. 

So he takes some protections, some 

precautions, to prevent the dissemination of 

that material. 

 This identifies several positions 

or responsibilities for certain people. The 

NIOSH point of contact has certain 

responsibilities. The DOE site point of 

contact -- this is very frequently the EEOICPA 

point of contact for the sites. 

 The NIOSH site point of contact is 

our point of contact, our technical lead for 

the site, usually one of the health 

physicists. 

 The DOE Headquarters point of 

contact are people in Dr. Worthington's office 

who work with us to do this coordination 
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effort, and they also are the ones who 

dispense the funding for the EEOICPA program 

to the various sites. 

 The NIOSH contractor point of 

contact -- and I guess we should also say CDC 

contractor point of contact, who coordinates 

contractor data requests with us, for 

instance. And then they may at some point, I 

believe, deal directly with the DOE points of 

contact as well. 

 NIOSH site point of contact has 

certain responsibilities; for instance, 

checking the site research database for a 

NIOSH request so that we don't request 

information we already have. That is one of 

the aspects of this, is to make sure that 

these data requests do not duplicate 

information that we already have available to 

us. That is just not very efficient. 

 We always notify the DOE 

Headquarters point of contact prior to 

notifying the site, so that the Headquarters 
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people are engaged and aware of what the 

activities are. Then we do submit the formal 

requests, the information request, the access 

request, what it is. 

 The DOE site POC provides the DOE 

information we ask for or, if we need to go 

there and do our own capture or have access, 

then they coordinate with us to accomplish 

that data capture. 

 The NIOSH site POC coordinates with 

the DOE site POC. NIOSH site POC submits a 

list of participating individuals and requests 

forms to DOE site and DOE headquarters. Now 

this is to get access, you know. Whether it 

is a cleared visit or not, you still need to 

have access to the site, even if you are not 

going to look at cleared items. So we need to 

let them know who is coming, and there are 

certain pieces of information you need to 

provide. 

 If it is, in fact, classified -- 

you know, people with clearances and are going 
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to look at classified information, then you 

heard from Dr. Worthington, there is more to 

be done yet. So the more lead time in those 

situations, the better. 

 So then if there are requirements 

for -- site requirements for badging and 

training, the DOE site POC coordinates those 

and arranges for the visitors to have those. 

 This says NIOSH reviewers, and I 

think that means everybody that is coming, 

whether it be NIOSH, NIOSH contractor, CDC 

contractor, Special Government Employee who 

are visiting these sites, if it is, in fact -- 

I believe this pertains to classified visits. 

We have meetings with the classification 

officers for the site in order to get an 

overview of the sensitivities. So you come to 

inform us in our work. 

 The DOE site POC coordinates 

retrieval of information, and then we attempt 

to coordinate the technical review of the 

documentation. 
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 Now for information that we want to 

capture, if in fact this is a classified 

visit, this would occur perhaps after we have 

selected the documents that we would like to 

capture. 

 If it is an unclassified visit, it 

would occur before we show up to look at it. 

If we are sending people without clearances, 

then these things would have to be reviewed 

and make sure they are marked appropriately 

before we got there. 

 So we try to coordinate these 

activities with the site to make sure that 

either the information that we have requested 

is there and available to us or, if we have 

requested to look at classified information, 

that they will have reviewers who will be able 

to -- after we have decided which we would 

like to capture, if in fact they can be 

released, then they would review them for 

release at that time. 

 This procedure also addresses the 
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conduct and coordination of interviews. As a 

general rule, workers are given a standard 

caution against revealing potentially 

sensitive data in an unclassified setting, and 

we always say that, if you think that some of 

the information you are going to tell us 

might, in fact, be classified, let us know, 

and we can arrange for a secure interview, an 

interview in a secure facility where you can 

speak with impunity about whatever you want, 

and we will make sure that we have only people 

with clearances there. 

 So if we do get secure interview 

requests, then we coordinate with the DOE site 

POC to arrange for a time and a place for 

those interviews. 

 Anytime there is an interview, 

there is a summary of the interview that is 

prepared. If it is a non-secure interview -- 

in other words, we don't have any reason to 

believe that this information has any 

sensitivity to it -- we prepare a summary of 
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the interview, and sometimes it is referred to 

as notes or typed notes. I think some of our 

policies call it notes, but it is an interview 

summary that we then provide to the Department 

of Energy. 

 If it is at an active site, there 

is a site person that we provide it to. If it 

is from an inactive site, we provide it to the 

Headquarters. 

 For secure interviews, the 

handwritten notes that are taken by the 

interviewers are reviewed for classification. 

So this occurs in a secure environment. You 

don't get out with your handwritten notes 

until a reviewer says you can have them. 

 Once the interview notes are 

reviewed and marked as unclassified, then they 

are provided to the interviewee for 

concurrence. So this would be the summary, 

the interview summary. We give them back to 

the interviewee to make sure that what the 

interviewee said we faithfully captured or 
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whoever did the interview faithfully captured 

it. 

 Those then unclassified interview 

notes are submitted and are entered into the 

Site Research Database where everyone 

associated with the project, is working on the 

project, then can see them. 

 Classified interview notes, we 

don't get. The Department of Energy keeps 

those. If we have interview notes that turned 

out that they are sensitive and are 

classified, the Department of Energy will hold 

onto those for us, and they would be available 

for review by appropriately cleared people who 

have a need to know later on. 

 For documents that are obtained 

during interviews -- now this would be an 

instance where an interviewee would say I 

brought these documents which I think will 

explain things to you; and if they are not 

marked, if they don't have a marking on them 

or perhaps even if they do, because we don't 
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know if the marking is still current and 

appropriate, if the person who brings them to 

us says I want these back, then the first 

thing we do is we copy it. We keep a copy, 

and we send it back. So he has his copy back. 

 Then we provide our version to the 

DOE to determine if it needs to be marked in 

some fashion. Once it is determined that they 

don't need to be marked or that they are 

unclassified -- and in this case, not UCNI -- 

then we enter them into the Site Research 

Database. Again, if in fact they are 

classified, then DOE would retain those for 

us. 

 The final of the three documents, 

DOE Classification Review of Documents, 

describes -- which is our procedure number 11 

-- outlines the process to coordinate review 

of documents by DOE Classification Office, and 

this refers to EEOICPA project prepared 

documents. This is not source documents or 

DOE documents. I don't think that is what 
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this addresses. This is things that we write 

that now we provide to the Department of 

Energy for review. 

 This right now applies to all the 

documents we prepare, whether associated with 

a DOE or an AWE site. So there is a list of 

them and the kinds of things that fall into 

this. 

 This would be all NIOSH personnel, 

Advisory Board and its contractor, all NIOSH 

contractors and subcontractors. 

 Now the documents that are subject 

to this procedure are generated from source 

material that is unclassified or it may be OUO 

or it may be UCNI. I mean all those documents 

they use to prepare these project documents, 

because we can have and use all those types of 

information. 

 The reason for this review by the 

Department of Energy is to ensure that we 

don't assemble a document that contains from 

several source documents that now, all of a 
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sudden because we've put some things together, 

inadvertently we have come up with something 

that should be -- that is more sensitive than 

what we started with. I believe I have heard 

that referred to as the mosaic effect. So 

that is the purpose for this review. 

 For documents that are created from 

classified source documents, these -- if I am 

not mistaken, if we are working from a 

classified source document, we are not at our 

own offices. We are at a DOE facility who are 

holding those for us. So it is prepared at 

that document in accordance with the 

requirements that the Department of Energy 

tells us on how to prepare this. 

 Typically, as I understand it, you 

are on a -- you can write on a computer that 

is not connected to anything. You know, it 

can't go anywhere except there. It is their 

computer there. You don't get the computer 

file. You don't get anything until they say, 

okay, what you have written is okay. Then 
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they will let you have what it was. So that 

is when we are working from classified source 

materials. 

 Now for documents that are created 

from assumed unclassified, which would include 

OUO or UCNI source documents, the draft 

documents have limited distribution among the 

development team. For instance, if there is -

- let's talk about our contractor, ORAU. 

 If they are preparing a site -- 

some sort of site profile or technical based 

document that pertains to a particular site, 

they get a draft before they do their internal 

peer review, their own technical review which 

they will do before they even give it to us -- 

Before they do their own internal technical 

review, they send that draft document to the 

applicable either DOE site or the DOE 

Headquarters, depending upon whether there is 

a site -- whether it pertains to an active 

site or not -- and sent via a hard copy or a 

CD. It is not e-mailed, and there is no 
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transmission via e-mail prior to the review 

and clearance by the appropriate DOE site 

office. 

 When DOE has completed that review 

-- now when these are sent, if I am not 

mistaken, we at NIOSH get notified. So we 

have a master tracking of the various 

documents that are at Headquarters. 

 When DOE reviews these and they 

inform us, okay, review is complete, no 

problems, then at that point it can go on with 

its normal review. For instance, if it is an 

ORAU document, DOE says okay, no problems with 

this, they would then do their internal peer 

review, have a final product, send that to us 

for our review and approval. 

 Review of documents that have had 

DOE site office or Headquarters review, So 

once that has been done, DOE site, or we have 

that initial review, now those documents can 

be electronically distributed for technical 

review and approval, and after a final 
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approval but prior to posting on our website, 

we send again a hard copy or CD to the 

appropriate DOE Headquarters, because 

theoretically there have been some 

modifications made to the document during the 

various technical reviews, and to make sure 

that those technical comments and comment 

resolutions have not changed the nature of the 

documents. So there is another review there. 

 So you can see there are two review 

cycles built into the preparation of all the 

documents here. 

 Once DOE says, okay, this final 

version is good, too, then we can put it on 

our website. 

 I didn't ask for questions, 

apparently, in my slide show. I didn't put 

that together. I don't suppose that will stop 

people from having them. So I will try to 

answer whatever questions you may have. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Stu, you 

probably have sensed from some of the 
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questions and comments earlier when we talked 

about the DOE's plan that there are some 

concerns about the -- shall I call it the 

independence of the Board's review and how 

that is impacted by being included in the 

NIOSH part of the program. 

 I think we may have to deal with 

that in some way in order to assure that, if 

the NIOSH procedure includes the Board, that 

it is very clear that there is some level of 

independence, an appropriate level of 

independence and transparency. 

 Assuming that that could be 

achieved -- I am going to assume that for the 

moment, but I don't want to say that that is a 

given -- then it seems to me, the document has 

some of the same issues that the DOE document 

had in terms of how we describe who is 

covered. 

 For example, under Scope you don't 

mention the CDC subcontractor, although you 

did make a remark, I think, that -- 
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 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. I noted 

from the other discussion that that was likely 

something we would have to look at. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: However, I notice 

that the responsibilities only fall on the 

employees in Section 4.3. So since we are not 

employees of NIOSH, are we off the hook there? 

 I don't think that was what was intended. 

 MR. HINNEFELD: It wasn't the 

intent, I'm confident. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: But notice there 

a completely different description of who is 

responsible there. Then this occurs in some 

other places. So one would have to go back 

and make sure that things are appropriately 

described. 

 Also, I notice in Section 5.2 -- 

this is perhaps not a major point, but here is 

a case -- I am really asking about terminology 

-- where thumb drives, flash drives and so on 

should be password protected. 

 That sounds like it is optional. 
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Does the agency have a particular meaning of 

should or is this the same as shall or must? 

But those kinds of words are important. Some 

people would interpret should as, yes, it is a 

pretty good thing to do, but it is not really 

always required. So I think you need to look 

at that kind of terminology as well. 

 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. I think 

part of that might be due to the evolving 

nature of computer security requirements that 

we are receiving from HHS and CDC. So that 

may be part of that evolving process of coming 

into compliance with what the expectations 

are. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I know that our 

contractor has had some comments on this 

document, and we have had copies of those, and 

I think we won't take them up right now, but I 

do want to sort of get on the floor some of 

the general questions and perhaps concerns. 

Then we are going to take a break, but let's 

proceed for about five minutes right now or so 
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and get some initial comments and concerns on 

the table. Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Two things. First 

off, before I list one of my major concerns, I 

would like to ask maybe at some point after 

the break we could have our contractor sort of 

report on their experience with this process 

to date and some of the problems that they 

have seen in terms of delays and obtaining 

information and review of information and so 

forth; because I think it would help inform us 

how we review this particular document. 

 One of my major concerns about 

this, which I mentioned to Dr. Worthington 

earlier, but really feel it is much more 

directed at NIOSH since you appear to be the 

one that -- the agency that has driven this 

process and at least would be the one that did 

this, and I notice that in the comments from 

our contractor, you have already rejected 

these claims and criticisms. But I think that 

this document as written fundamentally 
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undermines the independence of the Board and 

of our ability to credibly provide independent 

reviews of the documents that we are -- 

documents, the dose reconstructions, the SEC 

evaluation and other things that we are 

mandated by the Act to do. 

 I think that, going forward, that 

if this document stays in place and gets 

implemented, I don't think the Board can claim 

to be independent anymore and should not be 

trying to fool the public, the claimants, and 

the petitioners that we have any remaining 

independence. 

 Essentially, you will control all 

access to information. You essentially will 

control our contractor. I think, unless that 

fundamental flaw is fixed, I don't think there 

is much need to address the other points, and 

very valid points, that Dr. Ziemer has raised 

about the inconsistencies in the document. 

 Frankly, what I was also concerned 

about, Stu, was your -- I don't think NIOSH 
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even understands what is in this document or 

how it is being implemented. 

 Now it is probably unfair to you 

since you are using Larry's slides, I suspect, 

and we are trying to interpret them on the 

fly, but there is a lot of confusion out 

there, and I think parts of this are not 

clearly written. 

 I think it really needs a major 

rework, but unless we address the independence 

issue -- and maybe this is a time that we need 

to go back to this whole issue of how is our 

contractor oversight provided. 

 We had talked early on that maybe 

we should have another agency being the 

contract source for overseeing the contract, 

letting the contract for the Board's 

contractor, for SC&A. 

 I think we really need to revisit 

this, because if this is the approach that 

NIOSH is going to take, attempt to control all 

access to a site by our contractor and by the 
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have independent oversight in this program. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. Brad. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Stu, I know they 

say don't shoot the messengers, but 

unfortunately, you are the only one here, and 

I apologize. But I will tell you something 

right now, and I'm looking up the date of this 

-- the date of this is effective 1/23/2009. I 

am really disappointed that the Board was not 

involved in this at all. 

 I tried up front to be able to get 

involved in this at the very beginning, but, 

no, everything proceeded to go on. The whole 

independence of this Board is important on 

these claimants and everything else. 

 To tell you the truth, I really 

feel kind of slapped in the face with this, 

because actually, it will -- you will be able 

to control everything that we see, everything 

that we get, everything that we are able to 

do. 
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 Now we understand that there is a 

basis and why we need to be able to do this, 

but if we could all communicate, as we talked 

about on the phone, we can still reach the 

same thing. But the thing is with this, we 

really can't. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you, Brad. 

Wanda Munn. 

 MEMBER MUNN: The concept of the 

desirability to have the Board involved in 

this process is certainly well taken. On the 

other hand, in practical terms, if we 

recognize the fact that NIOSH is not, as has 

been portrayed here, an overseer but rather 

the entire support activity for this Board, 

then there needs to be a better definition 

established between this Board and NIOSH as to 

where that line lies. 

 Clearly, the Board does not have 

the facility itself to perform the clerical 

and administrative tasks that NIOSH performs 

on our behalf, and if they are not -- if we do 
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not have other capabilities available to us, 

then it appears some discussion needs to occur 

at some juncture, probably not now, with 

respect to how this perception of the agency 

being a gatekeeper rather than being technical 

and administrative support for the Board 

probably needs to be on the table somewhere. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, the Chair 

certainly understands the need for 

coordinating the efforts to seek documents 

from the Department of Energy. That is, to 

coordinate both the efforts of the Board and 

NIOSH. 

 If that could be done in a single 

document, that would be fine. I would want to 

hear, and I think the comments that Joe 

Fitzgerald raised on behalf of our contractor 

-- although we didn't have ourselves input 

into that even -- our comments I would want to 

hear discussed some more to understand why we 

could not have a separate point of contact who 

would clearly coordinate with the NIOSH point 
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of contact. 

 So you know, if there's 50 boxes 

available, we've got to agree on what 50 boxes 

those are at some site visit, to use a 

specific example, because DOE has some 

limitations, too, and we can't demand to have 

our 50 boxes and NIOSH wants their 50 boxes. 

 So, clearly, there is a 

coordination issue here, but the issue of 

determining how we can best achieve an 

efficient way to get at documents while 

maintaining the necessary independence -- and 

independence, I believe, is mandated by the 

law or the Act -- we need to discuss further. 

 I think we need to take our break, 

though. Let's take a 15 minute break, and 

then we will come back. Thank you very much. 

 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

matter went off the record at 3:22 p.m., and 

resumed at 3:47 p.m.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, we are 

going to proceed. For the record, I would 
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like to have the record show that Dr. Jim 

Lockey has joined us. He actually came in 

during the previous presentation, but welcome, 

Jim. We are glad to have you back. 

 Gen Roessler came in before Dr. 

Lockey. You have been here so long, we've 

gotten used to having you here. I think Mike 

Gibson is still on the phone. So we have a 

full cadre of the 12 Board members here or 

present by phone. 

 I would like to allow us to 

continue the discussion a little bit more on 

the security plan. We will have a chance to 

return to it during our work session, but I 

would like to hear from some of the other 

Board members who haven't had a chance to 

express their views. 

 I am particularly interested in 

hearing concerns about the issue of the 

Board's independence vis a vis the NIOSH 

security plan, because I think our path 

forward will depend on the extent to which the 
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Board is or is not comfortable with the plan, 

particularly the NIOSH plan as it currently 

stands. So, Phil. 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I want to tell 

the people here that the way I see this, this 

is a real bottleneck. This is almost saying 

NIOSH will get to pick and choose what we get 

to see, what documents we want. 

 Now I can perfectly understand DOE, 

but we can have our own POC, and we will 

notify NIOSH saying, look, this is documents 

we are interested in and we are going to look 

at, come along, if you want to. If you don't, 

that's fine, too, but we need to look at these 

documents, rather than this being funneled 

through NIOSH, which to me is just one 

bottleneck that they can pick and choose what 

we can look at and what we can see. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. Jim, 

let me -- if there are others? Okay, Jim 

Melius. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Just a brief 
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follow-up on what we were just talking about. 

I am not sure what the intentions are for this 

document, but going forward I just can't see 

how having the point of contact being the 

NIOSH person basically in charge of the SEC 

evaluation or whatever at that site is 

workable, where you can avoid the perception 

of conflict of interest or the perception of 

some sort of bias. 

 I don't want to be down here, you 

know, six months from now trying to defend an 

SEC evaluation review where that issue comes 

up. We have to take steps to avoid that. 

 I have been saying this for quite 

sometime, and we have been ignored up to now. 

I see now indication from NIOSH that they will 

even accept or consider this issue, and that 

is what I found most disturbing. 

 When Joe Fitzgerald raised it, it 

was summarily dismissed by the anonymous 

person who was responding in the document 

review. I assume it was Larry, but it may 
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have been somebody else. I think it is a 

fundamental problem. 

 Unless we get beyond that, we 

shouldn't even be wasting our time with this 

document. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Mike, did you 

have a comment? Was that Mike Gibson on the 

phone? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: No, that wasn't me, 

Paul. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Oh, okay. Other 

Board members? Okay, Brad, go ahead. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I guess one of my 

concerns is we have spent so many years to try 

to keep the transparency a bit, to be able to 

keep the independence of the Board and, in my 

eyes, I don't see this. 

 I was very upset to be able to find 

out about the phone calls on this procedure 

that had gone on that none of us had known. I 

accidentally fell into one, and what I see on 

this paper is not what was discussed on that. 
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 When we do a procedure or something 

like this, this is opened up so that everybody 

knows what is going on. I threw out -- I 

understand that we have to have a point of 

contact. DOE has no problem with who they 

give the information to or whatever, but they 

need to be able to kind of have a point of 

contact. 

 I felt -- and I threw out that that 

is fine. Have NIOSH have a point of contact 

and have SC&A have a point of contact. 

Between those two, they can communicate and be 

able to do this, which this was dismissed as 

not feasible and wouldn't work. 

 I really think that we need to sit 

down, and we need to put some serious thought 

into this. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: In your view as 

you expressed it, SC&A would be operating in 

behalf of the Board as the Board's point of 

contact in the support capacity? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, they would, 
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and they would be able to do their requests or 

so forth. Then that way, they can do the 

Board's work. They can keep their 

independence, but as this is written right 

now, that isn't there. Like Wanda was saying, 

we needed to have a different terminology for 

it. I'm just a good old boy. It comes back to 

kind of the fox watching the henhouse. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Ted, did you have 

your comment, and then we will go to Jim. 

 MR. KATZ: Sure. Let me just say, 

from the perspective of NIOSH and Dr. Branch, 

OD level, I think everybody has been pretty 

articulate about the very real perceptual 

concerns here. 

 I mean, I think it is true, no 

matter how well meaning those points of 

contact are -- another point that Dr. Melius 

raised -- it is that person that is the head 

of the SEC evaluation that is serving as sort 

of the funnel point or however you want to say 

it for coordinating requests and so on. I can 
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see that that is just -- you can't get away 

from that perceptual problem. 

 I think this does have a solution. 

I think we can come up with an approach that 

gives the Board its independence, its own 

staff separate from the OCAS staff, to address 

this point of contact request, document 

control, and so on, while still achieving the 

kind of coordination that DOE needs so that 

they are not running in four directions on the 

same purpose. 

 So while I can't lay out a very 

specific proposal at this point, I am 

certainly committed. I think Dr. Branch would 

be committed to coming up with a solution that 

works for the Board, that is guided by the 

Board's concerns and interests, and that 

achieves the kind of independence or sustains 

the kind of independence that the Board needs 

to function effectively. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you, Ted. 

We appreciate that input. Now, Dr. Melius. 
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 MEMBER MELIUS: One comment on 

that, and then a separate issue. The comment 

on that is what is -- and this is a rhetorical 

question. I don't expect an answer. These 

procedures have already been finalized, and 

now you are coming to us. These are being 

implemented, and now we are going to spend 

some period of time trying to work out a new 

way, a new approach that would deal with this 

issue. 

 Probably -- I think there were a 

number of issues that Dr. Ziemer mentioned 

that need to be tightened up, and meanwhile 

this is being implemented. I think that is -- 

the process itself, I don't understand. As I 

said, that is rhetorical. I don't expect you 

to answer that. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I like to answer 

rhetorical questions. So when you are done - 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Well, go ahead. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: No. What I would 

like to see is during the work session this 
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week, I would like the Board to have a 

specific recommendation on a path forward. I 

think we can proceed on an interim basis. 

 I mean, we have a way to get to the 

documents we need, and we can work with DOE to 

do that. But I think we need to think about 

what it would look like. 

 Would it look like a change in this 

document that would have that transparency, or 

would it look like a separate Board document 

that would be a parallel document with the 

DOE-NIOSH documents? We need to give that 

some thought and be ready to make a 

recommendation. 

 We need to make sure that 

everything -- that legal counsel is 

comfortable with the direction we go, but we 

want to find a way that -- and this will help 

NIOSH, too. I don't think they want to be 

seen as directing the Board's activities or 

curtailing the Board's activities. 

 So I think we will all benefit from 
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having a plan which achieves the independence 

and the transparency. So we need to give some 

thought to what that is going to look like, 

and perhaps can at least have a framework for 

going forward by Thursday. So that will be 

something to cogitate on in the meantime. 

 Additional comments? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I would also -- 

Well, two comments. One is I would hope we 

would take the time at some point, because I 

know we are getting squeezed for time, to hear 

from our contractor about some of the issues 

that they have encountered related to this 

document or the implementation of this 

document, and with classified and other 

information delays. 

 My other comment, a number of years 

ago, once upon a time, we ran into a potential 

problem with security at another site. It was 

the Iowa site. 

 If you remember, at one point the 

Board was about to recommend an SEC be granted 
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-- the petition be granted at one of the Iowa 

sites based on the fact that the information 

was classified, we were unable to access it in 

a transparent way that was appropriate, we 

felt was appropriate, for this program. 

 At that point, we were stymied by 

an unnamed -- or maybe he was named, or she, I 

don't know, but somebody within the 

administration who said that that could not be 

the basis for granting an SEC. 

 We were never able to get that in 

writing, and I don't think we ever even got 

fully briefed on that, because it was 

apparently some sort of a verbal or oral 

communication from somebody from counsel's 

office to counsel's office or something. 

 Anyway, we were able to work around 

it at the time, but in reviewing these 

documents now I still see that kind of 

situation as something that we may have to 

encounter. Certainly, with some of the sites 

that we are dealing with now and petitions we 
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are dealing with now, that is a possibility. 

 I also think that both NIOSH and 

DOE need to give some thought to that, that if 

we are going to go through sort of elaborate 

procedures and lots of time trying to work our 

process and make that compatible with the 

security, very justifiable security, needs of 

the Department of Energy, I just worry that we 

are going to reach a point where this program 

can't legitimately justify what we are doing, 

because the information will be so classified 

and we won't be able to discuss it, report it 

or really deal with it in a way that is fair 

to the petitioners or to the claimants. 

 I think that is something that we 

need to think about. As I said, at the time 

we encountered it the first time, my proposal 

or recommendation was that we do it in a way 

that is favorable to the claimants. 

 No claimant should be punished or 

have their claim turned down because the 

information was so classified that they had no 
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access or there is no transparency, at least 

not adequate transparency, to the process that 

made the process fair for them. 

 I think that we need to rethink 

through that issue again. We have avoided it 

so far. I am not sure we can continue to 

avoid it and, certainly, some of the sections 

of these documents raise that issue again. 

