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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

+ + + + +

SUBCOMMITTEE ON PROCEDURES REVIEW

+ + + + +

TUESDAY

JANUARY 10, 2017

+ + + + +

The Subcommittee convened via 

teleconference at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time, Wanda 

Munn, Chair, presiding.

PRESENT:

WANDA I. MUNN, Chair

JOSIE BEACH, Member

JOHN W. POSTON, SR., Member 

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

DAVE ALLEN, DCAS

ROBERT ANIGSTEIN, SC&A

BOB BARTON, SC&A

HANS BEHLING, SC&A

KATHY BEHLING, SC&A

RON BUCHANAN, SC&A

ZAIDA BURGOS, NIOSH

ROSE GOGLIOTTI, SC&A

STU HINNEFELD, DCAS

PATRICIA JESKE

JENNY LIN, HHS

LORI MARION-MOSS, DCAS

JOHN MAURO, SC&A

DAN MCKEEL

JIM NETON, DCAS 

JOHN RAMSPOTT

MUTTY SHARFI, ORAU Team

SCOTT SIEBERT, ORAU Team

MATT SMITH, ORAU Team

JOHN STIVER, SC&A

ELYSE THOMAS, ORAU Team
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Contents 

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

Review BRS Status................................. 6

Y-12 - OTIB 0029, Finding 4...................... 15

OTIB-32 - Status Report on Protocol Review....... 18

ORAU OTIB-0014 - Correct Canceled List Status.... 24

ORAU OTIB-0014 - Finding 3 In Vivo Count Issues.. 25

ORAUT-OTIB-0039 - Finding 3 Abeyance Status...... 31

ORAUT-OTIB-0060 - Finding 2 Abeyance Statues..... 32

ORAU PROC-0042 - OTIB-64 Status.................. 33

ORAU-RPRT-0044 - Crosswalk 4 Open Items to 0053.. 45

PER 011 - #3 Abeyance Status; Case Selection Status

................................................. 56

PER 029 - Finding 11, 1212 Status................ 87

PER 0031 - Report Review Carryover............... 91

PER 0047 - Abeyance 3, 4......................... 91

PER 0053 - Case Selection Status................ 100

PER 0054 - Status............................... 106

PER 0057 - Case Selection Status................ 121

PER 0055........................................ 179

Administrative Detail - Routine Note of Abeyance 

Items Ready for Closing......................... 194

Administrative Detail - Status of Case Selection 

and Recommendations............................. 195

Adjourn......................................... 200
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 11:03 a.m.

3 Welcome and Roll Call 

4 MR. KATZ: Welcome, everyone. This 

5 is the Advisory Board on Radiation Worker Health. 

6 It's the Procedures Review Subcommittee. And we 

7 have three Members present. Wanda Munn is Chair, 

8 and Paul Ziemer, and Josie Beach.

9 Let me cover their conflicts, and 

10 they're the only ones we have to address 

11 conflicts for, for this Subcommittee meeting. 

12 But Josie, Josie Beach and Wanda Munn both have 

13 a conflict with respect to discussing Hanford 

14 matters. I don't believe there are any Hanford 

15 matters today. And Dr. Ziemer, his limited 

16 restrictions regard X-10. I'm not sure if 

17 there's any X-10 matter today, and also after 

18 2000, LANL, Los Alamos, but only after the year 

19 2000. So I'm not sure that comes up.

20 So let's go along then with roll call. 

21 Let's start with the ORAU team. Oh, and let me 

22 mention also while I'm here, because it may be 
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1 harder to get to it later, at 2:30 we're going to 

2 be discussing Program Evaluation Report reviews 

3 by SC&A, and the first one, which we hope to start 

4 pretty much at 2:30, is on GSI. It's PER 0057. 

5 And for that call, Dr. Poston, who is also on the 

6 Board, will join us. And Dr. Poston has a 

7 variety of conflicts, but no conflict with 

8 respect to GSI. So that will happen this 

9 afternoon.

10 And the agenda for today's meeting is 

11 posted on the NIOSH website under scheduled 

12 meetings, today's date, and so you can see that 

13 agenda. And that has a presentation for GSI, 

14 which was Privacy Act reviewed-cleared by Jenny 

15 -- thank you, Jenny -- to the two folks on the 

16 line, that will be on line, at least this 

17 afternoon, who have interest in that, the public 

18 members like Dr. McKeel and Mr. John Ramspott. 

19 So they have that presentation, and they can 

20 follow along with that.

21 So let's now go to roll call. 

22 (Roll call.) 
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1 MR. KATZ: And with that, with no 

2 further ado, Wanda, it's your meeting. 

3 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you much, Ted. 

4 Let's take a look at the agenda before we get 

5 underway here. Most of it will run pretty much 

6 as expected. As Ted has already mentioned, we'll 

7 try to keep the 2:30 PER 57 schedule to the extent 

8 that we can.

9 There's one small piece of addition 

10 that needs to go down at the bottom. We have a 

11 block of Subtask Four reports that did not get to 

12 the agenda that we should have. We will have the 

13 Subtask Four reports that cover PER 55, 060 

14 that's Blockson, I think, and 064, DuPont 

15 Deepwater, and 066, Huntington, I believe. So 

16 we will add those, if time permits, at the tail 

17 end.

18 Review BRS Status 

19 CHAIR MUNN: Other than that, let's 

20 talk for a little bit about the BRS status. I 

21 have not personally checked all of the closures 

22 that we made last meeting, which were going to be 
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1 added for us. There was a commitment for OTIB2 0060 that we closed last time, internal dosimetry 

3 TIB, that Stu Hinnefeld was going to provide 

4 words for us for closing item three on that 

5 particular OTIB and was going to sign off on that. 

6 That's been done. So to the best of my 

7 knowledge, OTIB-60 is now completely off of our 

8 agenda, which is a good thing.

9 With respect to the others, I've only 

10 spot-checked a couple of the closures. Lori and 

11 I assume Kathy, who did most of those wrap-ups 

12 after the fact, will give us a quick rundown 

13 whether there's anything outstanding, to the best 

14 of your knowledge, of whether we have covered and 

15 now have properly recorded all of the closure 

16 status that we completed last time. 

17 Lori? Are you on mute? Not hearing 

18 you. So Kathy? 

19 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes, I'm here. I 

20 have updated the BRS with all of the PERs that we 

21 have completed, and you just mentioned some of 

22 them. And I think, as we go through here, I was 
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1 hoping to actually bring up the BRS while we're 

2 talking about these various outstanding findings 

3 and OTIBs and PERs. However, I'm not sure how 

4 to do that. 

5 CHAIR MUNN: I had trouble doing it, 

6 too, because I have less than three screens. 

7 Well, let me very quickly run down a few that I 

8 have noted. I had OTIB-13, which had been 

9 superceded. And OTIB-29, we had three on there 

10 that we closed. OTIB-32 --

11 MEMBER BEACH: Wanda, could you speak 

12 up just a hair? 

13 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. 

14 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry. Let me 

15 interrupt a second. Zaida, are you still on the 

16 line? 

17 MS. BURGOS: Yes, I will call. 

18 MR. KATZ: Okay, yes, thank you. 

19 MS. MARION-MOSS: Wanda, this is 

20 Lori. I'm back. 

21 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, good. Glad to hear 

22 it. Kathy and I were just starting through the 
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1 ones that I believe Kathy has probably closed. 

2 She was trying to pull the BRS up on her screen 

3 and was having the same problem I usually have 

4 trying to get two things up at the same time on 

5 the same screen. I was just saying that those 

6 that I had noted that were outstanding to be 

7 closed offline were OTIB-13, 29, 33, TIB-14, 

8 ORAUT-OTIB-39, and TIB-50. And I've already 

9 mentioned OTIB-50. So those were the ones I had 

10 on my list, but there may be others.

11 Kathy, are you giving up? 

12 MS. K. BEHLING: No. And as I said, 

13 I was going to try to pull some of these up as we 

14 talk about them on Skype. If somebody can give 

15 me a show-and-tell perhaps or tell me how I go 

16 about doing that. Ted or Zaida?

17 MS. BURGOS: Kathy, I think at the 

18 bottom of the conversation screen you pulled up, 

19 there's a little picture of a computer monitor.

20 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. As a guest, 

21 can I do that? 

22 MS. BURGOS: You can try. I don't 
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1 know. I'm new to Skype, too. 

2 MS. K. BEHLING: I'm not doing very 

3 well here.

4 MS. BURGOS: You're presenting now. 

5 I have a picture of your desktop.

6 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. I don't see 

7 that.

8 MS. BURGOS: Well, I think that you're 

9 sharing your screen with us now, and so you're 

10 not going to see. We'll just see what you're 

11 doing.

12 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay.

13 MS. BURGOS: Like now we see your 

14 email.

15 MS. K. BEHLING: Al

16 Alright. Let's see if I can -- okay. 

17 That's not going to do it. Hold on one second. 

18 MR. KATZ: While Kathy is struggling 

19 through this, let me just note again for 

20 everybody we just had to cut another line because 

21 someone put us on hold and we were hearing their 

22 audio, you know, the background music or in this 
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1 case it was a beep. But, please, no one on this 

2 line should be putting the call on hold at any 

3 point. Hang up and dial back in if you need to 

4 go for a piece. Thanks. 

5 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. Are you 

6 seeing the PERs? 

7 MS. BURGOS: Yes. 

8 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. And, Wanda, 

9 other than the PERs that were submitted and the 

10 PER subtasks four reports that were submitted, I 

11 don't have anything else to add. And I think you 

12 did mention those earlier that we're prepared to 

13 talk about PER -- let's see, where's my list here? 

14 PER 55, which is OTIB-6000 -- TBD-6000. PER 60, 

15 which is Blockson. PER 64, DuPont Deepwater, and 

16 PER 66, Huntington, that were not included on 

17 your agenda. So as we work through the agenda, 

18 I can try and pull up the various findings and 

19 ensure that the BRS has been updated, if that's 

20 what you'd like to do. Are you hearing me? 

21 MR. KATZ: Yes, Kathy, we're hearing 

22 you. I mean, that's good. I don't think you 
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1 need to show us the BRS just to prove you've 

2 updated it but --

3 MS. K. BEHLING: No, the only thing I 

4 was thinking is that the agenda maybe lists an 

5 item and says finding number two, and if I could 

6 bring up on --

7 MR. KATZ: Oh, yes, for sure. If 

8 we're discussing one, for sure. 

9 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes, that's why I 

10 brought it up because there's obviously not a lot 

11 of detail in the agenda, which is the appropriate 

12 thing to do.

13 MR. KATZ: Right. Thanks, Kathy. 

14 So, Wanda, are you back? It seems like we've 

15 lost Wanda again. This is --

16 MS. K. BEHLING: Because I think the 

17 first item on the agenda, obviously, she has down 

18 here is the OTIB-29. However, I believe she also 

19 wanted to give Lori an opportunity to chime in or 

20 add to anything that she's included on the BRS. 

21 MR. KATZ: Right. 

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Is it safe to say that 
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1 BRS is up to date because of the action with --

2 (telephonic interference)

3 MR. KATZ: And Kathy's saying that --

4 right, Kathy? You guys have updated everything 

5 that you have on your plate, right? 

6 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes. 

7 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay. So those items 

9 that we closed out last time had been reflected 

10 on the BRS?

11 MS. K. BEHLING: That's correct. 

12 MR. KATZ: Okay. Good, thanks. 

13 Well, Wanda said she was having trouble with her 

14 phone system. I'm sure she realizes that she's 

15 offline. 

16 CHAIR MUNN: This is Wanda. Can you 

17 hear me? 

18 MR. KATZ: Yes, you're back.

19 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, yes. I was unaware 

20 of the fact that I had been cut off, I guess.

21 MR. KATZ: Well, it was your -- we did 

22 cut a line because they had put the call on hold 
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1 and we were getting their hold sign. I don't 

2 think that should have been you, but. 

3 CHAIR MUNN: No, it wasn't. I was 

4 hearing that, and I continued to hear everything 

5 that was being said but suddenly Kathy was asking 

6 whether I was there and I was saying, yes, I'm 

7 here, I'm here.

8 MR. KATZ: Oh, so it sounds like you 

9 were muted but not offline.

10 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, I wasn't muted. I 

11 was completely offline. But in any case, we're 

12 back and has anything transpired in my notable 

13 absence? 

14 MR. KATZ: Oh, Kathy said that 

15 everything is updated, as far as what was on 

16 SC&A's plate, as to updated closings from the 

17 last meeting.

18 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, that's good. Thank 

19 you, Kathy. I appreciate that. And I was trying 

20 to call for Lori to verify that there was nothing 

21 outstanding in her basket, but, whatever we're 

22 doing, I think we can move on from BRS. I believe 
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1 that we've double-checked enough of the things 

2 that we needed to take a look at. 

3 We have -- and one other thing before 

4 we leave. My apologies for a couple of notes on 

5 the agenda. I have uploaded a great deal of 

6 material that says things have transpired offline 

7 since I first put together the agenda, and a 

8 number of those items are actually SC&A items 

9 because NIOSH has fulfilled their obligation to 

10 provide whatever they were going to provide and 

11 SC&A has since provided reports on the activity 

12 status in the interim. So you will see that 

13 occur several times, especially this afternoon. 

14 Y-12 - OTIB 0029, Finding 4 

15 CHAIR MUNN: But for the time being, 

16 we're talking about Y-12 -- OTIB-29, Finding 

17 Number 4. There was one outstanding item there, 

18 and it is, I believe, the NIOSH action. Stu? 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I'm here 

20 finally. Jim, are you on? 

21 DR. NETON: Yes, I'm on. Is Lori on? 

22 She's seems to be dropping in and out. 
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1 CHAIR MUNN: She was on earlier, but 

2 I was -- 

3 DR. NETON: Lori, are you on the 

4 phone? 

5 MS. MARION-MOSS: I'm back. 

6 DR. NETON: Alright. Well, I think 

7 this one I have the lead on anyway, so I'll 

8 respond. There were five findings. This was 

9 originally on OTIB-29, which is the Y-12 internal 

10 dose coworker model. Finding 4 is the only one 

11 that's listed as, I think it's in progress.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, I think so. 

13 DR. NETON: I thought when we 

14 discussed this the last time that this one had 

15 been closed or we had responded to it. I went 

16 back and evaluated the record pretty thoroughly, 

17 and we did provide a response. There was some 

18 communication between Joyce Lipsztein and Dave 

19 Allen. This is regarding these Monday morning 

20 samples.

21 CHAIR MUNN: Exactly, yes.

22 DR. NETON: The Site Profile --
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1 actually, TIB-29 has since been canceled, but the 

2 relevant issue has been transferred into the Y3 12 TBD, Section 5 of the Y-12 TBD, the internal 

4 dose section. So the finding still remains.

5 I thought that we had addressed it. 

6 There was some communication between Dave Allen 

7 and Joyce Lipszstein regarding this issue about 

8 how maybe if they only took Monday morning 

9 samples the coworker model would underestimate 

10 intakes. Dave Allen went back and analyzed the 

11 data and determined that a large percentage, I 

12 think something like 30 to 40 percent, were 

13 actually not taken on Monday. They were taken 

14 during the regular work week, which would tend to 

15 mitigate the effect of only taking samples on 

16 Monday.

17 Dave had proposed a path forward to 

18 analyze this in light of using a coworker model, 

19 and, honestly, I cannot find where that issue was 

20 addressed. We think it happened, but none of us 

21 can find it, so we need to go back and either, if 

22 we can't find it, we'll have to re-do that 
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1 analysis. So that's where we stand right now. 

2 This is going to remain open until we can complete 

3 the loop on this. 

4 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, thank you, Jim. 

5 That, essentially, is the understanding that I 

6 had. We had multiple discussions about this 

7 earlier in past meetings, and it was my feeling 

8 that, philosophically, it had been taken care of, 

9 and we all remember, I think, that Dave did a 

10 significant amount of work tracking it down. But 

11 I could not find any closure on it and certainly 

12 at the last meeting we didn't have closure in 

13 terms of verifying that any document changes that 

14 were necessary were being made or had been made.

15 So I'll continue to carry that over 

16 until we can track down what's been done. It may 

17 be easy to close it, but I don't have any record 

18 of the document that I'm aware of. 

19 DR. NETON: We'll try to have this 

20 buttoned up by the next, the next meeting.

21 OTIB-32 - Status Report on Protocol Review 

22 CHAIR MUNN: Good. Appreciate that. 
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1 Thanks. Next item that we have is OTIB-32, and 

2 I think that, I think SC&A understands that we 

3 don't expect any long or in-depth discussion 

4 about this. But at our last meeting, when we 

5 talked about this external coworker document, 

6 there was a question left as to how SC&A intended 

7 to address the change in their protocol because 

8 their current protocol review instructions still 

9 have them expecting to follow a path that we no 

10 longer follow. Is that a reasonable summation, 

11 Kathy? 

12 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes, it is. In fact, 

13 we did close the finding, and it's strange that 

14 this falls under the Savannah River Site external 

15 coworker. But what happened during the process 

16 of talking about this finding, we went into the 

17 fact that we used to use or, initially, our 

18 protocol called for the identified review 

19 objective. There were seven review objectives, 

20 and we actually developed a table so that all of 

21 our reviewers would ask the same type of 

22 questions for each of the documents we were 
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1 reviewing. However, that initial protocol was 

2 established back in 2004, so we've obviously 

3 changed things and changed the approach that 

4 we're using to a more narrative approach that 

5 looks at all of the aspects of whatever document 

6 we're reviewing.

7 I wasn't quite sure, I didn't have it 

8 in my notes that we were being tasked to rewrite 

9 that, but it is no longer being used and we can 

10 certainly make modifications to that protocol or 

11 that procedure if that is what you'd like us to 

12 do.

13 CHAIR MUNN: My personal feeling is 

14 that a simple note in your procedure saying that 

15 there's this particular aspect of protocol is no 

16 longer necessary and no longer an active 

17 requirement. I think just a simple statement to 

18 that effect would satisfy any concerns that 

19 anyone might have.

20 Is there any objection to that 

21 suggestion to SC&A?

22 MEMBER BEACH: No, none here, Wanda.
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1 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. Paul? 

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I have none. I 

3 think we agreed last time that this is no longer 

4 -- it had been a finding --

5 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, that's correct. We 

6 did agree. We just did not take any suggested 

7 action. If you can take that under advisement, 

8 Kathy, I think that will relieve our concerns 

9 with respect to OTIB-32, and we can just move 

10 forward, not just the OTIB but with respect --

11 you're right. It's odd that a protocol review 

12 issue falls under Savannah River but --

13 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay, that's fine and 

14 not a problem. If I could interject something 

15 else here with regard to making changes to our 

16 protocols or our procedures. One of the other 

17 things that still is in the back of my mind is 

18 our PER procedure, review procedure, has these 

19 five subtasks, and we always follow subtask one 

20 through four with four being, you know, the 

21 review of selected cases. But five states that 

22 we're going to write reports, yes, complete 
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1 report, which we don't do. We really do an 

2 initial report that covers pretty much subtasks 

3 one through three, and we suggest how many cases 

4 we may want to review under subtask four, and 

5 then we write a report on that PER and then we 

6 write a second report for the subtask four, if we 

7 are tasked to do that. And that would just 

8 require a very minor change to that procedure, 

9 but I think -- would you like us to make that 

10 change, also? 

11 CHAIR MUNN: My knee-jerk reaction is 

12 yes. I think it's, certainly in my mind and 

13 perhaps in the minds of others, as well, subtask 

14 five was taken care of by the report that you 

15 give us on subtask four. But if that's not, if 

16 that's not the view that others have, we probably 

17 should have that brief discussion right now.

18 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. And it would 

19 be a very simple change. I just thought about 

20 it as we're talking about this, but go ahead. 

21 I'm sorry.

22 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, that's fine. 
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: It would basically be 

2 two reports instead of one overall report. 

3 You're accomplishing an objective --- (telephonic 

4 interference)

5 MS. K. BEHLING: Correct. 

6 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, I think that kind 

7 of status is quite accurate. Josie? 

8 MEMBER BEACH: I agree with that, 

9 also.

10 CHAIR MUNN: I think it's certainly 

11 within our purview to state that, from this 

12 Subcommittee's purview in any case, your report 

13 on subtask four that you give to us should be 

14 adequate for purposes of meeting your requirement 

15 for subtask five. 

16 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay, very good. I 

17 didn't want to have any confusion there. 

18 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, I believe that's the 

19 case. You can say that we've discussed it and 

20 reached consensus here, in the Subcommittee in 

21 any case. 

22 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay, very good. 
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1 ORAU OTIB-0014 - Correct Canceled List Status 

2 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you. OTIB-14. We 

3 were going to make some, there was a confusion, 

4 as I recall, between documents, reference 

5 documents, with respect to the status of 14. 

6 It's been canceled, and most everybody knows it's 

7 been canceled, but it did not appear on the 

8 canceled list, as I recall. And we also had one 

9 outstanding finding, number 3, in vivo counts. 

10 NIOSH?

11 MS. MARION-MOSS: Wanda, this is 

12 Lori. As I recall, there was some question about 

13 TIB-14 appearing on the NIOSH website, appearing 

14 as if it was still an active document. And one 

15 of our actions was to go out and correct that on 

16 the NIOSH website. So that has been corrected, 

17 and it shows up, TIB-14 shows up as being a 

18 canceled document.

19 CHAIR MUNN: Okay, that's fine. My 

20 memory was that it was already listed on the 

21 canceled list but was not taken off the web. Is 

22 that a correct -- 
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1 MS. MARION-MOSS: That's correct.

2 CHAIR MUNN: Yes. But now it's been 

3 taken off the web, and it remains on the canceled 

4 list, so there can be no confusion as to its 

5 status, correct? 

6 MS. MARION-MOSS: Correct. 

7 ORAU OTIB-0014 - Finding 3 In Vivo Count Issues 

8 CHAIR MUNN: Good. What about 

9 Finding 3? 

10 MS. MARION-MOSS: Finding 3, that's 

11 in regards to the Rocky Flats TBD, I believe. 

12 And as it's stated here -- 

13 CHAIR MUNN: That was internal 

14 coworker at Rocky Flats.

15 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes, this is Kathy 

16 Behling. Are you able to see the screen that I'm 

17 hopefully displaying that shows OTIB-14 Finding 

18 3? 

