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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

 CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL 

+ + + + + 

 NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL 

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

 ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND 

 WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

 65th MEETING 

 + + + + + 

 TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2009 

 The meeting convened in the 

Conference Room of the Danford's Hotel and 

Marina, 25 East Broadway, Port Jefferson, New 

York, at 9:30 a.m., Paul L. Ziemer, Chairman, 

presiding. 

PRESENT: 

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Chairman 

JOSIE BEACH, Member 

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member 

MICHAEL H. GIBSON, Member 

MARK GRIFFON, Member 

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member 

JAMES MALCOLM MELIUS, Member 

WANDA I. MUNN, Member 

JOHN W. POSTON, Member 

ROBERT W. PRESLEY, Member 

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member 

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member 

THEODORE M. KATZ, Designated Federal 

 Official 

REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS: 
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ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor 

AL-NABULSI, ISAF, DOE 

AQUINO, LITA, NIOSH 

BRADFORD, SHANNON, NIOSH 

BREYER, LAURIE, OCAS 

BROEHM, JASON, CDC 

CALHOUN, GRADY, NIOSH 

CANO, REGINE, DOE 

CARTER, JOHN, DOE BHSO 

DIAZ, THERESA, BNL 

ELLIOTT, LARRY, NIOSH 

ERIKSON, NANCY, Petitioner* 

FALCO, JOE, BNL 

FITZGERALD, JOSEPH, SC&A 

FRAZER, CAROL, AAHS 

GEIGER, KATHLEEN, BNL 

GLOVER, SAM, NIOSH/OCAS 

GOULD, LIESL, BNL 

HINNEFELD, STUART, NIOSH 

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 

HOYT, ROSEMARY, Petitioner* 

HUGHES, LARA, NIOSH 

JONES, TOM, NIOSH 

KOTSCH, JEFFREY, DOL 

LEWIS, GREG, DOE 

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A 

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 

McGOLERICK, ROBERT, HHS 

McFEE, MATTHEW, ORAU 

MOTTL, ADELE 

NETON, JIM, NIOSH 

OBERDORF, MIMI, Public 

PASTOR, JOHN, BNL 

PRESLEY, LOUISE S. 

RUTHERFORD, LaVON, NIOSH 

SCHEVERER, THOMAS, BNL (Retired) 

SKELTON, RICHARD, BNL (Retired) 

SOSNOUSKI, MARTHA, Office of Senator 

 Gillibrand 

VICTOR, ALEXANDRA, Office of Senator Schumer 

WADE, LEWIS, Contractor 

*Present via telephone 

 T-A-B-L-E O-F C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S 
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Welcome..................................... 5 

NIOSH Program Update....................... 11 

DOL Program Update......................... 86 

DOE Update................................ 102 

Science Update............................ 133 

Blockson Chemical SEC 

 Petition: Radon Model................... 178 

Hanford SEC Petition (83.14).............. 237 

Brookhaven National Lab 

 SEC Petition............................ 278 

Public Comment............................ 324 

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

9:13 a.m. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Good morning. 

This is the meeting Number 65 of the Advisory 

Board on Radiation and Worker Health, meeting 

on Long Island in the town -- or I believe 

they call it the Village of Port Jefferson, 

which is in the vicinity of the Brookhaven 

National Laboratory facilities. 

 We welcome each one here, and we'd 

like to remind you that there are copies of 

the agenda and also related documents on the 

table in the rear of this room. If you've not 

already done so, please register your 

attendance with us in the registration 

booklet, which is out in the foyer. 

 Also, any members of the public who 

wish to address the assembly later today 

during the public comment period, please sign 

the book in the foyer so that we have some 

idea of who and how many will be participating 

in the public comment session. 
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 Just for the record, all of the 

Board members are here assembled, with the 

exception of Dr. Lockey. And we hope he will 

be able to join us in the very near future of 

this day. 

 But in any event, let me call on 

our Designated Federal Official, Ted Katz, to 

also make some preliminary remarks. 

 MR. KATZ: I have a short leash 

here. A couple things. Just for the Board 

members, note that we've turned down the mic 

levels because of a feedback problem. So try 

to speak directly into the mics when you speak 

so that you'll be recorded well and so that 

the people on the phone can hear you. 

 A couple notices I'd like to give. 

 One, first of all I'd like to welcome 

everybody. We don't have a lot of people from 

Brookhaven here in the room right now but 

welcome, everyone on the telephone lines, as 

well. I want to note for you since the last 

full Board meeting, face-to-face Board 
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meeting, we have a new Director, again, at 

NIOSH, a new Director that we have had before, 

John Howard. And we're very glad to have him 

back for another term. 

 I'd also like to note that in this 

past week, President Obama appointed four 

additional members to the Board. And we're 

very glad to have the extra help. It's a 

great group. It includes: 

 Richard Lemen, who is a highly 

accomplished epidemiologist in occupational 

safety and health. He had worked at NIOSH. 

He's got a lot of background in policy making 

as well as research. And sort of a specialty 

in respiratory diseases and asbestos; 

 David Richardson, who is an 

epidemiologist from North Carolina who has 

done quite a bit of work related to Energy 

workers at different sites at the complex; 

 Bill Field, who wears both an 

epidemiologist hat and a health physics hat, a 

radon expert, and has, in the past when we 
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were dealing with Iowa Ammunition Site, was 

also an expert -- sort of an expert -- 

technical expert who provided sort of input to 

the Board when it was deliberating over the 

SEC petition for Iowa; 

 And finally, but not least, Henry 

Anderson, who some of you may recall, who have 

been following this Board, was with the 

original Board and served, I think, you know, 

six years on the Board previously and we're 

happy to have him rejoin the Board for another 

go. 

 Then just an administrative matter 

for the folks on the phone, please mute your 

phones except when you are addressing the 

Board, you know, in a public comment session 

or for an SEC petition. If you don't have a 

mute button, *6 will work. And then *6 again 

to unmute your phone. And if you need to 

leave a call at some point, please don't put 

it on hold. Just hang up and dial back in 

because a hold will disrupt the audio for 
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everyone here at the Board. 

 And thank you very much for joining 

us. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you, Ted. 

 And let me add a word of welcome to 

the four new Board members or three new plus 

one returning, as it were, and indicate how 

pleased we are to have them join us. 

 They will actually be seated as 

soon as the bureaucratic paperwork has been 

completed and all the associated details of 

that. 

 And then we hope in the very near 

future to have an orientation session, which 

we do for new members, to familiarize them 

with procedures and approaches that are used 

by this Board and related matters so that they 

will be able to, so to speak, hit the ground 

running. And we hope to do that as quickly as 

we can. 

 Some of those new individuals may, 

in fact, be with us today, not as official 
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members at this point but listening in. 

They're not all able to but some will and so 

may indeed even be on the line as we speak. 

 But in any event, we're pleased to 

have them aboard. 

 I should also mention for the 

record that there was a tour for the Board of 

the Brookhaven National Laboratory facility 

yesterday. A number of the Board members were 

able to participate in that. 

 And that was an excellent sort of 

orientation for those who had not been there 

and certainly a good review for those who had 

been there before. 

 So just for the record, we do thank 

the folks at the Brookhaven National 

Laboratory who hosted that tour and made it a 

very good one, as far as our Board members are 

concerned. 

 I should point out that we will 

proceed on the agenda, as much as possible, as 

it is given, but you must recognize that some 
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of the items are what we consider timecertain, particular those that deal with SEC 

petitions. Those will be, as much as 

possible, time-certains in order to 

accommodate Petitioners who may be available 

by phone or in person, as the case may be, to 

address petition issues that they may wish to 

speak to. 

 So as much as possible, all of 

those which are identified on the agenda as 

dealing with SEC petitions will be considered 

time-certains. 

 The other items are somewhat more 

flexible and we will proceed and flex 

ourselves in terms of how the timing goes on 

those. And sometimes we get behind, sometimes 

we get ahead, but we will be flexible on those 

to the extent possible. 

 With those preliminary comments, we 

are ready to hear from Larry Elliott from 

NIOSH OCAS. And Larry will give us his 

regular NIOSH program update. 
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 Welcome, Larry. 

 MR. KATZ: While Larry is setting 

up, let me just check for the folks on the 

phone just to make certain, since we haven't, 

would someone from the phone lines just let us 

know if you can hear well? 

 PARTICIPANT: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay, great. Thank you. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you, Dr. 

Ziemer. 

 Good morning everyone. Can you 

hear me? 

 PARTICIPANT: No. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: No? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: It's on. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: It's on. Okay. 

 Well, as has been customary, I'll 

start with some news briefs from NIOSH and 

OCAS, NIOSH's Office of Compensation Analysis 

and Support. First of all, as a news brief, 

Ted stole a little bit of our thunder in 

mentioning that Dr. John Howard has been 
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reappointed as the Director of NIOSH. Dr. 

Thomas R. Frieden made that appointment happen 

a few weeks ago. And we're very much 

appreciative of Dr. Howard's return and 

welcome him back. 

 The second news brief goes to a 

procedural administrative matter. We are 

about to approach the Office of Management and 

Budget for an approval to use our special 

exposure cohort forms. You've heard us talk 

about OMB approval on our Computer-Assisted 

Telephone Interview form. Well, now it is 

time to approach OMB for approval on the use 

of our special exposure cohort forms. 

 And so if any Board member has 

thoughts or comments about that form, we would 

certainly welcome them. You can submit those 

to me or any of the OCAS staff members. 

 Thirdly, we've recently had some 

comprehensive ethics training for all OCAS 

employees. And particularly we had a special 

focus on conflicts of interest. This training 
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was provided by Chris Cox. You are familiar 

with him as a Board member. He has given you 

the ethics training in the past. He serves 

with the Office of General Counsel Ethics 

Division. 

 In addition to this training, we 

asked the CDC Ethics Office to clarify 

guidelines for OCAS employees with potential 

financial conflicts of interest with the 

program. 

 As you know, in accordance with 

NIOSH's conflict or bias policy, staff members 

who worked at a facility -- at a covered 

facility cannot do or perform certain program 

functions relative to that facility. So in 

other words, they cannot serve as a document 

owner relative to a facility for which they 

had prior employment. 

 In addition, we are revisiting the 

application of 18 USC Section 208 and 5 CFR 

Part 2635. These are regulations, laws that 

require all federal employees to acknowledge 
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any financial conflicts of interest. And 

we're doing this with the assistance of the 

CDC Ethics Office and the Office of General 

Counsel Ethics Division attorneys. 

 We've specifically requested 

clarification regarding the proper course of 

action to take when individual staff members 

have previous employment at one of the covered 

facilities and has been diagnosed with an 

eligible cancer. 

 Since an OCAS employee's work may 

have included work that is not specific to a 

single facility but could nonetheless have 

what is called a predictable effect, in other 

words an individual could be working over on a 

document that has overarching implications to 

many facilities, including the one they worked 

at, this can result in a -- can be perceived 

and can be an actual financial conflict if 

there is a predictable effect on the outcome 

of that individual's claim from the work that 

they performed. 
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 Our lawyers are working with the 

CDC Ethics Office and the Office of General 

Counsel Ethics Division attorneys to determine 

whether these sorts of situations create 

financial conflicts. Each individual staff 

member who is so affected will be given 

guidance and be given specific boundaries 

within which to work. 

 For example, if a person is working 

on an implementation guide for the program 

that speaks to how dose is to be estimated 

across the weapons complex, across facilities, 

but was conflicted at one or two of the sites 

represented in the covered facilities list, 

that individual would not be able to speak in 

the discussion of a work group or in the Board 

deliberation process. 

 The fourth news brief that I bring 

to you today is a report of our worker 

outreach program. We had a workshop two or 

three weeks ago. Twenty-four members of 

organized labor representatives, former 
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Workers Screening Program representatives, and 

advocates joined us in Cincinnati for a twoday workshop to discuss the dose 

reconstruction approaches that we utilize and 

the SEC petition processes. 

 This Advisory Board had three 

members, a Board member and two members from 

your contracting support staff, in attendance 

observing that workshop. 

 We're very pleased with the outcome 

of these workshops. We typically are holding 

two a year. And they seem to be well received 

and the folks are very appreciative of the 

information that we provide them. 

 And the purpose of the workshop is 

to assist them in going back out into their 

communities and talking with potential 

claimants and/or people who may have not filed 

a claim but should file a claim about how the 

process works and how they can enable and help 

those folks make their way through this 

difficult process. 
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 As you know, this month, our 

country recognizes a group of workers who made 

personal sacrifices to protect our country and 

our freedom. The U.S. Senate designated 

October 30th, 2009 as a National Day of 

Remembrance for American nuclear weapons 

program workers and uranium miners, millers, 

and haulers. We invite everyone to join NIOSH 

in honoring these workers on the National Day 

of Remembrance, October 30th, 2009. 

 These American nuclear weapons 

program workers, some whom sacrificed their 

health and many who lost their lives as a 

result of workplace exposures are the focus of 

our meeting this week and the focus of the 

compensation program that was enacted in the 

year 2000. Their sacrifices must always be at 

the forefront as we carry out our work in this 

program. 

 From the beginning of our 

involvement in EEIOCPA, NIOSH's core values 

have been an integral part of our activities. 
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 Because of the history that led to this 

compensation program, NIOSH has focused in 

particular on the core values of quality of 

science, transparency, and accountability, 

which are at the heart of our actions, our 

decisions, and our communications in this 

program. 

 First and foremost, NIOSH strives 

to bring the best available science, 

transparency, and accountability to the 

reconstruction of radiation doses for cancerrelated claims. It is important to note that 

Congress recognized the potential for a lack 

of monitoring records for workers eligible in 

the compensation program. And the Congress, 

in its law, specified that methods for 

radiation dose reconstruction be established 

by regulation. 

 Specifically this law requires the 

promulgation of a rule to establish scientific 

methods for arriving at reasonable estimates 

of radiation dose for those individuals who 
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were not monitored for radiation, for those 

individuals who were inadequately monitored, 

and for those individuals whose monitoring 

records are missing or incomplete. 

 In the process of establishing this 

rule, both the general public and more than 30 

stakeholder organizations were asked for 

input. And NIOSH reviewed over 200 pages of 

their comments in the development of this 

regulation. 

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each claimant could have an opportunity to be 

interviewed prior to the dose reconstruction 

process beginning and again when the draft 

dose reconstruction report had been completed. 

 These interviews are an opportunity 

for claimants to both understand and to 

provide information to us to understand how 

this program works and how dose reconstruction 

works and to provide information that might 

enable us to complete their claim. Close to 

100,000 interviews with claimants have now 
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been conducted. 

 Although the radiation dose 

reconstruction efforts have been ongoing in 

the United States for several decades, this 

type of radiation dose reconstruction for a 

compensation program was and still is 

unfamiliar to many people. 

 Each dose reconstruction is 

individual. It is dependent upon the 

circumstances of each individual claim. It 

has its own unique characteristics and 

complexities. 

 NIOSH has provided an answer for 

the vast majority of claims that have been 

sent to us for dose reconstruction. And you 

see on this slide more than 84 percent of over 

30,000 claims have been provided a dose 

reconstruction report. 

 As of September 30th, 2009, 4,161 

cases remained at NIOSH for dose 

reconstruction. That represents about 14 

percent of the over 30,000 population that 
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we're still working on. 

 We have 577 cases that are 

currently administratively closed. And we 

cannot move those cases forward unless the 

claimant provides us with an OCAS-1 indicating 

that they have no further information to 

provide or if they provide new information 

that would affect the claim, we would reopen 

the claim for continuation of the dose 

reconstruction. 

 This pie chart presents the case 

status again as of September 30th, 2009. And 

you can see here that the majority of the pie 

in blue is represented by the completed 

claims. 

 The claims that have been pulled 

from our caseload population by the Department 

of Labor for various reasons represents three 

percent and is shown in the gray. 

 The SEC claims that have been 

pulled for eligibility for a class amount to 

about eight percent. And that's shown in 
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purple. 

 The administratively closed that I 

just mentioned, those 577 or two percent, are 

shown in red. 

 The active population are the ones 

in yellow and the ones in green. So if you 

combine those two numbers, you'll come up with 

the 4,161 claims, three percent of which are 

pended. 

 Of the 4,161 cases that are still 

at NIOSH for dose reconstruction, we show here 

in this slide that 1,581 cases are in the dose 

reconstruction process. There are another 385 

initial draft dose reconstruction reports in 

the hands of the claimant, again waiting for 

an OCAS-1 form. And that leaves 2,195 claims 

that are in some stage of development toward 

advancing into actual dose reconstruction. 

 One thousand and twenty-nine cases 

are pended. And if we look at those 

specifically, the top four categories are 

presented here: 660 of those cases are pended 
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because of technical basis document issues, 

and I would add that, of that, there is around 

500 -- close to 550 in that category that are 

Hanford-related pends. 

 There are 110 SEC cases pended 

before final designation. So as a class 

proceeds toward designation, cases become 

pended before -- so we don't take any action 

on them until we hear from DOL about their 

eligibility for the class. 

 Ninety-six cases are pending the 

development of the dose reconstruction 

methodology since they are non-presumptive 

cancer that didn't find its way into class 

eligibility. 

 And 71 claims are awaiting specific 

demographic information updates regarding the 

claim, a new survivor, or a change in 

employment information, or a correction on the 

type of cancer. 

 I think also I'd like to note about 

300 of those Hanford claims -- you'll hear 
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more about that later this afternoon in the 

evaluation report -- but about 300 of those 

Hanford claims are going to be eligible for 

the class that we are proposing. 

 NIOSH has painstakingly pored over 

thousands of boxes of records and tens of 

thousands of individual documents to acquire 

the records and the data that is needed to 

provide claimants with answers to their 

claims. We've also integrated information 

that has been provided by the claimants, by 

petitioners, by site experts, and by subject 

matter experts as well as information that is 

gathered from our worker outreach meetings. 

 We're tracking down information 

from over 200 sites for which NIOSH has claims 

to do dose reconstructions for. It has been 

one of the biggest challenges in this program. 

 The sheer volume of records and the data 

that's been acquired, cataloged and compiled 

into an electronic research database is truly 

remarkable, particularly when the difficulty 
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in searching out the records is taken into 

consideration. 

 For some sites, research is timeconsuming and arduous, and NIOSH has worked 

with DOE as well as alongside staff at 

individual facilities to unearth paper records 

that were often buried in storage facilities 

among the boxes and the file drawers in that 

facility. And we have found data for other 

facilities when we have gone through these 

data searches. 

 NIOSH has made over 200 data search 

and capture missions during which the contents 

of almost 7,000 boxes plus various forms of 

data were reviewed and over 28,000 individual 

documents and things like binders, microfilm 

cartridges, photos, and compact discs were 

retrieved. 

 It's not unusual for us to go out 

and go through 50 or 60 boxes of data only to 

retrieve about 150 or so relevant documents 

for our use. It is also not unusual for an 
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individual site to have records stored at more 

than one place, and Brookhaven is a fine 

example of that situation. 

 Some records may be at a federal 

record center, some at the site, and some at 

another facility. Some records are filed by 

project. Some not by site or organization but 

by other indexing tools. 

 Because of this, NIOSH has turned 

up records for one facility during a search 

for records and found records for another 

facility. As an example, while researching 

the thorium exposure issue for the Fernald 

site, NIOSH ran across documents relevant to 

the thorium concerns at the Savannah River 

site. 

 In pursuing this discovery, NIOSH 

followed a trail of records from one box to 

another, from one location to another, and in 

the end, we were able to identify the data for 

thorium exposures at the Savannah River site. 

 This is just one example of our 
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detective work in locating and identifying 

data at more than 200 facilities for which 

NIOSH has claims. We can give many more 

examples. 

 In some cases, these data searches 

turn up exposure information that was not 

evident before. In examples like the Savannah 

River site, the data added thorium for some 

claimants which otherwise would not have been 

accounted for in their dose reconstructions. 

 In all, NIOSH efforts have made 

more information on the facilities and their 

operations available to the general public and 

the claimants than ever before. 

 Because the dose reconstructions in 

this program are individual and complex and 

because of the potential for a lack of 

monitoring records, the dose reconstruction 

methods used by NIOSH consistently give 

benefit of the doubt to the claimant whenever 

there is a question or uncertainty about the 

amount of radiation exposure the worker may 
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have received. 

 That is when there are two equally 

plausible exposure scenarios, NIOSH selects 

the scenario that provides the highest dose to 

the organ or the tissue that developed the 

cancer. This benefit of the doubt is evident 

in the Probability of Causation percentages 

for the 22,312 dose reconstructions that have 

been sent back to the Department of Labor for 

final decision. 

 As you can see in this slide, 32 

percent of the cases had a Probability of 

Causation of greater than 50 percent, much 

higher than the Department of Energy's 

original estimate when the program was 

established. 

 When asked by the Office of 

Management and Budget and the Congressional 

Budget Office, the Department of Energy 

predicted less than five percent of the 

nuclear weapons workers with cancer would have 

a Probability of Causation greater than 50 
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percent. Keep in mind that this 32 percent 

does not include cases that were pulled from 

dose reconstruction because they were 

compensated under an SEC-class. 

 In this slide, you'll see the 

distribution of Probability of Causation 

broken out in ten percent increments up to the 

greater than 50 percent decision level. If we 

look at the distributions of PoC that have 

been returned to the Department of Labor for 

decision, you'll see here that there is a 

large number of claims that fall in the zero 

to ten percent PoC category. 

 And we work very hard when we see a 

claim that falls in the 45 to 49 percent 

category. As you know, we run those cases 

multiple times through our IREP scenario to 

make sure that they are statistically 

accurate. 

 The quality of science and the 

benefit of doubt for claimants are also the 

foundation for NIOSH's process for change to 
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the scientific elements underlying the dose 

reconstruction process. These changes are 

based upon scientific progress and discussion. 

 This is explicitly outlined in the 

dose reconstruction rule and updates to 

certain scientific elements of the dose 

reconstructions may be recommended by the 

public at any time. In this chart, we show 

the number of reworks that have been returned 

to us over the course of time. 

 We've received 9,583 cases to be 

reworked. Many times the rework is because of 

demographic information related to the claim. 

 And the large spikes that you see here are 

those program evaluation reviews that were 

done in late 2007, primarily the Super S 

program evaluation review for the large number 

of claims as shown in that spike. 

 So what this program evaluation 

review means for claimants is that when new, 

relevant information becomes available, for 

example a scientific update, new information 
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on a site or a change in the dose 

reconstruction methodology for that site, and 

it appears that this new information may 

result in an increase for a completed dose 

reconstruction with a Probability of Causation 

of less than 50 percent, NIOSH is committed to 

working with the Department of Labor to reopen 

and rework the dose reconstruction as 

appropriate. 

 While this requires resources and 

time to investigate and change procedures as 

well as reevaluate cases that may be affected, 

we owe it to the claimants. 

 In EEOICPA, Congress stipulated 

that the assumptions, the methodology, and the 

data used in dose reconstruction be made 

available to researchers and the general 

public, with exceptions for the protection of 

privacy, and NIOSH emphasizes transparency and 

accountability in making NIOSH's process and 

methodology as open as possible for claimants, 

their families, and advocates. 
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 One way that NIOSH makes 

information available is through our website 

that provides comprehensive information about 

NIOSH's dose reconstructions and other 

activities in support of this compensation 

program. The website includes over 100 web 

pages and over 2,500 PDF documents. 

 NIOSH has also designed the dose 

reconstruction and the SEC processes with an 

unusual amount of opportunity for public 

debate and public input. Although it is 

typical of the sciences for differences of 

opinion to be debated in public forums, it is 

not so typical to find it in this type of 

program. 

 This leads some people to 

misunderstand the nature of the debate. For 

example, when the Advisory Board or its 

contractor review NIOSH documents or 

methodologies, it is typical for them to raise 

a list of questions. These questions are then 

discussed and debated among NIOSH and its 
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contractor and also the Advisory Board and its 

contractor. 

 Generally these discussions are 

held in a public forum. The debates are not 

about who is right or wrong. They are about 

bringing the best available science from a 

variety of sources and perspectives to the 

process. And making sure it is as transparent 

as possible for claimants and their families 

and advocates. 

 We grant you that allowing for 

public debate and for the resolution of 

differences of opinion does take time and it 

adds to the process. Scrutinizing thousands 

of boxes and tens of thousands of individual 

documents to acquire records and data needed 

for these dose reconstructions also adds time 

to the process. Reworking cases when relevant 

new information becomes available adds time to 

the process, sometimes a significant amount of 

time. 

 However, we feel these claimants 
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are owed the best available science as well as 

an exceptional degree of transparency and 

accountability. We've worked hard to reduce 

the amount of time required to process a dose 

reconstruction including developing measures 

for estimating exposure where appropriate, 

developing the technical documents to enhance 

consistency and reduce the time required for 

individual dose reconstructions in creating a 

comprehensive database and tracking system. 

 As you can see in this slide, we 

continue to reduce the average days required 

to complete initial draft dose reconstruction 

reports. So go back to that one slide please. 

 Is that it? Is this the slide I wanted? 

Yes. So if we look at the oldest cases we 

had, they were taking the longest time. And 

as we look at the relatively newest cases 

we're getting, we're showing a rather dramatic 

reduction in the time required to process 

those dose reconstructions. 

 Next slide. We also, if we look at 
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the efforts we're making to improve our 

timeliness from this slide, we can see that by 

these dates, we're also improving the amount 

of time it takes to complete a dose 

reconstruction. 

 NIOSH requests exposure monitoring 

information from the Department of Energy for 

dose reconstructions. DOE provides NIOSH with 

a response to the request within 60 days. 

This response from DOE may contain the dose 

information that we've requested or it may 

simply indicate where they're at in trying to 

track down the information. 

 We closely monitor the progress DOE 

makes on these data requests for information. 

 We have had discussions with both DOE and DOL 

about ways to improve the efficiency of 

records retrieval process by asking DOE to 

provide exposure records to NIOSH at the time 

when DOL approaches DOE for claim employment 

eligibility verification. This would 

eliminate the time during the dose 
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reconstruction process and enable us to move 

claims through the system a little faster. 

 Here you see the number of 

outstanding requests we have before DOE at 

this time. It's 304 as of September 30th. 

Eighty of those were greater than 60 days. 

This has been a dramatic improvement also from 

your last Board meeting presentation when 

these numbers were almost twice as large. 

 Since it's the beginning of a new 

fiscal year, I wanted to give you a brief 

update on our program assessment rating tool 

or PART goals for fiscal year 2009. As you 

can see in the first goal objective, we were 

to complete 35 percent of the initial DRs 

within, dose reconstructions, within 180 days 

of receipt during the fiscal year. We 

surpassed that objective by coming in at 55 

percent out of all DRs, dose reconstructions, 

completed in 180 days or less. 

 Our second objective was to 

complete 50 percent of the legacy cases. And 
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the beginning of FY09, we were defining our 

legacy cases as one which had been at NIOSH 

for more than two years. In June of 2009, 

this year, you remember that we set a 

management objective for no claim older than a 

year. And so eight months into the fiscal 

year, we changed the definition of legacy 

claims to reflect that management objective to 

complete initial draft DRs within a one-year 

time frame. 

 I'll talk a little bit more about 

that management objective in a few minutes. 

And as you can see, we only completed 12 

percent toward this objective. But, remind 

you, we changed the definition of what legacy 

cases means twice. Obviously it was a much 

more difficult hurdle than the original 

objective with the original definition for 

legacy enabled us to achieve. 

 The third objective was to complete 

40 percent of the DOL returns within 180 days 
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of receipt. And again we surpassed that goal 

by coming in at 47 percent. 

 The fourth objective was to 

complete 60 percent of our 83.13 special 

exposure cohort evaluation reports within 180 

days. And we completed 43 percent of those. 

In each case where we did not make 180-day 

time frame, we provided the Advisory Board and 

the Petitioners and the public with an 

explanation of why. 

 Our FY2010 PART goals are divided 

into two categories: dose reconstructions and 

SEC petitions. And simply our first goal is 

to provide a dose reconstruction to all 

claimants in a timely manner. And in FY2010, 

we propose that we will do that for all cases 

and have no case older than a year during this 

fiscal year. I can see this goal becoming 180 

days or less in the future, but for FY2010, 

we're saying we're not going to have any claim 

older than a year old in our hands. 

 Goal Two is to deliver an 
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evaluation report within 180 days for all of 

the 83.13 petitions that come to us so we want 

to complete 60 percent of those evaluation 

reports within 180 days. And if we are unable 

to do so, we'll provide a schedule and an 

explanation to the Advisory Board and the 

Petitioners. 

 As this program evolved over the 

past eight years, the early claimants, those 

who have waited the longest for answers, have 

always been a high priority. It weighs 

heavily on us that some claimants have not 

lived to receive an answer. Let me say I'm 

personally sorry that we did not fulfill our 

obligation to those claimants in a timely 

manner. 

