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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 

+ + + + +

WORK GROUP ON BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY

+ + + + +

FRIDAY

JANUARY 21, 2011

+ + + + +

 The Work Group convened in the 

Zurich Room of the Cincinnati Airport 

Marriott, 2395 Progress Drive, Hebron, 

Kentucky, at 9:00 a.m., Josie Beach, Chair, 

presiding.

PRESENT:

JOSIE BEACH, Chair

HENRY ANDERSON, Member*

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member*
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

TIMOTHY ADLER, ORAU Team*

RON BUCHANAN, SC&A* 

GRADY CALHOUN, DCAS

LEO FAUST, ORAU Team

JOE FITZGERALD, SC&A

JENNY LIN, HHS

JIM NETON, DCAS

KATHY ROBERTSON-DEMERS, SC&A*

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

Page

Welcome.................................... 4 

Neutron Discussion - NIOSH/SC&A............ 8 

Internal Data Discussion - NIOSH/SC&A..... 56

Path Forward............................. 160

Adjournment.............................. 176
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 9:09 a.m.

3 MR. KATZ: Good morning, everyone 

4 in the room and on the line, this is the 

5 Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, 

6 BNL Work Group and we're, we have both Jim and 

7 Grady and we're going to get started here.

8 Let's begin with roll call with 

9 Board Members in the room.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Josie Beach, 

11 Brookhaven Chair, no conflict.

12 MEMBER CLAWSON: Brad Clawson, 

13 Work Group Member, no conflict.

14 MEMBER MUNN: Wanda Munn, Work 

15 Group Member, no conflict.

16 MR. KATZ: And Board Members on 

17 the line?

18 MEMBER ROESSLER: Gen Roessler, no 

19 conflict.

20 MR. KATZ: Welcome, Gen. And do 

21 we have Dr. Anderson, too, Henry -- Andy?

22 (No response.)
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1 MR. KATZ: Zaida, are you on the 

2 line? Or Nancy Adams?

3 (No response.)

4 MR. KATZ: Okay, we'll try to get 

5 ahold of Andy because he did intend to attend. 

6 That's it for Board Members, let's move on. 

7 NIOSH-ORAU Team in the room?

8 DR. NETON: Jim Neton, NIOSH, no 

9 conflict.

10 MR. CALHOUN: Grady Calhoun, 

11 NIOSH, no conflict.

12 MR. KATZ: And any NIOSH ORAU Team 

13 on the line?

14 MR. ADLER: Tim Adler, ORAU, no 

15 conflict.

16 MR. KATZ: Thank you and welcome. 

17 SC&A in the room?

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, Joe 

19 Fitzgerald, no conflict.

20 MR. KATZ: And SC&A on the line?

21 DR. BUCHANAN: Ron Buchanan, no 

22 conflict.
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1 MR. KATZ: Welcome, Ron. Joe, are 

2 you expecting anyone else?

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, Kathy 

4 Robertson-DeMers will probably join us in the 

5 next hour or so.

6 MR. KATZ: Okay, that's right, you 

7 mentioned that.

8 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Hi there, I 

9 just -- I had my phone on mute.

10 MR. KATZ: Welcome, Kathy.

11 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Kathy 

12 Robertson-DeMers, no conflict.

13 MR. KATZ: Thank you. Federal 

14 officials, whether NIOSH, HHS, other agencies 

15 and contractors to the Feds in the room?

16 MS. LIN: Jenny, HHS, Jenny Lin.

17 MR. KATZ: And on the line?

18 MR. FAUST: Leo Faust, ORAU, no 

19 conflict.

20 MR. KATZ: Will Faust, ORAU, thank 

21 you.

22 MR. CALHOUN: Leo.
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1 MR. KATZ: Oh, Leo Faust, sorry. 

2 Okay, any other government officials or 

3 contractors on the line?

4 (No response.)

5 MR. KATZ: Okay, and last but not 

6 least, members of the public. There are none 

7 in the room; are there any on the line?

8 (No response.)

9 MR. KATZ: Okay, so let me just 

10 remind everyone on the line to please mute 

11 your phones except when you're addressing the 

12 group.

13 If you don't have a mute button, 

14 use *6, that will mute your phone. When you 

15 use *6, again, it will take you off mute. And 

16 please don't put your call on hold.

17 Just hang up and dial back in if 

18 you need to leave for a while. And it's your 

19 agenda, Josie.

20 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, there is an 

21 agenda posted on the web. We're going to 

22 start our discussions with neutrons this 
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1 morning and then we're going to go into 

2 internal data discussions.

3 If you remember, this is our 

4 second Work Group Meeting. Our first Work 

5 Group Meeting was held in July on the 28th of 

6 2010.

7 We are looking at the years from 

8 1980 to 2007. We do have an Issues Matrix 

9 that we're working from. That was put out in 

10 July of 2010, and that's all I have for an 

11 update.

12 Grady, I'm assuming that you're 

13 going to want to start this morning with our 

14 neutron discussion.

15 MR. CALHOUN: Well, I think that -

16 - can I assume that everybody received the 

17 response we got?

18 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

19 MR. CALHOUN: And that was kind of 

20 our go do, our list of items that we needed to 

21 address after the first meeting. And it seems 

22 to me that it would be easiest just to go 
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1 through the actual questions and answers.

2 I'll rely a lot on Leo on the 

3 phone there, but I don't know if -- it seems 

4 silly just to read them, but I guess we could 

5 read the responses, if that's what you want to 

6 do.

7 Or if there's any particular 

8 issues that we had. I know that during --

9 gosh, it seems so long ago, the interviews 

10 that we had. We had group interviews and SC&A 

11 Team and Working Group Members and I was on 

12 the phone for most of them. And I think Ron 

13 Buchanan asked some questions of the folks 

14 there that were knowledgeable about neutron 

15 monitoring issues.

16 So do we know, are there any of 

17 the, let's see, there's -- are there any 

18 specific issues that we have with the 

19 responses? 

20 That seems like a better way to me 

21 to address these rather than reading the 

22 responses.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, this is Joe, 

2 let me pose this because this particular issue 

3 I would characterize as one of more clarity. 

4 Because I think when we went through the 

5 Evaluation Report originally, last year, we 

6 didn't find anything wrong.

7 But we didn't find a whole lot of 

8 treatment of the neutron issue, 

9 particularlygiven the fact that Brookhaven did 

10 use NTA film.

11 And at all the other sites we have 

12 gone through a number of issues, such as 

13 fading and, you know, what not, with NTA film, 

14 and we wanted to understand better exactly how 

15 that was going to be handled with dose 

16 reconstruction.

17 So a number of the issues we 

18 raised were in that context. And what my 

19 suggestion is, and I don't disagree 

20 with5Grady, it might be kind of laborious to 

21 go through the question and answers per se, we 

22 all have the response.
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1 But I've talked to Ron and I 

2 think, sort of similar to what you're saying, 

3 we can go through this and highlight where we 

4 still may have questions or an opportunity to 

5 engage Leo in some, you know, clarification of 

6 what was said in the response. That might be 

7 more useful. Does that sound good?

8 CHAIR BEACH: And that would be 

9 helpful to me. I know there were six 

10 questions on neutrons. Maybe when Ron is 

11 going through it, if he'd kind of pinpoint 

12 which ones he's focusing on.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, even more so 

14 that, I think, you know, given the passage of 

15 time, I've also asked him to kind of provide a 

16 little bit of a back story.

17 Okay, you know, why did we raise 

18 this question and just sort of bring us back 

19 to where we were discussing this in the last 

20 Work Group Meeting, so a little context.

21 Ron?

22 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I'm here, this 
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1 is Ron Buchanan, SC&A. Yes, I realize we've 

2 all slept in since we went through this in 

3 July, and so I think what would be beneficial 

4 for the group is to go through what has taken 

5 place and I will go through the main issues 

6 and where SC&A stands as far as seeing them as 

7 Site Profile or SEC issues at this point.

8 And then we can, perhaps, discuss 

9 the path forward for the items that need to be 

10 addressed, if that's okay with everyone.

11 So let's start back at the 

12 beginning and kind of look at what's been 

13 done. The TBD-6 for Brookhaven was issued 

14 originally in August of '06.

15 SC&A did a Site Profile review on 

16 that, and turned that in September of '09. 

17 And, of course, this applies both to the 

18 neutron issues and the bioassay data.

19 NIOSH did an ER Report in the same 

20 month, September of '09. And then NIOSH did a 

21 revised TBD-6 in April of 2010. So a little 

22 less than a year ago. 
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1 SC&A replied to the ER in the 

2 first of July 2010, and I don't know if you 

3 all have that in front of you, but I want to 

4 kind of use that as a guide today, because 

5 that leads us into NIOSH's response, which was 

6 issued in the 17th of December of 2010, about 

7 a month ago.

8 In between the meeting and NIOSH's 

9 issue of their reply, we did have an Action 

10 Item List that went out in August of 2010. 

11 And then we did group interviews with some of 

12 the older workers at Brookhaven in September 

13 of 2010.

14 And this was a NIOSH and an SC&A 

15 group discussion with them on the phone that 

16 lasted from, oh, 20 minutes to an hour each. 

17 And so what we was trying to get them to do 

18 was recall what happened 25, 30 years ago, in 

19 some detail for both the bioassay and for the 

20 neutron issue.

21 And, of course, we're having this 

22 group meeting today to discuss where we stand 
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1 and what we need to do. And so, what I'd like 

2 to do is to bring everybody up a little bit to 

3 date of why there are neutron issues.

4 In our Evaluation Report of last 

5 summer, that we discussed somewhat at the July 

6 meeting, we see that Brookhaven was a research 

7 lab so it has many different neutron 

8 possibilities. They have the reactor, they 

9 had the old reactor, they had the recent 

10 reactors, that were shut down in the '90s.

11 They had, one of the pioneers in 

12 accelerators and so they did quite a bit of 

13 neutron measurements in the early years, and 

14 around '65, when they were bringing the 

15 accelerators up, did a lot of experimental and 

16 exploratory-type shielding and dosimetry work.

17 They did increase, the 

18 accelerator, they did increase both the 

19 intensity and the energy as time went on.

20 And so this increases some of the 

21 neutron dose and makes the spectrum different. 

22 And so they did then go into a more of a 
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1 heavy ion and collider-type scenario in the 

2 '90s, the way I understand it.

3 And so what we're looking at, 

4 perhaps, is a period between '65, when they 

5 really started looking at the neutron fields 

6 in '95, 2000 era, when they went into the 

7 heavy ion collider, which decreases your 

8 neutron field.

9 Now, mixed in with that is the 

10 fact that dosimetry changed during that 

11 period, the technology changed and also the 

12 fields changed at their facility, so they were 

13 looking for a different type of detector.

14 So I don't know how many of you 

15 have our response to the ER. We list in there 

16 that the NTA film, of course, as we have 

17 discussed at other sites, it was used from the 

18 '50s to 1995, and of course the main issue 

19 there is low and higher-energy neutrons, 

20 because it sees them good from about half, 

21 about 20 MeV.

22 The TLDs, thermoluminescent 
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1 dosimeters for neutrons, was used from 1996 to 

2 present. The CR-39 was used '85 to present. 

3 And the Lexan, it was used from '85 to June of 

4 '97.

5 So, now, generally speaking, 

6 Brookhaven was conservative in that they did 

7 use the radiological affecting as a quality 

8 factor which converts the dose to rem 

9 equivalent at a factor of ten.

10 Now, there are four main areas 

11 that we want to look at was, does the 

12 dosimeter respond, what do we do about the 

13 dosimeter's lack of response below a half, .7 

14 MeV?

15 What about its lack of response to 

16 greater than 20 MeV? So that was an issue 

17 that we have to look at. That's one, the 

18 lower and higher energy.

19 The neutron, the NTA fading, what 

20 would we do about that? And the angular 

21 dependency of the dosimeter, and then what 

22 about the switch over and how problems develop 
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1 there from about '85 to '95.

2 So those are the four areas we 

3 want to look at, and determine how we want to 

4 address them. And so these were brought out 

5 in somewhat detail in our July report.

6 And then NIOSH responded to those 

7 in December, in the second part of their 

8 paper. And it says there's neutron monitoring 

9 issues and that's numbered one through six.

10 And so what I did, what had not 

11 been done was to actually go back and do some 

12 kind of like semi-quantitative analysis of how 

13 the dosimeters were calibrated and so, were 

14 they compensated for the lower and higher 

15 energies and fading and angular response?

16 And so what I did is I went back 

17 and I got the references that I dug up, the 

18 references NIOSH had provided and looked at 

19 those and tried to do a semi-quantitative look 

20 at the calibration of the system and how it 

21 would respond and whether it was missing any 

22 dose.
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1 And so what I have concluded, of 

2 those four issues, is that the lower energies 

3 and the higher energy neutrons, they were 

4 present.

5 But the calibration method that 

6 they used at Brookhaven would, was meant to 

7 compensate for those. If there is an issue 

8 there, it would be a Site Profile issue as 

9 opposed to an SEC issue, because they did use 

10 ion chambers, Bonner spheres, and carbon-12 

11 plastic scintillator activation to look at the 

12 neutron energy spectrums.

13 And so those points, I think that 

14 we can agree would be Site Profile issues. 

15 Now the two issues which I do not feel 

16 comfortable with, and I don't think have been 

17 addressed fully, are the NTA Fading and the 

18 angular response.

19 Now, and also the Landauer 

20 problem, '85 to '95. Now I think that the 

21 fading and the angular response can be 

22 addressed and could be a Site Profile issue if 
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1 it was properly addressed.

2 Now TBD-6 was revised in April of 

3 2010, and on Page 86, it does give a sentence 

4 in there. It says a fading correction for NTA 

5 film is nine percent per week, taken from 

6 Myers 1994, which was a Mound document.

7 And the angular dependency 

8 correction factor of 1.3, which is Kathren 

9 1965. Okay, so, now SC&A's problem with this 

10 is that the fading factor of nine percent is 

11 the low value from Mound, and we have the same 

12 discussion with Mound and with Pantex.

13 You know, actually Mound, they had 

14 a health physicist there said use the 33 per 

15 week and the 56 percent fading per week for 

16 their dosimetry.

17 So SC&A feel that nine percent is 

18 low for this fading and we're not sure if BNL 

19 did any corrections. Now they did some 

20 publications on fading, they have several 

21 documents on fading, but we don't know if they 

22 cycled their dosimeters, if they sealed them.
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1 Fading is caused by lower energy 

2 neutrons fade faster, the interactions from 

3 them on NTA film. But in addition, the heat 

4 and humidity has a big factor and some of the 

5 experiments done at Brookhaven and Mound, show 

6 that it's very sensitive to humidity and the 

7 temperature. So we cannot determine whether 

8 the actual dose of record reflects any fading 

9 corrections or not.

10 I mean, would they use a cycle 

11 that they corrected for? Did they apply 

12 anything to it before they recorded it? So 

13 we're not satisfied with the fading factor.

14 The angular factor of 1.33: 

15 generally, NTA film, it depends on energy 

16 spectrum, but as a rule of thumb, decreases in 

17 sensitivity as you increase the angle of 

18 incidence.

19 So we feel that's probably a 

20 reasonable number. However, I went through 16 

21 claims that had possible neutron exposure, 

22 found neutron exposures at BNL, and none of 
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1 them had any correction for fading or angular 

2 dependency.

3 And this was after, six of those

4 were before the new TBD was issued and ten 

5 were after. And so we don't feel that angular 

6 dependency and fading is being actually 

7 incorporated into the DR Reports. So that's, 

8 that brings us to the last issue, and that's 

9 the Landauer problem.

10 And there, as the energy 

11 intensities are increasing, they were looking 

12 for dosimeters to replace the NTA. And we 

13 went over this last time, so I won't go into 

14 detail.

15 But essentially, they were using 

16 NTA film plus a combination of CR-39 and 

17 Lexan. Supposedly the Lexan was used in 

18 combination with NTA for people that worked in 

19 accelerators and CR in combination with NTA 

20 for people that worked around reactors or 

21 sealed sources of the neutrons.

22 And so I went to the -- again, I 
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1 looked at those 16 claims and I could not seem 

2 to find any. Now this is a small sampling, of 

3 course. I could not find any that had any CR 

4 results on it.

5 In the claims file, if you pull 

6 out individual claims, they'll have --

7 MEMBER ANDERSON: This is Andy, I 

8 got disconnected and I dialed back in.

9 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. If you go to 

10 the claims file, they say NTA film and they 

11 have a flag that shows whether it's TLD or 

12 Lexan. And so you can go in and find out 

13 where the person worked and go in and see what 

14 their dosimetry record read.

15 And it is showing whether it's 

16 NTA, Lexan or CR-39, but I could not find any 

17 CR-39 listed in the ones I looked at. And so, 

18 it does not look like they added the NTA and 

19 the Lexan together when they did use it.

20 And so we are still concerned 

21 about the problem that existed in '85 to '95 

22 concerning the dosimetry and Landauer's 
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1 response.

2 And so that is the three areas 

3 that we feel still need addressed, is the 

4 fading, the angular response and the '85 to 

5 '95 dosimetry record issue. Now, is there any 

6 questions that anybody has that we need to go 

7 over before we start discussing this?

8 MEMBER ANDERSON: This is Andy, I 

9 just wanted to let -- I didn't want to 

10 interrupt while you were presenting -- I 

11 wanted to let you know I'm on the line.

12 MR. KATZ: Yes, thanks, glad to 

13 have you, Andy.

