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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

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NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

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ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH

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120th MEETING

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WEDNESDAY

DECEMBER 13, 2017

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The meeting convened at 8:30 a.m., 

Mountain Time, in the DoubleTree by Hilton 

Albuquerque, 201 Marquette Avenue Northwest, 

Albuquerque, New Mexico, James M. Melius, Chair, 

presiding.
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PRESENT:

JAMES M. MELIUS, Chair

HENRY ANDERSON, Member

JOSIE BEACH, Member

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member*

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Member

DAVID KOTELCHUCK, Member

RICHARD LEMEN, Member*

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member*

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

JOHN W. POSTON, SR., Member*

DAVID B. RICHARDSON, Member

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member*

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member

LORETTA R. VALERIO, Member

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member*

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official
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REGISTERED AND/OR PUBLIC COMMENT PARTICIPANTS:

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor

ALLEN, KELLEY

BARTON, BOB, SC&A

BEHLING, KATHY, SC&A*

BLAZE, D'LANIE

BURGOS, ZAIDA, NIOSH

CALHOUN, GRADY, DCAS

CARROLL, STEPHANIE*

CRAWFORD, CHRIS, DOL*

DOMINA, KIRK

EVASKOVICH, ANDREW

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A

GIRON, ELOI

GRIFFON, MARK

HAND, DONNA*

HINNEFELD, STU, DCAS

IRWIN, PETER

KINMAN, JOSH, DCAS

JACQUEZ-ORTIZ, MICHELLE

LEWIS, GREG, DOE*

LIN, JENNY, HHS

NETON, JIM, DCAS

RUTHERFORD, LAVON, DCAS

STIVER, JOHN, SC&A

TAULBEE, TIM, DCAS
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Contents 

Welcome and Introduction.......................... 5

NIOSH Program Update.............................. 8

DOL Program Update............................... 16

DOE Program Update............................... 23

Dose Reconstruction Reviews Update............... 35

Dose Reconstruction Review Methods............... 58

Ames Laboratory SEC Petition..................... 98

(1971 - 1989; Ames IA)........................... 98

Procedures Reviews: Use of Coworker Dosimetry... 150

Data for External Dose Assignment (OTIB 20);.... 150

Parameters for Processing Claims for Construction

................................................ 150

Workers (OTIB 52)............................... 150

Savannah River Site SEC Petition................ 200

Update (1972-2007; Aiken, SC)................... 200

SEC Petitions Status Update..................... 272

Board Work Session.............................. 309

Sandia SEC Petition (1995-2011;................. 310

Albuquerque, NM) Update......................... 310

Public Comment.................................. 317

Adjourn......................................... 361
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

2 8:33 a.m.

3 Welcome and Introduction 

4 CHAIR MELIUS: We are going to get 

5 started. And Ted, do you want to do the opening?

6 MR. KATZ: Yes. Welcome, everyone. 

7 This is the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

8 Worker Health. Welcome to our 120th meeting, in 

9 Albuquerque. 

10 Some preliminaries: The agenda for 

11 today and the materials for today, and for 

12 tomorrow morning's meeting, are posted on the 

13 NIOSH website under the Board's schedule of 

14 meetings section. Click on that, today's date, 

15 and you should have there the agenda and all the 

16 presentations for today and tomorrow morning, as 

17 well as all the background documentation that 

18 relates to those presentations. So you're 

19 welcome to follow along with us there.

20 There is also a Skype link on the 

21 agenda. And if you want to, you can use that 

22 Skype link with your computer to follow the 

23 presentations as they are given. Either way, you 
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1 have the presentations on the web or you can 

2 follow it by Skype, if you want to see the pages, 

3 so to speak, turn as they are being presented. 

4 The audio, in any case, is this phone line. So 

5 you'll hear it either way.

6 Also, there's a public comment session 

7 at the end of the day today. It's at 6:00 p.m. 

8 So, anybody who is listening right now for that 

9 comment session, please be available at the 

10 beginning, because it starts at 6:00 and it says 

11 6:00 to 7:00, but it will end whenever we are 

12 through with comments. So please be there at the 

13 beginning.

14 And people that are here in the room, 

15 if you want to make public comment, there's a 

16 sign-up sheet outside. For people on the phone, 

17 no need to sign up. We'll get to the phone 

18 comments after we go through the in-person 

19 comments.

20 Okay, and last preliminary is, for 

21 everyone on the phone, please mute your phone 

22 while listening to this conference. The Board 

23 Members, of course, will be speaking at times, 
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1 but everybody should keep their phone on mute, 

2 except for when they're addressing the Board. 

3 And if you don't have a mute button for your 

4 phone, press *6. *6 will mute you phone, and *6 

5 will take your phone back off mute.

6 And also, please, nobody put this call 

7 on hold at any point because that causes 

8 disruptions for everyone listening on the phone. 

9 If you have to leave the meeting for a while, 

10 just hang up and dial back in, but don't use hold.

11 Okay, then, let's get, then, to roll 

12 call. We have no conflicts of interest for 

13 today's sessions, except for there is an update 

14 at the end of the day for Sandia. We have several 

15 Board Members that have conflicts there. But 

16 it's just an update. There's no interaction. So 

17 there's really no issue with conflicts for today 

18 or tomorrow morning. So we won't address that 

19 with roll call.

20 (Roll call.)

21 MR. KATZ: With that, no more ado, 

22 it's your meeting, Dr. Melius.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, thank you, Ted. 
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1 We'll get started, as usual, with an update from 

2 NIOSH and Stu.

3 NIOSH Program Update 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Thank you, Dr. Melius, 

5 and good morning, everyone. I'm here to provide 

6 my traditional update of what's new for the 

7 program for the past period of time.