 There is a new administration, and 

perhaps a better or fairer assessment of how 

that conflict needs to be resolved. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And, certainly, 

the scenario of the type you suggest could 

arise in a number of different ways that we 

probably can't fully anticipate, even if we 

tried to develop something that would address 

it in a general way. 

 So I think at this time we have to 

deal with these documents that we have and try 

to move forward with them. It may be that, as 

we get into this, some other related issues 

such as this type where there is a limitation 
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put on what information can be made available, 

for example, to petitioners or even to 

claimants becomes problematical. 

 Other comments? I will call either 

tomorrow or during our work session on Joe 

Fitzgerald and SC&A to give us some specific 

feedback on this issue. So we will return to 

it. 

 The document, the SC&A document, 

their critique of the NIOSH document and their 

sort of comment matrix and the NIOSH responses 

were distributed to the Board. So you should 

have that. Brad, do you have an additional 

comment? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON; I would also like 

to be able to hear from some of the NIOSH 

people that have -- because when we discussed 

it, and after a phone call, they had a little 

different opinion of how this was going to be 

implemented. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. And I 

think, in fairness, Stu and maybe Jim later in 
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the week may be in a position to flip a coin, 

but perhaps can help us better understand 

NIOSH's position on that as well. 

 I do want to give both Department 

of Energy and Department of Labor an 

opportunity to proceed with their updates. 

Dr. Worthington is going to give us sort of -- 

or no, I believe Gina will give us the regular 

DOE update, which is kind of a status report 

of what is happening with the documents. Then 

we will also have a chance to hear from 

Department of Labor. 

 Hopefully, these will be brief 

enough. I am hoping we won't consume the time 

that we had set aside for these. 

 MS. CANO: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer 

and the Board. Again, I am Regina Cano. I am 

the Director of the Office of Former Workers 

Screening Program. This office is responsible 

for the Energy Employees Compensation Program, 

and then we are also responsible for the DOE 

Former Workers Screening Programs. 
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 I am going to go ahead and give a 

quick overview. I know the Board has heard 

this many, many times, but for those that are 

here for the first time, I will give you a 

quick overview of DOE's responsibilities under 

the program. 

 We have basically three. First, we 

provide -- We respond to DOL and NIOSH's 

requests for information, and that is in 

response to individual claims. So that could 

be employment verification or exposure 

records. 

 We also provide support and 

assistance, as you've heard, to DOL, NIOSH and 

the Advisory Board through research and 

retrieval of relevant records from DOE sites. 

 Then we also update and research 

issues related to the covered facilities 

designations. Right now, there are over 343 

covered facilities, and we manage that website 

-- or that list on the DOE website. 

 In regard to responding to 
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individual claims, in approximation about 

6,500 employment verification requests, 

respond to Labor. We also respond to NIOSH, 

approximately 4,000, and those are for dose 

records. Then document acquisition requests, 

otherwise known as the DAR, about 7500 a year. 

 For the total number of requests 

for '07, we had about 22,000, in '80 about 

18,000. 

 As mentioned, we do support record 

retrieval activities at our sites. These next 

few slides are just kind of an example of 

ongoing activities. It is not reflective of 

all the activities, because there might be 

sites that are pulling documents on a smaller 

basis, but these are our larger research 

retrieval activities at the moment. 

 In regard to Brookhaven, that has 

been an ongoing effort probably for the past 

six or seven months. We have hosted a number 

of visits for NIOSH. We have had public 

meetings. We continue to work with NIOSH and 
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Brookhaven to make sure that they receive the 

information that they need. 

 Hanford, this has been a large 

effort, as you know. This has been going on 

for over a year now, but we have actually 

worked through a lot of the issues that we had 

early on, and we feel like we are making 

progress. 

 In the past we have hosted six 

major document identification visits. We have 

been able to provide -- actually get through a 

lot of our backlog. I know there was a 

backlog there for a while, and we have 

actually been able to get through that, 

complete the backlog, and now we are just 

working on current requests that come in from 

NIOSH. 

 We have about 30 boxes that are 

currently under review. We have 70 boxes 

awaiting review by NIOSH contractors before it 

goes through document review, and then we have 

26 boxes cleared by DOE, and are awaiting 
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scanning by the NIOSH contractor. 

 In regard to Mound, this is another 

ongoing effort. We have hosted over 20 

document review visits. We have conducted 170 

search requests which responds to about 4,000 

pages. We have retrieved 70 boxes for review, 

and we have digitized those documents. We 

have conducted document reviews for over 20 

classified documents. 

 Los Alamos, We have hosted several 

visits with NIOSH, and we continue to work 

with them, and trying to facilitate and 

provide the information that they need. 

 In regard to Savannah River, so far 

we have hosted eight visits. We also are 

working through some issues that have come up 

through Savannah River. We have a new point 

of contact in management at Savannah River, 

but they continue to work with us 

cooperatively and work through the issues that 

we identify. But to date, again you will see 

the numbers. They have also processed 225 
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classified documents. 

 Now Lawrence Livermore National Lab 

-- they are not an SEC per se, but this is 

just another example. We support NIOSH 

relevant to SEC activities. There are also 

other smaller record retrieval activities that 

we support for NIOSH, whether it be for their 

technical basis documents or it may be an 

Advisory Board review of site profiles or 

other work that NIOSH is involved with. 

Livermore happens to be one that we are 

working with, with NIOSH right now. 

 As I also mentioned, we are 

responsible for the database that comprises 

343 covered facilities. DOE's role under 

EEOICPA is to designate beryllium vendors and 

AWEs. 

 I also want to reiterate, because 

it seems that there is always confusion about 

rules and responsibilities, that we do 

designate the AWE facilities' beryllium 

vendors, but it is Labor's responsibility to 
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designate the DOE facilities and clarify or 

designate the covered time frames. 

 Facility research, as I mentioned, 

we are working with the Office of Legacy 

Management. They have expertise. They often 

assist us in researching questions that NIOSH 

sends to DOE in regard to covered time frames, 

designated facilities. To date, we have also 

assisted Department of Labor in answering 

specific questions related to designated 

facilities with over 350 documents. This has 

occurred within the past year. 

 I will go through the initiatives. 

You heard this before. Within the past couple 

of years, we have instituted a number of 

initiatives to improve our customer service 

within the agencies, our sites, the management 

at the sites, and then with DOE Headquarters. 

 We have named a POC. We hold 

weekly calls with NIOSH and Department of 

Labor, as well as the Advisory Board to work 

through any issues that may arise. 
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 Again, as you have heard today, we 

have been collaborating with Department of 

Labor and NIOSH to streamline and improve the 

process. We do want to emphasize that 

coordination of efforts is important to us, 

and we thank everybody for continuing to work 

with us on this effort. 

 The top bullet, working with the 

CIO's office -- I'm not sure if this was on 

the presentation last time, but this is 

important in that, as you know, subcontracts 

are very difficult for us to find. Many times 

these subcontractors leave the facility or the 

site, and they take these records with them. 

 We have been working with the CIO's 

office to make sure that there is proper 

contracting language in those contracts to 

guaranty that they don't walk away with those 

important records. 

 The other project we have been 

working on for a couple of years -- and I'm 

happy to say that we awarded the cooperative 
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agreement to the hospital in January, and that 

is to take possession of the Los Alamos 

Medical Center records, the medical records 

that previously belonged to DOE, and those are 

records up to 1964. 

 As a matter of fact, the contractor 

is on site this week conducting ES&H surveys. 

 So we hope we will be able to start working 

through those records within the next few 

weeks. 

 This last bullet, expanding 

outreach/coordination of Former Worker Program 

and Energy Compensation Program. As I 

mentioned earlier, within the Office of Former 

Workers Screening Programs, we have the 

program of the Former Workers Screening 

Program. This is one program we think that 

these two programs complement each other. 

 We want to make sure that this 

program and EEOICPA work and collaborate more 

with each other so we can make sure we get the 

proper message out to our workforce as well as 
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our field management. 

 Outreach efforts. When I say 

outreach, this also means outreach to our 

agencies as well as our workers. Again, we 

are working with -- we had a working group 

that met last week. All agencies were 

involved, Department of Labor, NIOSH, both 

Ombudsman's Offices and our Former Worker 

Program to talk about ways that we could 

improve the program. How can we coordinate 

efforts? How can we collaborate? Because 

oftentimes the screening programs will 

identify occupational health concerns, and 

then they then direct these employees into the 

Energy Compensation Program. So I 

think it is important that both programs 

become ambassadors, in essence, so they can 

actually talk more about what the other 

program does and in confidence, and with the 

understanding that is agreed upon by all 

agencies. 

 Again, training to the District 
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Office, the DOL District Offices. This has 

been provided within the past couple of years, 

and we are going to try to expand that to the 

Resource Centers. This has been, we found, 

very valuable and useful. 

 EEOICPA point of contacts. As a 

matter of fact, we have two here in the 

audience. We have Filipa Gregio who is with 

Los Alamos and Linda Sanchez who is with the 

Service Center. They are here today. 

 They often attend public meetings. 

They work with the Resource Centers. They 

work -- they are critical. Again, they work 

with NIOSH and the Advisory Board's contractor 

to make sure that they receive the information 

that they need, and again they are the on-site 

source of EEOICPA information for our workers. 

 Oftentimes workers go straight to them and 

ask them questions about the program. 

 As I mentioned, the Former Worker 

Screening Program. Again, I just wanted to -- 

I think this is the first time we have ever 
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actually talked about the screening program or 

provided it in our overview, and I think it is 

important that we recognize that this is an 

important program to DOE. 

 We make sure that after these 

people are seen within the screening program 

and they identify a potential health defect, 

that we get them into the EEOICPA program. 

They have been doing this from the early onset 

of EEOICPA. So this is something they have 

been doing since early 2000 when the Energy 

Compensation Program was established. 

 We have Becky Trujillo from our 

Former Worker Program Screening Program. She 

is one of our outreach coordinators. So she 

is here today as well. 

 We have two screening programs for 

Los Alamos, and then we also have one for 

Sandia. So we just wanted to provide you with 

that information, but we have Becky Trujillo. 

 Again, she is our outreach coordinator. 

 I believe that's it. If anybody 
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has any questions -- I hope I went fairly 

quickly. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Very good, Gina. 

 Let's open the floor for questions. Phil, 

want to start? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: This isn't so 

much a question as it is a thank you. We 

appreciate Gina for all the hard work you have 

done on the medical records issue, and 

Michelle Hacquez-Ortiz. These two people have 

done a tremendous amount of work, and we 

appreciate it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. Well 

said. Other comments or questions? 

Apparently not. Again, thank you very much, 

Gina, and for your team and the work that they 

are doing to assist and support what we are 

doing. 

 Now we are going to go ahead and 

have an update from Department of Labor, and 

Rachel Leiton is going to give us that today 

instead of Jeff. So welcome, Rachel. 
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 MS. LEITON: Thank you. Good 

afternoon, everyone. I am very happy to be 

here to provide you with this brief 

presentation. I will try to keep it brief, 

knowing there is a lot of other items on the 

agenda. 

 I am Rachel Leiton. I am the 

relatively new Director for the Energy Program 

over at the Department of Labor. I took over 

for Pete Turcic when he retired in the fall of 

this year. I have been with the program since 

the beginning, since its inception, as the 

Policy Chief. 

 So I am just going to go over some 

-- again, I know you have probably seen all of 

this before, but for those of you who are new, 

I will just give a brief background of where 

we are with the program and where it came 

from, what it is all about. 

 Part B became effective in July of 

2001. Since that time, there have been 64,889 

cases filed, which represents 95,653 claims. 
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The difference is basically whether it is an 

employee's case or a survivor's claim. That 

is how we differentiate between the survivors 

and the employees, because you could have 

several survivors on a particular case. 

 We have referred over 28,000 cases 

to NIOSH since that time. On October 28, 

2004, we received part E, which was formerly 

Part D of the EEOICPA which was administered 

by DOE. At that time -- Since that time, we 

have received 55,600 cases, which represent 

77,988 claims. 

 In October of 2004, we did receive 

over 25,000 cases that were transferred from 

the Department of Energy as a result of the 

Part D program. 

 EEOICPA compensation. This gives 

you some details about how much we have paid 

so far. We have paid $4.5 billion total in 

compensation. In Part B that is $2.84 

billion. In Part E, that is $1.44 billion. 

We have also paid $286 million in medical 
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benefits thus far. 

 Paid cases. We have 48,000-plus 

payees in both Parts B and E, and again the 

35,000 is the actual cases versus the payees. 

That breaks down to 35,116 Part B payees and 

23,132 cases. For Part E, that is 13,499 

payees and 12,853 cases. 

 Quickly, the Part B section. It 

was our first new entitlement program in OWCP, 

which is the Office of Workers Compensation 

Program, since black lung in 1969. It covers 

radiation induced cancer, beryllium illnesses, 

special exposure cohort cases -- that is what 

we talk about here -- silicosis for miners in 

Nevada and Alaska. 

 Then there is a supplemental 

payment for RECA uranium workers who received 

RECA Radiation Compensation Act, which is 

administered by Department of Justice. 

Certain uranium workers received $100,000 from 

that program, and can also receive $50,000 

from our program. 
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 The old Part B program was a state 

workers comp program, and people could apply 

for assistance through that program to get 

state workers comp. Since that program was 

not Federally funded, they created Part E so 

that we could provide Federal funding for 

these Part E eligible folks. 

 Part B individuals who were DOE 

employees, Federal DOE employees, DOE 

contractors and subcontractors, atomic weapons 

employees, beryllium vendors are all covered. 

 Certain survivors of those deceased workers 

are also covered. That would be a spouse -- 

In the order of survival would be the spouse, 

the children, regardless of their age, 

parents, grandchildren, grandparents, and then 

yet again RECA Section 5 uranium workers and 

their survivors. 

 Under Part B there is presumptive 

coverage for workers with 22 specified cancers 

at special exposure cohort sites, meaning if 

they have a particular cancer that is listed 
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within the Act and they worked at a certain 

SEC site for a certain number of days, they 

can be covered automatically without going 

through NIOSH dose reconstruction. 

 There were four that were in the 

original legislation. Those are three gas 

distribution plants plus Amchitka Island in 

Alaska. As of February 15, 2009, there are 39 

SEC classes added by HHS. Actually, that 

includes, I believe, the three GDPs and 

Amchitka. 

 Part B benefits allows for 150,000 

lump sum compassion payment. Basically, that 

is for anybody who we have determined has 

either cancer, beryllium disease or silicosis, 

and has met the threshold for either going 

through a dose reconstruction or meeting the 

requirements of an SEC. We also cover medical 

benefits for any conditions that we cover. 

 We also cover medical treatment and 

monitoring only from beryllium sensitivity. 

If it is chronic beryllium disease, we pay for 
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all medical expenses. 

 Part E, as I said, was created in 

2004. It is a federally funded program like 

Part B. An individual can receive lump sum 

payments of up to $250,000 on top of the 

$150,000 in some cases that they may receive 

from Part B, plus medical benefits for 

accepted conditions. 

 There are some significant 

differences between Part B and Part E. In 

Part E only DOE contractors and subcontractors 

are covered, not Federal employees, not atomic 

weapons employers or beryllium vendor workers. 

 They are not part of Part E, that section of 

the Act. 

 Certain survivors of deceased 

workers are covered as well, but the 

definition under Part E is very different from 

the definition under B, because you either can 

be a spouse or, if you are a child and there 

is no spouse at the time of the employee's 

death, you would have had to have been under 
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the age of 18, under the age of 23 and 

enrolled in a full time educational 

institution, or any age and incapable of selfsupport. So adult children under Part E are 

not covered, in general. 

 Also another huge difference in 

Part E is that Part B only covers four 

conditions, cancer, silicosis, beryllium 

disease. Under Part E we cover any condition 

as long as we can establish that there was 

exposure to toxic substances in the workplace. 

 Okay, some statistics. This is an 

overview or our final decisions on covered 

applications. Basically, we have approved 

24,886 of these covered applications, and in 

the denials we have denied 18,674 covered 

applications. 

 The rest of these numbers basically 

tell you that there is a breakdown of survivor 

not eligible, the 12,000. The bar there in 

green is for PoCs, probability of causation, 

returns from NIOSH that were under 50 percent, 
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and the blue bar is the medical -- We received 

information from a claimant that shows that 

they didn't have enough medical to support 

that they had a condition that would support 

their claim. This is only Part B we are 

referring to. 

 New SEC related cases, 2,265 cases 

were withdrawn from NIOSH for review for the 

SEC. That represents approximately -- I'm not 

sure I have the percentage. Oh, this is the 

whole percentage of all. So it is 2,265 cases 

total, and then we have issued 2101 final 

decisions, of which 2,074 were final 

approvals. 

 Thirty-nine recommended decisions, 

but no final decision -- that means that we 

have one layer that we have almost gotten to, 

which is the recommended. After a recommended 

decision, the claimant can appeal and go to a 

final decision. We got 39 more of those so 

far to do. 

 We have 46 cases pending, and 79 
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cases closed. Closed usually means that they 

have withdrawn their claim or something along 

those lines, but we have issued 92 percent of 

final decisions on these cases thus far that 

we have received. 

 NIOSH referral case status. We 

have referred a total of 28,654 cases to 

NIOSH. 22,251 cases have been returned from 

NIOSH, and this is over the history of the 

program. 19,503 are currently at DOL with 

dose reconstruction. Thirty-two are being 

reworked for return to NIOSH. That is of the 

22,000, and 2,716 withdrawn from NIOSH with no 

dose reconstruction. That could be for PERs 

or for SECs and various other reasons. 

 We show that 6,403 cases currently 

are at NIOSH. I know that varies from NIOSH's 

number and the reason for that is we are 

currently reconciling some of these numbers. 

I think we just count things slightly 

different, and we hope to get that number much 

closer next time we come to an Advisory Board 
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meeting. 

 We have had -- Out of those 6,500, 

3,500 approximately of them were initial or 

original referrals to NIOSH, and 2,841 are 

reworks or returns to NIOSH. 

 This is a graphical representation 

of the dose reconstruction status that we have 

record of, 19,503 cases are at DOL with the 

dose reconstructions I indicated. 16,876 of 

those dose reconstruction cases have final 

decisions, approximately 6,000 of which are 

final approvals, and over 10,000 are final 

denials, 2,234 dose reconstruction cases with 

recommended but no final decision, and 393 

dose reconstruction cases pending a 

recommended decision by DOL, which means it 

has come back from NIOSH, and we are about to 

write a decision. 

 So we have written final decisions 

in 87 percent of the dose reconstruction cases 

so far. 

 NIOSH case related compensation. 
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Out of all the cases that we have sent to 

NIOSH and approved, we have paid $1.2 billion 

in compensation, which represents 12,301 

payees. 

 We have also paid $903.1 million on 

dose reconstructed cases, which represents 

8,570 payees, and -- this is the breakdown, 

actually, of those that are dose reconstructed 

and those that were SEC related. So $302.4 

million on those was for SECs, which 

represents 3,731 payees. 

 This is just a breakdown of the 

cases that we have received monthly from NIOSH 

-- or actually, that we have received in 

general, and this goes back to July of 2008. 

As you can see, it has been fluctuating 

slightly. It has gotten a little bit less, 

but since it is monthly, some of the months 

just fluctuate. 

 Part B cases sent to NIOSH monthly. 

 This is what we send to them monthly. It is 

not that far different when you look at it 
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graphically from what we receive, but there 

are certain uptakes. This is between July of 

2008 and December 2008. 

 SEC petition site discussions. For 

Los Alamos we have basically had 5,109 cases 

filed with 7,539 claims filed under both Parts 

B and E. We have sent 480 for NIOSH dose 

reconstruction. We have issued 1,267 Part B 

final decisions for LANL, 714 of which were 

approvals, 672 Part E approvals, and then we 

have paid $146 million at LANL thus far for 

Part B. 

 Westinghouse. There are 77 cases, 

17 NIOSH dose reconstructions, 24 final 

decisions for Part B, five of which were 

approvals, and Part B is not applicable in 

their case. We've paid $940,000 at 

Westinghouse. 

 Tyson Valley. There have been very 

few at Tyson Valley, as you can see. We only 

have six cases as a Part B only facility, and 

one of those was a dose reconstruction case. 
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We have one final decision. It is pretty 

minimal at this point. 

 General Steel. There has been 623 

cases, 208 with NIOSH dose reconstruction, 257 

with final decisions, 48 of which were 

approvals and one Part B approval thus far. A 

lot of the disapprovals under Part E are a 

result of non-covered survivors, and we have 

paid $7.2 million at General Steel. 

 Blockson Chemical, 213 cases, Part 

B only for Blockson. 105 dose 

reconstructions, 127 final decisions, 53 of 

which were approvals, $8 million in 

compensation. 

 Dow-Madison. Thus far we have had 

371 cases, 34 for NIOSH dose reconstruction, 

119 final decisions, 80 approval with $11 

million in paid compensation. 

 I would like to talk just a second 

about -- this is kind of a new section of our 

slides -- about overall program impact. As 

you know, OMB -- Office of Management and 
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Budget -- will do a performance rating 

assistance tool on various programs throughout 

the Departments, throughout the government, 

and they did one of these a couple of years 

ago for our program and kind of insisted that 

we -- since we are the administers of the 

program, that we coordinate with our partner 

agencies, both Department of Energy and NIOSH. 

 So we have been tasked with making 

sure that we understand what they are doing, 

how they are writing, what their statistics 

are, and what their goals are. Part of that 

is we have gone over the PART tool with them, 

and worked with them on the goals that they 

created. We have been happy to have that 

cooperation on determining what those goals 

may be. 

 One recommendation that has come 

out of that is on their first goal with regard 

to the average days for conducting a dose 

reconstruction. It is just that those be 

simply dose reconstruction cases rather than 
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counting SEC cases, working with them on that. 

 We have also had an OIG report 

recently. This is Inspector General, which 

they have also indicated that, since we are 

the administers of the program, that we should 

be measuring all aspects of the program, 

keeping track of these sorts of things. 

 So we have been trying to balance 

that and look at all -- both DOE and NIOSH in 

that aspect. So I cover some of the trends 

that we have been looking at. 

 This is basically average days on 

Part B cases from the filing date to the final 

decision date. The first bar represents cases 

that have been sent to NIOSH. The yellow is 

the number of days that it takes DOL to 

prepare the response before it goes to NIOSH 

on average. The red bar there is the number 

of days at NIOSH. The green is how long it 

takes us normally to issue a recommended 

decision, and the blue is the average days to 

a final decision after a recommended decision 
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in these cases. 

 The second bar here is our cases 

that were not sent to NIOSH. The green is, 

again, the average days to a recommended 

decision, with the blue average days to a 

final decision. 

 The Part B cases -- this is just -- 

the last bar is just all Part B cases averaged 

together. 

 This is the representation of Part 

B cases that have been filed in general. 

Thirty-eight percent of them have been NIOSH 

cases, plus the SEC cases referred to NIOSH 

represent six percent, and SEC cases that have 

never been referred to NIOSH represent eight 

percent. The rest of RECA cases and other 

types of cases that we receive under Part B, 

silicosis, chronic lung disease, et cetera. 

 This is a chart that is -- it is 

the average days from filing date to final 

decision date. The difference between this 

chart and the chart that I will show next is 
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that this is called a five-year final 

decision, and it kind of shows how far back 

some of these final decisions go. 

 So the average days are coming 

down, but we are still looking. The red one 

here is the cases that have been sent to 

NIOSH, and we are looking at the status on the 

date that we had a final decision on it, and 

then the green one is all cases in general. 

The blue one is cases that have not been sent 

to NIOSH, which as you can see is this one 

just looked at from a different way of 

plotting. This is plotted by year of filing. 

 So as you can see, near the end 

there we are just looking at a smaller number 

of cases that have been filed and, therefore, 

the numbers are coming down. That is not to 

say that they are not coming down. It is just 

looking at it from a different perspective. 

 This is referrals to NIOSH and dose 

reconstructions received from NIOSH. This is 

similar to the submittals versus referrals 
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that NIOSH has. The only difference, here you 

will see that they spike, and NIOSH and DOL 

count PEPs and PERs differently. We count 

every time we send something to them, and I 

think that their count is just referrals, 

original referrals. We are still working on 

those, but with just a different way of 

counting them. 

 The numbers themselves, if you look 

at the way it looks, aside from that spike are 

pretty similar. It looks like they are coming 

down. The blue is the referrals to NIOSH, and 

the red are the dose reconstructions received 

from NIOSH. 

 This chart is a representation of 

the reworks versus the PEPs and PERs and the 

initial referrals, and this is by quarter. 

You will see that not every quarter is listed 

on there, but they are plotted pretty much, 

for the same sorts of reasons. We can't fit 

every section on there. 

 You will see that the blue here -- 
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The blue is the initial referral, and then you 

will see in 2008, quarter one -- I'm sorry, 

2006, quarter one, you will start seeing the 

yellow, which is just reworks in general that 

we have to send it back for some reason, 

whether it is a new cancer, new employment. 

Then the red shows the PEPs and PERs, and you 

will see that spike there in 2008, quarter 

one. Those are the ones we are still trying 

to work down and get back from NIOSH. It just 

shows an interesting way of looking at the 

reworks and the PEPs and PERs. 

 This is cases pending initial DOL 

determination and cases pending NIOSH dose 

reconstruction. The big purple line are Part 

E cases. That was when we first got the 

25,000 cases from Department of Energy, and 

how we worked those down. 

 Then we have the NIOSH cases, which 

is the middle line, and the Part B cases. But 

they are getting closer together at the end 

there in December of 2008. 
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 NIOSH showed an overview of pended 

cases. Some of those were broken down by 

seeking employment information from DOL, 

additional medical information from DOL, and 

claimant/survivor information. 