14 MR. CALHOUN: I don't know if Leo 

15 has anything or Tim. It seems like we 

16 discussed this with one of the guys about, 

17 that we interviewed.

18 And there were some questions 

19 brought up about what they did and how they 

20 compensated for any differences during the 

21 switch from Landauer.

22 It seemed like those questions 
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1 were at least answered to most people's 

2 satisfaction on the phone at the time. I 

3 think, Ron, you were on the phone?

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I was.

5 MR. CALHOUN: And I don't know if 

6 we need to ask some follow-up questions to 

7 that, but it's my recollection that he thought 

8 that the responses that they were getting were 

9 conservatively high.

10 But I may be wrong, I haven't 

11 looked at that interview for a while.

12 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, this is Ron 

13 again and SC&A again. No, I didn't feel that 

14 the interview answered the question. It was a 

15 general response, I felt, a person that wasn't 

16 really directly involved with this perhaps.

17 I don't recall exactly who or what 

18 but I remember the interview sessions. And I 

19 know that it did not answer the question as 

20 far as SC&A is concerned. 

21 And then, when you look back in 

22 the files, you know, the data does not list 
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1 enough information. For example, if it lists 

2 just Lexan, what did we do, what happened to 

3 the NTA film?

4 If it lists just NTA, what 

5 happened to the Lexan and the CR-39? And so, 

6 you know, that issue is in the data and then, 

7 again, the emails went back and forth. I 

8 don't feel that that's been resolved because 

9 these, some of these emails came out, one that 

10 you pointed out in your response.

11 It came out in like '95 or 

12 something. It says, okay, don't use Lexan, 

13 use something else, or vice versa. In fact, 

14 within a couple of months they switched from 

15 using Lexan, not using Lexan and such.

16 But that was about eight years 

17 after the first memo that told them to use 

18 Lexan. So I don't feel that that has been 

19 satisfactorily addressed.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, this is Joe. 

21 That was my recollection as well, that we 

22 were trying to find somebody in the follow-up 
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1 interviews we did that could shed some light 

2 on the outcome more than the memos. We had the 

3 memos, but the outcome of all that debate. 

4 I want to read an interview which 

5 actually was, perhaps, a little more 

6 illuminating, that we did as part of the Site 

7 Profile Review which we made available some 

8 time ago to NIOSH as well, which touches on 

9 this issue.

10 And it also touches on the 

11 question of what they end up doing as a 

12 resolution. We were interviewing some health 

13 physicists from that era, and this is one, 

14 this is the question that we were asking:

15 Is there any additional 

16 information concerning the problems with NTA, 

17 CR-39 and Lexan neutron dosimetry that would 

18 be helpful? 

19 And this is the response:

20 The discrepancies were the most 

21 critical at the low-level doses. There was a 

22 wide discrepancy between the NTA, CR-39 and 
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1 Lexan system.

2 We could see a disparity up to at 

3 least 150 millirem. As the dose increased, 

4 the disparity narrowed. In general, the CR5 39 read lower for low dose. 

6 The stated LLD, lower limit of 

7 detectability, was frequently missed. There 

8 were numerous times these issues were brought 

9 to the attention of Landauer, but there wasn't 

10 ever a consistent improvement.

11 Our follow-up question was: given 

12 the discrepancies in the different methods, 

13 how was the dose of record assigned?

14 The response: the process was to 

15 assign the highest dose to the dose of record. 

16 The CR-39 has a threshold of 500 keV, the 

17 TLD-6 would cede this 500 keV and below.

18 And then the other health 

19 physicists added, there was a memorandum 

20 generated telling them how to assign the dose. 

21 I can only tell you, we searched high and low 

22 for that memorandum or some documentation that 
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1 would kind of put this in perspective.

2 We could not find it. But that 

3 was probably, you know, the most telling. And 

4 I guess, Grady, it's not inconsistent with 

5 what was in your response.

6 I mean, I think it suggests that, 

7 you know, they were pretty much aware of the 

8 issue and were trying to reconcile the 

9 disparity.

10 But we could not find any 

11 documentation which pinned down how they 

12 adjusted the dose of record and whether the 

13 dose of record was always adjusted.

14 And, as Ron was pointing out, it's 

15 not clear from looking at the actual dose 

16 records exactly what was done. So there's a 

17 level of uncertainty.

18 Although, from the health physics 

19 commentary that we have heard, it seems like, 

20 you know, these are smart people and they knew 

21 that had to come up with some adjustment. We 

22 just can't quite find it.
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1 And this is 30 years, so to be 

2 fair about it, you know, it's not necessarily 

3 going to be easy to find out the A to B to C 

4 that was done in the record. 

5 But that's something I think it's 

6 worth trying to cross the T on, because you 

7 know, again, as it was allowed in this 

8 interview, 150 millirem certainly is an 

9 adjustment that would be useful to have 

10 included in any dose reconstruction process.

11 So, that's the only thing I want 

12 add, that I thought, you know, going back over 

13 all of our interviews since Day 1, I thought 

14 that was the closest to getting a little bit 

15 more perspective on that.

16 We didn't get much on the follow17 up interviews we did in September.

18 MR. FAUST: This is Leo. I don't 

19 -- I was not a party to any of the 

20 interviews, so I can't speak about that. But 

21 I do know from all of the material that I've 

22 gone through, at least, that they did a whole 
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1 series of additional measurements besides 

2 their dosimetry using Bonner spheres and 

3 Snoopys and carbon-14 and I don't know what 

4 else.

5 But they did a whole series of 

6 additional measurements and they concluded 

7 that all of them, the maximum error between 

8 the measurements and what the dosimeters read, 

9 it seems to me was like 20 percent was the 

10 maximum error that they found, covering the 

11 whole energy ranges, up to and including 20

12 MeV.

13 There's also that note concerning 

14 the discrepancies between CR-39 and Lexan. 

15 And they ordered the stoppage of use of Lexan 

16 because of that.

17 And how they corrected, if they 

18 did, in the doses of record, other than 

19 recording the highest exposure, I'm not 

20 certain. 

21 Because neither Paul nor I have 

22 found any place where a correction was made. 
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1 Fading, they insisted on a two-week maximum 

2 use period for NTA film to tend to reduce the 

3 impact of the fading.

4 And if I'm correct, they did a 

5 considerable fading study, particularly in a 

6 relative humidity atmospheres upwards of three 

7 or four months, if I recall correctly. 

8 And they found that if they used 

9 either a desiccant or wrapped that film in 

10 some kind of a plastic, they reduce that 

11 fading down to where 90 percent was probably a 

12 conservative value.

13 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron 

14 Buchanan, SC&A. Leo, yes, that's correct. 

15 What you say is correct. However, we don't 

16 know whether they did seal it. We hadn't 

17 found any documents saying they sealed it or 

18 used a desiccant or when that started.

19 And if they didn't, the two week 

20 exchange period, obviously from the Mound 

21 Study, shows you can lose up to 56 percent, so 

22 that's a factor of two, which is significant 
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1 in the dose reconstruction.

2 So we have not found anything that 

3 documents what they did to their actual NTA 

4 film that the users wore. We did, you know, 

5 they did do the studies and they did some 

6 fairly good studies, but we don't know what 

7 was implemented from that.

8 MR. FAUST: Yes, I can't -- that 

9 study actually that we're talking about, was 

10 done in May of -- well, the report anyway was 

11 dated May 1975. And unfortunately, it does 

12 not say what they ended up employing. So I 

13 can't answer. I don't know.

14 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, I don't 

15 either, that's the reason that we brought it 

16 up as an issue. And I agree the Bonner 

17 spheres and such were used, ionization 

18 chambers, Bonner spheres, and carbon-12 

19 activation.

20 But when there's a discrepancy --

21 and so when we look in the records, we don't 

22 know really, you know, this is Lexan and a 
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1 dose, we don't know if that was the 

2 combination.

3 Because at some points they were 

4 adding them, the doses, and according to some 

5 of those memos, the NTA and the Lexan or all 

6 three or two out of the three, and we don't 

7 know which that includes.

8 And so if some of them were 

9 missing some of the neutrons, we don't know if 

10 that was included or not. And so, we're not 

11 sure what the dose of record actually 

12 reflects.

13 And, like Joe says, if we could 

14 find that memo that would help.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Well, this is Wanda. 

16 As having been pointed out here that these 

17 are fairly bright people that we're talking 

18 about, not your average bear.

19 And given the philosophy of health 

20 physics from the outset, the tendency to be as 

21 conservative as possible has always been a 

22 basic tenet.
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1 When you have statements that more 

2 than one reading, the conservative one was the 

3 one that was accepted, it would seem to me 

4 that that simply follows the normal 

5 philosophy.

6 Questioning it may be a good 

7 academic exercise, but in terms of 

8 practicality, in all possibility -- in all 

9 probability, the general philosophy would have 

10 been followed. Which is, use the most 

11 conservative number, which would be the 

12 largest number.

13 CHAIR BEACH: But you also have to 

14 see the proof of that. Which is, I think, the 

15 problem, we're not finding that.

16 MEMBER CLAWSON: This is Brad. In 

17 following a lot of this, the problem that I'm 

18 having following this is that we're going off 

19 of memos that have gone back and forth.

20 But, as Josie has said, there's no 

21 proof of what was put in there. And as these 

22 individuals being the best and brightest, 
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1 there's no doubt to that.

2 But this is also why we're in this 

3 program, is because through the years we have 

4 learned things, but the bottom line is, we 

5 need proof of what they did do, because this 

6 is why we've had to implement programs that 

7 everybody would do all these processes the 

8 same and monitor people the same.

9 I guess my problem in reading this 

10 is, these are just memos back and forth, 

11 there's nothing there that shows us what they 

12 really did do.

13 MR. FAUST: I think that they 

14 never used, when they were playing around with 

15 Lexan, in particular in CR-39, also, they also 

16 used NTA film. And I think that they used 

17 either one or the other, depending upon the 

18 facility, in addition to the NTA.

19 And from the instrument 

20 measurements that were made, dating back to at 

21 least 1965, they found that they were, the 

22 maximum error that they found was about 20 
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1 percent between what the instrument readings 

2 were and what the dosimetric readings were.

3 And the fact that they used ten 

4 for an RBE, later a Q, was certainly 

5 conservative. So, all in all, and also we do 

6 know that they do record the highest dose, 

7 which is the dose of record.

8 But when you look at it all, it 

9 seems to me like no matter what the plastic 

10 was used in, or in the dosimetry, that it's 

11 always been claimant-favorable, the result.

12 I mean, that's the conclusion I 

13 have to reach.

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: So, Leo, this is 

15 Brad. You're telling me that you've got 

16 record of how they did this?

17 MR. FAUST: No, but all of the 

18 data, all of the data from their activities is 

19 indicative of what they ended up doing. I 

20 can't put my fingers on a document that says 

21 this is exactly what we did, I can't do that.

22 At least I haven't found it yet.
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1 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron 

2 Buchanan with SC&A. Now, I'd like to clarify 

3 a point here. It is true that when they did 

4 the experimental setup and they did Bonner 

5 spheres, ion chambers and carbon activation 

6 and put NTA film or Lexan or CR-39 in there, 

7 at that particular point, and then had it 

8 read, then they came within 20 percent. 

9 But then we look at the memos that 

10 went back and forth, in the real world, from 

11 the wearers and the process -- the vendor, in 

12 everyday work, they were getting factors of 

13 two and three different -- in reading, some 

14 would read minimum and some would read like 

15 1,000 millirem and then later on it would be 

16 reversed.

17 Lexan would read more, NTA would 

18 read less, vice versa. So the 20 percent 

19 wasn't across the board. This was in a 

20 particular experimental setup when they had 

21 controlled conditions.

22 When it got into everyday 
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1 practice, by what the memo said, there was 

2 large discrepancies that people that were on 

3 vacation, they got readings of 1,000 millirem.

4 And people that were working in 

5 the field were getting minimal. And so it 

6 was, we want to put the 20 percent in 

7 perspective.

8 MR. FAUST: I read that too, but I 

9 can't say somebody going on vacation and 

10 ending up with a horrendous dose on his 

11 dosimeter, hard -- you don't know what 

12 happened. So, I don't look at that with any 

13 favorability at all.

14 But what you said was in fact 

15 correct. That also drove them to insist that 

16 they quit using Lexan, which was kind of dumb 

17 in the first place.

18 But, nonetheless, that's what they 

19 did. And they got -- they quit using it and 

20 rightly so.

21 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, but we still 

22 have some of the dose of record, if you go 
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1 through the claimant files, you'll see 

2 numerous entries using Lexan.

3 MR. FAUST: That may be and 

4 probably because it was the highest dose that 

5 they got between the two. Because they always 

6 did have NTA film there also.

7 DR. NETON: This is Jim. I'd just 

8 like to go back to the fading issue. From 

9 what I've heard, it seems like there's been a 

10 fairly well-designed study to evaluate the 

11 degree of fading on these dosimeters. And, 

12 given that we know that, I don't know why this 

13 would not be a Site Profile issue because it's 

14 just a matter of whether we apply that 

15 correction factor or not. 

16 Why is that being discussed in 

17 this context? I guess I don't understand.

18 CHAIR BEACH: The other issue I 

19 had with the study Ron discussed, the 16 

20 people that he polled, six of them they found 

21 -- and Ron, correct me if I'm wrong on any of 

22 this -- the six people were fine, but were 
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1 before the new TBD, the ten were after, and he 

2 found that they weren't using the new method, 

3 so that's another issue, for me too, is how 

4 that's -- what's happening with the TBD that 

5 dose reconstructors aren't using that?

6 MR. CALHOUN: This is Grady. I'll 

7 take that one on. I need, if Ron at some point 

8 could email me those 16 case numbers, that 

9 would be great, and I'll take a look at that 

10 and see what happened there.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: As a matter of 

12 context, I'll disagree with where you're going 

13 with that. It's just that the treatment on 

14 these issues in the ER were slight, and we 

15 raised them from the standpoint, as I started 

16 the conversation, as a matter of clarification 

17 as to what was going to be used.

18 And I think that's where I see the 

19 train headed, but we need some clarification. 

20 On the other issues, the discrepancies in the 

21 Landauer issue, I think there's been a good22 faith effort, on everybody's part, to try to 
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1 nail that one down.

2 I tried to find documentation and, 

3 you know, after going through thousands of 

4 pieces of paper, I mean, we just can't find 

5 it.

6 What would be helpful, I think, 

7 is, and I was thinking about this as Leo was 

8 talking, what is the, you know, what is the 

9 variance that we're talking about? Because it 

10 does get less as you go higher in energy.

11 And really it may just be a 

12 relatively minor, you know, you add ten 

13 percent or something to certain energy levels, 

14 lower energy levels, and if one can't 

15 substantiate in any way, shape or form, 

16 whether or not the dose of record was 

17 adjusted, it might make more sense and be more 

18 cost-efficient.

19 Say, well, okay, really we're 

20 talking ten percent or whatever, 12 percent, I 

21 don't know what the number is. Maybe it would 

22 just be helpful saying, okay, for 
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1 conservatism's sake and not to dig any deeper, 

2 I think we've dug as deep as we can. Maybe 

3 that would be a reasonable way to go. 

4 I mean, I was kind of hoping that 

5 the interviewees would be more specific, but I 

6 think what we got was similar to what Wanda 

7 was saying.

8 Everybody sort of said, well, you 

9 know, of course health physics practice, you 

10 would take the higher dose. But it was sort 

11 of a little speculative in the sense that, you 

12 know, of course that was good health physics 

13 practice, we're all smart people.

14 But nobody knew for sure and there 

15 was no documentation. When he said there was 

16 a memo, that was sort of like the Holy Grail 

17 that we were trying to find and we couldn't 

18 find it.

19 So, in that context, that would be 

20 something that might be helpful to do. Just 

21 figure out, you know, in the end, what are we 

22 talking about?
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1 We're talking ten percent. Maybe 

2 it's, you know, it's worth just saying, not to 

3 beat a dead horse at this point, but perhaps 

4 that would be one way to get to this thing.

5 CHAIR BEACH: So is that an action 

6 item for NIOSH to --

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, that's, the 

8 Work Group has to consider that.

9 CHAIR BEACH: Well, I'm just 

10 writing down --

11 MR. CALHOUN: I have like six 

12 right now.

13 CHAIR BEACH: Oh, really?

14 (Laughter.)

15 MR. FITZGERALD: I just don't see 

16 any real resolution on that issue, because 

17 that's a matter of trying to find some 

18 evidence beyond, you know, sort of the more 

19 speculative thing.

20 And rather than try to keep 

21 looking for paper, it might be useful just to 

22 find out what does it mean, in the end?
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Does it really 

3 matter that much? If it doesn't, maybe just 

4 let it go.

5 MEMBER MUNN: It probably doesn't.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm 

7 thinking if it's 20 percent at, you know, the 

8 higher levels, then maybe it's something in 

9 the order of ten or 12 percent, at the levels 

10 we're talking about in most operations, energy 

11 levels.

12 MEMBER MUNN: Or even lower. Ten 

13 and 12 percent would be --

14 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, maybe even 

15 lower, I don't know. But it just seems like 

16 you could figure that out and if it were --

17 MEMBER MUNN: Well, it would 

18 certainly be claimant-friendly.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: It would be 

20 claimant-friendly. Just to assume that, you 

21 know, we can't really nail it down. On the 

22 other hand, if they did not, then this is how 
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1 much it would come to.