 At the last meeting I introduced 

NIOSH's new initiative to continue our 

timeliness improvements. We have established 

a management objective which explicitly 

reinforces and intensifies NIOSH's commitment 

to the production of timely dose 
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reconstructions. And I hope that means that 

as few claimants as possible wait years 

without answers, at least the answer about the 

dose reconstruction from NIOSH. 

 The objective formalizes a policy 

to complete the initial draft dose 

reconstructions within a year. I'm going to 

walk you through what this initiative means to 

us now. 

 We realize it is an ambitious 

objective but it is one that we owe the 

workers who sacrificed and to the claimants 

who have waited for an answer. We believe we 

are now in a position to tackle it to achieve 

this goal because there are a number of 

program elements in place which provide the 

necessary foundation and continuity. 

 These elements include the 

development of technical basis documents, 

especially the completion of most of those 

site profiles for large sites, and the 

majority of technical basis documents needed 
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for the other sites. Remember that we needed 

to develop information for over 200 different 

facilities for which NIOSH has received 

claims. 

 A strong infrastructure is in place 

including the NIOSH IREP, including the 

tracking database systems that we have for 

claims as well as the information that we 

receive. We have promulgated the three rules 

that the law called for that are necessary to 

process claims both through dose 

reconstruction and special exposure cohort 

petitioning. 

 We have developed and shown 

experience in performing dose reconstructions 

for a wide variety of sites with a wide 

variety of exposures under the standardization 

of methodologies, procedures, and through our 

reports. 

 We have evaluated 78 special 

exposure cohort petitions, completed those, 

and 44 classes have been added. And by the 
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end of tomorrow, 24 SEC petitions will be with 

you, the Board, awaiting your recommendation. 

 A technical support contract is now 

in place with options for four one-year 

extensions based upon the needs of the 

program. Level funding is what we expect for 

this year -- level from what we had last year. 

 Without these elements in place, we 

do not have the foundation or the continuity 

that is required to take on this ambitious 

objective. So we've been working hard to put 

together a well thought-out plan to get to 

this goal and developing projections for 

progress along the way to the effective date 

of June 2010. 

 So as of June 1st, 2009, this past 

summer, there were 2,709 claims at NIOSH 

awaiting an initial dose reconstruction. 

Those claims were at risk of being one year or 

older as of June 1st, 2010, so they form the 

initial legacy claim population that we were 

speaking of. 
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 On October 12th, 2009, last week, 

931 claims have been completed and there were 

1,778 claims remaining in the legacy claim 

population. This means that 34 percent have 

been completed and 66 percent remain. 

 By December 31st, 2009, we expect 

approximately 1,544 claims to be completed 

with 1,165 claims remaining without an initial 

dose reconstruction. This would represent 

approximately 57 percent completed and 43 

percent remaining. 

 By March of next year, we expect 

approximately 2,234 claims to be completed 

with 475 claims remaining without an initial 

dose reconstruction or 82 percent complete. 

 And by June 1st, 2010, our 

objective is that no claims will remain at 

NIOSH that are more than one year old without 

an initial dose reconstruction. 

 In parallel with the management 

objective, we are also planning for the 

completion of rework claims. I showed you a 
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slide with reworks. Here, we're looking at, 

by June 1st, 2010, NIOSH would have no rework 

that has been with us for longer than a year. 

 So you see that we have evolved our 

definition of legacy. A year ago it meant a 

claim that had been at NIOSH for two or more 

years without an initial dose reconstruction. 

 In June of 2009, the definition of legacy 

claim was updated to reflect the establishment 

of the management objective to complete 

initial draft dose reconstructions within a 

year. Now we are defining a legacy claim as 

any claim, initial or rework, that has been at 

NIOSH for over one year. 

 So as of June 1st, 2009, there were 

1,614 claims without a draft dose 

reconstruction in the rework population. 

These claims would have been at risk of being 

older than a year on June 1st, 2010. 

 On October 12th, again, last week, 

548 claims had been completed and there were 

1,066 claims without a draft dose 
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reconstruction remaining in the rework 

population. This means 34 percent were 

complete and 66 percent remained to be 

completed by June 1st, 2010. 

 By December 31st, 2009, we expect 

approximately 916 claims to be completed with 

698 claims remaining, awaiting a dose 

reconstruction revision. 

 By March 1st, 2010, we expect 

approximately 1,330 claims to be completed and 

about 284 rework claims remaining. That would 

be equal to about 82 percent completed, 18 

percent remaining. 

 And by June 1st, our objective is 

that no rework claim will remain at NIOSH for 

more than a year without a dose reconstruction 

revision. 

 Now, we need to combine these two. 

 And so this third slide does that for you. 

Combining the initials and the legacy, the 

rework legacy claims, as of June 1st, there 

were 4,323 combined that were at risk of being 
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older than a year by June 1st, 2010. 

 On October 12th, a total of 1,479 

claims had been completed and there were 2,844 

remaining. 

 By December 31st, 2009, we expect 

around 2,460 claims to be completed, leaving 

1,863 claims without a draft dose 

reconstruction. Fifty-seven percent at that 

point would be completed and 43 percent would 

remain to be done. 

 By March 1st, 2010, we expect 

approximately 3,564 claims to be completed and 

759 claims without a draft dose reconstruction 

remaining. 

 By June 1st, 2010, our objective is 

that no legacy claim will be at NIOSH that 

will have been here for over a year old. 

 There are several challenges which 

we have recognized that will impact our 

ability to achieve this goal. There are 114 

sites represented by the population of 

combined legacy claims that remain to be 
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completed by June 1, 2010. Of those 114 

sites, as of June 1st, 2009, there were 33 

sites that had holds associated with them. 

 A hold is an issue associated with 

a covered facility or site. And those are 

obstacles that are currently recognized that 

prevent dose reconstructions from being done. 

 We are closely tracking the progress toward 

resolution of each of these holds. And we'll 

continue to do so. 

 As of October 12th, last week, 27 

of those sites had holds associated with them. 

 We anticipate that by December 31st, 2009, 12 

site-related issues impacting claim progress 

will be resolved, leaving 15 of the original 

33 sites with holds. 

 All but three of these sites have 

estimated resolution dates prior to June 1, 

2010. I should note, however, that the dates 

for the resolution of these holds are 

dependent upon the completion of site-specific 

issues. This does not take into account any 
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new issues that may arise during the 

resolution of the current holds. 

 The dates for the resolution of 

holds can be dependent on action by DOL or 

DOE. These are actions outside of the control 

of NIOSH. 

 An example of this is when a 

particular issue arises regarding the facility 

designation or the dates of a covered facility 

designation. Or another issue outside of our 

direct control can be dependent upon the 

Advisory Board activities and deliberations 

such as when the hold pertains to an SEC 

evaluation report or technical document 

review. 

 You can question how we can be 

shooting for these ambitious objectives when 

we know there are issues that need to be 

resolved and they are time-dependent. We 

agree. We understand. This is an ambitious 

effort. 

 And in order to achieve it, we know 
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we have to be on top of a number of different 

issues. We have to be closely tracking our 

progress. And we have to be pushing for 

resolution. Dr. Howard has made it extremely 

clear that we will do everything possible to 

achieve these objectives. 

 I also want to note that if there 

are any initial or rework claims that have 

been in the dose reconstruction process for 

more than a year after the June 2010 effective 

date of this policy, those claims will be 

critically evaluated within 15 days. 

 The evaluation will identify 

relevant issues and obstacles preventing the 

completion of that claim. A summary of that 

evaluation as a memorandum will be added to 

the claim file. The memorandum will also 

recommend how to best proceed in completing 

and returning the claim to the Department of 

Labor. 

 Similar evaluations will also be 

done for any additional claims which reach a 
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one-year anniversary following the effective 

date of this policy. So going into the 

future, we will not tolerate a claim over a 

year old without having a complete evaluation 

of the circumstances preventing its progress. 

 We will continue to update you at 

these meetings on our progress toward these 

objectives. 

 You've seen this slide before many 

times. And it is important to note that this 

simply shows the trend of claims that have 

been submitted to NIOSH and those that have 

been returned to the Department of Labor as 

well as to the claimants. 

 We still get around 200 new claim 

referrals each month. And an additional like 

number of reworks. We also continue to 

receive new 83.13 SEC petition evaluations and 

to initiate new 83.14 petitions. 

 NIOSH strives to bring the best 

available science, transparency, and 

accountability to the SEC process as it does 
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to the dose reconstruction process. We engage 

in painstaking records research and NIOSH has 

also provided assistance at all points in the 

petitioning process. 

 Our Ombudsman's Office and the SEC 

Petition Counselor walk a petitioner through 

the forms and explain the information needed 

to complete the forms. They offer advice on 

how the petitioner must meet the evaluation 

criteria for a petition. And they also help 

the petitioner by answering any questions 

about the process or the status of the 

petition. 

 Like the dose reconstruction 

process, the SEC petition process is designed 

with an unusual amount of opportunity for 

public debate and input. Again, it's NIOSH's 

objective to bring the best available science 

from a variety of sources and processes, and 

making sure that it is as transparent as 

possible for petitioners and claimants. 

 With regard to Brookhaven, the 
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Brookhaven National Lab, I want to just show 

where we're at currently with our number of 

claims. We have received 94 claims relative 

to Brookhaven, 28 or 30 percent have been 

completed and submitted to the Department of 

Labor. Seven of those were found by DOL to be 

compensable and 21 to be non-compensable under 

dose reconstruction. Four have been pulled by 

the Department of Labor for various reasons. 

And that leaves 62, or 60 percent of the 

cases, active at NIOSH. And we're anxious to 

present our evaluation report to the Board at 

this meeting on Brookhaven to add a class. 

 The Probability of Causation 

distribution is shown in this slide for the 

Brookhaven claims. And I think that's all I 

need to say about that. 

 I would like to close with the 

homepage of our website which reads, and if 

you'll indulge me, honoring quiet sacrifice. 

This month our country recognizes a group of 

workers who quietly made personal sacrifices 
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to protect our country and our freedom. The 

U.S. Senate designated October 30th, 2009, as 

a National Day of Remembrance for American 

nuclear weapons program workers and uranium 

miners, millers, and haulers. 

 These workers did not just do a 

job. During a time when our country was at 

war and later during the Cold War, they 

discreetly built a nuclear weapons program to 

protect and defend their families, neighbors, 

and fellow citizens across the country. 

 And in doing so, some of the 

workers were exposed, often unknowingly, to 

the types of workplace risks that NIOSH now 

strives everyday to prevent. Some of these 

workers sacrificed their health. And some 

lost their lives as a result of these 

exposures. 

 From the beginning of our 

involvement in this compensation program, 

NIOSH's core values have been an integral part 

of our activities. In particular, the core 
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values of quality of science, transparency, 

and accountability are at the heart of all of 

our actions, decisions, and communications. 

 As NIOSH continues to fill its role 

under EEOICPA, we recognize the debt of 

gratitude owed to the workers who quietly made 

sacrifices to protect our country and honor 

that debt with our commitment to quality of 

science, transparency, and accountability in 

our work. 

 We invite you to join NIOSH in 

honoring these workers on the National Day of 

Remembrance, October 30th, 2009. 

 I'll take any questions you might 

have. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 

much, Larry. And also thank you for reminding 

us all of the National Day of Remembrance 

which will be coming up very shortly. 

 I'd like to ask for a clarification 

on a few of your slides, specifically Slides 

18, 19, and 20, which deal with the timeliness 
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issues. And first of all a minor point, I 

assume March 31st, 2009 on this slide should 

be 2010. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: It should be 2010, 

yes. Sorry. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And it's probably 

true on all three slides. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, it's wrong. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: But I noticed in 

your presentation for the March 31st dates, in 

all cases, the numbers you gave us orally were 

quite different from what are on the slides. 

So is there a new -- is that an update? 

 For example, on the first slide, 

this shows 764. The number you gave us was 

435. And I noticed on the other two slides 

the numbers for the March dates were quite 

different. So have the projections changed, 

or -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: My apologies. We 

were working on this presentation -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I know it's very 
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current, obviously very current data. But 

just for the record, I wondered which of those 

numbers -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: The numbers I gave 

verbally are the -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Are the correct 

numbers. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- ones that should 

have been on the slides. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: My apologies. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I think there 

were slight differences in December but very, 

very minor. But the March numbers were quite 

far apart in all three cases. Okay. So the 

verbal numbers are the correct ones. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Right. If I could 

add, the projections are developed from our 

management plan. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And what activities 

are included in that plan that need to happen 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- advance progress 

on certain facility claims. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I wonder if it 

might be possible, because some of us keep 

these slides and use them, if we could have an 

updated version of those -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: We'll get you an 

updated -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- three slides -

- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- version and I will 

also -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- just for our 

own records. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- I will also give 

you the -- make sure that you understand the 

correct numbers -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- that have to be 

placed there. 
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much. 

 Dr. Melius, some comments or 

questions? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I have a few 

questions for Larry. 

 My first question is -- I'm just 

trying to understand some of the resource 

issues and so forth and, although there's a 

lot of activities on the part of NIOSH staff 

and your contractors, there have also been 

significant delays at a number of sites as you 

or your contractor, you know, works to 

complete reports and so forth with that. 

 And I think in the Hanford case, 

which we'll hear later, we've been essentially 

on hold for a couple of years. So a lot of 

that was an issue of access to records as I 

understand it. But, on some other sites, for 

example NTS, Nevada Test Site, I think there's 

been delay at least over a year in terms of 

responding to some of the SC&A comments. 
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 And in the case of the Idaho site, 

it has now been a -- which is a site profile 

review, we've waited I think almost two years 

now waiting for a response for the site 

profile review by SC&A so the work group can 

take on, you know, the task of trying to 

reconcile issues with that site. 

 And I'm just -- I'm not as 

interested particularly in what's happening at 

the particular sites as much as, is there an 

overall issue with adequate support for being 

able to take on some of these tasks, or are 

there some other reasons for this? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, there are, as I 

indicated in the presentation, there are over 

200 covered facilities for which we've had 

claims and we have, of course, the resources 

that we have been given to accomplish the 

work. 

 We could certainly do more with 

more. Yes, the specific examples that you 

brought up, Dr. Melius, the Idaho Lab is 
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probably, in my mind, the one that we could 

have done a better job on. 

 I think the Hanford experience, I 

believe that there is a logical, rational due 

process that has occurred there. We've added 

two classes. We broke those classes into the 

situations where we recognized we could not 

reconstruct the dose. 

 We pursued data and other 

information that were necessary in order to 

answer questions about our ability to 

reconstruct dose in the later periods at 

Hanford. And we have processed the Hanford 

petitions along the way as best we could with 

the resources that we had and accounting for 

our access to the Department of Energy 

facilities out there and record systems. 

 We're doing what we can. And 

certainly, I'm upset that some things seem to 

get placed on the back burner when we should 

all be aware of where they are at and moving 

them forward. Idaho is one of those 
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situations. 

 I can say that Nevada Test Site, no 

claims have been held up there. Hanford, 

there were a number of claims that were in 

hold status until we had some resolution of 

the data issues and whether or not we could 

reconstruct dose. 

 Nevada Test Site is not similar to 

that. We have been processing claims as the 

Board deliberation has proceeded. Idaho, we 

have not had any claims put on hold because of 

technical issues or Board deliberation efforts 

in that regard. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Well, I think there 

is sort of an issue of, are those -- should 

those SEC -- or should there be problems found 

in the site profile reviews, whether those 

claims would have to be reworked. But I guess 

we can cross that bridge at that time. 

 I have a second question which is 

related to the individual dose 

reconstructions. And I believe that we made a 
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commitment at that last meeting, if I 

understood it correctly, that we were going to 

sort of change the process in terms of how the 

individual dose reconstruction files were 

going to be kept. 

 Where they would now include a 

record of the procedure that is being used for 

various parts of those dose reconstructions. 

And I'm trying to understand if that's been 

implemented yet. Or am I misunderstanding the 

process or the commitment? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: No, the commitment 

was, when we have such worksheets or other 

information that is provided as guidance to 

the dose reconstructor that was influential in 

the development of the dose reconstruction, 

that will be recorded as a reference and 

included in the dose reconstruction file. 

 So some of these cases would not 

have that. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Right. No, I know. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Those that do have 
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that or have benefit of that will have that 

documented. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: So that part of it 

has been implemented? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: That part has. Stu? 

 I'm -- yes, I'm correct in that. Stu is 

shaking his head in the affirmative. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. Good. 

 The third question is related to an 

issue that came up at the Amarillo, Texas 

meeting, which has to do with the security -- 

data security issue -- DOE security issue and 

how that should be handled in terms of how 

this program is run. And I think at that 

meeting I had asked a question about a policy 

we heard about, verbally, oh six, seven years 

ago from -- relayed to us, I believe, from 

somebody in the Department of Justice or 

something, that sort of secrecy of records and 

so forth was not the grounds for us to allow 

an SEC petition in terms of -- actually if 

those records couldn't be made public, that 
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were the basis for the decision there, so be 

it. There would not be any sort of public 

access or public debate about that. It would 

not be grounds for allowing an SEC petition. 

 And we discussed that again in the 

Amarillo meeting. And I'm just still trying 

to get an update to understand, since it is a 

policy we've never seen in writing or really 

had a good explanation for. And I'm trying to 

understand if that policy is still in effect 

and still applies to the program. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I would have to 

turn to the General Counsel folks in the 

audience. I believe it does. This is a 

Department of Justice determination that was 

made early in the program. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Larry, I think in 

the discussion, as I recall it at the Amarillo 

discussion, I think there was -- I don't know 

if I would call it a commitment but I think 

NIOSH felt that we would always come forward -

- we, being the program -- would always come 
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forward with information that was publicly 

available as the basis for either denying or 

approving an SEC class, if I understood that 

correctly -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- that you would 

not revert to classified information that was 

not otherwise available as a basis for a 

decision. Did I understand -- 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: That was my 

understanding of it though whether that's 

doable I think is problematic, I suppose. And 

it may be the basis. 

 Dr. Melius, your question was if, 

in fact, the basis for the information is 

classified, what do we do? And I think that's 

the issue that we continue to struggle with. 

But, I certainly understood NIOSH's intent was 

not to base a recommendation on classified 

information, if at all possible. So that, I 

guess, still leaves somewhat in limbo the 
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issue of -- which is the basis of the question 

-- what do we do if, in fact, that's the 

information. 

 And I suspect we don't know the 

answer to that yet. But perhaps you are 

seeking -- is it written somewhere? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Well, I'm trying to 

-- if anybody recalls, we actually had asked 

for some information in writing or some better 

understanding of that policy. It was never 

provided to us. And it's now six or seven 

years later. And I'm just asking -- I'm 

trying to understand. We're certainly 

confronted with the potential for this again 

with Pantex and probably some other sites. 

And I don't understand what the basis is. 

 If you recall right, we were 

actually, I think, in the Iowa site. We had 

actually made a determination on that basis 

and were told that we couldn't do it. And 

then had to, you know, I won't say start over 

again but that added several months or a year 
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to the process while we had to then sort of 

figure out another way. 

 And it turns out the petition was 

granted. But I would like to avoid that delay 

and understand how to proceed. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, I would like to 

avoid any such delays, as well. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And my commitment -- 

thank you for reminding me, Dr. Ziemer, the 

commitment I made in Amarillo was that I don't 

have any intention or desire to bring forward 

a technical basis for recommendation on a 

class, either add or deny, that has behind it 

some sensitive information that can't be 

shared publicly. 

 Our intent in that is that we will 

work with the Department of Energy to find 

ways to express what we need to express in 

these technical basis recommendations. 

 And yes, is it possible that for 

Pantex or Mound or some other site, there may 
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be something that can't be spoken of publicly. 

 That is a possibility. But we have ways of 

working with DOE to find words and language 

and phrases that enable us to communicate 

about these issues without divulging national 

security interests. 

 Will that be satisfying to the 

Board and to the public? I can't say. I 

can't predict. 

 But there have been many instances 

where, through our work with our contractor 

and our staff, we have found ways to describe 

events, circumstances, and exposure scenarios 

without divulging the fact that there's 

sensitive information behind that. And you 

have taken action on those things without 

question. 

 I can't answer for the Department 

of Justice. I can't answer for the General 

Counsel's Office, HHS, as to what will happen 

if there is such a scenario that plays out in 

the future where something has to be dealt 
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with behind closed doors. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: And I guess what 

I'm asking for is for some clarification on 

that from the attorneys. If you don't want to 

answer now, you don't have to. I mean you can 

brief us later. But I just -- it's a -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Maybe Ms. Howell has 

a comment now. And it's not clear to me 

whether it is strictly a NIOSH legal issue or 

whether it goes beyond to Department of 

Justice. But -- 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I'm trying to 

understand. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: -- some preliminary 

comments, Ms. Howell? 

 MS. HOWELL: Since the information 

that you received several years ago was based 

on information from the Department of Justice, 

we would have to revisit the issue with them 

because we can't release further information 

without speaking with them. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I would think -- 
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could you do that? I think that's actually 

what we asked for seven years ago and never 

received. I believe, as a Board, we asked for 

clarification on this. 

 MS. HOWELL: I believe several 

years ago you were told that we received the 

information that we could not release it. 

Like I said, we can revisit that now, if you 

would like or if NIOSH would like. But I 

believe that when this initially came up we 

requested to be able to present you with more 

and we were only given the ability to kind of 

make an oral presentation at that time. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, let me 

suggest, since we don't task NIOSH or CDC, but 

perhaps Mr. Elliott and Ms. Howell can discuss 

this and determine if there is a way to get 

something in writing that would address this 

that would at least give some level of 

understanding to the Board as to how we would 

proceed in the future if, in fact, such a 

situation arose. 
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 I think we understand the intent is 

not to have to base any decisions on specific 

classified information. But if, in fact, a 

situation arose where it becomes very clear 

that the sensitive information is part and 

parcel to the decision, in those kinds of 

cases, how do we proceed? 

 Now it may very well be that we 

can't anticipate all of the possibilities. So 

if we only have the kind of scenarios that 

Larry described where we can describe with 

proper words without revealing classified 

information, then maybe it is not an issue. 

But we don't sort of know that in advance. 

 So I would suggest if OCAS and HHS 

are willing to at least pursue whether or not 

there might be a more formalized legal 

recommendation or discussion or decision, that 

we could at least have a reference point-to. 

And if they tell us that we'll face the issue 

when it comes, then that's what they tell us. 

 But I think -- I assume Dr. Melius and maybe 
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others on the Board would feel this way, that 

you would at least like some level of 

understanding of what will happen in these 

kinds of cases or what might happen. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Correct. If we can 

avoid an unnecessary delay or, you know, 

mistake, then we think we should. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 Let me see if there are other -- 

did you have additional questions, Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I had one other. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Proceed. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. That's a 

question -- I'm just trying to get 

clarification on what the practice is and so 

forth. My understanding is that at one point 

in time -- I may have asked this before, but I 

don't remember if I did it in the public 

session -- was that NIOSH had tasked ORAU with 

doing a follow-up on sort of public comments 

that were received at these meetings, during 

the public comment session to try to sort of 
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categorize and ensure some level of follow-up 

of the information presented here. 

 And then more recently, I was under 

the impression that that had either never 

started or had stopped. And so I'm just 

trying to understand the practice of what is 

the follow up now for people that make 

presentations during the public session. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: So during the public 

comment period? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Correct. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: When people offer up 

comments or input, the practice has been and 

remains that I or somebody from staff will 

pull those individuals aside and speak to them 

about whatever comment they offered. In many 

instances, if the comment is related to 

communications between us and the claimant, we 

try to decipher whether or not it is our 

communications that is confusing the claimant 

or is it another piece of correspondence from 

one of the other agencies that's confusing the 
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claimant. So there is follow-up with that 

individual. 

 If it is input that we hear 

regarding a specific technical basis document 

or site profile, one of us will get with that 

individual and, again, follow up and try to 

elucidate more information about what is being 

provided and how we might factor that into our 

considerations and revisions of the documents 

that are being spoken about. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: No, I have not asked 

ORAU to go back and evaluate public comment 

periods. We have a worker outreach effort 

that does look at those kinds of things, reads 

the transcripts. The work group on outreach 

is examining our practices in this regard. So 

it is under review from that perspective. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: So your outreach 

contractor or whatever you call them does 

review the transcripts and follow up? Or 

what? I don't quite understand that. 
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contractors I feel review the transcripts. 

Both contractors are attuned to what happens 

in public comment period that is relevant to 

our work that can be built upon, that can be 

used to address concerns, that can serve to 

show improvement in our efforts. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And so yes, they both 

have that responsibility. They both have the 

responsibility of picking up on these things. 

 Staff also pick up on these things and turn 

their -- focus technical leads on certain 

sites that would be most interested in 

information about -- that's given about that 

site and would follow up on that information. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Let me insert 

something here, if I might, because this is an 

issue I've been giving some thought to 

recently. 

 I think, Ted, I may have discussed 

it with you as well in recent months but the 
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more underlying issue is a formalization of 

the follow-up and maybe even a tracking of 

what is done. Now we get different kinds of 

comments in the public comment session. We 

get some that deal directly with personal 

cases. And the Board can't specifically deal 

with those. 

 Others are more related to 

policies, approaches, procedures, and those 

kinds of things. And there are some 

reoccurring themes. For example, we often 

heard the reoccurring themes relating to the 

CATI interviews and the Procedures Work Group 

-- no, Subcommittee it is now -- has dealt 

with that recommendation on revising that and 

so on. 

 But one of the, I think, underlying 

concerns is, are there issues that are raised 

in those public comment periods that kind of 

fall through the cracks. Yes, we hear them 

but do they really get dealt with? And it's 

not always clear who has the responsibility 
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for following up. 

 The Board may feel that it has some 

obligations, since these occur in the public 

comment period of our meetings, to at least 

make sure that we're aware of what happens 

with these comments. 

 And I don't have a particular 

solution to that. I have some ideas on what 

one could do. But we don't want the Board 

duplicating something that NIOSH might be 

doing. And I think, in part, the question 

could relate to that, Dr. Melius. 

 But it seems to me that perhaps 

this would be a task, Mr. Gibson, that your 

work group could look at. And ask the 

question what should the Board be doing with 

respect to public comments. 

 Do we need to be categorizing them 

at the end of each meeting? And, for example, 

if they are individual comments on cases, we'd 

just say well, we've got this many. And we 

can't do anything with that. We just want to 
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make sure that they are, indeed, dealt with by 

the agencies. 

 And sometimes they are labor 

issues. Sometimes they are Part E issues. 

Sometimes they are OCAS issues. But the other 

kinds of issues that we hear about, and many 

of those have to do with what people think the 

Board should be doing. And are we following 

up on that? 

 You might talk in your Subcommittee 

about whether or not we should be tracking 

that. And if so, make sure that it wouldn't 

be something that we would duplicate, perhaps, 

what Larry's group is doing. 

 I don't think we want to try to 

solve that issue here. But I have had this 

ongoing concern that we hear these comments 

and we sort of intuitively feel like we know 

what they are. But it is very easy to say, 

well, didn't somebody mention that before? 

Or, you know, have we really tracked it and 

followed up on it? 
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 So that's one suggestion. We start 

to at least be more deliberate and take a look 

maybe. Maybe your work group would say no, we 

think this is something that we must leave 

with NIOSH OCAS. Or maybe this is something 

we should do. And other members of the Board 

may wish to weigh in on this. 

 But I think it's certainly a valid 

question. And one we need to address. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, I mean, 

frankly Larry, I mean I often see you try to, 

you know, chase down, talk to the people 

making public comments. I often don't see 

anybody else very often at these public 

comment periods. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, I think 

maybe the Board members do interact with the 

people. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: No, the Board, I'm 

talking about from the NIOSH staff -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: -- point of view. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, and 

sometimes we've sent them over to Jeff and the 

Labor people as well. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: But nonetheless, 

there can be items that fall through the 

cracks. And we want to be aware of that. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I have one related 

question. These worker outreach meetings that 

are done, are there records kept of those? 

Are there tapes or transcripts? Or how is 

that handled? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: There are records. 

We have a database tracking system that you 

all can access through the staff tools. For 

example, the workshop that we held a few weeks 

ago, the presentations are there, the 

invitees, the review of the workshop filled 

out by the participants is included in that. 

 If you are asking me, do we -- how 

do we capture the discussion in worker 

outreach meetings, that's done by minutes that 
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are assembled and shared with the participants 

for their review and editing for accuracy and 

clarification. 

 No, we do not record or transcribe 

these meetings. We use a set of summary 

minutes to capture what was said at the 

meeting. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Thanks. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, Mr. Clawson, 

comment? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: I just wanted 

follow up on what you had been saying earlier, 

Paul, because like any of the sites that I'm 

involved with or that I chair, when public 

comments come up, I want to make sure that 

they are addressed because many times as the 

Work Group Chair or whatever, the people 

follow up back to me and how come haven't you 

addressed this issue. 

 We've got to figure out a way to be 
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able to do this because many of them when we 

got into -- I try to keep track of them and 

when we get into the work group, I try to 

bring up that these need to be addressed. 

This was brought up in public comment. And to 

make sure that we do. 