19 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, we are.

20 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. Because it

21 does show there we were questioning why the TBD 

22 didn't explain why there was no americium 
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1 coworker model. I think that's the outstanding 

2 finding. 

3 MS. MARION-MOSS: Yes, it is. And 

4 NIOSH has taken a look at this and realized that 

5 that is something that was not updated in the 

6 revision, so that has been slated to be included 

7 in the TBD during the next revision.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: Is that part of --

9 MS. K. BEHLING: Pardon me? 

10 CHAIR MUNN: What did you say, Paul? 

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Sorry. I went back 

12 on mute. Is that part of TBD-115 now? 

13 MS. K. BEHLING: The Rocky Flats TBD? 

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: I'm not sure. I had 

15 it in my notes that it's a finding that would be 

16 handled through TBD-115. 

17 DR. NETON: I think that's TBD-11-

18 Section 5. 

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: I had 115.

20 DR. NETON: Yes, sorry. It's TBKS21 011-5. That's the internal dose kit for Rocky 

22 Flats. Excuse me, TBD. 
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, thank you. 

2 CHAIR MUNN: So this goes into 

3 abeyance then. We can take it off our active 

4 list, and you get to add it to your abeyance list. 

5 That's good. It's now yours. Thank you. 

6 Let's move on to OTIB-39 if we're 

7 happy with the status of Finding 3 and TIB-14. 

8 MR. KATZ: Could I just ask, Wanda, 

9 for a clarification about this? 

10 CHAIR MUNN: Yes. 

11 MR. KATZ: With these in abeyance, is 

12 this, I imagine they don't have to tell us, but 

13 is this, the americium bottle, is this something 

14 that SC&A has already seen and reviewed and will 

15 end up in the Site Profile, or is it something 

16 that needs to be added and, hence, after that 

17 will be reviewed by SC&A? 

18 MS. K. BEHLING: This is Kathy 

19 Behling. I believe it's something that's going 

20 to have to be added and then reviewed.

21 MR. KATZ: Okay. So it really is not 

22 an abeyance because we don't have agreement about 
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1 its content even. We just have agreement that 

2 it needs to be added, so we don't have agreement 

3 about how that -- right? Is that correct? 

4 MS. K. BEHLING: Correct. 

5 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, thank you. I did 

6 not recognize that fine point. So the question 

7 then becomes are we continuing to carry that 

8 here, or do we carry it as a TBD item? 

9 MR. KATZ: Well, yes. I mean, 

10 typically, the Work Groups handle Site Profile 

11 reviews.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Right.

13 MR. KATZ: I'm not sure why this one, 

14 how this one wound its way into -- maybe because 

15 of its original source.

16 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, I think the original 

17 source was out of the coworker internal.

18 MR. KATZ: So I think what we want to 

19 do is keep this in progress here, and SC&A can 

20 send a little memo to the Rocky Flats Work Group 

21 just saying to put this on, basically, so to put 

22 Dr. Kotelchuck on notice that we have the Site 
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1 Profile element that will need to be reviewed 

2 when it's completed by NIOSH.

3 CHAIR MUNN: Okay.

4 MR. KATZ: Is that okay, Wanda?

5 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, right. And then it 

6 goes --

7 MR. KATZ: And then we can close this 

8 out after that's been done, which is sort of, it 

9 still sits under our --

10 CHAIR MUNN: Right, okay. That's 

11 fine. Thank you. I do appreciate that. I did 

12 not recognize that fine point, frankly. And it 

13 was just dropped out of active notice, so thanks.

14 MS. MARION-MOSS: Wanda, this is 

15 Lori. Based on that conversation, do we want to 

16 update the BRS to reflect what Ted has just said?

17 CHAIR MUNN: Absolutely, yes. 

18 MR. KATZ: Yes, please, Lori.

19 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, that's crucial. 

20 That's our link that takes us over to the Work 

21 Group and then to the document itself. But 

22 somebody else has to do it, so that's good. Will 
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1 you take care of that for us, Lori?

2 MS. MARION-MOSS: Yes.

3 CHAIR MUNN: Put the right words in. 

4 Thanks.

5 MS. MARION-MOSS: Okay. 

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Are we talking about 

7 Finding 3 in OTIB-139? 

8 CHAIR MUNN: No, we're talking about 

9 Finding 3 in OTIB-14. 

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay.

11 CHAIR MUNN: I mean, not OTIB, in TIB12 14, yes. 

13 MS. K. BEHLING: I was too quick to 

14 go on the new screen. Sorry. 

15 CHAIR MUNN: That's okay. That's 

16 quite alright. That's appreciated. We'll take 

17 care of the wording on that and get it 

18 appropriately handled, and SC&A will see to it 

19 that Dave Kotelchuck, Dr. Kotelchuck and his 

20 Rocky Flats Work Group understand that they have 

21 that item. 

22 MR. KATZ: Yes. And John Stiver just 
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1 consider this tasked since this is really just an 

2 extension of -- 

3 MR. STIVER: Okay. Will do. 

4 MR. KATZ: -- consideration. Thanks.

5 ORAUT-OTIB-0039 - Finding 3 Abeyance Status 

6 CHAIR MUNN: Thanks, John. Onto 

7 OTIB-39 Finding 3. I don't know. Lori, you may 

8 already have this in your list, if we ever get to 

9 that list, in our administrative detail with 

10 respect to abeyance statuses. I put a couple of 

11 them in our active list just because they were 

12 items that I didn't want to put back up. How are 

13 we standing with OTIB-39 Finding 3? 

14 MS. MARION-MOSS: We're still working 

15 on that, Wanda, so we don't have anything to add 

16 today.

17 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. So I'm going 

18 to take it off my active list with the assurance 

19 that it is on your abeyance list.

20 MS. MARION-MOSS: Yes, ma'am.

21 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. Again, we will 

22 not look at that next time. We'll just assume 
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1 that it's being tracked appropriately under the 

2 abeyance statuses.

3 ORAUT-OTIB-0060 - Finding 2 Abeyance Statues 

4 CHAIR MUNN: The next item we have on 

5 our agenda OTIB-60 Finding 2. That's like the 

6 one we just looked at, Lori. This is another one 

7 from your abeyance status list.

8 MS. MARION-MOSS: Here, too, we're 

9 still working on that particular document, and we 

10 don't have anything to report today.

11 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. That's very 

12 good. It also is going to drop off our active 

13 list now under the assurance that it's on yours. 

14 PROC 42 and OTIB-64. Here's a tangled web we can 

15 attack. NIOSH had the action. 

16 MS. K. BEHLING: And, Wanda, 

17 actually, I don't know if NIOSH has anything to 

18 add, but I do know that this is where Ron Buchanan 

19 had put together a memo that discussed we did a 

20 focused review of OTIB-64, and I think Ron is 

21 prepared to discuss that.

22 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, I hope so. Have we 
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1 gotten, do we have you on track, Ron, or have I 

2 gotten ahead of the agenda adequately to confuse 

3 everybody? 

4 ORAU PROC-0042 - OTIB-64 Status 

5 DR. BUCHANAN: No, it's fine. If you 

6 see this as kind of a tangled web, OTIB-13 has 

7 been for many years, Y-12, this is Y-12 external 

8 dose reconstruction, OTIB-13. And connected to 

9 that was Procedure 42, and these used the scaling 

10 factor, and these were both replaced recently by 

11 OTIB-44 and OTIB-64, and one being the scaling 

12 factor sort of redone and then coworker data, 

13 OTIB-64, for Y-12 external dose. 

14 In May, I think it was, we discussed 

15 OTIB-13 findings and closed them all. Wanda 

16 closed those out at the meeting, and so that's 

17 really not applicable to this discussion. Now, 

18 Procedure 42, we were charged with going through 

19 that and determining if the findings there had 

20 been answered or not applicable to OTIB because 

21 of the replacement, OTIB-44 and OTIB-64, and so 

22 that's what we did. And I believe there's about 
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1 six findings on the previous Procedure 42, and 

2 what we did is I went through that and I took 

3 that and looked at the findings we had, the six 

4 findings we had. I went and did 44 and OTIB-64 

5 to see if they were answered or no longer 

6 applicable, and what we find is that, in most of 

7 the cases, NIOSH uses a different approach. They 

8 use different statistics and if they used the 

9 scaling factors to find differently than it was 

10 in OTIB-13 in Procedure 42. 

11 And so what I found with these 

12 findings under Procedure 42 are no longer 

13 applicable. A couple of them were about the 147 

14 workers being stated that that was data used from 

15 them, and OTIB-44 and OTIB-64 does address that 

16 and lets the reader know that they did use that 

17 data.

18 And so I don't know if you want to go 

19 through each finding or the fact that we feel 

20 that they are no longer or have been addressed 

21 for all six finding recommend the Work Group 

22 closure, and so however you want to handle that 
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1 at this point. 

2 CHAIR MUNN: Well, Ron, I know we've 

3 been through this before, but I lose track of 

4 where I am every time I start to follow through 

5 on the actions. I personally would prefer that 

6 you go through these one at a time with a very 

7 brief explanation of where we are and whether we 

8 need to be concerned about this in some other 

9 slot in our activities than where we have them 

10 now. As many of these as we can close out and 

11 as accurately as we can characterize the 

12 outstanding actions, any one finding to be taken 

13 off of our consideration would be really helpful.

14 So yes from my perspective. If other 

15 people would prefer that we just rely on what Ron 

16 has written here and try to follow through with 

17 it ourselves on our own. I only scanned the 

18 report because I had hoped that we'd get a little 

19 bit more as we go through, but I'll leave it to 

20 my colleagues to make --

21 MEMBER BEACH: Wanda, I was going to 

22 recommend the same thing, so I'm in agreement 
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1 with that, going through each finding briefly. 

2 CHAIR MUNN: Good, alright.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: That's fine. 

4 CHAIR MUNN: Good. So not to belabor 

5 it, Ron, but we certainly, I think it behooves us 

6 to try to get these condensed to their essence 

7 and get them on the appropriate concern list. So 

8 if you'll follow through with the good work 

9 you've already done one at a time, it will be 

10 most helpful. Thanks. 

11 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, thank you. So 

12 we have on the screen now, we have finding number 

13 one of Procedure 42, and there was some errors, 

14 some text errors in some references that were 

15 somewhat confusing and I had to re-read it 

16 several times to clarify them. And we find the 

17 resolution to that is that OTIB-64 is a complete 

18 rewrite of the procedure, and so, therefore, it 

19 did not contain the same text errors and the 

20 clarification issues identified previously did 

21 not appear in the new OTIB. And also the scope 

22 of the coworker data was outlined in Section 2, 
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1 page seven, of OTIB-54. So we feel that these 

2 did not, this finding did not any longer apply to 

3 the OTIB that replaced it, and we recommend 

4 closure. 

5 CHAIR MUNN: That is a wonderful 

6 recommendation, from my perspective. Do I have 

7 any objection from Paul or Josie? 

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: I agree with closing.

9 MEMBER BEACH: I agree also to close 

10 it. Thank you. 

11 CHAIR MUNN: Please make the notation 

12 that Finding 1 has been discussed by the 

13 Subcommittee, and we are following the 

14 contractor's recommendation for closure.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. I'll move on to 

16 Finding 2, and this was problems with the 

17 reference to some of the programs that were used 

18 telling the dose constructor in the original 

19 Procedure 42 to use the programs that we thought 

20 that were referenced well and that we wanted to 

21 make sure that the dose constructor would be 

22 consistent. 
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1 And if you want to scroll on down 

2 there, Kathy, to the answer. Okay. Again, this 

3 is a complete rewrite, and it does not use the 

4 same scaling factor methodology which we 

5 identified in Procedure 42. Therefore, the 

6 finding didn't apply to the new OTIBs, and we 

7 recommend closure. 

8 CHAIR MUNN: I believe that we can use 

9 the identical wording for that item, unless I 

10 hear objection from Paul or from Josie. 

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: I agree. 

12 MEMBER BEACH: No objection here. 

13 CHAIR MUNN: Very good. We are now 

14 closing Finding 2. 

15 DR. BUCHANAN: And this brings us to 

16 Finding 3, and this was what I was referring to 

17 on it wasn't identified that actually that some 

18 of the data was being used was from 1947 and 1956, 

19 147 batched workers for the period 1956 to 1965. 

20 And there was no Procedure 42. That was not 

21 clear. Again, we see that OTIB-64, the coworker 

22 model now, replaces that, and it does identify on 
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1 page 34 and 35 where this data comes from that is 

2 being used. And so we find it is no longer 

3 applicable in this case because it has been 

4 answered, and we recommend closure. 

5 CHAIR MUNN: I'm thinking about this 

6 a little bit because of the time differential. 

7 I believe it's reasonable to use the same wording 

8 for closure of Finding Number 3, as well. Do I

9 hear agreement? 

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: I agree with the 

11 recommendation. 

12 MEMBER BEACH: I also agree with it. 

13 CHAIR MUNN: Again, duplicate the 

14 wording for Finding 3. That seems appropriate, 

15 despite the confusion and despite the original 

16 concern. Thanks, Ron. We can take up Finding 

17 4, I believe. 

18 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Finding 4, if 

19 we can move up the page here. Okay. This is 

20 concerning assumptions and limitations on the 

21 original Procedure 42. And, again, these have 

22 been completely replaced in OTIB-64, and the 
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1 assumptions and limitations are spelled out on 

2 page 7, 8, 14, and 15 of the new OTIB-64 for the 

3 coworker data. And so we felt that they had been 

4 adequately explained and presented to the reader, 

5 and so, therefore, we find that this has been 

6 resolved and recommend closure. 

7 CHAIR MUNN: It is so good to have 

8 these tracked down. Thank you very much. I 

9 recommend the use of the same language for 

10 Finding 4, unless I hear to the contrary. Do we 

11 agree, Paul? 

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I agree with 

13 that. 

14 CHAIR MUNN: Josie? 

15 MEMBER BEACH: I agree, also. 

16 Thanks, Wanda. 

17 CHAIR MUNN: Very good. We have 

18 closed Finding 4, and we can move on. 

19 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. The next one is 

20 Finding 5, and this is, there was a technical 

21 error in the way the exponents were created in 

22 the scaling factor of the Procedure 42. And just 
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1 as a sideline, the scaling factor was to help the 

2 coworker model compensate for the 50's when there 

3 was very little data. There was more data in the 

4 60's, so the scaling factor looked at workers' 

5 records from '61 to '65 and said, okay, we will 

6 upscale their doses in 47 to 1960 because they 

7 were probably exposed to more, even though they 

8 weren't monitored. And so the scaling factor got 

9 pretty complicated, so it was easy to get a 

10 problem with it in how they carried it through 

11 and we identified one of those problems in 

12 Procedure 42. However, again, OTIB-64 is a 

13 rewrite. It doesn't contain the same 

14 methodology, and so we find that that has been 

15 resolved and recommend closure on that finding. 

16 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you, Ron. Because 

17 I am too lazy to go refresh my memory about OTIB18 64, how did you get around the scaling factor?

19 DR. BUCHANAN: They do use a scaling 

20 factor, but, as I get to Finding 6, I'll expand 

21 on that a little more. They do use a scaling 

22 factor, but they don't use the same methodology 
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1 as they used in Procedure 42. And so while I 

2 recommend we evaluate the new one, this finding 

3 doesn't apply to the new one. 

4 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. Very good. 

5 Then we will consider the new one as an entirely 

6 separate article, and we can, again, duplicate 

7 the wording from Finding 1, that the Subcommittee 

8 recommends that it be closed. Paul, do you 

9 agree? 

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I agree with the 

11 recommendation. 

12 CHAIR MUNN: Josie? 

13 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, I do, too. 

14 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. Very good. 

15 Now let's see what they did use. Finding 6. 

16 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So now we'll go 

17 to Finding 6, and now this is still applicable to 

18 Procedure 42, and then I'll summarize at the end. 

19 Okay. We talked about scaling factor in Finding 

20 5. Finding 6 is how the scaling factor was 

21 applied, and this has to do with an exponent and 

22 when it was greater than one and less than one or 
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1 one. And so this Finding 6 was a suggestion 

2 in wording so that would be applied uniformly and 

3 correctly. 

4 And so, again, if we look at the 

5 resolution on that, we find that this error 

6 doesn't occur in OTIB-64 and it is a different 

7 scaling factor method. And so we recommend the 

8 finding for Procedure 42 be closed. And you'll 

9 want to go down a little further, Kathy. Under 

10 summary and conclusion, if we can get that up.

11 Okay. So, essentially, what we find, 

12 what this paragraph says, that we find that OTIB13 13 and Procedure 42 has been replaced with OTIB14 44 and 64 and we find that the previous findings 

15 in those two documents were not applicable to the 

16 new document and/or have been resolved.

17 Now, we were tasked only with using 

18 the two new documents to see if the old findings 

19 had been resolved, and we've found that they 

20 have. However, SC&A did not perform a technical 

21 evaluation of the replacement documents OTIB-64 

22 and OTIB-44, and their application or 
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1 appropriateness for dose reconstruction, as this 

2 would require tasking by the Procedure Review 

3 Committee, and the new methods use a different 

4 methodology in driving the adjustment factor, the 

5 scaling factor, and they use quite a few 

6 different statistics than they did in the old 

7 documents. And, therefore, we recommend that a 

8 full technical review of OTIB-44 and OTIB-64 be 

9 performed, especially in evaluation of the 

10 statistic methodology and the results obtained.

11 MR. KATZ: So this is then, I mean, 

12 for the Procedures Subcommittee to recommend to 

13 the Board a tasking on this because it's a new 

14 procedure review? 

15 CHAIR MUNN: Yes. And Ron's 

16 recommendation sounds quite reasonable to me. It 

17 would seem logical, especially given the 

18 importance of these doses. It would seem 

19 reasonable that we would want the current OTIBs 

20 to be scrutinized.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: We need to close that 

22 last item, though, first, right? To prior this 
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1 recommendation? 

2 CHAIR MUNN: Yes. And item one for 

3 Finding 6, for this finding, needs to be closed 

4 with the same wording as we had used for the 

5 others, unless I hear something to the contrary. 

6 We could perhaps add comments here that, if we do 

7 intend to recommend tasks to review OTIB-64 and 

8 44, we can incorporate that in our closure 

9 statements. I would suggest that we do that. It 

10 makes sense to me.

11 ORAU-RPRT-0044 - Crosswalk 4 Open Items to 0053 

12 CHAIR MUNN: So let's put this on the 

13 table for just a few seconds while I add whether 

14 it is the will of my colleagues that we do proceed 

15 to a task that requests tasking for SC&A to review 

16 OTIB-64 and 44. 

17 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, Wanda, I do agree 

18 with that. That's a good path forward. 

19 CHAIR MUNN: And Paul? 

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I agree with 

21 that. This would be a review of 64? 

22 CHAIR MUNN: And 44, both OTIBs.
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right.

2 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. 

3 MR. KATZ: And this is Ted. Then for 

4 this and any other items that come up today, 

5 please send me just a brief summary that I can 

6 share with the rest of the Board that summarizes 

7 the procedure that the Procedure Subcommittee 

8 recommending be reviewed to summarize the 

9 procedure, you know, and its status and it hasn't 

10 been reviewed for X, Y, Z, whatever the limit is 

11 in the review in this case. We've talked about 

12 it already. So if you could just put that in a 

13 brief note to me for each of these procedures 

14 that we may be asking for a tasking, that would 

15 be helpful and then I could share that with the 

16 rest of the Board. 

17 CHAIR MUNN: Ron, could you put 

18 together such a memo and run it by me before we 

19 send it out? 

20 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I can do that. 

21 CHAIR MUNN: I would appreciate that 

22 very much. And I'll let Ted know.
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1 MR. KATZ: Yes. Well, send it to me, 

2 too, please, Ron, because I have some other items 

3 already for tasking for -- the teleconference is 

4 coming up pretty soon. 

5 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, it is, and this is 

6 a good time for us to try to get all of these 

7 requests for work that we have internally decided 

8 on that hadn't been recommended yet to the Board. 

9 I'll look forward to a memo from you, Ron. And, 

10 Lori, I'm assuming you're going to be -- Lori or 

11 Kathy, who's going to be doing the BRS insertion 

12 on these? 

13 MS. K. BEHLING: SC&A can update the 

14 BRS for these. 

15 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. If you would, 

16 incorporating the sentence with respect to 

17 closure --

18 MS. K. BEHLING: Will do.

19 CHAIR MUNN: -- that we're 

20 recommending to the full Board that OTIB-64 and 

21 44 assigned to SC&A for review. Thank you. 

22 Report 44. Oh, before we go on, is there 
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1 anything further with this item on Proc 42 and 

2 OTIB-64/44 that we need to address? That 

3 completes your review, Ron? 

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, that completes my 

5 review. Thank you. 

6 CHAIR MUNN: Any comments, any 

7 questions, any concerns? If not, then we will 

8 move on to Report 44. NIOSH was going to take a 

9 look at 53 and 44 and see if the open items, how 

10 the open items related to each and to get it 

11 squared it away once and for all, we hope. Do 

12 we have that report from NIOSH? 

13 DR. NETON: Yes, this is Jim. That 

14 was my task at the last Work Group -- or 

15 Procedures Subcommittee meeting. So I took a 

16 look at Report 44, which was a report that dealt 

17 with how to handle distributions of bioassay 

18 samples that had a significant fraction of values 

19 less than the MDA that essentially had a lot of 

20 sensor data. And SC&A's review of that report 

21 was pretty favorable from a statistical analysis 

22 sense, but the four findings largely related to 
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1 the fact that they felt that there should be some 

2 indication of how you would deal with 

3 stratification of distributions. In other 

4 words, how do you know all the data came from the 

5 same sample population allowing for different 

6 exposures and different locations in work 

7 assignments? Our response was, basically, that 

8 we dealt with those issues in Report 53, which 

9 was a report specifically dealing with 

10 stratification of coworker models. 

11 That said, I went back and looked at 

12 Report 53 to review, and it is true that we deal 

13 with stratification in that report, but there 

14 were eight findings, all of which are still open 

15 because of various criticisms of the statistical 

16 processes and concepts that were outlined in 

17 there. And in response to that, you might recall 

18 that we also issued Imp Guide 4, which was how to 

19 deal with coworker models, and it was a somewhat 

20 more qualitative discussion, as opposed to the 

21 detailed statistical analyses. 