8 Our news updates, the first one 

9 relates to Super S solubility class plutonium, 

10 which you all recall we developed a method for 

11 dealing with Super S solubility before the ICRP. 

12 The ICRP did not have a model for Super S. They 

13 stopped at S.

14 So we had had data available from the 

15 TRU Registry that kind of indicated what the 

16 longer retention for Super S plutonium was. We 

17 developed a mathematical workaround, while we did 

18 not develop new model parameters to fit to the 

19 ICRP model. We just worked a mathematical 

20 workaround.

21 Well, recently, the ICRP has caught up 

22 with us and addressed Super S solubility in their 

23 model, their lung model, and by changing those 
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1 they've actually changed the model parameters for 

2 using their lung model. They've adapted it to 

3 address Super S solubility.

4 And so we will be going back to our 

5 OTIB-49, which is our Super S Technical 

6 Information Bulletin, and conforming it to the 

7 ICRP's model, since we now have an ICRP model for 

8 Super S.

9 So, that will be an activity that will 

10 be coming up. It's not in place yet. It's not 

11 real clear how that will affect the outcome. I 

12 don't suppose it will be very -- you know, the 

13 outcome of cases I don't think will be affected 

14 to any great degree. But, anyhow, that is a piece 

15 of work that is coming up and a piece of news 

16 that came up just fairly recently.

17 Our other activities that I've got on 

18 the news report here are outreach activities. We 

19 did have our annual Joint Outreach Task Group 

20 meeting in October. That's typically an in21 person meeting in Washington, but since we don't 

22 work in Washington, we attended by phone. And we 

23 largely discussed lessons learned from things 
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1 we've done and some plans for the upcoming year.

2 Our outreach contractor, ATL, 

3 sponsored our Dose Reconstruction and SEC 

4 Workshop in Cincinnati. We do that once a year, 

5 usually in September, and invite people who are 

6 interested in the program from around the country 

7 to attend and give them a quick workshop on the 

8 dose reconstruction and SEC process.

9 I did attend a Public Joint Outreach 

10 Task Group meeting in conjunction with the 

11 Advisory Board on Toxic Substances and Worker 

12 Health meeting in Santa Fe. That was last month.

13 Since so many of the principals 

14 associated with Joint Outreach Task Group were 

15 going to be at the Part E meeting, they decided 

16 they would have a public meeting in association 

17 with that meeting. And so we went and attended.

18 I did take the opportunity to attend one day of 

19 the Part E Board meeting while I was there.

20 And then just last week the Department 

21 of Labor sponsored an Authorized Representative 

22 Workshop in Jacksonville, Florida. This is an 

23 attempt to continue outreach to people who have 
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1 more than a personal -- more than their personal 

2 claim interest in the program and to provide them 

3 some tools and assistance in performing their job 

4 as an authorized rep.

5 At the moment, my computer is not 

6 doing anything.

7 (Pause.)

8 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Stu, could I ask 

9 you a question while you're waiting for the 

10 computer?

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Sure.

12 MEMBER RICHARDSON: This relates to 

13 the ICRP model for Super S. You mentioned the 

14 lung. Does the ICRP model have target organs 

15 other than the lung? Does it model transport to 

16 other compartments? And is that going to have 

17 any --

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, Jim, correct if 

19 I'm wrong here, but, yeah, the ICRP model has a 

20 lung model that includes the transport of 

21 materials into the bloodstream for distribution 

22 to other organs.

23 So, as far as I know, that portion of 
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1 the ICRP is not changed by this addition of Super 

2 S to the lung Class. But, you know, the lung 

3 Class describes parameters for -- there are 

4 several compartments of the lung and different 

5 clearance parameters to either physical removal, 

6 transferred to lymph nodes, or transferred to the 

7 blood stream.

8 And this describes -- the change in 

9 the model changed the coefficients of transfer 

10 for those compartments. Once it's in the 

11 bloodstream, then there is also an ICRP model for 

12 the distribution to organs and recirculation from 

13 the organs from the bloodstream.

14 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay, and those 

15 are assumed to be uniform for the different --

16 for Super S?

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Yeah, the solubility 

18 Class in the lung is not assumed to affect the 

19 transport once it's in the bloodstream.

20 (Pause.)

21 MR. HINNEFELD: The remainder of the 

22 report is our status report on cases. As you can 

23 see, we have over 48,000 cases we've received 
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1 from NIOSH. The majority of those have been 

2 returned. Some 800 are administratively closed 

3 and 1,200 are with us in some stage of the dose 

4 reconstruction process.

5 Of the cases we've submitted to DOL, 

6 41,000 have gone with dose reconstructions and 

7 then roughly 5,000 have been pulled for one 

8 reason or another, many of those for SEC 

9 determination because an SEC was added.

10 This is a breakdown of the cases that 

11 are at NIOSH. You can see that, of those 1,248 

12 cases that are at NIOSH, 274 of those are actually 

13 with the claimants, the draft dose 

14 reconstructions are with the claimants. So that 

15 leaves, really, close to 1,000 in our inbox, 

16 which has been a pretty steady number for a while 

17 now.

18 Probability of Causation summary, 

19 this percentage hasn't really changed much. 

20 That's around roughly 27 or 28 percent of the 

21 cases that have been through dose reconstruction 

22 are above 50 percent Probability of Causation.

23 The DOE has zero requests from us that 
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1 are above 60 days. So this is kind of an 

2 improvement since the last couple of months. And 

3 the 155 outstanding just means we're waiting for 

4 responses, but they're not very old.