2 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, this is Ron 

3 with SC&A again. I think, Jim, that what SC&A 

4 would like to see is that these items be 

5 addressed so that they can be taken off the 

6 SEC issue because I think fading is 

7 addressable and I think that angular is 

8 addressable and even this suggestion that Joe 

9 made addresses that issue.

10 It's just that if fading was a 

11 problem, and if you look at 56 percent, that 

12 increases your neutron dose by two, if they 

13 didn't use any sort of compensation program in 

14 their NTA film.

15 And so that is a large dose 

16 factor, a factor of two and then 1.3 on top of 

17 that and then, say, 20 percent on top of that. 

18 That's leading to, you know, two or three 

19 times the original recorded dose, and so 

20 that's pretty significant.

21 But if those issues could be 

22 addressed, then that would be under Site 
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1 Profile.

2 MR. FAUST: We -- this is Leo 

3 again. We're under the, I mean, we're in the 

4 process of trying to find a reference that was 

5 actually made by Ernie Piesch over at 

6 Karlsruhe, I believe, on fading.

7 My information tells me that it's 

8 probably one of the best fading studies that 

9 was ever done. We're trying to locate a copy 

10 of that to see just exactly what he ended up 

11 with.

12 It may take us a few days yet to 

13 get that, but we're in the process of doing 

14 it. Hopefully, from that, we can put this 

15 fading issue to bed.

16 Everybody knows that we had a 

17 fading problem, but nobody knows how we went 

18 about trying to alleviate that problem. One 

19 other thing, there is a note, again dated 

20 1965, that suggests that regardless of what 

21 dosimeter -- well, this is NTA film, 

22 obviously.
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1 Regardless, they say the technique 

2 is always overestimated exposure by between 30 

3 percent in a factor of about five.

4 So, you know, when you read all 

5 this stuff, you've got to conclude that their 

6 dosimeter program ended up with an 

7 overestimation of what actual exposures were 

8 encountered.

9 And I can only assume that that's 

10 what was reported was, whatever exposure was 

11 measured is what was recorded.

12 Anyway, it seems like we're 

13 conservative regardless of what we do.

14 DR. BUCHANAN: Leo, this is Ron 

15 with SC&A again. Now, the fading study, I 

16 missed out, who did this that you're referring 

17 to, that you're hunting?

18 MR. FAUST: Ernie Piesch.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: And was he with 

20 BNL?

21 MR. FAUST: No, no, no, he's with 

22 Karlsruhe, Germany. His last name, you spell 
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1 it P-i-e-s-c-h.

2 DR. BUCHANAN: And do you know when 

3 that study was done?

4 MR. FAUST: About 1975 is when the 

5 journal was issued, but I can't tell you if 

6 that's when the study was done or not. But it 

7 probably was done prior to '75, not too much 

8 before that.

9 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron again. 

10 Okay, well, what we need to know, you know, 

11 what BNL did, if we can find anything that BNL 

12 did about fading.

13 If not, then we have to use a 

14 conservative approach and assume they didn't 

15 and apply some factor. On the 1965 note about 

16 30 percent the five times, I agree at that 

17 time that was probably true.

18 Now, as they increased in energy 

19 and they had higher-energy neutrons, I think 

20 that that conservative factor probably 

21 narrowed but it still probably was 

22 conservative.
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1 We don't know that for sure. And 

2 so that's the reason we have concerns about 

3 the '85 to '95 error, because of the memos 

4 that went back and forth.

5 So I agree, in '65, they were 

6 pretty conservative at that point.

7 MR. FAUST: Yes, that value goes up 

8 as high as 30 MeV neutrons. Does that -- that 

9 certainly covers the energy ranges in 

10 existence at Brookhaven at that time, and 

11 probably later also.

12 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, I have one more 

13 question before we review the action items. 

14 How about badge -- people that didn't wear 

15 their badges. Is there any -- how will you 

16 handle that? Is there coworker modeling done?

17 MR. CALHOUN: We actually do have 

18 a bit of a coworker model that we're using, 

19 but I would have to see if, there's got to be 

20 an ambient, there may be an ambient neutron 

21 dose assigned.

22 I don't know, I'd have to go back 
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1 and look at the TBD, I don't know off the top 

2 of my head.

3 CHAIR BEACH: And that's the same 

4 TBD-6?

5 MR. CALHOUN: Yes.

6 CHAIR BEACH: Has SC&A reviewed 

7 TBD-6 by any chance?

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, Ron, we 

9 haven't provided written responses.

10 MR. CALHOUN: No, I'm talking 

11 Technical Basis Document 48.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, 48.

13 CHAIR BEACH: Forty-eight.

14 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, that's the 

15 Brookhaven TBD.

16 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, so is there 

17 any other items to cover on neutrons, before 

18 we go into that -- hello?

19 MEMBER ANDERSON: I don't have any 

20 comments.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Thanks, Henry. 

22 Okay, Grady, you said you had six and then you 
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1 lowered it to three.

2 MR. CALHOUN: Well, let's see, I 

3 just had a little, some notes written down. 

4 Let's see, I'll see what I've got here. 

5 MR. KATZ: While you're looking, 

6 one is that Ron is going to email these 16 

7 cases to Grady.

8 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, that's one 

9 thing.

10 MR. KATZ: At SC&A.

11 MR. CALHOUN: I'm going to take a 

12 look at that. And then I have: need to find 

13 out if BNL did any fading corrections prior to 

14 issuing the dose of record. Probably a TBD 

15 issue, is what I have written there.

16 Most of these others are just 

17 bullets under the Lexan/NTA issue. So I think 

18 that we're going to look for any additional 

19 documentation, memorandum, whatever, that may 

20 discuss further what was done or if there was 

21 any instruction on how to assign the higher of 

22 the two doses.
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, and then Joe 

2 talked about a variance?

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, no, I was 

4 saying if that didn't bear fruit, it was a 

5 two-part thing. If that doesn't bear fruit, 

6 because we did look for that, then maybe the 

7 Work Group would benefit from knowing what the 

8 variance would be. The range, and whether that 

9 was seen by NIOSH as something that could be 

10 accommodated.

11 CHAIR BEACH: So is that 

12 something, Grady, that you can just do as a 

13 secondary, if the first one doesn't bear 

14 fruit, as Joe indicated?

15 So that we don't -- that we can 

16 just keep moving forward?

17 MR. CALHOUN: What was the actual 

18 specific issue?

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, the issue 

20 is that we've been looking for that, I call it 

21 the Holy Grail.

22 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, sure.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: The documentation 

2 on what they actually did, in terms of 

3 adjusting the dose of record. If you don't 

4 have any luck finding some documentation to 

5 that effect, the fallback position is just, 

6 you know, does it really matter, what's the 

7 variance of all of --

8 MR. CALHOUN: What would be 

9 helpful is a discussion of the variance over 

10 range, maybe we can just adopt a correction 

11 factor and does it really matter?

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Range of energy. 

13 And can it be accommodated, just add it in 

14 just for the sake of claimant-favorability and 

15 we'll be done with it.

16 MEMBER MUNN: I think if we have 

17 the claimant-favorable boundaries, then --

18 DR. NETON: Yes. At some point we 

19 have to acknowledge the records aren't 

20 findable and we're going to have to move 

21 forward one way or the other.

22 MEMBER MUNN: Is claimant-
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1 favorable in the findings? That ought to 

2 certainly cover any problems with any issues 

3 that would arise.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, and Ernie 

5 mentioned the Ernie P. study. Are you 

6 actively looking for that, Leo?

7 MR. FAUST: Yes, we are.

8 CHAIR BEACH: And if you obtain 

9 that, would you make that copy available to 

10 the Work Group, SC&A?

11 MR. FAUST: Sure.

12 MR. KATZ: That's the study on 

13 fading.

14 CHAIR BEACH: Fading, yes.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron 

16 Buchanan, if I could interject one thing --

17 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, please.

18 DR. BUCHANAN: -- on the issue of 

19 correction factor.

20 I guess a starting point would be 

21 that if, under controlled conditions, they 

22 said that they can measure within plus or 
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1 minus 20 percent. And honestly, the minimum 

2 claimant-favorable figure would be 1.2, 

3 because that would be 20 percent.

4 So that would be a starting point. 

5 We need to look at that and go on from there.

6 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. Is there 

7 anything else on neutrons? And I'd like to 

8 ask, are there any petitioners on the line at 

9 this time?

10 (No response.)

11 CHAIR BEACH: So I would suggest 

12 that we go ahead and take our break, before we 

13 get into the internal. Is everybody agreeable 

14 to that? Ten minutes?

15 MEMBER MUNN: Sure.

16 MR. KATZ: Sure.

17 MR. FAUST: How long are you going 

18 to be on break?

19 CHAIR BEACH: Ten minutes.

20 MR. KATZ: Just ten minutes.

21 MR. FAUST: Okay, I'll call back 

22 in.
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1 MR. KATZ: Thanks. 

2 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

3 matter went off the record at 10:02 a.m. and 

4 resumed at 10:14 a.m.)

5 MR. KATZ: Okay, we're reconvening 

6 after a short break. This is the BNL Work 

7 Group, Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

8 Health. Andy, do we have you back, and Gen?

9 MEMBER ROESSLER: I'm here.

10 MR. KATZ: Hi, Gen. How about 

11 Andy? Okay, I'm sure he'll join us soon.

12 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, so what we're 

13 going to get started on now is the internal 

14 data issues, it was actually Issue Number 1 in 

15 our Matrix that came out last July.

16 I think what we'll do is go ahead 

17 and let Grady, NIOSH start with responses to 

18 those questions.

19 MR. CALHOUN: Okay, basically, 

20 everybody knows this but the reason that we 

21 established 1980 -- or the reason that we have 

22 said that we can't do dose reconstructions 
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1 prior to that, had to do with records 

2 retrievability. They did not keep their 

3 records, BNL did not keep their records in a 

4 very readily retrievable manner.

5 So, anyway, one of the go dos that 

6 we had was to interview some individuals, 

7 well, actually, it was interview the 

8 individual currently compiling records and ask 

9 his opinion on what he has, when the records 

10 are complete, et cetera.

11 Well, there's actually not a single 

12 individual that does that. When we make a 

13 records request, BNL goes through two or three 

14 different record sources and looks for the 

15 records and compiles them and then sends them 

16 on to us.

17 One of the, I don't know if it's in 

18 this first one or not, but Department of 

19 Energy was tasked with -- there it is, it's C 

20 -- was tasked with coming up with a nice 

21 description of how they, in a step-by-step 

22 manner, look for records before they give them 
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1 to us.

2 And, as of today, they've still not 

3 provided that to us. So, anyway, but 

4 basically we did talk to a few people that 

5 were involved in records, as part of our 

6 interview.

7 It seems like everybody is on board 

8 with the fact that there was an effort in the 

9 late '70s to try to consolidate records. Our 

10 Evaluation Report was based on what records 

11 were actually retrievable.

12 So what we did is we had this 69-

13 person study, is what we call it. We had 

14 maybe ten or so people per decade. Now these 

15 are random folks, these were not necessarily 

16 claimants. We asked the -- all of these 

17 individuals were people that we had found 

18 memos for that said, you need to go get a 

19 whole body count.

20 So what we did was we requested all 

21 the dosimetry data as we would, as if it was a 

22 dose reconstruction request from Brookhaven 
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1 National Lab, for all of those individuals. 

2 And we kind of grouped them to see what we got 

3 back, because we know that these individuals 

4 were determined to have needed some type of 

5 bioassay and they were told to get that 

6 bioassay.

7 So we wanted to find the records 

8 and see did they get the bioassay. And the 

9 way it fell out and this table is in the ER, 

10 is that in the '70s, and this was only from 

11 '73 to '79, we got 75 percent of the records.

12 Beginning in 1980, we got 92 

13 percent, which was, one record was missing. 

14 We subsequently found that record, but it was 

15 18 months after the request date, so we didn't 

16 count it.

17 So we have a whole body count for 

18 that, for that guy, but it was 18 months after 

19 the request date so we didn't count it.

20 In the '90s, we had 11 people. 

21 They were all in 1992, actually, and we got 

22 100 percent of all of the records from whole 
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1 body counts. So that's how we came up with 

2 1980. Now, as part of this re-review, I guess 

3 I'll call it, I was going through some 

4 documents and I evidently failed miserably in 

5 this table that I put in here.

6 Because I don't think I explained 

7 it well enough for Josie to understand it, you 

8 know. This was not my work. There was a memo 

9 ivehat was out there that requested missing 

10 whole body count data.

11 And I don't know who the person is, 

12 I've got the SRDB number --

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Milt. Oh, I'm 

14 sorry.

15 MR. CALHOUN: It was Miltenberger? 

16 Okay, good.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm not sure --

18 MR. CALHOUN: Oh, sorry. But 

19 anyway, we had that, he made a request and 

20 said, hey, I'm missing these records from 

21 these individuals, can you give them to us? 

22 And this was in May of 1980.
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1 And it went back from '73, all the 

2 way from 1973, by year, and the number 

3 reported I put in this table. Now this is 

4 what he had asked for.

5 I went through the records that we 

6 have. Now, keep in mind, we don't have every 

7 single record that was ever generated at 

8 Brookhaven.

9 And the vast majority of these 

10 individuals are not claimants, these are just 

11 records that we have found in our data 

12 capture.

13 And what we found is that there's 

14 actually a very significant drop off here, but 

15 the percent that I could not find, you can see 

16 that on the far, right-hand corner, ranged 

17 basically from zero percent to 80 percent.

18 And in '79, 80 percent of them were 

19 still missing. Now that's only four out of 

20 five cases, that was a small sample number. 

21 This memo was put out in May of 1980, so there 

22 were only two whole body counts that he 
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1 determined were missing in 1980, when he made 

2 the request to, what I'll call the project 

3 managers of different divisions.

4 And I have both of those whole body 

5 counts, I found those in the data. So this 

6 was not an independent review that I did, this 

7 was based on a memo that he put out in 1980, 

8 and I just tried to follow that up.

9 So, I did poorly in explaining that 

10 table that I put in there, I should have done 

11 better on that. I guess another part of my 

12 response here is that we, in part of our 

13 interviews that we had, I guess Ron mentioned 

14 it was September.

15 Gosh, it seems like a long time 

16 ago. You know, we did ask the question of 

17 folks and, as I said earlier, you know, 

18 everybody there that we talked to that had an 

19 opinion about the records, thought that, you 

20 know, right around 1980 and or late '70s, 

21 things were getting together.

22 We were starting to get 
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1 consolidated records. Nobody really had any 

2 strong feeling that records should not be 

3 available. That's all I have on 1-A, if we 

4 want to talk about that before we move on to 

5 1-B?

6 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, let's do that.

7 MR. CALHOUN: Okay.

8 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: This is 

9 Kathy DeMers. I have a couple of questions 

10 about the table.

11 MR. CALHOUN: Okay.

12 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Okay, I know 

13 you referenced an SRDB number. But if I, 

14 first of all, that makes this 1980 memo was 

15 to Rothman from Miltenberger, so I don't know 

16 if that constitutes Department Heads.

17 But the data that immediately 

18 follows it is called Missing Results for Whole 

19 Body Analysis. And I could not reconcile the 

20 numbers in your table with the data provided 

21 in those two pages.

22 And I'm wondering if you can be 
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1 more specific about where you got the data for 

2 each of these columns?

3 MR. CALHOUN: I can, I can't do it 

4 right now, because it's going to be in 

5 multiple, multiple documents, but I can.

6 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Okay, so you 

7 can give us the page numbers?

8 MR. CALHOUN: Yes.

9 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Within that?

10 MR. FITZGERALD: It's a derivation 

11 of that table?

12 MR. CALHOUN: Yes.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

14 MR. CALHOUN: It's just going to 

15 be, yes, Column 3 and Column 5.

16 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Okay, and I 

17 wasn't sure how you determined what was found 

18 amongst the missing records?

19 MR. CALHOUN: That I found records 

20 for those individuals.

21 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: So you have, 

22 separate from this SRDB number --
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1 MR. CALHOUN: Yes.

2 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: You have 

3 data?

4 MR. CALHOUN: Yes.

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: For example, 

6 in your set of 69 or --

7 MR. CALHOUN: No, it's completely, 

8 this is completely different. This was just, 

9 I saw that he made this request, you can see 

10 that some of them are checked off, but I 

11 couldn't put a whole lot of faith in that.

12 So, I went back to the other 

13 documents that I had and looked them up, name 

14 by name, to find if there was a whole body 

15 count.

16 And they are in, I promise they're 

17 in at least five or six different documents. 

18 But I can look that up. I think it's going to 

19 take a while. I should have wrote them down.

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Well, if we 

21 had the page numbers, it would be more helpful 

22 because that SRDB document is over 100 pages.
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1 MR. CALHOUN: Right, and really, 

2 really the only one that matters is 1980.

3 CHAIR BEACH: Well, 1980 and 

4 beyond.

5 MR. CALHOUN: But this specific one 

6 was issued in March or May, because I can't go 

7 any further than that. So what I'll do, is 

8 I'll just focus on 1980, because prior to that 

9 doesn't matter.

10 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: I also 

11 wanted to say something about the interviews 

12 that we did. It wasn't clear to me that they 

13 were coming out and absolutely saying that it 

14 was reasonable to assume that everything was 

15 centralized by 1980.

16 They weren't coming out with a 

17 concrete declaration that that's what was 

18 happening.