22 So that said, these findings on the 
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1 stratification issue still remain open, so I 

2 could not really see any way to address and close 

3 out the findings that were levied against 

4 Procedure 44 for stratification. I don't know 

5 how we could actually close them in light of that. 

6 So that's where I ended up on this one. 

7 CHAIR MUNN: Well, that creates a 

8 question in --- well. 

9 DR. NETON: Well, you could say that 

10 they were addressed, the stratification is 

11 addressed in Report 53, but the models that are 

12 provided in 53 are under review yet. So you 

13 really can't say that we addressed them. We 

14 attempted to address them but --

15 CHAIR MUNN: Well, the question that 

16 comes to my mind is why am I not carrying Report 

17 53 or --

18 DR. NETON: Well, remember 53 was sort 

19 of taken over by the Special Issues Work Group. 

20 MEMBER BEACH: That's what I 

21 remember, too, Jim. 

22 DR. NETON: Right. That's correct. 
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1 And until such time as that issue is resolved, in 

2 light of the review of draft Implementation Guide 

3 4, those issues are sort of held out there for 

4 discussion until that's resolved. 

5 MR. KATZ: Right. And just to add a 

6 little bit, so that Work Group was awaiting a 

7 group of example coworker models to review, and 

8 many of those, I think, have now been produced. 

9 DR. NETON: Yes. The Savannah River 

10 coworker models have been provided to both the 

11 Work Group and the Savannah River Work Group, as 

12 well as the Special Issues Work Group. 

13 MR. KATZ: Right. And so those are, 

14 I believe, under review at SC&A, and there will 

15 be a meeting down the road once those reviews are 

16 ready to discuss then these example coworker 

17 models. So that's how this -- so this, as Jim 

18 was, more or less, saying, this can't get wrapped 

19 up until all that work is -- I mean, you know, 

20 it's been a big piece of work. 

21 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. It sounds to 

22 me as though we should be maintaining this in our 
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1 records as open items from Report 53 about which 

2 we can do nothing until the Work Groups have 

3 completed their activities. Am I looking at this 

4 correctly, Ted? 

5 MR. KATZ: Right. It's in progress. 

6 I think that's what it should be stated as, in 

7 progress.

8 CHAIR MUNN: And I'd like us to 

9 clarify in our comments that we await the 

10 decisions of two Work Groups in order to proceed. 

11 So this really and truly, I would like a 

12 recommendation with respect to whether we carry 

13 this in our records as Report 44 or whether we 

14 recognize that the action has all been directed 

15 from the replacement report. Should we not be 

16 carrying this as Report 53 in process through two 

17 Work Groups? 

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: It seems to me you 

19 still have to track this under 044.

20 MR. KATZ: Unless 044 is obsolete, 

21 then we still need to close this out. We just 

22 can't close it out until the bigger issue --
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. Is this really 

2 obsolete or --

3 DR. NETON: No, Report 44 is not 

4 obsolete. Our original response to the finding, 

5 and it still is valid, is that Report 43 was a 

6 methodology to analyze a statistical distribution 

7 of bioassay samples, in no way intended to 

8 address the stratification issue. And all four 

9 findings, I just looked at them again, are 

10 related to that issue.

11 So in some sense, the findings can be 

12 transferred to Report 53, acknowledging, though, 

13 that the stratification issue is still under 

14 discussion in Report 53 because none of the 

15 findings against Report 44 have to do with the 

16 statistical methodology that was offered as to be 

17 acceptable. And our response said that, that 

18 that's all we intended it to be. 

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: But we know they have 

20 a recommendation from the contractor or response 

21 that sort of says, okay, we'll recommend closing 

22 that issue. 
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1 DR. NETON: Actually, I'm looking at 

2 one of the findings. Finding 2 actually says 

3 that SC&A recommends closure.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, do we have that? 

5 I don't --

6 DR. NETON: I don't know if we have 

7 them for all the findings.

8 CHAIR MUNN: For at least one. 

9 That's true. Well, I guess we can continue to 

10 carry it as in progress but still in the hands of 

11 two Work Groups to resolve. 

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: What do they 

13 recommend on the others? 

14 DR. NETON: Well, I'm looking at 

15 Finding Number 4, and it says SC&A recommends 

16 review of 44, taking into consideration a new 

17 methodology to deal with coworker data sets as 

18 described in Report 53. It basically says review 

19 44 in light of those two additional documents, 

20 but I don't know -- I think what it's saying is 

21 that those documents really cover the issues that 

22 they raised. 
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1 MR. KATZ: So I think the simplest 

2 thing to do is just to put this aside as in 

3 progress. We don't need to have it carried on 

4 each agenda, and wait until that other ball of 

5 wax is wrapped up, and then we can come back and 

6 put these bed. That seems like the simplest 

7 thing to do. 

8 CHAIR MUNN: Well, my question is what 

9 sort of trigger do we have from the Work Groups 

10 and otherwise for us to address Report 44 when 

11 the issues with 053 have been addressed? 

12 MR. KATZ: Well, this is sitting in 

13 the BRS as in progress and, when we run through 

14 what's left in progress, we'll see that, right, 

15 that this one hasn't been addressed. You can put 

16 a little note there as a reminder for us that 

17 it's waiting.

18 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. We just don't, we 

19 don't have an established process now whereby we 

20 go back and, at a regular interval, take a look 

21 at what's in progress. We take a look at 

22 abeyance items, but we have --
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1 MR. KATZ: I thought SC&A looks at 

2 what's -- SC&A and NIOSH should be looking at 

3 what's in progress and putting these things 

4 behind us. I think that should be a routine 

5 process. I don't -- 

6 CHAIR MUNN: I think that's --

7 MR. KATZ: -- just look at abeyance 

8 items.

9 PER 011 - #3 Abeyance Status; Case Selection Status 

10 CHAIR MUNN: Well, we regularly do so 

11 in our procedures review but don't regularly look 

12 at -- on occasion, we do, but in Subcommittee we 

13 have not done that routinely for in process. But 

14 if that's being done by both NIOSH and by SC&A, 

15 then I won't worry my pretty little head about 

16 it. Otherwise, when we either consider 

17 establishing the routine the way we have for 

18 abeyance or if we feel comfortable with the 

19 process as it is, then I'm fine with that. I 

20 just don't, I'm unaware of any routine that we, 

21 as a Subcommittee, go through to check those -- 

22 MR. KATZ: I think the Subcommittee 
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1 will check regularly in the BRS. Again, our 

2 whole procedure was everything should be taken in 

3 progress and assigned either to NIOSH or SC&A. 

4 In this case, it's assigned to a Work Group that 

5 --

6 CHAIR MUNN: Yes.

7 MR. KATZ: There shouldn't be 

8 anything in our slate of procedures that are 

9 under review that isn't assigned one way or the 

10 other. 

11 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, but that doesn't 

12 come to our attention. I'm just being, I guess, 

13 nitpicky about how I personally know that's what 

14 happens but --

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: The other in progress 

16 ones we get regular feedback from NIOSH and SC&A. 

17 If it's a finding of another Work Group, we 

18 probably lose track of whether they looked at it 

19 or not. I'm wondering if there's a way where 

20 ones that are in progress in this kind of a 

21 category, just to keep them on the agenda, if 

22 it's an in progress that somebody other than SC&A 
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1 and NIOSH has the lead on it. 

2 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. It's something 

3 that just simply goes away for us for an 

4 undetermined amount of time. Depending on how 

5 active the Work Group is, it can stretch itself 

6 out for a long, long time. 

7 MS. K. BEHLING: This is Kathy. 

8 Would it be worthwhile to send a note to the Work 

9 Groups just to keep you informed as to their 

10 progress? 

11 MR. KATZ: No. The Work Groups will 

12 never be able to keep track of that they're 

13 supposed to inform another Work Group at some 

14 point. That will never happen. So I think 

15 really, SC&A, if you can keep this in the 

16 tracking, keep this tracked, that would work. 

17 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. It would if we 

18 would request that one of the routine tasks for 

19 SC&A would be to take a look at in-progress items 

20 to see when they have been in the hands of a Work 

21 Group or Work Groups just to keep us aware of 

22 that from time to time, not perhaps every 
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1 meeting, depending on how frequently we meet. 

2 But certainly on a fairly routine basis, just be 

3 looking at that. I don't think that's been done 

4 in the past. I'm not aware of it. I've not seen 

5 --

6 MR. STIVER: Wanda, this is John. 

7 Actually, we do that for each of the Board 

8 meetings for that Board coordination document.

9 MR. KATZ: Right, you do. But those 

10 are for ones that are on your plate or NIOSH's 

11 plate. So I guess we just need to make sure that 

12 included in that listing is -- I don't think 

13 there's that many, but however many are assigned 

14 or really in the purview of another Work Group. 

15 MR. STIVER: Okay. We can add the 

16 subsection.

17 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, that would be a 

18 logical subset, I think, of --

19 MR. STIVER: And also put a note in 

20 the BRS to the effect that, you know, this is 

21 basically remaining in progress until such time 

22 as the other Work Groups resolve the common 
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1 issues. 

2 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, that will be 

3 helpful. Thanks. Resolved. Alright, good. 

4 That's great. We'll rely on SC&A for the kind 

5 of information we need to move forward on this 

6 task. Thanks.

7 Anything else to say then about these 

8 concerns we have with Report 44 and 53? Those 

9 four open items are out of our hands for the 

10 moment, but they're going to be tracked. Thank 

11 you very much.

12 Alright. Let's move forward. We are 

13 not going to take up the next item. That's the 

14 one that we have given a 2:30 time certain for 

15 discussing. But is Rose with us? Are you 

16 online, Rose? Hello? 

17 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Yes, I'm here, Wanda. 

18 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, great. Are you 

19 ready for us to take up K-25, PER 11? 

20 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Sure.

21 CHAIR MUNN: Okay, good. Let's do 

22 that. Number 3 abeyance status and whether we've 
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1 done case selections. I haven't checked to see 

2 whether that has moved forward. I was looking 

3 elsewhere of whether we can go ahead with your 

4 full report. Thanks, Rose. I appreciate it.

5 MS. GOGLIOTTI: No problem. Just for 

6 a refresher, at the last meeting we were tasked 

7 to review four cases from PER 11, and PER 11 is 

8 very similar to PER 14. There were a series of 

9 modifications to the K-25 coworker model, 

10 including vetted by OTIB-52, which is 

11 construction trade worker. And we have findings 

12 from our initial tasking 1 through 3, and we have, 

13 for the most part, addressed those. As a result 

14 of that, though, we did have one issue that's I 

15 believe an abeyance --

16 CHAIR MUNN: Number 3, right? 

17 MS. GOGLIOTTI: -- we identified that 

18 NIOSH was improperly implementing OTIB-52. They 

19 were excluding construction trade workers that 

20 worked for the prime contractor from construction 

21 trade worker dose, and that was not, in fact, the 

22 intent of the procedure. And so they've 
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1 committed to a PER to address that issue, but the 

2 Subcommittee decided to go ahead anyway and task 

3 us with four case reviews, which we did here. 

4 I've got a lot of stuff going on at once 

5 here --

6 CHAIR MUNN: Yes. That's okay. I've 

7 lost my screen anyhow, so I'm not going to be 

8 disturbed.

9 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Alright. Well, there 

10 were two criteria that we requested cases be 

11 selected from. We requested two claims that were 

12 originally completed before May 31st, 2005, and 

13 that was slightly modified by one of our previous 

14 findings. And also two claims that were 

15 construction trade worker claims that were 

16 processed between May 21st, 2005 and August 31st, 

17 2006. And the reason for those dates has to do 

18 with different revisions that impacted coworker 

19 modeling for K-25.

20 And, initially, there were 432 claims 

21 that were submitted or kicked backed to NIOSH, 

22 and only 69 of those were reversed. And we did 
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1 have our four cases assigned in June of 2016, and 

2 we initially had a little snafu where the words 

3 "construction trade worker" were left off one of 

4 our requests, so we did have to go back and 

5 request two new cases to make sure we were 

6 adequately capturing the population of cases that 

7 we wanted to. 

8 So our first claim --

9 MR. KATZ: Rose, I don't know if you 

10 can do anything about this, like perhaps move 

11 your mic closer to your mouth or something, 

12 because your voice, I can understand you, we can 

13 understand you, I think, but it does --

14 MS. LIN: And just a reminder, this 

15 is Jenny with OGC, just be careful with the 

16 information that you're sharing on the public 

17 meeting, okay? 

18 MS. GOGLIOTTI: I'm aware.

19 MS. LIN: Thank you. It's just a lot 

20 of information that's been shared on the screen, 

21 and we're working from an unredacted version of 

22 the documents, so, you know, just be cautioned 
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1 about the information you share. Thank you. 

2 MS. GOGLIOTTI: I'm aware that these 

3 tend to have a lot of PA information in them. 

4 But our first case that Kathy has up on the screen 

5 would definitely qualify as a construction trade 

6 worker, as you can see by their employment 

7 history here. And the first claim was done in 

8 2005, and the PoC was less than one percent. And 

9 it was reworked under this PER in 2009. However, 

10 there were several other changes added, so when 

11 you look at the table you'll see it wasn't just 

12 coworker dose that was impacted, including a 

13 cancer was added to the dose reconstruction. So 

14 the PoC did change a lot, but it wasn't 

15 exclusively because of coworker modeling. And 

16 it did go up to under 15 percent but still far 

17 below the 50 percent threshold.

18 The original case assigned the dose 

19 for three years, but in the reworks case NIOSH 

20 only assigned dose for one year. However, in 

21 this dose reconstruction, there was no 

22 construction trade worker dose assigned. There 
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1 was no modifications for construction trade 

2 worker. They did follow the updated guidance. 

3 They just didn't adjust for construction trade 

4 worker.

5 So we do have that as a finding here 

6 that we do acknowledge that NIOSH was improperly 

7 implementing OTIB-52 until early 2014, and this 

8 rework was done in 2009, so that was before that. 

9 So it's possible this case will be captured under 

10 the new PER. And here I did confirm that the EE 

11 did work for the prime contractor during the 

12 period in question. So at this point, I don't 

13 think we can address that, and I would recommend 

14 that we just hold that until the new PER is 

15 issued. 

16 CHAIR MUNN: You're recommending that 

17 we continue to hold Finding 3 in abeyance until 

18 --

19 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Well, this would be 

20 Finding 6 now. We continued the finding 

21 numbering from where we left off in the first 

22 three taskings. 
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1 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. That's good. I'm 

2 having trouble because I'm struggling with my 

3 electronic devices and have completely lost my 

4 ability to even close my screen. So I'm having 

5 to follow with my ear, which is not always great. 

6 Okay, very good. 

7 So we're recommending, essentially, 

8 that this entire PER be held in abeyance until 

9 the new PER is issued, correct? 

10 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Not the entire PER. 

11 We did go through and we did review four cases. 

12 One of the four cases did include the 

13 construction trade worker adjustment, so they are 

14 doing it in some cases. But I think we were just 

15 hitting the threshold here because how many of 

16 these cases were done when they were implementing 

17 OTIB-52 incorrectly.

18 CHAIR MUNN: Alright.

19 MS. GOGLIOTTI: And a large part of 

20 this PER has to do with the implementation of 

21 that procedure.

22 CHAIR MUNN: So, essentially, it's 
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1 Finding Number 6?

2 MS. GOGLIOTTI: This is Finding 

3 Number 6, correct.

4 CHAIR MUNN: That we're focusing on, 

5 and we are going to place number six in abeyance 

6 pending the issuance of the new PER. Am I 

7 correct?

8 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Yes.

9 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. And that's 

10 what we're going to put on our Board Reporting 

11 System for this item. We will continue to --

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Before you do that, 

13 let me ask do we have NIOSH responses to the 

14 findings? 

15 MS. GOGLIOTTI: No. 

16 CHAIR MUNN: Not that I'm aware of.

17 MS. MARION-MOSS: No, Paul. We're 

18 still looking at these cases. This is Lori. 

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: So the reason I ask 

20 that, I'm not sure this is an abeyance issue at 

21 this point if we don't know what NIOSH's position 

22 is on it. 
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1 CHAIR MUNN: Yes. We need, I think -

2 -

3 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Well, we can 

4 certainly ask them do you believe that coworker 

5 dose should have been assigned or the 

6 construction trade worker dose should have been 

7 assigned, given these parameters. 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu 

9 Hinnefeld. I think I'll offer to this is that, 

10 you know, we talked at other meetings about this 

11 confusion that went on about whether prime 

12 contractor employees should be considered 

13 construction trade workers or not because, when 

14 we compiled the construction trade worker data 

15 set, we included prime contractor construction 

16 workers in with construction workers. But there 

17 was some confusion on some people's part about 

18 when you do a dose reconstruction and we look at 

19 construction trade workers does that only apply 

20 to subcontractors? And so some of these cases I 

21 think were done with the belief that a prime 

22 contractor should not get the construction trade 
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1 worker adjustment, and we've since clarified that

2 in our guidance and I believe we will be doing a 

3 PER to address that change, the fact that we have 

4 to look at cases where, you know, prime 

5 contractor construction workers were not given 

6 the construction trade worker adjustment.

7 So I believe some of these cases fall 

8 into that pool of cases that were construction 

9 trade workers but, since they were working for 

10 the prime contractor, the dose reconstructor did 

11 not give them the CTW adjustment. So I believe 

12 we're going to catch these things up on a future 

13 PER. But we'll have some official response, and 

14 we'll put it in the BRS.

15 MR. KATZ: Alright. So, Wanda, I 

16 think what you guys need is you need for NIOSH to 

17 respond and confirm this is one of those cases, 

18 and then you can close this finding.

19 CHAIR MUNN: We do need that, yes. 

20 So I will carry it on the next meeting agenda as 

21 a NIOSH action, as I have carried it indirectly 

22 on this one. Sorry. But we'll have that item 
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1 to get us back on track next time, if that's 

2 amenable with all concerned. 

3 MS. K. BEHLING: Excuse me, Wanda. 

4 Should this finding then remain open? 

5 MR. KATZ: Yes, in progress. 

6 CHAIR MUNN: As in progress, yes --

7 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay.

8 CHAIR MUNN: -- pending a response 

9 from NIOSH.

10 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay.

11 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. Do we have 

12 anything else on PER 11? 

13 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Yes, that was just the 

14 first of four cases. 

15 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. Now it's your 

16 ball game. 

17 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Okay. The next case, 

18 we found that the dose was assigned correctly in 

19 the reworked, but we do have one observation with 

20 this case. We're not really sure if construction 

21 trade worker dose should be applied in this 

22 instance. It's an unusual case. Here, the DOE 
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1 files indicate the EE had a certain profession 

2 that wouldn't necessarily qualify as a 

3 construction trade worker but then in NOCTS a 

4 different set of careers are listed, and those 

5 would qualify as construction trade workers. 

6 And so in this case, we're not sure if 

7 it would be appropriate to follow NOCTS' guidance 

8 or the guidance that we've included in the CATI 

9 report in the DOE files. I don't know where the 

10 NOCTS specific employment classification comes 

11 from, if that's part of a DOL confirmation, but 

12 I couldn't find anything that justified what was 

13 in NOCTS.

14 CHAIR MUNN: It sounds --

15 MS. GOGLIOTTI: They would have 

16 always included construction trade worker. I'm 

17 not sure in this instance.

18 CHAIR MUNN: It sounds reasonable to 

19 me that this also falls in the category of the 

20 previous, of its predecessor. I think it sounds 

21 to me as though a response from NIOSH is in order. 

22 Any objection to that suggestion? 
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1 MEMBER BEACH: None here, Wanda.

2 CHAIR MUNN: Well, let's make a note 

3 in the BRS that we are requesting NIOSH feedback 

4 and response. Alright. 

5 MS. GOGLIOTTI: We'll go to the next 

6 case then. This case was originally completed 

7 in February 2006 and was reworked in 2010. It 

8 was initially an overestimate and became a best 

9 estimate and was actually compensated as a 

10 result. However, this case also, we believe, 

11 would qualify as a construction trade worker, and 

12 there was no construction trade worker estimate, 

13 so very similar to the last finding. It's 

14 unclear if, under the new PER, this would have 

15 been included because of OTIB-52 confusion. So 

16 I would recommend that we group this also with 

17 Finding 6. 

18 CHAIR MUNN: Any problem with that 

19 recommendation?

20 MEMBER BEACH: None here. 

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: No. 

22 CHAIR MUNN: If not, then let's follow 
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1 up accordingly.

2 MS. GOGLIOTTI: And we do also have 

3 one observation with this case. Here, the cancer 

4 was a skin cancer on the extremity. Can I talk 

5 about this? I don't want to reveal any 

6 information, but it indicates where the cancer 

7 is.

8 CHAIR MUNN: Yes. We're okay, are we 

9 not, Jenny? 

10 MR. KATZ: No, let's not. Let's just 

11 not go there with details, but thanks. 

12 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Well, because of 

13 where the PPE was, there isn't necessarily 

14 guidance for it. The guidance that NIOSH used 

15 involved a paper liner and one lab coat and two 

16 pairs of coveralls, which is an electron 

17 attenuation factor of 0.855. However, we don't 

18 agree that that might be claimant-favorable in 

19 this instance. The employment that NIOSH 

20 references in the dose reconstruction report 

21 acknowledges that this might not be applicable 

22 but it was the best that they could do. Sorry. 
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1 It's hard to talk about this without --

2 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, it is hard to talk 

3 about it. I'm not quite sure how we do that 

4 appropriately and get any information to those of 

5 us who are out here --

6 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Well, Kathy does have 

7 it up on the screen, but I --

8 CHAIR MUNN: But I don't have a screen 

9 so . . . 

10 MS. GOGLIOTTI: I tracked down the 

11 references for this, and it does talk about give 

12 different adjustment factors for different PPEs 

13 when it's known. And those all have a lowered 

14 beta dose attenuation factor. And given that the 

15 specific PPE isn't clear in this instance, we 

16 think it might have been more appropriate to just 

17 assume no PPE for the beta coworkers dose 

18 attenuation, and that reduces dose by about 1.22 

19 rems. I'm sorry, 0.122 rems. 

20 CHAIR MUNN: That clearly, in my view, 

21 requires a response from NIOSH. 