5 And then our summary of the first 

6 20,000 cases, this is how they break down: 16,732 

7 have been submitted for dose reconstruction; 

8 2,000 have been pulled because SECs were added 

9 once we had the claim in our hands; and 770 were 

10 pulled for some other reason.

11 Of the claims we have now, you can see 

12 from the breakdown here, there are three that are 

13 identified as initials. Of course, I'm always 

14 interested in those because there shouldn't be 

15 any initials in the first 20,000. So, those three 

16 cases, in two of those three cases, the claimant 

17 was paid through the SEC process. In other words, 

18 we got the case for dose reconstruction. While 

19 we had the case, an SEC Class was added, and so 

20 the case was paid through dose reconstruction. 

21 So it never showed up as a final. The dose 

22 reconstruction just showed up as incomplete. 

23 Those two people then got non-SEC cancers, 
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1 submitted another claim for medical benefits for 

2 those non-SEC cancers, and so the Department of 

3 Labor sent the case back to us.

4 Since we had never sent back a dose 

5 reconstruction to the Department of Labor, our 

6 system shows them as initial cases. So, they 

7 actually sat for many years between the time they 

8 were pulled for SEC and the time we got it back 

9 for the additional cancer.

10 The third case was a case where we did 

11 a draft dose reconstruction, the Energy Employee 

12 claimant did not return the OCAS-1, and so the 

13 case was administratively closed. Again, we did 

14 not return a dose reconstruction to DOL. Many 

15 years later, a survivor claimant picked up the 

16 claim, reactivated it, and so it shows up as an 

17 initial because we've never sent one back, even 

18 though it was inactive for many years.

19 Okay, that concludes my statistics. 

20 I've taken more than my time but I'm blaming my 

21 computer for that. Are there any other 

22 questions?

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Any questions for Stu 
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1 or for his computer, since they've shared the 

2 last 20 minutes or so?

3 Okay. Now, we have another challenge.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Trying to get it going 

5 again.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Getting it going again.

7 MR. KATZ: While he's getting that 

8 going, Board Members note, if you didn't hear 

9 before, the internet connection here, after you 

10 leave your computer idle for ten minutes, the 

11 internet connection will drop you and you'll have 

12 to rejoin. So you might want to just tap your 

13 computer every now and then to keep that live.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, the Department of 

15 Labor's presentation is now on the screen. I 

16 believe the Department of Labor representative 

17 will be presenting from the phone.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah, Frank Crawford, 

19 are you --

20 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes, I'm here.

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, go ahead.

22 DOL Program Update

23 MR. CRAWFORD: And thanks to Stu for 
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1 helping me with his presentation, as usual.

2 I'll just provide -- go to slide 2, 

3 Stu. This slide shows the compensation paid for 

4 Part B and Part E. We see that we have paid out 

5 $6.4 billion in total compensation for Part B, 

6 and $4.2 billion for Part E. We've also paid 

7 $3.7 billion for medical bills, for a total of 

8 $14.3 billion for compensation and medical bills 

9 paid. There were 197,000 cases filed, as of mid10 November. Next slide, Stu.

11 On this slide we see that we're 

12 talking about Part B cancer cases with a final 

13 decision to accept, of which we have 10,366 cases 

14 with dose reconstructions and final decisions, 

15 representing $1.53 billion in compensation. We 

16 have a further 25,726 accepted SEC cases, 

17 representing $3.8 billion in compensation.

18 And then for cases that are accepted 

19 both on SEC status and with a PoC of greater than 

20 50 percent, we have 990 such cases, representing 

21 $148.5 million in compensation.

22 For the total, all the accepted SEC 

23 dose reconstruction cases and combined cases, 
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1 37,082 cases, we have paid out $5.52 billion in 

2 compensation. Next slide, Stu.

3 This shows the location of NIOSH4 referred cases. Our numbers always differ a 

5 little bit from NIOSH's, but we show 48,850 cases 

6 referred to NIOSH for dose reconstruction. 

7 We also show that 47,001 cases have 

8 been returned from NIOSH to DOL: 40,712 of those 

9 with dose reconstructions and a further 6,289 

10 were withdrawn from NIOSH with no dose 

11 reconstruction. There are all sorts of reasons 

12 for that, including a lack of survivors, SEC13 involved cases, that sort of thing. 

14 And we show 1,849 cases currently at 

15 NIOSH. Next slide.

16 Now, this shows graphically the 

17 acceptances for Part B cases with dose 

18 reconstructions and final decisions. We see that 

19 we have 35 percent approved, which is 11,394 

20 cases, with 65 percent final denials, 

21 representing 21,170 cases. Total cases, again, 

22 32,564.

23 Next slide. This represents a 
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1 breakdown of all Part B cases. And that shows 

2 that 34 percent have gone to NIOSH. Then a 

3 further 12 percent represent SEC cases referred 

4 to NIOSH for medical benefits, primarily. And 

5 then we have another 15 percent of SEC cases never 

6 sent to NIOSH, probably, again, because the 

7 cancer was one of the listed cancers which 

8 qualified for the SEC and they have no other 

9 reason to file.

10 Nine percent were RECA cases. And the 

11 Other category is large but it includes beryllium 

12 sensitivity, chronic beryllium disease, chronic 

13 silicosis, and other lung problems.

14 Next slide. Now we have Part B final 

15 decisions. These include, I believe, SEC cases, 

16 because they are much larger than the last slide 

17 we showed with that. We have 97,560 cases with 

18 final decisions under Part B; 51,184 Part B 

19 approvals, or 52 percent approved, and 46,376 

20 Part B denials, or 48 percent, the remainder.

21 So we see the addition of Part B makes 

22 a large difference -- I mean, the SEC part to the 

23 Part Bs.
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1 Next slide, please. This should be 

2 showing us our top four worksites. Those don't

3 change too much: Hanford, Savannah River Site, 

4 the Y-12 Plant, and Nevada Test Site are our top 

5 sites for cases. These are the most recent three 

6 months that we have -- or four months. 