 When we saw that slide last time, 

we worked with NIOSH to determine what those 

cases were, and from our records we have 

worked it down to only 55 total pended cases 

at DOL, which means, if they have pended it 

and asking us for information, we have 55 

left, according to our records. 

 There is a gap there, because we 

have a formal form that we have to send to 

them when we make a change. So that is 

probably why our numbers aren't quite matching 

here, but our records show we have either sent 

an e-mail or we have corrected those and unpended them. So the next time you should see 

the numbers getting lower on both ends. 

 That is really all I have, and 

welcome to questions. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 

much, Rachel. A quick question on the slide 

dealing with the average days from filing date 

to final decision for the -- yes, that one. 

Does that represent all cases over the past 

several years, not just this past year? 

 MS. LEITON: No, all cases. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. 

Other comments? John Poston? 

 MEMBER POSTON: It is just a 

comment, not a question. I am amazed. Based 

on my math, that is nine days short of three 

years. Now I understand why so many folks are 

frustrated. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. Brad? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I was just 

wondering, do you have a copy of your slides 

on the back of the table back there for 

people? 

 MS. LEITON: Yes. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. I just want 

to make sure. I saw a lot of people 
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frantically marking down. I just want to make 

sure they realize that -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. All of 

these presentations should be on the table. 

Oh, there are none left? 

 MS. LEITON: There are none left? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Maybe we can get 

some additional copies run. Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I'm sorry. Would 

you share what parameters you are tracking for 

this program as part of your OMB and other 

tracking? 

 MS. LEITON: I'm sorry. What are 

you -- 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Sorry. Could you 

tell me what parameters you are tracking for 

the program? You are showing some of these, 

but are these all of them? 

 MS. LEITON: We track a lot of 

information. We just took some of them that 

might be relevant to NIOSH and to you guys, 

but we track -- we have operational plan goals 
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that are rather extensive. We track from the 

time it takes to process a case to an initial 

determination, in general the time it takes to 

take an initial action, meaning sending a 

development letter, the time it takes to issue 

final decisions. 

 We have a very extensive 

operational plan that goes into detail as to 

what we track. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: What I am asking 

for is could you share with us what you are 

tracking relevant to this program? 

 MS. LEITON: Okay. Well, we track 

-- 

 MEMBER MELIUS: In writing? I 

mean, you don't have to go through it. That's 

all. 

 MS. LEITON: Oh, sure. You want me 

to describe these a little bit more in 

writing? Is that what you mean? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. What are -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: What are the 
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parameters? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: -- the parameters. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: You don't have to 

do that right now. 

 MS. LEITON: Okay. That's good. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Other questions 

or comments? Very good. Thank you again, 

Rachel, for that presentation. We are always 

pleased to get the updates from Labor on those 

activities. 

 MS. LEITON: Thank you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We are going to 

move ahead now to the Los Alamos National 

Laboratory SEC petition, and I am going to ask 

our designated federal official to take a few 

minutes to describe the decision process for 

the local folks here, Ted, if you wouldn't 

mind doing that. I'll put him on the spot. 

Just briefly so there is a clear understanding 

of what the process is. 

 Then the Chair is going to leave 

the table, because under our rules we have on 
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petitions and certain of our activities, some 

of the members of the Board may be conflicted. 

 I myself am conflicted because of certain 

activities that I was involved in here at this 

site in the late Nineties. I believe Dr. 

Poston is also conflicted. Is there anyone 

else? Yes, Phil Schofield. 

 So three of us are conflicted on 

this site. Fortunately, there are enough 

Board members left so that they can proceed. 

 We do have a work group on Los 

Alamos. That work group is chaired by Mark 

Griffon, and Mark has agreed to be the 

Chairman pro tem for this part of the meeting. 

 So, Mark, I am going to turn the Chair over 

to you, and I am going to scoot out of here, 

as is Dr. Poston and Mr. Schofield. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay, let me start it 

off. Just a very brief description of the 

entire process. Really, the main point to 

take away from this brief presentation is just 

that what is happening today is really just 
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the beginning, the outset of a Board process 

of evaluating a petition. 

 There is quite a bit that comes 

before this point at the Board, and I will run 

through that very briefly. But the Board is, 

in effect, taking up this petition at this 

meeting at the outset. Typically with 

petitions of this kind of scope and so on, 

there will be two or multiple Board meetings 

at which the petition will be discussed, and a 

lot of work will go on. 

 Let me just do this chronologically 

so you can understand that a bit. So far, as 

the petitioners know but maybe everyone else 

here doesn't, what has happened is the 

petition has been submitted. It was qualified, 

meaning that it met some basic requirements 

for a petition to be taken up by the Board, as 

well as evaluated by OCAS and so on. 

 That all happened, and now OCAS, 

which is a part of NIOSH, which runs this 

program, does reconstructions and so on, has 
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come out with an evaluation report which 

evaluates the two basic issues that are always 

relevant for a petition, which is, is it 

feasible to do dose reconstruction, and if it 

is not, was health endangered, those two 

points. 

 So OCAS has done that evaluation 

and published an evaluation report and 

submitted it to the Board, and today shortly 

we will present that report to the Board to 

kick things off. 

 Now just to tell you a little bit 

more about the Board's proceedings, the Board 

will take this up today, and probably on 

Thursday there will be Board discussion time 

where it will take it up again and certainly 

follow up on issues that are initially raised 

today, not just issues raised by the Board 

members but also issues that are raised by the 

petitioners when they present here today, and 

people that are speaking on behalf of the 

petitioners that will be presenting today, as 
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well as all of you here from LANL who may have 

something to contribute to the process, too. 

All of you -- your input is essential to this 

process of the Board, and the Board always 

learns a lot from the public generally, not 

just the petitioners, in doing these 

evaluations. 

 So subsequently, after the Board 

takes this up today and then follows up with 

some actions on Thursday, one of those actions 

very typically for a petition of complexity 

and large scope is to assign its work group, 

for one, to evaluate the petition, but also it 

has its contractors. 

 You have heard SC&A, which will do 

a very in depth technical investigation of 

issues related to the petition. That 

information will come to the work group. The 

work group will have typically multiple 

meetings to burrow into those issues and 

resolve them, and all this comes to conclusion 

when everybody is satisfied that they have dug 
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through all the issues sufficiently, and the 

Board then can as a whole take up the petition 

with the aim of coming up with a 

recommendation going forward. 

 So I just wanted to give that 

prelude. Mark, you can kick things off now. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. I think the 

way we have this broken up on the agenda -- I 

think everyone has seen the agenda -- is that 

we have NIOSH here to present the evaluation 

report. 

 This is, I believe, the third SEC 

petition from LANL, and we have previously 

approved two earlier time period SECs. This 

one extends from '75 to 2005. 

 So NIOSH is going to do a 

presentation. I just wanted to ask Ted or 

NIOSH staff, are there copies of the report 

available in the back and overheads of what is 

going to be presented? Are there enough 

copies is, I guess, the pertinent question. 

You might want to check on that while we are 
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working on this. 

 Then after that is completed, I 

will open it up for Board questions. Then we 

are going to hear from the petitioner. I 

talked to the petitioner. There are several 

people that are going to speak on behalf of 

the petition. 

 Then all of you are here also, and 

we do have a public comment after a brief 

break. So you will have plenty of opportunity 

to weigh-in. We want to hear, as Ted said, 

from everyone. There is a public session 

after a brief break, and it will be fresh in 

your minds, the presentation and everything 

you have heard from the petitioner. So you 

can certainly weigh-in on those discussions. 

 So I will start off now -- I think 

they are looking for the documents back there. 

 I will start off asking NIOSH, Dr. Greg 

Macievic. Am I saying your name correctly? 

Macievic, I'm sorry -- Macievic. Dr. Greg 

Macievic is here from NIOSH to present, and I 
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will turn over the floor to you. 

 DR. MACIEVIC: My name is Greg 

Macievic. I am a health physicist with OCAS, 

and I was the main lead on the NIOSH -- on the 

Los Alamos National Laboratory SEC Cohort 

evaluation report, and we will jump right in 

and say that the purpose of the report is to 

evaluate the feasibility of reconstructing 

doses for service support workers -- and this 

includes, but is not limited to, security 

guards, firefighters, laborers, custodians, 

carpenters, plumbers, electricians, 

pipefitters, sheet metal workers, ironworkers, 

welders, maintenance workers, truck drivers, 

delivery persons, rad technicians, and area 

work coordinators, who worked in any of the 

technical areas with a history of radioactive 

material at Los Alamos from the period of 

January 1, 1976, through December 31, 2005. 

 Since this comes up several times, 

I will just refer back to this instead of 

repeating this all the time. 
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 So both EEOICPA and 42 CFR 83.13 

require NIOSH to evaluate qualified petitions, 

which this was, requesting that the Department 

of Health and Human Service add a class of 

employees to the SEC. 

 The evaluation is intended to 

provide a fair and science based determination 

of whether it is feasible to estimate with 

sufficient accuracy the radiation doses of the 

class of employees through NIOSH dose 

reconstructions. So can we scientifically and 

feasibly do the dose reconstruction? As was 

mentioned just a few moments ago, we have done 

two previous SEC evaluations. I will do the 

second one first, and that was September 1, 

'44 through July 18, 1963 for RaLa workers in 

Technical Area 10 in the Bayo Canyon Site, 

Technical Area 35 and Buildings H, Sigma and U 

located within Technical Area 1. 

 Now the second evaluation, which is 

the one that I previously worked on, which was 

the SEC evaluation for March 15, 1943 through 
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December 31, 1975 -- Basically, this 

evaluation that we are doing today is really 

part two or a continuation of the first 

evaluation, because in the first one we ended 

it on December 31, 1975, because the 

petitioners set that date, and at the time 

with the amount of data we had, we could not 

with any accuracy say we could do doses or 

make a cutoff time earlier than that. 

 So we ended with December 31, 1975. 

So what we have had to do -- and the reason is 

that the site itself -- there was plenty of 

external dosimetry information, internal 

dosimetry information on specific 

radionuclides, five main player radionuclides, 

which I will talk about these later in the 

report. But there were a group known that we 

called exotic radionuclides that were smaller 

amounts in quantity, restricted in area, but 

we could not evaluate to what extent a person 

might have had an intake of these materials. 

 So what we had to do in this one is 
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to extend and quantify those materials, the 

exotic radionuclides. 

 So this petition was received on 

April 3, 2008, and the petitioner proposed 

that class definition that was read before, 

and it was qualified on May 29, 2008, and the 

class evaluated by us. We stayed with the 

same class definition and all the words. 

 Now this petition was supposed to 

be -- or the evaluation report was supposed to 

be submitted in December essentially or at the 

end of November, I forget, right into that 

time period. But there were delays in getting 

data from the site, and it took longer than 

anticipated, and on October 8, 2008, we 

notified the Board that we wouldn't be able to 

meet that deadline, and it was extended for 

two months. That is why we are doing it in 

the February Board meeting as opposed to the 

December Board meeting. The evaluation report 

was officially issued on February 4, 2009. 

 Okay. The petition basis had 
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several things in it that -- these first parts 

come from that first evaluation. They 

basically are NIOSH saying we at this point 

cannot do the evaluations based on the things 

that are said here, because the source term 

data are not sufficient and complete for dose 

reconstruction, that it recognized that a 

potential dose reconstruction issue may exist 

post-'75, and this was before our data 

captures, that the internal dose assessment 

for mixed fission products and how we were 

going to manage that was not established at 

the time, and on this basis NIOSH determined 

that the current petition qualifies for 

further evaluation. 

 So, really, it is an extension from 

the first SEC to do this one. 

 The petition also had things as 

worker affidavits to support the statements 

that talked about inadequate or no personal 

protective equipment or were working in areas 

in which other workers were wearing protective 
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equipment. Service support workers had little 

or not participation in the LANL urine 

sampling or whole body counting program; that 

the Cerro Grande Fire in 2000 was an 

unmonitored, unrecorded, or inadequately 

monitored exposure incident. 

 The Sigma Americium Contamination 

Incident in 2005 was an unmonitored, 

unrecorded, or inadequately monitored incident 

from an area that was considered nonradiological, and then afterwards was 

considered radiological. 

 There were process hazards analysis 

reports, hazard control plans, work 

instructions and other things that did not 

specify or define the special hazards used for 

things like 100-gram quantities of neptunium 

powders, that there are neutron correction 

factors for different areas on the site, 

because there's different energies of neutrons 

in different facilities; and that we couldn't 

adequately address that problem with the 
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dosimetry. 

 There was a Tiger Team Assessment 

Report that covered the entire site back in 

'89-'90 time period, and they evaluated the 

entire site and the activities going on, and 

gave a report on the status of LANL at that 

time. 

 Also that -- again, this is from 

the petition itself, that there is no data 

available that permits internal dose 

contributions from strontium-90 that dose 

reconstructions can be done with sufficient 

accuracy. 

 There is very little data for 

radionuclides available prior to the Eighties 

before they started using germanium detectors, 

as they became more common in the internal 

dosimetry group. No attempts were made to 

quantify actinium, curium, protactinium using 

chest counts post 1970. 

 Okay. So with that information, we 

went on the hunt over to LANL and went to find 
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documentation to fill in the holes that were 

suggested by the petition that had all these 

areas that were lacking. At that time, the 

amount of data that was there supported that 

idea, and we have done more work which we will 

talk about in a minute. 

 The sources that we have for our 

information that we are using is, we have site 

profiles and technical basis documents. We 

have the ORAU -- our contractor -- team has 

technical information bulletins and procedures 

that they have written based on things from 

the site. We have had interviews with current 

and former employees of the site. 

 There are -- We have had radiation 

work permits and special work permits that 

give a great amount of information about 

activities going on at the site; the LAHDRA, 

or the Los Alamos Historical Document 

Retrieval and Assessment project, which has 

recorded a large number of LANL documents, 

procedures, surveys, things like quarterly 
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reports, health physics reports and other such 

things that give a round-out of the field of 

how the health physics program was operating 

through all these years. 

 We also have our site research 

database, which, as of October 1st, had 1644 -

- Well, since October 1st, we have added 1644 

files. So there is a total of 3,794 files in 

that. Those 1644 were basically captured from 

October/November/December, and those three 

months, which, I think, was four data 

captures, and we also last week did another 

data capture, and we intend to do other data 

captures, too, to fill in holes on other 

information where there appears to be some 

lack of documentation. But the site 

description is starting to fill in more with 

information to give a rounder feel for what 

was occurring at the site. 

 Other things, we have quarterly 

health physics report. There is health 

physics checklists that start essentially in 
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the mid-Seventies; documentation provided by 

the petitioners as well, and Andrew Evaskovich 

did a very good job of gathering data that we 

could use also in this report. 

 There is case files from the NIOSH 

OCAS Claims Tracking, which has a lot of data 

in there about internal and external dosimetry 

and other activities from the reports and the 

files. Found a great amount of radiological 

incident report data, historical incident 

files from '44 to '91, incident RIRs reports, 

radiation protection observations that go from 

the Eighties to the present, ORPS reports or 

the occurrence reporting and processing 

systems from 1990 to the present, dose 

assessment report from '98 to the present. 

 We give here some of the -- From 

the claims files, there were a total of 629 

claims made. Of the 629 that were made, 331 

are for the period of January '76 through 

December 2005. 

 The number of dose reconstructions 
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completed for who meet the definition for the 

class under evaluation that were completed is 

161. So in those files, the number of claims 

that had internal dosimetry information, out 

of the 244 -- or 74 percent of the 331 had a 

good sample or a good listing of internal dose 

information. For the external, 93 percent of 

the 331 files have external dosimetry 

information. So there is a decent amount of 

information in those files as well. 

 A brief review of the LANL 

operations, for people who want to get more 

information on several of these activities and 

 that there were a lot more descriptions in 

the 1943-1975 evaluation report, and in order 

to -- since this is basically an extension of 

that, I didn't want to repeat every one of 

those activities again. So that information 

is in that report, and it is really just the 

descriptions of what is at the sites, the 

different facilities, the different technical 

areas and things like that. 
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 The main functional areas, though, 

are the weapons development and testing; 

critical assemblies; accelerators, reactors, 

X-ray equipment, radiography; biomedical, 

fusion research; waste management and 

treatment. They basically covered the gamut 

of things at that particular site. 

 So now we move into a little more 

of the meat of the subject, which is that 

definition that exotic radionuclides, which 

was the thing that caused the SEC in the first 

place for 1943-75, and what we followed up 

now. 

 The exotic, as we define them, are 

the mixed fission products and mixed 

activation products, Americium-241 when it is 

separated out from the plutonium, thorium-232, 

-230, actinium, protactinium-231, neptunium237, curium-244, and strontium-90/yttrium-90 

combination outside of being paired with 

cesium. 

 Now the primary radionuclides, 
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which I will show on a future slide as we come 

through, that have a significant amount of 

information, internal/external dosimetry 

information on which our plan is based is 

going to be tritium, plutonium-238, 239, 

uranium-234-5-8, americium-241 and cesium-137. 

 Those are the primary that LANL was 

concentrating on most of the time; whereas, 

the exotics were in smaller, lesser quantities 

in fixed areas of the site and not spread 

throughout the facility, but the main focus 

was on these primary radionuclides. 

 So they also had heat sources, 

kilogram quantities of weapons grade 

plutonium. You can see the percentages of the 

 materials that go into the weapons grade; 

tritium for the nuclear weapons, mega-curie 

quantities; depleted and natural uranium, 

kilogram quantities; enriched uranium, U-233; 

mixed fission products in reactor areas with 

cesium, strontium and the noble gases; mixed 

activation products which are all those I 
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won't read. 

 We have strontium-90/yttrium-90 as 

a residual from the RaLa project, that one 

that became an SEC; thorium-230 -- there is no 

evidence of that use that we've found since 

the 1950s; thorium-232 was used in casing, 

machining, and powder metallurgy. 

 Neptunium-237 had periodically been 

used or done at the site, and it was in gram 

to kilogram quantities, and it was also noted 

because of the work on Radiation Work Permits 

as to the types of materials that were being 

used. 

 Actinium-227: There is no 

indication past 1975. It's found as residual 

contamination, but we are still using it as 

one of the radionuclides that we are going to 

compute missed dose with, and we will get to 

that a little further down. 

 The protactinium: There are only 

references to gram quantities in site 

documents, and curium-244 is basically 
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referenced in some very solid procedures as, 

how to use it, where to use it, and that it 

was highly controlled in its use. 

 Okay. The LANL data we have gotten 

for the internal dose from the master LANL 

file collected data for in vivo from 1960 to 

2004, in vitro from prior to '91, and also '91 

to 2004. 

 Now in the 1970s -- and here is one 

of the reasons that, up to the Seventies, the 

internal dosimetry group starts to use more of 

the -- they begin using the Phoswich detectors 

for the lungs for qualifying mixed fission 

products and mixed activation products. 

 They had a planar high purity 

germanium detector that was used for looking 

at the liver and thyroid specifically, and 

then a germanium-lithium detector and then a 

high purity germanium detector for basically 

doing a whole body scan, and these are very 

high resolution instruments that could look 

for radionuclides with gamma rays, having a 
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very high resolution. 

 So you could pick out peaks of 

anything that might be there, because in their 

documentation they do refer to the fact that 

not only were they looking for those five or 

six main players, but they were also looking 

for the potential of any of these other 

materials being in the body as well, and that 

starts occurring in the Seventies where they 

are starting to look for this more. Previous 

to that, the documentation is not there for 

it. 

 These are just some numbers for the 

plutonium and the five main player 

radionuclides. There's large numbers of 

samples that are done from '76 through 2004, 

all these listings of the numbers/amounts, and 

these will be values. This information is 

going to be used in the part where we 

determine dose later on. 

 The Zia employees during these 

periods in the Seventies and Eighties had 
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different categories as to when to leave a 

sample, and these are the criteria that talk 

about when you would leave the sample or when 

it was exempt. 

 You start seeing that jobs that had 

short exposure or people with no real 

potential, they would leave either base urine 

samples or some kind of follow-up sample or a 

termination sample. 

 So on the external dose side, I say 

that 75 percent of the workers were monitored, 

because on the next slide that follows there 

is a couple of years where the number of 

workers at the site and the number of workers 

monitored -- it's about 75 percent for about a 

year or two. 

 Then as you get past '76-'77-'78, 

now the numbers start climbing up to pretty 

much most people on the site are monitored. 

You are in the 90 percentages, like on that 

fit with the NOCTS or our internal data for 

the claimants where 93 percent of the people 
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of our claimants had external dosimetry data 

in their files. 

 So it is pretty well covered, and 

as this SEC was intended, it was mainly the 

internal dosimetry that was the problem. The 

external dosimetry was pretty well defined for 

all the years. So we are really looking to 

define those exotic in internal dosimetry. 

 So when you go through here, there 

were-- They had the beta-gamma film. 1977-'78 

you start getting the changeover from film 

dosimetry to TLDs. You have NTA film that was 

used for that period, but then that goes over 

into the Eighties with TLDs and albedo badges. 

 What they did was in the early part 

of the Eighties and early Nineties, they added 

an NTA film to the albedo badge. So you got 

the low energy portion of the spectrum and the 

high energy portion of the spectrum for the 

neutron dose. Then in 1995 they added track 

etch dosimetry, which is a plastic that 

records tracks and pits in a surface, and you 
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count the number of pits, and you get what the 

high energy dose is. 

 So they had those areas covered. 

So external. And these next three slides 

basically show that we have had the monitored 

-- number of workers monitored and the total 

number of workers. 

 Some of these where you have more 

monitored than there are total -- because 

these are coming out of different pools of 

data from dosimetry files and then worker 

files, and they don't always match up. But 

the point is looking at it, you see that there 

is no huge discrepancy of two to one that they 

weren't monitored. They were basically all 

monitored for external radiation. 

 You have the gamma number of 

workers monitored with a dose greater than 50 

millirem, all of these values which they are 

also in the technical basis document for 

external dosimetry. These numbers are in 

there to be used for anybody who wasn't 
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monitored or if you were doing some kind of 

missed dose, you have a very large pool of 

data to draw from to estimate a dose for a 

person. That is for number of gammas. 

 For the neutrons, doses greater 

than 50 millirem, number of workers, and then 

what the mean and maximum doses are, all 

through the years in question for this 

petition. 

 Shallow dose, also again number of 

workers monitored, large pool of data that you 

have for measuring and calculating external 

dose. 

 So in determining the feasibility, 

we need to determine the feasibility of 

constructing or bounding the internal dose and 

reconstructing and bounding the external dose, 

and then we have discussed the petitioners’ 

basis that they submitted as to why it isn't 

possible. 

 Again, this is basically a repeat 

of where we are going with the exotics. So 
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you can see again the exotics versus the 

primary radionuclides. 

 Okay. So when we did this data 

capture, this is the data -- it goes on two 

slides -- of the materials that we found that 

allowed us to eventually say that we thought 

it was feasible. 

 That you have significant bioassay 

for the primary radionuclides cover this 

petition time frame. Now there is little 

bioassay for the exotics. There are some 

things that were done in the Nineties, in the 

2000 time frame where there was some material, 

and there is really not that much for it. 

 You had gross alpha and beta/gamma 

monitoring which was done at all the 

facilities. So that that is covered, and 

these exotics, a good percentage are alpha. 

So you are going to be looking for alpha 

radiation and treating it as the same as 

plutonium versus what you have for these 

exotic radionuclides. 
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 So they are looking for -- They are 

controlling to a certain level of alpha 

contamination. So right there, you are 

restricting what your potential is for 

exposure. 

 We found employee health physics 

checklists, quite a number of these, and a 

great many of the employees had them. If you 

were going into an area that had the potential 

for radiological conditions, it was to 

identify those individuals with a significant 

potential for radiation exposure. They got 

that sheet. 

 It was instituted in the Seventies. 

So it is in the period of time that goes with 

this petition. The monitoring schedules for 

external and bioassay and all that -- for the 

bioassay are based on these checklists. 

 So they are looking at the jobs, 

trying to determine what the hazards are going 

to be, and set up bioassays based on this 

information. They are still in use today. 
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They are now in electronic form, whereas 

before it was on an actual paper form, hard 

copy. They covered LANL employees, contractor 

employees, students, and visitors. 

 To look at the comprehensiveness of 

the health physics program, we found extensive 

amount of exposure reports, air monitoring 

reports, incident reports, work permits, 

special operating procedures, radioactive 

material handling, stack monitoring, 

contamination surveys, nasal smears, whole 

body counting and urinalysis reports, CAM and 

ALARA reports, all throughout this. 

 One of the things about LANL as 

opposed to some site that is more like a 

foundry or whatever, these activities are 

contained in specific laboratories in specific 

buildings, which helps you to localize where 

the material is. So you get a feel for 

whether this material, these exotics, are not 

just laying around on the ground in other 

places to be picked up incidentally. 
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 With all this backing and 

controlling to the alpha contamination and 

beta/gamma radiation, they are looking 

incidentally also for these radionuclides, 

because you are looking for alpha and not some 

instrument that will be used just to detect 

plutonium, or the other five radionuclides. 

 So you are looking for this. So 

you are controlling down the program. By 

saying this, I am not saying LANL was the 

ideal site for holiness and all that. Far 

from it. I talked to the managers. 

 So there were several documents 

that we found pertaining to the exotics 

themselves. There are -- and this is not that 

we just found one in one year. 

 These are examples from different 

years to show that we found the special 

radiation special work permits for thorium in 

'92, RWPs for neptunium in '94, actinium in 

the decommissioning reports of 1981, 

radiological safety procedures -- they are 
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mentioned in 1977; standard operating 

procedures for the actinide elements where 

they have very thorough procedures on how to 

control, in a couple of particular labs in DP 

West, these radionuclides. 