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: On observations, do 
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1 we actually try to close those but --

2 CHAIR MUNN: We try to, but I 

3 certainly don't have an answer to the observation 

4 that was made. And I don't know how we can 

5 proceed, other than requesting a little more 

6 information, if it's available, from NIOSH. And 

7 if it's not, then if the answer is we've done the 

8 best we can, given the constraints that we work 

9 under, then that's the better answer than I 

10 personally have right now. But any other 

11 suggestions as to how to proceed with the 

12 observation? 

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: I was just really 

14 asking how do we track observations anyway?

15 CHAIR MUNN: Well, usually, we don't 

16 because the observation under ordinary 

17 circumstances is not something on which we, as a 

18 Subcommittee, have needed additional 

19 information, actually, or that we felt needed a 

20 response. I just personally don't have any 

21 additional information that would resolve the 

22 dilemma in my own mind. If there is one out 
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1 there, I don't know what it is. It just occurs 

2 from my own piece of mind, I suppose, I'd like to 

3 see if NIOSH has additional information that we 

4 don't have with regard to this because I don't 

5 have any feel at all for what the depth of 

6 information that's available to them and don't 

7 really and truly understand the constraints under 

8 which they must operate to make the decisions 

9 that they make.

10 But if there's nothing that can be 

11 added, then I'd guess I'd like to know that. But 

12 it's not anything that's going to affect the 

13 outcome one way or the other.

14 MS. K. BEHLING: And this is Kathy 

15 Behling. We have been adding the observations 

16 to the BRS, so they exist there.

17 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, we decided to do 

18 that quite some time ago.

19 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes. I thought that 

20 was Paul's --

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: No, I understand 

22 they're there. I couldn't recall that we were 
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1 trying to close them in a certain sense. 

2 CHAIR MUNN: Well, we've never really 

3 and truly encountered one that we thought we 

4 needed to be closed. It's usually just an 

5 observation, as this one is. 

6 MS. GOGLIOTTI: This one we made as 

7 an observation, too, because it's not the direct 

8 implementation of the PER, but it was applied to 

9 the coworker modeling in this instance. And I 

10 will point out also that observation two and 

11 Finding 7 don't really have an impact of the 

12 overall case because this case was compensated.

13 CHAIR MUNN: Right. It's not going 

14 to change anything regardless, but it's a matter 

15 of information, in my view, more than anything 

16 else. Thank you, Rose. 

17 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Okay. And we've got 

18 one final case here, but it did not have any 

19 findings. I'll just go through it quickly. It 

20 was originally done in 2006 and was revised in 

21 2010. The PoC was 22 percent. When it was 

22 reworked, it did go up but, so far, we'll well 
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1 below the 50-percent threshold. The original 

2 case actually applied only Y-12 coworker dose 

3 because the EE did work at all three Oak Ridge 

4 facilities when the dose was revised. 

5 NIOSH did kind of an interesting thing 

6 that I've seen in dose reconstructions before 

7 where they essentially calculated coworker dose 

8 at each of the three Oak Ridge facilities at the

9 50-percent threshold and then considered the 

10 three doses and assigned the highest dose from 

11 each coworker modeling. I'm not aware of any 

12 procedures that recommend doing that. However, 

13 it seems claimant-favorable and a reasonable 

14 approach to assigning dose. So we have no 

15 problem with the way that they did that, and the 

16 coworker dose did increase. And this one, we had 

17 no findings, and so it shows that PER 11 will be 

18 implemented correctly for this particular case. 

19 CHAIR MUNN: That's always good 

20 information to have. Thank you, Rose. 

21 MS. GOGLIOTTI: So in conclusion, we 

22 had our four cases that we reviewed. We did have 
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1 two findings and two observations. Both findings 

2 had to do with using a CTW correction, and we 

3 believe that that will be covered under the new 

4 PER and for OTIB-52, but we can let NIOSH respond 

5 to that. 

6 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. I think we've 

7 identified what we expect in this case, so we are 

8 going to be in progress and waiting some 

9 responses from NIOSH. And we'll carry that over 

10 to next time.

11 My clock tells me that it is now 

12 essentially 12:40 for most of you, and that's our 

13 anticipated lunch hour. Unless there's any 

14 objection, I'd like for us to pause our 

15 proceedings at this point and see you back here 

16 at 1:40. Is that amenable with all? 

17 MR. KATZ: Sounds good, Wanda.

18 MEMBER BEACH: Sounds great.

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

20 CHAIR MUNN: I'll struggle with my 

21 screen and see if I can get back to you by 1:40. 

22 Alright. Thank you all. We'll see you very 
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1 shortly.

2 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter went 

3 off the record at 12:40 p.m. and went 

4 back on the record at 1:42 p.m.)

5 MR. KATZ: Okay, great. So we have 

6 our Subcommittee members on, and, Wanda, back to 

7 you. 

8 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. Since we're 

9 still early for our time certain slot, let's 

10 begin by taking up PER 29.

11 MR. KATZ: Oh, yes, right, because we 

12 need John Poston. Right, thanks.

13 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, I had understood 

14 that we were definitely going to save GSI until 

15 2:30, which it's hard to tell where I am but where 

16 you are I don't think it is that yet. PER 29. 

17 MS. K. BEHLING: Excuse me, Wanda. 

18 This is Kathy. Before we leave PER 11, I believe 

19 there is Finding Number 3 that is in abeyance 

20 that we're waiting on NIOSH response. Am I 

21 correct on that? 

22 CHAIR MUNN: I thought that was 
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1 correct but --

2 MS. K. BEHLING: And I'm not sure we 

3 gave him an opportunity to --

4 CHAIR MUNN: No, we didn't. We 

5 abruptly went to lunch. Thank you, Kathy. Stu, 

6 are you prepared to give us any information at 

7 all about Finding Number 3? 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Lori, do you have 

9 anything on that? 

10 MS. MARION-MOSS: Yes. We're still 

11 working on that PER for that in-abeyance finding.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. So I'll need to 

13 carry it yet again. Okay, very good. We'll do 

14 that, and we'll expect number 3 activity, as well 

15 as a response to the additional findings that 

16 Rose has just given us with regard to the cases. 

17 Good. PER 29 then. 

18 MS. K. BEHLING: And, again, this is 

19 Kathy. I'm sorry to interrupt. Is what is 

20 showing on my screen being displayed or not?

21 CHAIR MUNN: I can't tell you because 

22 I have --
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1 MR. KATZ: No, there's nothing 

2 showing right now. 

3 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. Hold one 

4 second here. How do I get back over there? 

5 Okay, just one second. Let me get back in here. 

6 I was in, but somebody has to allow me to join, 

7 I believe. 

8 CHAIR MUNN: And my apologies from the 

9 Chair. I have no idea what's happening with my 

10 digital functions here, but it certainly is not 

11 allowing me to be where I need to be.

12 MS. K. BEHLING: Are you seeing my 

13 screen now. 

14 MR. KATZ: No, I'm not seeing your 

15 screen still. 

16 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. I'm selecting 

17 present desktop, and it's not doing anything.

18 MR. KATZ: Maybe Rose can bring it up. 

19 I know she's listed as a presenter.

20 MS. GOGLIOTTI: I'll try. 

21 MR. KATZ: So that's working.

22 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Okay. So you have my 
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1 desktop?

2 MR. KATZ: Yes, yes. 

3 MS. GOGLIOTTI: I wasn't planning on 

4 presenting . . . 

5 MR. KATZ: I think someone can give 

6 Kathy permission to present, but it has to be 

7 given. Not sure how that --

8 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes, because my 

9 screen is currently saying that I'm in the lobby. 

10 Okay. Here we go. I can maybe try one more 

11 time, if you'd like. 

12 MR. KATZ: Well, then, Rose, you'd 

13 have to give control. See that little give 

14 control button? 

15 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Yes. 

16 MR. KATZ: See if you can do that for 

17 Kathy. Yes. And, Kathy, so now it should work 

18 for you. 

19 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. 

20 CHAIR MUNN: There does seem to be a 

21 time delay this morning for some reason.

22 MR. KATZ: It's showing, Kathy, that 
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1 you have the right to display, so it should work 

2 for you. 

3 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. Are you 

4 seeing the BRS? 

5 MR. KATZ: Well, right now I'm just 

6 seeing a desktop and a cursor moving around, and 

7 I don't know if that's your cursor or . . . 

8 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. Mine says 

9 presentable content, desktop Rose now showing. 

10 MR. KATZ: Okay. Yes, well, it's 

11 showing Rose, but I thought she had given you 

12 control. You should be in control. So you have 

13 to go down and select your desktop and --

14 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. Are you 

15 seeing the BRS? 

16 MS. GOGLIOTTI: No. 

17 MS. K. BEHLING: Not quite sure 

18 because when I select, and maybe I'm selecting 

19 the wrong thing, when I go to the screen that's 

20 supposed to be the presentation screen, the only 

21 thing I see is managed presentable content.

22 MR. KATZ: Well, don't you have a 
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1 little symbol of a desktop on yours? 

2 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes.

3 MR. KATZ: Can you click on it?

4 MS. K. BEHLING: And when I select 

5 that, it doesn't allow me to go to present desktop 

6 as it did before. Now it's just manage 

7 presentable content. 

8 MR. KATZ: Right. So something has 

9 changed. Maybe now try it.

10 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. 

11 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Is it possible that, 

12 because you signed in under the attendee instead 

13 of a presenter --

14 MR. KATZ: But I thought she did 

15 before, too. 

16 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes, I did. 

17 MR. KATZ: So it's the same as it was 

18 before, and it was saying that she has control. 

19 Maybe, for time's sake, we should just have Rose 

20 --

21 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes.

22 MR. KATZ: Rose, if you can handle it. 
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1 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Sure. 

2 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes, I apologize. I 

3 don't know --

4 MR. KATZ: No, no worries. It's a 

5 new system so . . . 

6 CHAIR MUNN: We're all in the same 

7 boat, Kathy. 

8 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes, everything 

9 seemed fine the first time around. 

10 MR. KATZ: Yes, it went fine.

11 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, we had no problems 

12 with it at all last week.

13 MR. KATZ: You may need to wrest 

14 control back from Kathy, Rose. Okay. So Rose 

15 is back in control. 

16 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Okay. Can everybody 

17 see my screen here?

18 MR. KATZ: Yes, yes.

19 MS. GOGLIOTTI: And the next one we 

20 were going to do was PER 29; is that correct? 

21 CHAIR MUNN: That's correct, yes. 

22 That's what we were looking at. 
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1 MS. K. BEHLING: Actually, I was just 

2 going to go to the BRS and show findings. 

3 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Okay. 

4 MR. KATZ: There it is. 

5 PER 029 - Finding 11, 1212 Status 

6 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Okay. And Finding 

7 11. Alright. It's up on the screen.

8 MR. KATZ: Yes, fine. Thank you, 

9 Rose. Kathy, are you there? 

10 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes, I'm here. This 

11 is a NIOSH response we're waiting for. 

12 MS. MARION-MOSS: This is Lori. PER 

13 29 is a Hanford PER, and this particular finding 

14 here states that the Subcommittee is awaiting a 

15 new PER for Hanford. We agreed to the finding. 

16 If I can recap, the finding is associated with 

17 the plutonium alpha impurities that the PER did 

18 not address. So we have agreed to that finding, 

19 and we are currently awaiting the various issues 

20 associated with the Hanford TBD to be resolved 

21 prior to issuing a new PER.

22 MR. KATZ: So this is still, this is 
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1 in abeyance. 

2 MS. MARION-MOSS: Well, currently, 

3 it's in progress now. 

4 MR. KATZ: I thought, I thought what 

5 you had said was that you agreed to the changes 

6 and were just waiting for other matters to get 

7 addressed before you update the TBD. Isn't that 

8 what you said?

9 MS. MARION-MOSS: Correct.

10 MR. KATZ: Lori?

11 MS. MARION-MOSS: Yes, that's 

12 correct, Ted. But what I was referring to was 

13 that, currently, in the BRS, the status is in 

14 progress.

15 MR. KATZ: Oh, no, I understand, but 

16 so if you're agreeing to the findings then we can 

17 put them in abeyance is what I was saying.

18 MS. MARION-MOSS: Okay.

19 MR. KATZ: Yes. I mean, that's for 

20 the Subcommittee to do. 

21 CHAIR MUNN: Paul, can you take the 

22 helm on this? 
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, neither you, nor 

2 Josie, can comment on this one, I guess. 

3 CHAIR MUNN: That's correct. This is 

4 your decision today.

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: I'll discuss this 

6 with myself. 

7 CHAIR MUNN: Yes.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: This is fairly 

9 straightforward. The final adjudication of this 

10 one has been agreed to, but it hadn't appeared 

11 yet. So I think in abeyance is where it needs 

12 to go, as I understand the issue. 

13 MR. KATZ: Right.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: And I'm the only one 

15 that gets to vote on this, so I'm voting that we 

16 take them in abeyance.

17 MR. KATZ: Right. I think that works 

18 fine. There's no controversy here since NIOSH 

19 agrees with the finding. 

20 MS. K. BEHLING: Will NIOSH be putting 

21 that in abeyance or do you want SC&A to --

22 MR. KATZ: You can go ahead and do 
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1 that, Kathy. That's fine.

2 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. Thank you.

3 MR. KATZ: Thanks. 

4 CHAIR MUNN: Are there any other 

5 comments from anyone with respect to PER 29? If 

6 not, then let's go to PER 31, report review. 

7 This is a carryover from a couple of meetings 

8 before.

9 MS. K. BEHLING: There is one more 

10 finding, 12, for the PER 29. 

11 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, yes, Paul? I'm

12 trying to walk away from one of the --

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, okay. Lori, do 

14 you have it?

15 MS. MARION-MOSS: Oh, yes, this is 

16 Lori. The same holds true for Finding Number 12. 

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay. Same final 

18 outcome here, so I'll be clear that this will go 

19 in abeyance. 

20 MR. KATZ: Thanks, Paul. 

21 CHAIR MUNN: And, again, we're back 

22 to PER 31. That's a carryover. Do you have 
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1 anything, NIOSH?

2 MS. MARION-MOSS: Stu, this is the PER 

3 for Y-12 for the -- 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: This is the thorium 

5 one, right? The thorium -- 

6 MS. MARION-MOSS: Correct, correct.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. It's still 

8 being worked on, still working on a way to, we're 

9 still deciding if we can do thorium doses for Y10 12. 

11 PER 0031 - Report Review Carryover 

12 CHAIR MUNN: So we're continuing the 

13 carryover. 

14 MR. KATZ: Right. So this should 

15 show as in progress. 

16 PER 0047 - Abeyance 3, 4 

17 CHAIR MUNN: PER 47, one that's in 

18 abeyance. We have Findings 3 and 4. Again, a 

19 carryover from NIOSH. Any report? It should 

20 have been a part of the abeyance items. 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: I believe we have a 
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1 new item in there on 4. 

2 MS. MARION-MOSS: No, that would be 

3 3, Stu.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Three? Three is what 

5 we entered in this? 

6 MS. MARION-MOSS: Yes.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. To talk about 

8 this briefly, the original response that our side 

9 put in, we put in is not really relevant to the 

10 comment. This is a dose reconstruction that's 

11 done from a template, so we don't have enough 

12 claims from the site to run a Site Profile. Then 

13 we write a dose reconstruction. The entire 

14 analysis was supposed to be on the dose 

15 reconstruction report, and, to make sure those 

16 were consistent, we have these templates that we 

17 work from to prepare these dose reconstruction 

18 reports.

19 In this case, the dose -- and when you 

20 use a template there are pieces of the template 

21 that are applicable and you insert and there are 

22 pieces that are not applicable and you don't 
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1 include in the dose reconstruction. In this 

2 case, the dose reconstructor did not include a 

3 table that was relevant to this dose 

4 reconstruction. And so this number appeared 

5 without any basis, but it does, in fact, have a 

6 basis, have the correct information from the 

7 template being copied.

8 So I think, you know, we can probably 

9 provide an example, provide the templates so that 

10 people, you know, could see that the information 

11 is there, or we can proceed elsewhere. But this 

12 is just a matter of a piece of information that 

13 should have been in the dose reconstruction 

14 report being inadvertently admitted. 

15 MR. KATZ: And for the record, this 

16 is a Grand Junction case.

17 CHAIR MUNN: Yes.

18 MEMBER BEACH: This is Josie. Can 

19 that be attached just right here, in addition to 

20 your reply? 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: I'm sorry. What did 

22 you say? 
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1 MEMBER BEACH: Can that just be 

2 attached right at number three here? 

3 MR. HINNEFELD: So we could provide 

4 the template to --

5 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, is there any reason 

6 why the template itself can't be attached.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: No, no.

8 CHAIR MUNN: If not, then perhaps that 

9 would be the simplest way to dispose of this 

10 particular finding, just attach it.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: I mean, if we have a 

12 confirmation that it was done, I don't see any 

13 need to actually put it here. 

14 MEMBER BEACH: As long as SC&A has 

15 looked at it and agrees. 

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: I mean, SC&A was only 

17 raising the issue of why the template wasn't 

18 compared, right? 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: They raised the issue 

20 about -- well, if we can go up and look at the 

21 finding. There's a description of the data 

22 available that is not presented and there's no 
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1 tabulation of it in the dose reconstruction 

2 report. There is a tabulation of it in the 

3 template, which is supposed to be copied on the 

4 dose reconstruction report. So that's, you know, 

5 that's the nature of the finding. 

6 CHAIR MUNN: So I understand 

7 correctly, this is essentially a QA issue, right? 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: I would guess that's 

9 true, yes.

10 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. I would think so 

11 because this template exists. It just simply was 

12 not used appropriately, right? 

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I gather it was 

14 used. It doesn't show up in the report is --

15 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, it doesn't show. 

16 MEMBER ZIEMER: Is that correct? 

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, we used the data 

18 that was in the template in preparation of the 

19 dose reconstruction report in order to get the 

20 number, the dose number. What we didn't include 

21 was the tabulation of those, we say there are 569 

22 air sample measurements, but then there's no 
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1 attenuation of the dose reconstructor that shows 

2 what those indicate. So that was what was left 

3 out, though we used the dose number from the 

4 template. We just didn't include the table. I 

5 believe that's the case. 

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: SC&A, do you need to 

7 see that to confirm it? 

8 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes. This is Kathy. 

9 Yes, he was questioning, it appeared in the 

10 template that the dose reconstructors were being 

11 told that you can go back to look at these 569 -

12 -

13 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, right. That's 

14 the way the dose reconstruction appears, yes. 

15 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes. And we wanted 

16 to be sure that it was tabulated somewhere, but 

17 I'm not sure that we saw that. And I do think 

18 that we should see, we should see that, yes. 

19 MR. KATZ: Sorry. We can't hear, 

20 Hans. 

21 MS. K. BEHLING: Go ahead, go ahead. 

22 He was on mute. 
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1 CHAIR MUNN: Now we're not hearing you 

2 at all. 

3 MR. KATZ: No, he was just far from 

4 his mike. He wasn't on mute. But now we can't 

5 hear him. 

6 CHAIR MUNN: Still not hearing 

7 anything. 

8 MS. K. BEHLING: What he's suggesting 

9 is that we didn't want, obviously, the dose 

10 reconstructors to have to go back through 500 and 

11 something and we wanted to be sure that this data 

12 was in some tabulated format. But we saw bottom13 line dose numbers, but I think we still need to 

14 look at the supporting data that was used to 

15 develop those doses. 

16 MR. KATZ: So that's fine. I mean, 

17 we can just continue this as in progress, and 

18 it's in SC&A's hands. 

19 CHAIR MUNN: Right. 

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, we'll send a 

21 template. 

22 MR. KATZ: Yes, yes. 
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Now, Ted, all we need 

2 is a report back from SC&A that they've confirmed 

3 it. We don't need the template in order to --

4 MR. KATZ: Right, right.

5 CHAIR MUNN: And that will take care 

6 of item number three, Finding Number 3. But we 

7 still need something from NIOSH, I believe, for 

8 Finding 4, correct? 

9 MS. MARION-MOSS: Yes, Wanda, this is 

10 Lori. I believe Finding 4 was that we would 

11 revise the template in regards to the radium-226 

12 and thorium-230 equilibrium ratio, and we're 

13 still working on that and we should have that by 

14 the next meeting. 

15 CHAIR MUNN: So it's being corrected, 

16 is it? The template? 

17 MS. MARION-MOSS: Yes. We need to 

18 make a correction.

19 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. Very good. So we 

20 have an action from NIOSH on both of them, but 

21 next time we'll hear back from SC&A. Okay.

22 MR. KATZ: But I think a 
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1 clarification. Lori, have you already agreed 

2 with the finding before it was in abeyance 

3 awaiting you to actually make a change to the 

4 template, or are you just agreeing with the 

5 finding now and saying you're going to make such 

6 a change, or something else? 

7 MS. MARION-MOSS: No, back in April -

8 -

9 MR. KATZ: Okay, okay. So it already 

10 was in effect, should have been in abeyance.

11 MS. MARION-MOSS: Right. So it's in 

12 abeyance now.

13 MR. KATZ: Okay, good, alright.

14 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, that's where we have 

15 it, I believe.

16 MR. KATZ: Okay, thanks. 

17 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. I will 

18 untangle that in my own mind offline. Anything 

19 else on PER 47? 

20 MS. K. BEHLING: Wanda, one question. 

21 Should Finding 3 state in abeyance, or did I hear 

22 someone say we should now put this in progress? 
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1 MR. KATZ: Well, I'm not sure why it 

2 was in abeyance if you had an answer in the first 

3 place already with respect to the template, 

4 right? We just learned -- 

5 MS. K. BEHLING: I guess we were 

6 waiting to see the template. 

7 MS. GOGLIOTTI: We can change it to 

8 in progress in the BRS.

9 MR. KATZ: Yes, okay. 

10 MS. K. BEHLING: Alright. I just 

11 wanted to verify.

12 PER 0053 - Case Selection Status 

13 CHAIR MUNN: That's good. All clear 

14 on PER 47? Then we'll move on to, we have a 

15 chemical PER, 53. We have Hans' report on that 

16 because NIOSH has already fulfilled its 

17 obligation and provided the cases, and the 

18 selection was made and Hans has a report for us. 

19 Are you there, Hans?

20 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay. I'm sorry.

21 CHAIR MUNN: That's quite alright. 

22 DR. H. BEHLING: I had problems with 
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1 my headset here. It's been acting up. 