7 Next slide, please. This slide also 

8 is fairly static. We're showing the monthly 

9 percentage of new cases, DOE cases versus AWE. 

10 The AWE cases are fairly steady. They should 

11 decline somewhat because those are our older 

12 sites, for the most part, and we're just getting 

13 fewer claims over time for those.

14 Next slide, please. This shows the 

15 petition sites that will be discussed in the 

16 meeting -- that are planned to be discussed, in 

17 any case. These included Ames Laboratory, Area 

18 IV of Santa Susana, the Savannah River Site, and 

19 Sandia National Laboratory, Albuquerque. 

20 This slide's a little too complex to 

21 read every number here but there is quite a 

22 disparity in claims. Ames Laboratory has 950 

23 cases compared to, say, Savannah River Site, 
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1 which is 18,356 cases.

2 We also see statistics on how many 

3 cases have received final decisions, how many 

4 cases have had DRs done, how many Part B 

5 approvals, how many Part E approvals, and how 

6 much compensation and medical bills have been 

7 paid out.

8 Savannah River alone accounts for $1.1 

9 billion of compensation and medical bills, with, 

10 interestingly, Sandia at $310 million; Area IV, 

11 $64 million; and Ames, $67 million.

12 Next slide, please. For outreach 

13 events, this first slide is repeated from meeting 

14 to meeting. So, the program conducts outreach 

15 events in response to new SEC Class findings. We 

16 have town hall meetings and traveling resource 

17 centers to inform people of the new events. In 

18 small SECs, there are press releases but no 

19 meetings. And then we do host informational 

20 meetings regarding medical benefits provided 

21 under the Act.

22 Next slide, please. The Joint 

23 Outreach Task Group is composed of members from 
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1 DEEOIC itself; the Department of Energy; the 

2 Department of Energy Former Workers Medical 

3 Screening Program; the National Institute for 

4 Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH; and then 

5 the Ombudsman to NIOSH for EEOICPA, Denise Brock; 

6 and finally, DOL's Office of the Ombudsman for 

7 EEOICPA, Malcolm Nelson. There are monthly 

8 conference calls and then town hall meetings, of 

9 course, are conducted. Next slide, please.

10 These are just our recent meetings. 

11 We see that there was a joint outreach meeting in 

12 Santa Fe in November; a quarterly medical 

13 conference call in September; a quarterly medical 

14 conference call also in September, two weeks 

15 earlier -- oh, no, a day earlier, sorry. There 

16 was a medical benefits session in Monticello, 

17 Utah, August 23rd; another in Shiprock, New 

18 Mexico, August 22nd; finally, a traveling 

19 resource center and medical benefits session in 

20 Metropolis, Illinois, in June.

21 The rest of the slides are standard 

22 handout slides, which I will not present here, 

23 having to do with features of the Act and who 
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1 qualifies as survivor, that sort of thing. 

2 They're available on the Board's site.

3 Does the Board have any questions?

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Questions for Frank?

5 No questions.

6 MR. CRAWFORD: Thank you.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you very much. 

8 The next presentation is Department of Energy, 

9 which is also from a distance, I believe.

10 DOE Program Update 

11 MR. LEWIS: Yes, Dr. Melius, this is 

12 Greg Lewis from DOE. And I'm logged in online 

13 but, for whatever reason, I don't know if it's 

14 the network interface, but I cannot actually see 

15 the presentation. So I believe Stu's going to go 

16 quick through mine. And it's short so I think I 

17 should be able to follow along via paper, but I 

18 will do my best.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Hold on a second, 

20 Greg. I think I got thrown off the wireless 

21 again.

22 MR. LEWIS: Well, while you're doing 

23 that, I just had a few things to mention, much 
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1 like Stu had mentioned. We also participated in 

2 the joint outreach event in Santa Fe a few weeks 

3 ago. I think there was an excellent turnout, 

4 close to a hundred folks. And then DOE gave three 

5 separate presentations to the authorized 

6 representative meeting that Stu mentioned that 

7 was down in the DOL office in Jacksonville. We 

8 think that was well-received and hope it was 

9 helpful to those advocates that are helping folks 

10 navigate through the claims process.

11 And then Stu had mentioned that we're 

12 currently at zero claims, or zero records 

13 requests over 60 days, and we're very proud of 

14 that. And as he mentioned, that hasn't been the 

15 case recently, particularly surrounding the 

16 changeover from FY '17 to fiscal year '18 there 

17 at the end of September and early October. 

18 Because of some funding challenges we had last 

19 year, there were a few sites that had exhausted 

20 their funds in mid- to late-September and then 

21 they had to wait until we got new funding in 

22 October for the new fiscal year. Even though 

23 we're under a continuing resolution, we obviously 
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1 get some allotment of funding and we were able to 

2 resupply those sites that were out.

3 So, there were a few sites that had 

4 some late claims, late requests at the end of 

5 September but we're obviously all caught up now 

6 and we worked very hard to do so. So, we will 

7 try to stay as current as possible.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, Greg, your 

9 slides are on the screen now.

10 MR. LEWIS: Alright. So, again, I am 

11 Greg Lewis, the Director of the Office of Worker 

12 Screening and Compensation Support at DOE and I'm 

13 just going to give you a brief update about our 

14 activities here at DOE. 