 Then you have an assorted number of 

radiation protection memos, 40 SOPs in 1976. 

So this is just a sampling, and you do find 

them. Again, it is not that there are 

thousands of documents, but it shows that 

through this period of time, there are ongoing 

and knowledgeable actions to actually look for 

this material. So it is not out of their 

mind, and they are only concentrating on the 

five. 

 So and I repeat there that the 

exotics were handled, controlled, monitored in 

a manner similar to the primaries in the way 

they look for the radiation. 

 So this comes down to how do we get 

around this issue of then covering these 

exotic radionuclides that are present, but 
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there is really not a lot of information? 

 Well, we have developed a co-worker 

dataset on all the five or the primary 

radionuclides, and got -- and it is in the 

draft technical -- I'm jumping out of myself; 

I'll go on with my slides -- in the draft 

technical OTIB-0062, which we will be 

finishing up, and it has co-worker data for 

plutonium-238, 239 uranium and cesium, and the 

intake rates. All these intakes from these 

radionuclides cover the entire period of the 

petition, from '76 through 2005. 

 So if you are using -- Basically 

the guidelines for these exotics are either 

the same as plutonium or more restrictive in 

some of the cases. That is one of the reasons 

why we feel that using this co-worker model 

will be good. 

 If you had no internal dosimetry -- 

this is for unmonitored workers. 

 If you had no internal dosimetry, 

we are going to bound the intakes of the 
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exotics using the co-worker data intakes, and 

we will assign exotic to primary daily intake 

rates by nuclide based on the properties or 

controls. 

 What that is saying is you are 

going to take -- In a person who isn't 

monitored, if there appears to be these 

exotics in the room and you've got the coworker model for plutonium, what you are going 

to do is look at the co-worker model for 

plutonium for the particular year, and then 

say, okay, here are the intakes based on the 

bioassay or the urinalysis samples that they 

computed the intakes. 

 We are going to take those intakes, 

take all these exotics, which you will see 

there are some exotics that are closer to 

plutonium-238 than 239 -- but you are going to 

take those exotics, and you are going to 

compute a dose as though it were that -- by 

curium using that number from the plutonium 

intake. 
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 So you are going to end up with -- 

and you are going to compute it for the sclass and m-class of radionuclide, and you are 

going to come up with numbers for all these 

radionuclides, and then you are going to look 

at the maximum value and say that is the 

number we are going to use for the missed dose 

to this person. 

 So you would assign the highest 

dose. So you have plutonium-239 either by 

control or similarity in its radiological 

properties. You are going to have plutonium239, actinium, protactinium, neptunium, 

americium and thorium-230. 

 You would use plutonium-238 similar 

with curium-244, uranium with natural thorium, 

and the cesium-137 would go with the mixed 

fission products and the activation products. 

 So if you don't know whether -- If 

you think it might be plutonium-239, 238 or 

all those, you would take every one of those 

exotics, put them in with their appropriate 
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intake, come up with a whole listing of doses, 

and assign the highest value to the person, if 

they were exposed, if they were in areas that 

had plutonium-239, 238 uranium. 

 If you know he was only working 

with plutonium-238 and you have the potential 

for -- you would use curium to be the missed 

dose, that one, or you would then go and use 

the others, if you felt those numbers there. I 

hope I'm not making this fuzzier, but I am 

trying to take that. 

 We are doing this whole process 

associating a whole bunch of -- looking at a 

whole bunch of doses to assign what the missed 

dose is. 

 Okay. This evaluation -- So it 

concludes that internal dose reconstruction 

for members of the proposed class is feasible, 

and it is based on the in vivo and in vitro 

bioassay data for monitored workers, and using 

co-worker data to bound intakes to unmonitored 

workers, based on the co-worker study 
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described in TIB-62 and described in the 

evaluation report. 

 We get to -- I'll go quicker 

through the external, because the key point is 

in the internal. External, we basically are 

running along the same lines as the previous 

SEC, which says we can do internal/external 

dosimetry and run all the way through here, 

and we've got enough data to give maximums and 

minimums, that there is a monitoring for a 

substantial fraction of the total workers 

since 1945. 

 Beta dose was monitored regularly 

with instrumentation and on the film badge, 

that you do have enough information from all 

that data where you can bound doses, and there 

general was -- there was no low energy beta 

component that you would have to worry about 

in here. 

 Neutron dose: Talks about the NTA 

film being used prior to 1980, that if you 

want to use it where you -- You basically have 
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-- since the turnover was going from '77-'78, 

you have maybe two years where you were 

relying solely on NTA film. So you could 

either extrapolate back with the TLD -- 

extrapolate back with the TLD data, if you 

want to do that. That is a possibility, 

because you are not talking significant 

lengths of time here. You are talking a year 

or two. 

 So after 1980, neutron doses are 

considered to be sufficiently accurate for the 

albedo combined with NTA film, and then the 

track-etched dosimetry. So we believe that 

the external dose, based on what is currently 

in the external technical dosimetry document, 

is capable of bounding dose and computing it. 

 Okay. Same thing goes for the 

environmental dose with the ambient dose. 

That model is in the environmental TBD, and 

there is really no change to that, and we 

believe that actually does bound the class for 

environmental. 
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 The X-ray is the same. The X-ray 

TBD does -- We are not making a change to that 

or adding. We feel that does bound the dose 

with all the information that we do have for 

X-radiation. 

 Okay. During the period of this 

evaluation, the number of workers were 

monitored, and information describing the 

workplace radiation fields basically says that 

we can bound the dose for external dosimetry 

under this period of 1976 to 2005. 

 As I said before, the information 

on the X-rays, that the occupational related 

X-ray examinations have also been reviewed. 

The available information has for that also 

been found to be adequate, and external dose 

is bounded by the current information that we 

have. 

 Okay. I am going to go quickly 

through two sample dose reconstructions. This 

one is for a hypothetical female born in 1930, 

with the amino proliferative disease, and it 
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was computed to the red bone marrow. She was 

a custodian from '75 through 1991. 

 We give you the -- There was 

external dosimetry monitoring, but they were 

limited to one urinalysis for plutonium-230 

and 239, and there was a potential for the 

exotic radionuclides to be present. 

 So the photon dose, we have 0.034 

rem. We assigned a missed dose for the 

neutron with the technical basis document of 

1.715 rem photon, 3.891 neutron. The 

unmonitored dose is zero. Medical dose 0.114. 

 On-site ambient, 0.001. 

 Then here is the new dose. The 

total external dose of 5.764 rem to the red 

bone marrow, and these are going to be on the 

-- these two on the public drive so that the 

Board can get access to them and take a look 

at the details, where this 5.764 came from. 

 So what it was, was a single urine 

sample. A dose was computed based on 

plutonium-239 intake co-worker model. The 
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highest dose was computed to be Class S 

actinium-227, and of Class S absorption and 

the total internal dose turned out to be 6.038 

rem to the red bone marrow. 

 So that leaves, adding the internal 

and external, 11.8 rem to the red bone marrow, 

and that gave a 99 percent probability of 

causation at 14.63 percent. So this first one 

shows that it is not necessarily going to -- 

by using this model that you are going to 

always compensate. 

 Then for the second worker, to give 

you an example of the compensation, we do a 

male with liver cancer, it's basically the 

same time periods. The monitoring 

information. This person has no bioassay at 

all, no internal dose monitoring present. 

You've got the doses for external, which we 

can do. 

 Run through that. I hope I am not 

running through too fast, but this is stuff 

that -- so total external dose of 2.375 rem to 
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the liver form the external. 

 The unmonitored dose was computed, 

like the previous one on plutonium-238/239. 

It was applied from the co-worker model, and 

the highest dose was actinium, Class S again, 

and total internal dose of 4.6 rem to the 

liver. Total together with internal and 

external is 6.992 rem to the liver, and a 

probability of a 99th percentile causation, 

80.94. 

 So the two examples show you can 

get above and below that number. So it is not 

an extreme idea involved. 

 Okay. So we evaluated the 

petition, and we issued the SEC evaluation 

report on February 4th. WE had the two-prong 

test that is it feasible to estimate the level 

of radiation doses for the members of the 

class with sufficient accuracy? And does the 

radiation dose -- has it endangered health of 

the members of that class? 

 We found that with available 
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monitoring records, process descriptions, the 

source term data that we found through these 

data captures are adequate to complete the 

dose reconstructions with sufficient accuracy 

for the evaluated class of employees, and 

there was no need to do a health endangerment 

determination. 

 So the final page is basically that 

we can do feasible dose reconstructions for 

all these radionuclides. 

 Questions? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: At this point, I 

do want to break in. I also -- I am looking 

at the clock and realizing that, if I don't 

stick to the time frame pretty well, Paul may 

never give me this mic back. 

 Let me just -- and then I'll open 

it up for Board members to ask some questions 

briefly, I think, though, because I am going 

to preface it by saying that I think my work 

group is already committed; and after seeing 

what you have brought forward there, the co-
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worker models, et cetera, the LANL Work Group 

already is committed to reviewing this 

evaluation report. 

 I don't know that we have tasked 

SC&A, but we will discuss that later this 

week, but I think it seems pretty clear that 

it needs a little -- there are some technical 

details in there that we will probably have to 

go through. 

 I am going to start, as Paul always 

does, with a couple of questions. Then I will 

open it up to everybody else. 

 One which I think is in the minds 

of a lot of people here in the audience. 

There was some delay. I'm not sure when this 

petition was qualified and how long it took 

for this evaluation report to be completed. 

Can you just give us those time frames? 

 DR. MACIEVIC: Sure. Let's see. 

It was qualified back in May or April. Can 

you help me, LaVon, if you've got it? It was 

April for you. 
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 MR. EVASKOVICH: It was submitted 

in April. It was received, I think, April 

3rd, and qualified May 29th. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I know that LaVon 

had been in touch with me. The only reason I 

bring it up is I wondered if it was pertinent 

to our prior discussion. Can you tell us, was 

it delays with regard to data access? 

 DR. MACIEVIC: Well, the data 

access -- Yes, that was -- We spent over 

pretty much two months trying to get access to 

the data. What it turned out to be is that, 

in talking to upper management who weren't 

quite sure what it was, I gather, we were 

trying to get, and as they got people in who 

were managing the records, talking with them, 

and we were able to -- One, we were put onto 

the Federal Records Center in Denver. 

 So we started out there first. 

Then we had to have more discussions with them 

to clarify exactly what we wanted from the 

LANL site. This took several phone calls, and 
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it was just each side trying to explain 

exactly what we wanted until the doors finally 

opened up two months after October, October 

20th or so, and then we started to get the 

information flowing out. 

 So it really was -- for that 

portion, was just in communications with the 

site, trying to determine -- them trying to 

figure out what it is we are asking, because 

they are thinking in terms of we are asking 

that, you know, we've gotten information to 

you already about the claimants; so what else 

more do you want. 

 So we are saying, no, we need this, 

this, this and this, and where is this. It 

took a while to get all that straightened out. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I was also 

thinking that perhaps it would be helpful in 

your monthly meetings for lessons learned and 

what some of the data access -- how we could 

move that forward. 

 DR. MACIEVIC: Yes. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: I had a number of 

questions, but I am going to limit myself to 

one, and then open it up to everyone. 

 On this exotic radionuclide 

question, I think you started out -- and 

correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought you 

started out the discussion saying that the 

earlier petition had been qualified based on 

those exotics, primarily based on those 

exotics, that we couldn't reconstruct the 

exotics. You had primary radionuclide 

information, but you didn't have the exotics. 

 What changed in '75? It seems like 

you have the same picture. 

 DR. MACIEVIC: Well, '75 -- the 

mid-Seventies, you end up with the checklist 

sheets that start talking about where this 

material is, what they were doing, how the 

bioassays were distributed. You get the in 

vivo counting, counting on board much stronger 

with the check counts and that. 

 The Seventies are really a turning 
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point to -- and this is all based on data that 

we saw after we collected it, that the 

mid/early Seventies, past that period we 

didn't have that information in the first one. 

 So as far as we were concerned, we 

weren't sure what we had to use after the data 

captures. The Seventies is a definite cutoff 

point where you can say we've got internal 

data, we've got external, we've got the RWPs, 

a lot more RWPs, and SWPs. We've got many 

more procedures and descriptions of processes 

that weren't available before. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Really, it was 

then you could document better. The control 

of the exotics was more stringent or as 

stringent. 

 DR. MACIEVIC: Right. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I'll let it go for 

now. I didn't see who -- I'm new at this. 

I'll ask Jim. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Just so I 

understand, this evaluation report is now a 
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final report. You are not still collecting 

data or developing procedures or finalizing 

things? 

 DR. MACIEVIC: Well, this is a 

finalized report. We have the data we need 

from what we've got that say, yes, we can do 

dose reconstruction. What we are continuing 

with is, as long as LANL has opened the early 

dates for us to allow us to take data, we are 

going to try to get as much data as we can, 

which will help to boost this information, but 

the data that we already have is sufficient 

that we have collected with this report. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: But what if it 

refutes what you -- What if you find data that 

contradicts what your belief is or does not 

substantiate or support the procedures that 

you are proposing for dose reconstruction? 

 DR. MACIEVIC: Well, I don't 

believe that is going to happen. What we are 

looking for is more specific data to actual 

problems. We are not essentially looking for 
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all information under the sun. 

 What we've found is like for 

strontium-90, there are more urine samples 

that are out there that we are going to find. 

 So we could potentially make a co-worker 

model from that, as opposed to having to use 

other data to work around that. But I don't 

foresee that you are going to find something 

and say, oh, my god, this doesn't work or it 

doesn't -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think Jim wanted 

to say something. 

 DR. NETON: I think this is sort of 

standard to our approach. We are just looking 

to -- you know, if the data are available, to 

refine the models and to collect more 

information. We have done that at a number of 

different sites. 

 We are confident this is not going 

to change the opinion. We have enough 

documents, a substantial portion of 

documentation now that points to that there 
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were complete hazard analyses done, hazard 

control analyses and that sort of thing. We 

are very comfortable with that. 

 There is no reason, if the data are 

available, that you shouldn't move forward to 

refine these models. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I think it is one 

thing to refine them. It is another thing to 

develop a new model, which was the example 

that was just given. I just want to point 

out, I think the petitioners need to be aware. 

 It is a repeated problem with many 

of the other sites that we are looking at 

where there is this continual process of 

getting new data, changing procedures, and it 

is a moving target, and it makes it very 

difficult to come to resolution and, 

certainly, very frustrating on the part of the 

petitioners and, frankly, on the part of the 

Board and our contractor trying to keep up 

with this process. 

 So I am trying to pin you down a 
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bit on this one so that we understand where 

you are and what we are going to be 

evaluating, and it is not something that is 

going to stretch out for years, which it is 

doing at other sites, because you really 

aren't ready. You really don't have the data 

in hand or the procedures in place and haven't 

confirmed them in order to be able to do what 

you claim you can do. 

 DR. NETON: I would suggest that 

the working groups look at the data we provide 

and come to that conclusion themselves. I 

mean, we've provided what we have as our best 

effort to reconstruct these doses -- a very 

scientific, defensible process outlined here, 

and let the process work. We are not 

proposing to modify this at all. This is what 

it is. I am not sure where the issue is here. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think Jim is 

getting at the path we've gone down in the 

past, and I don't know how to change that. 

But one example in the presentation was the 
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neutrons 375 -- or 380. I think you said you 

may go with NP ratios that determine neutron 

values. 

 DR. MACIEVIC: Well, we used -- 

currently use NP ratios, now. That's right. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: It was not very 

definitive. You know, you may do this or you 

may do this. So I guess that is where Jim is 

going. 

 DR. NETON: Right. I guess I am a 

little bit concerned when I am hearing that we 

shouldn't go and get additional data to refine 

models, if it is available at some point down 

the line. I mean, we have always asserted 

from the beginning that we would do that. As 

data became available, we would collect it and 

analyze it. 

 We are not sure, you know, what 

additional relevant data may come out of this, 

but the data are there, and we haven't looked 

through all of it yet. 

 DR. MACIEVIC: Well, if I may say, 
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the things we are looking for which we have 

already made the determination of how we want 

to do the model and we have quarterly reports 

that refer to X number of samples were taken 

for this, this and this, we are going to try 

to find the data for those samples, which does 

not refute this report, although it doesn't 

say -- Instead of a report that says the 

samples exist, we've got the samples now. 

 So that is not -- We are not going 

backward or changing. We are just saying, 

instead of saying trust us based on a 

quarterly report, we are saying use the actual 

data. So -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think there is a 

lengthier discussion to have on this topic, 

but let me get the other two more commenters 

and maybe more Board comments. But I do want 

to give plenty of time for the petitioner to 

present. I think Brad was first. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Back in Slide 15 

when you were talking about the number of 
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claims, which have internal and so forth, you 

made a comment that you felt that you had a 

good sample of it. What do you guys determine 

is a good sample? Is it 50 percent of people, 

75? 

 DR. MACIEVIC: From the bioassay 

slides? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes. 

 DR. MACIEVIC: Well, when you have 

basically, for plutonium and uranium, over 

2000 samples per year as opposed to one every 

other year, or having -- if it is a smaller 

number, but you have a set of data that covers 

the expanse that you want to cover. 

 There is not a magic NIOSH number 

we say, ah, that meets the criteria. That 

does not exist, but if it shows that you have 

sufficient data to get good statistics, that 

would be it, and those slides show there is 

lots of data there where you can get good 

statistics. 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. One other 
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thing, and that was on the environmental, that 

you feel that you've got a good handle on 

that. Now was everybody at LANL -- were they 

monitored? Did they all wear badges? 

 I guess one of the ones that I am 

looking at is the guards, because through the 

later years we've come to find out that they 

were monitoring the outer perimeters and so 

forth down into a lot of the canyons and stuff 

like that that had higher amounts, basically 

the runoff and so forth like that. 

 If I remember right, some of the 

outer guards were not monitored. So I'm 

wondering how you can -- I mean, the 

environmental of it, just give this 

environmental number, because some of these 

other people -- This isn't going to play into 

that. 

 DR. MACIEVIC: Well, you would have 

to go to the -- and unfortunately, now off the 

top of my head without the environmental, 

technical basis document, which goes through 
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the statistics of what they are talking about 

was what they had available to be able to make 

that statement. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I am sure we will 

delve into those topics of enough data. 

Josie? 

 MEMBER BEACH: I just have a quick 

question. Can you give me an idea of the 

percentage of claimants that you will be using 

the co-worker data on to reconstruct their 

dose? 

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at is -- I can't give you one right now, 

because it is going to have to be done on an 

individual basis, based on the person's job 

description, title, where they work. As you 

probably know, for the guards and the firemen 

and all that, that is something that has to be 

worked into what kind of number do you assign 

to those people for -- who weren't in the 

buildings necessarily but outside. So that is 

an open number. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: Any other 

questions now? I know we all have a lot of 

questions. I am going to save mine for the 

work group. I do want to get to the 

petitioner at this point. 

 The named petitioner is Andrew 

Evaskovich, and I think Andrew has asked me 

that if Harriet Ruiz could lead off. So, 

Harriet is going to lead off for the 

presentation of the petitioners. I'll give 

her a chance to get her stuff ready. 

 We've got several people speaking 

for the petitioner. As I said, just a 

reminder, there is a sign-up for public 

comment. We are going to have a brief break 

after this petitioner presentation, but then 

everyone is welcome to participate in the 

public comment period after the break. So we 

all hope you can stay, and I will stop talking 

so you can come up. 

 MS. RUIZ: Thank you. Thank you, 

Board members, and welcome to the land of the 
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enchantment. Lori is handing out some -- It 

is just a token of our appreciation as means 

the petitioner and the claimants who have 

finally gotten compensated under my petition. 

You don't know how this has helped so many 

families who, some of them have called me 

seven years -- seven years -- to get 

compensated. 

 I really think that there is a 

problem with dose reconstructions. That is 

why you see so many people filing special 

exposure cohorts to help their workers. 

 I was going through some files -- I 

will be brief. I was going through some files 

and purging things. It has been a very busy 

time since my husband got sick and passed 

away. 

 For you new members, my husband was 

a state representative. He was a worker from 

Los Alamos. I took his seat as a state 

representative. In the 46th legislature, 

second session in 2004, Ray was very, very 
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ill. He had maybe two months left to live, but 

he -- and this will be in your packet. It is 

a House Joint Memorial Number 20, and I won't 

go into the details. You can read it later. 

 Because of his passion for the 

workers, not just the workers that he worked 

with but previously to that point and past it, 

up to now, he knew there was a problem on the 

Hill. He asked me two days before he passed 

away to finish his job. That is why I became 

a state representative and got the SEC 

qualified and passed, and I cannot thank you 

enough. It has been a true blessing. 

 When they brought the evaluation 

out on my SEC, there was a section in there 

that was going to exclude some of the TAs, and 

because of Andrew's wonderful research -- and 

I know reading through his SEC, you can see 

what a wonderful researcher Andrew is -- he 

found some historical documents that actually 

we brought to the Board, and you realized that 

they should be included. I want to thank you 
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for that, and also publicly thank Andrew, 

because in Denver I didn't have that 

opportunity. 

 With that, I am going to give this 

to Andrew, because I know everybody is hungry 

and tired. Thank you again. 

 Enjoy these little gifts. They are 

from a company that has been in Albuquerque 

for -- I can't tell you. The granddaughter is 

now running the business. Enjoy them, and 

they are sweets for the sweet. Thank you. 

Andrew. 

 (Applause.) 

 MR. EVASKOVICH: Thank you, 

Harriet. I appreciate that. Let me see if I 

can bring up my presentation. 

 Good day. My name is Andrew 

Evaskovich. I am the LANL petitioner today. 

This will be my presentation. 

 Before I begin, I would like to 

thank some people from NIOSH who have been 

very helpful in this process, Laurie Breyer, 
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Larry Elliott who, unfortunately, can't be 

here -- I have had some discussions with him 

that have been informative; LaVon Rutherford, 

and also Greg Macievic who has been very 

helpful in this process as well. I appreciate 

all of your help. 

 I wanted to talk today about the 

uniqueness of Los Alamos and try to develop a 

way that I could show you that it stands apart 

from the other sites. It's there, you know, 

the exotics, topography, the geography, the 

people that work there, and this is what I 

found. 

 (A video was shown.) 

 I feel pretty confident saying that 

no other site has had an opera written about 

the work that was conducted there. 

 Let me begin. I did quite a bit of 

research in order to develop this petition. 

The majority of it was based on environmental 

data that I was able to find through different 

sources. So I am going to discuss that 
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portion of it, because the bioassay 

information is a lot harder to come by for 

somebody in my position. I would let NIOSH do 

that work. 

 The argument against the bioassay 

data basically comes from affidavits and 

interviews with people that worked on the 

hill. 

 LANL releases radionuclides in 

various ways. We have explosions, exhaust 

stacks, and then there is the issue of buried 

or discharged materials leaching and then 

getting resuspended by the wind. 

 I am going to first discuss a 

little bit about explosions. Basically, an 

explosion is a rapid release of energy 

followed by expanding gases, and the expanding 

gases compress the surrounding area to create 

a shock wave. 

 A lot of explosive testing was 

conducted at Los Alamos since its inception, 

because they were trying to develop the 
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implosion device, and they still do explosive 

testing on certain materials. 

 This is a photograph of an 

explosion. Some of the key issues: As you 

can see here, you have a very large fireball, 

but you can also see the shock wave formed by 

the compression of the air coming out from the 

explosion. 

 It creates tremendous heat, forms a 

fireball, and it rises into the air. This is 

important, because the modeling used for the 

explosive testing done at Los Alamos is based 

on area modeling or an area source as opposed 

to a point source, and I believe the 

information that I have captured indicates 

that it is a point source. I will show you 

why here. 

 The fireball rises up in the form 

of a dust cloud, but you have this chimneylike effect until it reaches up to the point 

where the fireball cools to the ambient 

temperature, in which case the winds will 
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carry it away. 

 So, basically, it is like coming 

out of a stack, except it is going to go 

higher into the air, depending on the force of 

the explosion or the amount of the explosives 

used. 

 This figure will illustrate some 

issues concerning explosions. You can see the 

shock wave coming toward the camera there, 

debris falling, and notice how the plume goes 

up. You have that chimney-like effect. 

 The important aspect is going to be 

the vacuum that is created by the explosion, 

and you will see as you watch this video and 

the successive explosions, the dust that is 

kicked up into the air by the explosion is 

drawn back toward the center and then lifted 

up into the plume. 

 In this portion right here, you can 

see the obvious effects of the vacuum as the 

dust clouds move back toward the center. 

 Another issue that comes from the 
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explosives testing is the temperatures of the 

explosives that are generated when the actual 

explosion occurs, and the temperatures of 

materials' boiling points and melting points. 

 As you can see, the heat of the 

explosion is about 3500 degrees Celsius, and 

the melting points are all underneath that, 

and plutonium, in fact, is essentially at the 

boiling point for the temperature of the 

explosives that were used there. 

 To illustrate this, I have a graph. 

The points that are not shown are not 

available data. Those are the first four, and 

then these are the other four. Then there are 

a lot of exhaust stacks that give material 

into the air at Los Alamos. In fact, there's 

several hundred stacks, approximately 90 

involved in experiments that could result in 

releasing radionuclides, and 34 of the stacks 

were subject to the Clean Air Act monitoring. 

 During this time, they didn't have 

a complete inventory of the stacks that must 
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be monitored, and many emitted radionuclides 

without proper monitoring. 

 Then we have an issue with burying 

discharged radioactive materials. That 

started in the beginning of Los Alamos when 

they started burying the disposable wastes up 

there. You look for the fluids. In their 

early days there was a treatment facility at 

TA-45. Currently, it is at TA-50. 