2 MR. KATZ: Hans, before you get 

3 started, just please be very careful not to 

4 really discuss Chapter 6 of individual cases. 

5 DR. H. BEHLING: I have been warned 

6 by my wife, and she's sitting right here ready to 

7 hit me if I say something I'm not supposed to.

8 MR. KATZ: Okay. Thanks, Hans. 

9 CHAIR MUNN: She has her hand on the 

10 mute button. 

11 DR. H. BEHLING: Okay. Anyway, I 

12 just wanted to briefly review the one case that 

13 was reworked and evaluated on behalf of the 

14 Allied Chemical Corporation with regard to PER 

15 53. Anyway, I wanted to briefly just give a 

16 little bit of a background so that everyone is on 

17 par with the issues here. 

18 The PER 53 was issued as a result of 

19 significant issues to the Site Profile for Allied 

20 Chemical, and I can just briefly review what some 

21 of these issues were. Number one, there was new 

22 guidance in Section 4.1 of the TBD for the 
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1 assignment of external doses for periods when 

2 monitoring records were incomplete and missing, 

3 and the revised version recommends an approach 

4 for filling the gaps in dosimetry by means of 

5 uses adjacent time periods with available dose 

6 data. 

7 The second issue that was incorporated 

8 into the revision was additions to revised 

9 isotopic ratios for non-uranium radionuclide 

10 intakes in a residual period, and there was some 

11 increase in mode of unmonitored neutron dose from 

12 1969 to 1976. And there was also not just in 

13 addition to revisions to the TBD but there was 

14 also they coincided in time, the revision 

15 coincided in time with changes to OTIB-70, the 

16 dose reconstruction, during residual periods at 

17 the time referenced for the facility. And that 

18 particular revision changed the source term, the 

19 patient factor, from 0.01 per day to 0.067, which 

20 is an increase in the potential exposures and 

21 dose during the residual period.

22 The revisions that were incorporated 
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1 into Revision 2 involves all job types at the 

2 facility. Also, it incorporated dose time frames 

3 during the operational period, as well as the 

4 residual period. And on behalf of the PER 63, 

5 NIOSH had identified 93 claims that mandated the 

6 recalculation of the dose, and, of the 93 revised 

7 dose reconstructions performed by NIOSH under PER 

8 63, the resulting Probability of Causation values 

9 were all below 45, so none of them exceeded the 

10 threshold for being compensable.

11 On behalf of the commitment under 

12 subtask 4, SC&A recommended that at least one 

13 dose reconstruction should be evaluated, but that 

14 was conditional that it was an individual that 

15 was employed during the operational period, as 

16 well as the residual period. And when I look at 

17 the data here in the teleconference call on May 

18 16th, 2016, the procedure review Subcommittee 

19 tasked SC&A to review one case that was provided 

20 to us by NIOSH that met that criteria. This 

21 individual was employed during the operational 

22 and during the residual period.
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1 And at this point, I think, Kathy, can 

2 you pull up -- okay. I just want to briefly go 

3 over the actual changes that occurred that appear 

4 in Table 3-1 which compares the dose estimates 

5 identified in the previous and reworked PERs, and 

6 there were really a total of five changes that 

7 were identified in bold print. And you'll see 

8 that in the first one there were two cancers, by 

9 the way, for this individual, which you can see. 

10 And then, therefore, you have four columns: the 

11 first cancer, the previous dose, the revised dose 

12 for the first cancer. And same thing for the 

13 second cancer: the previous dose and the revised 

14 dose.

15 For the first change that you see for 

16 external dose, the cancer was revised from 2.075 

17 rem to 2.684 rem, and that was based on an 

18 increase in dose that reflects the increase of 

19 the non-penetrating dose component from 9.36. 

20 But, in essence, this change would take the 

21 interpretation guidance in ORAUT-OTIB-0017, the 

22 interpretation of dosimetry data for assignment 
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1 of shallow dose, incorporated into the revision 

2 of the Site Profile.

3 The second one is the unmonitored 

4 neutron doses to cancers that is now in the SEC 

5 of external unmonitored neutron dose, which is 

6 the third row of the table. And the change value 

7 of 0.094 rem to 0.104 rem is a modest site 

8 increase and reflects the change in the neutron 

9 dose rate between Revision 1 and Revision 2 of 

10 the Site Profile that was changed under Revision 

11 2. And that's the third issue that was changed, 

12 the internal dose that increased on behalf of the 

13 first cancer from 4.912 to 5.033 rem, while the 

14 internal dose to the other cancer decreased from 

15 3.703 to 3.351 rem. This increases the rates of 

16 internal dose to these two cancers respectively 

17 with respect to the combined impact of the 

18 changes in Revision 2 to the Site Profile 

19 involving non-uranium radionuclides in the 

20 depletion rate of separating in the residual 

21 period as defined by the revised OTIB-70. 

22 All of the numbers were only modestly 
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1 changed, and we identified, SC&A identified the 

2 fact that all of the revisions that had been 

3 introduced had been adequately reflected in the 

4 revision of this particular dose reconstruction 

5 and there were no findings. As a result, SC&A 

6 recommends closure of PER 53. 

7 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you, Hans. Any 

8 comments or suggestions? 

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I recommend 

10 that we accept the recommendation. 

11 CHAIR MUNN: I certainly would 

12 confer. Josie? 

13 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, I don't have any 

14 comments, and I agree with accepting the 

15 conclusion.

16 PER 0054 - Status 

17 CHAIR MUNN: The entry needs to be 

18 that the Subcommittee has considered this item 

19 and accepts the recommendation that it be closed. 

20 And we can move on to -- thank you, Hans -- move 

21 on to PER 54. I'm uncertain on this one as to 

22 who has the action. At the time of our last 
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1 meeting, we were expecting NIOSH to have this 

2 action, but I don't know what's transpired since 

3 then. 

4 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes, this is Kathy. 

5 Has Bob Anigstein joined? 

6 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I'm here. 

7 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, good. 

8 MS. K. BEHLING: Good. This had to 

9 do with whether, during the session where I 

10 present to the Subcommittee the new PERs and new 

11 OTIBs that are out there, you know, for your 

12 consideration as to whether you want us to review 

13 them, one of them was the carborundum PER 54, and 

14 there was discussion that perhaps we do not need 

15 to look at this PER because there's an SEC in 

16 progress and until the SEC is finalized or 

17 whatever. And at the time, I don't think Bob was 

18 on the phone, and I wanted to be sure that he was 

19 in agreement with that. And I think there was 

20 some email or something sent out by Bob that 

21 indicated he did look this over and discuss this 

22 with NIOSH and he's in agreement that we can wait. 
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1 Am I correct on that, Bob? 

2 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu 

3 Hinnefeld. Can everybody hear me? 

4 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, we can.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Is anybody saying 

6 anything? 

7 CHAIR MUNN: I'm saying something, 

8 but I don't know anyone else is. 

9 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Can everybody hear 

10 me? 

11 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, I can hear Bob 

12 Anigstein. 

13 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I can hear you 

14 now, Bob. 

15 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Kathy, are we talking 

16 about the Carborundum PER? 

17 CHAIR MUNN: Yes. 

18 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes. 

19 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes, that was -- okay. 

20 The thing with the Carborundum PER, in my 

21 opinion, this was a very minor thing --

22 CHAIR MUNN: I can barely hear you, 
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1 Bob. 

2 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay, one second. 

3 CHAIR MUNN: I can barely hear you.

4 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay. Better?

5 CHAIR MUNN: Much, much better.

6 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay. Yes, my 

7 problem is I hear two phones. One I hear on 

8 better, and the other one people hear me better. 

9 So I'm going to sometimes have to say say again 

10 being on this phone. What happened with 

11 Carborundum was they originally did it purely 

12 based on TBD-6000, and then there was a revision 

13 to TBD-6000 somewhere in 2011, so they redid the 

14 Carborundum based on new values in TBD-6000. 

15 They're really minor changes. 

16 However, since then there was an SEC 

17 and there was a major change in the approach to 

18 doing the characterization of the site. Much 

19 more research was done by NIOSH on the site, and 

20 the SEC report essentially is like a Site 

21 Profile. So it seemed that, eventually, there's 

22 going to be, once the SEC, which is still in 
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1 progress, once the SEC has voted on by the Board, 

2 which I believe is scheduled to be at the next 

3 March Board meeting, there will be much more 

4 extensive changes. So it doesn't seem very 

5 worthwhile to review these relatively minor 

6 changes that are under -- what is it? Sixty7 four.

8 CHAIR MUNN: So these are essentially 

9 in abeyance until the SEC report is complete? 

10 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I would agree with 

11 that, yes.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. 

13 DR. ANIGSTEIN: In other words, the 

14 Board considered the SEC at the last Board 

15 meeting and went back to NIOSH and requested 

16 NIOSH for more information.

17 CHAIR MUNN: But in any case, we're 

18 holding it in abeyance until we have the report 

19 on the SEC, right? 

20 MS. K. BEHLING: Correct, yes. 

21 CHAIR MUNN: I think so, yes. I think 

22 that's correct. So let's make a notation to that 
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1 effect. 

2 MR. KATZ: Right. And we may never 

3 even do this PER because --

4 MS. K. BEHLING: That's right. 

5 MR. KATZ: -- because it's kind of a 

6 moot point.

7 CHAIR MUNN: It goes on our abeyance 

8 list. 

9 MS. MARION-MOSS: Wanda, this is 

10 Lori. What are we putting in abeyance? 

11 CHAIR MUNN: The entire effort to look 

12 at PER 54.

13 MS. MARION-MOSS: Okay, thank you.

14 CHAIR MUNN: As was just commented, 

15 we may not even do this one. It depends on the 

16 outcome of the SEC report, which is pending. 

17 Then it is getting very near to the 2:30 time 

18 that we anticipated doing something else, but I 

19 don't know whether we have all the people aboard 

20 that we have committed to. 

21 MR. KATZ: Well, I mean, I think the 

22 person that's missing is John Poston. John, are 
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1 you on the line? Look, I'll try to call John 

2 Poston, but he wasn't expecting to join until 

3 2:30 so . . . 

4 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. Then let's go 

5 ahead and move on to PER 59. And I think there 

6 were actually three other PERs that were being 

7 looked at in terms of criteria that we were 

8 expecting from SEC, I believe, from SC&A. 

9 MS. K. BEHLING: This is Kathy. This 

10 PER 59, along with PER -- and PER 59 is Norton 

11 Company -- along with PER 61, which is Bridgeport 

12 Brass; PER 63 is Alcoa Pennsylvania; and PER 65 

13 is Anaconda. During the last meeting, the 

14 Subcommittee agreed that there should be a full 

15 review of those four PERs. However, Ted 

16 indicated that, because it's a full review, it 

17 had to be presented to the full Board and that 

18 they had to concur with that.

19 Now, I believe, Ted, just a few days 

20 ago I had sent out a memo that had a table in it 

21 with these PERs in it, and I believe, have you 

22 fully briefed that to the full Board now, Ted? 
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1 MR. KATZ: No, not yet because I need 

2 all the materials for the full Board, not this 

3 just. And so anything coming out of this meeting 

4 I'm going to provide to the Board, too. 

5 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay. So you are 

6 going to take care of making sure that the entire 

7 Board gets to look at this and make a decision?

8 MR. KATZ: Yes.

9 CHAIR MUNN: Hopefully, yes. 

10 Hopefully, that will be on the agenda by the end 

11 of this month, right, Ted? 

12 MR. KATZ: Yes, it's for the Board 

13 meeting at the end of this month. And because I 

14 think three or all of those are ones where SC&A 

15 hasn't reviewed, in effect, the Site Profile, 

16 whatever it is, because these don't necessarily 

17 have Site Profiles, per se. I think this is 

18 going to be a case where we recommend to the 

19 Board, the Board is going to want to have the 

20 whole Site Profile reviewed in effect.

21 CHAIR MUNN: A full review. 

22 MR. KATZ: Yes, not just the PER 
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1 changes because I don't think it's reviewed in 

2 the first place.

3 CHAIR MUNN: And, Ted, do you need 

4 anything more from me to present to the Board? 

5 MR. KATZ: So what I have is the table 

6 with the various discussions.

7 CHAIR MUNN: Okay.

8 MR. KATZ: If there's more detail as 

9 background for each of those, that will be handy. 

10 But, otherwise, I think the Board can deal with 

11 minimal information.

12 MS. K. BEHLING: Okay, yes. Because 

13 in that table, I put together just a summary and 

14 how the doses were effected and number of cases 

15 involved and our recommendations. 

16 MR. KATZ: Right. And I'm just 

17 talking about really your recommendation column, 

18 which is where you, I think, address the fact 

19 that SC&A hasn't reviewed those sites.

20 CHAIR MUNN: Correct.

21 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

22 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. Just 
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1 a question for clarity. The name of each of 

2 those are very familiar, and it sounds like they 

3 may very well have been cases that were reviewed. 

4 And in the process of reviewing those cases, to 

5 varying degrees, these sites may or may not have 

6 had a Site Profile at the time, and this could go 

7 back a ways. And, of course, if the case was 

8 reviewed, either the DR itself contains the 

9 information necessary to review the case or there 

10 was, it made reference to, for example, TBD-6000 

11 or it had a Site Profile, at least at that time. 

12 I just want a little clarification. 

13 It sounds like there are, there are Site Profiles 

14 for these that were not previously reviewed, and 

15 I'm presuming they were not reviewed, at least in 

16 part, in support of the cases that were reviewed. 

17 The names you just named sound awful familiar. 

18 CHAIR MUNN: I think you're correct, 

19 John. I think we have, we had looked at them not 

20 in this same context as some of our other reviews, 

21 I think. But you're right. These are not 

22 strangers to us.
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1 DR. MAURO: Okay.

2 CHAIR MUNN: We've all had, we've all 

3 had at least some cases from these sites before 

4 us.

5 MR. KATZ: So, John, anyway, I think, 

6 I'm not sure that's what you're getting at. But 

7 in any event, whether you have already, in 

8 effect, reviewed them through a DR review or some 

9 other means, that will be, obviously, if you see, 

10 once you get started on one of these taskings, 

11 assuming the Board makes these taskings, that 

12 you've already done some work and that's already 

13 water under the bridge, that just makes it 

14 easier.

15 DR. MAURO: Good. No, that helps 

16 clarify. 

17 MR. KATZ: Okay.

18 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. Then we will 

19 continue to keep these on our radar until we see 

20 what the Board does and what time frame we're 

21 likely to have after that. That's good to hear.

22 Anyone else, any comments about those 
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1 four that we just were discussing? 

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: The numbers, it's, 

3 in addition to O-59, I think O-49 and O-73. Then 

4 was there a fourth one?

5 CHAIR MUNN: No.

6 MR. KATZ: Yes, there's a fourth one. 

7 CHAIR MUNN: We have 59, 61, 63, and 

8 65 in that grouping, correct. 

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: O-59, O-63 --

10 CHAIR MUNN: No, O-61 and O-63, O-65.

11 MR. KATZ: Right. And, Paul, you'll 

12 receive, along with the rest of the Board, a memo 

13 from me with these items anyway. 

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. 

15 MR. KATZ: You're welcome. 

16 CHAIR MUNN: Do we have a report back 

17 with respect to Dr. Poston yet? 

18 MR. KATZ: Let's check on the phone. 

19 Dr. Poston, have you joined us? I sent him, in 

20 the interim, an email reminder, but we're still 

21 two minutes early. I don't know what his course 

22 schedule is and whether this was adjusting time. 
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1 I know he intended to join us. 

2 CHAIR MUNN: Well, I hesitate to 

3 undertake the next item that I have, which is 

4 penciled in, which is the subtask 4 reports on 

5 four PERs, and I'd like us --

6 MR. KATZ: Okay. If you'll just hold 

7 for a minute, let me try to call him.

8 CHAIR MUNN: That's fine.

9 MR. KATZ: Okay.

10 CHAIR MUNN: And we can take a ten11 minute break, if we'd like.

12 MR. KATZ: Okay. John, there he is. 

13 MEMBER POSTON: Yes, I'm here. 

14 MR. KATZ: Okay, super. So that's 

15 what we were asking about, whether you joined 

16 yet. 

17 MEMBER POSTON: I was just waiting for 

18 an opportune time to say hello.

19 MR. KATZ: Well, thank you, John. 

20 I'm glad you could join us.

21 CHAIR MUNN: This is an opportune 

22 time, and howdy. Was someone trying to get my 
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1 attention just before --

2 MS. K. BEHLING: This is Kathy. I 

3 was just going to suggest that perhaps we wanted 

4 to give control of the screen over to Bob. I 

5 know that this is his, I believe it's his first 

6 time using the software. 

7 MR. KATZ: Scary prospect. 

8 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, I think that's true. 

9 And he does have --

10 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Can I start 

11 presenting? 

12 CHAIR MUNN: I think you may persist 

13 --

14 MR. KATZ: So, Bob, why don't you see 

15 if you can get a hold of the screen from your 

16 invite. 

17 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay. Let me see if 

18 --

19 MR. KATZ: If you can't, someone else 

20 can change the slides for you.

21 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I should start now, 

22 right?
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1 MR. KATZ: Yes. I mean, first, you 

2 have to put something up on the screen.

3 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes, exactly.

4 MR. KATZ: Yes. So there's a little 

5 desktop symbol, Bob. 

6 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I know how to do it. 

7 It's just that my computer is slow.

8 MR. KATZ: Okay, good.

9 MS. JESKE: This is Patricia Jeske 

10 just joining the meeting. 

11 MR. KATZ: Oh, welcome, Patricia.

12 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Here we go. And, 

13 everyone --

14 MR. KATZ: And for the court reporter, 

15 that's another member of the public, Patricia 

16 Jeske. 

17 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Can everyone see me? 

18 CHAIR MUNN: We can. How wonderful. 

19 Thank you, Bob. 

20 MR. KATZ: Yes, you're a star, Bob.

21 CHAIR MUNN: You are. And even I have 

22 a screen to watch you on. That's good. 
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1 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes, just a full 

2 screen. Should I start? 

3 CHAIR MUNN: Please do.

4 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay.

5 MR. KATZ: One thing I should just 

6 note, I just want to make sure I have Jim Neton 

7 and Dave Allen on the line. 

8 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Very good. Okay.

9 MR. KATZ: No, wait. I mean, I don't 

10 know that. Do we have Jim and Dave Allen on the 

11 line? 

12 MR. ALLEN: This is Dave Allen. I'm 

13 on the line. 

14 MR. KATZ: Okay, great. Jim, are you 

15 on the line, too? 

16 DR. NETON: I'm sorry, yes. 

17 MR. KATZ: Okay, great. Thanks. 

18 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay.

19 MR. KATZ: Okay. Sorry, Bob.

20 PER 0057 - Case Selection Status 

21 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay. So we were 

22 asked to do, under Subtask 4 we were given, NIOSH 
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1 had selected five cases from PER 57, which is the 

2 Appendix BB Revision 1. There also has since 

3 been an Appendix BB Revision 2, but we're not 

4 addressing that at this time.

5 We had three findings, three things 

6 that we call findings at this point, let's put it 

7 that way. The first finding and probably the 

8 most significant is that there is an 

9 administrative category under Appendix BB, both 

10 Rev 1 and Rev 2, which, and I'm quoting from the 

11 appendix, the administrative category consists of 

12 people that spent most of their time in their 

13 office environment and did not routinely access 

14 the operating areas of the plant. 

15 Now, we did a complete review of the 

16 PER cases, in addition to the ones, just for this 

17 purpose, in addition to the ones that were 

18 assigned to us, and when I say complete review I 

19 mean a very cursory review, and identified which 

20 ones were put in the administrative category. 

21 And one of the cases that we were assigned, plus 

22 one other one, we found that, even though the job 
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1 title sounded like an administrative job, like 

2 supervisor, manager, something along that line, 

3 the description in the CATI actually puts them in 

4 the plant. Their office location was in the 

5 plant, and they frequently had to leave their 

6 office to inspect the steel, to inspect the 

7 casting, to inspect plant operations. So that 

8 does not fit the category of administrative, 

9 which is a very occasional, I believe is what was 

10 discussed here in the Work Group meeting was 

11 somebody, a secretary, working in a separate 

12 building. I mean, GSI did have a separate 

13 administrative building on the site but at some 

14 distance from the steel plant, and the hypothesis 

15 was supposedly a manager sends his secretary into 

16 the plant and says, you know, Joe, the boss wants 

17 to talk to you, would you come with me? So this 

18 would be very occasional.

19 These workers were not in that, did 

20 not fit that description. They were routinely 

21 in the plant, even though they were not 

22 steelworkers, per se, and therefore should not be 
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1 in the administrative category.

2 Finding 2. This gets a little 

3 complicated. NIOSH prepared a set of, a fairly 

4 complex set of workbooks to calculate doses from 

5 intakes of uranium. Instead of doing a separate 

6 calculation for each worker running IMBA, they 

7 had a workbook so that, for a certain given intake 

8 during the given year, this would be the dose 

9 during that year and subsequent years. And we 

10 confirmed with a completely independent 

11 calculation and got very close to NIOSH numbers.

12 And that worked very fine when it's a uniform 

13 exposure for the entire year. 

14 However, if the exposure is not for an 

15 entire year, what NIOSH did was they simply used 

16 the same procedure but prorated the daily 

17 intakes. Instead of reducing the time period, 

18 they kept the time period as one year but reduced 

19 the intakes in proportion, as I'll show in a 

20 moment, whereas a more exact dose assessment, 

21 which we did in a couple of cases, was to use the 

22 actual daily intakes as specified in Appendix BB 
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1 and used the actual dates. 

2 And an example, which applies to all 

3 workers that would have been there in 1952, so 

4 this is not any individual worker, the period of 

5 operations began October 1st, '52, so this gave 

6 92 days in 1952 where the worker could have been 

7 exposed.

8 The inhaled intake in 1952 was 

9 specified as 114 dpm per calendar day. So the 

10 NIOSH method was to take the 114 and multiply it 

11 by 92 days and divide it by 365 days for the year, 

12 and then they have a derived amount of 28.79 dpm 

13 per calendar day, and the exposure is assumed to 

14 take place starting January 1st to December 31st, 

15 1952. And the lung dose calculated by any worker 

16 that would be in this category, the lung dose 

17 would be 0.33 rem in 1952. It would be more just 

18 during, the liver dose, during that year.