15 If you can go to the next slide, Stu, 

16 our core mandate is to work on behalf of the 

17 claimants to provide records to NIOSH and to the 

18 Department of Labor.

19 The next slide, Stu. And I'll go 

20 through some of these fairly quickly. Most of 

21 these are routine slides. And then I'll take 

22 questions at the end.

23 Our overall responsibilities: we 
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1 respond to individual claims, individual records 

2 requests for folks that have applied to the 

3 program. We also provide assistance to 

4 Department of Labor and NIOSH and the Advisory 

5 Board for large-scale site characterization 

6 projects, like the Special Exposure Cohorts that 

7 we're going to be talking about over the next 

8 couple of days: Ames, Savannah River, Sandia, and 

9 Santa Susana Field Lab.

10 And then also we work with both 

11 agencies to do research into covered facility 

12 designations, when necessary.

13 Next slide, Stu. We should be on 

14 slide 4. It's just giving you a general idea of 

15 the volume of requests we handle out at our DOE 

16 field sites. We get about 7,000 employment 

17 verifications a year, approximately 4,000 

18 requests for dosimetry and radiological 

19 monitoring information from NIOSH, and then about 

20 7,000 what we call DARs, document acquisition 

21 requests, but those are basically DOL is 

22 requesting all exposure information specifically 

23 related to an individual.
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1 And these records requests from DOL 

2 and NIOSH can be very complicated. Folks can 

3 have worked at multiple sites or as a federal 

4 contractor and subcontractor over the course of 

5 their career. So we can have to go to multiple 

6 different locations to answer one records 

7 request.

8 You can go to the next slide. Now 

9 we're on slide 6 with the volume of records at 

10 the top. This is just some statistics. We 

11 recently closed our books on FY '17 and it looks 

12 like we responded to 18,522 records requests for 

13 over 25 different DOE sites.

14 And if you can go to the next slide, 

15 slide 7, we're still updating these to reflect 

16 2017. So these numbers are about a year old. We 

17 had some issues with our statistical package that 

18 we're trying to correct, so we had to use some 

19 old numbers here. This is just giving you an 

20 idea of some characteristics of the records that 

21 we provide. The average number of pages for an 

22 EV, employment verification, is about 14; average 

23 number of pages we sent to NIOSH is about 50; and 
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1 the average for DAR is 150.

2 So, while the overall average is, it 

3 looks like, about 214 pages, that's somewhat 

4 misleading because most of what's provided in a 

5 NIOSH request and an employment verification is 

6 also then included in the DAR. So I would say 

7 that it's probably more accurate to say our 

8 average number of pages is somewhere around 160, 

9 somewhere along those lines.

10 And I always want to caution folks 

11 when they're looking at an average, you know, 

12 many of our responses are much larger and, of 

13 course, many are much smaller. Particularly, we

14 struggle with the subcontractor records. We try 

15 very hard to find those but we certainly don't 

16 find as many records for the subcontractor 

17 employees or short-time employees versus the 

18 career employees with the prime contractor.

19 If you can go to the next slide. We 

20 have, of course, our goal is to get all claims in 

21 in under 60 days. And as Stu said earlier, as of 

22 this moment, we're doing very well.

23 In FY 2017, we responded to about 87 
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1 percent of all requests in under 60 days. That's

2 down from the previous year. In FY 2016, we were 

3 up around 95 percent and we'd like to get back 

4 there in '18. 

5 In FY 2017 we had some difficulties, 

6 primarily with funding. There were some other 

7 issues. One of our larger sites, Y-12, went 

8 through a -- they closed their current records 

9 center and they moved everything to a separate 

10 facility. So they were moving thousands and 

11 thousands of boxes. And while they were pulling 

12 those, putting them on pallets, and shipping them 

13 in trucks over to the new center, they were 

14 inaccessible for our purposes for a month or so, 

15 at least a couple of weeks. 

16 So that caused a number of our 

17 requests at that site to go over 60 days. And 

18 then also because of funding interruptions at 

19 various sites due to the continuing resolution 

20 last year, the end of the CR, and then the end 

21 of the fiscal year, our on times for response 

22 rate did go down in 2017. But as I said, 

23 hopefully, we if our funding is a little bit 
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1 steadier this year, we're hoping to get that back 

2 up to 95 percent.

3 But I will point out that, even with 

4 the challenges, there were a few sites that had 

5 a near perfect record last year, including, out 

6 in the New Mexico area, Los Alamos had only two 

7 late out of 831. And then Savannah River and our 

8 Oak Ridge office also performed extremely well 

9 last year.

10 If you can go to the next slide, slide 

11 9, it's talking about the large-scale records 

12 research projects, such as the Special Exposure 

13 Cohorts. We worked very hard to get NIOSH and 

14 the Advisory Board and their contractor the 

15 information they need to do their job.

16 Next slide, I just listed a few that 

17 we had been working on. Obviously, you know, 

18 we're working on many at any given time. Some 

19 are large requests, some are small, but we try to 

20 get them to NIOSH in the requested timeframe.

21 Next slide, slide 11. Document 

22 reviews, again, I talk about this every 

23 presentation, but I do want to note, for this 
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1 particular meeting I know we received a rush 

2 request for a document review, I want to say, I 

3 think it was Wednesday afternoon of last week, 

4 for a document that was needed for this Board 

5 meeting. 

6 Typically, we request documents with 

7 about two weeks' advanced lead time just so we 

8 make sure that our classification staff has the 

9 time to review them. But, you know, we got this 

10 rush request. It was needed for the Board meeting 

11 today and so we were able to expedite that. We 

12 talked to our classification folks and they made 

13 it a top priority and they were able to get it 

14 back to NIOSH, I believe, Friday morning. So we 

15 were able to turn that around in just about a 

16 day.