 Large amounts have been disposed of 

in the ground, and they don't have reliable 

source inventories, and this is based on -- 

Some information is in your packet there from 

the New Mexico Environment Department 

concerning areas of concern and potential 

release sites. I have included some 

information and highlighted that. 

 Additionally, the National Academy 

of Sciences was involved in some research 

there dealing with groundwater, and that was 

one of the determinations that they made in 

the report, which is also included in the 
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petition, of these areas. 

 We also have material disposal 

areas, and two of those which are key, B and 

B, they have unknown radionuclide inventories. 

 They don't know what is in there, and they 

don't know how much is in there. 

 There are 829 solid waste 

management units and AOCs that are in the 

process of being investigated. These 

investigations are pending a decision from the 

New Mexico Environment Department. So these 

are what I consider, I think, important source 

points for determining what is up there. 

 Four-hundred seventy-eight 

potential release sites have confirmed or 

suspected radiological sites, and they have 

been characterized to contain unknown 

radionuclides. Waste has been disposed in 

hundreds of these areas, and these wastes have 

not been characterized. 

 This is from TA-54. Radionuclides 

reported in waste in MDA G. There is about 75 
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different radioisotopes on this chart, and 

this is from an official document prepared for 

the New Mexico Environment Department as part 

of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act 

permitting process, and this was developed in 

1992. 

 I think you can see, the list is 

quite a bit longer than what Dr. Macievic 

presented as far as exotics. 

 I would like to discuss the air 

monitoring at LANL, because it is important. 

Not only did they have monitoring stacks, I 

think there were problems with the AIRNET 

samplers. They are very limited. They only 

detect plutonium, uranium, tritium and 

americium. They don't detect the other 

radionuclides, and the placement of the 

monitors is to determine the dose to the 

public off-site. So they are on the perimeter 

of the laboratory. 

 Monitoring isn't close to the 

buildings where you can have stack-tip 
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downwash or other effects which would place it 

closer to the workers with a higher 

concentration. 

 In 1996 a Federal Judge ruled Los 

Alamos National Laboratory was in violation of 

the Clean Air Act because of their monitoring 

practices. As a result, the Environmental 

Protection Agency found that all sources of 

radionuclide emissions have not been 

identified. 

 There were problems with stack 

monitoring equipment and vents. The 

monitoring systems did not meet regulatory 

requirements, and LANL had not conducted and 

was not in compliance with quality assurance 

programs required by the regulations. 

 ES&H-17 is charged with the 

environmental monitoring at Los Alamos -- they 

failed to verify inventories submitted by the 

facilities, and those are necessary in order 

for record keeping, and also determines your 

source term. 
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 The informal method used to 

estimate quantities of radionuclides -- one of 

them listed in the report was eyeballing the 

contents of a container, and they did not take 

representative samples of effluent. Samplers 

were not placed considering actual emission 

locations, and the air was not monitored 

around the buildings at LANL. The documents 

that I provided in my petition report is where 

this information comes from. 

 There are issues with the AIRNET 

samplers themselves, because he has good 

efficiency for 5 micrometer, but less than 60 

percent for 10 micrometer samples, and the 

sampler is most efficient if the flow was in 

the front of the air sampler. So -- and winds 

change direction in Los Alamos. They are 

primarily from the south. They can come from 

different directions. There are different 

aspects of the topography that affect the wind 

flow over the mesas and in the canyons. 

 This is a photograph of an AIRNET 
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station. 

 The Cerro Grande fire was a large 

issue. The fire burned over a 47,000 acre 

area, 7500 acres of land at Los Alamos and 112 

structures. The fire burned numerous 

contaminated sites or potentially contaminated 

sites and technical areas, 0, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 

15, 16, 18, 20, 35, 40, 49, 42, 50, 52 and 55. 

 This data is based on some maps 

that I have included in the petition 

documentation as well, and the sites are 

according to the RCRA permitting process. 

 There was a problem with the air 

monitoring during the fire because of the 

large amount of particulate from the fire 

clogged the filters, and there was a loss in 

power when the fire was burning on Los Alamos 

property. So the AIRNET stations were not 

operating, and the AIRNET stations lost 

accuracy due to the high winds, which 

basically during the high wind affects the 

samplers. 
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 You can see here the smoke plume 

from the fire. This is Los Alamos. You can 

see the fire, and the plume conducts itself 

all the way into Oklahoma, Colorado. 

 One of the reports cited in the 

evaluation report is LA-UR-011132, and one 

footnote in that acknowledges that there are 

problems of an order of magnitude larger than 

the usual uncertainties due to the sampling 

that was done during the fire. 

 These are the doses that they 

assigned in that report for workers in 

Mortandad Canyon. As you can see, the doses 

are fairly small. However, in 1999 when the 

Environmental Impact Statement was prepared 

for resuspension following the wildfire, you 

can see the receptor dose over here in this 

column, 690 millirems EF site, and that is per 

day. So the doses are considerably higher 

according to LANL documents for resuspension. 

 So what I am doing is pointing out 

the discrepancies that need to be looked at 
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when this is reviewed by the working group and 

SC&A. 

 Another issue I would like to 

address was a noncompliance report written in 

1997, and one of the issues cited on the front 

of it. I have included a copy of this report 

in your packet as well. 

 Basically, I am not too sure how 

the report reads, but they cite there was a 

problem with the Code of Federal Regulations 

835 and the annual limits are not to be 

exceeded. 

 Now this is the narrative from that 

report. There was a potential that employee 

exposures would not have been identified in a 

timely manner because of weaknesses in the 

LANL routine Pu bioassay program. There is no 

documented evidence that the weaknesses 

resulted in exceeding the annual committed or 

effective dose equivalent for any individual 

or in a failure to comply with the ALARA 

program. 
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 This report was prepared as a 

noncompliance with Price-Anderson Act, 

Amended, which potentially they could have 

been fined $75,000 a day for each day that 

they were not in compliance with the Code. 

 Some problems with the ORPS 

requirements with reporting, and the main 

thing is the report should enable the general 

reader to understand the basic what, who, 

when, where and how the event to satisfy the 

issues involved and the actions taken. This 

is from the ORPS Manual for preparing these 

reports. 

 The biggest thing is all reports 

should present enough information so that the 

general reader understands why the event needs 

to be reported, and what the effect is. 

 Additionally, they have to do more 

than merely state a reportable limit was 

exceeded, which they didn't even do there. 

But I don't think two sentences qualify as a 

sufficient narrative for all the requirements 
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in ORPS to state what the problem was. 

 In the evaluation report, they also 

discuss Tiger Team findings, and they said 

that basically those dealt with safety issues 

such as signage or that -- but not dealing 

with the bioassay or the monitoring. However, 

looking through the Tiger Team, and these are 

just a few instances of that, found with 

internal radiation dosimetry they were cited 

because they weren't including the TA-36 and 

TA-15 LANL personnel for inclusion in the 

bioassay. These are explosives testing areas, 

and also radiography. 

 Not all personnel at the depleted 

uranium facilities are evaluated for petition, 

and to comply with the DOE orders. Routine 

tritium bioassay samples scheduled by the 

field may remain in the field for several 

weeks rather than being turned in immediately 

after they are provided. 

 The external dosimetry -- there are 

problems with that as well. The dosimeter is 
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not DOELAP-accredited in all 13 categories, 

and this is at the time that the report was 

prepared. Since then, a new dosimeter has 

been implemented at LANL, and it has been in 

place for 10 years. 

 There is a problem with the low 

energy data dosimetry, and part of the problem 

is the low energy radiations from bromine-77, 

technetium and uranium. So there are a couple 

more examples of exotic radionuclides, and 

they are not being monitored. 

 Another issue is with the neutron 

monitoring, and they are using correction 

factors, but they aren't included in the 

dosimetry records for the individual. So you 

need to be able to determine how they got this 

dose, the data that they used to develop the 

dose, and I think that that is an issue that 

needs to be looked at. 

 The radiation protection 

technicians were not reviewing operations 

involving radioactive materials to ensure that 
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workers who should participate in the bioassay 

program do so. So the issue here is missed 

dose, because these people should have been 

monitored and they weren't. 

 An issue with the phosphorous 

protectors is that in the presence of gamma 

emitters, they don't accurately measure 

plutonium and americium. 

 Under the LANL ES&H selfassessment, there were some issues as well, 

and I included these in my documents that are 

sent to -- didn't include the whole document 

that was prepared, because I didn't have 

ownership of it. So I only made copies of 

certain sections that I felt are pertinent, 

but I'm sure there is more information there, 

because I didn't read it as in-depth and find 

everything I think that could have been found. 

 Some of the issues there, the 

assigning of people to the bioassay program, 

and then the adequately monitored portion of 

it. So even then, there were problems back in 
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'91 with bioassay, and I think these need to 

be addressed. 

 This is from the report which was 

prepared in '91, which also talks about the in 

vivo measurements and the problems with the 

equipment that they have there, and the fact 

that they don't meet the DOE order and the 

ANSI standard and 13.30. So they were going 

to have to upgrade the instrumentation and 

documented programs for that. 

 The final evaluation report -- and 

they did talk about radiation work permits, 

and there were some problems with those as 

well; pre-job planning and documentation are 

inadequate. 

 So I think that calls into question 

whether or not those documents are reliable, 

and especially this next one. Radiation work 

permit forms in use at the laboratory do not 

include all necessary information to ensure 

job control. An example they gave following 

that is, pre-survey or post-survey data. 
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 I do agree with one section or this 

sentence of the report; LANL clearly possessed 

capabilities to conduct bioassay measurements 

for those exotic radionuclides. However, 

specific data for such measurements are very 

sparse and generally unavailable. 

 I think this calls into question 

the quality of the data that is used for dose 

reconstructions, and that demonstrates you 

have to question whether or not the dose 

reconstructions are, therefore, accurate based 

on that data. 

 I think the discrepancies that I 

presented here so far concerning the report 

and what is in my petition require further 

review, and I am requesting the Board -- that 

the Advisory Board and the LANL Working Group 

review the petition, including attached 

documents, the evaluation report, and that 

SC&A should be tasked to do this as well. 

From what I understand from Mark, this is 

pretty much going to be taken care of. 
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 So I appreciate the time that you 

have given to me, and I hope that you review 

the documents that I provided, even though 

there is quite a bit of information there. I 

appreciate this opportunity. Thank you. 

 (Applause.) 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I want to say that 

I think Harriett spoke very accurately when 

she said that Andrew did a lot of research on 

this. We will be looking at this in the Work 

Group, I'm pretty sure. 

 Again, I don't want to get ahead of 

myself. I don't think we have tasked SC&A, 

but we will discuss it further this week, I am 

sure. 

 I believe there are a few more 

presenters for the petitioner, and the first I 

have is Michelle Hacquez-Ortiz. She is from 

Senator Tom Udall's office, and either mic 

that you are comfortable with is fine. I 

think they are both working now. 

 Are you reading a prepared 
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statement from the Senator or are these your 

own comments? Maybe you can tell us. 

 MS. HACQUEZ-ORTIZ: These are on 

behalf of Senator Udall. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. Thank you. 

 MS. HACQUEZ-ORTIZ: Well, first I 

want to commend Andrew Evaskovich. Harriett 

has had a lot of support in her quest to get 

that first SEC. Andrew was very much a driver 

in that, and that was an exceptional 

presentation, very well researched. So thank 

you for the hundreds of hours that went into 

that, Drew, on behalf of all the workers. 

 Thank you very much, Mark, and 

members of the Advisory Board for allowing me 

to read a statement into the record from 

Senator Tom Udall on behalf of his New Mexico 

constituents who are sick and dying while 

awaiting compensation as a result of their 

work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

 My name is Michelle Hacquez-Ortiz, 

and I have served on the Senator's staff since 
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his first election to Congress in 1999. 

 As a member of the House of 

Representatives, Tom Udall, along with his New 

Mexico colleague, Senator Jeff Bingaman, 

hosted the first public hearings in New Mexico 

on this issue, and worked to ensure that his 

constituents would be covered as part of the 

Energy Employees Occupational Illness Program 

Act of 2000. 

 Senator Udall and his staff have 

spent years since the program's inception 

trying to realize justice for these claimants. 

As some members of the Advisory Board might 

recall, Senator Udall followed both the RaLa 

and Harriett Ruiz's Special Exposure Cohort 

petitions very closely. 

 Likewise, the Senator and his staff 

have continued to offer support to Andrew 

Evaskovich and the larger class of workers 

covered in his proposed SEC petition. 

 The Senator felt it was important 

to present this statement to the Advisory 
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Board to stress his strong support of an SEC 

for the proposed class of LANL workers in 

whole or in part. He thanks the Board for its 

decision to host this week's meeting here in 

New Mexico so that the affected claimants had 

an opportunity to personally and directly 

participate in the meeting. 

 This afternoon NIOSH presented its 

case to the Advisory Board, and our view that 

the agency is able to accurately reconstruct 

dose for the entire SEC class. You will also 

hear from numerous LANL claimants about why 

granting the petition, even in part, is so 

important. 

 The Senator shares his 

constituents' concerns about the lack of 

sufficient monitoring at LANL, as well as the 

integrity of historical data used in NIOSH's 

dose reconstruction for the proposed class. 

 Senator Udall would like to 

encourage the Advisory Board to keep in mind 

that, although NIOSH had months to develop its 
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evaluation report, petitioners were given less 

than two weeks to review and respond to the 

report in preparation for this week's meeting. 

 We all know that two years ago, the 

Advisory Board approved an SEC petition for 

State Representative Harriett Ruiz to cover 

all Los Alamos workers from 1943 through 1975. 

 This was due to the unreliable nature of 

radiation dose records in these early years of 

LANL operations. 

 At your meeting in Denver, 

Colorado, representatives from NIOSH stood 

before the Advisory Board and recommended 

approval of the Ruiz SEC. Less than two years 

later, NIOSH again stands before the Board, 

this time arguing a very different position. 

 Senator Udall encourages the 

Advisory Board to closely consider what his 

constituents believe is a mixed message from 

NIOSH. 

 First, the agency self-initiated an 

SEC for LANL RaLa workers. It then approved 
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the Harriett Ruiz SEC for LANL workers through 

December 31, 1975. In an apparent about-face, 

NIOSH now claims that, due to newly discovered 

records, not only should the Evaskovich SEC be 

rejected in a wholesale fashion, but if NIOSH 

knew then what it knows now, the agency would 

have recommended denying Harriett Ruiz's 

petition beyond 1970. 

 If you accept NIOSH's assertion 

that the agency can accurately reconstruct 

dose after 1970, what about the obvious holes 

that remain? Some of my constituents believe 

that these holes are, in a sense, the elephant 

in the living room. 

 One hole is the fact that LANL used 

everything in the periodic table. There are 

questions about the location and quantity of 

materials at LANL, like plutonium-240. Has 

NIOSH fully answered how they can accurately 

reconstruct dose for mixed activation products 

and exotic radionuclides used at LANL? 

 Another hole deals with first 
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responders like firefighters and security 

guards who, more often than not, were 

insufficiently monitored. Has NIOSH fully 

answered how they can accurately reconstruct 

dose for first responders? 

 Yet another hole is Area G, the 

nuclear dump at LANL, and members of the 

proposed class who worked at that site. Has 

NIOSH fully answered how they can accurately 

reconstruct dose for Area G workers? 

 What about the many workers who 

wore their film or TLD badges underneath lead 

aprons? 

 To accept NIOSH's wholesale 

rejection of the SEC class, the Advisory Board 

must be convinced that none of these workers 

should be included in the class. Senator 

Udall realizes the difficult task the Advisory 

Board has in considering the complex issues 

associated with the proposed LANL petition. 

He understands the hard work and long hours 

each of you commit as members of this 
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important Board. 

 The Senator supports approval of 

the petition in whole or in part, and he is 

hopeful for a positive outcome on behalf of 

these courageous Cold War veterans, so that 

they can finally receive the relief and 

compensation they so rightly deserve. 

 He thanks you for your thoughtful 

consideration of the petition and allowing 

time on the agenda for his statement. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Thank you. 

 (Applause.) 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: One last presenter 

is Chris Neubauer, and Chris is from 

Congressman Ben Lujan's office and reading a 

statement from the Congressman or your own? 

 MR. NEUBAUER: A statement on 

behalf of the Congressman's office. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Thank you. 

 MR. NEUBAUER: Good evening to 

members of the Advisory Board. Thank you for 

allowing us to speak today. My name is 
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Christopher Neubauer. I am Constituent 

Services Manager for Congressman Ben R. Lujan. 

 Today the Congressman offers his 

support to Andrew Evaskovich and the class of 

workers in his proposed SEC petition. 

 As Ms. Hacquez-Ortiz stated 

earlier, it was only two years ago that the 

Advisory Board approved an SEC petition for 

Representative Ruiz to cover all of Los Alamos 

workers from 1944 to 1975, because they found 

that the radiation dose records kept by Los 

Alamos National Laboratory during this time 

were unreliable. 

 NIOSH claims that the Evaskovich 

SEC should be rejected due to newly discovered 

records which support the ability to conduct 

an accurate dose reconstruction. The 

Congressman encourages the Board to consider 

the holes that remain, including those that 

were just outlined by Ms. Hacquez-Ortiz on 

behalf of Senator Udall. 

 Consider the recent beryllium 
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contamination in one of LANL's technical 

areas. Even though beryllium is not a 

radioactive concern, the contamination is 

proof that incidents happen where workers' 

exposure to harmful substances suddenly 

deviates from the norm. 

 Even if NIOSH can prove that the 

newly discovered records support a more 

accurate dose reconstruction process, has 

NIOSH fully explained how it can account for 

any and all inconsistencies where 

abnormalities that may have occurred in the 

exposure records, especially in the early 

years following 1975? 

 Congressman Lujan respectfully 

reminds the Board that we are dealing with 

real people whose lives and whose families 

have been strongly affected by these issues. 

These individuals have rights and deserve 

compensation and relief. 

 On behalf of his constituents and 

these brave veterans, Congressman Lujan asks 
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the Board to approve the petition in whole or 

in part. The Congressman thanks you for your 

consideration and for your time. Thank you. 

 (Applause.) 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: And I have just 

been told that from Senator Bingaman's office, 

we have Patricia Dominguez who is going to, I 

think, state his position or make a 

presentation for him. Patricia, are you here? 

 MS. DOMINGUEZ: Good evening. My 

name is Patricia Dominguez. I am here to read 

a statement on behalf of United States Senator 

Jeff Bingaman. 

 Let me thank the Advisory Board for 

coming to New Mexico to hear NIOSH's 

evaluation of the Special Exposure Cohort 

petition 00109 covering workers between 1975 

and 2005. 

 The cause of workers addressed in 

this petition is unique to Los Alamos. There 

were service support workers, many who moved 

throughout the complex at different job sites, 
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in many cases for short periods of time. 

While the files for permanent laboratory 

workers and dosimetry data can be established 

with accuracy from 1975 to 2005, it is 

problematic at best for these subcontractors 

who frequently moved between jobs on and off 

Los Alamos. 

 Page 43 of the NIOSH analysis of 

the petition notes that, for the Zia Company, 

one of the main employers of service workers 

at Los Alamos, that access was restricted to 

certain plutonium sites, if no bioassays was 

recorded in 425 calendar days. For many of 

these workers, a typical stay was on the order 

of a few months, much less than 425 days. 

 Much of the NIOSH analysis rests on 

the correlation in Tables 6 through 4 between 

the numbers of workers monitored versus the 

number of workers on the site. 

 The report itself on page 33 admits 

that the major source of uncertainty appears 

to stem from the variability in worker types, 
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which is precisely the cause that the proposed 

SEC is to address these service workers. 

 I appreciate the hard and 

thoughtful work that has gone into NIOSH 

analysis, but it seems not to account for the 

principle contention that many of these 

workers were transient in nature. With little 

records kept on them by the subcontractors as 

compared to permanent Los Alamos employees, I 

ask the Advisory Board to respectfully 

consider this type of job function as they 

perform their evaluation. 

 Again, I thank you for your time 

today, and I appreciate all of the efforts 

involved in this process. Thank you. 

 (Applause.) 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Thank you, 

Patricia. I think -- Andrew, is that it? Did 

we capture everyone that is going to speak on 

behalf of the petition? I think so. 

 MR. EVASKOVICH: Yes, it is. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I guess I just -- 
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We are about a half-hour over, but I would ask 

the Board if you have any follow-up questions 

for petitioners or any other comments we want 

to make at this time. We do have other Board 

working time that we could discuss this, but I 

will open it up for any other questions, 

comments. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I just had a 

question for Andrew. Can we get a copy of 

your presentation, at least the latter part of 

it? I noticed some of it wasn't in here. 

 MR. EVASKOVICH: The presentation -

- I provided a disk. So it is in a computer 

there, and that is NIOSH's copy. I am 

assuming they will distribute it to everybody. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Jim? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I just want to 

thank the petitioners for their efforts and 

information. I would like to at least get the 

process going, and I think we need to, one, 

task our work group on LANL to review the 

evaluation part, which we also got just two 
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weeks ago, and to begin that process. 

 Secondly, to also task our 

contractor to do a thorough review of the SEC 

evaluation report in conjunction with the work 

group. I will make that as a formal motion. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I would like to 

second that. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Any discussion of 

the motion? No opinions either way? Anybody 

supporting the motion? 

 MEMBER MUNN: We are going to have 

to do it. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I think I will 

take it by consent then, that everyone agrees 

we have to do a work group, and we should task 

SC&A for this. So we don't need to vote. 

Well, all in favor, say aye. 

 (A chorus of ayes.) 

 Mike on the phone, are you still 

with us? That was an aye. Okay. All right. 

So we have a unanimous vote minus the two that 

aren't on the Board. Three, I'm sorry, three. 
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 Okay. I think that should close 

out our session now. Paul, 15 minutes? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Ten? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Ten-minute 

comfort break, and then we will start public 

comment right after the 10-minute break. 

Thanks for staying with us. 

 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

matter went off the record at 6:30 p.m., and 

resumed at 6:43 p.m.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you all for 

sticking around for this part of our session 

this evening. We are hoping to move right 

along, because many of you are getting hungry. 

 Many of us are getting hungry, as well. 

 For Board members, if you would 

take your seats, we will get underway. 

 This is the public comment portion 

of today's Board meeting. We will have 

another public comment session as well 

tomorrow. I should point out to you that this 

public comment session is not considered 
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technically to be part of the Los Alamos 

petition discussion. 

 So all the Board members are able 

to be at the table for this, because we are 

simply here to hear what you have to say, and 

not everyone speaking either here or by phone 

will necessarily be speaking about the Los 

Alamos site in any event, because the public 

comment session is open to any member of the 

public from anywhere in the United States to 

give comment on issues that pertain to the 

Board's activities and, in turn, to NIOSH and 

Department of Labor activities as well. 

 We are here primarily to hear your 

comments. If you have particular issues 

dealing with a personal claim, you need to 

deal with the claim representatives that are 

here in the building, and you can be directed 

to them. This Board is not in the position to 

answer specific questions about claims and 

that sort of thing. 

 We do want to hear your comments. 
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You may be talking in the framework of a 

claim, and that is just fine, but we will not 

be discussing particular claims this evening. 

 The other ground rule I want to 

tell you is that we have a 10-minute time 

limit on the comments, and I always like to 

point out to people that the 10 minutes is not 

a goal to be achieved. It is an upper limit, 

and if you can be more concise than that, 

that's good, because there are a number of 

people who wish to speak, and in fairness to 

those who are at the end of the list, we would 

like to have time to hear them and not have 

everyone getting so worn out that they are 

leaving before the folks at the end get a 

chance to speak. 

 We also have some legal ground 

rules, and our designated federal official, 

Ted Katz, is going to go over those legal 

ground rules. As soon as he is done, we will 

start right down the list in the order that 

you have signed up. Ted? 
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 MR. KATZ: Yes. Thank you, Dr. 

Ziemer. So just to be very quick about this, 

but this is our redaction policy, and this 

relates to -- as I think most of you are aware 

at this point but maybe not all, we take a 

verbatim transcript of every Board meeting, 

and so this regards what we keep and what we 

don't keep in the transcript. 

 So if you come to the mic and 

present and self-identify yourself, your name 

and your information will stay in the 

transcript and be publicly available. It will 

be on the website, the NIOSH website. 

 However, if you speak of a third 

party, another party, that information about 

third parties, not yourself, typically will be 

redacted from the transcript to protect that 

person's privacy. 

 The other thing I should tell you, 

that personal information you give, even 

medical information, typically would be 

retained about yourself. 
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 The other thing I should tell you 

then is this policy, if you want to see it in 

all of its legal language, should be available 

on the back table there. It is also on the 

NIOSH website with the agenda for the meeting. 

 Lastly, if there is someone here 

who has something they want to address to the 

Board or some members of the Board, but does 

not want to do that publicly, then please 

consult me, and we will see how we can take 

care of that need. 

 That covers it. Thank you, Dr. 

Ziemer. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, 

Ted. Let's begin then with [Identifying 

Information Redacted}. Is [Identifying 

Information Redacted} here? 

 PARTICIPANT: Patricia Dominguez of 

Senator Bingaman's staff covered that earlier. 

 So [Identifying Information Redacted} won't 

be here. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you 
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very much. I had a feeling that was the case, 

but I didn't recall. 

 Antoinette Bonsingore, and she is 

with us by phone, I believe. Antoinette? 

 MS. BONSINGORE: Thank you, Dr. 

Ziemer. My name is Antoinette Bonsingore, and 

I am the SEC representative for the Linde 

Ceramics facility. 