19 However, if you do the more exact 

20 method and still assuming 114 dpm per calendar 

21 day, but now the exposure doesn't start until 

22 October 1st, which is when, in fact, it did start 
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1 and go through December 31st, the lung dose for 

2 1952, the doses from this intake to the lungs in 

3 1952 is 0.2 rem. So the NIOSH dose is 63 percent 

4 higher. The explanation is because the uranium 

5 starts to accumulate in January and, therefore, 

6 has a longer time to reside in the lungs than the 

7 liver dose.

8 Conversely, if there was a case where 

9 a worker left the employment, say early in the 

10 year, his dose for that year from the intake would 

11 be understated because it will be assumed by the 

12 NIOSH method that he continue receiving the dose, 

13 the intake, during the entire year at a much lower 

14 daily rate, whereas, in fact, he would have 

15 gotten it all early in the year and that uranium 

16 would sit in his lungs and deliver dose later.

17 So in both cases that could make a 

18 difference. And when you're talking about some 

19 cases where the PoC, and this has actually 

20 happened very, very close to 50 percent, this 

21 could make a difference one way or the other. 

22 And then Finding 3 was simply an error 
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1 in the calculation where the worker's file 

2 described when he left the employment or when the 

3 cancer occurred when the dose calculation should 

4 have stopped and the actual calculation file 

5 showed that he stopped a year later, so there was 

6 an extra year which was simply an error in the 

7 calculation. And in this particular instance, 

8 it probably made very little difference, but it 

9 points to a QA issue that such an error had taken 

10 place.

11 Okay. The rest we call observations 

12 in the sense that we're not certain whether they 

13 are major effects or not in the individual cases, 

14 but the overarching issues that apply to all 

15 cases and, in some cases, they may make more of 

16 a difference than in other cases. 

17 So the first one is the uncertainty 

18 distribution of photon and neutron DCF, dose 

19 conversation factors. And NIOSH, in all cases 

20 from the ones we examined, where the external 

21 exposure was specified as fixed numbers in a 

22 given time period, they also used fixed values of 
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1 the DCF to convert a dose to a given organ. 

2 However, this is inconsistent with the discussion 

3 in Chapter 5, I think it is, of OCAS-IG-001, which 

4 states that a triangular distribution around a 

5 DCF would be appropriate, and the one recommended 

6 is, the mode of distribution should be the 

7 effective DCF for the most likely geometry, which 

8 is, in fact, what is used as the fixed value. 

9 However, the minimum should be the geometry that 

10 gives the lower DCF and the maximum geometry 

11 gives the highest DCF, and this was not done in 

12 this instance.

13 The top table here is taken straight 

14 out of, it's simply cut and paste, OCAS-IG-001, 

15 and it shows the various values of the DCF for 

16 converting exposure and roentgen to one dose for 

17 photons in the 30 to 250 keV range, energy range. 

18 So the table below lists three alternatives. It 

19 starts out with the fixed value, which is what 

20 NIOSH used, and three alternative distributions 

21 that should be considered. One of them would be 

22 considering the effective dose -- not effective 
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1 dose. Cancel that. The effective DCF and using 

2 the triangular distribution for the geometry that 

3 gives the minimum DCF, which is the isotropic 

4 exposure coming from all directions; the mode 

5 being the AP, anteroposterior; and the max being 

6 the posterior-anterior, PA. And in such a case, 

7 you get, probably the most significant value is 

8 the 95th percentile of that distribution because 

9 IREP takes the 99th percentile, but it's combined 

10 of different distributions. Probably the 95th 

11 percentile is close to effective example. And 

12 here, instead of 0.986, you get 1.032, so it was 

13 five-percent higher.

14 The next one, which is the most, which 

15 seems to be the most practical because it takes 

16 in the entire range, it goes from the minimum DCF 

17 to the maximum DCF of all the numbers in this 

18 table, and so that goes from a minimum of 0.128 

19 to a maximum of 1.26, and you get a 95th 

20 percentile of 1.135, which is about 15-percent 

21 higher than the fixed value.

22 And then, finally, there's the one 
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1 that NIOSH uses, and that's staying with the, 

2 contrary to the recommendation in Chapter 5 of 

3 OCAS-IG-001, it uses a range not of different 

4 geometries but a different energy range within 

5 that geometry, within the AP geometry. And based 

6 on that, this range, we end up with a 95th 

7 percentile of 1.078, which is about nine-percent 

8 higher.

9 So our recommendation is that there 

10 should be a distribution of DCF whenever external 

11 exposures are assigned fixed values. And a 

12 triangular distribution, the one on the second 

13 line here in the maximum range, is the most 

14 claimant-favorable.

15 Next, in the first ten years of the 

16 operation of the covered period, it was agreed on 

17 during the Work Group meetings that the external 

18 exposure would be modeled as a triangular 

19 distribution. And the graph here, the red 

20 triangle, represents that distribution. It goes 

21 from 6 point-something per year to 15 per year, 

22 which would be the stipulated regulatory limit 
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1 during that period of time. 

2 So here NIOSH employed, shown by the 

3 black triangle, the dose conversion factors to 

4 the lung over using the energy, the energy 

5 distribution here. And the way they combined it 

6 is it simply took the minimum of this triangular 

7 distribution and multiplied it by the minimum of 

8 this triangular distribution to get the blue, the 

9 minimum of the blue triangle. And they did the 

10 same thing with the mode, multiplied by this mode 

11 to get a mode close to one, so it looks almost 

12 the same. And then the maximum, again, times the 

13 max, and we get this.

14 So they ended up with another 

15 triangular distribution. Implicit in this 

16 assumption is that there is a perfect correlation 

17 between the uncertainty in the DCF and the 

18 uncertainty in the external exposure. But it's 

19 simply not scientifically correct. There's no 

20 reason why the two would be correlated. 

21 Therefore, the blue triangle, which is the 

22 distribution that they do use, we don't agree 
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1 with. 

2 Instead, what we did was we did a 

3 Monte Carlo sampling. We simply sampled from 

4 this distribution. We took one value from this 

5 distribution and one value from this 

6 distribution, randomly sampled, multiplied the 

7 two together, and repeated this procedure one 

8 million times. 

9 That sounds scary, but that's only two 

10 minutes of computer time once we get set up. And 

11 we ended up with a distribution on the right which 

12 looks very similar to a normal distribution. 

13 There is a cutoff here, which is an artifact of 

14 the plotting program. In reality, it goes on, 

15 the maximum value would be about the same as this 

16 maximum value. 

17 And it's slightly asymmetric, and 

18 there's a little more detail on the right. But 

19 for practical purposes, given that IREP, you 

20 know, limits how many distributions you can put 

21 in, a normal distribution would be a very good 

22 approximation, and the same Monte Carlo programs, 
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1 a program called Crystal Ball, which is an add2 on to Excel, would tell you what the median is, 

3 what the standard deviation is, and that simply 

4 defines a normal distribution.

5 So we would recommend that NIOSH looks 

6 into doing something like this. It has to be 

7 done for each organ, but only has to be done once, 

8 so it would be a very modest effort. And then 

9 this could be put into the worksheets.

10 The next observation we have is one of 

11 the IREP inputs is to specify whether the 

12 exposure rate is acute or chronic. So in the 

13 case of external exposures, we observed, looking 

14 at at least five cases, that it appears that NIOSH 

15 seems to have a blanket policy that all photon 

16 and electron external dose rates are designated 

17 acute and all neutron external dose rates are 

18 designated chronic. 

19 In reality, some exposure scenarios 

20 produce doses that are inherently chronic. For 

21 instance, during the residual period, the 

22 worker's in contact with this vacuum cleaner for 
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1 3,250 hours a year. Well, that's a chronic 

2 exposure. It's getting the same exposure minute3 by-minute, hour-by-hour, every single workday.

4 Similarly, a worker in contact -- the 

5 layout man is in contact with irradiated steel 

6 for 3,250 hours per year. Again, that's a 

7 chronic exposure. You have a piece of steel in 

8 front of you, you're marking it up, working with 

9 it. And that would be much more like a chronic 

10 exposure rate.

11 On the other hand, the neutron 

12 exposure rate, which is listed as chronic, should 

13 be more -- would seem to be more likely to be 

14 acute, because the neutrons come from the 

15 betatron itself. And we assume that the worker 

16 is just outside the betatron building and he's 

17 getting some sort of radiation from the betatron. 

18 Well, the betatron is pulsed 180 times a second, 

19 and each injection pulse is 4 microseconds. So 

20 there was about 5.5 milliseconds between pulses, 

21 and the pulse is 4 microseconds, so it's less 

22 than 1/1000th of that time. And then you add to 
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1 that the fact that the betatron duty cycle is 

2 only 41 percent. 

3 So the worker is really exposed for, 

4 I'm just guesstimating, like a few seconds during 

5 a day, or less than a minute. I think I came up 

6 with eight and a half minutes or eight and a half 

7 seconds during the year. This is vague memory. 

8 But it's clear that it's an intense intermittent 

9 exposure, and therefore -- and then, furthermore, 

10 since the photons from that same source, in the 

11 NIOSH model dose reconstruction, are 

12 characterized as being acute, it doesn't make 

13 sense, from the same betatron, from the same 

14 betatron target, that the neutrons would be 

15 chronic and the photons would be acute. So we 

16 recommend that the neutrons should be acute in 

17 this instance.

18 Finally, there was a question of 

19 assigning medical X-rays. All GSI workers were 

20 assigned doses from medical X-rays. However, in 

21 reviewing the CATI reports, NIOSH seemed to 

22 ignore the worker's statement when he answered, 
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1 no, medical X-rays were not required, at least in 

2 this instance. So it doesn't seem logical that 

3 he should be assigned medical X-rays when he said 

4 he didn't have any. I thought the CATI report 

5 should be paid attention to.

6 And then, finally, was the place of 

7 employment. Now, the majority of the cases 

8 selected by NIOSH for SC&A review were employed 

9 Granite City Steel, not at GSI. Granite City, 

10 so we reviewed them anyway, but they used the 

11 methodology for Granite City Steel, so we 

12 reviewed them as if they had been at GSI. But 

13 in fact, they weren't. And Granite City Steel 

14 was not a covered facility until 1974 when they 

15 acquired the GSI site. This was already during 

16 the residual period. GSI had shut down 

17 operations and simply sold them the grounds, 

18 which they then, because they were south of the 

19 Granite City facility, they're referred to as the 

20 South Plant, as opposed to the old one that was 

21 the North Plant.

22 So the only Granite City Steel 
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1 employees that would be covered for exposure 

2 would be the residual contamination, only if they 

3 worked in the South Plant between 1974 and 1993. 

4 And there was a DOL circular to that effect. So 

5 this is something that should be noted in future 

6 cases, that the CATI report, in which case gives 

7 the work location -- and this is something that, 

8 even if NIOSH comes across a case, it seems that 

9 they should review it and notify DOL as to whether 

10 or not that worker, in fact, was working at the 

11 covered facility.

12 Okay. I'm done but happy to answer 

13 questions.

14 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you very much, Bob. 

15 That's a thorough review.

16 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Excuse me, Wanda. 

17 I'm having a little trouble hearing you.

18 CHAIR MUNN: I was just thanking you 

19 for a very thorough report.

20 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Oh, thank you.

21 CHAIR MUNN: It's much appreciated. 

22 Questions, comments? 
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: This is Ziemer. I 

2 have a question, Bob, on the acute versus chronic 

3 definitions. I get what you're saying about the 

4 pulsed radiation that looks acute in the sense

5 that the pulse time is very short. However, you 

6 have the issue of individuals being exposed, even 

7 though at a short, on a daily, for example, basis. 

8 So although there are bursts of radiation given, 

9 it's not like all their exposure for the year 

10 occurred in one day. It's still chronic in the 

11 sense of it being stretched out over the year.

12 My understanding of the way these 

13 biological sets are evaluated is that the chronic 

14 really applies to the case where you have 

15 repeated doses over an extended period of time. 

16 I'm not sure -- I may not be aware because I 

17 haven't dealt with accelerated radiation that 

18 much in terms of the pulsed stuff, and maybe John 

19 Poston can fill me in on that a little bit, but 

20 is that acute just because it's pulsed? And 

21 maybe, Jim Neton, you can help me on that.

22 MEMBER POSTON: I sort of have the 
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1 same concern. I was trying to listen carefully 

2 to what Bob was saying, but I don't think that's 

3 the way I would have looked at it. But I'll have 

4 to think about it a little bit more before I jump 

5 in. 

6 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. I 

7 have a thought on this. I think the acute versus 

8 chronic issue goes to IREP and the way in which 

9 they calculate the Probability of Causation and 

10 the distinction that's made between when that 

11 particular dose is called acute and when it's 

12 called chronic. And there's a quantitative 

13 effect that comes out of that when you're doing 

14 IREP.

15 I don't have the answer, but I think 

16 the answer --

17 DR. NETON: John, you're right. Go 

18 ahead. 

19 DR. MAURO: Okay. All I was going to 

20 say is I think the answer to this question lies 

21 there, that distinction --

22 DR. NETON: Well, it is, and it has 
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1 to do with the dose and dose rate effectiveness 

2 factor that's applied. And we typically pick the 

3 one that gives the higher Probability of 

4 Causation given in a certain exposure mode. And 

5 in the case of photons, it's better to be one 

6 way. In there case of neutrons, it's better to 

7 be the other way. And that gives you a higher 

8 PoC value. That's why it's done that way. 

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: It really has to do 

10 with the calculation itself. 

11 DR. NETON: Exactly.

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Thanks for clarifying 

13 that.

14 DR. ANIGSTEIN: My thought would be 

15 that, first of all, with the neutrons, whatever 

16 it is, the neutron and the photon from the same 

17 source should be the same type of exposure. And 

18 my impression, and I would be pleased to be 

19 corrected, is that the acute usually gives you 

20 the higher PoC. It has greater effects. That's 

21 --

22 DR. NETON: That depends on whether 
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1 it's neutrons or photons.

2 DR. ANIGSTEIN: There's a difference 

3 with neutrons and photons?

4 DR. NETON: Yes, it is. It's the 

5 opposite.

6 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I see. Okay. That's 

7 why I said observation and not a finding because 

8 it's just a topic for discussion. We don't have 

9 a strong position on this.

10 CHAIR MUNN: Well, it's certainly a 

11 curiosity, and I appreciate the comments that 

12 have been made with respect to clearing that up. 

13 Common sense would follow Bob's rationale, but I 

14 can certainly see what you're saying, Jim. 

15 MEMBER POSTON: It also goes back to 

16 what's happening to the observer, that is, the 

17 person being exposed. I mean, the badge that the 

18 person's wearing can't tell, you know, that 

19 they've been pulsed or a constant, because it 

20 looks like a constant if you're sitting out there 

21 with any kind of radiation detector. Unless it's 

22 very sensitive, you probably won't even see it 
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1 move in terms of when the beam is on and when the 

2 beam is off, so to speak.

3 CHAIR MUNN: Well, they're very rapid 

4 pulses, also. 

5 MEMBER POSTON: Yeah. 

6 CHAIR MUNN: So are we happy with --

7 can we accept then that the NIOSH approach in 

8 that regard is accurate, given the constraints 

9 under which those decisions must be made? It 

10 seems so to me. 

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yeah, that seems 

12 fine. I had a question on the medical, also. I 

13 understand Bob's concern about checking the CATI, 

14 and I'll ask Jim Neton this question: don't we 

15 establish for a facility either, yes, they do 

16 annual X-rays or they don't? And if they do, you 

17 assign it for everybody regardless of what the 

18 CATI says, you give them a medical exposure? 

19 DR. NETON: In general, yes. If it's 

20 decided that it's a medical X-ray that was 

21 administered, that will trump an individual case.

22 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Again, that's what we 
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1 made it an observation. We don't have a strong 

2 -- we're not coming down firmly.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yeah, it's only if 

4 it's an individual does it apply to the medical 

5 X-ray. If it's decided that at GSI we would 

6 assign it, everybody gets that exposure assigned 

7 whether or not they remember having it, right? 

8 CHAIR MUNN: Right, I believe. 

9 MR. ALLEN: Hi, Paul, this is Dave 

10 Allen. I just wanted to say that, for what 

11 you're talking about, you're absolutely right. 

12 We do look at the CATI, but we look at the CATI, 

13 there's an overall for the site, because the 

14 policy of taking x rays as a condition of 

15 employment is generally not going to be a case16 by-case decision that a site is going to make. 

17 They're going to make it for all the employees. 

18 And it's not unusual for the CATI, for 

19 one person to say they were not taken and another 

20 person saying they were and many people to say 

21 they don't know. So we kind of look at them 

22 overall and see if there's a clear answer or if 
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1 we just don't know. And if we don't know, we 

2 assign them. So we wouldn't assign or not assign 

3 based on a single CATI, but we might use the CATIs 

4 overall as a decision point for the site.

5 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay, that's 

6 reasonable. 

7 CHAIR MUNN: So this brings us to the 

8 big question with respect to the findings 

9 themselves. We have been given three specific 

10 findings. And, in my view, it's now appropriate 

11 for NIOSH to have an opportunity to respond to 

12 those in the appropriate fashion and the one to 

13 which we're accustomed, unless we can resolve any 

14 one of those three in discussion today.

15 What's your feeling, NIOSH? Can any 

16 one of these be resolved here in discussion, or 

17 do you need opportunity to report finally on all 

18 three?

19 MR. ALLEN: I think it might be worth 

20 discussing. I don't know if we can resolve them 

21 or not, but I think it's worth discussing today 

22 briefly.
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1 CHAIR MUNN: Then let's do that.

2 MR. ALLEN: Okay.

3 CHAIR MUNN: It's your mic. 

4 MR. ALLEN: Okay, Wanda. This is 

5 Dave Allen. Starting from the beginning there, 

6 Finding Number 1 was a finding that we had someone 

7 we assigned in the administrative category and 

8 Bob disagreed that it should have been 

9 administrative category and felt it should be 

10 radiography category. 

11 I went back, I looked at that 

12 particular case, and, I mean, the job title was 

13 something like office manager for that, and I 

14 expect it got assigned based on job title. If 

15 you dig into the CATI like Bob did, you find out 

16 the office was actually within the production 

17 area. And from discussions we've held in the 

18 past, that should have been probably assigned as 

19 a radiographer. 

20 And the question is, what do you do 

21 about that at this point? And, normally, it 

22 would be an error in an individual dose 
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1 reconstruction and then we'd decide how we're 

2 going to correct that error. In this particular 

3 case, that is, one of these people, it looks like 

4 they were not actually employed at that site. So 

5 I don't think, for the particular case, there's 

6 much we can do as far as correcting anything. 

7 I don't know if anybody has any 

8 feelings on that or not.

9 CHAIR MUNN: Do we have a single case 

10 there? 

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: As a matter of 

12 principle, you would agree that if the CATI did 

13 show that, then you have to take it into 

14 consideration and you have to go back and adjust 

15 the dose reconstruction, correct? 

16 MR. ALLEN: Yeah. We always have the 

17 possibility of an error one way or another 

18 somewhere. In this particular one, as long as 

19 we're going to say that somebody working in the 

20 office, and the office was within the production 

21 area, and that should be radiographer dose, then, 

22 yeah, that would be an error in the case.
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1 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Dave, I can't cite 

2 this on the phone, but if you look at the full 

3 report, towards the back, I believe, there was 

4 another case that we found, not one of the five 

5 cases that were assigned to us, where it was a 

6 GSI worker.

7 MR. ALLEN: Yeah, I did see that in 

8 your report, and I haven't had a chance to 

9 actually open up that particular one yet. But 

10 if that is the same situation, then the 

11 corrective action would be, you know, if someone 

12 has pointed out an error we've made, we would go 

13 back and contact Department of Labor and try to 

14 get that case back. 

15 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay, Dave, you and I 

16 can communicate offline on that, if you wish.

17 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. This 

18 raises an interesting point, just a policy issue. 

19 When we're doing a case, as Bob has just 

20 described, and it turned out in this particular 

21 case it's a moot point because he didn't work 

22 there, do we find ourselves in a situation where 
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1 we should be looking at other -- this is a very 

2 nice example where we say it looks like this a 

3 place, appropriately, where there's discretion on 

4 the part of the dose reconstructor on where do we 

5 assign a person. There's many such situations 

6 where this had the discretion that needs to be 

7 made, and in this particular case we did not agree 

8 with the discretion and we gave our reasons.

9 When we're in a similar situation in 

10 other cases, for other PERs, should we be doing 

11 that? That is, does it add value where we would 

12 go say it looks like they made a judgment error 

13 here and let's go take a look at how widespread 

14 this error might be or if this is just one of a 

15 kind. I guess a little direction, if you hadn't 

16 already resolved this, I'd like to hear, you 

17 know, your position regarding this matter. 

18 MR. ALLEN: I think that's a question 

19 for the Work Group, right, John? 

20 DR. MAURO: Yes, I think it's for the 

21 Work Group and maybe the Board. You know, it's 

22 sort of like the scope of our PER role, that we 
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1 sort of go outside and say, listen, you know, 

2 we're going to look around a little further to 

3 see if this is a problem that may have 

4 implications to other cases at this facility. I 

5 guess this goes towards the Work Group.

6 MR. KATZ: John, I can weigh in on 

7 this. I mean, it's really hard to imagine -- I 

8 mean, it all depends, I think, on whether there's 

9 some reason to suspect that there may be a 

10 widespread problem, because we're not trying to 

11 -- we're not getting a statistical sample of 

12 cases for any of these PERs, and that's not even 

13 the point. 

14 So I think were SC&A to be concerned 

15 that there may be a widespread problem, for 

16 whatever reason, I think the thing to do at that 

17 point is to state, to send a memo saying, "we've 

18 been reviewing this, you know, PER and we've come 

19 across this case and it has X problem with it, 

20 and we're concerned that this problem may be 

21 widespread and this is the reasons why we're 

22 concerned, and does NIOSH want to look at a 
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1 broader sample to see if this is a widespread 

2 problem," because it's not even necessarily SC&A 

3 that would go look and see if this is a widespread 

4 problem. 

5 DR. ANIGSTEIN: This is Bob. We 

6 looked at all the PER, all the cases under the 

7 PER, and only found one other case where this 

8 problem occurred.