19 MR. CALHOUN: I agree.

20 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: It was more 

21 of a, yes, it was right about around then. 

22 And if you go down and you read the, well, 
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1 this is under Section C, really.

2 And read how you summarize these 

3 interviews, you kind of get that feeling. So 

4 they never came out and said, yes, this is a 

5 concrete date. And, in fact, I actually got 

6 the feeling that they were saying, yes, it was 

7 reasonable sometime within the early '80s.

8 One of my concerns about these 

9 interviews and stating so concretely what 

10 these interviewees believe, is that they have 

11 not undergone review by the interviewee.

12 And you provided us with a phone 

13 number, so we're going to give those out.

14 MR. CALHOUN: Okay.

15 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: And allow 

16 them the opportunity to validate what we have 

17 summarized.

18 MR. CALHOUN: I in no way meant to 

19 imply that they said a concrete date, because 

20 they certainly did not. They just, nobody 

21 thought that that was unreasonable.

22 MEMBER MUNN: We wouldn't be 
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1 talking about this now if they had.

2 (Laughter.)

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, you know, 

4 this is Joe. I think it's important to 

5 remember the context. I think it was Dr. 

6 Roessler who felt it would be important to, 

7 you know, revisit the question of the 

8 [identifying information redacted] memorandum, 

9 since that was cited in the Evaluation Report, 

10 and see if we can find some of his 

11 contemporaries that could speak to, first hand 

12 knowledge of what happened and maybe what he 

13 meant in the memos, since we only have that 

14 one memo.

15 That memo, again, to put it in 

16 perspective, was a proposal to his management 

17 that it made sense to do this, to centralize 

18 into his division, the whole body counting 

19 responsibility.

20 But, you know, that was the only 

21 sliver of information we have. And so we went 

22 back and started talking to some of the same 
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1 people that we had talked to earlier, and to 

2 be very fair about this, if anyone asked me to 

3 think back 30 years, to what I was doing in 

4 one year 30 years ago, and did I know about, 

5 you know, what one of my coworkers was up to.

6 I mean I think generally the 

7 response is, you know, I have no idea what I 

8 was doing 30 years ago. And, yes, I knew 

9 [identifying information redacted], but, you 

10 know, I don't know about that memo, I don't 

11 know about any specific attempted to 

12 centralize, but no.

13 You know, certainly it would, it 

14 would make sense that things were getting 

15 better in the early '80s, that's kind of in 

16 general what I kind of recall.

17 But, you know, when we were 

18 pressing their memories to come up with 

19 something, I thought that was, it wasn't 

20 something that could substantiate the original 

21 question that Dr. Roessler raised.

22 I think it was just their 
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1 acknowledging, in a general sense, no specific 

2 knowledge, no specific, you know, information 

3 that, yes, you know, certainly in the '80s, 

4 things got better.

5 That was the context that we got 

6 that with. The only thing I would take 

7 exception, Grady, I don't think they were on 

8 board. I think they were reflecting that, 

9 yes, general things got better during the 

10 '80s, but that wasn't enough to give us, I 

11 think, the specific information that would 

12 allow us to feel more comfortable, that it was 

13 January 1st, 1980.

14 So, you know, again I think it was 

15 a good faith effort by all of us to try to 

16 find somebody who could say, yes, I remember 

17 the memo, I remember when that went in, I 

18 remember what happened.

19 That would have been perfect, but 

20 that did not happen. So, I think it was 

21 important to do that. My comment on this 

22 thing, you know, I think everybody agrees the 
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1 records at Brookhaven, even in the '80s are 

2 very sketchy.

3 I mean it's just the nature of the 

4 beast. And part of what I hear Grady talking 

5 about is, given that, and we normally do sort 

6 of a database analysis.

7 Well, in this case, we already know 

8 the data is in different places and different 

9 forms and hard copy, you know, it's just in 

10 rough shape.

11 So, I think NIOSH, and 

12 appropriately so, looked at a retrievability 

13 process saying, okay, we're not going to look 

14 at this thing as a whole, but we're going to 

15 see, empirically.

16 It makes sense. Empirically sample 

17 by decade, by year and see, you know, when we 

18 start feeling more comfortable that we can 

19 actually recover data.

20 And, given the circumstances, that 

21 makes perfect sense. And to see if there's 

22 any documentation where, almost in the same 
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1 vein that, where somebody like this individual 

2 was making a special request.

3 He was getting more success in 

4 getting or seeing that the bioassays were 

5 done. So, in a way, that was almost an 

6 empirical test that was done at that time, by 

7 an individual.

8 So, same issue as retrievability. 

9 But my concern is that when you base the 

10 retrievability sampling or test, on these 

11 memos requesting, I don't know whether it's 

12 biasing the sample.

13 Because where someone is actually, 

14 I think this is something I'd like to discuss. 

15 When you're actually making a request by 

16 memorandum that this Joe Blow needs to be 

17 bioassayed. 

18 That's a pretty, you know, that's a 

19 special request. I mean there's routine 

20 monitoring and then you really are asking for 

21 somebody to be bioassayed because they 

22 obviously must have been seen as exposed, 
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1 above and beyond your normal program, routine 

2 program.

3 So, you know, the 69 sampling that 

4 was done, even the Miltenberger request. I'll 

5 throw that out. I'm not sure if that's the 

6 universe of bioassay sampling.

7 I think it's certainly the universe 

8 of specially requested, you know, please 

9 bioassay this person. So, that would be one 

10 cautionary note, because I don't know what the 

11 answer is.

12 But that's certainly is one 

13 question in my mind. The other question gets 

14 to more the state of the Brookhaven records.

15 I think we kind of agree that the 

16 records aren't in good shape and they're 

17 working hard to find records and get them 

18 together and make them available and all that.

19 I don't know what the status is 

20 now, but when we were out there, we met the 

21 individual who was running around. And he was 

22 still pulling records together. He wasn't 
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1 sure exactly what the situation would be.

2 But when we step back from this, 

3 there seems to me two real central questions. 

4 One is retrievability, which is, can we even 

5 do dose reconstruction?

6 Can we ask for records and get 

7 them? And I think NIOSH has made a good faith 

8 effort to figure out, you know, let's do some 

9 sampling to see if that's even doable.

10 And the question I have for that is 

11 how's it going? You're doing claimant, you 

12 know, you're actually doing dose 

13 reconstruction on claimant files and to us it 

14 would be useful to know, in real time, whether 

15 or not you're getting the records for the 

16 active claims as they stand.

17 I mean the sampling is one issue, 

18 but you're actually now in the real thing. So 

19 that would be a helpful thing to know. The 

20 second thing is, apart from the retrievability 

21 question is the completeness and aptitude 

22 question.
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1 This Work Group, this Board, has to 

2 answer a question. Are the records complete 

3 and sufficiently adequate? And that goes to, 

4 you know, question of coworker.

5 Where you have individuals that 

6 don't have a dose, how are you going to assign 

7 that dose. And you have to have a complete 

8 enough set of records that you get a 

9 distribution that represents the site.

10 And it gave me great pause when we 

11 were talking to -- in fact the individual who 

12 was actually trying to get this stuff together 

13 for NIOSH, and he was, you know, sort of like 

14 going door-to-door, if I may, at the lab, 

15 trying to see who had records.

16 And the first thing that crossed my 

17 mind is that's going to be a heck of a 

18 challenge, being able to feel you have a 

19 complete enough set of records that you could 

20 construct a coworker dose model that would be 

21 representative, sufficient representative, if 

22 you felt the distribution was there.
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1 I know the last time we talked you 

2 said you hadn't had, put a coworker model 

3 together, right?

4 MR. CALHOUN: Not completely.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: And, so the second 

6 part of the question is, apart from 

7 retrievability, are the records complete 

8 enough that, in fact, a coworker model is 

9 even feasible. And, as of today, I don't have 

10 the answer and I don't think you do either.

11 Which is central to this Board's 

12 decision on an SEC, I believe. And I think 

13 that, I'm not sure how long you want to wait 

14 until Brookhaven has searched, you know, for 

15 records, but I think that assessment of what 

16 we've got, is it complete enough that you 

17 could have some confidence on distribution 

18 that you could come up with a coworker model 

19 or not? And if we don't either know or don't 

20 think so, based on what we can understand is 

21 the state of the records, then I think that 

22 puts everybody in the same situation as, you 
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1 know, what are we going to do for missing 

2 doses?

3 So I can see that the issue in 

4 those two parts, and I can emphasize on the 

5 retrievability question, you have no choice. 

6 You have to look at retrievability because you 

7 can't go from A to B on dose reconstruction if 

8 you can't be sure you're getting records.

9 But then you still have that second 

10 question that has to be answered, if somebody 

11 don't have a dose of record, and you're going 

12 to assign something, how are you going to do 

13 it.

14 So, I have some cautions on the 

15 first, but I really am lost on the second. 

16 And it would almost, you know, at some point, 

17 one has to then go and do what we would call a 

18 Data Adequacy and Completeness Review and just 

19 say, what do we got?

20 Is there enough there it could 

21 support the coworker dose model construction 

22 and we don't have anything to look at, because 
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1 I guess you haven't done it, but that, you 

2 know, before we go too far, that certainly is 

3 something that we have to look at.

4 MEMBER MUNN: Well, before we go 

5 any further, why don't we have a reality check 

6 here. We've gotten pretty esoteric about, 

7 we're wandering around out there in the 

8 general miasma of what might we have where?

9 The reality is this is one of the 

10 nation's leading research and development 

11 laboratories. By definition, it is not a 

12 process.

13 It is not an organization. It is 

14 not a site where a charge was given to what 

15 was going to take place there and that charge 

16 was followed through and developed over time.

17 That's not what --

18 CHAIR BEACH: May I ask a question? 

19 Are you talking the charge being the memos 

20 that we have read? Is that the charge? 

21 MEMBER MUNN: No. I'm talking 

22 about the basic charter of this - 
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Of the work at the 

2 lab, okay.

3 MEMBER MUNN: The basic charter of 

4 this site is not like the basic charter of 

5 Mound, or Oak Ridge, of Hanford. This is not 

6 the same kind of thing. And we, if we 

7 approach this with the concept that we're 

8 going to try find the same set of data, the 

9 same set of records that we find at production 

10 facilities, or pure development facilities, 

11 then we're fooling ourselves because that's 

12 not going to happen.

13 When we talk about coworkers, we're 

14 not talking about coworkers who were on a 

15 single site that did a single thing, and who 

16 shared, even if they didn't have, they had 

17 many different jobs, but they were all in the 

18 same place, the end result, the goal for the 

19 site was the same.

20 This is a site where there were two 

21 dozen different activities going on at the 

22 same time. And the need for record keeping in 
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1 each one of those projects, would be entirely 

2 different, entirely different.

3 One can see how it would be 

4 illogical to be having a strong dose 

5 reconstruction activity going on for some 

6 project where the level of exposure in that 

7 project was minimal, as opposed to a project 

8 where esoteric kinds of activities were going 

9 on with unusual materials or with unusual 

10 levels of energy.

11 It is an extremely diverse site 

12 with extremely diverse projects and they've 

13 changed over the years. So for us to even go 

14 searching for the kinds of records that we 

15 would like to have, that we've seen in other 

16 DOE sites, may not be a realistic goal for us.

17 CHAIR BEACH: And that's what makes 

18 this a potential SEC issue. Because the 

19 workers still deserve to have those dose 

20 records found and attributed to whatever dose 

21 they may have received.

22 MEMBER MUNN: But that's a part of 
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1 my point, too. The part of my point is that 

2 the probability, this is another one of those 

3 can you prove a negative?

4 Can I prove that this worker was 

5 involved in a project that did not require 

6 close exposure monitoring. How can you ever 

7 prove that?

8 I don't believe it can ever be 

9 proved. I don't, there's no reason why it 

10 should be proved, if the project -- but, of 

11 course, that worker is not going to be with 

12 that project only.

13 After 14 years, that worker is 

14 probably going to be involved in some other 

15 project. So, it would be expected that an 

16 individual worker's record would not be 

17 continuous, the way it is, or the way we would 

18 like it to be in other kinds of -- I can see 

19 I'm losing the audience.

20 DR. NETON: I think this speaks to 

21 the issue of what we talked about in Santa Fe, 

22 which is this, you know, what do you do with 
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1 these sort of low dose facilities where they 

2 handle a lot, for lack of a better word, 

3 exotic radionuclides, where in general there 

4 is the, at least impression, that most people 

5 didn't get exposed to very much.

6 They weren't, you're right, these 

7 weren't factories. They were doing bench top, 

8 for the most part, experiments working with 

9 small amounts of radionuclides, so how does 

10 one establish that these exposures were low 

11 and put some upper bound on those doses.

12 And I think, as I mentioned in 

13 Santa Fe, I think the approach that needs to 

14 be taken is to look at the health physics 

15 program that was in place, or the start of 

16 one.

17 Were they consciously aware, were 

18 the aware of the hazards and was there some 

19 type of evaluation done, of the hazards, and a 

20 decision made whether this constituted some 

21 potential for exposure or not.

22 And I think, we're in the 1980s. 
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1 And, I don't know, maybe Grady is going to 

2 shake his head on this, but it seems like we 

3 should be able to find some sort of program 

4 documentation that substantiates that.

5 We've made some decisions, we've 

6 looked at the hazards and we evaluated them. 

7 And they were either small or large and here's 

8 what we're going to do to either mitigate them 

9 or monitor them.

10 MEMBER ANDERSON: Well, this is 

11 Andy. And again I think we may not get

12 specific values, but I think what you're 

13 saying is there ought to be some qualitative 

14 evaluation made at some point.

15 And that should be recorded 

16 somewhere.

17 DR. NETON: Well, exactly.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Before we go too 

19 far on giving credit to the program, you know, 

20 we also talked about this in Santa Fe, that 

21 the regulation calls for quantitative analysis 

22 and I think quantitative in the broadest 
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1 sense, not just numbers.

2 But certainly it's something beyond 

3 program performance. We would think the 1980s

4 would be the great awakening. But since I was 

5 in DOE in the 1980s, I can tell you that 

6 wasn't the case.

7 It was an evolution that started in 

8 the mid '80s and culminated with Tiger Teams 

9 in the early '90s. So, as far as the early 

10 '80s, no, I don't think there was a great 

11 wellspring of change in the Energy research 

12 labs tending to lag behind everybody else.

13 Pretty much because of what you 

14 said. They weren't really seen as facilities 

15 with high source terms, so the spotlight 

16 wasn't really on them.

17 And going back to your comment, I 

18 agree that the diversity of the labs is a 

19 challenge. And certainly the fact that they 

20 didn't really have these kinds of production 

21 facilities and the sources, you know, led to 

22 situations where they did it activity-by-
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1 activity more.

2 It wasn't an overall program. So 

3 you had a decentralized approach. Now the 

4 flip side of that is that's a real challenge 

5 with this program.

6 And we've confronted the same 

7 challenge at the other laboratories. This 

8 isn't the only laboratory. We have the 

9 defense labs, we have the other Energy 

10 research labs at Berkeley and what have you.

11 And the issue is the same. And 

12 what I'm saying is that, you know, you need 

13 certainly the act recognized in the beginning 

14 that, you know, you're going to find a rather 

15 diverse situation on the part that some 

16 facilities will have wonderfully centralized 

17 and automated data records.

18 Dose records, so that it's going to 

19 be readily, you know, much more feasible to do 

20 those reconstruction. In other cases, you're 

21 not going to have that good fortune.

22 You're going to have situations 
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1 where the records are not centralized, they're 

2 not in good condition, are missing. And the 

3 Act provides for the SEC process when you have 

4 situations where the records are, in fact, you 

5 know, just not really adequate.

6 And so what we're aiming toward is 

7 saying, okay, given the reality, in this case 

8 Brookhaven, how are you going to, in fact, do 

9 dose reconstruction with sufficient accuracy.

10 Is there a way to get there, from A 

11 to B? And, as I was saying earlier, I think 

12 the approach that NIOSH has taken, starting 

13 with retrievability, is about the only place 

14 you can start on that question.

15 Because you're looking at a very 

16 direct question, can we even, you know, 

17 retrieve the records that would support dose 

18 reconstruction for the time periods in 

19 question.

20 That's more of an empirical 

21 approach, that's why I'm saying, you know, 

22 saying, okay, let's pulse the system and get 
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1 some level of confidence that when you pulse 

2 the system we get what we need.

3 But the other question I would 

4 raise, is a broader question of, you're not 

5 going to have, you know, when you have 

6 claimants, you're not always going to have a 

7 dose of record for that individual. And you 

8 have to rely on some ability to assign a 

9 coworker dose.

10 And it may just be facility11 specific, and I think for a laboratory that's 

12 very appropriate. And what we've done at 

13 other sites, so you look at facility-specific 

14 coworker doses, you don't do everybody.

15 You don't do the entire lab, you 

16 just pick those places in those time periods. 

17 Where clearly you have the potential, this 

18 was what Jim was saying, the potential for 

19 exposure.

20 And you use that data to assign a 

21 coworker dose. But what I'm questioning is 

22 1980 and beyond, do we in fact have adequate 
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1 records to provide that information for those 

2 facilities.

3 And I don't think that question has 

4 been answered, you know, in the process that 

5 we've been through so far. And I think that's 

6 got to answered before we have a level of 

7 confidence on the SEC.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Well, one of the, can 

9 I stop you just for a second?

10 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: This is 

11 Kathy DeMers, can I kind of remind you guys of 

12 an interview that we did in 2009, with the 

13 personnel monitoring group.