 But, sometimes I miss them and I'm 

called to task by some of the people of, why 

aren't you addressing this. So this is an 

issue that many of us have. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 And I think Mark Griffon has a 

comment. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. This is to 

follow up on the same issue. Larry, I thought 

at one point I know there was an early version 

of this. And I don't know if you got away 

from this or not. 

 But there was a tracking database 

developed to track the comments from the work 

groups or from the worker outreach sessions. 

And I don't know if that -- the last I heard, 
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that the initial database was being modified 

and they were coming up with a new -- and I'm 

just curious what the status of that is. And 

it's on the O: drive. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. ORAU had 

started, in the early days of the program, a 

platform called -- I believe it was WISPR -- 

yes, I think. But it wasn't adaptable. We 

couldn't migrate it to other -- to a more 

relational, searchable platform. 

 And so there is a new database 

tracking system that we have developed. It is 

capturing all of this information from our 

worker outreach efforts. 

 It incorporates, as I said, the 

purpose of the meeting, the materials used at 

a meeting to communicate with the 

participants, whatever that may be. If it is 

an SEC ombudsman petition discussion, those 

materials would be there. If it's a site 

profile discussion with a focus group, then 

what are the questions that are being asked of 
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the focus group, what is the information being 

gained. That's there. 

 Right now, I don't believe we track 

in that system public comments from the Board 

meeting. That could be something that we look 

at. 

 But I would like to speak quickly 

about Dr. Melius' assertion that he doesn't 

see staff go out and do this. We try to do 

our business unobtrusively and without calling 

attention to the fact that we're pulling 

somebody out of the room. My staff may meet 

with somebody out in the hallway. I may ask 

that person to come back the next day and talk 

to certain members of the staff. 

 So we do follow up on these things 

personally and individually with each 

commenter as we see appropriate. And it's 

done -- I can show you claim files where I 

have added commentary to the file notes about 

our interactions with people from these 

situations. 
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to the database question though, Larry, where 

can we find that? Is that on the OCAS 

website? Or is that on our O: drive? Or do 

Board members have access to that database? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: You're supposed to 

have access to the database. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Maybe someone 

during the break can help me find it. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, we can. Maybe 

Tom James can help you locate that. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I don't know if it's 

on the shared drive or if it's -- for me it is 

in staff tools. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We need to move 

along. Any follow-up questions, Board 

members, for Larry? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Again, thank you, 

Larry, for your presentation. 

 We do want to hear now from the 
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Department of Labor. And Jeff Kotsch is here 

this morning. Again, Jeff, welcome. And 

we'll have the Department of Labor program 

update. 

 MR. KOTSCH: Good morning. This 

will be an update of the DOL's activities 

related to the Energy Employees Occupational 

Illness Compensation Program Act. 

 Just a little background. Most of 

us have heard this numerous times but I know 

there are a few people in the audience that 

may not have gone through the ordeal yet. 

 The Part B portion of the program 

became effective on July 31st, 2001. And 

since that time -- or as of, actually, October 

8th of this year, 67,696 cases or 100,676 

claims have been filed. As I always note, 

there are always more claims than cases 

because, for survivor claims, there may be 

more than one survivor. 

 Thirty thousand five hundred and 

eight cases have been referred to NIOSH for 
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dose reconstruction. On the Part E side of 

the program, which we'll talk about a little 

later, that became effective on October 28th, 

2004. That was formerly the Part D program 

administered by the Department of Energy. 

 Again, as of October 8th, 58,916 

cases or 83,154 claims have been filed. And 

over 25,000 cases were transferred from DOE 

when Part E came over to the Department of 

Labor. 

 As far as compensation for the 

program, again as of October 8th, 5.2 billion 

dollars have been paid out in total 

compensation, 3.09 billion of that for Part B. 

 Part E was 1.74 billion. And there was 379 

million in medical benefits. 

 As far as paid cases under the 

program, 54,645 payees in 40,591 Part B and E 

cases, basically, as of October 8th. A little 

over 38,100 Part B payees in almost 25,000 

cases and about 16,500 Part E payees in 15,646 

cases. So Part B is about -- what is it -- 61 
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percent of the payments. 

 A quick look at Part B. Part B 

covers radiation-induced cancers, including 

the special exposure cohort. It includes 

chronic beryllium disease and beryllium 

sensitivity, silicosis for the miners at the 

Nevada Test Site and the Amchitka Island Test 

Site up in Alaska, and provides a supplement 

per the statute for the RECA Section 5 uranium 

workers. That's the Radiation Exposure 

Compensation Act, which is basically done by 

the Department of Justice. 

 Who is eligible? DOE employees, 

DOE contractors and subcontractors, the atomic 

weapons employers, beryllium vendors, certain 

survivors of deceased workers that are listed 

there, and, again, the RECA Section 5 uranium 

workers. 

 Presumptive coverage. There is 

presumptive coverage for workers with the 22 

specified cancers at the special exposure 

cohort or the SEC sites. There are the four 
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statutory sites, the three gaseous fusion 

plants at Portsmouth, Paducah, and K-25 plus, 

again, the Amchitka Test Site. And as of 

October 8th, 2009, there were 44 SEC classes 

that have been added by HHS. 

 Quickly, the Part B benefits 

include a 150,000 lump sum payment, medical 

benefits for the covered conditions that are 

addressed in the decision, and medical 

treatment and monitoring only for beryllium 

sensitivity. 

 This is just a breakdown of the 

final decisions. There have been 26,661 final 

decisions approved as of October 8th and 

20,129 final decisions denied. And the 

reasons are broken out a little further on the 

right-hand side. A little under 600 for 

survivors not eligible, a little over 14,100 

for Probability of Causations less than 50 

percent, and a little over 5,400 for medical 

information insufficient to support the claim. 

 A quick look at Part E. Again, 
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created in 2004 to replace the old Part D. It 

is, again, a federal entitlement like Part B. 

 It provides lump sum payments up to 250,000 

dollars, usually on top of the Part B payment, 

plus medical benefits for the accepted 

conditions. 

 Eligibility includes DOE 

contractors and subcontractors. Unlike Part B 

it does not include the atomic weapons 

employers or beryllium vendor workers. 

 There is a little bit of a 

difference in the survivors of the deceased 

workers, too. It's -- Part E, by statute, is 

a little more restrictive as indicated up 

there on the slide. And it covers -- Part E 

covers any occupational disease, any toxic 

exposure, including Part B disease. So there 

is, in essence, dual eligibility under the two 

parts. 

 Part E also includes impairment. 

It's a determination of the percent of 

permanent whole body impairment due to the 
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covered illness. The program uses the AMA 

Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent 

Impairment, the fifth edition of that, and 

awards 2,500 dollars per each percentage point 

of impairment. 

 There is another portion of Part E 

which covers wage loss. If medical evidence 

shows -- or medical evidence must show the 

decreased capacity to work and the 

compensation schemes, by statute, are there. 

Basically, if you have 50 percent or less -- 

or less than 50 percent of the pre-disability 

annual wage, you get 15,000 in compensation. 

Between 50 and 75, it's 10,000. 

 And here is just the graphic of the 

Part E final decisions: 21,811 approved as of 

October 8th, 18,355 final decisions denied. 

Again, a little further breakdown on the right 

side. A little under 5,500 for cancers not -- 

with Probability of Causations less than 50 

percent and a little under 13,000 when there 

is insufficient medical information. 
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 As far as the referrals to NIOSH, 

we are indicating as of October 8th, 30,508 

cases referred to NIOSH for dose 

reconstruction, 25,396 have been returned by 

NIOSH and are currently at the Department of 

Labor, 22,159 had dose reconstructions, 3,237 

were without dose reconstructions. They may 

have been pulled back for SEC considerations 

or there may have been changes to the case 

information that would not allow us to go 

further with the dose reconstruction. 

 Fifty-one hundred and twelve cases 

we're indicating are currently at NIOSH, 3,017 

are initial referrals, 2,095 reworks on 

returns. 

 As far as new SEC-related cases, 

the Department has withdrawn 2,955 cases from 

NIOSH for review. We've issued 2,621 final 

decisions, of which 2,539 had final approvals. 

 There are 28 recommended but no final 

decisions. That means it is between the -- 

they are currently with the final adjudication 
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branch, 59 cases are pending, and 247 cases 

were closed. These numbers are as of 

September 30th. 

 Dose reconstruction case status, 

22,159 cases were returned by NIOSH with a 

dose reconstruction -- that would be to the 

Department of Labor -- 20,356 with dose 

reconstruction in final decisions. So we've 

got about 66 percent with final decisions, 

6,850 with final approvals of PoC greater than 

50 percent, 13,506 final denials with PoC less 

than 50 percent. 

 These are Part B cancer cases with 

final decisions to accept. There have been 

6,546 accepted dose reconstruction cases with 

971.3 million in compensation. Accepted SEC 

cases, there were 9,864 for 1.4 billion in 

compensation. Where we had both SEC status 

and PoC greater than 50, there were 304 for 

45.4 million in compensation. Those would be 

cases that also had dose reconstructions for 

medical benefits. And so the total of all 
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accepted SEC and dose reconstructed cases, 

16,714 for 2.4 billion in compensation. 

 Just a graphic. For the last year 

for Part B cases received by the Department of 

Labor, fairly steady -- I mean moves up and 

down but fairly steady over the last few 

months anyway, running in the low 300s. We're 

showing 321 for September, that data as of 

September 30th. 

 And these are Part B cases sent to 

NIOSH on a monthly basis, again for the last 

year, it has been dropping over the last few 

months, this is both initial referrals and the 

reworks or returns to NIOSH. And I guess the 

numbers are -- we're running in the 300s and 

dropping somewhat for -- I'm not sure why but, 

you know, now into the low 200s, 219 for 

September. 

 Just a listing we've been providing 

more recently. The top four work sites of 

incoming Part B cases: Hanford, Y-12 Plant, 

Savannah River Site, K-25 Diffusion Plant. 
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 For Hanford, last year's data shown 

there, again, dropping a little bit. It 

probably will -- hopefully, it'll go up again 

 as we -- depending on the new SEC, if there 

is an SEC expansion. But it was in the 40s, 

down -- 30 for September. Again, as of 

September 30th. 

 Y-12, been running in the low, I 

guess, low 40s. Now we're about 39 for 

September. 

 Savannah River, moving up and down. 

 But so 34 in August, 18 in September. 

 And K-25, running, at least over 

the last three or four months, fairly steadily 

at the low 30s. 

 Percentage of new Part B cases 

received monthly by Department of Labor, 

roughly running -- for the Department of 

Energy facilities in the 93, 94 percent. And 

then the next slide is the atomic weapons 

employers' percentages, which are obviously 

the remainder of that, running in the five to 
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six percent range. 

 And then as we like to do at each 

meeting, just presenting the numbers for the 

facilities that are on the agenda for this 

week's meeting. Blockson Chemical Company, 

214 cases, just Part B only. So it's an 

atomic weapons employer. Cases returned by 

NIOSH with the dose reconstruction, 124, final 

Part B decisions, 137, Part B approvals, 54, 

for a total compensation and medical bills 

paid of 8.2 million. 

 Hanford, 10,032 cases, both Part B 

and E, 1,925 cases returned with dose 

reconstruction, 3,639 Part B decisions, 1,943 

B approvals, 1,850 E approvals, total 

compensation of 416.3 million. 

 Brookhaven National Lab, 325 cases 

on 404 claims, again, both Part B and E, 33 

cases returned with the dose reconstruction, 

69 with Part B decisions, 26 with E approvals, 

40 with B approvals for 4.3 million. 

 Oak Ridge Hospital, 77 cases, both 
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Part B and E, 14 returned with the dose 

reconstruction. Labor issued 24 Part B 

decisions, final B decisions for 11 B 

approvals, 14 Part E approvals for a total 

compensation and medical bills paid of 2.9 

million. 

 Bliss & Laughlin Steel, 57 cases, 

both Part B and E, 26 returned with dose 

reconstructions. The Department of Labor 

issued 33 Part B decisions, ten of which were 

approvals. There was one Part E approval for 

1.6 million in compensation. 

 The Piqua Organic Moderated 

Reactor, 22 cases, six dose reconstruction 

from NIOSH, Labor issued eight Part B 

decisions. There were four approvals in Part 

B, three Part E approvals for 872,158 dollars. 

 Metals & Control Corporation, 21 

cases, Part B only, 13 dose reconstruction 

from NIOSH, 14 final decisions in Part B for, 

nine Part B approvals, and total compensation 

of 1.3 million. 
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 Electro Metallurgical, 174 Part B 

only cases, 93 dose reconstructions received 

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decisions, 44 Part B approvals from that group 

for compensation of 6.4 million. 

 And the University of Rochester, 

six cases, Part B only, one dose 

reconstruction, three final Part B decisions, 

two approvals in Part B, and 300,000 dollars 

in total compensation and medical bills paid. 

 And that's just the pie chart of 

the Part B cases filed. And what does it say 

-- 35 were sent for NIOSH. The others, the 

chronic beryllium silicosis claims, things 

like that, 11 RECA -- 11 percent in the RECA 

and then the remainder SEC cases referred to 

NIOSH, two percent, SEC cases never sent to 

NIOSH because they were basically resolved at 

Department of Labor, nine percent. 

 Questions? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you, Jeff. 
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 It appears that the claims 

submitted have dropped now monthly for what, 

the last seven months or so. It looked like a 

definite downward trend. Do we make anything 

of that? Or is that -- do you think that's 

just part of this cyclical thing? Or are 

there definitely less -- well, clearly there's 

less claims being filed. But are we -- 

 MR. KOTSCH: Yes, well, I mean 

we're not sure. We are -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Are you okay with 

that, I guess is what I'm asking. 

 MR. KOTSCH: We are continuing 

outreach. Obviously there are new SEC classes 

generated, you know, usually what -- two or 

three each time. There may be more this time. 

 But I guess more recently they have been 

smaller sized but the impact would probably be 

less. 

 But I don't know that we've got -- 

and I don't know whether Larry has any idea. 

I mean it's just -- I don't know if it's 
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cyclical or what it is. But we haven't 

ascribed it to anything. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 Mark Griffon? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, Jeff, I don't 

know if this is the appropriate time but you 

had mentioned -- I can't -- I don't know if it 

was on our phone call meeting or wherever, 

that DOL was reviewing the Rocky Flats 

Ruttenber database question. And that you 

would be prepared to offer your opinion during 

this meeting. 

 And I don't know if you're -- if we 

were planning on doing that later during the 

work group updates or if you're, you know -- 

 MR. KOTSCH: Whatever your 

preference is. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I don't -- I'll 

ask the Chair. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, let's do it 

during the work group update. I think it 

would be appropriate when were talking about -
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 MR. KOTSCH: Added suspense, so -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, also my 

concern was I didn't know if you were staying 

for all three days. 

 MR. KOTSCH: I'm here, I'm here. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 Other questions or comments? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Apparently not. 

 Thank you very much, Jeff. We 

appreciate, as usual, the comprehensive 

coverage of the Labor statistics, as it were. 

 We're going to take our break at 

this time. We have a 15-minute break. And 

then we will resume. 

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off 

the record at 11:01 a.m. and 

resumed at 11:20 a.m.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We are ready to 

resume our meeting. Our next presentation 

will be an update from the Department of 
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Energy. Your agenda indicates the Dr. 

Worthington would be giving the update, but 

she's not able to be with us today, but we do 

have Greg Lewis here. 

 And, Greg, we're pleased to have 

you present the Department of Energy update. 

 MR. LEWIS: Great. Thank you, Dr. 

Ziemer. And Dr. Worthington just wanted to 

apologize. She wanted to make it here but due 

to events back at the office, she just wasn't 

able to. But she does expect to be here for 

the next meeting. 

 So, again, I'm Greg Lewis. I'm the 

Program Manager for the EEOICPA Program at 

DOE. And I'm going to talk to you about some 

of the things that we've been doing since the 

last meeting. 

 Our core mandate at DOE for the 

EEOICPA Program is to work on behalf of the 

program claimants to ensure that all available 

worker and facility records and data are 

provided to DOL, NIOSH, and the Advisory 
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Board. 

 We have a number of 

responsibilities as far as that goes in terms 

of supporting both DOL and NIOSH in their 

requests for individual information to 

reconstruct dose and to adjudicate claims. 

 We also provide support and 

assistance to the Department of Labor, NIOSH, 

and the Advisory Board on large-scale records 

research, facilities research such as SEC 

petition evaluations and things like that. 

 And then we also conduct research 

and coordination with DOL and NIOSH on issues 

related to facility designations that may be 

changing years or adding facilities and things 

of that nature. 

 We did have a recent initiative to 

try to communicate with -- both internally to 

DOE and to outside stakeholders some of our 

responsibilities. 

 So we launched an awareness 

campaign focused on current and former 
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workers. We wanted to lay out the roles and 

responsibilities at DOE that we do on behalf 

of the workers. And that's both for the 

Former Worker Program, EEOICPA, and some of 

our current safety initiatives. 

 And, again, that's the Worker 

Safety and Health Program, 10 CFR 851. It may 

be unfamiliar to some of you but that's -- 

it's a rule that we put out within the last 

year focused on current and the next 

generation of DOE workers. And it's, you 

know, with the aim of preventing work-related 

illness and injuries. 

 This is the EEOICPA brochure, 

Former Worker, and 10 CFR 851. They are 

brochures with information. We have them on 

our DOE website for HHS. So anyone that needs 

a link, I can provide that. 

 And then our main activity, the one 

that takes up the most of our resources is 

supporting individual records requests from 

DOL and NIOSH. We do approximately 6,500 
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employment verifications for the Department of 

Labor, about 3,000 dose reconstruction records 

requests from NIOSH, and about 6,500 document 

acquisition requests from the Department of 

Labor and those are for additional exposure 

information, industrial hygiene records, 

medical records, et cetera. 

 The total number of records 

requests that we completed have gone down 

slightly in 2009 from about 16,800 to about 

16,000. We don't have our final September 

numbers in, but that's what we expect. 

 And I guess that goes back to Dr. 

Ziemer's point earlier. It looks like claims 

have gone down slightly this year. You know, 

as Jeff Kotsch said, we haven't really 

ascribed that to anything in particular. But 

we have noticed, you know, the requests have 

declined in the last year. 

 And then we do a number of things 

to support SEC research activities. Currently 

there are eight sites active. And I say 
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active although some of these, you know, we're 

doing more research than others. 

 Some of them are in the final 

stages but currently we are working on 

Hanford, Mound, Savannah River, Pantex, Los 

Alamos, Brookhaven, of course, the Nevada Test 

Site, and the Santa Susanna Field Lab. 

 Here are some statistics about some 

of the stuff we're doing at these various 

sites. At Hanford, we've produced over a 

million pages for review. That's both boxes 

of records and documents. 

 And then we've reviewed close to 

8,000 documents for classification. That's 

page by page by our classification reviewers. 

 So that's quite time-consuming. And that's 

probably -- the bulk of our resources at 

Hanford went toward classification review. 

But at this point, we've completed almost 

everything. 

 And I'm not going to hit all of 

these points for these sites. You know you 
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can get those handouts on the back table. And 

if anyone has questions, they can feel free to 

ask. But let's just go through some of the 

highlights. 

 We've supported a site visit at 

Hanford about once a month for the past year. 

 I think they've slowed down in the last 

couple of months as NIOSH has approached their 

evaluation, you know, recommendation. But 

they've been about once a month or so. 

 We've provided tours of multiple 

facilities. And you can see some of them up 

there, B Reactor, the Plutonium Finishing 

Plant, T Plant, the 100N area, et cetera. You 

know these were pretty detailed tours. 

 I know that we provided some 

training and outfitted various members of the 

tour group to go into certain, you know, 

radiation-protected areas. 

 We arranged for subject matter 

experts, current workers that have extensive 

facility or site history, as well as some 
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former workers that had knowledge of some of 

the early days. 

 At Savannah River, we hosted 12 

NIOSH site visits and have conducted document 

reviews for about 3,500 documents or over 

260,000 pages of information. 

 At Mound, we facilitated a number 

of meetings. We've provided classification 

experts to give, you know, both the Advisory 

Board members and NIOSH, NIOSH and SC&A staff 

information on, you know, what they can or 

can't say in certain areas. We're making sure 

that, you know, their documents have been 

reviewed appropriately. And the information 

that they would like to present to the public, 

you know, they are able to do that. 

 And then, again, we completed most 

of the document requests or records requests 

at Mound although we continue to support 

individual efforts or specific follow-up 

questions from NIOSH and SC&A. 

 Here at Brookhaven, we've hosted 
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over six records review and data capture 

visits from NIOSH staff. We've identified 

hundreds of boxes of records and made them 

available to NIOSH. We've pulled boxes back 

from off-site storage locations, federal 

records centers, things like that. 

 We've arranged for subject matter 

experts, again both current and former 

employees, which is important, you know, I 

think Brookhaven, the site goes back to, I 

believe, before 1950. So, again, the current 

workers have knowledge that goes back only so 

far. So we've made sure to arrange for former 

workers with knowledge about site activities 

and historical exposures to be available to 

talk to NIOSH and staff. 

 And then yesterday, we facilitated 

a site tour for NIOSH, the Advisory Board, 

and, you know, their contractors. Subject 

matter experts were available. The lab 

director actually addressed the tour, both at 

the beginning and the end, and was able to 
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answer some questions. And so, you know, we 

hope that was informative and helped give you 

some perspective on the facility and its 

activities. 

 Okay, I'm going to talk about 

document reviews and I know at previous Board 

meetings, there was some, you know, concerns 

over the security plan that we put together 

last February and the requirement for document 

reviews at various sites and facilities that 

have classification concerns. 

 Since February of 2009 when we 

initiated the security plan, 179 documents 

have been submitted to DOE for classification 

review. The average turnaround time for those 

documents was less than ten calendar days, so 

approximately seven work days, I guess. 

 You know in certain cases where an 

expedited review is necessary when NIOSH or 

the Board needed the document for, you know, 

immediate action, we've returned documents in 

one to two days as needed if possible. 
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 And then facility research is also 

an important part of what we do. We have -- 

there is a database with over 300 facilities 

covered under EEOICPA. This includes 

Department of Energy facilities, atomic 

weapons employers, and beryllium vendors. 

 We have the Office of Legacy 

Management. We have a separate contract with 

them. My office at DOE has contracted with 

Legacy Management for records research 

activities. They -- Legacy Management is 

unique in that they handle and manage most of 

the legacy records for the Department of 

Energy and are responsible for the sites that 

have closed or no longer exist. 

 So they have -- their staff have a 

unique knowledge of how to handle DOE records. 

 And they also have an extensive historical 

knowledge of DOE operations and activities. 

So, you know, they are very well positioned to 

be able to work within DOE with our various 

sites and outside of DOE at research sources 
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to locate relevant records that can determine 

what was done on DOE sites and atomic weapons 

employers, and what material was supplied 

where so we really utilize them to locate 

information and provide it back to the 

Department of Labor and NIOSH. 

 And then the current facilities 

that we're researching are Baycock [sic] & 

Wilcox Technologies in Lynchburg, Virginia and 

the Wah Chang facility in Albany, Oregon. And 

just to speak to, you know, the point that 

Larry and Dr. Ziemer were discussing earlier, 

you know, with Larry's commitment to -- 

NIOSH's commitment to, you know, return all 

cases by June of this year and they did 

mention that certain cases are pending based 

on facility research. If there is a question 

about the facility designation or the years of 

coverage, you know, they can't proceed until 

that's resolved. And we realize that. And, 

you know, at DOE, we do not want to stand in 

the way of that. We are doing our best to, 
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you know, return these research issues and get 

them the answers they need in the time they 

need them. 

 However, you know, we do want to 

say that with research, you know, the more you 

look sometimes, the more you find. And it's 

very difficult to just stop it, you know, when 

you continue to find information. 

 So, you know, we may be going to, 

you know, ten or more different DOE sites to 

find information. And then we also rely on 

these, you know, AWEs, we contact them 

directly to find information. And in certain 

cases, we may go to a town or a reading room, 

a local library who may have information about 

the very early days of the site. 

 So it's not always in our control 

when we get answers, which one example is the 

B&W facility in Lynchburg. We were waiting 

for information from them. And there were a 

number of issues that they experienced. So 

there was somewhat of a delay in the 
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information. But we do have that now and are 

about to close our research. But that's kind 

of an example of it's not always in our hands 

but we are striving to, you know, get the 

information back in a timely manner and not 

hold up NIOSH in their efforts. 

 We have a number of initiatives 

that we have undertaken in the last couple of 

months, you know, to try to improve our 

service to the Department of Labor and NIOSH 

and the Board. We hold weekly conference 

calls with members of NIOSH and the 

contractors to make sure that we're getting 

them what they need and, you know, kind of 

review any outstanding issues, talk about our 

path forward, and expectations on both sides. 

 We provide subject matter experts 

to Advisory Board Working Group in conference 

calls as well as, you know, NIOSH and SC&A if 

they need consultation on certain issues. We 

facilitated secure meetings and video 

conference calls for NIOSH and Advisory Board 
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staff so they can discuss classified 

information in a secure setting. We're 

currently working with our CIO's office to 

revise our contracting provisions and 

acquisitions guide to ensure DOE sites retain 

the right to access and, you know, use records 

once contractors have left or have fulfilled 

their obligations under a certain contract. 

 This is particularly important 

because we realize that there are problems 

obtaining subcontractor records from the early 

days and the not-so-early days because, you 

know, subcontractors, when they were finished 

with their project, a lot of them took their 

own records and left. And if that contractor 

is no longer in business or has been sold a 

number of times, it is difficult to access 

those records. 

 So in a continuing effort to 

improve that and make sure that, you know, 

from now on and in the future we're able to 

access those records, we're changing our 
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contracting guide so future contracts should 

make sure that we're able to access those 

records. And then the Los Alamos Medical 

Center Project, which I think we've been 

talking to you all or giving you updates on 

for some time now, we're actually -- the 

project is basically complete. 

 We're just working with the 

hospital legal staff to, you know, transition 

ownership of the records to the Department of 

Energy. So as soon as that's complete, we 

will have the pre-1964 records. And once we 

have those records, you know, of course they 

will be integrated into our records system for 

future EEOICPA claims. 

 And then we're also working with 

the Department of Labor to reconcile all past 

Los Alamos claims to make sure if there are 

valuable records in this collection, they are 

provided to the DOL and, you know, if cases 

need to be reopened or whatnot, they will be 

if needed. That's, of course, Department of 
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Labor's decision. 

 And I just want to, you know, 

commit that we do everything we can to provide 

documents to NIOSH, DOL, and the Advisory 

Board. But, you know, we must do so in a 

responsible manner. So as I said before, you 

know, we've reviewed and responded to 

classification reviews for NIOSH and, you 

know, the Board, SC&A documents. And our 

average response time is two to nine business 

days, you know, depending on the need. 

 And then as far as outreach, you 

know, our DOE EEOICPA point of contacts out at 

all of the field sites are really the backbone 

of the DOE program. They are the ones who -- 

Gina and I, our office works with to gather 

records. They work with NIOSH and the Board 

on research projects. They manage all of the 

different site groups that may be responding 

to requests, the medical department, 

industrial hygiene, RADCON, human resources, 

et cetera. 
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 So these POCs are -- who really 

drives this process, makes sure the responses 

are returned to you in a timely manner, makes 

sure that the quality is maintained, and, you 

know, answers -- arranges for subject matter 

experts, all of the things I've talked about. 

 And today we have -- Dr. Joe Falco 

is from the Brookhaven National Lab. He is 

their Occupational Medical Director. And he 

also wears the second hat as the EEOICPA 

Program Coordinator. So, you know, as part of 

his busy day he also has time for us, which, 

you know, involves quite a bit of working with 

the different groups at the lab and NIOSH, 

DOL, the Advisory Board, contractors, my 

office. So, you know, he really does a great 

job pulling together records and making sure 

that you all get the answers and information 

you need. 

 And then we've initiated a recent 

effort to coordinate outreach efforts with the 

Department of Labor, the DOL Ombudsman's 
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Office, the Former Worker Medical Screening 

Programs, and NIOSH. All of these groups in 

some form or another are trying to reach 

roughly the same population of DOE former 

workers. It's for different reasons but they 

are trying to talk to all the same groups. 

 And many times they are having 

separate events and we're trying to make sure 

that at these events, you know, the other 

groups are represented or at least there is 

information there, you know, trying to find 

some efficiencies, you know, so more people 

can be reached in a more effective manner. 

And then, you know, a little bit about the 

Former Worker Medical Screening Program, which 

ties in somewhat with EEOICPA in that it is a, 

you know, free screening program that 

identifies and notifies former workers at risk 

for various occupational diseases and offers 

them medical screening. 

 You know depending on the results 

of their screening, they are often referred to 
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the EEOICPA Program. They send them over to 

the Department of Labor program. Or, you 

know, it's useful, they can bring the 

information to their doctor to influence care. 