9 MR. KATZ: Okay. So in this case, 

10 but I'm trying to answer, I guess, John's --

11 thanks, Bob, that's helpful. So here it does 

12 sound like it wasn't a widespread problem. But 

13 were you to have concerns, I think the thing to 

14 do anyway is to state your concerns, send them in 

15 a memo, and then the Work Group or the 

16 Subcommittee or the Board can consider. So I 

17 think that's what to do. 

18 DR. MAURO: Very good. And I 

19 appreciate that. Thank you. 

20 CHAIR MUNN: And I think Ted is 

21 absolutely correct. In response to your earlier 

22 question, John, that question has been pondered 
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1 and has been discussed in at least two or three 

2 venues that I can think of in recent years, and 

3 in distant years as well. And my personal 

4 observation in that regard is, if you asked eight 

5 people that same question you'll get about ten 

6 different answers, and most of them having to do 

7 with the degree to which that individual is 

8 comfortable with the basic concept of 

9 professional judgment being exercised. 

10 And as I said, it's been discussed 

11 widely, and I don't know of any resolution that 

12 has been proposed anywhere, except to try to make 

13 sure that every dose reconstructor does the same 

14 thing with every dose every time. And I have yet 

15 to be convinced, personally, that that is 

16 reasonable and acceptable.

17 But Ted's response with respect to if 

18 you think there's a problem we need to know about 

19 it is absolutely correct, from my perspective. 

20 DR. MCKEEL: Chairman Munn, this is 

21 Dan McKeel. May I please make -- I know it's 

22 irregular, I know it's unusual, but I need to
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1 correct a major mistake that's gotten on the 

2 record in the last few minutes. 

3 CHAIR MUNN: If you would, go right 

4 ahead. Very briefly, Dan, please.

5 DR. MCKEEL: Very briefly. At the 

6 May meeting of this Subcommittee, I submitted a 

7 paper that contains letters from the Department 

8 of Labor, Rachel Leiton and John Vance, showing 

9 unequivocally that for PER-50 and PER-57 GSI, 

10 there were 15 cases that DOL acknowledges had the 

11 wrong employment. So that's 15 on the shortlist 

12 of 100 cases that were probably compensable. 

13 Now, that's not the same as just one case. And 

14 this is from the Department of Labor.

15 I also have to say that I'm shocked 

16 that nobody has brought up the fact that these 

17 cases, five cases, were selected by NIOSH. And 

18 three of the people didn't even work at GSI. And 

19 so a dose reconstruction done for them is 

20 inappropriate and it shouldn't be weighed in the 

21 kind of analysis you all are making. 

22 How could it possibly be accurate --
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1 for example, Granite City Steel didn't have any 

2 of the source terms, the same ones that they had 

3 at GSI. I think those three cases have to be 

4 thrown out and three more appropriate cases where 

5 people who worked at GSI have to be substituted. 

6 That's all I need to say. Thank you. 

7 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you. 

8 MEMBER BEACH: Wanda, this is Josie. 

9 I have a question for NIOSH on part of what Dan 

10 said, that DOL identified 15 cases. Does DOL 

11 have some kind of a way that they say to NIOSH 

12 that there's an issue in that regard? If they're 

13 seeing something, is there any process in place, 

14 I guess is what I'm asking.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu. You're 

16 asking is there a process in place if they see 

17 something about maybe they sent us a claim that 

18 shouldn't have had verified employment? 

19 MEMBER BEACH: Or 15 that were listed 

20 as incorrect employment listed.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: My experience has 

22 been that if, once Labor sends us a claim, that 
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1 there's little -- I don't think we have a 

2 mechanism to kind of go back and check to make 

3 sure that they sent it to us correctly. What 

4 generally happens if they send us a claim that 

5 was incorrectly verified, employment was 

6 incorrectly verified, we'll work the dose 

7 reconstruction and send it back. And then, at 

8 times, when it goes to their final adjudication 

9 branch, they may find out at that time that the 

10 employment was incorrectly verified and they'll 

11 not proceed with the case at that time. At 

12 times, that might happen. That doesn't always 

13 happen.

14 MEMBER BEACH: Well, will that come 

15 back to NIOSH or --

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, no, if there's 

17 no verified employment, it won't come back. You 

18 mean will we hear? 

19 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. So I'm not 

20 talking about non-verified employment. I'm 

21 talking about if a person is incorrectly labeled 

22 as an office worker when they should have been 
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1 labeled as something else. I think that's what 

2 Dan was referring to. 

3 MR. HINNEFELD: I don't think Labor 

4 has a way to verify that. 

5 DR. MCKEEL: No, Josie --

6 MR. KATZ: Josie, what Dan is 

7 referring to is people that didn't work at GSI 

8 but worked at the other facility. 

9 MEMBER BEACH: Oh, okay.

10 DR. MCKEEL: Never worked at GSI. 

11 (Simultaneous speaking.) 

12 MEMBER BEACH: Okay, thanks. 

13 CHAIR MUNN: Alright. Can we move 

14 on, then? Dave, we were speaking to findings. 

15 MR. ALLEN: Okay. Moving on to 

16 Finding 2. Finding 2 we were using a tool we had 

17 that used some look-up tables, and, as such, it 

18 can only do full-year chronic intakes. And 

19 because of that, we were prorating partial years, 

20 essentially prorating the intake rate for partial 

21 years. 

22 Bob mentioned that for that first 
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1 year, the 1952, he did some calculations and 

2 showed that our dose for the lung some 63-percent 

3 too high that first year. And that is true, but 

4 what I'd like to point out is the second year 

5 then, the doses, when you do this technique, the 

6 second year tends to be lower, second and 

7 subsequent. The total dose ends up being 

8 reasonably close pretty quickly. 

9 In fact, after the second year, it's 

10 within about six percent of what you would get 

11 with the correct dates used. After five years, 

12 you're within about two percent, the total dose, 

13 with the two techniques. 

14 And so the only way you're going to 

15 get that kind of 63 percent error that's 

16 associated really with the PoC is if somebody was 

17 diagnosed within a year of that initial exposure, 

18 and then the latency is going to be such an issue 

19 it's not really going to add anything to the PoC.

20 So I agree with Bob that, for cases 

21 that are very close to 50 percent, we probably 

22 should not have been using that little efficiency 
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1 method. And normally we wouldn't. I'm not sure 

2 how this one really did. 

3 But I did go back to this particular 

4 case and ran it in the way you would normally run 

5 it. This particular case came out 50.88 percent. 

6 And when I re-ran it in IMBA, because it was 

7 prorated on the front end and the back end, it 

8 varied for some statistics. When I re-ran it and 

9 put the doses in the IREP, I ended up with a 50.66 

10 instead of 50.88. It's not a huge difference 

11 there. And, like I said, the total doses tend 

12 to round that off to where it's an efficiency 

13 measure that has a little bit of inaccuracy, but 

14 it's not huge. 

15 CHAIR MUNN: So how do we address that

16 finding, then? And can you accept that, Bob, as 

17 being a reasonable explanation? 

18 MR. ALLEN: Well, one more bit of 

19 information on that was -- no, I take that back. 

20 Never mind.

21 CHAIR MUNN: Oh, okay. Bob? 

22 DR. ANIGSTEIN: We did look at the 
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1 entire run, looked at it both ways. Am I 

2 audible?

3 CHAIR MUNN: Barely. 

4 MR. KATZ: Your other phone is better, 

5 Bob. 

6 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Will do.

7 CHAIR MUNN: Much better. 

8 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay. Yes, we did 

9 look at that, but always the question is there 

10 will be some close cases, so it may be two-tenths 

11 of a percent sometimes, you know. I heard 

12 anecdotally that somebody came out at 49.75 or 

13 something like that percent. So it does strike 

14 me as, that when it's close, when it's within one 

15 or two percent of the 50 percent, then it should 

16 be re-run. That's not too much of a burden, 

17 because most of them are either well above 50 or 

18 well below 50. 

19 And, incidentally, when they are 

20 nowhere near 50, NIOSH does even more, doesn't 

21 even bother with the prorating. They just give 

22 it the full year's worth because they say it won't 
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1 make any difference, which is okay, as long as 

2 those are cases that are clearly very high or 

3 clearly very low.

4 So, we can't dictate NIOSH policy, but 

5 I would say to go the extra step for those very 

6 close cases because there could be cases where 

7 maybe when the diagnosis is early in the year 

8 I've notice they also give the full year's worth. 

9 I guess that just my personal inclination would 

10 be to do the more accurate method, particularly 

11 since it only needs to be employed in the minority 

12 of the cases, not all of them. 

13 MR. ALLEN: This is Dave. I had to 

14 double-check before I spoke up again. As I 

15 mentioned, this was a tool that we had been using 

16 that could only do full-year intakes. And, for 

17 a number of reasons, it's much easier to run with 

18 this tool than with IMBA, which is why they tend 

19 to like to do that. 

20 The piece of information you probably 

21 should know then is that the tool was updated not 

22 too long ago to where now we don't have to do 
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1 full-year intakes. We can do partial-year up to 

2 the date to where I think the problem itself, or 

3 the whole efficiency idea just went away with 

4 this, with the change to the tool. 

5 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes. We ran IMBA --

6 Kathy Behling sort of helped me out with that --

7 and I was able to do -- according to the IMBA 

8 format, you can do ten different time periods. 

9 Somehow it didn't work, but she was able to do 

10 nine time periods in one run. So it doesn't seem 

11 like it should be --

12 MR. ALLEN: Yeah, you just have to 

13 stick each one individually and go through the 

14 whole thing, whereas with this other tool you 

15 just set the time period. It's quite a bit 

16 simpler. 

17 DR. ANIGSTEIN: No, no, there's no 

18 question that this is simpler. I'm just 

19 recommending that, again, in those few cases it 

20 appears it comes very close to 50, like within a 

21 percentage point or so, NIOSH would consider, you 

22 know, re-doing the IMBA. 
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1 MR. ALLEN: And like I said, the 

2 reason for the efficiency was this tool wouldn't 

3 do that, and now, as of a few months ago, it does 

4 do that. So I think the whole -- I agree with 

5 your recommendation, but I think it's kind of 

6 moot now. We can actually do it for every case 

7 pretty easy now. 

8 MR. KATZ: So it looks like, Wanda, 

9 this is one the Subcommittee can consider 

10 closing. 

11 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, it is. That was to 

12 be my question. Are we satisfied that we 

13 understand what the issues are and they are, at 

14 this point, probably moot for future cases and 

15 this one can be closed or not? What's your 

16 feeling, Bob? 

17 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Again, I would argue 

18 for -- I'm not quite sure I understood what Dave 

19 said. Is the methodology going to be different 

20 than in the cases we reviewed? Has the tool been 

21 changed? 

22 MR. KATZ: Yes, Bob. What Dave said 
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1 is that the tool has been changed so it uses the 

2 procedure that it should have used but for the 

3 want for efficiency. So it's a moot issue. 

4 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Oh, then it's closed. 

5 MR. KATZ: Right. 

6 CHAIR MUNN: That's good. Can we 

7 please make a note to that effect on the BRS? 

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: I'd be willing to 

9 close this issue. I think we would like 

10 something in writing, since NIOSH, the official 

11 response somewhere in the system.

12 MR. ALLEN: You're talking about into 

13 the BRS? 

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: However we want to do 

15 it.

16 DR. ANIGSTEIN: It would be easier if 

17 there was a memo --

18 MR. KATZ: Yeah, this is Ted. It 

19 would be better to have a piece of paper so that 

20 the Board can close out this review, too. 

21 CHAIR MUNN: And so that it can, in 

22 effect -- if the paper itself could be used as 
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1 the closer attachment for this finding that would 

2 be helpful. 

3 MR. ALLEN: Okay. And that's for all 

4 findings or just the --

5 CHAIR MUNN: No, we were only 

6 discussing Finding 2. We haven't actually gone 

7 through this specific exercise with Finding 1 and 

8 we haven't discussed Finding 3 yet. But we will, 

9 we will address those very shortly. This is for 

10 Finding 2 specifically, Dave. 

11 MR. ALLEN: Okay.

12 MR. KATZ: Well, actually, but we do 

13 ultimately want paper on them all. 

14 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, yes, we do, with the 

15 possible exception of Finding 3. That might not 

16 be necessary, given the fact that it is, 

17 effectively, a QA issue and doesn't impact this 

18 case. It seems to me we ought to be able to 

19 close that here if there's no objection. 

20 Bob, is there any objection to closing 

21 Finding 3?

22 DR. ANIGSTEIN: I agree that it 
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1 doesn't even have to be re-run so long as NIOSH 

2 makes a note of the fact.

3 CHAIR MUNN: Good. If we could then, 

4 in fact, close Finding 3, which leaves us with 

5 Finding 1. The fact that the business of 

6 assigning job categories is problematic, and has 

7 been from the very outset, I don't know how much 

8 more we can say about that. 

9 There is one thing that I might 

10 request. I would ask our NIOSH colleagues, for 

11 the sake of our public listening and concerns 

12 with these cases, could you please clarify the 

13 way we do case selection for our PERs and the 

14 focus that we place? 

15 Dave, would you, or Jim, please, just 

16 very briefly go through the process that we 

17 exercise in order to select cases for SC&A to 

18 look at when we're reviewing a PER? 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, this is Stu. I 

20 guess I can take a shot at that. 

21 CHAIR MUNN: If you would, please. 

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, SC&A, when they 
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1 do the task 1, 2 and 3 review of the PER, 

2 generally, at that time they determine 

3 characteristics of cases that would be affected 

4 by the PER, and, therefore, it would be 

5 beneficial to see if those cases, you know, to 

6 take selection of one or two from the categories 

7 that are affected and review those cases. 

8 And so the selection depends on what 

9 change the PER is supposed to cover. The 

10 characteristics may be a characteristic of a time 

11 period or a type of dose, like internal or neutron 

12 or something like that. And so based on whatever 

13 the characteristic is of the change that gave 

14 rise to the PER, that causes SC&A to decide, well, 

15 we should look at these categories of cases. 

16 And so once they tell us the category, 

17 then, typically, well, they have to be described 

18 in criteria that we can search our database on, 

19 at least to a certain extent. And then sometimes 

20 it requires an actual eyes-on look at the case to 

21 see if it fits the criteria. We'll select the 

22 number that are asked for from each category and 
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1 provide them the claim numbers. And then, once 

2 they have the claim numbers, they have access to 

3 all the files and can do the reviews. 

4 CHAIR MUNN: And they do the 

5 selection, correct?

6 MR. HINNEFELD: I think, in many 

7 cases, we select the cases.

8 CHAIR MUNN: You select the ones that 

9 are available.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, they give us 

11 criteria.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Yes.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: And from those 

14 criteria --

15 CHAIR MUNN: They give you the 

16 criteria and tell you how many they want from --

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, and I think we 

18 select them.

19 CHAIR MUNN: Right. And then provide 

20 them with the case numbers.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

22 CHAIR MUNN: And they proceed from 
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1 there.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

3 CHAIR MUNN: Now, with respect to PER 

4 57, with Finding 1, there is a concern with 

5 respect to the selection of categories of 

6 workplace titles. We have not heard any 

7 discussion, that I'm aware of, that would resolve 

8 this concern once and for all, either here or in 

9 any other site of which I'm aware. 

10 Is there anything else that anyone 

11 wants to say with regard to this dilemma that we 

12 face and whether or not we can pursue Finding 1 

13 further than Bob has taken it? 

14 DR. NETON: Wanda, this is Jim. I 

15 think this is a unique situation. We envisioned, 

16 when we created this administrative category, 

17 that there would be very few cases. And, in 

18 fact, there were very few cases. I don't know 

19 the exact number, but I want to say it's less 

20 than a handful. 

21 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, I don't remember 

22 more than three or four. 
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1 DR. ANIGSTEIN: This is Bob. There 

2 were exactly three cases. 

3 DR. NETON: And so only three people 

4 out of the entire GSI site were assigned this 

5 administrative dose and all three have been 

6 looked at.

7 CHAIR MUNN: Yes.

8 DR. NETON: So I don't know that 

9 there's any more to do on this, other than --

10 (Simultaneous speaking.)

11 DR. NETON: Right. I don't know if 

12 there's anything more to do other than review the 

13 three cases again against SC&A comments and 

14 correct the one or so that may require to be 

15 modified based on a new interpretation. We've 

16 looked at the entire universe of cases. 

17 CHAIR MUNN: I personally can see no 

18 profitable way to pursue this. I don't see that 

19 we can any further resolution of the question 

20 than we have now. I'm just asking, am I 

21 overlooking something? Is there some other 

22 avenue of resolution that we can pursue that we 
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1 have not considered? 

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I think we have 

3 the resolution, and that is NIOSH is reviewing 

4 the case that brought up the issue, and the other 

5 two cases. If that's being done, I'm willing to 

6 close the finding. 

7 MR. KATZ: In my notes, you actually 

8 did close it already. 

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, okay. 

10 CHAIR MUNN: Well, we had left that 

11 impression, but nobody said the words, that I was 

12 aware of. 

13 MR. KATZ: Okay. Because I normally 

14 don't write it down until you do, but okay. 

15 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. Josie, do you see 

16 any further action that needs to be taken? 

17 MEMBER BEACH: No, I don't at this 

18 time. 

19 CHAIR MUNN: Does anyone else have any 

20 comment with regard to Finding 1? If not, then 

21 we will recommend that we close this finding, 

22 that it's been pursued to the best of our ability, 
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1 and it's now closed. Do I have three votes yes? 

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. 

3 MEMBER POSTON: Yes. 

4 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

5 CHAIR MUNN: Very good. Then let's 

6 make one final question, whether there is 

7 anything further that we can say or should say 

8 with respect to GSI and this particular PER.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, let me ask a 

10 question for clarity. It's related to the issue 

11 that Dr. McKeel raised. How many of the reviewed 

12 cases, Bob, that you had were not actually ones 

13 that were at GSI in either the normal period or 

14 in the residual period? 

15 CHAIR MUNN: I'm sorry. How many 

16 what, Paul?

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: How many cases that 

18 were reviewed by SC&A were actually not employed 

19 at GSI? 

20 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Three out of the five 

21 cases were not at GSI.

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: So they were people 
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1 who we did a dose reconstruction on that actually 

2 were never exposed, correct?

3 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Yes, there were three 

4 cases, out of five cases that were selected by 

5 NIOSH for SC&A review, three were not GSI 

6 employees and they did not fall under EEOICPA.

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: But Labor still 

8 considers them to be GSI employees or not?

9 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Well, I think what 

10 happened was that they were -- I traced that. 

11 When the initial dose reconstruction was done on 

12 those cases back in summer of 2007, and, at that 

13 point, that's when we first got acquainted with 

14 GSI and I think John Mauro, either he met, I 

15 think, Dr. McKeel or John Ramspott, and, at that 

16 time, there was a belief and understanding that 

17 Granite City Steel and GSI were synonymous. 

18 And then in November of 2007, DOL 

19 issued a circular outlining that, no, these are 

20 two different facilities. And the problem was 

21 that, by the time they were doing the dose 

22 reconstruction, the GSI site had been purchased 
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1 by Granite City Steel, which then became acquired 

2 by, I think, National Steel and a whole sequence 

3 of things. So it was understandable that that 

4 mistake would have been made initially. 

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Those individuals who 

6 weren't really GSI employees still remained in 

7 the system, though, for dose reconstruction, and 

8 have been carried along all this time? 

9 MR. ALLEN: Paul, this is Dave Allen. 

10 Can I say something on that? 

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: You bet.

12 MR. ALLEN: You've got to remember 

13 this is PER. It's kind of a different mode than 

14 normal here. And these primarily were cases that 

15 were sent to us as GSI employment, we did dose 

16 reconstructions, sent them back to DOL, and they 

17 finalized the case long before all this happened. 

18 So it's a completed case in the past. 

19 And then we do a PER and we're looking at all 

20 completed cases from the past. When DOL changes 

21 their mind on that employment and it's not an 

22 active case here at NIOSH, they don't necessarily 
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1 update us. In fact, they usually don't update 

2 us. So we don't really have any way of knowing 

3 that they decided to change their mind on a 

4 particular case. When we did the PER, we did it 

5 for all previously completed cases, sent it off 

6 to them and --

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Got you. And maybe 

8 just to follow up on Dr. McKeel's request, but 

9 should we, in fact -- we really only have two 

10 cases that were valid cases to do when we 

11 originally thought there should be five. Is that 

12 correct? 

13 CHAIR MUNN: That's my understanding. 

14 MR. KATZ: Well, I mean, Paul, if you 

15 recall, the discussion when this came up 

16 initially is, I think the point was that the 

17 characteristics really doesn't matter. You're 

18 not using personnel dosimetry in the first place. 

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay. Just checking 

20 the methodology. 

21 MR. KATZ: You're checking the 

22 methodology, and whether they actually were there 
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1 or not doesn't actually impact checking the 

2 methodology.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: Got you, okay. 

4 MR. RAMSPOTT: Wanda, this is John 

5 Ramspott. Could I make a quick comment? 

6 CHAIR MUNN: Very quickly, John.

7 MR. RAMSPOTT: Very brief.

8 CHAIR MUNN: Yes.

9 MR. RAMSPOTT: This exact point that 

10 Ted's making, if you think about it, three people 

11 that didn't work at GSI had dose reconstructions. 

12 They were going to do five. That means three 

13 valid GSI workers were essentially shorted or 

14 left out of due process under this program, and 

15 the Work Group was shorted valid information that 

16 they can make judgment on because if the three 

17 people who worked at GSI really worked at GSI, 

18 let's say three other workers, if their 

19 information was used, you may have found 

20 something else that was flawed. That opportunity 

21 was taken away by doing Granite City workers 

22 instead of General Steel. So, essentially 
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1 everybody got shorted by this. And I'm not 

2 blaming NIOSH because I have worked with DOL and 

3 helped them correct some of this recently.

4 MR. KATZ: Okay. John, this is Ted. 

5 I'm not sure what you mean by shorted but --

6 MR. RAMSPOTT: GSI workers did not get 

7 an opportunity to have their claims reviewed for 

8 accuracy. 

9 MR. KATZ: John, that's not what this 

10 is. This is not an opportunity for GSI workers 

11 to have their individual claims reviewed. This 

12 is not a QA process of a management system, you 

13 know, internal, that would do something like 

14 that. 