14 And one of the interviewees that we 

15 talked to September, actually referred us to 

16 one of the individuals who participated in 

17 this interview.

18 I just wanted read this back to 

19 you, because it conflicts with the information 

20 that we were given in September. Which means 

21 we have to go back and rely on the record.

22 They said BNL radiation exposure 
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1 records can be broken into three categories. 

2 The later the person's start date, the more 

3 complete the record for internal monitoring.

4 From the 1940s though the 1970s, 

5 BNL maintained an individual folder by name. 

6 From the 1970s through the 1980s, there was a 

7 transition to electronic recording.

8 Unfortunately, the folders became 

9 increasingly incomplete during this time frame 

10 and data are missing. This is the period of 

11 most concern.

12 From the '90s to the present, there 

13 is a more systematic and complete electronic14 based record keeping.

15 They also mentioned that one of the 

16 problems they had was in the folders, they had 

17 indications that someone had, for example, 

18 bioassay, but they had no results. And at the 

19 time, they were working on compiling a list or 

20 a catalog of data, so that they would know all 

21 the different places they had to go, to 

22 compile a complete record.
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1 Now those interviews were done, 

2 like I said, in 2009.

3 CHAIR BEACH: What month was that 

4 Kathy?

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Let's see, 

6 the interview with these people was done on 

7 May 19th, 2009.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, thank you. I 

9 remember reading that last night as I was 

10 reviewing these older interviews.

11 The other thing I want to bring up 

12 is, that I was going to say just before Kathy 

13 spoke, is when I was looking at the interviews 

14 that we did back in 2009, a lot of these were 

15 considered event driven.

16 So, if there was an event, then 

17 they would bioassay for that event. In some 

18 cases, the event was brought to the attention 

19 by the person that took, went home and 

20 thought, oh, well maybe I have a problem.

21 I guess, the bottom line here for 

22 me is what was considered an event at the lab? 
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1 I'm thinking when there was an interview I 

2 read on whole body counting.

3 The interviewee or the whole body 

4 counting folks would come in with contaminated 

5 lab coats, so they would send them out and 

6 have them change into Tyvek suits.

7 To me, that's an event, but it 

8 seemed like, and Grady you mention that in 

9 your response back. But it didn't seem like 

10 it was considered an event at that time.

11 So, I guess I'm curious of what was 

12 considered an event and what was not 

13 considered an event.

14 MR. CALHOUN: That particular issue 

15 is one that, you know, when you're working, 

16 when you're working at a production facility 

17 or a lab, when you're handling rad materials, 

18 your lab coats are going to get contaminated.

19 They're going to get washed, but 

20 they're never going to be free of 

21 contamination that could be seen on whole body 

22 counter.
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1 You could hold it, you could wave a 

2 wand over it all you want, and not see a 

3 thing. But, as soon as you bring it into the 

4 whole body counter, you see contamination and 

5 you know that that's not inside.

6 But, aside from that, what I have 

7 and I'm kind of jumping down to B, but it's 

8 very much in line with what we're discussing 

9 here.

10 I've looked at so many of the 

11 documents, over the last couple of months. I 

12 have found documents before 1980 and after 

13 1980, that say that anybody with potential of 

14 receiving 100 millirem internal dose, needs to 

15 be monitored internally for that.

16 I have found documents that show 

17 that prior to maintenance activities, things 

18 were surveyed before the work could get done, 

19 to make sure that proper precautions were 

20 taken.

21 I have found documents that show 

22 that bioassay for exotic nuclides was taken 
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1 because something didn't go as planned. I 

2 found documents that list the thousands of 

3 smears and air samples that were taken in 

4 certain facilities.

5 So where I believe that we've got 

6 a firm indication that a program was in place, 

7 and that there was a threshold for monitoring. 

8 Like Wanda said, and I've only, I've been to 

9 the site multiple times, I haven't toured the 

10 whole facility.

11 It's like a big university. And I 

12 would say that more people were in jobs that 

13 had no potential for exposure than were in 

14 jobs that had potential for exposure.

15 So that pretty much necessitated 

16 the activity-by-activity or department-by17 department determination on, of who's going to 

18 get bioassayed.

19 I don't believe that the bioassay 

20 was generally incident driven. From the memos 

21 that I've seen, they're like project specific. 

22 You know, these people in your group need to 
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1 be whole body counted.

2 It's not because it was an 

3 incident, it's because these people need to be 

4 whole body counted. And then we believe that 

5 this monitoring was done, but I can't prove it 

6 until 1980.

7 Nothing before then, even though I 

8 believe that these people were monitored, I 

9 just can't prove it because the documents just 

10 weren't there.

11 So that's why I don't know of many 

12 other options other than falling back on the 

13 empirical data when somebody says they should 

14 be monitored and then we find out that they, 

15 in fact, were monitored.

16 That's where we are with, again, 

17 that's just kind of just banging on that, but 

18 coming up with a 1980, date.

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Grady, this 

20 is Kathy DeMers, I had another request for 

21 you, back under, I guess, Item B.

22 MR. CALHOUN: B as in boy?
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1 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Yes.

2 MR. CALHOUN: Okay. 

3 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: You said 

4 that you looked at eight employees?

5 MR. CALHOUN: Oh, okay, yes, I 

6 didn't even get to there yet, but go ahead, 

7 continue that.

8 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: And you 

9 looked at their CATI interview and determined 

10 whether they had mentioned that, whether a 

11 bioassay was collected or whether they had 

12 participated in whole body counting.

13 MR. CALHOUN: Yes.

14 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: And my 

15 question for you was whether you could give us 

16 the NIOSH ID number for those?

17 MR. CALHOUN: Sure. 

18 CHAIR BEACH: We jumped ahead a 

19 little bit to B. Is there anything else under 

20 A that we have not covered?

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, again, I'd 

22 like to have this discussion on the, how the 
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1 coworker approach is going to be done at 

2 Brookhaven. Just like it seems like it's a 

3 threshold question that the worker has to 

4 address at some point.

5 I know, based on the last Work 

6 Group Meeting you had said, Grady, that you 

7 have not addressed that, but I think just to 

8 hear from you what the plans are, what your 

9 sense of it is? Is it a matter of waiting for 

10 Brookhaven to sort of get to some point of 

11 records completeness before you look at it?

12 Or, are you looking at it now and 

13 you have some initial thoughts on it?

14 MR. CALHOUN: It's on the list, but 

15 it's pretty far down on the list. I know that 

16 we've recently received a big bunch of tritium 

17 data and other urinalysis data with thousands 

18 and thousands and thousands of entries.

19 Those are for later years, though. 

20 I want to say that those are like in the 

21 '90s. 

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Ninety's.
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1 MR. CALHOUN: Yes. But they were, 

2 I'm told that using the term database is not 

3 appropriate, it's a list of intakes and 

4 results. So it's not as easy to wade through 

5 as some other things.

6 But I think that we'll look at 

7 that. Certainly, right now, if somebody that 

8 worked past the '90s, or past the '80s, is 

9 working in a job that doesn't seem to, they 

10 don't have any dosimetry at all, we assign 

11 ambient for internal and external.

12 I'll have to look back and see what 

13 the thoughts are for coworker, I don't know 

14 for sure on that one. 

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Because, yes, the 

16 other thing too, I guess based on the last 

17 Work Group meeting, you know, the status of 

18 the DOE efforts. DOE -- the Brookhaven Lab 

19 efforts to bring these records together, you 

20 weren't able to get a handle on, you know, how 

21 they felt or even what their spreadsheet 

22 looked like at this stage, because of their 
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1 Privacy Act concerns.

2 Which puzzled me a little bit, and 

3 I guess, you know, as I understand it, 

4 government-to-government, we're all one 

5 government. That should not be an issue and 

6 I'm kind of puzzled why they would be citing 

7 Privacy Act to another federal agency.

8 MR. CALHOUN: Well, you know, on 

9 the same thing they gave us all this data just 

10 now, and that's not of claimant's either. So, 

11 it's kind of --

12 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm puzzled by 

13 that. I think the notion of how complete do 

14 they think it is and what their spreadsheet 

15 looks like. It should be accessible by NIOSH 

16 and I think Greg needs to address that.

17 Because, you know, I think this 

18 whole question about what are we dealing with 

19 as far as the body of records. This is so 

20 central to this Work Group and what you're 

21 doing, that you almost have to know that.

22 MR. CALHOUN: Right.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: And that would 

2 also inform this question about are we on 

3 stable ground for a coworker thing, for those 

4 facilities that really require it.

5 Again, I think it's going to be 

6 facility specific and time period specific. 

7 Because I think that the, you know, whether 

8 it's the reactor, certain time periods, maybe 

9 certain, maybe high flux beam reactor.

10 You know, there's certain 

11 facilities where you would probably want to 

12 have a pretty good sense that the distribution 

13 of dose is such that you could use that for 

14 workers that claimed they worked there during 

15 that time period. But I don't know how you 

16 can get there without knowing whether or not 

17 the lab is, has what they have or, you know, 

18 that part of it, I think.

19 So I would say that would be one 

20 question as to reach resolution as to where 

21 they stand as far as retrieving what records 

22 they have --
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1 MR. CALHOUN: Where BNL stands?

2 CHAIR BEACH: Well, and what have 

3 you done to retrieve records and what are you 

4 planning to do in the future?

5 MR. CALHOUN: There's, well, we've 

6 gotten these two big data dumps recently, and 

7 we've had our folks go through all of those, 

8 in link, by name, any of the data. So, even 

9 if Brookhaven weren't to give us that 

10 information, we will have that link to those 

11 individuals.

12 We're also going to go through the 

13 process, like I just, just the other day I 

14 found, it was 420 pages of termination 

15 urinalysis over multiple years.

16 And we're going to link those by 

17 name too, to any claimant that comes in, just 

18 as a stopgap measure in case we're not getting 

19 the right information.

20 That will help people prior to 

21 1982, because we won't just say, oh, we can't 

22 assign any dose. If we've got some dose for 
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1 people in the SEC period, and they've got skin 

2 cancer or whatever, we'll be able to assign 

3 some dose based on that, too.

4 So, it is certainly an evolving 

5 process. But, you know, I do feel confident 

6 and comfortable with 1980. Everything that 

7 I'm looking at actually makes me more 

8 comfortable with that. And I think Brookhaven 

9 certainly needs to get on board with their 

10 record retrieval, it will make it easier for 

11 them.

12 CHAIR BEACH: So everything that 

13 you've looked at, is that previous to the data 

14 dump, stuff that we have had access to, or is 

15 it stuff that you still --

16 MR. CALHOUN: The data dump is 

17 after, so it doesn't --

18 CHAIR BEACH: That is not making 

19 you uncomfortable.

20 MR. CALHOUN: Well, no, it's not 

21 making me uncomfortable, it's just from 

22 digging into this and writing my responses to 
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1 these questions, it's just, I feel like we've 

2 got the memos and things that say the process 

3 is in place.

4 We've got numbers that say, you 

5 know, monitor people if they have a potential. 

6 We've got, you know, I've got another memo 

7 that says if there's excess contamination, 

8 monitor these people.

9 I've got memos that show that 

10 somebody, because they had a high external 

11 dose, we did a whole body count on them.

12 So, it seems like they were very 

13 attentive in what they did and the whole 

14 records retrieval thing is what we have to 

15 evaluate.

16 And that's why, prior to 1980, I 

17 just, you know, I can't say with as much 

18 confidence that we have all of the records 

19 available for those individuals, as I can 

20 after.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Well, and I read 

22 those same memos and I do agree they said we 
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1 have to centralize the records in October, and 

2 I'm not clear that two months later it was 

3 actually accomplished.

4 I think the only way that I can 

5 evaluate that, is when somebody is supposed to 

6 get a whole body count, and they say this 

7 person has to get a whole body count. If I 

8 can find that whole body count, I've got it.

9 It doesn't matter if they were 

10 centralized or not. If I'm getting the data 

11 that I need to get, that's what's important.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I think one 

13 thing we have to do is separate the commentary 

14 from the time from what you're doing in terms 

15 of empirically establishing that you have 

16 retrievability.

17 Because I read the memos, you know, 

18 I've looked at some of the documentation and 

19 it sort of suggests that things were moving in 

20 a good direction, that they got it.

21 But, as far as whether that 

22 actually manifested itself, you know, actual 
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1 adequate records that can be used, I don't 

2 know if you can make that leap.

3 But the retrievability testing that 

4 you're doing I think is probably the only 

5 avenue that's left to you. The concern I have 

6 is that, it's empirical.

7 I mean it's sort of saying, okay, 

8 you know, I've picked 1980 because, you know, 

9 the Gestalt of all these documents seems to 

10 suggest that was as good as any date.

11 And I've, like we were talking to 

12 interviewees and I said, well, what about '79? 

13 What about '82? And they're saying, oh, that 

14 sounds just as good, too.

15 So, you know, but you know, the 

16 stakes are pretty high by drawing that line in 

17 terms of claimants and what not. And so I 

18 think the care that must be taken is okay.

19 If empirical, given the state of 

20 records, is what you've got, then I'd 

21 certainly be interested in the ongoing 

22 experience with the claims that are going in 
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1 on one hand, and also trying to pin down 

2 better, you know, Kathy mentioned when they 

3 were transitioning from paper records to 

4 electronic records.

5 They stopped filing things in the 

6 personnel files. And, based on the interviews 

7 we had, you know, data got lost just because 

8 it was disturbed by this handoff between one 

9 system and another.

10 They just didn't do that. Now, in 

11 the Evaluation Report, I mean that is actually 

12 highlighted. And it was portrayed a little 

13 softer in a sense that, from the '70s and 

14 '80s, limited electronic record keeping was, 

15 I'm reading from Page 49 of the ER.

16 Was started for some BNL monitoring 

17 data sets. BNL's decision to leave the 

18 electronically reported data stored as such, 

19 tresulted in a somewhat reduced use, in 

20 parentheses, and completeness of individual 

21 file folders.

22 That is, although electronically 
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1 reported data are available, hard copies of 

2 this information were not typically placed 

3 within the individual file folders, during 

4 this period.

5 So, you know, that's how, you know, 

6 that was characterized. But we talked to the 

7 HPs that had knowledge of that, they felt, 

8 yes, data got kind of lost in that shuffle.

9 And this is the early '80s. So 

10 even there we have a completeness question. 

11 So I think it comes back to retrievability is 

12 one tool and there's some questions about the 

13 completeness of the data, you know, quite 

14 apart from retrievability.

15 You can retrieve something but if 

16 you're retrieving an incomplete set of data, 

17 then you're going to be facing dose 

18 reconstruction on an incomplete set of data.

19 So I think the completeness issue 

20 comes into that. So retrievability is a 

21 process. Can you get something when you ask 

22 for it for an individual?
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1 That answers one question but it 

2 doesn't answer all the questions. It says, 

3 you know, are you retrieving something that 

4 is, in fact, adequate. And that part of it I 

5 think we still have to go back to the records, 

6 themselves, and try to establish how complete 

7 they are.

8 MR. CALHOUN: That's a tough 

9 question. I didn't say it's complete.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: It's a tough 

11 question.

12 MR. CALHOUN: But I mean even 

13 today, even today -- 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: It is, but Grady, 

15 I'll concede, but Brookhaven, Brookhaven, you 

16 know, we know that is a big question because 

17 as of two years ago, they had no idea what 

18 records they had and whether they could, in 

19 fact, get those records in one place.

20 And maybe it's a little better now, 

21 I haven't talked with them in about a year and 

22 a half on that question.
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1 But, think about it for a second. 

2 They had no idea what records they might have. 

3 And they were in the process of trying to 

4 figure out by knocking on doors and going --

5 MR. CALHOUN: Oh, I agree, I agree.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: So, in those 

7 circumstances, we have to attempt an answer.

8 MR. CALHOUN: Sure.

9 MR. FITZGERALD: Because if the 

10 answer is we still don't know, then I think 

11 the Work Group has to grapple with that. And 

12 if we don't, if DOE and Brookhaven doesn't 

13 really know and it is the best they can do, is 

14 that good enough?

15 I think that judgment still has to 

16 be made. And, you know, I think everything 

17 has been done from your part, whether it's 

18 retrievability of documentation, but I think 

19 that last question is still hanging out there.

20 MR. CALHOUN: Well, one of the 

21 things that we can, at least I like to hang my 

22 head on, is you know, I'll go back to the fact 
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1 that, I do put a little credence on the memos 

2 and the interviews.

3 And I've got something that says we 

4 have a program, I've got people that agree 

5 we've got a program. I do the empirical 

6 review to see retrievability.

7 Now, we've also got some, I'll call 

8 them annual summaries, of the whole body 

9 counts and urinalysis and what not that was 

10 taken over, by year, over the years.

11 And you'll see that what happened 

12 is the urinalysis fell down to pretty low, 

13 with the exception of tritium. And the whole 

14 body counts kind of took over.

15 So, that follows exactly what we're 

16 seeing. So it kind of makes me think that, 

17 you know, we're getting the data from the '80s 

18 on, that exists.

19 You know, I was talking to you 

20 about this one earlier, is that I've got other 

21 annual reports that say, you know, in all of 

22 1986, and they're for several different years, 
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1 there's been, you know, all bioassay results 

2 taken have been zero or less than, the result 

3 and the dose less than that required to be 

4 reported to the Department of Energy.