 So further information on the Former Worker 

Program can be found at that link. And, 

again, that link is on the handouts in the 

back of the room. And just some information 

about the local Brookhaven Former Worker 

Program, for production workers, the principle 

investigator is Dr. Markowitz with Queens 

College. And the contact information is 

there. 

 And for the construction workers, 

the principle investigator is Knut Ringen, and 

his contact information is there as well. And 

I believe someone from the construction 

workers will be here today or may be here now, 

but certainly for the public comment session 

and tomorrow as well. 

 And then I wanted to close, as 

Larry, you know, you've heard, but Larry 
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mentioned as well, with the National Day of 

Remembrance. On May 22nd, the U.S. Senate 

designated October 30th as the National Day of 

Remembrance for the nuclear weapons program 

workers and uranium miners, millers, and 

haulers. Hundreds of thousands of men and 

women have served this nation in building the 

nuclear defense since World War II. These 

dedicated workers paid a high price for their 

service to develop the program, and it 

benefited everyone here, you know. These 

patriotic men and women deserve to be 

recognized for their contribution, service, 

and sacrifice towards the defense of our great 

nation. Congress has encouraged the people of 

the United States to support and participate 

in appropriate ceremonies, programs, and other 

activities to commemorate October 30th as a 

National Day of Remembrance for past and 

present workers in America's nuclear weapons 

programs. 

 So, you know, the Secretary of 
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Energy has encouraged the DOE sites and 

laboratories to, you know, mark this day with 

some special events. So we do have various 

events going on around the country, you know, 

with former worker involvement and, you know, 

to honor those people that have given so much. 

 So I think that's it unless there 

are questions. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Greg, thank you 

very much for that update. Since I was picky 

with NIOSH on some slides, I thought it would 

be appropriate for me to be equally picky with 

Department of Energy. 

 But you had a slide talking about a 

facility in Lynchburg, Virginia, which was 

identified as Baycock & Wilcox. And I believe 

it's probably Babcock & Wilcox. And I'm 

looking to see if Dr. Poston is nodding 

because -- not that he's sleeping but he 

agrees that -- I think he may have even worked 

there. But I believe it is Babcock & Wilcox. 

 MR. LEWIS: That does sound right. 
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 I'll get that changed. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. Just for 

purposes of accuracy, both in our transcript 

and in our written material. I believe it's 

slide 21. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Ted and I have also 

done some research and Wah Chang is not a 

Chinese restaurant in Albany, Oregon. It is a 

specialty metals. I think it's either an only 

Teledyne or Allegheny Technology site. 

Teledyne? Yes, okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: The reason you 

know that is because you went there once to 

eat and couldn't get -- 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Well, we were 

concerned -- 

 (Laughter.) 

 MEMBER MELIUS: -- about the egg 

rolls. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, kidding 

aside, Dr. Melius, I do believe you do have a 

question or comment in addition to that? 
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 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, I do. In 

terms of your -- I have two questions -- first 

of all, in terms of your turnaround time, I'm 

glad that on average it is low. But can you 

sort of give me the range on the turnaround? 

Because I think what we're concerned about is 

that you can have a low average and have, you 

know, some turnaround in terms of document 

reviews that can go on for months. And I'm 

just trying to understand. 

 MR. LEWIS: Well, I don't have an 

exact range on me now in terms of specific 

numbers. I do know there are some outliers, 

you know, depending on the length of the 

document and the complexity. Most of what we 

review are actual reports compiled by NIOSH, 

their contractors, the Advisory Board, SC&A, 

typically those reports are not too long. And 

those fall well within the two to nine day 

range. 

 The ones that fall outside that are 

for whatever reason, if there is a longer 
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source document that the site reviewed and 

needs it re-reviewed or there may be various 

reasons. And these can be hundreds of pages, 

six, 700 pages. And those, of course, are 

very difficult to complete in the two to nine 

days. So sometimes it does take longer. I 

don't, again, have a specific range. And we 

do try to work with the requestor to figure 

out what the time frame is. You know, we know 

that some need to be expedited. 

 And we get some, you know, 

especially the four, five, 600-page documents. 

 And we'll work with, you know, whoever 

submitted it to come up with a, you know, 

appropriate time frame. Something that works, 

something that is reasonable for us to 

achieve, but that isn't going to delay the 

requestor, you know, too much if possible. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. Well, I 

think it might be helpful just for us to 

understand what's going on if you could 

report, you know, things over 30 days or 60 
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days. Some sort of parameter that would help 

us to understand those circumstances. A 

second question I have is a question I asked 

Mr. Podonsky at the last meeting. And I 

believe he said he would get back to us on 

this issue. And it's a request that actually 

goes back to prior meetings also. 

 And that was a request that, given 

the ongoing concerns of many workers at these 

facilities, that they could be reprimanded for 

providing information to either the, you know, 

Medical Screening Program, or to this program, 

to NIOSH, to contractors or the Board's 

contractors involved in doing these 

evaluations and follow-up. They asked if it 

was possible to get some sort of directive 

from DOE out to the sites indicating that 

they're -- you know something in writing 

indicating that there would be no reprimand 

for people providing information to this 

program, you know, providing they followed the 

appropriate security procedures. And I'm 
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trying to understand if that's going to 

happen, not happen; where does that stand? 

 MR. LEWIS: Yes, I don't have a 

direct answer from Mr. Podonsky, and the issue 

hasn't been resolved. However, you know, we 

continue to work on, I guess, a solution. One 

of the problems that we've run into is a 

directive like this would need to come from 

each of the DOE program offices. So he's 

coordinating with, you know, the Office of 

Science, EN, Nuclear Energy, the various 

offices within DOE would all have to come out 

with a coordinated letter, which has made it a 

little bit difficult. But, again, he 

continues to work on it. And, you know, as 

soon as he is able to come, sort of, to 

determination as to whether, you know, or when 

this letter can go out, he will get back to 

you. 

 And then I do want to say in the 

interim, you know, we have taken some steps to 

work with groups that are concerned with, I 
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guess, potential retaliation. You know we've 

arranged for some offsite interviews or we've 

attempted to arrange for some offsite 

locations where people can interview in a 

secure setting. 

And, you know, documents can be reviewed at 

headquarters instead of a certain site, you 

know, if individuals are worried about 

contractor retribution. So we have made, you 

know, some strides there. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I think we 

appreciate the efforts. I think having some 

sort of directive from headquarters would be 

most helpful. It continues to be a concern 

and I think on the part of, you know, worker 

representatives and so forth, I think we're 

going to continue to have problems with people 

being willing to cooperate with these programs 

unless they feel that they are being 

protected. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I believe that 

Mr. Podonsky also indicated that -- and, in 
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fact, I'm not sure he made that commitment 

actually -- but he indicated a skepticism 

about the effect of such headquarters' 

pronouncements. Because the history has 

indicated that down at the working level, 

there is an ability to ignore such 

pronouncements so that the real effort may 

take the form of what Greg has described and 

actually providing a climate or an environment 

where the information can be gathered in a way 

that is clear to the worker that the threat 

has somehow been removed. 

 I guess we would have to check the 

transcripts. I believe he did perhaps 

indicate that they would be willing to develop 

a statement such as you described. But it 

seemed to me he also committed to the idea 

that beyond the statement, it was very 

important to develop the actual working 

practices that made it possible and not just 

have it be a statement that could be somehow 

ignored. At least that's my recollection of 
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it. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, I don't have 

the transcript in front of me, but I think, 

again, if he's not going to do it -- if DOE is 

not going to do it, then they should say so. 

Secondly, I think it is important that there 

be something in writing specific to this 

program. I agree that changing the climate -- 

I think the climate probably has changed over 

the years and even over the recent years, but 

I think having something specific to this 

program would be helpful. And I'm at least 

under the impression that DOE is still working 

on that. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And that 

certainly makes sense. And at least from my 

perspective, both are needed. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Both a statement 

that it is the policy and then actually 

evidence that it is put into practice at the 

working level. 
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 Other comments or questions? Oh, 

Gina, please. 

 MS. CANO: I just want to make a 

comment. As Greg mentioned on his 

presentation, DOE has been very committed on 

outreach and communication. And it is pretty 

much a two-phased approach. One of it being 

going out to the field and really educating 

the management about EEOICPA and Former Worker 

Program and part of this is having this 

discussion with management that these are some 

of the concerns because it is at the site 

level. 

 Again, it has to be supported at 

the site level. Management has to encourage 

the workforce to come forward and have to 

support the program. So that's one of the key 

messages we are delivering to management as we 

go out within this next year. We met with Oak 

Ridge, had a meeting with Hanford, and 

Livermore. I think, we had a short meeting 

with Livermore. But, again, that is, again, 
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part of our objective. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 Other comments or questions for 

Greg? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Apparently not. 

So we will proceed. 

 Thank you, again, Greg for your 

participation. 

 MR. LEWIS: Thank you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And we look 

forward to working again closely with your 

group and Dr. Worthington and Mr. Podonsky. 

 Next we are going to have our 

science update. Dr. Neton from NIOSH-OCAS 

will present the science update. 

 Jim, welcome. 

 DR. NETON: Good morning. I'm 

going to -- what's become a semi-regular 

aspect of the Board meeting is to present an 

update on where we are with science issues 

within OCAS. 
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But I thought -- in the past few meetings, 

I've given sort of a discussion of what were 

emerging issues that we had to deal with. 

And, you know, how we resolve those issues. 

 And I sensed, especially from 

certain members of the Board, that we might 

want to go back and look at the original list 

that we developed several years ago, mostly to 

assure people we haven't forgotten about it 

and we continue to look at it, discuss any 

progress we've made on that original list or 

lack thereof. 

 Just to refresh your memories, 

there were two, sort of two flavors or two 

types of issues that we deal with broadly in 

what are considered the overarching science 

issues. And the first category I presented 

here are what I've titled -- you can't see the 

title very well -- I don't know, could we move 

that down a little bit -- okay -- so trust me, 

it says Original Risk Model Issues at the top. 

 And I've listed what I believe to be the 
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seven issues that were identified fairly early 

at the inception of the program by the 

Advisory Board. 

 And so I've just listed them here. 

 The first one -- and the ones that are 

highlighted in, I guess, that's a greenish 

color, are ones that we've actually either 

completed or have made significant progress on 

or about to complete. So three out of the 

seven have either been completed or we made 

significant progress. 

 The first one, the incorporation of 

nuclear studies -- nuclear worker 

epidemiologic studies in the IREP risk models 

has had some work done on it. We are 

collaborating with our sister organization 

over at the Department or Division of 

Surveillance Hazard Evaluation and Field 

Studies. There is still an organization over 

there known as the Occupational Energy 

Research Program that does risk evaluation of 

certain cohorts. 
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 And we, OCAS, as a collaborating 

entity within that organization to look at an 

extended evaluation of leukemia in the worker 

chronic case control study, a multi-site case 

control study for leukemia incidence at many 

different DOE sites as well as Portsmouth 

Naval Shipyard and possibly some reactor 

facilities if we can get access to records. 

So that study is ongoing. 

 And secondly in that area, there is 

a draft paper circulated for publication that 

did an analysis and review -- a meta-analysis 

of about 22 epidemiologic studies for leukemia 

that particularly involved protracted 

exposures to low levels of ionizing radiation. 

 So that issue has not been ignored but there 

is some ongoing work there. 

 Smoking adjustment for lung cancer, 

I think we all remember in 2006 we actually 

added the dual model for smoking adjustment 

based on the Radiation Effects Research 

Foundation update to the smoking adjustment 
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models. And we actually run both models and 

pick the one that gives the higher PoC. So 

that issue is complete. 

 The grouping of the rare and 

miscellaneous cancers, that is the situation 

where the RERF or actually the original 

analysis of the RERF data did not develop a 

separate risk model unless there were 50 cases 

of a particular site type of cancer. So they 

were forced to group certain types of cancers 

to come up with sort of a combined risk model. 

 We're looking into this. We have 

not done too much more on that. There is some 

work ongoing with the Radiation Effects 

Research Foundation, especially in the area of 

lymphoma and multiple myeloma to possibly 

tease those two out. Right now they are 

combined in IREP and analyzing them as 

separate entities and I'll talk a little bit 

more about that when I get to our discussion 

of where we are with chronic lymphocytic 

leukemia. 
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 Age exposure analysis, of course, 

has to do with the concerns that there may be 

a population of workers who, when exposed at 

older ages, are more susceptible to radiation 

for whatever reason. And the current risk 

models don't necessarily reflect that 

condition. There are some interesting new 

studies coming out in this area. We're 

monitoring them and are aware of them. But 

thus far we've not produced any original 

research based on them. 

 The interaction with other 

workplace exposures is related to the sort of 

synergistic potential effects of radiation and 

other carcinogens. Again, we do monitor the 

literature in this area. However, at least in 

our opinion, there is not sufficient 

quantitative evidence to be brought to the 

table to combine the two in any good fashion. 

 The evaluation for chronic 

lymphocytic leukemia model, I'll talk about a 

little later. We've made some very 
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substantial progress on that. And I'll get to 

that in some subsequent slides. 

 And the final one on the table, 

which is -- on the slide, is the dose and dose 

rate effectiveness factor adjustment. That, 

of course, is the adjustment of the 

effectiveness of the radiation as the dose 

becomes more protracted as opposed to an acute 

exposure scenario. 

 We've commissioned SENES Oak Ridge, 

Incorporated, our risk model contractor, to 

evaluate the relevant literature up to within 

the last six months or so. They produced a 

several hundred page report that we are now in 

the process of farming out for subject matter 

expert review. 

 The next one may be of more 

interest, I'm not sure. But these are the 

original dose reconstruction issues. There's 

ten issues listed here. The one that I've 

highlighted in the green color are ones where, 

in my opinion, these are issues that actually 
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do require some type of analysis by NIOSH and 

some sort of formal documentation to -- like 

something that would require either a White 

Paper or supplemental information, a technical 

information bulletin. I omitted to highlight 

thoriated welding rods. I think that also 

falls in that category three. 

 So five out of the ten issues, in 

my opinion, do require some type of a formal 

documentation of our position. The other 

issues, a number of these, they may be 

overarching but they sort of handled on a 

case-specific basis. If you look at the dose 

from hot particles, wherever hot particles are 

encountered in terms of incidence and 

exposures and scenarios where there may have 

been large flakes or something of that nature, 

we certainly could deal with them technically 

using something like a VARSKIN calculation or 

whatever. So I tend to think of those as sort 

of site-specific evaluations. 

 The other three, assumptions for 
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unmonitored workers, cohort badging, 

interpretation of unworn badges are really 

three versions of all the same thing. They 

really are assumptions for unmonitored 

workers. How do you deal with workers who are 

not completely monitored? 

 We've gone through a number of 

discussions at various sites on these issues. 

 In fact, you know, we've come to a standard 

practice now where we would use for internal 

dosimetry, coworker models, the 50th 

percentile with the full distribution for 

workers that were not monitored, that did not 

appear to have the potential for routine 

exposure in the workplace, and we would use 

the 95th percentile as the constant for 

workers who should have been monitored but 

weren't, you know had a much higher potential 

for internal exposure. 

 That's sort of become the default 

in our program. The cohort badging itself is, 

in my opinion, a subset of that. I mean the 
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idea here is that you didn't monitor the 

highest exposed workers but they sort of did a 

cross-sectional sampling of the workforce to 

see, you know, how the radiation controls were 

playing out. In that particular case, it 

really becomes a matter then of, if you have a 

cohort badging situation, does one default to 

the 50th or 95th percentile of the coworker 

model. 

 The interpretation of unworn badges 

is, I think, a site-specific issue. We 

thought early on that we might be able to have 

some sort of generic analysis that could be 

employed such as fitting a log normal 

distribution of the data and looking for a 

tail off at the upper ends. That turned out 

to be not workable. 

 So effectively what has to be done 

when there are issues at sites where it is 

indicated that workers may not have worn their 

badges is really -- it ends up being sort of a 

brute-force analysis. I think what comes to 
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mind is the analysis that was done at Nevada 

Test Site. SC&A can attest to this. There 

were a lot of monitoring records to go 

through. And at the end of the day, we were 

all comfortable after the evaluation was done 

that, yes, some workers didn't wear their 

badges but it would have minimal or almost no 

effect on the overall coworker model. 

 I think that needs to be addressed 

on a case-by-case basis. I can't think of any 

-- we couldn't think of any real generic way 

to address this issue. 

 The internal dose from Super S that 

is listed here, that is closed out. We've 

issued TIB-0049. And the Board is very 

familiar with the discussions that we had on 

that, particularly in relationship to how we 

reconstruct doses at the Rocky Flats site. 

 The nonstandard exposures has been 

sort of the poster child; nonstandard exposure 

that we've addressed with a TIB is the 

exposure to glove box workers. It can be up 
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to a factor of two difference from a glove box 

worker wearing his badge on his lapel or his 

left pocket area versus what his internal 

organs, maybe in the GI area, are experiencing 

-- what kind of radiation exposure. 

 So that issue has been addressed 

but then, again, outside of those issues they 

tend to be site-specific issues. Do you have 

overhead piping issues? Do you have planar 

sources of contamination to deal with? Those 

could all be modeled using the routine tools 

we have available to us which are either the 

MCNP Code or the ATTILA software. 

 That gets me down to what I think 

are the two areas where we still owe White 

Papers or some type of analysis. And that is 

the oral-nasal breathing and the workplace 

ingestion. And I'd like to talk a little bit 

about those. 

 Before I get to that, though, I do 

-- sort of parallel to what Larry Elliott 

presented earlier this morning, we keep our 
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own internal science goals for the fiscal 

year, which I presented to the Board, I think, 

in the December time frame. And these are not 

all that we do. Of course, there's a lot of 

other competing and conflicting demands on our 

time within the program. But we like to call 

out certain ones to make sure we keep the 

focus and attention on them. 

 And as you can see, the first two 

were very important to get done. And we have 

completed those, which was the formal 

verification and validation of the NIOSH IREP 

calculations. We have now implemented Version 

5.6 of IREP, and it is up and running very 

nicely. And the second one was an issue that 

arose as part of our interaction with the 

Department of Labor. And that was to develop 

a dose reconstruction methodology for RECA, 

Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, cases. 

That has been complete and we are now well 

into our caseload. I think we're up to 150 

RECA cases or something like that now in our 
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possession. These tend to be a one-size-fitsall model so they do go through fairly 

quickly. 

 And the other ones are more 

relevant to the Board here and that is the 

development of the chronic lymphocytic 

leukemia model and propose a model to the 

Secretary. The next one, issue a formal NIOSH 

position paper on ingestion or oral-nasal 

breathing. And then the final one, the review 

of the new solid cancer incidence data 

reported through the RERF. 

 Let me mention that one first. 

That was a goal that is not listed as 

completed but it is an ongoing effort. The 

solid cancer incidence data has been released 

by RERF. We have tasked SENES, our Oak Ridge 

contractor, to look through that. They have 

developed draft IREP programs that can run 

both the BEIR-VII and the new solid cancer 

incidence models. We are still awaiting the 

piece that has to do with the non-solid 
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tumors, the leukemias and lymphomas. 

 So although that issue is not 

listed as complete, it will be ongoing for 

some time as we try to incorporate all of the 

new relevant information into what will 

eventually become a new version of IREP, NIOSH 

IREP 6.0. We hope to engage folks at the 

National Cancer Institute in a collaborative 

effort to start moving that forward. 

 Let me focus on the chronic 

lymphocytic leukemia and the formal position 

papers for a bit. The chronic lymphocytic 

leukemia model we've talked about for quite 

some time now. And it was a complicated model 

to develop. We finally have got to the stage 

where we had four subject matter experts 

review the model in some detail. It was 

finalized as far as we were concerned. 

 And the four reviewers that we 

commissioned to help us evaluate the model 

were David Richardson from the Department of 

Energy Epidemiology at the University of North 
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Carolina; Mary Schubauer-Berigan is in-house 

with our Division of Surveillance Hazard 

Evaluation and Field Studies (Many of you 

know Mary from her earlier work on this 

program.); Dr. Richard Wakeford from the 

Dalton Institute University of Manchester of 

the U.K. (Those of you may remember Dr. 

Wakeford was originally with the British 

Compensation Program that is sort of a 

parallel program that exists over there.); 

and finally Dr. Lydia Zablotska, Department of 

Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the 

University of California, San Francisco. 

 The comments that we received were 

pretty favorable in general. I mean everyone 

agreed, thankfully, that chronic lymphocytic 

leukemia is potentially radiogenic. Even 

though there are no good epidemiologic studies 

that can definitively demonstrate that there 

is a radiogenic component of CLL, 

mechanistically there's no way you can 

discount it. And so we have a unanimous 
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consensus on that with our reviewers. And 

that was gratifying to see. 

 Where we did have some issues of 

divergence of opinion among our reviewers 

related to this using the NIOSH IREP model for 

lymphoma and multiple myeloma. I mentioned 

it's a combined model. It was done that way 

because of paucity of the data. They had to 

group cancers to get the requisite number of 

50. 

 Some argued that we should go off 

on our own and sort of develop our own 

lymphoma model now. It would be kind of a 

lengthy process for us to do. And right now, 

frankly, the RERF is still in the process of 

pulling out, teasing out the lymphomas 

themselves. So we would prefer to wait to do 

that. 

 But we recognize the urgency of 

getting this out. So we are proposing to 

stick with the lymphoma/multiple myeloma model 

to move things forward. And as everything in 
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this program, as the science evolves, we will 

be happy to go back and look at that and see 

what effects the emerging scientific analysis 

has on the program. 

 One other area where there was some 

difference of opinion had to do with the 

length of the latency period for CLL. Those 

of you may remember I talked previously that 

we were going to use a 15-year latency period 

for chronic lymphocytic leukemia. That seemed 

to be the right number. There's some more 

recent analyses that suggest that maybe ten 

might be the right number. And right now 

we're leaning towards moving that latency 

period to be a slightly shorter interval. 

 The dosimetry model has been 

tested. We talked about that before, the 

weighted model using the various components of 

the lymphatic system throughout the body. And 

it does provide plausible outcomes given the 

exposure scenarios we reviewed. We actually 

took some real cases, kind of ran them through 
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just to make sure that, you know, we weren't 

getting 100 percent Probability of Causations 

for all cases we tested regardless of the 

input parameters. So I think we have a fairly 

workable model here. 

 And so our plan then is to prepare 

a transmittal package to the HHS Secretary by 

the end of the second quarter of FY010. That 

was originally a goal for this year. It 

slipped. I wish I could say we're done. 

We're not, but we're closer than we've ever 

been. And I'm fairly confident that we can 

meet this goal. 

 Moving on to the issue of the oralnasal breathing and ingestion issues, I have 

talked about this at previous Advisory Board 

meetings, and I think I gave a fairly, at 

least in my opinion, a fairly good explanation 

of where we were with this. But just so I can 

refresh everyone's memory of what our opinion 

was on this, oral-nasal breathing and 

ingestion only effects cases that are 
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reconstructed using air concentration data. 

And almost exclusively -- air concentration 

data to reconstruct exposures is used almost 

exclusively at AWE facilities, in particular 

those that handled uranium. 

 So that limits the population down 

to probably somewhere -- ten percent or fewer 

of our cases. It doesn't mean it's not 

important. But I just want to point out what 

target population this effects. 

 The ingestion approach that we've 

developed for ingestion has been around for 

quite some time. It was one of our first TIBs 

that we produced, Technical Information 

Bulletins, and that is OCAS TIB-009. 

 We've had a difference of opinion 

with the Advisory Board through SC&A on how we 

handle this ingestion issue for quite some 

time but I believe that position has been 

evolving over time to where we are fairly 

close in our agreement. And there are a 

couple points of disagreement that are still 
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there but frankly I think where we are going 

to end up is we will agree to disagree. 

 So what we plan to do is rather 

than put out a separate standalone document, 

we will issue an appendix to OCAS TIB-009 that 

essentially -- I wouldn't say validates it but 

it provides supporting documentation and 

evidence why we believe the approach used in 

TIB-009 is appropriate. I think that's the 

best place for it to reside. 

 When that's done, that will close 

out a number of issues that are out there in 

the Procedures Working Group or Procedures 

Subcommittee. 

 Likewise the oral-nasal breathing 

position is to be incorporated into IG 001. 

That's the implementation guide for internal 

dosimetry. In my mind, that is a subset of 

how we do -- you know what the roadmap is to 

internal dose reconstruction. So we are going 

to include that as a supplement to that 

document. And we hope to have these -- well, 
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our goal is to have these completed by the end 

of the first quarter of this fiscal year, 

which would be by the end of the year -- end 

of the calendar year, December some time 

frame. 

 We're close. We have draft 

positions on these. They just have not been 

finalized. I had hoped to have them done 

before the Board meeting but we just didn't 

get there. 

 I'm going to skip the next slide 

and then go back. This is a slide that talks 

about the ingestion issue. And it summarizes 

our position on this issue. That is, it is 

our opinion the evaluation of ingestion 

requires knowledge of the process -- you have 

to know something about the surface 

contamination. The surface contamination, in 

our opinion, is clearly what drives -- the 

amount of surface contamination is clearly 

what drives how much a person can ingest. 

However, the surface contamination levels are 
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very sparse at these AWEs where we need to use 

these models. 

 So what we have done is developed a 

relationship that exists between what is in 

the air versus what gets deposited on the 

ground. And we believe we have a fairly firm 

idea of how that relationship goes. And then 

using that relationship, the amount that's on 

the ground, then we can determine an ingestion 

rate based on how many square meters per hour 

a person actually ingests of the contamination 

in their work environment. 

 And then I'll go back to the 

previous slide that shows the analysis that 

we've done of the TIB-009 values versus 

another code that's used by the NRC that is 

highlighted here. It's the RESRAD Program, 

Residual Radioactivity Program that's in a 

NUREG issued by the NRC. 

 And what we've done here is taken 

various air concentration data, computed 

surface contamination values, and then 
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calculated an hourly ingestion rate using 

RESRAD. And it is a range because they 

provide a uniform range of ingestion issues, 

versus what the TIB-009 hourly ingestion rate 

would be in dpm per hour. And, in fact, the 

values track very nicely. I mean I was very 

happy with how we were either at the upper 

range or the mid range for most of those 

values. So this will be all included as an 

appendix to TIB-009 to support our position on 

the ingestion. 

 When it comes to the oronasal 

breathing, we believe that the use of the 

default ICRP 66 lung model is acceptable for 

use in dose calculations. And this is based 

on some work that we did to first analyze what 

happens when you do oronasal breathing and you 

collect bioassay samples. It turns out it is 

almost self-correcting. The bioassay samples 

end up predicting the same intakes whether you 

have oronasal -- the same dose calculations 

whether you have oronasal breathing in place 
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or not. So that only limits it now to air 

sample data. And if you recall, we only use 

this at atomic weapons employer facilities. 

And not all the time but typically when we 

don't know anything about the facility, we'll 

use the 95th percentile of the air 

concentration data. 

 If one looks at that, the 

uncertainty at the 95th percentile is fairly 

large. It overwhelms the uncertainty added by 

the use of oronasal breathing. And we've 

done calculations to show that at the 95th 

percentile, the inclusion of oronasal 

breathing would tend to equate to maybe 

something equivalent to a person taking a 40-

minute lunch break, that kind of difference in 

exposure. So the differences in the 

calculated intakes are very small. 

 There are some other issues I won't 

get into but we'll document this all in the 

update to IG 001. 

 And finally, I didn't talk too much 
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about this but thorium welding rods was an 

issue that was brought up at one point. We've 

looked at this in some detail. The intakes -- 

NRC has done some pretty decent evaluations of 

this, actually taking breathing zone air 

samples and such. And the highest amount of 

intake they come up with for direct current 

welding is somewhere around ten picocuries of 

thorium per year. The doses end up being 

fairly small. I mean very small compared to 

what we're calculating for most of these 

workers. 

 So, you know, if we're doing 

overestimating cases, the increase in dose is 

trivial. For best estimates, it's very small. 

The only way to deal with this then is to 

address it -- if a person has an unusual 

circumstance where they are continually doing 

welding or something, we would address it at 

that time. But other than that, we just don't 

feel this is an issue that we can adopt and 

apply to every dose reconstruction for someone 
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who may have been involved in thoriated 

welding. 

 So I'll just conclude by providing 

you our updated science goals for 2010. At 

the top of the list is to get the model to the 

Secretary for chronic lymphocytic leukemia by 

the second quarter, followed -- no, I gave 

second quarter for the oronasal breathing -- 

I'll stick with the first one, which is by the 

end of the first quarter. I think I might 

have had cold feet by the time I got to this 

slide but I think we're close enough to commit 

to the December time frame to issue a formal 

documentation on ingestion and oronasal 

breathing. And we'll add thoriated welding 

rods in there. 

 The OCAS review of the DDREF, we 

hope to get that issued by the third quarter. 

 And then I haven't talked about it but our 

final goal here is to publish a review paper 

on the radiogenicity of cancer as it relates 

to compensation programs. There are some 
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interesting analyses one can do about 

radiogenicity and compensation. And strictly 

from a scientific perspective, we're not 

trying to get engaged in political thought 

here, but, you know, how does one determine 

what is a radiogenic cancer and what isn't? 