17 And we can't always do that, depending 

18 on the staff, the level of difficulty or 

19 technical content of the document and such, but 

20 we always try to meet NIOSH's needs and get things 

21 back as soon as possible.

22 And then next slide, facility 

23 research. I'll skip over this. Again, where 
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1 needed, we do research into covered facility 

2 designations. And you can skip past the next 

3 slide. I think I've talked about outreach. 

4 And you can go to slide 14, which is 

5 the Former Worker Medical Screening Program. And 

6 just to make a few notes about that program, for 

7 those in attendance, our Former Worker Program is 

8 a completely separate program from the 

9 compensation program, but it serves many of the 

10 same workers. All former federal contractor and 

11 subcontractor workers at DOE sites are eligible 

12 for our Former Worker Screening Program. We 

13 offer screening at no cost to the workers. We 

14 can find a facility close to your home. We have 

15 programs that serve all of our major DOE 

16 facilities, but if you worked at one of the 

17 smaller programs or you worked at one of the 

18 bigger programs but have moved out of the area or 

19 retired to a different location, we can find a 

20 clinic in your area to give you a screening.

21 We screen particularly for 

22 occupational diseases and we'll give you an 

23 interview and talk to you about what you did at 
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1 your site and tailor this screening to meet those 

2 things that you're likely at risk for.

3 So, if you can go to the next slide, 

4 slide 15, I've got a web link for our website and 

5 for a brochure on our program. So, if you or 

6 someone you know might be eligible or might be 

7 interested, I'd encourage you to give them a call 

8 and sign up for a screening. We aim to catch 

9 things early before they become a problem. So 

10 you certainly don't need to feel sick to go in 

11 for the screening. The whole point is you go 

12 when you're feeling healthy and we may catch 

13 things that you're unaware of. And the earlier 

14 they're caught, the more successful treatment can 

15 be most times.

16 And I think, if you go to the next 

17 slide, that is it. And I'll take any questions.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Questions for Greg? 

19 You guys are on a roll. Nobody has 

20 questions.

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I have a quick 

22 question.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Oh, Dave. Well, at 
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1 least you waited until the end of the slides.

2 MR. LEWIS: I couldn't get off scot3 free.

4 MEMBER RICHARDSON: It's just about 

5 clarification. The movement of the Y-12 records, 

6 what motivated that and are they moving to a place 

7 where you expect that the time to respond to 

8 records requests will be shorter or longer?

9 MR. LEWIS: So, the reason for the 

10 move, and I'm not an expert on this, it had 

11 nothing to do with the compensation program. 

12 Basically, it was a price issue. The site had 

13 worked through a contractor for the records 

14 center. The records center was built for Y-12 

15 but it was owned and managed by a private company. 

16 And for whatever reason, there was some 

17 differences in opinion about the rates or 

18 something to that effect. Again, I'm not very 

19 well versed in it, but the site and DOE decided 

20 to move the records to a federal records center.

21 In terms of the timeframe, as far as 

22 we can tell, there's been no difference. I guess 

23 physically it is a bit further. I'm not sure 
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1 exactly which federal records center they're 

2 located in, but things, I think, that they can 

3 scan and send, when necessary, they can 

4 physically send them back. We haven't noticed 

5 any difference. It may end up taking one to two 

6 days longer, on average, but we actually don't 

7 know that for sure yet.

8 We certainly don't anticipate any 

9 significant difference in time. It should be 

10 roughly the same. The product should be the same. 

11 The time should be the same. And we anticipate 

12 no negative impact to claimants.

13 CHAIR MELIUS: We'll remember that you 

14 said that.

15 MR. LEWIS: I know you will.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you, though, 

17 Greg. Any other questions?

18 Okay, thank you. Okay, our next 

19 presentation is Dave Kotelchuck, who will give us 

20 an update on the Dose Reconstruction Reviews.

21 Dose Reconstruction Reviews Update

22 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Alright. I've got 

23 a report on our Subcommittee on Dose 
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1 Reconstruction Reviews. The hardworking members 

2 of our Subcommittee are Josie Beach, Brad 

3 Clawson, Wanda Munn, John Poston, and Dave 

4 Richardson.

5 The next slides are slides about our 

6 mandate. So let's now look at the resolved and 

7 open findings by set.

8 If you will take a look, we have 

9 completed up through the 13th, and they were in 

10 our report to the Secretary. But I'd like for 

11 you to take a look at the ones for 14 through 18, 

12 which we've been working on recently. And you'll 

13 notice, if you'll go over to the next to the last 

14 column, there are ten open or unresolved 

15 findings, two of which are still with the 

16 Subcommittee, others are awaiting action by 

17 different groups, whether SC&A or NIOSH/ORAU.

18 And as you see down at the bottom, we 

19 are 97 percent complete on reviewing the 

20 findings, the 1379 findings. And the number of 

21 cases we have is 498. We are in the middle of 

22 doing sets 19 and 21. If you'll just take the 

23 column number of cases in set, subtract 60, you 
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1 have about 438, which is about a little over a 

2 hundred more cases reviewed than we had for the 

3 Secretary's report at the beginning of this year. 

4 So we're moving along well.

5 Let's take a look also at the 

6 observations. So, we'll go to the next slide. 

7 And these are set. Of course, the 

8 open/unresolved findings, we have the ten. And 

9 there is just one open or really unresolved --

10 unopen finding. So we just have 11 total issues 

11 to deal with. And not much more to say about 

12 that for the moment.