 On behalf of the Linde Ceramics SEC 

petitioners, I am requesting that, in light of 

the continuing inability of the Linde 

petitioners to receive any effective 

assistance from NIOSH regarding the 

deciphering of the petition evaluation report, 

that the Advisory Board authorize SC&A to 

review and provide an evaluation of NIOSH's 

decision to not recommend SEC status for this 

facility. 

 The fundamental absence of due 

process is at the core reason why fairness and 

equity has evaporated within the 

administration of the EEOICPA. Both the dose 
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reconstruction claims and appeal process and 

the SEC petitioning process have become 

adversarial in nature, and it was never the 

intent of Congress to create an adversarial 

system. 

 Any semblance of a claimantfavorable system cannot be realized without 

the basic ability to understand the 

administrative procedures as well as the 

technical documents provided to dose 

reconstruction claimants and to SEC 

petitioners. 

 These problems have resulted in a 

breakdown within the EEOICPA that demands 

immediate attention and redress. NIOSH and 

the Department of Labor are denying sickened 

workers access to basic fairness due to the 

absence of transparency. 

 This is exemplified when there is a 

complete lack of any regulations to provide 

for accountability within the dose 

reconstruction program or the SEC petitioning 
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process. 

 NIOSH and the Department of Labor 

have the discretionary authority to make 

decisions which claimants and petitioners are 

powerless to understand or to challenge. 

Regulations are needed to eliminate the power 

to implement the law on an unaccountable and 

discretionary basis. 

 The EEOICPA administrative process 

is not claimant-favorable under any equitable 

definition of that legal requirement. 

Recently, two specific issues affecting the 

Linde SEC petitioners highlight the problems 

associated with this lack of accountability. 

 First, NIOSH has the complete 

discretion to decide whether a revised site 

profile will be used as the reference point in 

the preparation of an SEC petition evaluation 

report, even when the original SEC petition 

was filed and later qualified for review under 

a previously existing site profile. 

 There are no administrative rules 
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that govern this decision-making process. 

Linde petitioners filed their SEC petition 

before the current and revised site profile 

was issued by NIOSH in November of 2008. The 

Linde SEC petition qualified for review in 

July of 2008, before the current and revised 

site profile was issued. 

 Therefore, even though the 

petitioners based their argument on the only 

existing site profile available in March of 

2008, when the petition was filed, and in July 

when the petition qualified for review, now 

the Linde petitioners are presented with an 

entirely new site profile that their original 

petition could not have possibly been based 

upon. 

 This clearly alters the playing 

field in favor of NIOSH. NIOSH is not living 

up to its duty to work with petitioners under 

a claimant-favorable decision-making system. 

NIOSH should be required to work only within 

the confines of existing site profiles and to 
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evaluate the liability of an SEC petition 

within those confines based solely upon when a 

petition is submitted and when that petition 

qualifies for review. 

 To allow NIOSH the ad hoc authority 

to decide these complex issues without 

providing any notice to petitioners is unfair, 

particularly when petitioners are powerless to 

challenge these decisions that directly affect 

their basic rights. 

 Furthermore, when petitioners are 

time and again provided documents that are so 

technical in nature that the only individuals 

who are qualified to understand that 

information work exclusively for NIOSH, and 

those same experts repeatedly refuse to 

provide answers to basic questions about 

revisions to site profiles and information 

contained in petition evaluation reports, then 

any semblance of fairness has clearly 

disappeared. 

 The fact that NIOSH is not required 
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to provide answers to these questions or to 

work within the confines of site profiles that 

actually exist at the time of the 

qualification of a petition cannot be allowed 

to continue. 

 I realize that this request is 

beyond the purview of the Board's authority. 

However, the second issue and request for 

assistance affecting the ability of the 

petitioners to respond to the claims presented 

in the petition evaluation report is within 

the Board's direct authority. 

 Therefore, I urge this board to act 

swiftly on our request to authorize the SC&A 

review of the petition evaluation report. 

This highly technical document requires the 

expertise of a qualified health physicist to 

understand. 

 Consequently, this document is 

essentially useless to the petitioners without 

the basic ability to make sense of it. And 

since the average petitioner is generally not 
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a health physicist, petitioners are once again 

clearly at a disadvantage. 

 Unless petitioners are provided 

with the tools to understand the arguments set 

forth by NIOSH as to why they have decided not 

to recommend SEC status, the petitioners 

cannot respond to NIOSH in any cogent or 

effective manner. 

 Petitioners are effectively 

eliminated from the SEC petitioning process 

when they are denied the ability to respond to 

the arguments that NIOSH presents to this 

Board, and when a petitioner is afforded the 

opportunity to present arguments before the 

Board, they are foreclosed from responding to 

NIOSH in any real way. 

 Petitioners once again get the 

increasingly short end of the stick. I urge 

this Board to refer the petition evaluation 

report for the Linde Ceramics SEC petition to 

SC&A for immediate review before the scheduled 

presentation of this petition before the Board 
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in May. 

 The Linde petitioners deserve the 

right to be provided with and the use of all 

the information that NIOSH has at its 

disposal. 

 Additionally, since the Board is 

authorized to recommend the review of petition 

evaluation reports by SC&A, I also urge this 

Board to consider instituting a blanket policy 

requiring review by SC&A in each and every 

instance that NIOSH issues a petition 

evaluation report that recommends the denial 

of SEC status. 

 The congressional intent of this 

legislation was to compensate sickened workers 

in a non-adversarial and claimant-favorable 

way. However, when the process becomes 

adversarial, the spirit and purpose of this 

law is violated. 

 The Board has the authority to 

institute this blanket policy of SC&A review 

of petition evaluation reports. That would 
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provide the most direct and immediate way to 

begin to level the playing field for SEC 

petitioners and to begin to dismantle a system 

that has become clearly adversarial. 

 I would like to thank the Advisory 

Board for this opportunity to address the 

Board tonight. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 

much, Antoinette, for those comments. During 

our work session later in the week, we will, 

among other things, be discussing the Linde 

site as well. 

 MS. BONSINGORE: Thank you, Dr. 

Ziemer. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Next, Dr. Maureen 

Merritt. 

 DR. MERRITT: Is this on? Yes. I 

am Dr. Maureen Merritt, and I want to thank 

the Board, first of all, for allowing me to 

speak this evening, and I also would like to 

commend Drew Evaskovich for what a great job 

he did on that presentation of his SEC. 
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 On behalf of ANWAG, which is the 

Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy Groups, of 

which I think most of the Board members are 

aware -- it is a national coalition of 

advocacy groups for nuclear workers, and on 

behalf of our local New Mexico Alliance of 

Nuclear Worker Advocates, and on behalf of the 

National Cold War Patriots nonprofit 

organization whose membership is over 1500 

strong and growing, I want to voice our 

support of this new Los Alamos National Labs 

Special Exposure Cohort petition for the 

following reasons. 

 The first, most simple and obvious 

reason is because the sick nuclear workers of 

Los Alamos, and indeed all of the DOE AWE 

weapons complexes around the country deserve 

under EEOICPA to be spared the lengthy, 

grueling and inexact science that is currently 

dose reconstruction. 

 We don't believe it was ever 

Congress' intent to further prolong our sick 
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nuclear workers' suffering through this type 

of process. We urge the Board to overturn 

NIOSH's recommendation to deny this SEC on the 

grounds that they have sufficient records to 

reconstruct dose for the following reasons. 

 First, we have inadequate bioassay 

data over this particular time period of '76 

through 2005. B) we have poor data 

representation of actual conditions at the 

various technical areas. C) we have overuse 

of surrogate and co-worker data that is not 

relevant or accurate to this specific site. 

D) we have misstatement of various key site 

facts, i.e., for example, the site profiles 

and SEMs upon which NIOSH and ORAU rely to do 

their dose reconstructions. 

 Those undergo constant revisions 

and, therefore, because they are a living 

document, there is no end to it, a finite 

point by which you can determine the actual 

accuracy. 

 E) sketchy dose records related to 
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the so-called exotic radioisotopes, and I know 

you have heard a lot about the exotics today. 

 F) we have use of binders which are 

considered the gold standard of dose but that 

are, nevertheless, inaccurate. 

 There is precedent for our concerns 

today. Previous deficiencies in NIOSH ORAU 

site profiles and SEC evaluation reports of 

other sites such as Bethlehem Steel, Fernald, 

Hanford, Nevada Test Site, Portsmouth, Rocky 

Flats, et al., found upon review by Sanford 

Cohen & Associates, have led to thousands of 

EEOICPA claims being sent back to NIOSH by DOL 

for rework, too date, in fact, nearly 3,000 

have been sent back. 

 There are several respected health 

physicists who have worked in the DOE AWE 

radioactive exposure data arena that refute 

the premises upon which ORAU's so-called 

accurate dose reconstruction is based. 

 My understanding is that published 

comprehensive case profile studies will be 
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forthcoming to the public soon, and I urge the 

Board to keep an eye open for those. I don't 

have a specific date of publication, but it is 

in the works. 

 Meanwhile, we respectfully request, 

if the Board has not yet had time to review 

NIOSH's written denial of this SEC, that you 

please defer voting until such time as you 

have all the facts at hand. Of course, you 

have already commented on that, and my last 

request was going to be that you assign a work 

group and also assign SC&A -- task them to 

review all the material submitted before 

making a final decision. 

 Thank you for your time. Now I do 

have a couple of other comments, not related 

to the SEC, if I may. How am I doing timewise? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: You have a couple 

minutes yet. 

 DR. MERRITT: I will try and 

summarize this document. I do believe, 
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actually, the Board may have gotten a copy of 

this, but we did send a letter -- and again, 

this is on behalf of ANWAG and other 

coalitions of advocacy groups around the 

country and interested stakeholders. 

 Mr. Elliott is not here today, 

unfortunately, but I can still read at least 

excerpts from it. Interestingly, you did 

already address this. Several of these issues 

were addressed earlier today, and I was very 

gratified to hear that. 

 Recently, the NIOSH Office of OCAS 

posted new policies and procedures which 

affect data retrieval of the DOE's documents 

and security measures for those documents. 

The policies and procedures is designated 

specifically as ORAU-T Policy 0003, 010 and 

011. ANWAG does appreciate that issues 

related to national security must be 

protected, but we wonder why has it taken the 

office nine years to develop these policies 

and procedures. 
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 ANWAG has reviewed the documents 

and will relay some of our serious concerns we 

have with these. It is our hope that these 

concerns will be immediately remedied by your 

office. 

 As I say, I did hear discussion 

already about them. So I know that they are 

probably on your plate. 

 One of the most disconcerting 

issues in these documents is a reference to 

Sanford Cohen & Associates as NIOSH's 

contractor. This designation is not 

acceptable. 

 As you are aware, the Advisory 

Board awarded a contract to SC&A to audit 

NIOSH and its contractor, ORAU, technical 

documents and scientific assumptions. Simply 

because the funding for the Board and SC&A is 

funneled through the Department of Health and 

Human Services does not mean that SC&A is 

NIOSH's contractor. 

 The Board is supposed to be an 
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independent advisory board whose members are 

appointed by the President. The Board's 

contractor, therefore, is answerable only to 

the Board and the President, not to NIOSH. I 

believe I heard that stated earlier today. 

 Thusly, the policies and procedures 

that your office has issued should not be 

arbitrarily applied to the Board or SC&A, and 

presumably you are going to explore that and 

see what the legal justification is, if 

anything. 

 The next procedure, OCAS-010, 

details steps to retrieve data from DOE for 

documents needed to perform dose 

reconstructions and Special Exposure Cohort 

petition evaluation reports. This procedure 

appears to be overly burdensome to SC&A. 

 The explanation for this procedure 

was that DOE did not want to pull records 

twice. Taken at face value, this explanation 

appears logical. However, NIOSH ORAU would 

have already pulled the documents required 
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when they completed the site profiles and 

evaluated SECs. 

 So SC&A's records request to DOE, 

when tasked by the Board to audit NIOSH ORAU 

technical documents or SEC petition evaluation 

reports, will not necessarily duplicate the 

records pulled by NIOSH ORAU. 

 I believe, and we believe, NIOSH 

must be extremely careful not to censor the 

Board in any way, and SC&A record requests to 

DOE, a possibility that some of us are 

concerned has already happened. 

 Now ANWAG agrees that SC&A should 

keep NIOSH apprised of the documents they 

request, and it is our understanding that they 

have done so. We don't see the need, however, 

for SC&A as an auditing contractor for an 

independent advisory board to go through 

NIOSH's point of contact to request documents 

from DOE. And of course, there are additional 

delays and costs associated with this, what we 

consider a rather convoluted procedure at this 
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point. 

 We have -- I won't go over the 

other regulations, because I don't want to go 

over the time limit, but I do want to make one 

small quote here. 

 The policy posted at your website 

on January 30, 2009, was actually in place for 

more than four years, but it was only just 

recently posted, and it failed to incorporate 

President Obama's memorandum to the executive 

department and the agencies on the Freedom of 

Information Act and the ability to obtain 

documents by SEC petitioners and the public. 

 The government should not keep 

information confidential merely because public 

officials might be embarrassed by disclosure -

- this is quote/unquote -- because errors and 

failure might be revealed or because of 

speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure 

should never be based on an effort to protect 

the personal interests of government officials 

at the expense of those they are supposed to 
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serve. 

 In responding to requests under the 

FOIA, executive branch agencies should act 

promptly and in the spirit of cooperation. Of 

course, the previous President, George W. 

Bush, in December of 2007 signed an order 

which restores the presumption of disclosure 

to FOIA requesters. 

 So in conclusion, we request that 

there is a refraining from asserting that the 

Board or its contractor, SC&A, are under 

NIOSH's control, and a revision of ORAU-T 

Policy 003 to reflect the latest law and 

Presidential memorandum on FOIA requests. 

 Thank you very much. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you for 

those comments, Dr. Merritt. Let's proceed 

then with Richard Johnson. 

 MR. JOHNSON: My name is Richard 

Johnson, and I want to thank you for giving me 

the opportunity to speak. 

 I was employed at Los Alamos 
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National Laboratory from 1977 to 1999 and 

assigned to Engineering-4 of the Engineering 

Division. 

 Engineering-4's coverage of LANL 

was operations, maintenance and repair and 

construction. We had full coverage of LANL. 

As such, this required us to be the first 

responders for operational dysfunctions of the 

facilities at LANL. 

 The laboratory covers 45 square 

miles and more than 2500 buildings and 

structures. There is 100 miles of steam 

mains, 150 miles of roads, many of them 

leading to biological, chemical, environmental 

or radiological impacted sites. 

 This requires support service 

employees to provide first response and 

corrective actions. This generally starts 

with discovery by the protective force or 

other sources, first response by Engineering 

area coordinators and/or specialists to 

coordinate services of the craftsmen, fire 
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protection, health monitoring personnel and 

others to deal with any failures of equipment 

or services that would jeopardize the goals of 

LANL or impose dangers to Los Alamos and the 

environment. 

 Note all comments are for my time 

of service. Also, fire protection was part of 

LANL at that point in time, and provided most 

of the services of HAZMAT. 

 Exposures at TA-53: my first 

assignment was at TA-53. I had more than 800 

workdays at TA-53. My area of coverage was 

the entire site to assure continuous operation 

of all auxiliary equipment required for the 

Meson Physics Accelerator and the Weapons 

Neutron Research Facility and facility support 

areas. 

 I was an Engineering-4 

inspector/operator for the TA-53 facilities. 

As a result, I was required to perform routine 

inspections at two-hour intervals and be a 

first responder for equipment or system 
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failures. On a daily basis, the environment I 

worked in produced biological, chemical and 

radiological exposures. 

 In 1978 I was exposed to one of the 

largest radionuclide releases for DOE 

operations in the nation, as a result of an 

equipment failure on the accelerator and the 

refusal to shut down for equipment repair 

during a production run. This went on for an 

extended period of time. 

 More than 117,000 curies of 

radionuclide was released, as monitored at the 

site boundary or perimeter a half-mile away. 

The exposure in my work area was directly 

under the plume of precipitation at the point 

of release from stack FE-3, and the stack 

monitoring was shut off due to the high level 

of saturation. 

 I was not monitored, due to the 

conditions of saturation. I only recall 

having my urine checked one time with a wave 

of the monitor's wand across the side of a 
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container. 

 In addition to the area described 

above, I was next to the unshielded junction 

point where the beam for the accelerator was 

routed to the Weapons Neutron Research 

facility, releasing high levels of neutrons. 

Also, my routine inspections included the WNR 

facility. 

 Monitoring was not performed at TA53 for neutrons at that point in time. See 

the 7/31/07 Los Alamos National Laboratory TBD 

revision of Document Number OCAS-18. 

 The lack of monitoring for this 

incident, in combination with the lack of 

monitoring for neutrons, does not allow for an 

accurate way to portray the exposures received 

in our required work area. 

 Exposures at TA-54, 1982-1985 I 

became the Engineering-4 Area Coordinator, and 

had more than 650 days' coverage of all areas 

of TA-54. I was required to provide 

maintenance and repair operations and 
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construction to assure the continuous 

operation of all site facilities, including 

Area G, the hot dump. During this period, I 

was a first responder for emergencies and 

equipment failures. 

 An incident of note was on February 

4, 1985. I responded to a call from the 

protective force that water was running out 

from under the doors of TA-54-22, the Health 

Physics Control Center for TA-54. 

 When I entered the building, the 

interior was destroyed from frozen water pipes 

above the ceiling. This resulted in the loss 

of most of the HSE-1 and HSE-7 records 

pertaining to health physics workers' 

radiation dosimetry, monitoring personnel, and 

most of the instrument and equipment records 

were lost as well. 

 As a result, for most of that 

worked there prior to that point in time, 

there is no accurate way to portray the 

exposures we received in our required work 
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areas. 

 Exposures LANL-wide. In 1985 to 

1997, I became an Engineering specialist with 

Engineering-4. This gave me coverage of the 

entire Laboratory for the specialty programs 

covering pumps and all equipment auxiliary to 

their service, and steam systems and all 

equipment auxiliary to the equipment serviced. 

 When you provide service to 2500-

plus buildings and more than 30,000 pieces of 

equipment and systems, you come in contact 

with every source of environmental and 

personal exposure LANL has to offer. 

 In summation, I believe the 

petition being looked at for the inclusion of 

the Support Service Employees class should be 

added to the Special Exposure Cohort of the 

Energy Employees Occupational Illness 

Compensation Program Act. 

 The inconsistent system provided 

for dose reconstruction does not provide for 

accumulative exposures when your service takes 
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in every site and facility at Los Alamos 

Laboratory. 

 Some sites or TAs are only looked 

at for incidents, with no recognition of the 

daily exposure levels, for lack of 

information. And then you have highly 

publicized areas that are recognized for 

accumulative exposures. 

 With Los Alamos National 

Laboratories' history for loss of records, 

inconsistent methods of record-keeping, and 

its monitoring methods over the years, it 

amazes me that any conclusion could be drawn 

for individual dose reconstructions for the 

Support Services employees. 

 Is a copy of this required? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: It is not 

required, but we would be pleased to have it 

for the court reporter, if you would wish to 

leave it with us. Thank you very much, 

Richard. 

 Let's go ahead now with Joni 
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Arends. 

 MS. ARENDS: Good evening, members 

of the Advisory Board and the audience -- 

people in the audience. 

 My name is Joni Arends. I am with 

Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety based in 

Santa Fe. CCNS formed in 1988 to address 

community concerns about the transportation of 

waste from LANL to the waste isolation pilot 

plant. 

 CCNS supports the SEC petition for 

the mobile employees that travel from 

technical area to technical area at Los Alamos 

National Laboratory. 

 CCNS has recently been involved in 

31 days of negotiations with DOE, LANL, the 

New Mexico Environment Department about the 

draft RCRA permit for hazardous waste 

operations at the Laboratory. 

 So CCNS is bringing 20 years' worth 

of experience and knowledge about the 

laboratory to the table to address public 
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concerns, environmental concerns, and public 

health concerns. 

 We are very familiar with DOE 

patterns and practices regarding data quality, 

which requires us to question whether NIOSH 

has the data to make the dose reconstructions. 

 As you know, DOE is self-regulating for 

radionuclides and, although the dose is 

greater for workers, our examples are with 

regard to public doses. 

 What I would like to do is give you 

some examples from our own experience in terms 

of problems with data quality at the 

laboratory. 

 So when the rad NESHAP, the 

National Emission Standards for Hazard Air 

Pollutants, came into effect, the 40 C.F.R. 61 

came into effect in the late nineties or late 

1980s, LANL knew that they were out of 

compliance with the standards, and they didn't 

care, and EPA wasn't doing its job. 

 So in 1992 CCNS sued DOE for 
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violations of the Clean Air Act at LANL, 

specifically the rad NESHAPs. As you may 

know, the citizens who resulted in three first 

of its kind audits of LANL's compliance with 

the rad NESHAPs, and all of the audits found 

problems with data collection and reporting 

concerns. 

 We specifically asked for the 

auditors to hire specialists in QA/QC -- 

quality assurance/quality control. That was 

not done, despite many concerns about QA and 

QC. The first audit found that LANL was out 

of compliance with the rad NESHAPs. 

 So I am going to give you some 

examples, and what I would like to do is 

submit some written comments based on the 

presentation. 

 So one of the big concerns was the 

episodic releases from the Lab. As you know, 

the regulations allow the Department of Energy 

to average the doses over a year period of 

time, but one of the outstanding questions was 
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the dose received by a jogger going past a 

facility such as TA-18 when they were 

operating the reactors, driving past 54 on a 

bicycle or going past an open detonation, an 

open burn site, a prescribed burn, and whether 

somebody was going to receive their 10-

millirem dose through one exposure, not 

averaged over the entire year, because of the 

possibility of a Pu-238 particle getting into 

somebody's lungs as a result of one of these 

releases from the Laboratory, and because you 

could get your 10-millirem dose from one 

particle of Pu-238. 

 So that was an outstanding issue. 

So there is a great need to look at the 

environmental doses more carefully. 

 One of the issues that we raised 

during the audits was the use of the exotics 

at the Laboratory, and the list was much more 

extensive than what was presented here today. 

 We suggest that you ask for -- what 

we understand is that LANL actually did 
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emission standards for the exotics, and there 

might have been dozens of them. I am thinking 

there were 60 to 80 that they actually 

calculated in order to comply with Appendix E 

of the Subpart H requirements. 

 So I would ask this board to ask 

specifically for the work done by Keith 

Jacobson with the Meteorology and Air Quality 

Group, who actually did those calculations, so 

that you have a list of what LANL's concerns 

were with regard to the exotics. 

 During the audits, we heard many 

anecdotal stories about how workers, at the 

direction of facility managers, were told to 

take contaminated items, specifically tritiumcontaminated items, to put them in plastic 

bags and to take them outside and release the 

tritium into the air. This example 

demonstrates how exposures were not recorded 

at LANL. 

 Another example would be in 2003 or 

2004, CCNS witnessed a LANL worker changing 
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data on the AIRNET radionuclide emission air 

quality database without noting why the data 

was changed. When asked, they explained that 

it was an outlier, that it was an exceptional 

value and, therefore, it shouldn't be in the 

database, and so they just changed the number 

without indicating why the number was changed 

in the database, even though there was a 

column available for that. 

 Another example is, shortly after a 

NEWNET station, which measures gamma emissions 

in real time at the Laboratory -- there was a 

NEWNET station located at the entrance to TA54, which is the low level dump, and the dump 

for a lot of other things. There was a 

detection of a leak in a transport container 

going into TA-54, and after that detection was 

talked about in public meetings, the NEWNET 

station was removed. 

 Another issue was the calibration 

facility at TA-3, that there were very high 

levels that were recorded on the NEWNET 
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station, and finally because of public 

concern, the Lab removed that source from TA3, because the workers were walking by at 

lunchtime and in the morning. You know, it 

was readily available near the CMR building. 

 Another issue was that, when we 

were discussing the open burning of high 

explosives and other contaminants, RCRA 

contaminants and other materials used by the 

Laboratory, we looked at the 1999 site-wide 

environmental impact statement to look at what 

kind of worker exposure would result from 

prescribed burns and open burning. 

 When we questioned the Laboratory 

about -- when we presented that data, kind of 

similar to what was presented earlier, we were 

told, oh, those numbers are wrong. That is a 

common occurrence for us, is that we bring DOE 

data forward, we bring LANL data forward, and 

then we are told that the data is no good. 

 So probably 95 percent of the time 

that we do that, we are told that the data is 
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no good. I will provide you with specific 

examples and the correspondence and the emails, just so that you have more basis to be 

able to say, you know, LANL is maybe not 

providing this with the correct data. 

 So for these reasons and many more, 

I want to let you know that CCNS and a 

coalition of groups called Communities for 

Clean Water filed a law suit against DOE for 

violations of the Clean Water Act at LANL, 

specifically focused about storm water 

discharges in the L.A. Pueblo Canyon. 

 We are in the process of going 

through the scheduling order and the discovery 

for that part. But we have been called on to 

address these issues at the Laboratory through 

the citizen supervisions, because the 

regulators aren't doing enough, as far as we 

are concerned, in terms of stopping the 

migration of contamination. 

 So in conclusion, we are very 

concerned about workers who will be conducting 
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clean-up activities at LANL under the New 

Mexico Environment Department/DOE/LANL order 

on consent, the recently released individual 

storm water permit for LANL which was issued 

by the EPA just last week, and also the 

renewal of the draft hazardous waste permit, 

and possible accelerated clean-up under the 

stimulus plan. 

 We must prevent exposure before it 

happens. We need to protect our workers, and 

we need to ensure that the workers are 

properly trained and have the ability to voice 

concerns, if there is a dangerous situation. 

We can't continue to repeat this process. 

 So, therefore, we urge the Advisory 

Board to do more study of this data and the 

data quality at LANL. Thank you very much. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you, Joni. 