And what makes, you know, what the current 

literature out there speaks to that. 

 And, you know, we'll use as the 

basis for that some consensus scientific 

documents such as the BEIR reports. That's 

something that we would like to put out there 

in the public literature. 

 And with that, I think that 

concludes my presentation. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 

much, Jim. I wonder if you could just 

elaborate a little more on that very last 

point on radiogenicity of cancer? It 

certainly impacts on SECs if one changes the 

list. Are you anticipating addressing the 

presumptive cancer list? 
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 DR. NETON: No, no. Just in 

general. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Just in general. 

 DR. NETON: What the current 

scientific literature show or indicates for 

the radiogenicity of various cancers. I mean 

you can go down the list and -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, the reason 

I sort of asked that question is your final 

phrase, the radiogenicity as it relates to 

compensation programs may be a somewhat 

different question than the radiogenicity of 

cancers period. 

 DR. NETON: Yes. And I think 

that's probably -- I probably should strike 

that last phrase related to compensation 

programs. I think it could be used to inform 

compensation programs. That's really what I 

meant. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: But the framework 

you're looking at is just what cancers are 

truly radiogenic. Is that more the issue? Or 
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 DR. NETON: Well, the relative 

radiogenicity, there is almost no way one can 

-- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Rule out. 

 DR. NETON: -- rule out anything. 

You know you have the extreme ends of the 

spectrum such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia 

 -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 DR. NETON: -- versus leukemias, 

the lung cancers. And, in fact, one can 

envision a very nice chart that shows what is 

the central estimate of the excessive relative 

risk perceiver. And what are the confidence 

bands on that. 

 And in many cases, the confidence 

bands go well below zero. And, in fact, for 

our program, some of the cancers aren't 

radiogenic until you -- don't have a positive 

risk value until you get to the upper 99th 

percentile almost. Not that high but you have 
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to go fairly far out on the tail to get a 

positive excessive relative risk perceiver. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: So the paper is 

simply a review paper that will present sort 

of the state of the information on risk, 

including the uncertainties. 

 DR. NETON: Right. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

 Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, regarding 

those science goals, I'm trying to understand 

what the role of the Board is in these four 

issues -- your science goals for 2010. So 

does the chronic lymphocytic leukemia model 

come to the Board for input? 

 DR. NETON: Well, it -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: We prepare a package 

for rulemaking to deliver to the Secretary. 

That's the first step that Jim is talking 

about now. And that package will propose to 

the Secretary the scientific basis that we've 

arrived at for adding CLL to this program and 
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how we would go about reconstructing dose for 

claims that present with CLL. 

 We need the Secretary to review 

that and opine about that and give us the goahead for rulemaking. Once we have that then 

we would enter into rulemaking and there would 

be a timed public comment period where it 

would coincide with the Board's review of the 

risk model, of our proposed rule, of our 

proposed dose reconstruction methodology for 

this. And that would enable the Board and 

individual members of the Board to provide 

comment during the rulemaking and the public 

comment period for that. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Going down the 

list, the documentation on ingestion, oronasal 

breathing and thoriated welding rods. 

 DR. NETON: Right. I think that 

would be, in my opinion, would be handled as 

any other document that NIOSH produces. The 

Board certainly has a right to review the 

document -- you know the technical approaches 
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that we've outlined either by themselves or 

with the assistance of SC&A or whoever they 

wish to bring to bear on the issue. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, I mean I would 

argue that if I understood you right, at least 

on the ingestion/oronasal breathing where the 

Board or Board and its contractors have 

expressed concerns about that which I won't 

say you are ignoring, but you disagree with, 

and frankly I don't think the Board, as a 

Board, has discussed these issues in a while. 

 Every time it comes up, we always 

say well, you're working on it. And I think 

it would be good -- I just want to understand 

that, you know, it comes back to the Board. 

And I agree as a document, it would make sense 

to handle it at that level. I just would do 

that. 

 And then the review paper on DDREF, 

what's -- 

 DR. NETON: That would just be a 

peer-reviewed publication that we would issue 
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out of our program. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: So what does it 

have to do with the program? Well, I mean 

these last two, I just don't quite understand, 

particularly the last one, the radiogenicity, 

what -- this DDREF thing I think is an issue 

that is out there and it makes sense. 

 The radiogenicity thing is not, as 

far as I know, is not an issue that's out 

there. It seems to be sort of an extraneous 

activity. And I'm just trying to understand. 

 DR. NETON: Well, I think -- well, 

at least my thinking was here that we've 

developed quite a bit of expertise within our 

program about radiogenicity cancers and going 

through various things, we've just put forth a 

paper to the Congress recommending that basal 

cell carcinoma be added on the presumptive 

cancer list. 

 So in doing that, we surveyed an 

extensive amount of literature to come up with 

that recommendation. And I thought -- at 
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least, we thought internally that it would be 

good to share that with the scientific 

community -- 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. 

 DR. NETON: -- as an outcome of our 

research. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: So it would 

essentially be a review paper? 

 DR. NETON: Yes. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. 

 DR. NETON: Exactly. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: So it's not -- 

because you really haven't done any original 

research. 

 DR. NETON: Oh, no, no. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: That's what I'm 

trying to understand. 

 DR. NETON: Sorry, I wasn't clear. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. That was 

certainly my understanding. It was a review 

paper that just -- you know, the information 
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is there, but from time to time it is very 

helpful in the community to bring it all 

together so one can look at not only the 

numbers but the uncertainties and related 

issues. So it's certainly a good thing. 

 Phil, you have a comment or a 

question? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, I've got a 

question. 

 When you're looking at these 

different facilities -- I'm going to use Rocky 

Flats for an example here -- I know how a lot 

of the technicians handled waste materials on 

the materials they were producing. 

 So you would expect, because of the 

way they were handled, that you might see a 

marked increase in cancers of the lymph nodes, 

I would think, and the armpit areas of a lot 

of these technicians. 

 And what I'm wondering is, when you 

look at these cancers that may or may not be 

added, in some cases, would you not have to 
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give a little more weight to the facility 

because of the way things were done? 

 DR. NETON: I guess I'm not quite 

following your question. 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay. An 

example is Rocky Flats, a lot of the 

technicians, when they were removing materials 

from the glove box or line the stuff, they 

would actually hold it in their arm, up in 

their armpit while they did the wrapping and 

cutting. 

 DR. NETON: Oh, okay. 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: And because of 

this and some of the materials they dealt with 

were, you know, very high-level, it would not 

surprise me to see a marked increase over a 

facility where they, you know, held it between 

their knees. 

 DR. NETON: Okay. I see. If I'm 

understanding correctly, it seems to me that 

that would become more of a dosimetry issue. 

You know the development of the risk model 
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itself is somewhat independent of that. I 

mean we have to -- to develop a risk model, 

you need to have some good idea of what the 

exposures were. 

 And the best situation is parallel 

uniform beam geometry so you really can nail 

what their exposures may have been. But then 

converting that to some risk to the workers, 

that is related to how much dose they 

received. 

 And if we were aware that they were 

holding things under their arms and they 

developed some sort of a lymph adenoma or 

something like that, we'd certainly take that 

into consideration. 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay. Thanks. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Wanda Munn? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Jim, this is more of 

a matter of a curiosity question than anything 

else. 

 For those of us who are not likely 

to read the existing reports on solid tumors, 
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how far along are you in your review of that? 

 And is there anything of any significance 

that you -- that we might glean from knowing 

something about the findings of the original 

report that you were reviewing? 

 DR. NETON: The original RERF data? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And the BEIR-VII? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Correct. 

 DR. NETON: Yes, boy that's a 

loaded question. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I know it is. 

 (Laughter.) 

 DR. NETON: I hate to comment on 

preliminary analyses. What I can say is that, 

you know, our model is fairly new as risk 

models go. 

 You know there is some concern -- 

in fact this came up with some of our 

stakeholders and claimants that BEIR-VII came 

out and discussed these major differences in 

bladder cancer that were coming out as 
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compared to BEIR-V. 

 And so the logical question was, 

well, why aren't we incorporating BEIR-VII in 

our risk models if there is such a major 

difference. And in particular it was a sexrelated difference. I forgot now if it was 

males or females. I think it was females. 

 The fact of the matter was that our 

risk models are much more closely aligned with 

BEIR-VII than they are with BEIR-V because we 

were sort of in that era of the dose 

calculations. 

 So there are tweaks -- there are a 

number of tweaks that are going to be made if 

we end up embarking down this path. And 

that's one thing we're trying to be careful 

of. 

 If you think about it, if we go to 

IREP 6.0 and change the risk models, that 

essentially changes the PC calculations for 

possibly 30,000 cases or at least whatever 

cancer that risk model applies. 
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 DDREF would effect 30,000 analyses. 

 So we're being careful to make sure that when 

we jump, if we do jump, that it is based on 

the best available science at the time that 

shows some sort of a quantum shift that makes 

sense to us, not just minor refinements. 

 I know I'm kind of beating around 

the bush here because there is really no good 

answer I can give you for -- 

 MEMBER MUNN: No, I didn't expect 

you to give me the results of your review so 

far. 

 DR. NETON: There are some 

differences in the, you know, the gender, 

maybe some gender analysis, differences in the 

populations. And more than likely, tweezing 

out these lymphomas versus the multiple 

myelomas could make a difference. 

 There are some early analyses that 

might indicate that, if you do that, the 

lymphoma risk model may go down. But, you 

know, it's too early to tell. I mean we kind 
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of look at this and -- 

 MEMBER MUNN: It will certainly be 

informative to see your review. I'm glad 

you're doing that. Thank you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

 Further questions or comments? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Dr. Neton, thank 

you again for this update. It is very helpful 

and we appreciate the work that you are doing 

on these various issues. 

 We're going to take our lunch 

break. And we will reconvene at two o'clock. 

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off 

the record at 12:29 p.m. and 

resumed at 2:05 p.m.) 
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A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N 

2:05 p.m. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I would like to 

call the meeting back to order. 

 We begin our afternoon 

deliberations with the discussion on Blockson 

Chemical SEC. 

 Just as a reminder to you that the 

main motion on the SEC had been tabled but we 

have been having discussions on the so-called 

radon model, which was an effort to quantitate 

or perhaps I should say bound radon exposures 

in that facility. 

 And there have been some technical 

exchanges and some other discussions over our 

past couple of meetings on the radon issues 

and how one would model radon exposures for 

the Blockson Chemical facility. 

 Also, we may have some of the 

petitioners on the line. And we will give 

them an opportunity, if they so wish, to make 

comment. But first of all, I believe the 
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Board members, since our last meeting, have 

received from NIOSH and more specifically from 

Jim Neton, some discussion on the radon model 

issue. And then, Mark, I believe you may have 

some comments on it as well, as I understand 

it. At least you did provide some comments to 

the Board members. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I sent some 

comments. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And you may wish 

to amplify that somewhat. But let me first 

give Dr. Neton an opportunity to comment on 

the radon model and the radon issues. 

 DR. NETON: I don't have a formal 

presentation. So this should be fairly brief. 

 But I'd just like to summarize what has 

transpired since the last Board meeting. 

 When we met in West Chester, Ohio, 

at the last Board meeting, NIOSH had a couple 

of tasks to undertake. One was that -- I 

believe it was Mark Griffon was curious about 

the genesis or the origin of the production 
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rate that was used in the radon model. 

 And to that end, Tom Thoms of our 

staff put together a White Paper that was 

distributed to the Board members on September 

21st. And it is an eight-page White Paper 

that tries to get at whether the 6,000 pounds 

per week -- 6,000 tons, I'm sorry, 6,000 tons 

of processing of phosphate rock per week was a 

reasonable number. 

 And we approached -- Tom approached 

that from a slightly different direction. And 

we knew fairly well the uranium production 

rates -- I'm just summarizing briefly what was 

in the White Paper that was emailed -- from 

1955 through 1960. And, in fact, in 1955, we 

had some monthly production data. 

 So what Tom did was, given the fact 

that the uranium concentration of the ore was 

variable, he actually took the uranium 

production numbers and back-calculated how 

much radium, being in equilibrium with the 

uranium, would have been put through the plant 
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on an annual basis. And in 1955, on a monthly 

basis. 

 And just to cut to the chase, the 

analysis showed that the 6,000 tons per week 

processing rate seems to be pretty reasonable. 

 More specifically, actually, the 14,000 

becquerels per second throughput of radium 

through the building is bounded reasonably 

well when you back-calculate using the uranium 

production numbers. 

 And there is a table in the White 

Paper that summarizes that quite nicely on 

page five. The only exception was, I think, 

one month in 1955, October, it was a little 

over that by 1.4 standard deviations. But if 

you take the average for the entire year of 

1955, it is also bounded. 

 So NIOSH, at least, is comfortable 

with the 6,000 ton per week production rate 

that's used in the model. 

 Also, since the last Board meeting, 

SC&A put out a brief White Paper with some 
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strategies that they put forth to possibly 

use, undoubtedly, in the Blockson radon model. 

 If you recall, that was a topic of some 

discussion. 

 NIOSH looked at the strategies and, 

in fact, this was discussed at the Board's 

conference call. I forget which date that was 

but the most recent Board conference call. 

And it was decided that of all the strategies 

that were put forth, strategy number three 

seemed to have the most traction. It seemed 

to be something that we might be able to get 

our hands around. 

 So OCAS NIOSH put forth an effort 

to see if we could do a -- look through the 

data that's out there, published data, to see 

if we could come up with some strategy to 

provide some further, quote-unquote, 

validation of the Blockson model. 

 As pretty much expected, we could 

not find any relevant literature in the 1950s 

to support the radon model. But that's sort 
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of circular logic. We developed the source 

term model because we didn't have any data so, 

you know, we wouldn't expect to find any. But 

we did another search, another pass-through, 

and couldn't find anything. 

 But in going through the literature 

we did run across this particular Polish study 

that was more contemporary, in the 1980s. But 

it sort of struck my eye, at least, in the 

fact that it was the first study that I had 

seen that had done a number of measurements at 

four different large-volume phosphate plants. 

 They actually processed -- made 

fertilizer, produced over 75 percent of 

Poland's annual production of four million 

plus tons of phosphate and fertilizer. So 

these are pretty large plants. 

 So they took four plants and they 

did a lot of other analyses but the one that 

is relevant to our case here is they put I 

think it was a total of 80 track-edge radon 

cups throughout these four plants and measured 
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the concentrations principally in the 

fall/winter months. So the plants were not 

open and breezy. They were presumably 

somewhat closed up. 

 And they didn't report a 

distribution, unfortunately. They reported in 

a range of measurements from low to high of 

these 80 values. Well, we took a little 

liberty with the data, assumed they were lognormal. 

 And if you do that, you come up -- 

we came up with a geometric mean for these 80 

measurements that were taken in these four 

different facilities in the winter of about a 

picocurie per liter, 1.3 picocuries per liter, 

which is interesting in itself but more 

significantly, the geometric standard 

deviation of those measurements was 2.3, which 

was actually kind of comforting because if you 

compare that to the geometric standard 

deviation of the Blockson radon model, it is 

2.9. 
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 So it is a little bit higher, but 

in the same ballpark, which kind of makes you 

wonder. Well, it seems that the data, at 

least in this Polish study, did not have a 

very large distribution -- a geometric 

standard deviation as might be speculated. So 

that was one piece of information that I 

thought was fairly relevant. 

 The other part of the study was we 

were, you know, we talked at the last meeting 

about looking at the Mallinckrodt data as 

possibly useful in helping to define the 

bounding nature of the Blockson model. 

 I personally looked at a lot of 

radon data until my eyes were red at 

Mallinckrodt but at the end of the day, the 

issue was that the Mallinckrodt data had a lot 

of issues that we couldn't really get our 

hands around. 

 Probably most significantly was the 

fact that the source term at Mallinckrodt was 

quite variable. They processed uranium 
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pitchblende ore concentrates that varied 

anywhere from less than ten percent or around 

ten percent to 56, 60, 70 percent uranium by 

weight. I mean these are hugely concentrated 

ores unlike Blockson that had very low 

concentration. 

 That's not really relevant. It is 

just relevant that they had a variable source 

term coupled with the fact that if you read 

the data at Mallinckrodt, the plant appeared 

to be somewhat more compartmentalized than you 

would expect. In other words, there are 

reports of doors being shut and opened and 

changing, you know, the radon concentrations 

throughout the plant and that sort of thing. 

 So we weren't comfortable with 

developing -- or at least comparing our model 

to see if it worked at Mallinckrodt because we 

didn't know the source term very well, the 

production rate very well, nor the dimensions 

of the rooms. And those are three things that 

you've really got to know to come up with some 
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reasonable tests to be made. 

 So that's where we ended with the 

Mallinckrodt. I did put out an email 

subsequent to that that, you know, I thought 

about putting in the original report and I 

left out. And it has to do with the 

Mallinckrodt data itself. That is sort of the 

absolute magnitude of the data. 

 There's pretty good data. And, for 

example, in 1951, you know, we found a set of 

over 500 weekly radon measurements made at 

Mallinckrodt, you know, multiple locations, 

every week for pretty much the entire year. 

 And interestingly, the geometric 

mean of that data -- and it fit a log-normal 

distribution very well -- I think our score 

was somewhere around .95 -- the geometric mean 

of that data set was 13.7 picocuries per liter 

with a geometric standard deviation of 4.3. 

 So, again, you know, it's hard to 

make comparisons. But at least given that the 

Mallinckrodt source term is probably at least 
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a thousand times more concentrated than it was 

at Blockson, at least in my mind it's 

noteworthy that the data are not that far 

apart. I think there is a factor-of-two 

difference in the 95th percentile between 

Mallinckrodt and Blockson given the source 

term was a thousand times, at least, more 

concentrated. 

 So that's the extent of the 

analysis that we've done since the last 

meeting. I'd be happy to answer any questions 

folks might have. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Let's take 

questions for Dr. Neton. And then Mark will 

have an opportunity to make his comments. 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, Mark? Mark 

did also distribute to the Board last week, I 

think, some comments. But in case people 

either didn't receive those or read them or in 

any event, why don't you either amplify those 

or make additional comments, Mark? 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I'll remind him 

of what he said. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I mean I 

guess that, you know, I was -- and Jim sort of 

went over what I expected to hear as a 

response as far as the parameters, you know, 

define the parameters. I mean I guess, you 

know, I anticipated some of this. 

 I think even in the last meeting I 

said that, you know, I know there was probably 

a variable source term. I'm just -- I guess 

I'm a little surprised that there wasn't some 

time frame by which you knew the source term. 

 And even if the place was compartmentalized, 

I don't think that even really matters. 

 I mean, you know, we got a big box, 

we got a little box. You can still model a 

big or little box, you know, based on the 

model that you used. I mean I think it is a 

similar approach. 

 DR. NETON: You need to know the 
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size of the box. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, you do need 

to know sizes, right, right. So, you know, I 

guess that was my -- a little bit of dismay 

there that, you know, that there wasn't much 

more there. 

 I thought we had a decent 

opportunity with actual values that could be 

compared to validate that model. So that was 

my one reaction. 

 And then I guess my initial 

response was that I thought in the initial 

report it suggested that therefore these -- if 

I read the report correctly, it sort of 

suggested that therefore, you know, there's no 

way that we could use the Mallinckrodt as a 

surrogate for Blockson. 

 And I had to sort of restate, you 

know, that's never what I intended for this 

analysis to look at. So I was kind of thrown 

off like, you know, is that what they were -- 

is that what NIOSH was investigating? If so, 
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I think, you know, you need to turn it around 

a little bit because I was saying I wanted 

some validation of -- going back to that 

model, validation of the model, not the values 

at Blockson. 

 I know it is a different type of 

facility but this was a case where we had 

measured data and we can use the predictive 

values and compare it actual data is what I 

was hoping to see some of. 

 And, you know, I see a discussion 

of it. I don't see any really -- numbers 

where you really tried to get down and get the 

source data and try to do it, you know, so 

that was my one dismay with this attempt. 

 DR. NETON: Well, the fact is I 

couldn't find data. I mean, I've looked 

through all of our reports. I've looked 

through the Mallinckrodt files. You'd have to 

be able to identify the size of those 

individual rooms and the percentage of the 

uranium in the ore coming through. And 
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frankly the production rate as well over time. 

 This is a little different. You 

know the Blockson model assumes, you know, 

three shifts per day, seven days per week type 

operation. I don't think Mallinckrodt was -- 

I don't know if Mallinckrodt was that way or 

not. 

 So there's that variable. There's 

a source term variable. There are just too 

many variables. 

 We did approach it with the idea 

that we could use it to validate the model or 

at least the proof of principle type scenario. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, okay. 

 DR. NETON: But we just couldn't 

find the data to do that. Or couldn't 

identify the parameters sufficient to do that. 

 And frankly, anything we came up with, if it 

agreed with the -- you know it could be 

accused of being, you know, fortuitous or 

whatever. I mean it just -- if you start 

making up -- not making up but guessing at the 
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sizes and stuff and then all of a sudden the 

model fits, it leaves one to really question -

- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: To question your 

estimates or whatever, yes, yes. 

 DR. NETON: I mean we could easily 

have come up with volumes of rooms that could 

have been there to demonstrate what the 

concentrations might have been given certain 

source terms and stuff but I'm not sure that 

exercise would prove anything. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: No, I think you 

need actual values or else you're right, we 

would question you -- you know you just made 

this box fit, you know. 

 DR. NETON: Exactly. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: But I -- well, I 

guess and I'm trying to -- I don't have it 

open right now but the initial, the first 

White Paper, the response didn't really say 

that about validation. That what I was -- 

 DR. NETON: Yes. 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: -- my initial 

concern was that you weren't, you know, 

looking at it the way I had hoped, according 

to John's criteria three or whatever, you 

know, that we had discussed. So I was a 

little bit confused on what you had actually 

investigated. 

 DR. NETON: Well, criteria three 

was to actually establish a geometric standard 

deviation of the variables. And, in fact, I 

presented that in that follow-up email, which 

is 4.6. But I question the validity of the 

4.6 value given that this was different rooms, 

different size compartments. 

 I mean, it's -- you know, you could 

take that 4.6 value and plug it into SC&A's 

proposal and say okay, this is a 4.6 GSD on 

top of the already existing 2.6 or whatever it 

is. And say then my new 95th percentile 

becomes x. 

 That's possible. But I was not 

comfortable with the GSD that came out of that 
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analysis. So it would be more bounding than 

what we have but I'm not sure if -- I thought 

the Polish plant data was interesting in 

itself though that, you know, over four 

different plants in the wintertime with 80 

different track-edge measurements, which are 

integrated measurements over the entire -- I 

forget how long they left them out there -- 

four months -- these are not spot 

measurements. These are, you know, integrated 

four month-type measurements. 

 You end up with a geometric 

standard deviation fairly tight, 2.something, 

which probably -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, good. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: John Mauro, 

additional comment? 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, this is John. 

When we came up with the idea of strategy 

three, it was toward the end of coming up with 

a normalized spread on data from a building 

that if you actually are measuring long-term 
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measurements, let's say this room, and took 

three months of measurements in that part of 

the room, and that part of the room, and that 

part of the room, and you looked at the 

numbers and you could see how variable they 

are from place to place in the room, you start 

to get a sense of the stratification. 

 So that number three was more a way 

to get a handle not on validating the model 

but trying to get a handle on if we wanted to 

explicitly address the possibility of 

stratification, that's one way to do it. 

 And then when I saw your data, I 

said this is how you do it. And in theory, 

what I had in my mind when I read that, I 

said, gee, I would have another term in the 

equation that would say, if you normalize 

distribution with the geometric standard 

deviation of two, and you would sample from 

that as another one of the variables. And 

that would explicitly address stratification. 

 Now the question could be, you 
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know, that's one measure of what the spread 

might be due to stratification. That spread, 

of course, is due to more than just 

stratification. It's due to all of the 

parameters that effect spread. 

 So it would be an overestimate of 

the contribution of stratification. So I 

guess I'm coming back saying that I could see 

you actually now inserting that parameter in 

the model and explicitly addressing 

stratification. 

 DR. NETON: One could do that. 

And, in fact, I've done that. And it, of 

course, raises the 95th percentile to, I 

believe, from 17.6 picocuries per liter to 20-

something, 20.9, or 21. It doesn't change it, 

substantially. 

 But I guess my opinion is that I 

thought the two was sort of in agreement with 

what we had for the distribution in the 

Blockson model by virtue of the fact that what 

drives the GSD is changes in the air 
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concentration. We allowed the air 

concentration at Blockson to vary from one to 

five air turnovers per hour. 

 And that is, to a large extent, 

what drives the geometric standard deviation 

of the distribution in the first place. So I 

think the reason you have a GSD of 2 or 2.3 in 

this Polish facility is because of variations 

in localized air concentrations. That's one 

of the main reasons, given that you have a 

constant throughput. 

 This was the same kind of 

operation. It was a 24 hour a day, seven day 

a week operation. So you've got the same kind 

of throughput. And so I thought that it would 

actually be double counted. 

 If you started to put another -- a 

GSD of 2 point whatever on top of our 

geometric standard deviation, it would be 

double counting the uncertainty. It doesn't 

mean it would be incorrect to do that. I 

suppose it could be done. It's mathematically 
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possible. We've done it. And it comes out 

about 21 picocuries per liter by my 

recollection. It's not a huge difference. 

 You know what you do, like John 

suggested, you sample that -- you make that a 

unity distribution, a value of one, with a GSD 

of 2 point whatever. And then sample that as 

one of the terms in your Monte Carlo equation. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I mean, I have to 

wrap my mind around that a little bit. But 

I'm wondering how that addresses 

stratification. I mean it's -- 

 DR. NETON: Well -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: -- you're getting 

a bigger number but are you really addressing 

-- I mean because in these examples you gave, 

aren't the -- 

 DR. NETON: Well, these are 

stratified, presumably these are stratified 

samples. I mean they took 80 sample 

measurements -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right. 
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 DR. NETON: -- over a four-month 

period in four different phosphate factories. 

 And these are stratified numbers. I mean 

they range from X to Y with a GSD of 2 point 

something. That's the stratification that was 

measured within this facility. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 DR. NETON: It's an empirically 

measured value. That's redundant. It's 

empirical value that was determined through, 

you know, integrated track-edge measurements 

over a fairly long period of time. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 DR. NETON: So I don't know how 

much better one can do. I mean, the only 

missing link here, and I'll admit to it, is 

that we don't know where they put these 

samples. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: And that's my -- 

 DR. NETON: But, presumably there 

are 80 measurements in four facilities taken. 

 So it's, you know, 25-plus per -- or 20 at 
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each facility. One has to assume that they 

didn't stick them in the corner offices, you 

know, where the concentrations were going to 

be low and less variable. 

 I mean, they seem to be -- it 

seemed to be a well-designed study, is what 

I'm saying. You look at what they've done and 

it seemed to be a fairly well put together 

piece of work. 

 I forget where it was published. I 

think it was -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Did you give us 

that study? 

 DR. NETON: Yes, it's on the O: 

drive. It's in the Blockson Chemical folder. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Other 

questions or comments? Mark, additional 

comments? 

 Now, Board members -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I should say -- 

but one more comment, Paul, I'm sorry. I 
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should say that I was confusing the two. My 

Mallinckrodt request was more for the 

validation. And the criteria three was the 

separate -- the stratification issue. So I 

was confusing the two things. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thanks. 

 One thing, Board members, you'll 

need to determine for yourself is whether or 

not you believe the radon model, as it was 

developed and as it currently exists, is a 

reasonable estimate of the bounding value for 

radon or whether, in your mind, there are 

still questions to be dealt with. 

 And then beyond that, whether or 

not you are prepared to remove the original 

motion from the floor, which was the action on 

the SEC, which needs to be taken if we're 

going to move this Blockson matter forward. 

 So let me ask if there are more 

questions on the radon model. I don't believe 

we necessarily need to vote on the 

acceptability of the model although if someone 
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wishes to make such a motion, we can certainly 

do that. 

 But if you are at a point where you 

believe that the model is reasonable for 

bounding radon doses at the facility, then you 

would be in a position to say, okay, I'm ready 

to act on the original petition motion, which 

would have to come off the table first. 

 So it would be in order if someone 

wished to do that, to remove the original 

motion from the table. In the absence of 

that, it will remain there. 

 Wanda Munn? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Can't pass up this 

opportunity to review a little bit for the 

Board how we got to where we are. 

 Please recall that we are not 

operating blind with respect to Blockson. The 

Working Group pursued at least a dozen 

different issues. There were originally, as I 

recall, a small number of findings. We 

disposed of those fairly early with the 
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exception of one or two. 

 By the time all of the findings had 

been dealt with, both our technical contractor 

and NIOSH were in agreement that dose 

reconstructions could be done for these folks. 

 Recall this is a small plant with a 

relatively small amount of production. It was 

a dirty plant but not a hot plant. The source 

term is fairly well known and could be dealt 

with. 