13 Findings and observations per case by 

14 case group. You'll notice from the first 

15 Secretary's report, the findings per case 3.98; 

16 the Secretary's report at the end of last year, 

17 the beginning of this year is 2.7; and the current 

18 report we're down to 1.90. I think this reflects 

19 the fact that, as time goes on, we develop more 

20 and more prescriptions about what should be done 

21 in a certain case, and that narrows the issues 

22 about which there may be a finding.

23 So the findings per case are going 
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1 down, the observations per case are about the 

2 same. And we have been speeded up dramatically 

3 by the suggestion by SC&A that we take a look at 

4 Type 1 and Type 2 issues. Type 1 issues are 

5 issues in which neither NIOSH/ORAU or SC&A differ 

6 by very much. Either there are no findings or 

7 the differences of the findings are essentially 

8 resolved in discussions by the two groups. And 

9 as you see, 80 percent of the findings are Type 

10 1 issues and we can move these along fairly 

11 quickly. 

12 And the Type 2 issues are ones where 

13 there are substantive differences between the 

14 two. They represent only 20 percent, or a fifth 

15 of the cases that we're reviewing now in 19 and 

16 21. So that has really, I think, dramatically 

17 speeded up the process.

18 Now, let's take a look at the blinds. 

19 On the left-hand column, I have removed the

20 facility, so maybe an extra degree of caution to 

21 protect privacy of the individuals. I will come 

22 back to the issue of what facilities we've looked 

23 at.
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1 But, take a look. We have reviewed 25 

2 blinds so far. So, I think we can't put them all 

3 in one slide and have it visible. I hope these 

4 are reasonably visible to you, particularly those 

5 in the audience.

6 The first slide on the blinds, that's 

7 essentially been shown to you before and was part 

8 of the Secretary's report. And if you'll take a 

9 look at the PoCs by SC&A and NIOSH. Start with 

10 the NIOSH, the middle column, the NIOSH/ORAU 

11 POCs. 

12 You'll notice in the beginning we took 

13 quite a large range of PoCs for the cases that we 

14 reviewed. Many of the cases were in the middle 

15 and low 40s. Look at the 9 through 14. There 

16 are quite a few that are in the 40 percent area. 

17 The likelihood of a difference between SC&A and 

18 NIOSH/ORAU that will change the compensation 

19 decision would be small. And so, not 

20 surprisingly, but importantly, the compensation 

21 decision for all of those first cases of the 13 

22 cases that we reviewed, there is agreement. 

23 More significantly, let's take a look 
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1 at some of the more recent ones, the set 22 and 

2 set 23 blinds. If you'll, again, take a look at 

3 the NIOSH/ORAU PoCs, you'll notice that those 

4 cases that we've selected for blind reviews, that 

5 the Subcommittee has selected, the numbers are 

6 quite near 50 percent: high 40s, 46, 48, 46. And 

7 then a few over 50: 50.08, 50.57, so that if there 

8 some difference -- and there is, of course, 

9 differences because of professional judgment --

10 between what NIOSH found and what SC&A, we're 

11 right near the edge of changing compensation 

12 decision, depending on how the variation between 

13 the two. Quite strikingly, the compensation 

14 decisions have agreed for these blind reviews.

15 And then, in the last set of reviews 

16 in set 23, as you see, we are going up, if you 

17 will, quite near the edge of where the 

18 compensation decision would change. And 

19 dramatically and impressively, the compensation 

20 decisions agreed.

21 So in all the 25 cases that we've 

22 reviewed so far, the compensation decisions have 

23 been the same based on the blind reviews. And 
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1 I'm quite gratified, and I think we on the 

2 Subcommittee are quite gratified to see that 

3 degree of agreement.

4 And also let's look right now at the 

5 facilities that we've look at. Now, I haven't

6 listed them on the left-hand column, but I'm 

7 summarizing the facilities from which blind cases 

8 were reviewed.

9 There were four blind cases each from 

10 Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Rocky Flats, which are 

11 very large facilities, obviously; three from the 

12 Nevada Test Sites; two each from Fernald, Sandia, 

13 Pacific Northwest Lab; and then there was a 

14 single one from ten other sites. And as you see, 

15 that counts up to 31 sites, because, of course, 

16 some people worked at more than one site.

17 In fact, out of the 25 blind cases for 

18 blind review, five, as you will see just doing 

19 the arithmetic, there were five cases -- oh, you 

20 won't see it, but I will report there are five 

21 cases in which people worked at two facilities 

22 and one case in which a person worked at three 

23 facilities. 
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1 So this is particularly an area where 

2 you would think that there might be problems in 

3 kind of combining the data and getting a dose 

4 reconstruction from two or three different 

5 facilities. It challenges how precise our 

6 determinations are. 

7 And the fact is that, for those 25 

8 facilities, simply there are no differences in 

9 compensation decision. Which means, roughly 

10 speaking, that since we've had no difference in 

11 decision in 25 cases, then the number of times, 

12 in this very select group -- this is not a 

13 representative group of cases, right? This is 

14 select group right on the edge between 45 and 52 

15 percent PoCs. In that very select group, as I 

16 said, there is an error rate of somewhere between 

17 zero and four percent, one out of 20. But we 

18 don't have one out of 25, which would be four 

19 percent. So, somewhere between zero and four. 

20 We don't know what it is.

21 And obviously, in time, given the 

22 differences of professional judgment between the 

23 two most competent groups, there will be a time, 
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1 and there must be times, when the decision will 

2 be different, as it is near the 50 percent PoC, 

3 that the two groups will disagree. But so far, 

4 in the first 25, they have not.