 Next is [Identifying Information 

Redacted} -- it looks like [Identifying 

Information Redacted} -- and I can't read the 

rest of it. [Identifying Information 
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Redacted}? Any [Identifying Information 

Redacted} here that want to speak? Sometimes 

people sign this thinking they are signing the 

registration roster. So I will skip over that 

one then. Knut Ringen is on the list next. 

 MR. RINGEN: Good evening. I am 

Knut Ringen. I work with the National 

Building Trades, and I am the Science Advisor 

for the CPWR, Center for Construction Research 

and Development, and you have my disclosures 

from previous presentations, and I thank you 

for entertaining me once again. 

 I just want to make three quick 

points here -- three. The first is with 

regard to the LANL petition and NIOSH's 

evaluation of it. I believe it to be fatally 

flawed and should be rejected for one reason 

alone. 

 If you look at it through the 

petitioners or in terms of occupational 

classes, you will see that the vast majority 

of them are construction trades occupations. 
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NIOSH has agreed after years of discussions 

finally that they need to follow a different 

model for construction trades workers than for 

other workers. 

 Yet in this petition it has not 

taken into account this in any way that I can 

see, including it is not referenced in it that 

NIOSH has an OTIB dealing specifically with 

construction workers that certainly should 

have been considered. 

 I am a little embarrassed to have 

to point that out, because it is such a basic 

thing, and if nothing else, it should 

certainly lead to an SC&A evaluation of the 

petition. 

 The second issue has to do with how 

NIOSH deals with SECs in general. Lots of 

great points have been made here today. On 

the one hand, NIOSH is going out to workers 

and saying we want you to file SEC petitions. 

 On the other hand, NIOSH says we can conduct 

a dose reconstruction under any circumstances; 
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we are going to knock down that SEC petition. 

 That is what has happened here. It 

has happened at Savannah River, and in both 

cases something interesting takes place. NIOSH 

will say, you petitioner, have a valid claim 

here; but, gee, we can develop a method to 

deal with that and, therefore, we are going to 

decline the petition. 

 You heard today about the exotic 

nuclides, and NIOSH said, oh, yes, that's 

right, but no problem; presto, we have OTIB62, a cold nuclide extrapolation model that we 

can apply and figure out how to give people 

dose for these nuclides that they don't have 

adequate dose records on. 

 This is leading to enormous 

frustration among the workers, and it 

certainly isn't what Congress intended. I 

know that for a fact, because I worked closely 

with Congress on including Amchitka as an SEC 

site in the original legislation, and nowhere 

then did we think maybe we would use an 
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extrapolation model or something like that in 

the place of dose reconstruction that would be 

okay, and Congress didn't either, I can assure 

you. 

 The third issue I want to mention 

is our general concern about the program. Dr. 

Poston, I was interested to hear you say 

earlier today that you were surprised at the 

duration that it has taken. We hear this form 

our members all over the country. 

 It is the first time in my history 

of just about 40 years with NIOSH that we have 

had complaints about NIOSH from workers 

everywhere, something that is destroying or 

certainly hurting NIOSH's credibility 

enormously and causing us a great deal of 

difficulty. 

 In light of the new administration, 

Pete Stafford who is the Safety and Health 

Director for the building trades, went and met 

with Christine Branche, who is the Acting 

Director of NIOSH, last week and expressed our 
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concerns and the concerns of our members, the 

frustrations that they express about the 

program. 

 She asked that we send a letter 

expressing that so that NIOSH could review it 

and respond to it. Tomorrow I will give you 

that letter. The copy shop was closed 

tonight. I will give you that letter, and I 

will ask you to include it in the record, and 

you will get Christine Branche's response also 

for the record. So you will hear both sides 

of it. 

 In the conclusions to that, we 

asked that NIOSH consider a number of things. 

First, an objective review of the operation 

and staffing of this program. Maybe it is 

time for a change. Maybe it is time for some 

new people and new thinking in the operations 

here. 

 The second thing is we would like 

NIOSH to stop trying to do dose 

reconstructions where dose records are 
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deficient. Give up on this. Accept that, if 

the dose records are deficient, refer people 

to the SEC. 

 The third thing is stop what we 

call the charade of co-worker extrapolations 

or extrapolation and other estimates of 

missing dose. Simply refer those cases where 

that is at issue to the SEC. 

 In addition, we would like NIOSH to 

consider replacing ORAU as the contractor for 

this with an independent academic based 

centers to do the dose reconstructions. 

 We would also like you to establish 

and enforce truly credible conflict of 

interest policies. NIOSH says that in these 

SEC petition evaluations it is not using 

anyone with a conflict, and that may be true 

under their policy, but it is not true in 

reality. 

 In addition, we would like you to 

develop protocols to review more clearly 

statistically for the various occupational 
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groups who have come through this program what 

the record is of approvals of denials under 

the dose reconstruction process. 

 Finally, we ask that NIOSH review 

the membership of the Advisory Board, maybe 

get some new blood in here. Some of you have 

been around for a long time, and God bless you 

for your service, but we would like them to 

take a look at this, again objectively. 

 Those are our requests to NIOSH, 

and I want you to know about them. The 

Building Trades and the metal trades together 

have also requested hearings in both the 

Senate and the House on the oversight of this 

program. Thank you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. 

Michael Romeo -- Romero. 

 MR. ROMERO: I wish it was Romeo. 

My testimony is going to be short and sweet. A 

lot of topics were discussed here by Andrew 

and everybody else, but I just want to focus 

on one certain area, and it is basically from 
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the evaluation report, specifically on page 

20. You don't have to go to it. I will read 

it again. 

 The feasibility of reconstructing 

bounding internal radiation doses. This 

evaluation concludes that internal dose 

reconstruction for members of the proposed 

class is feasible based on: (1) using in vitro 

and in vivo bioassay data for monitored 

workers; and (2) using co-worker data to bound 

intakes to unmonitored workers. 

 The other statements in this 

evaluation report I would like to challenge 

here, and I will do the challenging here 

shortly, greater than 75 percent of workers 

were monitored from 1976 to 2005, and that 

basically NIOSH believes there is good control 

of exotic radionuclides. 

 We have heard that topic here 

plenty of times tonight, as well as there is 

complete hazards analysis performed, and 

complete health physics checklists filled out. 
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 That means correctly and cover, if you will, 

all the areas where workers have worked. 

 I am going to read to you -- and I 

know Andrew went over this a little bit -- 

some excerpts from the Tiger Team report in 

1991. I think this is important, because it 

brings out poor monitoring practice that 

occurred from '91 and in the past, obviously. 

 I know Andrew mentioned the '97 

PAAA report as well. So there is, if you 

will, recurrences of these poor monitoring 

practices. 

 Basically, what I want to get 

across here is that the evaluation report can 

say to all of us that they can do a good job 

at basically modeling any type of nuclide that 

is out there, but it goes back to the premise 

of do they know where all the workers were 

working -- my father, for example, who is 

deceased and passed away of cancer. 

 Just like was mentioned here, a lot 

of these workers did not work in one specific 
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area. They worked in multiple areas. A lot 

of workers were first responders. A lot of 

workers worked in areas where monitoring 

wasn't initially a requirement, and I will 

read some of those excerpts. 

 From the Tiger Team report, page 4-

81, finding, DOE 54.11 requires issuing of a 

dosimeter to anyone with the potential to 

receive greater than 100 millirem annual 

effective dose to the whole body, 5 rem to 

either the skin or any extremity, or 1.5 rem 

to the lens of the eyes. Because the minimum 

detectable limit for the LANL whole body 

dosimetry is 10 millirem, annual missed dose 

as large as 108 millirem is possible with 

monthly dosimeter exchanges. 

 That is pretty significant. 

 Page 4-81 of the Tiger Team report, 

finding, whole body dosimeters are worn either 

directly attached to the outer clothing on a 

necklace. When the dosimeter is on a 

necklace, the actual position of the dosimeter 
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can be 1-10 centimeters from the outer 

clothing. No studies have been made to show 

that the dose measured at the surface of the 

body is the same as the dose at a distance of 

10 centimeters. 

 This is a pretty common practice. 

 Page 4-183 of the Tiger Team 

report, finding, at the firing sites, 

including TA-36 and TA-15, LANL personnel are 

not evaluated for inclusion in the bioassay 

program. Not all personnel at the plutonium 

and depleted uranium facilities are evaluated 

for participation in the bioassay program to 

comply with GOE-5480.11. 

 Page 4-184 of the Tiger Team 

report, findings, the detectors of Ludlum 214 

fixed instruments -- these are the hand and 

monitors when you are exiting a contamination 

area -- are interchanged without recalibration 

or response testing. The backlog in 

calibrating Ludlum 214 hand and foot monitors 

resulted in a large number of instruments that 
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were out of calibration. Hand and foot 

monitors that are past the calibration date 

are not placed out of service, as required by 

LANL AR3-1 procedure, because sufficient 

number of replacement instruments are not 

available. 

 Page 4-185 of the Tiger Team 

report, finding, radiation protection 

instruments are not being returned for 

calibration and maintenance, as required by 

ANSI N323 and Health Physics Measurements 

Group procedures. 

 So again, I challenge the 

evaluation report in saying that greater than 

75 percent of monitored people -- monitored 

employees they have data for, because, number 

one, the data they have is probably not all 

representation for the area they are in or the 

type of radionuclides that they were exposed 

to; and also that would challenge that they 

have complete hazard analysis performed, 

because it goes back to the premise of 
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basically these workers were deployed to 

various sites, and it wasn't until later on, 

as you read from the Tiger Team report, that 

some of these sites, these personnel were not 

even in bioassay programs. 

 So from my standpoint, the way I 

see it from the last SEC petition that went 

all the way to December 31, 1975, did 

something miraculous happen after 1975 that 

monitoring practices got better, people 

started following procedures better, they 

developed more procedures? They just woke up 

overnight and decided, wow, I think our 

workers are getting exposed over here at the 

explosive sites? I don't think so. 

 So you guys really need to consider 

this. Thank you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you, 

Michael. I just want to give everyone a heads 

up. We have yet nine additional individuals 

to speak. So I just remind you again to be as 

terse as you are able to and still make your 
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points. Wayne Knox is next. Wayne, are you 

still here? 

 MR. KNOX: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I hear a voice. 

Oh, there he is. Okay. 

 MR. KNOX: Thanks very much. I 

want to pass this out right quick. I will 

make it very short. 

 I am an operational health 

physicist, and I have heard a lot of stories 

told tonight about what went on in the real 

world, and I fully endorse. 

 We were responsible for getting 

work done. We did that work, oftentimes 

without regard to all of the elegant models 

and without regard to all of the well designed 

programs and well worded procedures. 

 In general, I want to support the 

fact that the data quality and the validity of 

that data is bad. Very simply stated, that 

bad data is now inputted into what I consider 

to be a bad model, IREP. It is an enigma. 
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 If we were to take a quick look at 

what the regulation says we are supposed to do 

in terms of calculating the probability of 

causation, I presented it on the first page 

here. The probability of causation based upon 

the regulation is the radiation risk divided 

by the sum of the rad risk plus the base risk. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Hold on just a 

minute. We got somebody on the line that is 

interrupting. 

 MR. KATZ: People on the telephone, 

would you please mute your phone. Use *6 if 

you don't have a mute button. Thank you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Sorry, Wayne, for 

that interruption. Thank you. Go ahead. 

 MR. KNOX: We can look at this 

equation and just working within the context 

of the regulation say that, well, the cutoff 

point of a compensation threshold is the 50 

percent, which is the same as one-half. So 

all you have to do now is to say that this POC 

is equal to one-half. You can solve that 
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equation, and it turns out that the rad risk 

is equal to the base risk, is the cutoff 

point. 

 That is, if the rad risk is greater 

than the base risk, you win. Otherwise, go 

home. It is a very simple process. 

 What it really means -- and I am 

not so sure people understand what that means; 

that is, the rad risk equal to the base risk. 

 It means that the total risk of cancer is 

double. That person has twice the risk of 

dying from a particular cancer illness, based 

upon what the criterion that has been 

established in the regulation. 

 Now I have a question to ask you 

and the other people. If I were to tell you 

that I would give you 150,000 bucks for your 

risk of dying from cancer to be doubled, would 

you take me up on that deal? I don't think 

anyone would. 

 So number one, I think the 

standards are a bit high, even though we say 
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it is client friendly. It is not very -- by 

the way, instead of claimant I use client, 

because we are the clients. 

 If you were to next look at the way 

NIOSH defines the assigned risk, and we say 

that the assigned risk is equivalent roughly 

as the probability of causation -- if you look 

in the NIOSH documentation, it says that the 

excess risk as defined here is solely due to 

radiation. 

 It says that the relative risk is 

equal to the total risk of exposure divided by 

the risk due to background. Now what all of 

this means is that, if you take their 

definition and put it into the equation for 

the assigned risk and set this equal to onehalf, you end up with a tripling effect. 

 That is, you have three times the 

risk of dying from cancer if you were to use 

that assigned risk model. 

 Now I question that, and I did call 

some cognizant officials from NIOSH and NCI 
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and other people and said, do you really mean 

this, because that is not the way we really 

defined the relative risk. And they said, 

absolutely, we have looked at this; we have 

had all of these people evaluate this model 

and the equations; they are correct. 

 I went back again and said, are you 

sure? Do you understand what you are saying 

is a tripling effect? They agreed to look at 

it, and they came back to me and said, oops, 

you are right. You sort of misinterpreted 

what we meant by solely due to radiation; you 

misinterpreted it to mean solely due to 

radiation, and we didn't mean it like that. 

You misinterpreted, and also where we say 

total risk of exposure, you misinterpreted 

that to mean total risk of exposure when you 

should have interpreted it to mean the total 

risk of radiation exposure plus the 

background. 

 I said, wait, hold it. You told me 

that your people had evaluated this now, and I 
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can't believe that now you are telling me that 

perhaps I am right. And I said, yes, okay, 

I'll agree that then I am right, and maybe 

your model is flawed. Maybe this is why, when 

I do the calculation based upon accepted 

means, I come up with people passing, and IREP 

denies them. 

 I have been pursuing them, trying 

to get them to perform a validation and 

verification of the IREP system, and we can't 

somehow get it done. We need to have a 

totally independent validation and 

verification of IREP, and we need to have full 

disclosure of what is happening here. 

 People get compensation. They get 

medical care, if their risk is twice the 

normal risk of cancer. 

 I am going to shut up. I have some 

other things, but I know we got to go. I will 

see you tomorrow, though. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you, Wayne. 

 Let's now hear from [Identifying 
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Information Redacted}. [Identifying 

Information Redacted}, are you here? 

 Okay. Steve Biernacki. 

 MR. BIERNACKI: I will submit this, 

and I will say a few words. 

 Dr. Ziemer, members of the Board 

and fellow workers at Los Alamos. I just want 

to share with you my story. Briefly, my name 

is Steve Biernacki. I worked at Los Alamos in 

'81 and '82. I believe it was in TA-53 

mentioned tonight. 

 Ironically, I was one of those 

carpenters that they were talking about 

earlier, but I worked and built a pump house 

right next to a hot area, and it so happened 

that it had a sign there that said high 

radioactive area. But in those days, 

contractors were not given badges, nor was the 

inspector there, I might add. 

 All the inspectors had badges, but 

they were not on site. So using them as a 

model would not be equal to the time spent 
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adjacent to a high radiation area where you 

are actually digging in the dirt adjacent to 

that site. 

 I never thought much about it, 

didn't even give it a second thought. There 

was no emphasis put on radiation at the time, 

but 10 years later I went to a doctor and had 

been sick. I was normally healthy my whole 

life, never sick hardly a day in my life. 

 He said, boy, you've got radiation. 

He said, you've got leukemia. I said, well, 

what's that? He said, have you ever worked 

around radiation? I said, well, I just 

happened to work in Los Alamos, but he said, 

well, your odds of getting leukemia are one in 

100,000 unless you've worked around radiation. 

 Wouldn't have thought anything 

about it, but I was one of the fortunate ones. 

 I had a [Identifying Information Redacted} 

who had the same type of bone marrow as 

myself. Went in, got the bone marrow 

transplant, thought the story was over. 
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Didn't even pursue it. 

 A few years down the road, I came 

up with liver cancer, and that was just about 

three years ago. Come to find out, I had 

carcinoid tumors of the liver, and they had, 

in fact, eaten up the heart valve, set up 

carcinoid syndrome in the heart valve. 

 The Mayo Clinic told me that, in 

fact, I would have to go and get a bypass 

surgery and new valves put in before they 

could give me a liver transplant. Went up to 

the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. They 

gave me a new heart valve, a couple of them, 

pulmonary and tricuspid. 

 Came back down to the Mayo Clinic 

in Phoenix, Arizona, and they gave me half of 

my [Identifying Information Redacted} liver. 

While they were doing that, they checked me 

out. They paid pretty close attention, and 

they said, oh, and by the way, we spotted some 

spots on your lungs, too, and we want to keep 

a close watch on those. 
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 Now I am one of the 13,000 of the 

reports that Laurie said earlier that she got 

outside the door. She said, we got those out 

the door. I am one of those statistics. 

 Now not many people here today 

focused on that story, but every one of those 

13,000 probably has a story similar to that, 

but I found out something when I came to this 

meeting today. 

 I found out that some of those are 

not as fortunate as I. In fact, those are 

their loved ones testifying before you today. 

In fact, they didn't make it. 

 With that said, I know in the 

essence of time, I just want to speak for 

those 13,000 who got put out the door. In the 

last page of my report -- I was going to read 

it, like the rest of the people here, but I 

just want to say that, on my report, you go 

back to the second to the last page; the 

report does not state the location of my work 

around the radioactive mound in which I 
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worked. 

 It was not in the pathway of the 

pipeline that I had dug. The report does not 

mention the radioactive material that was in 

the mound or in the other areas marked with 

high radiation signage. The report only 

states general environment. 

 I don't believe I worked in the 

general environment, because the signage I 

worked around was marked and had contaminated 

soil. I was an unmonitored employee, because 

I was a carpenter for a contractor, not 

because I was less likely to have routinely 

received significant levels of external 

radiation. 

 What was the technical area I 

worked in? I've tried to go back. I have 

tried to go back and show them. It is ironic 

about this. I can't get in. I cannot -- you 

talk about a transparent process. They used 

some words like that, accountability and 

transparent. 
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 I can't get in to show people where 

that pile was, but I will tell you something. 

 If you go on a flyover on GIS, they've 

removed that pile. Now would they remove the 

pile if it wasn't radioactive or if it wasn't 

causing a problem? I don't think so. I think 

they removed it for a reason. I think the 

pile was radioactive, and I think it was 

removed for safety. 

 I think people have a documentation 

of that pile. I cannot get that documentation 

to prove that. I cannot show you that 

adjacent to that pump station was a mound of 

radioactive plutonium or whatever it was. 

There is no way for me to find out that 

information. I am blocked out. Security gave 

a speech here today about that transparency. 

It does not exist. I work at a college. I'm 

the Director of Physical Plant at a college. 

I cannot get in to find out that through any 

information act or anything. I have not been 

able to even set foot on that property. 
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 If, as construction workers, we 

were not required to wear badges, both out in 

the woods and in the compound, during 

construction, we never submitted our urine 

sampling, nasal smears, personal air 

monitoring, whole body counts or test counts, 

how can my exposure to radiation fields or any 

incidental exposure be calculated using 

monitored employee dosage? 

 They said to me today, we are going 

to create a model that stands beside somebody 

who was actually monitored. You cannot do 

that, because it is not accurate. It is not a 

quality way to measure it. 

 There were no monitored employees 

in the construction site except for inspectors 

who came maybe once a day, if they came at 

all. At no time did I work hand in hand with 

any monitored employee on my job site. 

 What is the difference between 

typical ambient air samples and breathing in a 

mix of radioactive dust particles right beside 
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a marked dump site? Let me explain that, 

because I did ask the questions to these. 

 We basically have in the system 

that we have right now -- I don't know if you 

understand this, but with Oakland University 

of Kentucky you have a subcontractor who is 

subbing out to physicists. 

 I have had those conversations. 

They no more know about my story or my 

workplace than the man in the moon. They are 

given a set of documents, and they are given a 

process, and I get the same dosage 

reconstruction as a secretary who worked in an 

office, and ambient air temperature. 

 They didn't tell me where they 

monitored the air from. They didn't do 

anything like that. So you can see that the 

dose reconstruction is very important. 

 I was working in dust clouds and 

construction excavation near contaminated 

sites, and not in the typical New Mexico air 

where there was air sampling on the job, and 
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there was none. There was never any air 

sampling on my project. 

 I want to thank you for taking the 

time to listen to my testimony. I pursue this 

claim, because I believe that somehow during 

my short time I worked at Los Alamos Lab I 

encountered a unique blend of radiation, and 

it somehow found a home in my body. 

 Nothing else makes sense. My 

personal doctor told me my odds of getting 

this type of leukemia was one in 100,000, had 

I not worked at Los Alamos. 

 My daughter is in med school here 

in UNM right here. She is in her fourth year. 

 She tells me that I am in the less than one 

percentile for survival, and I have to stay 

alive to get her through medical school. 

She's got five more years. 

 Please consider my statements and 

questions in context with Section 00109, 

Petition Dose Reconstruction for less than 250 

aggregate work days and the monitoring program 
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at LANL for the ingestion or inhalation of 

radioactive particles in the air due to 

resuspension of buried radioactive waste, 

ground contamination, and lack of internal 

monitoring data for construction workers. 

 Thank you. Appreciate it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 

much. Our next speaker will be [Identifying 

Information Redacted}. [Identifying 

Information Redacted}? Is [Identifying 

Information Redacted} here yet? 

 Okay. Marcella -- looks like N-ag-a-o. Oh, okay, close enough. 

 MS. NOGAR: Thank you very much for 

taking the time, Advisory Board, to listen to 

us. Marlene and I were asked to come and tell 

you about our husbands, their work, and our 

claim. 

 Our National Labs are very picky 

about who they select to do their research. 

Selections are based on honesty, integrity, 

intelligence, ability, commitment, and 
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allegiance to the United States in their 

mission to protect its citizens. 

 Scientists like my husband who are 

on the cutting edge in their field are sought 

out and hired for our nation's National Labs. 

They come to Los Alamos National Laboratory, 

and they do research. They do what they are 

told to do, and they work in the buildings 

that they are assigned. They never publicize 

or talk openly about their work, even with 

their spouses. They have signed an oath that 

they will honor until they die. 

 In my case, I learned about my 

husband's research when he was given the award 

Laboratory Fellow at the age of 44. I learned 

even more two years later at his funeral when 

many of his colleagues told me about his 

contributions to the Lab, his work and his 

research. 

 The words they spoke to me of 

protactinium, americium, plutonium, uranium 

were familiar to me, because I had seen those 
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words in his lab notebooks, and I had heard 

those words in hushed conversations with Dr. 

Charles Miller. 

 While I knew that he was performing 

experiments using lasers on the above 

radioactive materials, I never knew that the 

work that he was asked to do was extremely 

dangerous or that the experiments that he was 

performing using those materials with lasers 

would contribute to his death. 

 My husband completed the work for 

his PhD in 1976 at the University of Utah. He 

completed a National Science Foundation postdoctoral position at UC-Berkley's Chemistry 

Department with research director [Identifying 

Information Redacted}. 

 In 1977 he accepted an Assistant 

Professor of Chemistry position in Lincoln at 

the University of Nebraska. In 1980 he was 

offered and accepted a staff position with Los 

Alamos Scientific Laboratory. 

 One of the first people that my 
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husband worked with was Dr. Charles Miller. 

He was a young post-doc who had recently 

graduated from Stanford University. My 

husband had been given an assignment, and he 

needed a person to work with him. Charlie fit 

the bill. 

 Through the years they worked hand 

in hand, researching, planning, conducting 

experiments and reporting results through 

publications. They worked together in the 

same lab. What one did, the other did, too. 

They worked side by side in the basement of 

wing 5 of the Chemical and Metallurgy Research 

building, CMR. Later, the CMR building was 

completely shut down during the Tiger Team 

days, because it was so contaminated, and that 

was their lab. 

 Nick and Charlie used ion dye, 

argon, yag, carbon dioxide and krypton lasers 

to analyze radioactive materials for 

experiments that would leak with caustic dyes 

that are now considered too dangerous to 
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health, and are no longer used. 

 They cleaned up the spills, and 

they continued working. They analyzed 

isotopes and radioactive materials with those 

lasers, and they used benzene, DMSO, and many 

other chemicals in their lab. 

 Benzene is known to exasperate the 

effects of radiation in the body. DMSO is 

known to speed the absorption of radiation 

into the tissues, bones, nervous system and 

brain at a rapid rate. 

 In the early Eighties, no records 

were kept of the amount of radiation Charlie 

and Nick received while working with lasers 

and radioactive materials, but they were 

definitely working with it. My husband did 

not wear a dosimeter badge, and this is 

confirmed through the LASL/LANL medical 

records. 

 Nick and Charlie also developed the 

methodology and analyzed materials retrieved 

from underground nuclear tests at the Nevada 
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Test Site. There are no records of the 

radiation they received doing this work in the 

early Eighties. 

 Nick remained as Dr. Miller's 

mentor from day one as a post-doctoral 

position throughout his position as staff 

member at the laboratory. 

 My husband conducted much research 

in the following years. He was also a Deputy 

Group Leader and was part of the Tiger Team. 

He had to seek, identify, report and try to 

control workers' exposure to radiation in the 

CMR building. 

 My husband was truly a gifted 

scientist. I would be more than happy to give 

you a list of all his research, including over 

100 publications and papers and the large list 

of his accomplishments, including being LANL's 

youngest Laboratory Fellow. However, I feel 

that it is his research and exposure with 

radioactive materials and caustic chemicals in 

his early years of research that caused his 
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death. 