 Also, please be aware of the fact 

that compensations are being made. You've 

already seen that. Workers at Blockson have 

been compensated. It's not as if they are 

being ignored. It's not as if there are no 

claims that are being paid. 

 At the time that a recommendation 

vote came before the Working Group, the 

Working Group, which was evenly split, came to 

you with the Chair's recommendation that we 

not accept the recommendation for an SEC. But 

it was a split vote from the Working Group and 
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so you did not have a clear recommendation 

from the full Working Group. 

 At that point, this became a matter 

for the Board to debate. There have been one 

or two additional issues raised during that 

period of time that we've been looking at 

this, which is now well over a year. In each 

of those cases, information has been brought 

to you which would substantiate the position 

that I believe the Chair of your Working Group 

took to begin with. 

 And in each case, it has made no 

difference in the standing that each 

individual on this Board has taken with 

respect to this site. And with the 

recommendation for the SEC. 

 I am prepared to recommend that we 

accept the information that has been given us 

with respect to the radon model, and that we 

move from there to the business of addressing 

the SEC. 

 It is highly unlikely that there is 
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going to be any astonishing new news that is 

going to affect additional information that 

will be brought before you one way or the 

other. 

 You've had adequate opportunity. 

We've had adequate information. We can 

continue to pick at this for as long as we 

want. But the petitioner, in my view, has a 

right to a decision one way or the other. And 

individuals are being compensated. 

 My recommendation is that we accept 

the model and take the recommendation with 

regard to the SEC off the table. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Before I 

recognize that as a full motion, I want to see 

if either of the petitioners are on the phone. 

 And if they are, if they wish to make 

comment. I won't identify them at this point 

but if they are on the phone, they can 

identify themselves and make comment. 

 Are either of the -- do either of 

the Blockson petitioners wish to make comment? 
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 MR. RIVER: Hello? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes? 

 MR. RIVER: Yes, I've got a question 

to ask you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Please identify 

yourself. 

 MR. RIVER: Yes, my name is Sherman 

River. I'm from Crystal, Illinois. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Are you a 

petitioner? 

 MR. RIVER: Well, I got a claim 

against -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, the 

appropriate time for you to raise this would 

be during the public comment session. 

 MR. RIVER: I'm sorry. I 

apologize. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, this is only 

the petitioners for Blockson who we can hear 

from right now. 

 MR. RIVER: I apologize. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. 
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 Either of the Blockson petitioners? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Apparently not. 

 Let me ask, Wanda, were you making 

a motion to remove the original motion from 

the table? 

 MEMBER MUNN: It was my 

understanding you had asked for some agreement 

from the Board with respect to the radon model 

that we've discussed. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, if we -- 

 MEMBER MUNN: And -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- want agreement 

on that, that has to be done separately from a 

motion to un-table. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I recommended that we 

accept the radon model and that we remove the 

tabled motion. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, the Chair 

will split that then -- 

 MEMBER MUNN: That's fine. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- into -- 
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because the motion to remove from the table 

cannot be debated. The radon issue can be 

debated. 

 MEMBER MUNN: Understand. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: So we will split 

that. The motion is to accept the radon 

model. And what accepting means, in my mind, 

is that you would consider that it is adequate 

for bounding radon doses in the facility. 

 Is there a second? And then we can 

discuss it. Is there a second to that? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: I second. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: It's been 

seconded. Okay, it's open for discussion. 

 Mark, I'll recognize you. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I was just going 

to say, are we accepting that we can't -- that 

NIOSH can't validate this model? That we've 

requested it to be validated and are we 

accepting that? Is that -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: My interpretation 

of the -- 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: -- that they 

attempted but they cannot validate? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, my 

interpretation of the motion is that the model 

is being accepted as presented, which, I 

believe, Jim has not described what they did 

as validation, per se. He has done some 

things to, I believe, show reasonableness as I 

would understand it. 

 Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: And does this 

acceptance mean that we are accepting the use 

of this model at other sites because that's, I 

believe, is NIOSH's intention, at least as 

stated to us in the Work Group and, I believe, 

at the Board? So that this model would be 

what would be utilized at all similar sites. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Jim, can you 

answer that? I don't think the motion 

necessarily implied that but there may be some 

implications as a precedent. 

 DR. NETON: We would propose where 
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appropriate -- what we're saying is that we 

would use, where appropriate, an analytical 

model of this type where we have a very good 

handle on the source term, the building 

volume, you know, the sort of the primers that 

are in this model. They don't have to be the 

specific parameters. 

 In other words, we're not proposing 

that would apply 17.6 picocuries per liter at 

every site. But, for example, I could 

conceive of using this model -- in fact we 

have a draft in process right now for Texas 

City Chemicals that would use this type of an 

approach. 

 So yes, it could be used at other 

facilities but we're not proposing we use it 

at all radon sites. It depends upon the type 

of information that is available. For 

instance, if we don't know the building size 

at all, it would be difficult for us to use 

this model. We have to have certain known 

parameters. 
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 MEMBER MELIUS: So -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Go ahead, Jim. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Can I -- just a 

quick thought. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Then what would be 

used at other sites? You are confusing me a 

little bit because -- 

 DR. NETON: It depends on the time 

frame. I mean if it is in the 1970s, we would 

clearly have some information from the 1970s 

that indicates what the levels may have been 

in those type of facilities. 

 If they are Florida plants, you 

know, the phosphate -- for instance, we have 

done a lot of research in the Florida area. 

And we believe those data are probably 

applicable to Florida phosphate facilities. 

So we would entertain using those values if we 

had them in the 1970s. 

 For anything in the 1950s, clearly 

we're not going to be able to find -- we have 
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not been able to find any measurements, real 

data in the `50s. So we would end up more 

than likely using an approach such as this. 

 I would like to clarify a little 

bit. I don't know that you are actually 

accepting the -- you are not voting 

necessarily to accept the exact NIOSH model as 

it stands. I think that you would be voting 

to accept the fact that the radon levels could 

be bounded with a model of this type. 

 In other words, there is still a 

slight discrepancy between what SC&A might 

recommend for an upper bound versus what NIOSH 

is recommending. But, conceptually the models 

are the same. It's just a matter of which 

parameters are tweaked a little bit to get 

slightly different values. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: For the Blockson 

site? 

 DR. NETON: Right. For SEC 

purposes, you would just be voting that the 

model is a valid approach to bounding the 
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value. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Thank you. I'm now 

more confused but it was -- it was helpful. 

You were helpful. Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, yes, the 

applications beyond this are as Jim described, 

obviously. But I believe the Chair is 

interpreting the motion as being one that 

pertains to the bounding of radon doses at 

Blockson per se. 

 Further discussion? Anyone wish to 

speak for or against the motion? 

 Mark? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Can I ask -- back 

to the Mallinckrodt question. I'm just -- and 

it took me a while to log back on. I got 

kicked off of the -- our O: drive. But 

looking at the Mallinckrodt folder, I mean, 

was there any -- in your process, Jim, through 

assessing this, did you assemble any of this -

- I mean, I imagine if I were trying to do 

this, I think I would have assembled source 
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term information into a spreadsheet, looked at 

what I had kind of. Do you have any of that 

available that we can look at? 

 I mean, I'd like to -- and maybe I 

would come to the same conclusion as you 

would, which is that, you know, it's just -- 

it's too -- you know, there's not enough, it's 

got too many gaps, it's -- your mic's been 

turned off for a reason. I don't want a 

reply. 

 No, you know, I'm just wondering if 

you have any of this information, sort of like 

your working files when you were considering 

whether the data was sufficient to use as a 

validation of the Monte Carlo model? 

 DR. NETON: Well, I didn't approach 

it from that perspective. I was actually 

looking for data that could be used, you know. 

 I mean, so we looked through all 

these files of, you know, the O: drive files, 

the site research database. And I could not 

find anything that, you know, delineated the 
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size of the facility. 

 I mean, that was a given right 

there. I could not find the compartmental 

size to use in the model. I mean, so right 

there is nothing to assemble. I just couldn't 

find that. 

 Then it became very obvious to me 

looking through even the site profile that the 

concentrations of uranium that were in the ore 

that were processed were variable. I mean ten 

percent up to 70 percent uranium ore content. 

 So you've got a factor of seven right there. 

 You've got an unknown room size. 

 You know, I didn't need the -- I 

didn't feel the need to sit and have a 

spreadsheet to convince myself that this was 

an -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: But I thought, and 

I'm going by memory here, that's why I'm 

asking because I remember the Mallinckrodt 

site profile, at least the initial one, being 

incredibly robust with tables at the back. 
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And I don't know if any of that was source 

term. 

 But also I would expect -- and 

maybe I'm wrong on this -- but I would have 

expected that these concentration variations 

were in campaigns sort of, weren't they, that 

they got a run of the Congo ore and then they 

got a run of, you know -- I thought there 

would have been some definition to that source 

term change over -- 

 DR. NETON: I certainly didn't find 

any. And also I didn't turn this into a Ph.D. 

dissertation. I looked through as hard as I 

could to find -- I thought I exercised due 

diligence looking for data to be able to do 

this. 

 You know, the data, the annual data 

we have is quite robust. I mean 560-something 

samples over the entire year. I mean that's a 

lot of good data. But I have no idea what the 

concentrations were of the ore that went 

through there, the processing volume per unit 
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time, the size of the room. 

 So, you know, there's a lot of 

unknowns there that we don't know that we have 

a pretty good handle on at Blockson. I mean 

that's why we can have this model because we 

know about the relative size of the room and 

the concentration of the ore and the 

production rates. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: I guess I wasn't 

expecting that you could have defined that for 

all time periods for the plant history. But I 

thought there must be some block of time -- 

 DR. NETON: Well, I didn't look for 

every single block of time in the 15-year 

period. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Well, where some 

of those things were known, you know, and I 

really did expect that you knew quite a bit 

about the facility. I mean, we've had a lot 

of people involved in reconstructing what went 

on there. The petitioners were very active. 

 DR. NETON: Yes, yes, I mean 
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especially when you get to the point where 

they close the door -- there is a whole report 

on they closed this one door and it sucked the 

-- you know, changed the air balance such 

that, you know, it sucked the radon and it 

went up by a factor of two or three in another 

room. 

 And then they realized -- on top of 

that -- and I think I put this in the original 

write up that it was recognized pretty early 

on after 1949 or so that radon was a problem 

there. I mean it was -- you know there were 

concentrations. 

 The values that I reported here, 

this 13 picocuries per liter are actually 

values in the plant. Plant Six. I purposely 

tried to get plant ore processing values. 

 There are ore storage rooms that 

are much higher than that. I mean they are in 

confined spaces and drums being opened and 

stored for long periods of time. 

 But, yes, I did not find anything 
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like that. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: And just to -- I 

mean to Wanda's point, I don't -- I think this 

is sort of to Jim Melius's point and Wanda's 

point that, you know, I'm not necessarily just 

nit-picking this for the sake of nit-picking 

it. But I do think it has broader 

implications. 

 I mean, I think we've realized that 

this approach, at least, could -- is being 

considered for Texas City and probably several 

other sites. So that's part of the reason 

that we're, you know -- 

 DR. NETON: Right. And that's why 

I said -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: -- some of us 

anyway are interested in making sure it's 

correct. 

 DR. NETON: I wouldn't get hung up 

on the 17.6 picocuries per liter. I think 

it's the model concept itself. You know, is 

this model significantly robust to put an 
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upper bound in? Obviously we think it is. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Further 

discussion? Anyone speaking for or against 

the motion? Or are you ready to vote? 

 The motion would be -- if the 

motion passed, it would be an acceptance of 

the radon model for Blockson. It would have 

no specific impact on the final decision as 

far as action on the broader question of the 

SEC. That would have to be handled 

separately. 

 So this would simply be a matter to 

go on the record as to your comfort level with 

the radon model itself as it applies to 

Blockson. 

 We'll need to take a roll call vote 

on this. So let's proceed. A yes vote is a 

vote that is supportive of the motion, which 

basically says that you believe that this 

model is sufficient for the bounding of radon 

doses at Blockson. I may not have worded that 

quite the same as the original, but that's the 
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intent. 

 Okay? Are we ready to vote then? 

Okay, let's vote. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston? 

 MEMBER POSTON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Presley? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Ms. Roessler? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler, excuse me. 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Ziemer? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Griffon? 
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 MEMBER GRIFFON: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Gibson? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach? 

 MEMBER BEACH: No. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: It's a tie, so 

the motion fails. 

 Now this does not preclude us 

considering whether to move the main motion 

back to the table although the Chair 

recognizes now, based on that, that it is not 

likely that a motion to remove from the table 

would pass. But I need to allow the 

opportunity for that. 

 It would take a majority vote to 

bring the main motion, which is the motion to 

-- well, the main motion originally was to, I 

believe, and I have to remember which way it 

was worded. But I believe the motion was to 

agree with the NIOSH recommendation that doses 
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could be bounded at Blockson. 

 A comment, Mark? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, just a 

comment with respect to the last vote. I mean 

I'm glad, Paul, you said some words that rang 

very true of me in your statement that this is 

a vote of your comfort level with the model 

currently. And I just want to say that this 

doesn't mean that I'll never vote for this 

model. It just means that I'm not comfortable 

where we are now. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: All right. Does 

anyone wish to make a motion to remove the 

original Blockson motion from the table? 

 MEMBER MUNN: I have made that 

motion. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: It's been moved. 

 Is there a second? And there's a second. 

This is not a debatable motion. We will 

immediately vote in a different order. 

 MR. KATZ: I'm trying to mix this 

up every time. 
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 MEMBER MELIUS: Can you clarify the 

motion first? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We had put on the 

table several meetings ago, and I don't recall 

the exact date, a recommendation, which 

recommendation occurred following the NIOSH 

evaluation report, which -- where NIOSH 

indicated that they believe that they can 

bound or can reconstruct dose at Blockson and 

therefore, they were recommending that a new 

class not be added to the SEC. 

 I believe the motion for the Board 

at that time was to agree with the NIOSH 

recommendation. The Board was split six to 

six on that. And therefore, the motion to 

support the NIOSH position was not approved. 

 Later, that same motion was tabled, 

partially so that we could address issues such 

as the radon issue. I may not have the 

sequence details, but the motion on the table 

was the motion as to whether or not we support 

the NIOSH recommendation. 
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 So removing it -- 

 MEMBER MELIUS: A vote yes is to 

remove that from the table? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. It does not 

-- 

 MEMBER MELIUS: So it would keep it 

tabled? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: A vote no is a 

vote to let it remain on the table. A vote 

yes is to remove it from the table. A tie 

vote leaves it on the table as well. It has 

to have a majority to come off the table. 

Everybody clear on that? 

 Okay. So we now vote on whether to 

remove it from the table. This has nothing to 

do with the actual action. It's just to bring 

before us a previous motion. 

 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: No. 

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

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Griffon? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Gibson? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach? 

 MEMBER BEACH: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston? 

 MEMBER POSTON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Presley? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Ziemer? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: It's a tie. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Therefore, the 

motion to remove from the table fails. And 
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the original Blockson action remains on the 

table. And that's where it will remain for 

the time being. 

 Let me also suggest in the 

meantime, and partially direct this toward 

Mark but also to the rest of the Board, is 

that you may want to have the opportunity -- 

well, Jim said there wasn't a spreadsheet to 

look at. 

 DR. NETON: Right. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: So I'm not sure 

where we go from here. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. And I was 

just thinking of where to go from here. And a 

unique problem we have this time is that -- 

because I was thinking well, maybe it would be 

worthwhile to get our independent, you know, 

audit contractor to help us in looking at this 

and seeing if they felt there was anything in 

the Mallinckrodt data that, you know, could be 

used to validate. 

 However, in this particular case, 
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which was much to my chagrin early on, SC&A 

developed the model. So I don't know that 

they are -- you know, it's an inappropriate 

assignment for SC&A to validate the model that 

they developed. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Let me pose one 

question that -- and maybe it can be easily 

answered. It appears that one of the big 

hindrances at evaluating the Mallinckrodt data 

is the room size issue. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: It's multiple -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: But that was kind 

of the back-breaker that even if we knew there 

were campaigns and had subsets of data, if we 

don't know those room sizes, what can we do 

with it? Is there any way to get either 

blueprints, plans, or any information in the 

records? 

 I mean maybe it is not something 

that has even been looked for because it 

didn't arise as an issue before. Do we know 

that room sizes are not available? 
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 DR. NETON: I don't know that for 

sure, no. I mean I looked through the site 

research database the best I could and didn't 

find any -- essentially floor plans or 

diagrams of the building much like we had at 

Mallinckrodt. I mean I would have taken a 

small diagram to scale and kind of blown it up 

if we could find it. 

 It doesn't mean they don't exist. 

You're absolutely right. But my other concern 

though is this processing source term. I mean 

you have a factor of seven possible 

variability in the uranium radium source term, 

you know, concentration-wise, which is huge. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. I was 

thinking in terms of what Mark said about if 

one could identify a subset, a particular 

campaign where you knew that the 

concentrations for a particular time set in a 

particular location -- it may not be doable. 

 DR. NETON: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And I don't know 
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 -- and SC&A, as you looked at any of the 

Mallinckrodt stuff, do you recall seeing any 

room dimension information or any blueprints 

or anything? 

 DR. NETON: Now I'm not saying 

there aren't any because I honestly did not do 

an exhaustive, you know, we have thousands of 

files, a lot of files, a lot of data out 

there. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, and the 

other part of this is sort of the question of 

reasonableness. Is the bounding -- I think 

there is a reasonableness test in the law on 

these things. And is the bounding value 

proposed by NIOSH a reasonable value? Is 

there reason to think that for some reason 

there is something unique at Blockson that 

would drive that value way up? 

 You know if the number is 20 or 17, 

I don't think we're going to quibble. But I 

do want the Board to make sure that we're 

looking in these bounding things at what is 
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also reasonable. And if a refinement, whether 

it is the concentration or the room size, is 

not going to change that value very much, we 

need to know that somehow. 

 DR. NETON: Right. Well, a couple 

issues there. The reasonableness issue, I 

think, is there in the sense that it is true 

that there are no 1950s era data. But at the 

same time, I have looked through and my 

associates have looked through a lot of 

information on these processes and radon 

measurement. 

 And nowhere in the literature do I 

find any indication that says oh, by the way, 

all of a sudden we realize radon is a problem. 

 We need to do some sort of mitigation efforts 

to get it down to these currently low levels 

that we're seeing in the 1970s. 

 I see nothing in the literature. 

I mean I've not seen one article that says oh, 

by the way, this was a problem in the `50s and 

now we've increased the ventilation to 
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accommodate, you know, to reduce the radon 

emissions and concentrations. 

 You would think if it were such a 

major problem, you would see something like 

that, some kind of paper trail in the 

literature. It's quite possible, I've worked 

long and hard to work through this, but this 

ore was calcined at a very high temperature, 

like 1,400 degrees or something like that. 

 I have an opinion that the radon is 

probably -- most of it was driven off before 

it ever got into the plant. And that's 

another reason why these levels are high. 

Can't prove it so we're not putting it in our 

model at all. So I think the 17 picocuries 

per liter is quite a reasonable bounding value 

given that what we saw in the `70s was in the 

one to two picocurie per year ranges and no 

higher than that. 

 In fact, if you looked at -- and I 

never talked about this before, but the 

storage locations where they have the ore in a 
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very enclosed space with almost no air 

turnovers, doesn't usually approach what we're 

assigning here at 17.6 picocuries per liter. 

 If you look at the Florida 

phosphate data, which is -- admittedly, that's 

outside but the ore was stored in these 

tunnels, the storage tunnel with 

fluorophosphate areas were not -- were on the 

same par as what we're seeing here. And these 

are fairly enclosed, unventilated spaces. 

 And it's well known that radon has 

an emanation fraction of something like 30 

percent, you know, in the ore. So, again, you 

know, I can't think of any mechanism that 

would make the radon concentrations higher 

than what we're proposing at Blockson. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

 Okay, Board members, when we get to 

our work time later this week, I guess I'm 

going to be asking you for guidance on a path 

forward. We need to ask each other because we 

can't just let this sit here forever. This is 
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unfair to the -- I mean we need to drive 

toward a decision, whichever way it goes. We 

need to drive toward that. 

 And you know, I'm somewhat at a 

loss as to what to do beyond what we've done. 

 We seem to be pretty split on this. And at 

some point, I ask the question, you know, we 

may have to report to the Secretary about 

this. I don't know, Ted, we'll have to look 

into that. What do we do with this? And we 

may need counsel to help us on this. 

 If we remain split on this issue, 

at some point, we may have to close it. But -

- and I don't know if you want to speak to 

that, Ted. 

 MR. KATZ: Well, I wasn't really 

going to speak to that so much as to say, I 

mean, we -- as I noted at the beginning of the 

meeting, we have four new members. One of 

them is a radon expert. So maybe new 

perspectives to this dialogue will help, too. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, certainly 
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that may be the case. But keep in mind that 

here's a group of people that have been 

dealing with this for well over a year or a 

couple years. And so to sort of expect new 

people to sort of come aboard and then 

suddenly bail us out, I don't like the idea of 

relying on that. Maybe that would occur, but 

nonetheless, I'm not so comfortable with that. 

 Wanda, did you have an additional 

comment? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Well, that probably 

will occur. It's difficult to imagine why one 

would not want to take this off the table 

because up or down, it's logical for us to 

move forward with it. And there's only a 

limited number of additional efforts that can 

be made with respect to additional data, to 

additional methods of approach. 

 When we have a vote of this kind, 

which occurs all too often, and we know that 

we are going to be adding individuals to our 

number here, without allowing this particular 
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process to move forward, it's most 

disheartening. And I can't imagine how 

disheartening it must be for the petitioners 

in this case. 

 The fact that this decision has 

some bearing on future cases that are coming 

along is not lost on anyone here I'm sure. It 

also is very clearly a reason for attempting 

to maintain our current position longer. 

 It just does not speak well, I 

think, for science or for the enormous amount 

of effort that individuals have put into this 

to try to move the science forward. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Any 

further comments? 

 MEMBER MUNN: None. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 We need to proceed then with the 

next item, which is the Hanford SEC petition. 

 This is a so-called 83.14 petition. And Sam 

Glover is going to make the presentation for 

NIOSH. 
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 And he will, as part of his 

presentation, explain how this petition fits 

in with two earlier Hanford petitions that 

this Board has already processed. And then we 

may hear from several of the petitioners, 

including the one for which this petition is 

the focus as well as some of the earlier 

petitioners on the previous Hanford petition. 

 And Ted, did you have a comment? 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, just before we get 

started, I just wanted to remind the Board we 

are dealing with a lot of SEC petitions and 

going forward, based on -- in the agenda for 

today and tomorrow -- but based on the most 

recent training that we had related to ethics, 

conflict of interest, one of the implications 

there -- what we learned was when we are 

dealing with SEC petitions, I mean, we already 

have a standard practice of leaving the table 

although the guidance was to, if it's a small 

room, to leave the room or to be somewhere 

where you are not visible to the Board in 
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particular. 

 But the important point I just 

wanted to note in addition is we got guidance 

about tasking, that we need to also be careful 

about tasking when someone has a conflict. 

There are some situations where it is 

unavoidable that everybody will be at the 

table, and I will give some guidance about 

that when we get to our working session on 

Wednesday. 

 But with SEC petitions, we can 

avoid any trouble because we already have 

people with conflict that are already leaving 

the table. So I would just say we need to do 

all of our tasking related to SC&A if there is 

going to be any related to an SEC petition 

during the SEC petition session as opposed to 

ever leaving that for the working session when 

everybody is sitting at the table. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. And on 

Hanford, we have Mr. Clawson is conflicted, I 

believe -- no, not Mr. Clawson. 
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 MEMBER CLAWSON: No. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Ms. Beach, Ms. 

Beach. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: We just assume 

you're conflicted. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: All those 

northwestern sites look alike, don't they? 

 (Laughter.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Idaho, Hanford -- 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Then they all 

should be included in the -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right, right. 

 Ms. Beach, for the record, has left 

the table. And Ms. Munn, for the record, has 

left the table for this discussion. 

 So then we'll proceed and turn the 

podium over to Sam Glover. 

 Welcome, Sam. 

 DR. GLOVER: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. 

 I'd like to start out with a little bit of 

history, and we're a little bit off -- this 

started about three years ago. We've been at 
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this a long time. There are a lot of 

different things that have happened on data 

security and different things that have held 

issues up. 

 We certainly have been working and 

SC&A has been working very hard on this for a 

long time. So I thought we'd go back and 

start at the beginning, how all of this kind 

of came to be. 

 So in the beginning, we had three 

Hanford petitions, which were qualified 

essentially at the same time. These included 

an all production workers from the 100 and 300 

areas from `43 to `46, and all the 200 area 

workers and guards basically from December `44 

through September 1st, 1946, associated with 

the DuPont era. That was SEC-00050. 

 On November 21st, we had another 

one associated with all employees and 

facilities from January 1st, 1942 through 

December 31st, 1990. That was SEC-00057. 

 And then there was a third one, 
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which was all roving maintenance carpenters in 

the 100, 200, 300, and 400 areas from April 

25th, 1967 through February 1, 1971. 

 Those were all merged into one 

petition. And those three petitions were then 

evaluated in two separate parts, the DuPont 

years, which was 1942 through September 1st, 

1946, and Part 2, September 1st, 1946 through 

1990. 

 We issued the evaluation report for 

Part 1 in May of 2007. And that was presented 

to the Board in July of 2007. And an 

evaluation report for Part 2 was presented in 

October 2007, and an update to that was 

presented in April of 2008. 

 The early petition stated that 

personnel monitoring gaps existed for several 

individual workers, particularly in the pre1946 operational time frames. And so we 

qualified it based on the absence of bioassay 

data pre-1946. 

 There was -- the plutonium bioassay 
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didn't start until that time frame. There 

were certainly several years of operations 

where there is no bioassay. 

 The class that was added was 

actually formed by the Board on October 12th, 

2007 for Part 1, and that was all employees -- 

I'm sorry, get this correct -- employees of 

the Department of Energy or DOE contractors -- 

this writing is even small for me, I'm trying 

to read this very fine writing -- basically 

the 300 fuel area fabrications and research 

areas from October 1, 1943 through August 

31st, 1946, the 200 area plutonium separations 

from November 1st, 1944 through August 31st, 

1946, and the B, D, and F reactors in the 100 

area from September 1, 1944 through August 

31st, 1946. 

 August 31st is when GE took over 

for DuPont, just a bit of recalling some of 

the different things that occurred at Hanford. 

 So that was the first class that we 

recommended and was acted on. A second class 
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we proposed was based on americium and thorium 

infeasibilities at various parts of the 

Hanford site. SC&A issued several White 

Papers regarding the topic. We continued to 

research that. 

 And at the time -- actually I left 

it in the present tense -- it was hindered by 

the inability to access DOE data. It was 

slowed down. So it took some time to work 

through that class. And that's when we came 

back in April 2008 and basically it was part 

of this revised evaluation report. 

 And the class was added effective 

June 29th, 2008, which essentially is the 

September 1st, 1946 through December 31st, 

1961 in the 300 areas, and that's associated 

with thorium, and then from January 1, 1949 

through December 31st, 1968 in the 200 areas 

east and west at the Hanford Nuclear 

Reservation. And that was associated with 

americium separations. 

 So at that time, we still had 
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numerous matrix items. Those items were moved 

by the Board to get an expedient class, to get 

that to begin process. Several hundred 

claims, I think over 400 cases, were found to 

be within the SEC as part of that. So it was 

timely. 

 It has taken a long time to get 

access to the data. Some things we're still 

getting in. 

 The Board, at the time, Dr. Melius 

and the Work Groups, we identified basically 

three priority items amongst this 25- or 26-

item matrix. And those were americium, 

thorium, and uranium. How much data, how well 

had we defined the class basically within that 

time frame, kind of focusing on that and 

moving to the others. 

 The problem was at the same time we 

had data security or access issues. And a lot 

of different MOU -- all these different things 

came at the same time and essentially slowed 

progress down. So while we focused on those, 
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we really couldn't just say we are going to do 

these and move to the next thing, we actually 

had to do a number of different research 

projects at the same time. 

 So we began a large database 

search. We had several hundred thousand 

responses back to go through, looking at 

americium, thorium, and uranium. We had 13 

separate data captures. And those aren't just 

-- some of those are one-week periods, some of 

those are multiple-week periods. 

 We had at least 15 additional 

interviews with site experts, numerous 

facility tours, and those included site 

experts with us, people who actually were 

there in 1948, 1949, who would have been doing 

that work, SC&A accompanied us, and Board 

members accompanied us on those sites. 

 We have over 18,000 Hanford-related 

items in this SRDB now associated with this. 

It has been a very large undertaking. 

 In some cases we did not receive 
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the data until early this year. And some data 

is still coming in. Security classification 

review takes a long time. And so it has been 

a very lengthy process. 