5 I mean all of them, for the entire 

6 site. So, we know that this was a pretty low 

7 dose site, but that's not the issue. The 

8 issue is were they monitoring people and can 

9 we get the records.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Ted, did you have 

11 something?

12 MR. KATZ: I just was thinking 

13 maybe a path forward. Because the 

14 conversation keeps washing back and forth 

15 between general and, you know, in other words, 

16 BNL as a monolith versus the specific 

17 operations.

18 And we know that it's different 

19 requirements for these different operations in 

20 these different facilities. So I just 

21 wondered whether you couldn't just take, say, 

22 as a sample, a sample of say eight or ten 
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1 operations where you know some folks, you 

2 would have concerns about exposure at those 

3 operations.

4 And then, so use those to drill 

5 down and then do the empirical testing for 

6 those operations and see, you know, can we for 

7 these workers, can we actually do a coworker?

8 Do we need to do coworker dose 

9 reconstruction, because we don't have the 

10 records. And, if so, how do we do it for 

11 those eight or ten operations so that you're 

12 then specifically getting at this issue 

13 because BNL is not a monolith.

14 And if you're just sort of sampling 

15 randomly, you know, 20 or 40 or 80 cases, but 

16 they cover every operation and everything, 

17 you're not getting very deep into answering 

18 the question for this project that occurred in 

19 this building.

20 You know, anybody who was involved 

21 with that, can we do that dose reconstruction?

22 MR. FITZGERALD: And that's kind of 
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1 what I’msuggesting. Is that whether NIOSH, 

2 Grady, was in a position to have sufficient 

3 records for those facilities in those time 

4 periods.

5 And I think your answer was it was 

6 still flooding in. And what I'd tell the Work 

7 Group is this is a work in progress. So we're 

8 kind of in an interesting position.

9 Most sites you sort of have the 

10 data and you're just trying to judge the 

11 accuracy of data. Here, it's not clear how 

12 adequate it is, because it's a moving target.

13 And what we're going by on the ER, 

14 you know, we kind of, we are focused on the 

15 Evaluation Report and going from there. The 

16 Evaluation Report singled out January 1st, 

17 1980, based on a couple of memorandum and an 

18 empirical test sort of to corroborate those 

19 memorandum that was based on two out of two in 

20 1980.

21 MR. CALHOUN: I don't have nothing

22 to do with the ER, by the way, that was 
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1 afterwards.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: But, you know, I'm 

3 just saying that what you have, though, think 

4 about it for a second. And we're basing the 

5 threshold to decided when the SEC ends.

6 We're basing on a couple of memos 

7 and, you know, again, we can argue about 

8 interpretation, but beyond that, we're doing 

9 sort of empirical tests to see if there's any 

10 problem with picking 1980. But really 1980 

11 was based on those couple of memos. So I'm 

12 just --

13 MR. KATZ: But all I'm saying, 

14 just, can I --

15 CHAIR BEACH: What I'd like to 

16 propose based on what you said, Ted, is SC&A 

17 generally does a data adequacy and 

18 completeness for all sites.

19 So, I would like the Work Group to 

20 decide if that is something we need to do 

21 here, as well. Which would take into account 

22 what you were saying earlier, Ted, I believe.
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: We've, this is 

2 Brad. We've always had to do that on the 

3 sites, because the information that's coming 

4 in is very sketchy anyway.

5 And as we have seen at numerous 

6 sites, and has been said, a lot of these, 

7 where they had a lot of scientists and stuff 

8 weren't even for it. Because they didn't want 

9 to mess with it.

10 DR. NETON: I would just maybe 

11 suggest that that might be jumping the gun a 

12 little bit because we still don't have a 

13 position on the table as how we're doing this.

14 MR. CALHOUN: Coworker - 

15 DR. NETON: Coworker. And 

16 typically the data adequacy comes into play 

17 after NIOSH puts a position and says we 

18 believe the data are adequate, here's how 

19 we're doing it. 

20 And SC&A would go out and evaluate 

21 the -- is it true, does it pass the sanity 

22 test.
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1 MR. KATZ: But if you are a 

2 facility specific or project specific, I mean 

3 it seems like you already are doing dose 

4 reconstructions for folks.

5 I mean, so for a specific project 

6 of concern, you can look it, well have we done 

7 dose reconstructions and what are we finding 

8 now in terms of, you know, is there any 

9 indication that we're actually able to do, for 

10 that facility, for that project?

11 MR. CALHOUN: Exactly what, you 

12 know, we go into this thing, you know, when 

13 you just think about, you think okay and it's 

14 a facility like this. The significant 

15 internal exposure is going to come from the 

16 reactor facilities, from isotope separation, 

17 the accelerator facilities are not.

18 Okay, we're not going to have a 

19 significant internal exposure. That was also 

20 brought up in our interviews, the people said 

21 the same thing.

22 And what we find is that the 
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1 individuals who worked at the reactor 

2 facilities are much more likely to have whole 

3 body counts and urinalysis than the people who 

4 work at the accelerator facilities.

5 I remember that Ron actually asked 

6 a question during, I don't know why this one 

7 sticks in my brain, but asked a question 

8 during one of the interviews about isotope

9 separation because it made medical isotopes 

10 there.

11 And that's kind of a, you know, 

12 there's a whole gambit of, I'll call them 

13 exotic, nuclides that were produced there 

14 during that process. And Ron asked the 

15 person, and said well what about people at the

16 isotope separation facility?

17 And the response was, yes, we 

18 counted those people, I don't recall anybody 

19 ever being positive, and there were only about 

20 eight people doing it.

21 So we, based on what we would think 

22 the internal monitoring requirements and 
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1 practices would be, we kind of see that with 

2 the dosimetry that we're getting back from 

3 Brookhaven.

4 MR. KATZ: But so, anyway, I don't 

5 want to, I shouldn't even be spending your 

6 time with my questions. But my point was why 

7 not take a bunch of snapshots of facility's 

8 projects of concern and do whatever, bring to 

9 the table whatever there is on that.

10 Sort of wrestle down the question 

11 on a project or facility specific basis for a 

12 sample of these, because it seems like you 

13 need to do that to get comfort and to know 

14 that you actually can handle the cases that 

15 come in for that facility.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, there's two 

17 questions really. Certainly it would need to 

18 be that way, just because that's the nature of 

19 the beast. At Brookhaven you'd have to do it 

20 facility-specific, time-specific.

21 Going back to Jim's comment, 

22 though, do we know whether we have a complete 
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1 set of records for Brookhaven. I mean I have 

2 to tell you a year and a half ago, they didn't 

3 have any idea.

4 So, you know, it's sort of the cart

5 before the horse, to know if you can have that 

6 comfort level that you have what you're going 

7 to have.

8 I don't, maybe at this point you 

9 can make a conclusion that irregardless of 

10 whatever else they collect for the facility's 

11 time periods of concern, do you feel confident 

12 that there's enough there to propose an 

13 approach.

14 And I don't even know if you have 

15 claimants where, your missing dose where you 

16 would need yet. It sounds like it's low 

17 priority so that suggests that you don't 

18 really have, you know, you haven't deferred 

19 that many claimant cases where you are missing 

20 dose.

21 MR. CALHOUN: Right, in most cases 

22 when we have absolutely no dosimetry we assign 
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1 ambient.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: But is that 

3 decision based on the operations and time 

4 frame, where they were. So these are people 

5 that did obviously not work in the facility.

6 MR. CALHOUN: And for the most 

7 part, all the rad workers are going to have 

8 external dosimetry. You know, the issue is 

9 internal dosimetry.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: It's internal, 

11 right.

12 MR. CALHOUN: Yes.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: I'm just saying 

14 those workers, in terms of their claims, if 

15 they didn't have any data, at this point --

16 MR. CALHOUN: It's typically 

17 ambient internal dose.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Even for the 

19 facilities where you have a, obviously, an 

20 exposure potential to internal?

21 MR. CALHOUN: I would have to make 

22 sure of that, I don't want to just jump out on 
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1 --

2 MR. FITZGERALD: But that's 

3 something, I would be interested in that 

4 question, because that's sort of raises the 

5 issue of is there a real, you know, sort of 

6 pragmatic need for a coworker model.

7 I would argue that applying ambient 

8 to somebody working in the HFBR or something, 

9 or whatever it is would questionable because 

10 they have a potential.

11 And you would want to assign the 

12 coworker to those people. But I don't know. 

13 I don't know the circumstances.

14 And that would be a good answer, at 

15 least to bring people up to speed on that. 

16 And then the second question gets to whether 

17 NIOSH can make a judgment as to what you have 

18 on hand as far as information.

19 Whether as Ted is pointing out, 

20 whether it's sufficient to feedback to us, you 

21 know, yes, we have enough information for the 

22 reactors that we feel comfortable, there's a 
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1 coworker approach that we can apply if 

2 somebody came in.

3 And we wouldn't assign him an 

4 ambient environmental, we would assign this 

5 and here's why. That would give us something 

6 to chew on and you might come back and say, 

7 but we don't really have a complete set of 

8 records for a different facility.

9 And we're going to have to sort of 

10 kick, you know, kick on Brookhaven to see if 

11 they have any possible other sources of 

12 information that would give us more 

13 information.

14 DR. NETON: That's not unlike the 

15 course we took at Los Alamos. 

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.

17 DR. NETON: Looking at the separate 

18 facilities and seeing, do we have data for the 

19 fission products are whatever it is, the 

20 accelerators or reactors - 

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Right. This may 

22 be a hybrid what you're talking about. We're 
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1 saying, one, you know, what's the circumstance 

2 now because, what are you assigning for 

3 missing internal dose for those facilities in 

4 those time frames.

5 And even specifying for the Work 

6 Group what facilities you're going to count as 

7 ones where you have exposure potential to 

8 internal where a coworker dose would make 

9 sense.

10 Would it be helpful with the time 

11 periods and that way we can evaluate, you 

12 know, is everybody on board with what 

13 facilities and what time periods.

14 And then where do you have 

15 sufficient information that, you know, maybe 

16 the first feedback was, yes, we haven't 

17 constructed a coworker model, but we think we 

18 have enough that we could come up with 

19 something that would be plausible and we'll 

20 get that back.

21 But maybe for some other time 

22 periods at other facilities, not quite there 
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1 yet and we need to go back, iteratively and 

2 see if Brookhaven has anything else to offer.

3 And so that might be a way to move 

4 it forward without waiting for the whole 

5 shebang to be done, which is what I think 

6 you're suggesting.

7 CHAIR BEACH: So it sounds like 

8 this is a two-part, where Grady would have to 

9 come up with that report and then you would 

10 have to evaluate.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I agree with, 

12 Jim. I mean, we have nothing to evaluate 

13 because I don't think they've had a chance to 

14 figure out, you know, if you were going to 

15 apply that, what time periods and facilities 

16 would you apply it and where do we stand as 

17 far as the status of information and records 

18 for Brookhaven.

19 And maybe have a load, maybe we're 

20 halfway there for, you know, the site, but 

21 there's still other information that hasn't 

22 been forwarded yet.
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1 And my guess that's probably where 

2 everything stands. So it would be a two part. 

3 But if you've done dose reconstructions 

4 already and have assigned environmental 

5 ambient to individuals, as well as time 

6 periods where there's exposure potential, 

7 which is what I think Jim was talking about, 

8 exposure potential. Then I think we would 

9 question that.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Absolutely. And then 

11 the other part of that is going back to the 

12 DOE question and trying to retrieve those 

13 records from Brookhaven for the early '80s 

14 into the '90s.

15 And Joe had mentioned talking to 

16 Greg. I guess I'm wondering what the path 

17 forward is there.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: I just read that 

19 and that doesn't make any sense to me, you 

20 know, citing Privacy Act does not give --

21 MR. CALHOUN: What we were wanting 

22 to do was we were wanting to just get --
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Their index.

2 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, of all the 

3 workers and just do a study that way. And 

4 their lawyers some how wouldn't let us do 

5 that.

6 But they did let us do the study 

7 based on a memo, for other people who weren't 

8 claimants. And they said these, you know, we 

9 said we want these individuals.

10 I think the, and it doesn't make 

11 sense to me either. But I think the fact that 

12 they were, that we were asking for a certain, 

13 you know, Joe Fitzgerald, and not everybody 

14 who worked there, they were okay with.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: They're giving you 

16 the actual personnel records.

17 MR. CALHOUN: Right.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: So that, it 

19 doesn't make any sense, it's inconsistent. 

20 You can't hold back one from the other. I 

21 think maybe if pressed through Greg, that may 

22 go away and that would be to get a broad view.
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1 CHAIR BEACH: So we've also talked 

2 about an individual, who I won't name, that 

3 was a year and a half ago gathering up and 

4 looking at data from all the locations.

5 Is it possible to go back and talk 

6 to that individual and see how it's coming? 

7 How that data retrieval, based on his work, is 

8 going?

9 MR. CALHOUN: Do I know this 

10 person?

11 CHAIR BEACH: I don't think you 

12 interviewed him, I think --

13 MR. FITZGERALD: We interviewed him 

14 but you make a point that there's several 

15 people that are actually going around. Now 

16 this individual sounded like he was on point 

17 to figure out who has what.

18 This was two years ago and I have 

19 his name. But, that would be a starting 

20 point.

21 MR. CALHOUN: It's a BNL person?

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes.
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1 MR. CALHOUN: Okay.

2 CHAIR BEACH: So is that a starting 

3 point for SC&A to go follow up with that 

4 individual since you did the original 

5 interview?

6 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I think this 

7 is part and parcel to this other question 

8 about getting their index or spreadsheet and, 

9 you know, where things stand.

10 I think that was what they were

11 using to track what they were collecting. And 

12 this individual was actually using that.

13 So I think it's part of that one 

14 where if we can gain access to the index or 

15 the spreadsheet and we certainly would also 

16 want to talk to this individual again and find 

17 out where things stand.

18 And if they sort of, you know, 

19 stopped the exercise, I'm wondering about 

20 that. Whether they've done all they can do, 

21 it's been two or three years and, you know, 

22 this is it.
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1 And that would be helpful to know 

2 as well, that anything more would have to come 

3 from us saying what about this facility, look 

4 for that, be more specific.

5 If the broader effort on their part 

6 may have stopped.

7 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, our thought, at 

8 the time, and I don't know if we determined 

9 they didn't have it, but I don't think we ever 

10 believed that they had a comprehensive list of 

11 everybody who was ever monitored.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: No.

13 MR. CALHOUN: What our thought was, 

14 was we want a list of people who worked at 

15 BLIP for these different time periods.

16 And then we were going to see what 

17 kind of bioassay was done. That was what we 

18 wanted to do.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, that makes a 

20 lot of sense. Because then you have a 

21 baseline of all the employees that would have 

22 been potentially exposed and you could
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1 crosswalk that, as opposed to using memo 

2 which, again, my concern about memos is that 

3 might be a subset of the broader population 

4 that was potentially exposed. It might give 

5 you a different answer.

6 MR. ADLER: Joe, this is Tim. I 

7 think that notion may be erroneous. I think 

8 that, as we talked about before, there was no 

9 real set internal bioassay program at the 

10 site.

11 I think that the requests typically 

12 were done by memos and there really would be 

13 nothing special or unusual about that.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: No, I guess I was 

15 thinking more about those programs where you 

16 had routine bioassay, because you had a 

17 chronic source term.

18 MR. ADLER: There might be one memo 

19 covering a longer time period or something 

20 like that, but I just don't think there's 

21 anything usual or special about these memos, 

22 and they compromises their usefulness as far 
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1 as determining retrievability.

2 And I'd also argue they determine 

3 completeness, completeness, I don't know how.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, you know, 

5 that's another thing that we can validate by 

6 getting to these employee lists and what have 

7 you, because the memos by themselves I don't 

8 think we can surmise is the universe of people 

9 that were bioassayed. I think --

10 MR. ADLER: They're just the ones 

11 that we happened --

12 MR. FITZGERALD: You happened to 

13 have them. I mean, if you found more memos, 

14 it doesn't mean you have more people that were 

15 bioassayed, it just means that you have some 

16 more record that you can track.

17 So, yes, I think it represents a 

18 subset of everybody that was bioassayed. It's 

19 useful for operations, but I think it's 

20 necessarily useful to establish the monitored 

21 population.

22 I think going back to, going back 
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1 to Brookhaven and seeing what their employee 

2 lists were for BLIP and for the reactor. I 

3 mean that would, to me, would be a strong 

4 baseline of who was at that facility in what 

5 time frame and that would be a comparison 

6 point, I think.

7 MR. ADLER: Sure.

8 CHAIR BEACH: Grady, I'm looking at 

9 an interview that was done on May 19th, and 

10 there was a question asked from SC&A. Is 

11 there a database with incidents listed?

12 And the interviewee responded that 

13 there is a radiological footprint project 

14 which documents historical radiological issues 

15 in a spreadsheet.

16 The information was gathered to use 

17 for D&D and it contained historic spills and 

18 other contamination incidents. It says here 

19 toward the end that NIOSH had asked for this 

20 database and were told that they could not 

21 have it.

22 This was a management decision, and 
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1 it says there are 100 buildings in the 

2 database. And it doesn't say who in NIOSH 

3 asked for, but it seems like that would be a 

4 document that would be interesting for us to 

5 try to locate. And I have the interview here 

6 to give you.

7 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, I'll follow up 

8 on that. I don't know of that, I don't know 

9 of that interaction.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, so I'm not sure, 

11 you know, other than that I thought it was 

12 something we should follow up.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: You know, as I 

14 recall, I think they had a lot to do with 

15 maybe some of the D&D that was being 

16 considered toward the '90s, and they were 

17 trying to go back and figure out, like a lot 

18 of other sites. You know, what was handled in 

19 what locations.