 In July of 1994, my husband was 

diagnosed with cancer. It was a rare cancer 

called Leiomyosarcoma. He died two years 

later in August of '96 at the age of 46. 

 In September 2000 Dr. Charles 

Miller was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He 

went to New York University Medical Center to 

have the tumor removed. The Tumor Board at 

NYU said he had a glioblastoma brain tumor, 

which is caused by radiation. They concluded 

that his cancer was caused by radiation from 

his work. 

 Charlie died on February 4, 2001, 

two weeks after his 47th birthday. The 

American Cancer Society lists the cause of 

glioblastoma brain tumors as radiation. 

 When the Energy Employees 

Compensation Program was initiated by 

Congress, I filed a claim under Part B. NIOSH 

did a dose reconstruction, and my claim was 

denied. 
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 I was told that it was highly 

unlikely that Nick's cancer was caused by 

radiation that he received from his work. I 

was also told that my husband's cancer was not 

covered under Part B. 

 My husband's cancer was in the 

primary retroperitoneal and portions of the 

secondary retroperitoneal, which included the 

ascending and descending colon, which is the 

large and small intestine, and his ureter. 

This is from the UCLA pathology report. 

 I understand that NIOSH is now 

reevaluating my husband's case. I do not know 

if they have information from the Nevada Test 

Site, if they are considering the location of 

my husband's cancer, if they have considered 

that benzene exacerbates the effects of 

radiation to the body or that DMSO rapidly 

penetrates radiation to the tissues, bones, 

nervous system, and brain. 

 I don't know if they have 

considered the fact that the doses my husband 
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received were big doses in short periods of 

time, and they weren't small doses spread over 

long periods of time. 

 There is much missing data that was 

not considered, even though he would have been 

exposed to radiation during those periods. 

According to Memorial Sloan-Kettering cancer 

researchers, factors that have been associated 

with soft tissue sarcomas include prior 

exposure to radiation. The Mayo Clinic website 

lists radiation exposure associated with 

sarcomas. The American Cancer Society lists 

ionizing radiation as a risk factor for 

sarcomas. 

 I would like to know which current 

research and resources NIOSH is using to 

determine whether my husband's cancer was 

caused by the radioactive materials that he 

was using. 

 Has anyone at NIOSH assessed my 

husband's classified lab notebooks? Has 

anyone read all of his research to understand 
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what he was doing and, therefore, understand 

the amount of ionized radiation he was exposed 

to? Do they know how many people in the 

United States work with ionized radiation? 

 I think that you will agree that 

very few people who are exposed to ionized 

radioactive materials of that type -- I'm 

sorry. 

 I think that you will agree that 

very few people conduct this type of 

specialized research and, because there are so 

few people who are exposed to ionized 

radioactive materials, that type of cancer is 

equally small. 

 In 2008 I filed under Part E 

Chemical Exposure, and as of this date I have 

not received a written reply, despite numerous 

calls to the Seattle office. You might find 

it interesting that I drove Dr. Miller's 

widow, Marlene, to the Espanola office, and we 

filed our identical claims. Her claim under 

Part E was awarded in December 2008. 
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 Our children were very young when 

my husband became ill. They watched him 

suffer for two years. He was a wonderful 

father, and they have missed him so much. 

 I have lost the love of my life. 

It hurts to think that he has missed so much 

of their lives. It hurts to think that my 

husband's work at LANL caused his death. It 

hurts to think that he was selected to work at 

LANL because he was very good at what he did. 

 It hurts to think that, even though 

our country needed him, and he said yes, NIOSH 

and the Energy Employees Occupational Illness 

Compensation Program continues to say no. 

 I thank you for your time. Thank 

you for the time that you give up from your 

families to help us. Thank you for listening. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 

much. Marlene, did you have additional 

comments? 

 MS. MILLER: Yes, I do. Thank you. 

My husband and best fried, Charles M. Miller, 
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died at the early age of 47. Then to know 

that it was his job that caused the cancer 

that killed him and there is nothing I can do 

about it. The greatest travesty of all is to 

be denied compensation, because NIOSH claims 

he did not receive enough radiation to cause 

the cancer that the American Cancer Society 

defines as a radiation caused brain cancer. 

 Charlie worked at Hanford Reactor 

two summers while he was an undergraduate 

student at Washington State University 

majoring in physical chemistry. No records 

were kept as to the work he did at Hanford or 

how much radiation he received. However, it 

is well known that there had been many 

releases from Hanford, and that the Hanford 

reactor is of the same design as the Chernobyl 

reactor. 

 After Charlie completed his work 

for his PhD in 1980 at Stanford University, he 

went to Los Alamos and began his career in the 

nuclear weapons program with Nicholas Nogar, 
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an equally bright and highly respected young 

scientist. 

 They became best friends and worked 

side by side in the contaminated basement of 

the Chemical and Metallurgy Research Building, 

the CMR building. The CMR building was 

completely shut down when the Tiger Team was 

at LANL, because of its contamination. 

 Charlie and Nick used lasers with 

caustic dyes that are no longer used. They 

analyzed isotopes and radioactive materials 

using benzene, DMSO, and many other chemicals. 

Benzene is known to rapidly increase the 

effects of radiation in the body. DMSO is 

known to speed the absorption of radiation 

into the tissue, bones, nervous system, and 

brain at a rapid rate. This information has 

been scientifically proven at Livermore 

National Laboratory. 

 It was not uncommon for their 

lasers to spew caustic dyes all over the room 

and on them. Other accidents and spills, 
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including the radioactive materials occurred. 

They cleaned up the spills and continued 

working. 

 They did not have dosimeter badges, 

and records were not kept of the radiation 

they received. Marcella, Nick's wife, reports 

of one incident when Nick came home with his 

lab coat dissolved to shreds by an explosion. 

 Charlie was there as well. 

 In addition to numerous experiments 

involving benzene, DMSO, chemicals, isotopes 

and the whole gamut of radioactive materials, 

they developed the methodology and analyzed 

materials retrieved from underground nuclear 

tests at the Nevada Test Site. 

 There are no records for the 

radiation they received doing this work in the 

early Eighties. In addition to working at the 

CMR building and T-48, they worked at several 

other sites doing this type of work at the 

Lab. 

 Later Charlie became the lead 
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diagnostician for the Nuclear Weapons Program 

at Los Alamos. He would go to the Nevada Test 

Site for the underground tests. He worked 

with the Diamond Drillers to retrieve samples 

of the test. 

 He would sleep in the shack near 

where the drillers were working through the 

night so they could get him up to test the 

samples they brought to the surface to see if 

they contained the necessary materials to be 

returned to Los Alamos for further analyses. 

Charlie then packaged up this material and 

flew it back to Los Alamos on the Ross. 

 Nick died from stomach cancer in 

1996 at the age of 46. He left a wife and 

three children. At the time Nick was sick, 

there were 15 cases of this type of stomach 

cancer in the United States, the kind of 

cancer that Nick had. There were 15 cases in 

the United States. Five of those cases were 

in Los Alamos. 

 Charlie was diagnosed with a brain 
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tumor in September of 2000. We went to NYU 

Medical Center to have the tumor removed. The 

Tumor Board said that he had a glioblastoma 

brain tumor, which is caused by radiation. 

They concluded that this cancer was caused by 

the radiation from his work. 

 Charlie died on February 4, 2001, 

two weeks after his 47th birthday. The 

American Cancer Society lists the cause of 

glioblastoma brain tumors as radiation. 

 In the early Eighties, no records 

were kept of the amount of radiation Charlie 

and Nick received, but they were definitely 

working with it. 

 After Charlie died, I was asked by 

a friend who was a LANL attorney if I thought 

Charlie's death was caused by his work, and I 

said yes. I was told not to waste my money 

with a law suit, because LANL would hire 

powerful attorneys, and I wouldn't have a 

chance against them. 

 I was told that LANL would never 
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admit to any responsibility, because there 

were too many illnesses and deaths, and it 

would cost them too much money. This is what 

a Lab attorney told me. 

 When the Energy Employees 

Compensation Program was initiated by 

Congress, I filed under Part B. NIOSH did a 

dose reconstruction, and my claim was denied, 

because they said it was only 24 percent 

likely that Charlie's cancer was caused by 

radiation he received from his work. There 

was no consideration taken that he used 

benzene or DMSO while working with these 

radioactive materials. 

 Then I filed a claim under Part E. 

 The doctors and staff from the Department of 

Labor in Seattle concluded that I should be 

awarded compensation under Part E and that my 

case under Part B should be reopened. 

 At that time, I learned that NIOSH 

obtained only incomplete dose information from 

LANL, no dose information from Hanford, and no 
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dose information from the Nevada Test Site for 

this first dose reconstruction. 

 I obtained the dose information 

from NTS and forwarded it to NIOSH. There was 

no information available from Hanford. After 

the second dose reconstruction, NIOSH said it 

was now only six percent likely that the 

radiation from his work in the DOE complex 

caused his cancer. 

 The records showed that Charlie 

received more than twice as much radiation at 

NTS as was recorded that he received from 

LANL, as stated in the NIOSH findings, and the 

likelihood of radiation causing his cancer 

went from 24 percent down to six percent. 

 So with more than twice the amount 

of recorded radiation exposure, NIOSH now 

claims that it was four times less likely that 

the radiation caused his cancer. 

 There was no consideration for the 

fact that this dose data was incomplete. 

There was no information from Hanford and 
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incomplete information from LANL. Although it 

is scientifically known, it was not considered 

that benzene greatly increases the effects of 

radiation to the body or that DMSO rapidly 

penetrates radiation to the tissue, bones, 

nervous system and brain. 

 It was not considered that the 

doses that Charlie received were in big doses 

over a short period of time and not small 

amounts spread over a long period of time. 

The missing data was not considered, even 

though he would have been exposed to radiation 

during those periods. 

 No two people are exactly the same. 

What may be enough radiation in one person to 

cause cancer might not cause cancer in 

another. 

 I have spoken with people at NIOSH, 

and they just aren't willing to consider any 

of these other factors. To me, there is no 

doubt that Charlie and Nick's cancers were 

caused by their work at LANL or in the DOE 
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complex. 

 They at NIOSH continue to collect 

their paychecks while we only grieve the loss 

of our best friends and husbands. We lose the 

income from their employment and are left to 

beg for $150,000 in compensation. 

 This amount is only a drop in the 

bucket to the value of these men's worth. 

Charlie and Nick would be making more than 

that each year if they were still alive. 

Charlie has been dead for eight years now, and 

he would only be 55 today. 

 Charlie and Nick were highly 

educated young scientists with 10-12 years of 

advanced education at some of this country's 

best universities, and they were assigned to 

do dangerous work in unsafe areas and would be 

earning more than $150,000 annually if they 

were alive today. 

 At the time of his death, Charlie 

was the Program Manager for the weapons 

program. He managed the Weapons Archiving 
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Program and continued to work in the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. Charlie 

loved his country. He served it, and he died 

for it. 

 NIOSH cannot and does not evaluate 

cases justly, because too much data is 

missing, and there are too many variables. 

NIOSH should be eliminated from this process. 

 Thank you so much. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you, 

Marlene, and again for Michelle as well. 

 Next, Peggy Vargas. 

 MS. VARGAS: Good evening. My name 

is Peggy Sue Vargas. I was employed at Los 

Alamos from 1978 to 1996. 

 In 1978 to 1986, I was at Los 

Alamos National Lab as a graphics operator and 

secretary at TA-3, SM-38 where I mainly worked 

in film processing rooms with chemicals, no 

ventilation. No breathing protection. 

 What I want to do is stress and 

emphasize that I worked at many different 
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locations for many years without being 

monitored. From 1986 to 1994, I was employed 

at Los Alamos with the video company, PanAm 

and Johnson Controls. 

 My duties included, yes, 

secretarial work. However, in this time frame 

between 1992 through 1994, while being with 

Johnson Controls, I was a security specialist. 

 I performed random drug dog searches 

throughout various lab sites. These duties 

were performed without being issued TLD badges 

or TLD monitoring or protective clothing. 

 Some of these places included TA-3, 

Sigma and warehouses, salvage yards, machine 

shops, power plants, steam plant, and other 

sites that I cannot specifically recall. I 

was also out in the field inspecting the 

government parking lots for government vehicle 

identifications and for other security 

matters. 

 In 1994 through 1996, I worked for 

a LANL contractor by the name of Volt 
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Contracting Services as a secretary at tech 

sites, which also included TA-35. I handled 

paperwork, yes, and files from various 

locations within the TA-55, including the 

plutonium processing plant. I handled TLD 

badges, exchanged and processed them. The 

last group that I worked for, which was N&T-9, 

through my contractor which was at TA-55 did 

process PU-238. 

 In January of 1996 after being 

extremely sick, I was diagnosed with AML 

leukemia. To this day, I clearly remember 

when my doctor called my home on a Saturday 

evening to inform me that my lab results from 

my blood showed that I was found to have 

leukemia at a very aggressive stage, and for 

me to go to St. Vincent's Hospital in Santa Fe 

and be there by seven in the morning the 

following day, and he indicated to me that I 

would need to start chemotherapy. 

 Oh, how my heart ached for my two 

sons who were only 10 and six at the time, and 
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for my husband, to think what we faced in the 

coming months. 

 After talking with my physician at 

the hospital, he indicated that I indeed 

needed to start chemotherapy immediately, but 

I told him that I was afraid to start chemo 

because of what that also could do to me. 

 He said he understood, but that if 

I would not start chemotherapy, I would have 

at the most three months to live. During this 

period, my doctor told us that, even with 

treatments, it would be a 50/50 chance of my 

survival. 

 My family history shows no history 

of leukemia. After 18 months -- I'm sorry. 

After 18 harsh treatments of chemotherapy and 

11 bone marrow extractions, the leukemia went 

into remission stage. 

 To date, as a result of the harsh 

chemo, I suffer from chronic fibromyalgia, 

along with severe sleep disorder. I am in 

constant pain 90-95 percent of the time, and 
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the pain intensity varies. Even with sleep 

medication, I can't get a full night's rest 

and sleep. 

 All pain medication that has been 

advised by numerous physicians and acupuncture 

therapists, which I do alternative medicine -- 

they have not controlled my pain. Yes, my 

life has drastically changed from when I was 

employed at Los Alamos to now, but my faith 

and love for God will never change. I thank 

God that I am still alive here with my 

husband, my two sons and my family on what is 

my birthday today. 

 Although it is very difficult 

living with daily pain, I won't give up. 

Please do away with dose reconstruction for 

individuals like myself who worked for so many 

years throughout the lab without dose 

monitoring. 

 How can NIOSH even estimate a dose 

for me? My claim also has been denied due to 

the dose reconstruction. The dose 
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reconstruction levels do not meet the minimum 

expectable levels. 

 I graciously thank each and every 

one of you for your time this evening. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And we thank you 

and salute your courageous efforts in 

combating that disease. 

 I think we may have Dr. McKeel on 

the line this evening. Dan McKeel, are you 

with us? 

 DR. McKEEL: Yes, sir, I am. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Oh, good. Hang 

on just a minute. We are going to get the 

phone line near to the microphone here. Okay, 

Dan, please go ahead. 

 DR. McKEEL: Can you hear me all 

right? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Very well. 

 DR. McKEEL: All right. I am Dan 

McKeel. I am the Texas City Chemicals SEC00088 co-petitioner. I would like to note for 

the record the following activities and the 
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relevant timelines pertaining to this 

petition. 

 SEC-00088 was submitted to NIOSH on 

February 10, `07 and was qualified on August 

28, 2007. NIOSH issued their SEC evaluation 

report on January 18, '08, stating that it was 

feasible to reconstruct all internal and 

external doses, including neutron dose. 

 This was despite the fact that 

NIOSH admits that it has zero monitoring data 

and very little process data on the uranium 

extraction operations from phosphate rock that 

was done for the AEC at Texas City in 1952 to 

1956. 

 Despite this feasibility of dose 

reconstruction assertion, NIOSH has completed 

only two of 13 Texas City dose 

reconstructions, and has done none since 

issuing its evaluation report. I wonder why 

this is so, given that NIOSH claims it can 

dose reconstruction at this site. 

 The Board has tasked the Surrogate 
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Data work Group to coordinate this SEC and 

make a recommendation to the full Board. The 

Work Group last convened nine months ago on 

6/9/08. 

 SC&A performed a targeted review of 

SEC-88 and issued a report dated July 18, '08. 

SC&A elected to apply draft Surrogate Data 

Work Group criteria, before approval by the 

full Board as they were instructed to do, to 

the NIOSH evaluation of SEC-88 using Texas 

City as a test case. 

 SC&A also applied the draft 

criteria to Blockson Chemical, SEC-58. The 

full Board has still not approved those draft 

surrogate data criteria. 

 Meanwhile on August 21st of '08, 

NIOSH issued its own surrogate data criteria 

as an 11-page technical report, OCAS-IG-004, 

Rev 0. These NIOSH criteria differ from the 

Board's surrogate data criteria. 

 To my knowledge, these conflicting 

policies have not been resolved nor has there 
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been any attempt to do so. I am asking that 

SC&A should be tasked to review the NIOSH 

surrogate data criteria in OCAS-IG-004. 

 The petitioners have been 

unsuccessful, despite significant efforts, in 

obtaining certain crucial information about 

Texas City from the State of Texas agencies 

about the design and the floor plan of the 

uranium recovery building, including close-up 

photographs of the interior, about the 

production processes, about the AEC recovery 

building and uranium waste permits, about AEC 

imposed safety practices at the plant, and 

about the exact date the uranium recovery 

building was demolished to define the end of 

the residual uranium contamination period. 

 In summary, the petitioner for SEC 

asks the Board to please consider doing the 

following: (a) to finalize its own surrogate 

data criteria; (b) to task SC&A to consider 

the NIOSH surrogate data criteria; (c) to 

compare and resolve the two sets of criteria, 
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the Board's and NIOSH's; and (d), to reapply 

the final criteria to SEC-88 using Texas City 

Chemicals as a test case. 

 In addition, I ask the Board to 

urge NIOSH and Department of Energy to 

increase their efforts to obtain more Recovery 

building and uranium process information for 

the Texas City Chemicals site. 

 Data capture should include 

additional outreach efforts to get these data, 

including asking the Department of Labor to 

invoke Section 7384w of the Act related to 

issuance of subpoenas. 

 Thank you very much, and I 

appreciate the Board's time tonight. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you, Dr. 

McKeel. I want to see if Donna Hand is still 

with us. Donna, you may proceed, if you wish. 

 MS. HAND: I will be real short. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I'm a little 

nervous about all that material you have in 

your hand. 
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 MS. HAND: It's just some homework. 

I'll give everybody homework. 

 My name is Donna Hand. I am with 

the Nuclear Workers of Florida. I am a worker 

advocate, and also authorized representative 

for several claimants. 

 At Savannah River I had did a 

testimony. I told you I would follow up with 

a written statement. That is in the very back 

of this little program here, is the two 

written statements for my testimony then. 

 Again, it will start talking about 

this is a request for a procedure and to 

clarify the law and the Federal regulations as 

pertains to EEOICPA and under the authority of 

the Health and Human Services Secretary to 

define cancers, what are cancers, and the 

required models to be ran for the probability 

of causation guidelines. 

 DOL is required to run the 

uncertainty distribution of the dose 

reconstruction, and they do not use the worst 
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case scenario. If a constant is put into that 

distribution and they did not use the worst 

case scenario, then DOL is required by law and 

the probability of causation guidelines to run 

an uncertainty distribution. That would be a 

long normal. This is not being done. 

 DOL is required to run all models 

of secondary cancers with unknown primary and 

to use the model with the highest percentage. 

 That doesn't mean that they can just 

determine that was the only one. They have to 

use the one with the highest percentage of all 

the secondary or possible secondary cancers. 

 DOL is required to run both models 

of prostate cancer and bladder and all male 

genitalia, and to use the highest percentage 

model, since NIOSH has determined that the 

target organ is the bladder. 

 There is a technical bulletin, 

information that is in the middle of this 

packet that they reduced it to the target 

organ to the bladder, because in the testes 
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you did the shallow dose. Now you are doing 

it to the bladder. However, DOL's probability 

of causation model is still being run by all 

male genitalia. 

 Really, the law requires them to 

run both, and whichever one gets the highest 

dose, that is the one you are to use. 

 OCAS and DOL and required to use 

the claimant information unless refuted by 

substantial relevant evidence. The claimants 

are given the information to them. Unless 

NIOSH and OCAS and Department of Labor can 

find substantial evidence to refute this, they 

are to accept that evidence. 

 OSHA and DOL are required to use 

injection for internal doses when the file of 

record shows cuts, scrapes, et cetera. In 

fact, they have two guidelines they use. The 

internal guidelines mention it as injections. 

Then they also have a technical information 

bulletin called Wounds. Both of these require 

this. But you know, they are denying wounds, 
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and they will not use it in a dose 

reconstruction, because the claimant was not 

monitored. 

 The claimant is not going to be 

monitored for a cut or a wound such as, for 

example, a janitor got cut with classified 

waste cans, but because he was not monitored, 

they are not going to use that in his dose 

reconstruction. He got cut three times, and 

they are not going to add it at all, because 

he was not monitored by the health physicist. 

 The health physicist is going to 

tell this janitor, by the way, I need to 

monitor you for this cut because of radiation. 

But all along, they have never been monitored? 

I don't think so. 

 DOL is required to use the other 

ill defined sites model in all injection 

claims as well as the model of target organ, 

because you do not know, especially when a cut 

goes into the pathway of the transfer system, 

which is the blood, where is it going to end 
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up at? Because of that, there is a model 

there to run, other ill defined sites, as 

determined back in the very beginning of the 

program. So why don't DOL run that model as 

well? 

 HHS shall determine all cancers and 

the types, form of cancer, and not DOL. Part 

B has been exclusively to Health and Human 

Services Secretary. They are in total 

control. 

 Department of Labor is only -- only 

to run the probability of causation and to 

determine the facts of employment and cancers 

and medical evidence. 

 HHS shall determine if review of 

the dose reconstruction is required, and not 

DOL's health physicist. This review shall be 

done by someone that has no connection with 

the original dose reconstruction. Due process 

shall be granted for every claimant. 

 This was in the Federal Register as 

well as 82.27(a) (1) (2), and (b) (1) (2). The 
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reviews are not being done this way. 

Department of Labor is allowing their own 

health physicist to determine if a review 

needs to be done or not. They have no 

authority to do this. 

 OSHA shall follow the procedure of 

42 CFR 83, etcetera, in qualifying and 

evaluating the said petition. These are two 

separate steps. Why then in the Pinellas 

plant they said we didn't quality, but yet 

they evaluated. I've got documentation of 

that. They are -- you separate the two. 

 Health and Human Services shall -- 

mandatory, required -- determine the dose 

reconstruction in a timely manner in a SEC 

petition in a timely manner. 

 If the data for the dose 

reconstruction is not available at this time, 

OSHA will require -- mandatory -- proceed as 

if no data is available to do a dose 

reconstruction with sufficient accuracy and 

grant the SEC petition. 
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 Again, this is the Federal 

Register, page 22319, Volume 67, Number 85-E. 

 Health and Human Services shall 

determine procedures to cancel SEC petitions 

if the data is found later on after the 

grantee of a SEC petition, 83.19. So if you 

want to cancel it, fine, but don't deny it 

when you don't have the information there. 

 Health and Human Services shall 

determine procedures to vacate all implied 

bias and irrelevant statements from the dose 

reconstruction. The report shall state the 

facts that are required, and assume claimant 

friendly assumptions. 

 IN every single dose reconstruction 

report I have seen, there has been bias, 

prejudicial, ambiguous statements in every 

single one of them. 

 HHS shall have available to the 

claimant the information; the calculations of 

all doses used in the dose reconstruction, and 

this will also state the method, assumptions 
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and claimant input. This is in 8227(c). 

 HHS determines procedures to handle 

and accomplish dose reconstruction for 

terminally ill claimants and to define 

terminally ill claimants. Right now they do 

not have a procedure for terminally ill 

claimants. 

 DOL just recently, in fact, just 

about in July, I believe, issued a 

policy/procedure to handle terminally ill 

claimants. NIOSH still doesn't have it. 

 In conclusion, Health and Human 

Services has exclusive control over Part B by 

the way of the Executive Order that was 

issued. Advisory board is required to make 

recommendations to the Health and Human 

Services Secretary, because that is their 

boss. That is who they are under. 

 Advisory board is required to 

review OCAS and DOL's duties under Part B of 

EEOICPA. 

 I need you to please address these 
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issues very quickly, because these people are 

dying and deserve better. 

 I added two more notes in there 

about we need to define what is substantial 

and what is significant, and we need to also 

be able to access to their procedure 

documentation. There is no access to that. 

 This is technical information 

bulletin, yes, and guidelines, yes, but their 

procedures, no. 

 Case in point, and I would like to 

end. We appreciate your help. You are the 

only ombudsman that these claimants have. You 

are the only one that they can turn to under 

this part. 

 If you were a principal and you had 

a teacher, and every single one of those 

classes that that teacher taught, two-thirds 

of their students failed, would you question 

the students? Would you question your 

policy/procedures, or would you question 

something is wrong with that teacher? 
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 You are the principal. These 

claimants are the students, and this program, 

NIOSH and Department of Labor, are the 

teachers. 

 Thank you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 

much, Donna, for that input. 

 That concludes our public comment 

period for this evening. We do have another 

public comment period scheduled for tomorrow 

evening. 

 Also, the Board will be in session 

beginning at nine o'clock and throughout the 

day. All our meetings are fully open. You 

are welcome to come back and join us then. 

 So we will recess until tomorrow 

morning. 

 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

matter went off the record at 8:51 p.m.) 
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