 I do want to say that DOE has 

worked very hard. They had to work within the 

framework of their guidance. But to get us 

access, these things would not have happened 

without Gail Splett, her management and staff 

supporting us. 

 So we developed a number of draft 

reports -- not draft to the Board but internal 

drafts of different research items. Some of 

those were presented to the Board, the 100, 

the single-pass reactor data. We issued a 

final report on that. 

 We also developed N Reactor, 

neutron dosimetry, the 200 area and 300 area, 

and the research facilities, thorium, uranium, 

americium, curium, neptunium, polonium, 

thulium, highly-enriched uranium, U-233, 

promethium-147, tritium, technetium-99, and 
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also some issues associated with the alphabeta activity at the tank farms. We had a lot 

of different projects going on. 

 So what I want to say when we look 

at this is while I'm going to present three 

particular issues, an 83.14 does not intend to 

try to delve into everything you can't do. It 

is essentially the icing that covers a broad 

swath of topics. There is a lot -- there's 

potential other infeasibilities, but this 

covers a broad scope of time. 

 So polonium began production -- you 

are well familiar with the Mound facility -- 

Hanford began producing polonium for 

initiators back in 1945. And that continued 

through December 31st, 1971. 

 Early indications was that it was 

all done at Mound. That's not necessarily the 

case. They did do some work at Hanford in 

separations for that material and various 

research activities throughout those time 

frames. In the Area 200, we also see that 
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they, again, did some experimental solvent 

extraction work for a limited time from `65 to 

`66. 

 The 300 Area, we see from `63 to 

`69, they were doing some additional polonium 

experiments, particularly in the 325 building. 

For monitoring we see while they have 

discussed that there's an early procedure for 

bioassay, there's nothing until you get to `68 

and `69 they are for very particular incidents 

or processes that were going on. And they 

don't necessarily relate well to the history 

of activities at Hanford regarding polonium. 

We see in `72 and `73 microspheres being 

produced at PNNL. 

 So we really just don't have a 

broad basis for which to go back and try to do 

dose reconstruction for a highly volatile and 

complex compound which is mobile, which you 

guys have a lot of experience with at Mound 

Laboratories. 

 For neptunium, we see activity from 
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May 1st, 1948 through June 30th, 1972. In the 

200 Area, operations began at crude 

separations for metal waste, but they also 

became very highly refined and essentially 

pure neptunium-237. The 300 Area, from 

January 1, `66 through December 31st, 1970, 

target element fabrication work beginning in 

`66. In monitoring, there's no bioassay prior 

to 1972, in which case we see four baseline 

bioassay measurements. 

 For thorium in the 100 Area, we do 

see a few element failures beginning to be 

reported in the `65 though `68 time frame. 

For the Area 200, we see major thorium 

operations beginning with the Thorex process 

in `65. And these continued through the final 

campaign to fabricate, irradiate, and process 

pelletized thorium oxide in 1970. 

 Area 300, October 1, `45 through 

December 31st, 1970, they had large campaigns 

to irradiate or fabricate, irradiate, and 

process pelletized thorium oxides in the later 
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years and also trial canning periods in the 

beginning. They handled thorium for a large 

block of time. Essentially there is extremely 

little data regarding thorium operations 

monitoring data at Hanford that we have been 

able to find. 

 So as previously described, NIOSH 

determined it was not feasible to complete 

dose reconstructions for virtually all 

radionuclides during the DuPont era because of 

lack of bioassay. We simply just didn't have 

bioassay in the earliest years. Americium and 

thorium during specific time frames in the 200 

and 300 Areas, those are things we predefined. 

 Those are previous classes that were already 

added. 

 Conclusions of research, basically 

we've come to the conclusion that based on the 

results of this research in numerous areas, it 

is not feasible to complete dose 

reconstruction with sufficient accuracy for 

the time period October 1st, 1943 through June 
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30th, 1972. 

 So because the previous SEC-00057 

was acted and moved upon, we needed a route -- 

a path forward, which is an 83.14, to 

essentially add to the class. So an 83.14 was 

developed using a claim for which NIOSH issued 

a decision, which it could not reconstruct 

dose. The claimant was a technician and 

laboratory supervisor in areas with neptunium 

and thorium with no associated bioassay. The 

claimant submitted an 83.14 petition, and 

NIOSH issued its evaluation report on 

September 28th, 2009. 

 So you may ask why the class. 

There are several infeasibilities that exist 

during the time frame in question. And these 

are presented in a form which provides broad 

coverage. Not necessarily every infeasibility 

but a series that provides a broad coverage in 

time and place. The decision was based on 

lack of adequate biological monitoring, 

sufficient air monitoring information, and/or 
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sufficient process and radiological source 

term. It's extremely difficult to get your 

hands around all the different source terms at 

Hanford. 

 Why everyone? Based on our dose 

reconstruction experience and records, NIOSH 

thoroughly determined that there was not 

sufficient information available to enable us 

to accurately assess whether an Energy 

employee or class of employees did or did not 

potentially enter specific areas of Hanford 

during the time associated with both the 

previously-designated SEC classes and the 

recently identified polonium, thorium, and 

neptunium dose reconstruction infeasibilities. 

 So what about everyone else not 

included? So as I said, we did a lot of 

additional research projects, neutron/photon 

ratio, the single pass reactors, all this 

additional work with thulium. And if there 

is a dose reconstruction methodology which we 

have in place or which we have data for, we 
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will employ that. So, therefore, dose 

reconstructions for individuals employed at 

Hanford site during the period from October 

1, 1943 through June 30th, 1972 but who did 

not qualify for inclusion in the SEC, we will 

use these data as appropriate. 

 Evidence reviewed in this 

evaluation indicates that some workers in the 

class may have accumulated chronic radiation 

exposures through intakes of radionuclides and 

direct exposure to radioactive materials. 

Consequently, NIOSH is specifying that health 

may have been endangered. 

 The proposed class? All employees 

of the Department of Energy, its predecessor 

agencies, and its contractors or 

subcontractors who worked at the Hanford site 

in Richland, Washington, from October 1, 1943 

through June 30th, 1972 for a number of work 

days aggregating at least 250 work days 

occurring either solely under this employment 

or in combination with work days within the 
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parameters established for one or more other 

classes of employees, including the special 

exposure cohort. 

 I wanted to give you some flavor 

for what is the potential impact. The total 

number of cases that are Hanford and PNNL is 

about 3,500, 3,457. Previously, 415 were 

withdrawn as part of the SEC. The total 

number with the dose reconstruction at DOL was 

2,095 cases, total number without a DR at 

NIOSH, some of these cases have been held for 

a long time because of changes to the 

technical basis document, there are 888. 

Total before 1972, 718 cases to be done. 

Number of case claims at NIOSH, which the 

current proposed SEC may effect, is 321 cases. 

 So our recommendation for the 

period October 1, 1943 through June 30th, 

1972, NIOSH finds that radiation dose cannot 

be reconstructed for compensation purposes. 

So we have a feasibility of no, with health 

endangerment of yes. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 

much. 

 Sam, just to reiterate or 

emphasize, now as I understand this, this new 

-- this recommendation picks up the other two 

as well. Does it not? Everything now is 

covered by this, is that right? The two 

previous ones are subsets of this as I read 

the actual report. 

 DR. GLOVER: This would -- yes, 

that's correct. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: The other two 

existing ones now become, in essence, part of 

this SEC. Is that correct? 

 DR. GLOVER: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Or this class? 

 DR. GLOVER: That is correct. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Because it covers 

-- right. Okay. 

 Now let's open this up for 

questions. First, Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, just to 
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clarify this because I'm a little confused by 

what you said. There is still -- I mean there 

is still an active petition through the period 

1990 so this does not preclude further 

evaluation by the Board of that evaluation 

report -- further review of that evaluation 

report by the Board? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, I don't 

know if you're asking me. I believe you're 

correct on that. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: No, I'm asking 

NIOSH. Essentially -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: This doesn't 

close off the -- 

 MEMBER MELIUS: -- yes, this is 

sort of a customized new evaluation report 

that covers a select period here. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And, again, in an 

effort to cover those cases that we already 

know about. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: This proposed class 
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subsumes the previous two classes. It does 

not answer in finality the open petition. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Right. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: We can still continue 

our evaluation. We can still continue 

retrieving data. As Sam mentioned, we still 

have data coming back in. There could be the 

possibility of an additional evaluation report 

beyond this. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, and there will 

be -- there is an ongoing review by the Work 

Group and SC&A, and there are outstanding 

issues that are related to the time period 

beyond 1972. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: That's correct. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And I think part of 

the Work Group's chore now is working with us 

trying to figure out what issues have been 

removed by this recommendation. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right, some of 

the existing matrix findings that the Work 
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Group would have been looking at, yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: At least for 

certain time periods, yes. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: No, I just wanted 

to get that on the record, that's all. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Further comments 

or questions? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I'll just -- 

further comment -- we got this -- we didn't 

get this report until very recently. A little 

after the -- the data on it is a little bit 

misleading in terms of when we got it. And so 

I don't believe a lot of us have had time to 

review it. 

 I've had a chance to read the 

evaluation report. I asked Arjun, who we have 

been working with from SC&A, also to look it 

over. And, you know, I think -- I would say, 

you know, we are in agreement with the 

proposal. We think it addresses a number of 

the concerns we had that was still underway. 
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We've not been able to do much because of this 

data issue and because we've obviously known 

for some time that NIOSH was working on this 

to do that. 

 So I guess we would, you know, to 

the extent of our limited review, what we've 

had time, we would agree with this conclusion. 

 And, you know, we will be identifying other 

areas that need to be looked in to beyond 

1972. But we now have to sort of regroup 

because -- figure out what data is available 

and where we stand with this. 

 But I'd also like to compliment 

NIOSH on their efforts in doing this. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, and I agree 

with that, too. And on the part of the 

Hanford group. 

 But this particular report didn't 

get to us in time for the Work Group to 

specifically act as a group on it. But we've 

all had the opportunity to read through it. 

And it seems to make sense not only to pick up 
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the other two petitions but to basically 

extend this -- what now becomes the new class 

for Hanford since the findings seem to be 

fairly straightforward at this point. 

 We do need to allow opportunity for 

petitioners to comment if they wish to. Let 

me ask if any of the petitioners -- 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: May I -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Oh, a question 

first. Hang on. Yes, Mark? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Just one follow-up 

question. I see your slide on the why 

everyone slide. But can you elaborate? I 

mean that's the only thing in this that, I 

guess, troubles me is that it is all 

employees. And it doesn't so much trouble me 

as the question of equity with prior 

decisions, you know, that we have tried to 

separate out in prior SEC petitions, you know, 

certain production workers, whatever. 

 And can you expand on that? I mean 

it seems that you weren't able to in this 
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case. And that's fine. But I just want to 

understand it a little better. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, and I think 

it was covered in the evaluation report. But 

why don't you elaborate. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, we tried to be 

very clear, and I think Sam's presentation of 

that particular slide was as clear as we could 

make it. As we vetted this class definition 

with DOL and with DOE and we went out and 

actually met face to face with the local DOE 

management at Richland, it became apparent to 

us that they couldn't identify people who 

actually went into these areas. This 

definition will include those individuals who 

worked in the Federal Building downtown in 

Richland, Washington, recognizing that their 

assignments, their tasks, would take them out 

into the 100, 200, 300 areas. 

 Also, there's migration between 

areas, you know, people can be assigned to the 

1100 Area, which is primarily administrative 
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area, I think, or perhaps a non-exposed 

situation for most people, but they could 

leave that area and move into the 300, 200 

area to do their work. And it's clear to us 

that there is no way feasible to identify over 

the course of time, through the many eras of 

work out there, where these people moved. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Thank you. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I'd like to just 

ask a question. This is more of a curiosity 

thing, and it may be how DOL administers 

things. But if you had such an individual at 

the Federal Building and it was clear from 

either the CATI interview or the record that 

that individual went to the work site once a 

week, is the 250-day determination adjusted 

for that? Or is it 250 days regardless of 

where he was? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I would have to refer 

and defer that question to Jeff. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I think that's 

probably a Labor -- 
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 MR. ELLIOTT: It is a DOL question. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Maybe Jeff 

wouldn't be prepared to answer it but -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I can give you this 

much, sir. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- in sort of 

similar cases, how is that sort of thing 

handled? Is it a case-by-case or -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Let me say this. We 

were told and we do understand, we do know 

this to be a fact, that those folks who worked 

in, like, the Federal Building that had 

assignments out in the 200, 300 areas, were 

given a badge, an external badge. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: So these 

infeasibility issues go to internal dose 

problems for us, bioassay problems. So by the 

badging aspect, that could be used to 

determine when a person entered the risk areas 

and how many days they might have spent there. 

 But I don't know how you all -- 
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 MR. KOTSCH: I mean as always, 

those things are done on a case-by-case basis. 

 And it works both ways. I mean if there is 

evidence that he only entered once a week, 

that is used in the -- you know, that is used 

in the assessment of the 250. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. As a 

general principle. Obviously, it's a case-bycase. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: So you wouldn't be 

a Hanford site employee -- I guess it is sort 

of -- the way the class definition is it was, 

you know, who worked at the Hanford site. So 

somebody in that federal -- so you would have 

to move from that federal office building into 

the site. So then it is a question of 

documentation? No? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: The federal office 

building is part of the site. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. So that's 

considered -- 

 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, it's Hanford -- 
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the Hanford Works, Richland Facility. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: And our understanding 

is the Federal Building is considered part of 

that, the 1100 Area, which had some of the 

administrative offices and programs are part 

of that also. It is all inclusive. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. So I guess -

- I go back to Mark's question, which is -- I 

mean, again, not for this particular site but 

in general, this seems -- it seems to me that 

on some of the other older sites, 83.14s and 

some 83.13s that were going to a much broader 

definition, much broader class, we're not 

qualifying the class or restricting the class 

in some way. 

 And I think it does raise sort of 

equity questions with how we've handled this 

before. And now is probably not the time to 

try to go through the different sites and so 

forth because I haven't done it. But it seems 

to me that we need to start thinking about 
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what are going to be the criteria and is what 

we've done in the past fair to those employees 

at those sites when we suddenly appear to be 

taking up a new policy in terms of how we're 

crafting class definitions. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: No, no, no, I'm going 

to disagree strongly. There's no new policy. 

 Each one of these classes stand alone on 

their own merits with the information that is 

reviewed in the evaluation. And yes, in some 

instances, we are able to designate certain 

buildings where work was performed. In other 

situations such as Hanford, we cannot do that. 

 And when we recognize we cannot do that, 

that's what we're saying. 

 So it is not a policy change. 

These SEC petition evaluations are exactly 

like claims. All claims are individual. They 

are dependent upon the circumstances around 

the claim. The same goes for these SEC 

petitions and the classes that we are 

evaluating. So I don't see -- I mean we could 
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talk at length about disparities that are 

presented in this program by the law. But in 

our actions and our processing of these, we 

are trying to be as consistent as we possibly 

can, yet recognizing that there are individual 

situations and circumstances that drive the 

recommendations that we bring forward. 

 I think LaVon has a comment. 

 MR. RUTHERFORD: I just wanted to 

add that we also -- I mean we also have taken 

the opportunity when we have some of the 

earlier classes that we have added and we've 

recognized ultimately when it came to the 

administration of that class that DOL's 

interpretation of that class may have been 

somewhat different than ours, and we have went 

back and we've done 83.14s to modify that 

class. If you look at the Y-12 early years, 

we modified that class. Los Alamos National 

Lab, Lawrence Livermore, again, those have 

been modified because we recognized 

implementation was not working the way we 
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thought it would work. 

 And so I think that opportunity is 

out there for any of the previous classes. If 

ultimately we get a claim in back from the 

Department of Labor that we look at and we 

identify that, well, we thought that claim 

would have fit into the class, then we need to 

take that under consideration and look at 

maybe we haven't defined the class 

appropriately. 

 But I think that process is there. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Well, how many 

times has that worked? How many times have 

you gone back? 

 MR. RUTHERFORD: Y-12 early years, 

Lawrence Livermore National Lab twice at this 

time, at this time. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. 

 MR. RUTHERFORD: Again, if we end 

up in situations where we feel that a claim 

has not been appropriately administered, then 

we would look at going back again. 
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 MEMBER MELIUS: And do you actively 

look for claims that haven't been 

appropriately -- 

 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, we do. 

Actually we do. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. 

 MR. RUTHERFORD: During the 

process, when a dose reconstructor gets a dose 

reconstruction in, part of the process is 

looking at each claim and see how the decision 

was made, ultimately whether it is in or not 

in the SEC. And looking at how you would 

anticipate the exposures to that individual. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I'd like to request 

a presentation on that process for the next 

meeting. 

 MR. RUTHERFORD: I will accept that 

one. 

 (Laughter.) 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Excellent. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: It almost sounds 

like a challenge there, doesn't it? Thank 
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you. 

 Let me again see if any of the 

petitioners are on the line and wish to speak. 

 These are Hanford petitioners. Any of the 

Hanford petitioners wish to speak? 

 MS. HOYT: Yes. My name is 

Rosemary Hoyt. Can you hear me? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I can hear you, 

Rosemary. And I'll, just for the record, 

point out that Rosemary was a petitioner on 

one of the earlier versions, I believe. 

Rosemary, is that not correct? 

 MS. HOYT: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, please give 

us your comments. 

 MS. HOYT: Well, I would also like 

to hear from the current petitioner, if 

possible, and would like to speak after that 

person, if that person is on the line. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We had received a 

note that the person might possibly be on the 

line but did not wish to speak. But that 
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would be her call if she's on the line. 

 MS. HOYT: Okay. Well, then my 

first comment would be that I would dearly 

love to hear from that person and would like 

my contact information given to her. And I, 

again, ask her to please contact me. 

 The questions that I have are is 

americium included in this current SEC because 

it wasn't mentioned. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: The question is 

was americium included in the current ones? I 

believe the answer is no, but let me see. 

 Sam, can you answer that? At least 

it was not one of the named ones that you 

couldn't reconstruct, I guess, in the current 

petitions. Is that correct? 

 Hang on, Rosemary, we're -- 

 Rosemary's question was -- I 

believe it was do the current classes cover 

americium? I don't think they specifically 

named it as -- 

 DR. GLOVER: So the previous class 
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we'd already set forth for americium and 

thorium. We didn't necessarily have to 

restate them as being we can't do it or that 

we -- americium continues past that. But we 

do have bioassay data. It was unnecessary to 

continue to restate -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Because you 

covered the other. 

 DR. GLOVER: -- those 

infeasibilities. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. So that's 

sort of a yes then. 

 MS. HOYT: Okay. I'm making notes. 

 Another comment is I know that 

matrix has been very large and there were a 

lot of unresolved issues. Has the matrix been 

updated at all lately since it's my 

understanding that the Working Board -- 

Hanford Working Group has not met in almost 

two years. So -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Let me give a 

preliminary answer. And then perhaps Dr. 
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Melius, the Chair, can answer further. 

 But my understanding is that if 

this class is approved, that is if the 

recommendation of NIOSH is approved by the 

Board as well or if we make a similar 

recommendation, that would automatically take 

care of a number of the matrix issues. So we 

would need to update and revise the matrix. 

 But let me ask Dr. Melius to 

comment further. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, that is 

correct, Dr. Ziemer. And we have already got 

that in process. Sam Glover has been keeping 

us aware of their activities and with more 

information, providing additional information 

on some of their data collection and so forth. 

 We need to get caught up with that a little 

bit, but I think that can be done relatively 

quickly. 

 And Arjun Makhijani and I have had 

 discussions of this already. And we'll be 

proceeding as rapidly as we can to get it 
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updated and then to organize a Work Group 

meeting to go forward. We've already 

identified on a preliminary basis some issues 

that we think need to be looked at. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Of course, once 

that's updated, we need to make sure that the 

petitioners get copies of that as well. 

 And, Rosemary, we'll certainly make 

sure that you are kept apprised of that. 

 MS. HOYT: Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Did you have 

additional comments or questions? 

 MS. HOYT: Just one. Again, at the 

very beginning, it seemed that NIOSH was gung 

ho and said no, they could reconstruct 

everything. And the more they got into it, 

the more they realized that data was missing. 

 So I appreciate that NIOSH has taken the lead 

on this and is recognizing that it is very 

complex and that they were not able to do a 

lot of the dose reconstructing that they 

formerly thought they could do. 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

 So noted. 

 Any other petitioners on the line 

that wish to speak? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: If not, then Mark 

Griffon has a remark here. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Just a follow up 

on Rosemary's first point there -- the 

americium question. I mean I'm not sure -- 

this certainly becomes important for the nonSEC cancers. I wasn't -- when I read through 

this, and, granted, I didn't have a lot of 

time with it -- but if you can do the 

americium, plutonium, other nuclides in later 

years, it becomes relevant for the non-listed 

cancers obviously. 

 So can you restate -- is that -- 

you said we should presume that they are still 

infeasible all through `72. Is that -- 

 DR. GLOVER: We didn't restate that 

-- you know we didn't extend anything beyond 
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what was minimally necessary to state the 

class. Right now we have an infeasibility 

stated though `68. We won't do those for 

thorium during those current time frames. 

 If we have data then we will use 

that data. So the more we state that we can't 

do, the less dose I can apply for these nonSEC cancers. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 Any further comments on this one? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: It would be 

appropriate if the Board is ready to make a 

recommendation on this evaluation report. You 

have the possibility of two possible motions. 

 Or you can defer action, depending on your -- 

I guess I would say your comfort level with 

the information provided, whether you believe 

that you are ready to take action. A motion 

to agree with the recommendation and to so 

notify the Secretary would be appropriate or a 

motion not to agree. 
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motion? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I move that we 

accept the recommendation of this evaluation 

report. 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I second it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. It has 

been moved and seconded that we accept this 

evaluation. If the motion is approved, this 

automatically will generate a more formal 

wording of the motion as it goes forward to 

the Secretary following our usual format, and 

that wording would come to the Board during 

our work session later in the week. 

 Let me ask if there is any 

discussion on the motion to approve this -- or 

recommend this action to the Secretary that a 

class be added? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: There appears to 

be no discussion. We will then vote by roll 

call. 
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 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Gibson? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Griffon? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston? 

 MEMBER POSTON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Presley? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Ziemer? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Unanimous. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: There are 12 
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yeses, no nos, no abstentions -- ten rather. 

That's right because we have two members who 

are conflicted on this one. So it's -- the 

vote of the voting members on this is 

unanimous, and the motion carries. And we 

will so recommend to the Secretary in this 

particular case. 

 We are a little behind schedule, 

but we do need to go ahead and take our break. 

 It will be a 15-minute break. And just for 

the Brookhaven folks who might be on the line, 

we will reconvene here at four o'clock and 

discuss the Brookhaven SEC petition. 

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off 

the record at 3:45 p.m. and resumed 

at 4:01 p.m.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: There is a 

petition from Brookhaven National Laboratory 

for an SEC class. The evaluation report that 

has been prepared by NIOSH will be presented 

today by Grady Calhoun of NIOSH staff. We 

will also have an opportunity to hear from the 
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petitioner, I believe by phone because, as far 

as I know, the petitioner is not here in 

person. 

 But first we will hear from Grady 

and then have a chance to hear from the 

petitioner and then have discussion. 

 Grady? 

 MR. CALHOUN: Okay. Thank you. 

Can everybody hear me okay? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. CALHOUN: All right. Here we 

go. 

 All right. We started out with the 

Brookhaven petition on May 9th, 2008. And the 

proposed class definition was all employees 

who worked in all areas of the lab from 1947 

to present. We qualified the petition June 

27, 2008, but we ran into some problems as far 

as obtaining data. So we had to notify the 

Board twice, once in October of 2008 and once 

in March 2009 that we were not going to meet 

our 180 days for the evaluation report. 
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Finally, October 1st, we finalized the 

evaluation report and issued it. 

 Okay, some of the bases for the 

petition were that there really wasn't 

adequate monitoring. The 1980s was 

specifically listed, but, again, we took a 

look at the entire time frame, and there were 

also some thoughts that areas were improperly 

monitored during that -- or improperly posted 

so that the people didn't know what they were 

getting into when they were working. 

 Okay, the information that we had 

available to us and that we made available to 

us throughout this evaluation, we had the site 

profile that had already been approved for 

BNL, we had some interviews performed both by 

the OCAS-ORAU staff and by SC&A. And we 

looked at all the interviews from current and 

former Brookhaven employees while we were 

there. I actually was there myself a few 

times on data capture and talked to several 

people at the site. 
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 When we started this around May 

2008, we only had about 300 documents in our 

site research database. We have made a lot of 

data capture efforts at the site. About ten 

were made, and we captured an additional 2,500 

documents. That doesn't mean we just looked 

at 2,500 documents. We looked at thousands 

and thousands and thousands of documents to 

capture an additional 2,500 that were relevant 

for this evaluation. 

 Other sources of information that 

we had, we had annual reports that the site 

had completed and sent to the AEC, ERTA, and 

DOE. We had some of the bioassay data that we 

were looking at. This is the beginning of 

part of the problem in that the bioassay data 

was not maintained in a single location. As 

you can see, there's -- I won't read through 

all of these different possible repositories, 

but we found bits and pieces of bioassay in 

many, many, many locations, none of which were 

consolidated. 
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 We also have a database, the 

Landauer database, and microfiche from 1985 to 

1996 with film badges, that's external dose 

primarily, we have the tritium database from 

Analytical Services Laboratory that covered 

1995 to 2003. There is a health physics 

records storage system that the site has got 

up and running and we have from 2001 and 

later, we have a nice consolidated spot for 

internal doses and external doses from 1996 

and later are in that database. We also have 

had case files that we've received from 

Brookhaven when we've made requests for 

dosimetry data and X-ray data just during the 

normal course of our dose reconstruction 

process. 

 What we have currently I'll say inhouse is we have 92 claims. And these numbers 

are as of September 10th. Actually, a 

surprisingly low number for the size site it 

was -- is -- we have 92 claims. And since we 

evaluated the entire time period, all of those 
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claims could have been affected by the results 

of this evaluation report. We've completed 28 

of those claims. Of the 92 claims that we've 

got, 21 contain internal dosimetry, and 43 

contain external dosimetry. Just a little 

note, of the 92 cases that we've sent data 

requests for, as of September 10th, we've only 

received 64 responses back from the lab. 

 The operations, some of the 

operations at the site -- I know there was a 

tour there this weekend or yesterday, I guess 

-- they did a lot there. A very wide, diverse 

site. Got into areas of medicine, biology, 

chemistry, physics, materials science, nuclear 

engineering, environmental research, very, 

very large, diverse group of activities at the 

site. Some of them involved radiation and 

radioactive material. Some of them didn't. 

 They have reactors at the site, 

research reactors, BGRR graphite reactor, a 

high flux beam reactor. They also had a 

medical facility with a reactor that they used 
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to produce radioisotopes. And they also had a 

radiation therapy facility that contained 

rather large sources for external dose 

studies. They also had a bunch of 

accelerators at the site, a bunch of 

accelerators. Some of these started in the 

early, early years. And some of them are 

still in place today. And they are 

operational. 

 We also have the Department of 

Applied Science there, a target processing 

lab. That's one of the places where they put 

a target in an accelerator, induce 

radioactivity, and then they can do 

separations in that lab. So that's a 

potential hot spot, a potential area for 

internal and external dose. They also had a 

waste management facility and, of course, 

throughout this -- all these operations, 

radioactive wastes were generated and the 

waste management facility took care of the 

waste at the facility. 
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we've had and that we've seen throughout this 

evaluation, the external data has been 

centralized pretty much throughout the BNL's 

history. We have been able to find records of 

what was done, how many people were monitored, 

what kind of doses that we've seen throughout 

the history. Like I said, in 1996, we have -- 

that record system was launched. Newly 

generated records were stored electronically, 

and they are in the process now of going back 

and getting some of the more historical 

records uploaded into that database. 

 As far as what kind of external 

dosimetry did they use, from startup through 

`84, they used film and NTA. They used NTA 

early, `85 through `95, multi-element film, 

again, but they had the CR-39, which is 

helpful for the neutrons, and the Lexan as 

well. In `96 to present, they started with 

TLDs. 

 This is just to give you a little 
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bit of an idea -- I think my pointer is easier 

for me to press the button on here -- this is 

the number of individuals. This isn't dose. 

Just to give you an idea of throughout time 

with the site, these were taken from annual 

reports that they submitted every year. We 

couldn't find the one for 1971. And these 

were all found during our data capture 

efforts. And basically it just shows that the 

number of people monitored was very high. And 

then it goes down. 

 The green bars are the number of 

people less than one rem for the year and the 

yellow is one to four rem basically. And over 

four is the red bars. Okay, just a little bit 

of an idea of the number of people that were 

monitored at the site externally. 

 Okay, here's just another graph 

showing kind of the same thing but instead of 

the number of individuals, it's the dose. 

There is a maximum range of dose that was 

here. These have the arrow bars on them 
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because in the reports they were giving, for 

example, right here it would be four to five 

rem is how the numbers were reported through 

the years. So these are the maximum exposures 

that were reported throughout the years. 