20 MR. CALHOUN: Can we take a 

21 wrecking ball to this or do we need to save 

22 it.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, it's sort of 

2 the notion if we go in, what were some sources 

3 that we might be able to get. So, it will be 

4 a useful thing to find.

5 We didn't find it when we were 

6 doing the Site Profile.

7 CHAIR BEACH: It reminded me of 

8 some of the work they did for Mound, to kind 

9 of blueprint the different facilities. That 

10 was just one thing I had.

11 How are we doing on, as far as, it 

12 looks like we've covered A.

13 MR. CALHOUN: I didn't really finish 

14 B.

15 CHAIR BEACH: No, we never started, 

16 actually.

17 MR. CALHOUN: Well, I've gone over 

18 the bullets time and time again on that. But 

19 I can go through what I found when I looked at 

20 the cases.

21 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

22 MR. CALHOUN: Because that was one 
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1 of the, one of the specific tasks that I had 

2 was to look at the cases that we had in house 

3 and see, you know, what I could determine from 

4 the monitoring, you know, if they could have 

5 been monitored or should have been monitored, 

6 what not.

7 Obviously I only looked at those 

8 cases for which he had received responses. I 

9 only looked at those cases with employment 

10 after 1980.

11 Because prior to 1980, I wasn't all 

12 that concerned. I looked at the CATIs and 

13 this goes back to the whole retrievability 

14 thing.

15 And, at least in my mind, the best 

16 way to determine if people were monitored was, 

17 they were asked in their CATIs if they had 

18 whole body counts or if they had any kind of 

19 bioassay.

20 There were eight people that 

21 reported that they had had at least one 

22 bioassay. We received five either whole body 
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1 counts or urinalysis.

2 Urinalysis and whole body counts, 

3 four of those, or five of those individuals. 

4 Two of those people worked before and after 

5 1980, so I really couldn't get a good grip on, 

6 you know, whether they, if they were monitored 

7 prior to 1980, we didn't have the information.

8 The only person that I, that was 

9 really a hold out, was one individual who 

10 worked as a design engineer. He worked 12 

11 months in 1985 and 1986, in the Van De Graaff 

12 Building.

13 Not a building you would expect to 

14 have bioassay. He didn't wear external, he 

15 had no external badge, he reported that, but 

16 he did leave a urine sample.

17 Although I can't be 100 percent 

18 certain, my guess is the urine sample was for 

19 medical analysis.

20 So, that's what we found from 

21 looking at the in case documents. No doubt, 

22 I've received more since I did this evaluation 
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1 from Brookhaven.

2 I don't know how many more I've 

3 received since then.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Would it be 

5 possible to, you know, since the sample size, 

6 I guess, for the after '80, two of three, 

7 before or after January 1st. 

8 Are you suggesting we might be able 

9 to increase that sample?

10 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, maybe. I'd have 

11 to look at it --

12 MR. FITZGERALD: That would be, you 

13 know, I think, you know --

14 MR. CALHOUN: It's all about what 

15 we've received since I did this.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, I mean --

17 MR. CALHOUN: There's a bunch. I 

18 mean they're, I think they're outstanding on 

19 like 50.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, there's some 

21 downside to the empirical approach but at 

22 least it would provide further corroboration.
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1 MR. CALHOUN: Right.

2 MR. FITZGERALD: And if it were 46 

3 out of 46, as opposed to two out of three or 

4 something, that would be a bit more 

5 compelling.

6 MR. CALHOUN: That's just all a 

7 head, that's all you're going to go with.

8 CHAIR BEACH: So that's an action?

9 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, I'll try to 

10 update that is what I'll do. Because I've 

11 looked at, and I've got a spreadsheet 

12 somewhere that shows the last one I looked at.

13 CHAIR BEACH: And are you capturing 

14 your action items?

15 MR. CALHOUN: I am but we'll 

16 discuss them at the end here, I would hope, 

17 and we can kind of try to, try to sort of 

18 agree.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: Now I think it 

20 would helpful for, I guess, 1980 through, I 

21 don't know, five or six years beyond that.

22 MR. CALHOUN: I just looked at 
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1 anything past 1980. It could have been 19, it 

2 could have been 2005.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay.

4 MR. CALHOUN: Anything past '80, I 

5 looked at.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: All right.

7 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, this is Ron 

8 with SC&A, just before we move on, Grady, on 

9 the side that had bioassay, and when you do 

10 more, do you recall like they said you had 

11 bioassay, so you looked, did you look and see 

12 what years they worked at that facility and 

13 then how many bioassays they had --

14 MR. CALHOUN: Yes.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: One per year or they 

16 had one bioassay and you counted that as 

17 sufficient? Or how did you say, yes, they've 

18 bioassay.

19 MR. CALHOUN: If the person 

20 reported that they had participated in a 

21 urinalysis or whole body count and they had 

22 one, then I said that yes they did.
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1 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, you know, when 

2 you go back and do this again on these other 

3 cases that you've received information on, it 

4 would be helpful if you kind of categorize.

5 Say, okay, this person worked there 

6 five years and he had one bioassay or he 

7 worked there five years and he had five 

8 bioassays.

9 A number of bioassays per year 

10 worked with the helpful information. That's 

11 contained in the data you received.

12 MR. CALHOUN: Okay. 

13 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: This is 

14 Kathy DeMers, can I make an additional 

15 requests? 

16 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

17 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: When you 

18 break it out, can you break it out by 

19 radionuclide?

20 MR. CALHOUN: Not if it's a whole 

21 body count. If it's a urinalysis, you know, I 

22 could. I'll look at that, I'm not going to 
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1 promise.

2 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Okay.

3 CHAIR BEACH: Anything else on that 

4 particular item. We've already covered C, I 

5 think, unless there's more information --

6 MR. CALHOUN: Well, that's just a 

7 sad story that, the story, and I just sent him 

8 another email today, is just that I've pinged 

9 him. Routinely we meet with him every couple 

10 of weeks.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: It sounds like we 

12 may have to elevate that a little bit.

13 MR. CALHOUN: So, I do not have the 

14 procedure, officially. They produce them all 

15 DOE sites, their search procedure criteria, 

16 whatever process. And BNL has not done that.

17 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, and then do you 

18 want to go over D?

19 MR. CALHOUN: And D, you know, I 

20 don't know if we want to go through those. 

21 Basically, the general opinion is nobody 

22 thought that 1980 was ridiculous.
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1 Nobody said that January 1st, 1980, 

2 was the date. There's some other neutron 

3 issues that, you know, Ron was more involved 

4 with in the discussions, but, so I don't 

5 really have much more on D and what's written 

6 there and what we've spoken about.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, we, I think 

8 it was our joint hope that somebody would 

9 raise their hand, you know, and say, yes, I've 

10 worked with the individual and was aware of 

11 the memo and, yes, 1980 was the big time.

12 And that didn't happen but, again, 

13 given the time frame I wasn't too shocked and 

14 so it was an attempt to try to provide more 

15 corroboration. 

16 CHAIR BEACH: One of the questions 

17 I wrote down was where are the log books now? 

18 Have you had any access to any of those log 

19 books from the earlier --

20 MR. CALHOUN: The whole body 

21 counting log books?

22 CHAIR BEACH: Any of them, the 
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1 urinalysis, the whole body?

2 MR. CALHOUN: I believe we have. I 

3 think most of those are prior to '80, though. 

4 I don't know, Tim, if you have any additional 

5 information on that, but I am fairly certain I 

6 saw some of those yesterday, when I was going 

7 --

8 MR. ADLER: Yes, we have some of 

9 those.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Well, there's one 

11 interviewee on your second page of 

12 interviewees, I won't mention his name. 

13 Stated that records were kept in log books 

14 from about '78 to '82, so I was wondering if 

15 those later log books are available. I don't 

16 know what dates you have.

17 MR. CALHOUN: I don't know that, 

18 I'd have to see which ones I have. But I'm 

19 fairly certain I saw some yesterday in the 

20 SRDB. And we will, you know, every time that 

21 we have something like that, we try to go 

22 through the process of linking that 
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1 information.

2 It's very laborious, because you've 

3 got to go over it every time because you don't 

4 have, every month or so or half year to 

5 determine what your claimant, you know, your 

6 claimant's come in.

7 You can't link it to somebody you 

8 don't have.

9 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Josie, this 

10 is Kathy DeMers. Would you consider sending 

11 us interviews for review and action items? 

12 CHAIR BEACH: Are you talking about 

13 the later ones or the earlier ones, Kathy?

14 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: The ones we 

15 did in September and October.

16 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, so you want us 

17 to give you those interviews for review, is 

18 that what you're asking?

19 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: No. The 

20 interviews need to be sent out to the 

21 interviewee.

22 CHAIR BEACH: Correct, and that was 
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1 one of my questions I was going to ask, if 

2 that had been done.

3 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: I just got 

4 the phone numbers yesterday from Grady.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. So I think 

6 that is, has to happen to substantiate, to 

7 make sure that what was said is what they 

8 actually said. So, yes, if that's in 

9 agreement to everybody that that be done.

10 I certainly think that's a good 

11 call. Thanks, Kathy, for reminding me.

12 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: Okay.

13 CHAIR BEACH: Anything else on 

14 this? Any other follow-up interviews that 

15 came from that, that we need to do?

16 MR. CALHOUN: There was one 

17 individual we couldn't get a hold of. We 

18 tried a couple times and he didn't seem 

19 interested. But I know SC&A reviewed him, 

20 interviewed him earlier.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, we did. And, 

22 again, I think the information he provided 
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1 tended to be more on the environmental side, 

2 and he was at a senior level and had less 

3 knowledge of the specific things that were 

4 going on.

5 Although, I guess I held out the 

6 hope he would be able to speak to something as 

7 fundamental as the centralized record, but he 

8 didn't have any firsthand knowledge.

9 CHAIR BEACH: Excuse me, sorry. 

10 Gen or Andy, do you have any other follow-ups 

11 for the interviewees or questions?

12 MEMBER ROESSLER: Josie, this is 

13 Gen, I probably missed something when I was 

14 unmuting. Did you ask if we have any 

15 additional questions?

16 CHAIR BEACH: Questions or any 

17 follow-up interviews you'd like to see take 

18 place?

19 MEMBER ROESSLER: I don't think 

20 that we're going to get any follow-up. I 

21 agree with a lot of the things people have 

22 said here today. And, of course, the one 
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1 thing with those interviews that we did, I was 

2 hoping because of the red flag that came from 

3 the [identifying information redacted] memo, 

4 that something very simple would follow.

5 Somebody would lead us to a printed 

6 memo that would say, yes, here's what 

7 happened. And a certain date and that would 

8 simplify things.

9 I don't think that's going to be 

10 coming so I appreciate all of the effort that 

11 went into those interviews. But I think we 

12 probably are at a dead end on that.

13 MEMBER ANDERSON: This Andy, yes, I 

14 was hoping, I was wishful to, but I would 

15 agree, I think we've chased the best we can 

16 and I think the interviews were helpful, but 

17 unfortunately they didn't turn up what we 

18 really needed.

19 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, thank you. So 

20 anything else before we go into the action 

21 items and the path forward?

22 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, this is Ron 
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1 with SC&A. I wanted to say that one thing 

2 that's not being addressed, I think clearly, 

3 and this is, has to do with your next step, 

4 the action item path forward, is that I think 

5 something that would be helpful and almost 

6 necessary, is for us to get a handle on what 

7 the data systems were and how they were handed 

8 off and to where they're at today. And maybe 

9 this has been lightly touched on, but I think 

10 we ought to decide whether we should take 

11 definitely action item steps.

12 For example, how were the 

13 handwritten data transport to the first 

14 electronic data system to the second and to 

15 today.

16 Because that would answer some 

17 questions if we see that this was done 

18 faithfully then that would give us a level of 

19 comfort that we don't have now.

20 If we find out we don't know or 

21 they weren't verified as they were 

22 transformed, what databases are out there with 
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1 that, maybe they were transferred but maybe 

2 that database is stuck in the basement some 

3 place, so we can't get to it, well then that

4 sends up a red flag.

5 So I would suggest that as a main 

6 ingredient in valuating this, is to have 

7 someone look at how the databases were 

8 transferred and verified through the years.

9 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, let me understand 

10 this. So we went from paper to electronic and 

11 then we went to electronic and then again to 

12 another electronic system? 

13 Was that the history of it, that 

14 you recall?

15 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, and I kind of 

16 laid that out, somewhat, in my July report in 

17 the appendix in the back.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: But this is just 

20 what I scratched together from documents I 

21 had. This really wasn't, you know, a BNL's 

22 sanctified type -- information.
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1 And so I think we need to be able 

2 to link these and see if they were verified 

3 when they went from one place to another and 

4 just see if that sheds any light on all the 

5 questions we have here.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, and we did 

7 touch upon, you know, one artifact of that 

8 whole process which was the feedback from the 

9 HPs at, in the early '80s, when they went from 

10 paper to the electronic system.

11 There was, you know, the 

12 completeness issue where not everything that 

13 was being collected was filed in the personnel 

14 folders.

15 So there was a gap there. It was 

16 not really well defined as to, you know, what 

17 the implications would be as far as having 

18 complete records.

19 But it was just noted that the 

20 records were probably incomplete, to some 

21 degree, because of that transition. So that 

22 sort of argues, I think, for what Ron is 
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1 saying.

2 That we don't really know what the 

3 implications are for completeness, and I guess 

4 I had originally thought we would address that 

5 as part of data integrity.

6 You know, the V&V, the validation 

7 verification part of it. But, again, I think 

8 that could be looked at separately from the 

9 usual completeness thing that would be focused 

10 on the coworker model.

11 So maybe that's something that SC&A 

12 could revisit with Brookhaven and look at the, 

13 look at this V&V, the data integrity question 

14 of transition between systems from 1980, 

15 forward.

16 It shouldn't be as hard as trying 

17 to do it in the prehistoric days. And I think 

18 there's still people there that were involved 

19 with it.

20 Now we touched on it, so we have a 

21 very broad outline, but we didn't really go 

22 any deeper than that. I'll leave it to Grady, 
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1 is that something that --

2 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, I don't know, I 

3 mean, we can certainly look at it. I think 

4 that what you're more likely to find, and this 

5 is just my opinion, is that you're going to 

6 find the actual paper records placed into 

7 their file, than you are somebody typing in a 

8 result, from a record from 1960 --

9 MR. FITZGERALD: You know, that's 

10 what I thought too, but we got exactly the 

11 opposite from the HPs and I thought it was a 

12 little bit hard to understand, but they're 

13 saying because they were switching over to the 

14 electronic system, they stopped being so 

15 religious about putting the paper in the 

16 files. And that actually led to a gap --

17 MR. ADLER: This is Tim. I think 

18 that maybe getting misinterpreted, I'm not 

19 sure that, I think maybe, at least the 

20 impression I got was there was no paper to put 

21 in the files.

22 And then, as Grady said, there's 
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1 only a transition of data from one format to 

2 another over time. If it was generating 

3 paper, it's still pretty much in paper, and 

4 that's what I've seen.

5 And BNL has made very little effort 

6 to go back, as some sites have, and get these 

7 things electronically entered and stored. If 

8 it was paper, it is paper. If it was a memo, 

9 it's still a memo.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Again, Tim, I'm 

11 just going by what we were told by the 

12 personnel that were involved. And maybe they 

13 didn't choose their words as carefully as they 

14 needed to, but they basically said, and this 

15 is in the interview notes again.

16 From the 1970s to 1980s, there was 

17 a transition to electronic record keeping. 

18 Unfortunately the personnel folder became 

19 increasingly incomplete during this time frame 

20 and data is missing.

21 From the 1990s to the present there 

22 is a more systematic complete electronic based 
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1 record keeping. Now that doesn't obviate your

2 interpretation either.

3 MR. ADLER: Right --

4 MR. FITZGERALD: It just could be 

5 that they relied on electronic systems so the 

6 personnel folders were missing pieces, but it 

7 didn't mean anything.

8 I think what we're saying, maybe we 

9 can put that to bed, and just know that during 

10 these transitions, the integrity of the 

11 information was preserved.

12 And that's something that maybe is 

13 part of --

14 MR. CALHOUN: We can look at it, 

15 I've got it written down here.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: All right.

17 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron, again. 

18 What I'm referring to is Page 35 of our July 

19 1st, 2010 reply, Attachment B. And that is 

20 very, you know, a very preliminary look at the 

21 basic data systems and that's what I would 

22 like to see expanded upon, so that the Work 
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1 Group and us and NIOSH can have a feel for 

2 actually what was done when, and how much 

3 confidence can we have in the data that they 

4 give us today.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, so I'm getting 

6 a little bit of mixed signals, because I know 

7 SC&A said that they would look at that, and 

8 Grady just said you wrote that down.

9 Are you going to take that as an 

10 action to do that and then --

11 MR. CALHOUN: I can ask. What I 

12 can do is I can try to find something or 

13 interview some people. I don't how else I'd 

14 be able to do that.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I think it 

16 looks like, you know, we had looked at the 

17 same documentation and got sort of the same 

18 feedback.

19 What Tim is saying doesn't, you 

20 know, contradict what we're saying, it's just 

21 sort of the interpretation of what it means 

22 and maybe we can pin that down better.
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1 Does it mean that they still had a 

2 complete record, it's just that they were no 

3 longer using those personnel files.