15 The point of this is to test to see 

16 if the approaches used, the new methods used, are

17 implemented correctly. And it's not to sort of 

18 reverse an individual case that occurred or what 

19 have you. That's not why we do these. So it's 

20 not a shortcoming for a GSI worker who didn't 

21 have his case reviewed, or her, because that's 

22 not really the point of this in the first place. 
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1 I mean, really, this is not a public 

2 comment session. We did have Dan comment, and 

3 now you've commented. But we don't have a public 

4 comment session for this Subcommittee, and it's 

5 really not right in terms of proper process to 

6 institute one on the fly like this. So we've let 

7 this go for now, but I'll leave it at that.

8 MR. RAMSPOTT: I appreciate the 

9 opportunity, and thank you. 

10 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you, John. But I 

11 do want to underscore before we leave, again, 

12 there appears to be a misunderstanding with 

13 regard to the purpose of what we're doing. Ted 

14 just said so, but I'd like to underscore it again. 

15 The purpose of these PER reviews is 

16 not to re-review any individual dose 

17 reconstruction. That's not the point. We're 

18 looking at systematic program processes here. 

19 And that's why these cases, even though they are 

20 not the group of employees that you have primary 

21 concern with, are not being shorted in any way. 

22 Nobody is being denied anything here because we 
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1 are not looking at individual cases. We are not 

2 re-doing individual dose constructions for the 

3 purpose of addressing that dose reconstruction. 

4 We're looking at process. And that requirement 

5 has been satisfied by the process that we've just 

6 gone through here now.

7 So, thank you both for your interest 

8 and your concern. It's appreciated.

9 That being said, is there any other 

10 concern with regard to our closing Finding Number 

11 1? If not, then we will do so, with the caveat 

12 that we get appropriate statements in that regard 

13 from NIOSH. Finding 1 and Finding 2. 

14 Is there any other comment with regard 

15 to Bob's presentation or to this PER?

16 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro. I do 

17 have one. One of the observations, unless I 

18 missed it, had to do with this correlation 

19 between the dose distribution and the dose 

20 conversion factor distribution, and the product 

21 of the two being correlated or uncorrelated. Was 

22 that discussed to the point where it's been 
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1 resolved? Because I see that as a technical 

2 issue, and that applies not only here but across 

3 the Board. And the fact that they're 

4 stochastically independent, and, therefore, 

5 should be randomly sampled and not correlated, I 

6 think that might be important. 

7 MR. ALLEN: John, this is Dave Allen. 

8 I think I can answer that one pretty quick. 

9 DR. MAURO: Thanks.

10 MR. ALLEN: We looked at that one. 

11 It was done on the photon. It wasn't done on the 

12 other doses. And it's in a tool that we put 

13 together to try to take all these different 

14 things and put them all together for individual 

15 cases. And that was just flat-out a mistake, is 

16 what it amounts to. It should not have been done 

17 that way, and we're correcting the tool. And 

18 because of the Work Group findings, et cetera, 

19 were in the process of revising the appendix. 

20 And so we'll correct the tool and then we'll be 

21 PER'ing things again for the next revision, and 

22 that will be a piece of that. 
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1 DR. MAURO: Thank you. 

2 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you, all. Is 

3 there any other item that we need to address 

4 before we go quickly to the subtask reports on 

5 the four remaining PERs? If not, then let's do 

6 that. Kathy, are you up? 

7 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes. I'm going to 

8 ask, is Ron Buchanan still on the line? 

9 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I'm still here. 

10 PER 0055

11 MS. K. BEHLING: Do you want to do PER 

12 55? 

13 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes. If you can bring 

14 up the paper on it, I'll start in that.

15 MS. K. BEHLING: Should I try again?

16 DR. BUCHANAN: Or Rose can, whoever 

17 has got control there. I don't have control.

18 MR. KATZ: Rose, can you do that? 

19 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Yes, I'll pull it up 

20 right here. 

21 MR. KATZ: Thank you so much. 

22 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Hello? 
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1 CHAIR MUNN: Hello?

2 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Hello?

3 MR. KATZ: Bob, that's you. That's 

4 Bob speaking. 

5 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Oh, my phone, my phone 

6 just rang.

7 MR. KATZ: No, I understand.

8 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Okay. I'm going to 

9 sign off, unless there's on GSI.

10 MR. KATZ: Yes, that's fine. Thanks. 

11 Thanks, Bob.

12 DR. ANIGSTEIN: Thank you. 

13 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. While she's 

14 pulling that up, I can just give you a little bit 

15 of background. PER-55 was for TBD-6000 changes, 

16 and there were some changes in both the internal 

17 and external doses there. And so they were 

18 reworked, and we selected two cases. 

19 Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot of cases 

20 that fit the requirements that we put forth. 

21 NIOSH came back with two cases. The last one was 

22 fairly simple, and the first one was more 
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1 complex, in that this one was, the first case was 

2 reworked, and that was less than 50 percent in 

3 the old DR back in about '07. And then when it 

4 was reworked under PER-55, the PoC was greater 

5 than 50 percent. 

6 However, there was some confusing 

7 things that occurred on this. And I remember 

8 what they are, so while she's pulling it up, I'll 

9 say that. There wasn't any entry into the system 

10 after about 2008, 2009. This case was reworked 

11 under PER-55, and the PoC changed. And so we, 

12 you know, couldn't find a new DR on essentially 

13 what has happened on this. 

14 And so we looked at the information 

15 that was given to us by NIOSH with the case. And 

16 if you'd go down to that first case there, Rose, 

17 it will show that this worker, that the case we 

18 did work on worked at, I think, Huntington 

19 Aluminum, or something like that, an AWE 

20 facility, in the late '50s, early '60s. Okay. 

21 Keep on going down there. Okay, go on down some 

22 more.
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1 MS. GOGLIOTTI: Sorry. There's a 

2 little bit of a delay here. 

3 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So the worker 

4 worked there at the Hunter Douglas in California. 

5 Okay, stop right there. And in the '50s and 

6 '60s, the initial DR was in 2007, and it was less 

7 than 50 percent. And then due to the revisions 

8 in TBD-6000, PER-55 reworked it. And we see 

9 Table 2-1 there is just exactly what we want to 

10 look at this time, and we can see that the 

11 original dose was around in the high 30s total 

12 rems, and the PoC was in the high 20s. 

13 We see that it was reworked. And in 

14 the file, like I said, there wasn't a final DR in 

15 the files, and so there was some papers with it, 

16 some in the file that we were forwarded. And we 

17 see it was reworked under PER-55 using clerical 

18 values, or it could've been environmental values. 

19 And, again, just like we talked previously, it 

20 could have been either way, either as the 

21 clerical, like in management office or something, 

22 or just an environmental dose. So they worked 
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1 it both ways, which was good. 

2 However, you see in that table, 

3 because some of the values went up, some of the 

4 values went down in the tables, we see that the 

5 external dose decreased. However, that's not 

6 really true. The original dose was misprinted. 

7 It should have been in rems, and that's actually 

8 millirems. And so that's divided by a factor of 

9 a thousand. So the dose went up a little bit in 

10 the clerical value.

11 Environmental value was very small, 

12 less than one millirem. And we see that the 

13 external dose went down a little bit in both 

14 cases, and the internal dose went down a little 

15 bit in both cases. 

16 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry to interrupt, but 

17 someone is, I think, typing close to their mic or 

18 doing something making this knocking sound that's 

19 making it hard to follow Ron. So I guess 

20 everyone else, if you would mute your mics, maybe 

21 that will take care of the problem. It's stopped 

22 now, which makes me think it's true. 
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1 So mute your mics, please, everyone, 

2 but for Ron. And it's a star 6 to mute your mic, 

3 if you don't have a mute button. Thanks. 

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So we're at the 

5 point that when we compare the last two lines in 

6 Table 2-1, we see that the high 30 rems produced 

7 a PoC in the high 20s, but then on the rework for 

8 clerical we see that a lesser dose, low 30s, 

9 produced a PoC over 50 percent. And then if you 

10 look at the environmental, which you'd suspect to 

11 be low 30s, we see that the PoC is almost 60 

12 percent.

13 So this did not add up, and so we 

14 looked at this case. First of all, it wasn't re15 done right, and, secondly, what we see here. And 

16 we can go down to the next page, I think, Rose. 

17 And, yeah, keep going there. 

18 And so we used the clerical values in 

19 TBD-6000. We duplicated NIOSH's effort, and we 

20 came up with similar doses. And so we can keep 

21 on going down there, and we can go down to the 

22 next page. And then we also used an 
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1 environmental values. And you can keep on going 

2 there. Okay, so let's stop there at 2.2.4. 

3 So we investigated why the PoC 

4 increased as the dose decreased. And so what we 

5 found out was, number one, it looks like that 

6 perhaps, we can't verify this, but it looks like 

7 maybe the clerical and environmental PoCs were 

8 switched on the file that we received, because it 

9 didn't make any sense that the PoC had increased 

10 with decreased dose. 

11 And so I think that might have been 

12 what happened there, and NIOSH can look into this 

13 in a minute. And then explained why the PoC 

14 increased so much when the dose decreased when 

15 it's reworked under PER-55. And what we found 

16 out was that the distribution for the internal 

17 dose was changed from a constant to a lognormal

18 distribution. 

19 And so, before, when you had a higher 

20 dose you put in as a constant, the PoC came out 

21 in the low 50 percent. When you put a lower dose 

22 with a log-normal distribution, it comes out 
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1 greater than 50 percent. So I went back and 

2 reworked it even using the old doses with a log3 normal distribution, and it came out over 50 

4 percent. 

5 So, that's the difference. So this 

6 person's decision was changed from less than 50 

7 percent to more than 50 percent mainly on the 

8 distribution rather than the doses that were 

9 assigned. However, we found that, you know, it 

10 was done correctly and that they followed the 

11 PER-55 okay and we had no issues with that. It's 

12 just that the paperwork, paper trail, and why 

13 there wasn't a DR we could refer to, was the issue 

14 on this. 

15 So you'll want to go down a page. 

16 MR. KATZ: And while you're doing 

17 that, Ron, can I ask, did you check with NIOSH 

18 and ask why they did not send you the final DR if 

19 you never received it?

20 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, it wasn't even 

21 in the NOCTS files.

22 MR. KATZ: No, I understand. But, I 
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1 mean, did you call someone at NIOSH to find out 

2 why this was missing?

3 DR. BUCHANAN: No, I didn't.

4 MR. KATZ: Oh, okay. I mean, in the 

5 future, that would be the thing to do.

6 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

7 MR. KATZ: Thanks.

8 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So I'll go 

9 ahead and do the second case and then a summary, 

10 and then if NIOSH wants to respond they can. 

11 The second case was a worker that 

12 worked at B&T Metals in the '40s and '50s. And 

13 in this case, there was two cancers, and these 

14 were reworked. And we can go down a page to 

15 Table 3-1 there. Back up a little bit. Okay. 

16 Table 3-1 there, we see that reworking caused the 

17 external dose to go down a little bit. And the 

18 medical dose wasn't applicable at this site. And 

19 internal dose stayed the same. 

20 So this gave us a total dose of 0.028 

21 and 0.024. In the reworked case it went from 0.2 

22 percent to less than 0.2 percent. So while they 
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1 did it correctly, it wasn't too informative to 

2 test the application of PER-55. However, there 

3 wasn't many cases that was available to meet 

4 these criteria that we need to test, and so we 

5 ended up with two cases, one that we couldn't 

6 find the DR on and one that worked out okay but 

7 didn't really test the PER-55 very well.

8 So we want to go down to the summary 

9 there. Okay. So we see, since that's what I 

10 said, that we have one case that changed the PoC 

11 above 50 percent, mainly because of the 

12 distribution, and the other one there wasn't much 

13 change in it. And so we agree with the way they 

14 reworked it. We just couldn't find the paperwork 

15 on the first case. 

16 So that concludes my presentation. 

17 And I don't know if NIOSH wants to respond to any 

18 of that or not. 

19 CHAIR MUNN: I certainly hope so. 

20 There's a great deal there. 

21 DR. BUCHANAN: Yeah, we don't know 

22 which one, whether the clerical or the 
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1 environmental, were used in the final dose 

2 reconstruction on the first case. Either way, 

3 the results come out the same, but we don't know 

4 which one was used. 

5 MS. K. BEHLING: This is Kathy 

6 Behling. One of the things -- David Allen, if 

7 you're still on the line, please just interrupt 

8 me. But one of the things that NIOSH, they don't 

9 always go back and do a formal dose 

10 reconstruction rework. They will go in and do 

11 back of the -- not even back of the envelope. 

12 They go in, they look at what the critical aspects 

13 were, recalculate the PoC. And if there's no 

14 need to rework it, although in this case it, 

15 obviously, you know, was compensated, so they 

16 would have to rework it.

17 But I guess the other question that I 

18 do have is, why was the initial DR done with a 

19 constant, as opposed to a log-normal? And are 

20 there other cases out there that might be 

21 impacted by that distribution? 

22 CHAIR MUNN: Especially with a 
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1 difference of that magnitude. 

2 MS. K. BEHLING: Exactly.

3 CHAIR MUNN: The difference of the 

4 calculations is what was startling to me, not 

5 that there was a change. But that there was a 

6 change of that magnitude is staggering. 

7 DR. MAURO: This is John. I'd like 

8 to add to that, also. You know, as I recall, the 

9 main reason why we went through this process is 

10 OTIB-0070 dealing with the residual period was 

11 the major change that triggered the PER. There 

12 may have been others, but that ended up being the 

13 driver. And in the process of doing this, we 

14 tripped over this constant versus lognormal 

15 issue. 

16 So I just want to point out that it 

17 was almost just happenstance that NIOSH and SC&A 

18 saw this change, which, Wanda, your reaction is 

19 the same as mine. My goodness, we went from 27 

20 percent to over 50 percent just because we went 

21 from a constant to a lognormal. And I think 

22 that's important, even though it has nothing to 
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1 do with the PER.

2 CHAIR MUNN: Well, no, but it's 

3 astonishing, nevertheless.

4 DR. MAURO: Yes.

5 CHAIR MUNN: I don't recall having 

6 seen such an extreme difference.

7 DR. MAURO: Me too.

8 CHAIR MUNN: So I'm wondering what 

9 happened, essentially. It had to be more 

10 involved than just, it seems to me -- but I don't 

11 know what that is. I haven't heard anything that 

12 would be. 

13 MR. KATZ: Is Dave Allen on the line?

14 CHAIR MUNN: It doesn't sound like it. 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Hey, Jim, are you 

16 there? 

17 DR. NETON: Yeah, I'm here. I can't 

18 explain why it was used as a constant in the first 

19 pass. If this was a TBD-6000 case, the reason 

20 it went over 50 is because the GSD on all those 

21 TBD-6000 numbers is five. So that would clearly

22 explain the difference, but I don't know why it 
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1 was done as a constant on the first pass, whether 

2 it was just a flat-out mistake or what. I can't 

3 answer. We'd have to research it. But this was 

4 a TBD-6000 case, is it not? 

5 CHAIR MUNN: Yes, it was. 

6 DR. NETON: Yes, yes. So, clearly, 

7 the GSD of five applies to almost all the values 

8 in those tables. So I can't explain that, other 

9 than an error. But we need to research that and 

10 find out more. 

11 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, we'll look forward 

12 to a response. 

13 Anyone else have any questions or 

14 comments that we've not already addressed? I 

15 hear a voice in the background. I'm not getting 

16 -- that must be background --

17 MR. KATZ: It's not addressed to us, 

18 Wanda. Someone has their phone off mute. 

19 CHAIR MUNN: Alright, very good. 

20 Then we'll expect a response from NIOSH. 

21 At this juncture, I'll have to 

22 inquire, is there anyone who has to leave us, 
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1 other than Dave? It sounds like we already lost 

2 Dave. 

3 MEMBER BEACH: Wanda, it's Josie. 

4 I'm going to leave soon. They're closing down 

5 Hanford and where I'm working. I don't want to 

6 get locked in.

7 CHAIR MUNN: Well, gosh, there's just 

8 a little snow out there, Josie.

9 MEMBER BEACH: They're shutting the 

10 whole site down.

11 CHAIR MUNN: Yeah, I know. We've got 

12 schools and everything else closed here. Do we 

13 have a few minutes to devote to administrative 

14 detail before we go?

15 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

16 CHAIR MUNN: And let us suggest that 

17 the other three Subtask 4 reports, which we have 

18 had an opportunity to peruse briefly on the O: 

19 drive but haven't yet heard, will be carried over 

20 for our next meeting. 
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1 Administrative Detail - Routine Note of Abeyance 

2 Items Ready for Closing 

3 CHAIR MUNN: Quickly, administrative 

4 detail. Lori, do you have any abeyance items 

5 that are now ready for closing for us that we 

6 should be looking at today?

7 MS. MARION-MOSS: Briefly, I wanted 

8 to bring the Committee's attention to OTIB-PR-3. 

9 SC&A had an opportunity to look at it. This is 

10 a finding that they updated the BRS and 

11 recommended closure of this pretty old finding. 

12 CHAIR MUNN: Do we have anything new 

13 on it than just look at it now and agree to close 

14 it? 

15 MS. MARION-MOSS: Yes. 

16 CHAIR MUNN: Has SC&A -- this is just 

17 NIOSH's response to SC&A findings that it's ready 

18 to close.

19 MS. MARION-MOSS: SC&A hasn't made an 

20 entry into the BRS recently as they looked at 

21 that older finding. 

22 MR. KATZ: Okay. But that sounds 
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1 like that's one we need to take up at the next 

2 meeting.

3 CHAIR MUNN: It does, yeah. Are 

4 there others like it, Lori? 

5 MS. MARION-MOSS: That's the only one 

6 I have for now.

7 CHAIR MUNN: Okay. If you would be 

8 good enough to send that to the Subcommittee in 

9 an email to give us a note telling us what that 

10 is, I will put it on the agenda for next time.

11 MS. MARION-MOSS: I sure will.

12 CHAIR MUNN: Thank you much. 

13 Administrative Detail - Status of Case Selection 

14 and Recommendations 

15 CHAIR MUNN: SC&A, the status of case 

16 selections and recommendations, anything that we 

17 need to know that you haven't already told us one 

18 way or another? 

19 MS. K. BEHLING: This is Kathy. I 

20 did send you a memo that lists newly-issued PERs 

21 and technical guidance documents, along with our 

22 recommendations. There were three new PERs, and 
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1 there was an OTIB and a report that have been 

2 issued. And I don't know if you have the time 

3 to go through those or if you just want to review 

4 those separately and make a decision as to 

5 whether you agree with our recommendation. 

6 CHAIR MUNN: Well, let me ask our 

7 colleagues here. Paul and Josie, have you had 

8 an opportunity to take a look at those items that 

9 Kathy has sent to us? 

10 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, Wanda, I have. 

11 CHAIR MUNN: I was ready to accept all 

12 of their recommendations.

13 MEMBER BEACH: So was I, actually.

14 CHAIR MUNN: Paul?

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I didn't go 

16 through that in detail. I just skimmed through 

17 them. It looked reasonable, but I thought maybe 

18 we were going to discuss them. Are there any in 

19 there that are low priority -- I'm sort of 

20 wondering about the tasking level. And, Ted, you 

21 can help us, too. Are we in a position to where 

22 we can task --
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1 MR. KATZ: Yeah, we're not in a 

2 position to task. We're in a position to 

3 recommend to the Board. Normally, the way we do 

4 this is we have NIOSH respond to the 

5 recommendations, because sometimes that's very 

6 clarifying as to whether something should be 

7 tasked or not at this point, and we haven't done 

8 that either. 

9 CHAIR MUNN: It is, and normally we 

10 do have an opportunity to go through them item11 by-item so that we can discuss any clear 

12 additional items that we're not aware of that 

13 NIOSH might have additional information on. But 

14 we haven't been able to do that.

15 My question is, how shall we proceed? 

16 What would you prefer to do? I would really 

17 prefer to have a presentation on each of them. 

18 MR. KATZ: We could do that at the 

19 next meeting.

20 CHAIR MUNN: We've run out of time 

21 here. But if that's alright with all concerned, 

22 we'll carry those forward and --
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu 

2 Hinnefeld. Do you want our response or our 

3 reaction to the recommendations before then? 

4 CHAIR MUNN: Well, if you have one 

5 ready right now, sure, we can --

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I don't have one 

7 ready now but I'm --

8 MR. KATZ: Yeah, Stu, just at the 

9 meeting.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: You don't want it in 

11 advance? 

12 MR. KATZ: Yeah, you don't need to 

13 send a paper response, but just be ready to 

14 address those at the meeting. 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. And, Kathy, 

16 what date did you send those? 

17 MS. K. BEHLING: The date is the 28th 

18 of December.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. 

20 MS. K. BEHLING: I can resend, if 

21 you'd like. 

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Actually, it would be 
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1 helpful probably if you'd resend them to me. 

2 CHAIR MUNN: Okay, very good. Then 

3 we'll all be on notice that this will be at next 

4 time. Is there anything else for the good of the 

5 order? 

6 MEMBER BEACH: Do you want to try to 

7 schedule the next meeting? 

8 CHAIR MUNN: We need to have an 

9 opportunity to evaluate just a little better what 

10 we have, what we have on our plate, and what we 

11 don't. 

12 MR. KATZ: And part of that is how 

13 quickly NIOSH can be ready with responses for the 

14 things we're waiting for.

15 CHAIR MUNN: Right. So we're going 

16 to do a little offline communication with respect 

17 to what we are looking for. And then, Ted, can 

18 I rely on you to let us know after you've seen it 

19 and have a little better listing of what we know 

20 we're going to have to see next time?

21 MR. KATZ: Right. Well, we have the 

22 items we didn't get to today and the ones we just 
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1 discussed. So if NIOSH will send us a note with 

2 their sense of when they'd be ready to respond to 

3 the findings that were outstanding today that 

4 they've really just received recently on these 

5 PERs, then we'll go from there. 

6 CHAIR MUNN: I think that's great. 

7 Then Ted can send us a choice of dates, and we'll 

8 move forward in that direction.

9 Adjourn 

10 CHAIR MUNN: Anything else? If not, 

11 then try to stay warm, if you can, no matter where 

12 you are. And we are adjourned. 

13 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

14 went off the record at 4:06 p.m.)

15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 
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1