 This green diamond, these are the 

average. And you'll see the Y axis over here 

is different. So that's a much smaller dose. 

 And you can see that the doses -- the average 

doses are very, very small -- external doses. 

 Okay, now we go on to internal 

doses. And what kind of exposure potential 

did we have here? We had uranium, in our 

early years we had ton quantities of uranium 

of various enrichments, they did some fuel rod 

fabrication with that and they did some 

research, target fabrication for the 

accelerators. 

 We had fission and activation 

products because we had the reactors at the 

site obviously. And we also had acceleratorproduced activation products. And we had 
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these products because they were key in doing 

research for radiopharmaceutical production at 

the site. We also had a bunch of tritium 

there. And that resulted from one of the 

heavy water reactors there. They also did a 

lot of research with tritium -- biological and 

medical research with tritium at the site. 

 They had thorium at the site. Not 

a lot of it but we had thorium at the site for 

nuclear engineering research. Had some 

plutonium for research, americium, polonium, 

multiple other radionuclides in smaller 

quantities. The reason I point these out is 

just to show you the diversity of the internal 

sources of exposure that were here at the 

site. 

 BNL internal dose data, what kind 

of data do we have? We go through this 

evaluation report looking to see what kind of 

information do we have available to us to do 

dose reconstruction. We've got urinalysis 

results. We know the urinalysis started in 
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1949. Throughout time, we've seen urinalysis 

for plutonium, gross beta, mixed fission 

products, strontium, uranium, polonium, gamma, 

tritium. Now a bunch of other special 

analysis is required. We also have whole body 

counting. It started in 1960 at the site. 

 We found several incident reports, 

many incident reports actually. And the 

incidents seemed to be well documented. There 

is a description of what happened, who was 

involved, what were the potential 

contaminants, what did we do to follow up, did 

we monitor the people, what did we monitor 

them for, and what not. 

 Again, just as a little 

illustration of the type of different 

radionuclides we have here, some of the 

incident reports that we have list bunches of 

different radionuclides that I kind of turned 

exotic here that were in use at the site. And 

if something was involved to the point where 

we had to actually -- they had to do some type 
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of bioassay to determine what kind of 

intakes/uptakes were received. 

 The problem that we found is that 

the internal dosimetry records had been 

maintained in multiple locations. They still 

are. There's personnel work files, there's 

medical files, there's project files. And 

these dosimetry records are scattered all 

over. They are not in one particular place, 

at least up until a certain time. We found 

them in off-site facilities. We found them in 

on-site facilities. Okay? And most bioassay 

data currently exists in hard copy form only. 

 One of the things that we did as a 

test was we knew from looking at the site, 

doing all the data capture, looking at the 

program manuals, looking at the reports and 

everything, they had a good program there. 

They were conscientious. They knew what to 

monitor for. They monitored for it. And one 

of the things that we found was we'd find 

lists. And let's just say, you know, there 
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are several different areas on the site. And 

let's just use a certain accelerator, just for 

an example. 

 We'd find a list from that project 

report that said here is five people or seven 

people, whatever, that need to be monitored. 

Here is what they need to be monitored for 

because they could be exposed to this during 

the course of this operation. So they need to 

get a urinalysis. They need to get a whole 

body count, whatever. 

 So to test, what we did is we took 

a sample of those individuals throughout a 

time period of operation and said okay, if Joe 

Smith was told to get a urinalysis or a whole 

body count or whatever, some kind of bioassay, 

did he get it because it is not good enough 

for us to know that he was told to get 

monitored. We need to know that he was so we 

can do dose reconstruction. So what we did is 

we went through all of the information that we 

captured. We went through everything that BNL 
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had for us and tried to determine were these 

individuals monitored throughout the time when 

they were told to be monitored or when their 

project manager, whatever, made the 

determination to monitor them. 

 As I said earlier, Brookhaven was a 

whole bunch of different projects. And it 

wasn't like everybody was going to be 

monitored for every radionuclide or everybody 

was even going to get external monitoring. It 

was done on a project-specific and even a 

person-specific basis. So we thought the best 

approach to see how good the monitoring was or 

if the monitoring actually took place was to 

try to find the records when the individuals 

were told to get monitored because you can 

make the assumption, and I think it is a 

reasonable jump, that these were the highest 

potentially exposed people. 

 So we had 69 individuals that we 

found on some of these records. And we 

plotted them throughout decades, and we found 
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that we have not been able to consistently 

find the dosimetry results from people who 

were told to get monitored until 1980. And 

here is our graph of this. We had 

representatives in each of these decades, 

`40s, none, `50s, just a couple, `60s, none, 

`70s, we're up to about 75 percent of the 

individuals that were told to get monitored, 

we could find the monitoring results, `80s, 

we're up to about 92 percent, and by the `90s, 

we had 100 percent. 

 Now in the 1980s, this spot right 

here, that's just a -- that's one individual 

that we couldn't find the monitoring results 

for. We ultimately did find the results for 

that person, but it was in excess of 12 months 

after the whole body count was requested so we 

didn't count it. 

 So what happened in 1980? Well, 

besides the fact that it appears we're much 

more able to get reliable data from these 

people, we have a memo that we found that 
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actually was in 1979, it was October 1979. 

And it basically said, you know, we've got to 

consolidate the whole body count program and 

the bioassay program. Because of a lack of a 

centralization of responsibility, we're not 

following up on these counts. And we're not 

reporting the data. And we're just not doing 

a good job. So it seems that this probably 

contributed to the fact that we, you know, 

beginning in the `80s, we're much more likely 

to find the data from the individuals who were 

asked or told to be monitored. 

 As far as how we do the dose 

reconstructions, external dose reconstruction 

I mentioned. Here is the kind of monitoring 

that we have, the film badges used over time. 

 That's basically the same thing. TLD started 

in `96. Data availability for external, we 

have individual monitoring records available 

throughout the operational history of the 

site. For unmonitored workers, we've got 

something established in our Technical Basis 
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Document on how to take care of that for 

external dose. And we believe that the 

external dose can be reconstructed throughout 

the history of the site based on the 

information that we have seen. 

 As far as internal dose 

reconstruction goes, we know that urinalysis 

began in 1949. We know that whole body 

counts began in 1960. But because of the 

poor records management practices, we cannot 

reliably retrieve records prior to 1980. If 

I've got something that gives a group of 

individuals an order to go get monitored and I 

can't find their monitoring records, I can't 

do the dose reconstruction. I just don't know 

how -- what kind of assumptions I would have 

to make, especially since those people are 

identified as the more highly exposed 

individuals. 

 So due to our inability to 

consistently obtain internal dosimetry data, 

we cannot -- we don't believe that internal 
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doses can be bounded with sufficient accuracy 

prior to 1980. 

 We did the evaluation report. And 

we issued the evaluation report. It became 

final on October 1st, 2009. We evaluated 

whether or not it was feasible to estimate 

dose with sufficient accuracy and if there is 

a reasonable likelihood that health was 

endangered. We found that the available 

monitoring records, process descriptions, and 

source term data are adequate to complete dose 

reconstructions with sufficient accuracy after 

December 31st, 1979. 

 NIOSH believes that there is a 

reasonable likelihood that the radiation doses 

received at Brookhaven may have endangered the 

health of the members of the class. NIOSH 

recommends additions to the class consisting 

of all employees who worked in any area of 

Brookhaven National Lab January 1st, 1947 

through December 31st, 1979. 

 Oh, what happened there? That was 
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the last slide. It was. I promise. And the 

last slide basically just had a little table 

there that basically said that internal dose 

cannot be reconstructed prior to 1980. All 

the way to the end there. It's the very last 

one. There we go. Okay. Our recommendation 

is internal doses, `47 to `79 cannot be done. 

 We believe that we can do everything post1979. External doses included, we can do 

before 1979 as well. That's it. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, 

Grady. 

 Let's see if any of the Board 

members have questions for you before you sit 

down. 

 Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. Grady, could 

you explain the sample of `69. How was that 

selected? 

 MR. CALHOUN: As I said, we found 

individual -- I'll call them memos, and they 

were usually from a project manager that said 
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these individuals need to be monitored for X, 

Y, and Z because they have the potential to be 

exposed to it. 

 And we took several of these memos 

and tried to -- and, you know, there may be 

five, ten people on that list -- and so we 

took as many of those memos as we had 

specifying monitoring. And we separated those 

into decades as far as when the individuals 

worked. 

 We made requests, because these are 

for people who are claimants and nonclaimants, we made requests to Brookhaven for 

that data that they had. We got the data from 

them. 

 In addition, we looked through the 

data that we had captured. And in some cases, 

we have data that are not in the individual's 

files. And we matched that up to the kind of 

analysis that was requested by that project 

manager for that individual. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. So is there 
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a place -- I guess I'm having trouble in -- 

actually it's slide 22 here -- I don't know if 

that -- where you have a parallel little bar 

chart by percentages by year of when you could 

-- percent of requested bioassay results 

retrieved. 

 MR. CALHOUN: Right. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I guess I'm having 

trouble understanding what the denominators 

are for those different -- 

 MR. CALHOUN: They are different. 

They are going to vary a little bit by year. 

I believe in 1980, we had 12. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. 

 MR. CALHOUN: And we got 11 of the 

12 within 12 months. But the 12th one wasn't 

received until after 12 months. We could have 

counted it, but we didn't. That could have 

brought that up to 100 percent. But that was 

done I think 13, 14 months later. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. Thanks. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Dr. Roessler? 
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 MEMBER ROESSLER: My question is on 

slide 26. 

 MR. CALHOUN: If that's 22 -- 3, 4, 

5, 6, is that it? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay. 

 MR. CALHOUN: Is that it? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: I think so. 

 MR. CALHOUN: Okay. 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: The general 

question is that you've determined you can't 

do internal doses, and yet I'm wondering just 

how complete your search of records has been. 

 It seems you found a lot of them. It seems 

you found that they were not centralized. And 

you did do the sample of the `69 people. And 

from that, you've decided that you can't find 

some records for some of those people. 

 But I'm just -- I guess we talk 

about a comfort level. My comfort level is -- 

I need reassurance that you really feel you 

have searched the records enough that you just 

cannot do internal dosimetry. 
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 MR. CALHOUN: Yes. What I can tell 

you is we did at least ten data captures. We 

had people involved with us while we were 

there. I was actually there at the site. We 

had rad engineers who used to be technicians. 

 And the reason that I say that that is 

important is because they were involved with 

the actual processes. 

 And I'm not making a joke here. 

They would say, you know, let's check under 

Bob's desk, okay, and we'd go to Bob's desk 

and we could find something. We did that for 

days. And I don't believe that we're going to 

be able to find anything else. 

 They had set up a room for us there 

that had just hundreds of boxes of records 

that we went through. And I believe that 

Brookhaven has actually undertaken some 

efforts to try to get their records into 

order. And they have been helpful at times in 

finding documents in different locations. 

 We went through their records -- 
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management folks who would point us to 

different places. And we would try to find 

the documents. I don't know where else we 

would look. We've looked off-site, on-site. 

It's been years that this effort has been 

going on. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MR. CALHOUN: I don't think that 

the Brookhaven folks will think that we are 

going to find anything that we haven't found 

either. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay, Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: I have a follow-up 

question back to slide 22. But -- okay, so 

for the 1970s, you found it looks like 75 

percent of the bioassay results. 

 MR. CALHOUN: Yes. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: What is prohibiting 

you from doing some sort of coworker model or 

something like that? You've got -- again, I 

don't know what this stands for -- 

 MR. CALHOUN: Well, that's a good 
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question. And my answer to that is going to 

be when I have a memo that tells me that these 

guys need to be monitored because they are the 

highest exposed, or at least that is how I'm 

going to interpret it, if I don't have those 

records, I don't believe that my coworker data 

is feasible. I'm missing some people. 

 If I don't have the data from 

people that were supposed to be monitored 

because they have a higher potential, I can't 

base, you know, my coworker study is going to 

be skewed low potentially. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, but I guess 

has that stopped you before I guess -- 

 MR. CALHOUN: Sure, sure. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: But at 75 percent? 

 MR. CALHOUN: Well, I can't give 

you a number. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: No, no, I'm just 

trying -- 

 MR. CALHOUN: This is a completely 

different world, Brookhaven. And the way that 
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we've looked at this data and the lack of 

organization there caused us to try to take a 

little different tact with this. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, and this is 

not necessarily 75 of all the -- this is 75 

percent of the what's in the memos -- 

 MR. CALHOUN: Of the sample. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: -- that you 

found. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: No, no, I know, I 

know. I'm trying -- but that's the data we 

have. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. Right. 

 Yes, Larry, you have a comment? 

Okay, I took the words out of your mouth which 

is actually very unsanitary. 

 (Laughter.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Wanda? Wanda 

Munn? 

 MEMBER MUNN: I have only one 

question, Grady. And only one problem really. 

 Whenever an SEC says all employees, 
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that starts raising red flags for me. 

 MR. CALHOUN: Yes. 

 MEMBER MUNN: I have never been on 

a site where all employees were exposed to 

anything, large, small, or mediocre. And I 

know that it is difficult to sort out who 

might not be in that all category, but it is 

bothersome to see all employees when there is 

prima facie evidence that all employees were 

not exposed. 

 MR. CALHOUN: I agree with you. 

And -- but, again, I agree with you with the 

idea that we can't separate them out. The 

type of environment that is there, it is 

entirely possible for people to walk into -- 

whether they be janitor types or management 

types, it is entirely possible for those 

individuals to have gone into these sites. 

 As sketchy as the records are for 

dosimetry prior to 1980, I don't have a whole 

lot of confidence that I could determine where 

they worked. So I don't know any way to 
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separate them out. 

 Now I thought, well, what about the 

people who were monitored externally only. 

Maybe that could be our basis. But given the 

type of work that they did at that site, it 

could be a good health physics decision to 

monitor somebody internally and they didn't 

need to be monitored externally, you know, 

depending on what kind of operation they were 

doing. 

 So I wasn't comfortable with that 

either. So it does, it all comes back to 

prove who wasn't. And, you know, if I get a 

case in and, you know, they make an assertion 

that they worked here, there, and everywhere, 

and I got to rely on DOL to say no, they 

didn't, it's tough in this site. 

 I don't think that the controls 

were there to keep people in or out of those 

areas. So I'm with you. But it's a tough 

decision. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Can I ask that 
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question in a slightly different way because I 

was going to ask that also? But where on the 

report do you make that case? I didn't see it 

in your evaluation report. So where is your -

- 

 MR. CALHOUN: I don't know if it's 

in there. It may not be. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay, because to me 

it's like my crucial question here. 

 MR. CALHOUN: Yes. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Here we have a 

situation where we're saying reconstruction is 

feasible for almost all exposures except for 

internal doses, which is a big category 

albeit. And we're saying that everybody would 

have had an internal exposure. 

 So to me there's two parts of the 

case. One you make with your, you know, 

sampling going back and so forth, slide 22 and 

so forth. I don't see the case for all 

employees being included, the documentation 

for that. I guess that bothers me a little 
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bit, too. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Larry? 

 MR. ELLIOTT: I'm trying to recall 

from the evaluation report, and I don't 

believe it is explicitly stated to address 

your concern. I would say it is implicitly 

stated because of what we have to say about 

the various activities that this site found 

itself performing over the course of time. 

 It is essentially a laboratory 

situation, as you might imagine. And things 

changed quite drastically over the course of 

time. And so with the inability to retrieve 

records for those who were actually exposed, 

the inability to know who went into those 

areas where exposure could occur, we're in the 

same kind of a situation here at Brookhaven as 

we talked about earlier with Hanford where we 

can't track people's work and their migration 

through the facility over the course of time. 

 So it doesn't explicitly say that. 

 I guess we could go back there. But 
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implicitly I think what the report is arguing 

for is that the variety of activities and work 

performed at this site doesn't lend itself to 

saying here is a certain campaign. 

 Do we know who worked on that 

campaign? Like we know at Mound who worked 

with the certain tritium compounds. We can't 

do that here at this site. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, and I guess -- 

again, and I don't know if this would be -- 

should be required or is necessary to do, but 

if we have, you know, trouble sort of 

quantifying some of this -- so if there was a 

sample of 100 people or 200, you know, we'd 

have some sense of how people moved around and 

so forth, which they may very well have. I 

doubt it, but I just don't see that in -- I 

don't see the documentation for that. But it 

is hard to get at. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: John Poston? 

 MEMBER POSTON: I have a 

clarification and then a question. On your 
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slide there, if I understood you correctly, 

the 1980 bar represents 11 people out of 12? 

 MR. CALHOUN: Yes. That is 

correct. 

 MEMBER POSTON: So would one imply 

from that that the number of folks that 

potentially are exposed to internal uptakes 

would be small? 

 MR. CALHOUN: I think that that 

just is the number of memos that we captured 

that we could get that sample from. I do 

think that generally speaking, that especially 

in the later years, the internal, the people 

potentially exposed to internal radioisotopes 

was small. However, there was a bunch of 

different ones. And they were in a lot of 

different areas. 

 MEMBER POSTON: Okay. Well, that 

leads me to your last slide then that same 

internal dose from `47 to `79 but then you say 

that you can assess the internal dose for 

periods after that, after `79. 
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 So the question I have is how is 

this going to be divided because if I remember 

your class statement, it says until present. 

And I'm trying to understand -- 

 MR. CALHOUN: We can do it -- we 

believe that we can do dose reconstructions 

from January 1st, 1980 to present. 

 MEMBER POSTON: Okay. So I'm 

trying to understand how that's going to be 

handled. 

 MR. CALHOUN: We have the internal 

monitoring records. Is that what you're 

asking? 

 MEMBER POSTON: No. Are you going 

to divide the folks from `47 to `79, and 

you're not going to do dose reconstruction for 

them, but you are going to do dose 

reconstruction for those from `79 on? 

 MR. CALHOUN: Prior to January 1st, 

1980, we'll use any -- we'll be able to do 

external dose reconstruction. If they have 

internal monitoring records in their files, we 
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will use those for people who do not fit into 

the class -- non-presumptive cancers. 

 MEMBER POSTON: So maybe this is 

the wrong question, but do we need two 

classes? 

 MR. CALHOUN: No. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Well, you're only 

asking for the class through `79. 

 MR. CALHOUN: Correct. 

 MEMBER POSTON: No, it says 

present. Through present. I'm pretty sure. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: No, that's the 

original petitioner's request. 

 MEMBER POSTON: Okay. 

 MR. CALHOUN: The class that would 

be added would go up to December 31st, 1979. 

That's it. Okay? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: All right. Let 

me follow up though on -- and this sort of 

relates to your question, Jim -- is there -- 

can one make an argument -- well, let me ask 

it a different way. 
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 How much difference in what the 

activities were after `79 versus the early 

activities? Is there any way to do a coworker 

model based on the later data with the 

argument that the external -- or the internal 

dose potential could not have been that much 

greater or might it indeed have been less? Or 

you get the idea. 

 MR. CALHOUN: Are you talking about 

doing a coworker model for later data to apply 

to earlier times? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, that's what 

I'm asking you. 

 MR. CALHOUN: No, I don't think so 

because if you look at the activities, 

especially involving, you know, thorium and 

plutonium, they've gone down significantly 

since back in the day. So I don't think - 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, I guess I 

read that but had forgotten. 

 MR. CALHOUN: I don't think that 

that's -- 
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 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. CALHOUN: -- a good idea. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: So you can't 

really make the case that -- 

 MR. CALHOUN: I don't believe so. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes, thank you. 

 Other -- Gen, did you have a 

comment? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Can I just point 

out something for those of you that have been 

confused by that slide 22, if you go to the 

evaluation report on page 54 and 55, there is 

some more description of that information. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Dr. Lockey? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Just -- after 1980, 

does everybody have internal monitoring 

dosimetry? 

 MR. CALHOUN: Not everybody. Like 

I said, it was a case-by-case, project-byproject basis. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: After 1980? 

 MR. CALHOUN: Yes. We have found 
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that the individuals who were requested to 

have monitoring, we can get the data. It 

wasn't everybody at the site were monitored. 

There were people who were at risk for 

internal exposure that were monitored. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Did that answer 

the question, Jim? Yes. 

 Mark Griffon? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Just to follow up 

on that. After 1980, are the records all hard 

copy records still? 

 MR. CALHOUN: It's a mix, but the 

majority of the internal monitoring records 

are hard copy, yes. The tritium records are 

in a database. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: And this -- I 

wanted a clarification on that. You 

referenced this memo, Hull 1979, I looked in 

the full report, your evaluation report, and 

the title of that is Whole-Body Counting 

Program Review and Recommendations. 

 In your presentation, the slide 
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said Whole Body Count. It was consolidated 

kind of. But in your presentation, you said 

whole body count and bioassay program were 

consolidated. Was the bioassay program 

consolidated at that point? 

 MR. CALHOUN: It was primarily the 

whole body count. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. 

 MR. CALHOUN: Yes. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: So this bioassay 

data is still presumably around the site. 

 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, it's -- however, 

when we're looking at some of that data, we do 

find urinalysis when they asked for urinalysis 

data as well. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: But that data is 

not necessarily as centralized as far as - 

 MR. CALHOUN: None of it is 

centralized. It's just a matter of the 

ability to find it now. We have to look in 

two or three different repositories still 

after 1980. But we're able to find it. 
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Before that, we're not. 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Further 

questions or comments? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Let me give the 

petitioners an opportunity to comment. Is the 

petitioner on the line? And if so, does the 

petitioner wish to comment? 

 MS. ERIKSON: No. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I guess the no 

means the petitioner -- let me ask, is this 

the petitioner? 

 MS. ERIKSON: Yes. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: But you do not 

wish to comment? 

 MS. ERIKSON: No, I'm satisfied 

with what I'm hearing so far. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you very 

much. We don't need to identify, I don't 

believe, unless she wants to. 

 Okay, further comments, Board 
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members? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Then you have a 

couple of options before you. One is if you 

are satisfied that you are ready to respond to 

this particular recommendation, you can do 

that. If you wish to defer and feel that you 

need more information, you can do that as 

well. Or we can entertain a motion to either 

effect. 

 If you are ready to make a motion 

to recommend this class, we can do that. 

 Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, forgive me but 

my -- I'm not familiar. Have we had any work 

done by SC&A on Brookhaven? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: SC&A has done the 

site review. We have a report from them. And 

I'm trying to remember if you identified some 

SEC issues also. I know we have a site 

review. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, this is Joe 
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Fitzgerald. Yes, we completed the site 

profile review this summer. And I think the 

Board received that probably a week or two ago 

after DOE clearance. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Right. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Being a site 

profile review, we didn't, you know, highlight 

SEC issues. But certainly a lot of our 

conclusions paralleled those in the ER, and we 

did present some new issues that we'll have to 

consider in light of this evaluation report 

now. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Certainly the 

issue of the problem of internal dosimetry 

records in the early years was, indeed, one of 

the issues -- it was one of the findings in 

the site review that was SC&A's report. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. It was 

pretty apparent. You know we talked to a lot 

of the health physicists. It was pretty 

apparent that there were a number of severe 

problems in the record keeping. You've heard 
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some of the same things that NIOSH heard here. 

 We had some questions certainly in 

the 1980 time frame. I don't think in our 

site profile review we arrived at a, you know, 

boundary condition in 1980 such as was 

presented in the ER. 

 So it's certainly -- it was a site 

profile review, but based on what we saw, I 

think there are some questions in the early 

`80s and what have you that still present 

themselves. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: And let me point 

out that -- two things, one is if the Board 

wishes to defer this action, we definitely 

have to have a Work Group address the SEC 

issues right away. 

 Even if we recommend approval of 

the SEC, in the Chair's opinion, we will need 

to establish a Work Group for this site in the 

very near future to deal with both the site 

profile issues and the possibility of other 

issues that could be SEC related in the later 
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years. I mean, the petitioner has asked for a 

longer time period, but in any event, we are 

going to need to establish a Work Group on 

this site. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Can I ask Joe a 

follow-up question -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: You bet. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: -- which is based 

on SC&A's review, can you -- do you want to 

render an opinion on the class definition to 

this issue of how widespread internal 

exposures might have been in terms of covering 

everybody at the facility or not being able to 

identify who was and who wasn't? 

 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, from the 

site profile review, you know, we certainly 

identified sources of internal exposure that 

were focused on certain operations. 

 But being a multipurpose 

laboratory, there were sources, plentiful 

sources across the site. So, you know, again, 

I think we left it at that given the fact that 
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this was the review that we did. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. No, that's 

helpful. I just -- 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MR. FITZGERALD: This is not 

different from any other multipurpose 

laboratory we've looked at. I mean you do 

have a spectrum of sources that have internal 

dose implications. So that's certainly not 

different. 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Does 

anyone wish to make a motion as far as this 

particular recommendation is concerned? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. I do. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Wanda Munn? 

 MEMBER MUNN: Although I retain my 

reservations with respect to covering all 

employees, I can understand how it is 

impossible to sort people out in this. You 

can't prove any negatives. 

 So I am prepared to move that we 
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accept the NIOSH recommendation that an SEC be 

granted to all employees of DOE, its 

predecessor agencies, its contractors and 

subcontractors who worked at Brookhaven 

National Laboratory from January 1st, 1947 to 

December 31, 1979. 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Second. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. This is a 

motion to add a class to the SEC. And it has 

been seconded. Is there discussion on the 

motion? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: There appears to 

be no discussion. Are you ready then to vote? 

 We will vote by roll call. 

 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Gibson? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn? 
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 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Presley? 

 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield? 

 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Ziemer? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler? 

 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston? 

 MEMBER POSTON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius? 

 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Griffon? 

 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson? 

 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: It's unanimous. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Thank you. The 

ayes have it. And the motion carries. 

 And we will prepare the exact 

wording, which is very close to the actual 
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motion this time, for the Board's review for 

Thursday. But we will be recommending then to 

the Secretary the addition of this class to 

the Special Exposure Cohort. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: We are actually 

into our public comment period already. And 

I'm going to officially open the public 

comment period. 

 While Mr. Katz gives us the rules 

of engagement for public comment, I'm going to 

check with our administrative assistant to see 

who has signed up for public comment. And 

there may be folks on the phone as well who 

wish to comment. 

 MR. KATZ: Thanks, Dr. Ziemer. 

 This is just with respect to these 

meetings, these are fully transcribed so there 

is a verbatim transcript made. And that's 

posted on the NIOSH website for everyone to 

see and have. 

 So if you speak on the record and 

give your name, that name will be retained. 
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Any personal information you give about 

yourself will be retained in the record for 

the public. 

 If you speak, however, about a 

third party, another individual, that person's 

privacy will be protected. So that person's 

name and any other identifying information 

about the third party would typically be 

redacted. 

 So those are the basic rules. 

There is a full explanation of the Redaction 

Policy in the back of the room here. And for 

those of you who aren't present in the room, 

on the NIOSH website, along with the petition, 

is this Redaction Policy. 

 And I think that will take care of 

the basic issues there. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. I have 

been informed that there has been no one here 

in the assembly that has asked to make public 

comment. 

 We do perhaps have individuals on 
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the phone who wish to make public comment. 

And let me ask now if there are any 

individuals on the phone lines who wish to 

address the assembly? If so, just say yes and 

identify yourself. 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: I hear none. Let 

me, again -- I also want to ask Jason, do we 

have any Congressional input that you are 

aware of that we need to bring to the group at 

this time? 

 MR. BROEHM: I'm not aware of any. 

 There was one letter I was expecting, but it 

is not going to come. 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 

 I will, although no one has signed 

up, provide the opportunity for anyone here 

assembled that wishes to address the group to 

please do so. Any members of the public who 

wish to make public comment? 

 (No response.) 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: There appear to 
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be none. If that is the case, our public 

comment period has then ended. 

 And let me make sure, Mr. Katz, it 

is okay to have that short of a public comment 

period, I guess, if there are no identifiable 

comments. 

 MR. KATZ: Emily, do you have any 

concerns about this? It is posted to be 

comment period from 4:30 to 6:00. Do we need 

to sort of leave the lines open and sort of 

recess waiting for someone to come on line? 

 CHAIRMAN ZIEMER: Okay. What we're 

going to do -- there is always the 

possibility, and we've had this happen before 

that people, particularly phoning in, have 

regarded this as the period at which they can 

come in any time and make public comments. So 

we are going to leave the lines open. A 

couple of us will be here to monitor that. 

 The rest of you, if you wish to 

stay here until 6:00, you are welcome to. But 

if you feel that you need to leave, please 
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feel free to do that. 

 We're going to recess the official 

meeting here as far as the participants in the 

audience are concerned. We will have Board 

members here on hand in case we do get public 

comment. And if public comments do come in, 

they will be on the record so everyone will 

have an opportunity to see them. 

 So thank you very much. We are 

going to also then reconvene tomorrow morning 

at nine o'clock. So we stand in recess. 

 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

meeting was concluded at 4:54 p.m.) 
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NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 

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