4 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, I'll try to find 

5 that out.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: And then going 

7 forward, I think Ron's point is that, you 

8 know, and he went through some effort to go 

9 ahead and spreadsheet the systems. If one can 

10 be a little more specific about 1980 and 

11 beyond period, as to what that means, then I 

12 think that would answer the question.

13 MR. CALHOUN: When new databases 

14 were started, did we transcribe the data and, 

15 if so, was it verified.

16 CHAIR BEACH: Well, it seems like 

17 the 1982, I think the last one came on-line in 

18 2002.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: Right, HBRS came on 

20 in 2002. This is Ron. HBRS was started in 

21 '95, and external was entered on it, somewhere 

22 in the mid '90s.
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1 Then the internal was entered in 

2 2002, which beginning, when they started 

3 entering all the bioassay records from 

4 internal into the HBRS, and I understand that 

5 some of the older legacy electronic systems 

6 are being entered in, but I don't know to what 

7 percent of completeness that has been done.

8 And I don't know if the old 

9 electronic systems are all supported. Are 

10 they able to retrieve all that information, 

11 from the old electronic system? That still is 

12 an item that's hanging in the air.

13 MR. CALHOUN: I'll see if we can do 

14 that. What I have written down here, was data 

15 transcribed from one system to another. And 

16 if it was, was it verified.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, I mean you 

18 know, I think trying to avoid having too many 

19 people come at Brookhaven from too many 

20 different directions.

21 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, they don't like 

22 that.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: They don't like 

2 that. So, I'd rather have one contact on this 

3 stuff and then maybe go from there.

4 MR. CALHOUN: Once we get the list 

5 of the go dos together, we can decide what to 

6 do and maybe we can tag team.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I'm just 

8 saying we'd be glad to help, glad to take 

9 something off. I just don't want to get 

10 Brookhaven agitated.

11 CHAIR BEACH: Correct.

12 MR. CALHOUN: Or else they'll stop 

13 giving us records.

14 (Laughter.)

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: Grady, you talked 

16 about earlier, this is Brad. That you just 

17 received a bunch more, a capture whatever.

18 MR. CALHOUN: I don't want to say 

19 just. I'll it happened in the last eight or 

20 nine months probably. And I've written this 

21 in here just to kind of tell you what, I can 

22 tell you what it was.
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1 It was a data dump and, where was 

2 it. I got a bunch here, let's see. Where is 

3 it? Oh, here it is. BNL has provided data 

4 sets including in vivo results and tritium 

5 urinalysis for later years.

6 Tritium data contains 11,000 

7 entries from 1995, to 2003. In vivo data set 

8 contains more than 2,800 individual whole body 

9 counts from 1999, to 2001.

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: I'm just, one of 

11 my pet peeves is there's a lot, this is 

12 continuously going on stuff and I just want to 

13 make sure that when this comes in we kind of 

14 have a running file of what it is and where 

15 it's at.

16 This one I've got in Pantex, we've 

17 got new data in and it goes into the O: drive 

18 and then all you have is a number.

19 MR. CALHOUN: It would be cool if 

20 it had a date entered. 

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: Or what I've been 

22 requesting is, there's just a little folder up 
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1 at the front, as stuff came in. Just, you 

2 know, this came in or whatever.

3 And they have been good enough to 

4 sometimes put PDF files and so forth like 

5 that. But that's another issue. I just 

6 wanted to make sure that we were on top of the 

7 information as it came in.

8 Because this is a continuous thing 

9 and it's at every site. Just kind of a data 

10 capture. This one sounds like it will just be 

11 one, one file that will be pretty easy to 

12 find.

13 MR. CALHOUN: I assume that's SRDB, 

14 is that right, Tim?

15 MR. ADLER: Yes.

16 MEMBER CLAWSON: So it's just in 

17 one folder then and we can review it from 

18 there.

19 MR. ADLER: In the SRDB it ends up 

20 being a link for that spreadsheet.

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay.

22 MR. ADLER: And I think your SRDB 
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1 may be a little bit different than ours, so I 

2 can't guarantee how that will work for you.

3 MR. CALHOUN: It shouldn't be, but 

4 let's, if I can get the, if you can give me 

5 that number, Tim, after the meeting, I'll 

6 forward that to Brad.

7 MR. ADLER: Okay.

8 CHAIR BEACH: And just forward it 

9 to the Work Group, if you don't mind. Okay,

10 anything else before we go into the action 

11 items and future plans?

12 (No response.)

13 CHAIR BEACH: Who would like to 

14 start with their action, there's a lot of 

15 action items here, so Grady, why don't you go 

16 ahead?

17 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, this is just 

18 from the neutron part. Let's see, what I have 

19 is need to find out if BNL did any fading 

20 corrections prior to issuing the dose of 

21 record.

22 And, let's see, Ron looked at, 
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1 okay, I need to look at those 16 DRs that were 

2 completed after the revised TBD and look at 

3 the angular dependence correction factors.

4 And part of that is Ron is going to 

5 send me those numbers, so I know which ones to 

6 look at. I guess we're going to look for, I 

7 guess we'll try to look for the Holy Grail 

8 again.

9 Maybe a memorandum discussing how, 

10 a memorandum discussing how to assign dose, 

11 with the two different dosimetries.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I guess 

13 whether they assigned dose and how they did 

14 it.

15 MR. CALHOUN: Yes. Maybe a 

16 discussion of the variance over range to see 

17 if it really even matters. Okay, so that's 

18 one, two, three, four, that's all neutrons 

19 right now.

20 Leo Faust is looking for the Piesch 

21 memo. Okay, that's all I have for neutrons 

22 for me.
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1 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, and I believe 

2 SC&A just had the one action item to send you 

3 the case studies. Does anybody have anything 

4 else for neutrons?

5 (No response.)

6 CHAIR BEACH: And then again these 

7 will be typed up and sent out within the next 

8 couple of days. All right.

9 MR. CALHOUN: Okay, let's see, for 

10 internal data, okay what I'm going to do is 

11 I'm going to provide Kathy, or I guess I could 

12 provide it to everybody, the two data points 

13 for 1980, that I have, that I found for the 

14 table in Item Number 1.

15 I'm going to provide a status of 

16 the BNL requests for data on case-specific 

17 basis. I'm kind of, this one is kind of 

18 general, but we're going to kind of look at 

19 where we stand on the coworker model.

20 CHAIR BEACH: Is that going to be 

21 in the form of like a memo to us or a White 

22 Paper?
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1 MR. CALHOUN: Just let me, just 

2 leave it at that right now, so I can figure 

3 out how my response is going to be. I've got 

4 to look and see where we are before I respond.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Okay.

6 MR. CALHOUN: So how I deliver it 

7 to you is not as important as that I do. I'm 

8 going to get Kathy case IDs for the eight 

9 CATIs. Let's see, that's with the coworker.

10 Do we have enough data for coworker 

11 by facility? That's part of that. I'm going 

12 to update the review of the in-house study 

13 that I did, based on any new information.

14 CHAIR BEACH: And add cases 

15 possibly to that --

16 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, that's it. 

17 Those will be the cases, the claimant's that 

18 we have received and I'm looking at the dose 

19 - 

20 MR. KATZ: Can we go back a second 

21 to the "by facility" part of that coworker 

22 question. Do you guys need to select, some 
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1 how, a sample of, sort of, higher concern 

2 facilities because you can't do it for the 

3 whole BNL. I mean, you're just, right?

4 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, but we're, I 

5 think, it's a big look. This is not a trivial 

6 go do, you know, to go see what --

7 MR. KATZ: I'm sure.

8 MR. CALHOUN: You know, what we 

9 have. So --

10 MR. KATZ: But that's part of the 

11 reason for also narrowing the --

12 CHAIR BEACH: Right.

13 MR. CALHOUN: But it certainly, we 

14 would certainly look for, we would certainly 

15 look a the high potential facilities.

16 You know, I'd look at the HBFR or 

17 BLIP, maybe. But I wouldn't look as much at 

18 the reactor facilities because those are, or 

19 not reactor, accelerator facilities because 

20 those are going to be external.

21 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, there's, you 

22 know, that is helpful. I think it is a multi-
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1 step thing and it's a big task. I mean I 

2 think the first step is, you know, what is 

3 the, what are the facilities and time periods?

4 MR. CALHOUN: And that, yes, 

5 because that's going to involve talking to 

6 BNL.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, and then I 

8 think the Work Group would want to see what 

9 the judgment is, early judgment and decide 

10 it's comfortable with that judgment.

11 Then we go from there to see, you 

12 know, what's the completeness of the 

13 information. 

14 MR. KATZ: So then the first step, 

15 Joe is saying, is actually just identify a 

16 candidate?

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, and this 

18 hasn't been a high priority because there 

19 hasn't been a demand. But, nonetheless, if 

20 it's going to be a higher priority then it's 

21 going to be a big task.

22 MR. CALHOUN: And most likely it's 
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1 going to be HBFR, but --

2 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, your right, I 

3 think it probably in that time frame, no 

4 doubt. But the other thing is what are you 

5 doing now with active claims coming in, 

6 whether, just sort of a little bit of 

7 housekeeping as far as, you know, okay, would 

8 any of those be affected by your 

9 categorization that, you know, you're 

10 assigning ambient environmental but clearly if 

11 they fall within the time periods of 

12 facilities that would argue for a coworker 

13 assignment.

14 And I think you were going to 

15 advise, anybody at all falls in there.

16 MR. CALHOUN: I'll write that down. 

17 What are we doing now for coworker internal -

18 - 

19 MR. FITZGERALD: For those 

20 facilities --

21 MR. CALHOUN: At high --

22 MR. FITZGERALD: But I agree before 
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1 you can even answer that question you have to 

2 decide what facilities and what time.

3 MR. CALHOUN: Right.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Then you know, you 

5 know, what people.

6 MR. CALHOUN: And then the last one 

7 I have is, was data transcribed from one 

8 system to another and was it verified, if so.

9 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, then I had one 

10 that I wanted you to go see if you could find 

11 that radiological footprint?

12 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, that's good.

13 CHAIR BEACH: Here, I'll hand this 

14 over to you. It's kind of the third paragraph 

15 down there.

16 MR. CALHOUN: Oh, you've got notes 

17 on this, let me just write down then, I guess.

18 CHAIR BEACH: Well, or write down 

19 the interview, you can go find it, it's out on 

20 the O: drive.

21 MR. CALHOUN: Okay.

22 MR. FITZGERALD: And that goes hand 
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1 in hand with obtaining the information that 

2 has been kept back on a Privacy Act basis 

3 which is the, what Brookhaven has compiled as 

4 far as their records.

5 CHAIR BEACH: It looks like they 

6 did some of that work for you.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Then we have the 

8 action to send interviews out to the 

9 interviewees, I guess that was the last thing.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Yes, that was.

11 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron 

12 Buchanan, I couldn't see what was going on. 

13 What was that last one you handed Grady?

14 CHAIR BEACH: Sorry, Ron, that was 

15 the May 19th interview that Kathy and Joe did, 

16 and there was a question, one of the 

17 interviewees talked about a list that was put 

18 together.

19 And NIOSH had requested that and 

20 was denied, so I just asked Grady if he would 

21 go back out and find that list.

22 DR. BUCHANAN: What was the list 
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1 of?

2 CHAIR BEACH: It was a list of 

3 historical documents, it was a spreadsheet 

4 that they had completed for D&D work. It was 

5 gathered for use and for D&D.

6 MR. CALHOUN: Incident driven 

7 wasn't it, didn't you say it was incident?

8 CHAIR BEACH: It was called a 

9 Radiological Footprint Project and it 

10 documented historical radiological issues in a 

11 spreadsheet.

12 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, thank you.

13 CHAIR BEACH: And I don't believe 

14 anybody has it, it's at Brookhaven.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it's the kind 

16 of, it's similar to what we saw at Mound, it's 

17 like the King Report. It's a baseline to guide 

18 D&D so they know what the source, potential 

19 sources might be at different facilities.

20 CHAIR BEACH: Well, one thing it 

21 said, some of the departments were more 

22 forthcoming than others, so it's not complete, 
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1 but it sounds like it's a good place to start, 

2 or at least look at.

3 Okay, is there anything else, Kathy 

4 or Ron, that we've missed in the action items?

5 MS. ROBERTSON-DEMERS: I can't 

6 think of any.

7 DR. BUCHANAN: No. Let's see. 

8 They did cover going back and looking at the 

9 database system and the fading.

10 I will send those 16 cases to 

11 Grady. Now, I want to clarify a statement. 

12 Six of those were Dose Reconstructed before 

13 the new TBD and ten after the new TBD.

14 CHAIR BEACH: Correct.

15 MR. KATZ: Right, that was 

16 understood, right. Thanks, Ron.

17 MR. CALHOUN: And all I need is 

18 just the numbers.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: Right.

20 CHAIR BEACH: And when you send 

21 things out, could you please send it out to 

22 the whole Work Group, for those of us that 
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1 want to track.

2 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, sure will.

3 CHAIR BEACH: And then give me a 

4 time frame on when these lists of actions 

5 items will be typed up and sent back and forth 

6 and then out to the whole Work Group? What 

7 dokyou think?

8 MR. CALHOUN: I can get mine done 

9 by end of the day Monday.

10 CHAIR BEACH: Okay. And then out 

11 to the Work Group maybe Tuesday or Wednesday 

12 after we've both looked at them?

13 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, it will be 

14 sometime mid next week.

15 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, and then how 

16 about time line for the next Work Group 

17 meeting. I know I'm pushing here, it's a 

18 stretch.

19 Because I know NIOSH has got quite 

20 a few things.

21 MR. CALHOUN: Gosh, I would think

22 that I'm going to need a few months, at least.
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1 MR. KATZ: I would guess.

2 CHAIR BEACH: Well, you're going to 

3 need a couple of months, then I know SC&A will 

4 have to respond or review some of that?

5 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I would say, 

6 to have a profitable meeting, it would be 

7 helpful to have a meaningful, even a technical 

8 call if necessary, to make sure that, you 

9 know, we understand where the analysis has 

10 gone on, and particularly on the coworkers 

11 because that's a pretty big piece of this.

12 CHAIR BEACH: So possibly we'd need 

13 a technical call and then --

14 MR. FITZGERALD: It will be a few 

15 months. I mean I would guess, maybe sometime 

16 early May. 

17 MR. KATZ: Okay, which -- do you 

18 guys want to pick a date now?

19 CHAIR BEACH: I think we should 

20 pick.

21 MR. KATZ: Since we're all 

22 together. If we could just shoot for a date 
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1 in May. It can always be changed.

2 MR. CALHOUN: I'm out of town the 

3 13th to the 20th.

4 CHAIR BEACH: Well we have a LANL 

5 meeting on the second here, so the third would 

6 be a nice time for those of us that are 

7 already going to be here, if that's still 

8 available.

9 MR. KATZ: And so Andy and Gen, why 

10 don't you look at your calendars, too.

11 MEMBER ROESSLER: I'm looking, I'm 

12 free on the third.

13 MR. KATZ: That's good for Gen.

14 MEMBER ANDERSON: What dates again?

15 MR. KATZ: How is May 3rd for you, 

16 Gen, I mean, Andy?

17 MEMBER ANDERSON: May 3rd looks 

18 good.

19 MR. KATZ: Okay. And Brad?

20 MEMBER ANDERSON: Must be something 

21 going on bad then.

22 (Laughter.)
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1 MR. KATZ: So Brad is nodding yes, 

2 too.

3 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

4 MEMBER ANDERSON: Most definitely a 

5 yes.

6 MR. KATZ: Okay, why don't we --

7 MEMBER ANDERSON: What was the 

8 other date?

9 MR. KATZ: That's the only date 

10 we're talking about right now. It sounds like 

11 that's a good date for everyone.

12 MEMBER ANDERSON: Okay.

13 MR. KATZ: Okay, and then we'll 

14 just check in closer to time, Grady, about, 

15 and Joe, about readiness.

16 MEMBER ANDERSON: So we need a 

17 whole day?

18 MR. KATZ: Yes, let's plan on it.

19 CHAIR BEACH: Yes.

20 MEMBER ANDERSON: Okay, that'sfine. 

21 Then I'll plan to come in person.

22 CHAIR BEACH: Oh, nice.
175 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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

1 MR. CALHOUN: Great, always good to 

2 see you, Andy.

3 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, right. And 

4 eat at that wonderful --

5 MR. KATZ: Absolutely.

6 MEMBER ANDERSON: Restaurant in the 

7 hotel.

8 MR. KATZ: Absolutely.

9 MEMBER ANDERSON: I think I've had 

10 everything on their menu.

11 MR. KATZ: Well, Andy, you're not 

12 even close to the rest of us.

13 MEMBER ANDERSON: I'm not even 

14 close, I know.

15 MR. KATZ: The record some of us 

16 have with that nutritional value.

17 CHAIR BEACH: And we haven't heard 

18 from --

19 MEMBER ANDERSON: Okay, I'll mark 

20 down the date, the 3rd it is.

21 MR. CALHOUN: How about you, Tim, 

22 and your group?
176 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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

1 MR. ADLER: I guess I'm open at 

2 this point.

3 MR. CALHOUN: That's what I like to 

4 hear.

5 CHAIR BEACH: Okay, great meeting 

6 everybody, thank you and we're adjourned.

7 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

8 matter went off the record at 12:04 p.m.)

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177 

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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

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