5 Now, of the blinds reviewed, just 

6 looking at the statistics that we have for the 25 

7 cases, 25 blinds were reviewed. In 16, 

8 NIOSH/ORAU PoC is larger, and for nine, the SC&A 

9 PoC is larger. And that is satisfying, if you 

10 will. I mean, NIOSH is the group making the 

11 decisions in all of the cases, beyond simply the 

12 one percent that we reviewed. And they are, if 

13 you will, slightly more claimant-favorable.

14 But for each blind case, we looked at 

15 the difference in PoCs between NIOSH PoC and SC&A 

16 PoC. And since they're both professional groups, 

17 we can't say which is correct and which is not. 

18 They are just their variation in professional 

19 judgments.

20 So we looked at the absolute value of 

21 the differences between the PoC. And the average 

22 of the PoC differences is 2.43, with a standard 

23 deviation of 2.63. A median, you'll notice, is 
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1 a bit lower, 1.53. That is to say there are a 

2 few of those that are outliers. So, if the 

3 average of the absolute differences is 2.43 plus 

4 or minus 2.63, then we conclude that the average 

5 of the absolute difference of PoC values for 

6 blind cases calculated by the two groups are 

7 compatible with zero. That is, they are 

8 consistent. And that is impressive and 

9 gratifying.

10 And that, I think, is the last slide 

11 there. First, are there any comments by Members 

12 of Subcommittee? If anyone cares to have a 

13 comment, please do. 

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Wanda?

15 MEMBER MUNN: I have to say that the 

16 statistics that we looked at appear to be fairly 

17 dry. Those of us on the Committee know that the 

18 actual reality involved a fascinating number of 

19 difference in cases and a fascinating number of 

20 technical issues had to be addressed by each of 

21 the groups that were doing the reconstructions.

22 But, as Dr. Kotelchuck said, I think 

23 the most striking aspect of what we have done on 
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1 this Subcommittee in the last ten years has been 

2 the result that we saw in comparing the 

3 differences between the two and seeing that the 

4 final results do, in fact, agree so well when 

5 they're given that close scrutiny.

6 So, my thanks to the people who put in 

7 extra effort to try to make sure that these 

8 comparisons were as complete, as thorough, and as 

9 accurate as possibly could be done.

10 I think we all can be very pleased to 

11 review those results from time to time and 

12 reassure ourselves that a good job's being done.

13 CHAIR MELIUS: Any other Board 

14 Members, questions or comments? Andy.

15 MEMBER ANDERSON: My question is, 

16 while it all works out quite nicely there, have 

17 you taken a look at are there certain components 

18 of developing the score that are most 

19 consistently different between the two groups?

20 I mean, if you're using the same data, 

21 unless it's a subjective call as to where you 

22 choose something from, they actually should come 

23 out identical. Now, they're quite close but 
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1 there must be -- I mean, if it's a random issue 

2 versus are there some specific things that NIOSH 

3 is looking at and they're rounding up and SC&A 

4 are rounding down on some of these, that could 

5 account for this. Or is there a component here 

6 that might be worth looking at that's 

7 contributing to these differences?

8 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Well, I think what 

9 you raise is a good point. And we have not done 

10 this -- I have not done this in analyzing it. We 

11 certainly can.

12 I think until now, until this very 

13 report, we hadn't actually sat down and figured 

14 what the average of the differences was and that 

15 it was really consistent with zero. But we can 

16 and we should do that, I think. I'd like to 

17 consider that. That's something the Subcommittee 

18 should do, now that we can go a step further with 

19 the 25 that we have.

20 And, of course, we have another set of 

21 blinds coming up already that SC&A and NIOSH have 

22 reviewed, which we will add to the group.

23 Other questions?
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: Questions or comments?

2 I'm really concerned about the 

3 statistical emphasis here. While you say it's 

4 compatible with a difference of zero, it's also 

5 compatible with a difference of five, which is 

6 worrisome.

7 So I could take your same data here 

8 and say, "My God, what's wrong here? This is 

9 terrible." And I don't think that the blind 

10 procedure is set up for a statistical comparison.

11 It ought to be what Andy mentioned 

12 already. What are we finding where there are 

13 differences as parts of the individual dose 

14 reconstructions? Now, you're looking at a 

15 variety of sites and you have small numbers so 

16 far to look at, but I think that is a better 

17 target for what we want these blind reviews to 

18 do, because I don't think we'll ever get the 

19 numbers up that we can really reach statistical 

20 conclusions on every site and so forth. 

21 We really don't even, in our other 

22 reviews, really get to have a really large sample 

23 for any site, and particularly the smaller sites 
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1 it's very few.

2 So I would caution there. And I mean, 

3 to me, if I can find the slide here, the set 17, 

4 the second number four on your list there, where 

5 there's a difference of about ten percent.

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Now, to me, it's not 

8 that that difference is ten percent, but what is 

9 the difference between SC&A and ORAU? What is 

10 the rationale? What part of the dose 

11 reconstruction did they have such a disagreement 

12 on? Or was it interpretation? 

13 Was it something -- a lot of times 

14 it's not -- I won't say it's professional 

15 judgment as much as maybe the background 

16 documents are so vague or uncertain that two 

17 people can interpret them very differently. Or 

18 is that just a statistical fluke where it's just 

19 a bunch of small differences just added up going 

20 in one direction or the other side?

21 So I think we're more concerned -- and 

22 maybe when we report on these in the future as 

23 you go through the next 25 or whatever is what 
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1 are we finding about the process that should be 

2 improved or could be improved, rather than just 

3 what is the absolute number and do we find 

4 compensation/non-compensation difference.

5 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Well, I would just 

6 say that I believe that the most significant 

7 thing is that the compensation decisions agree, 

8 given that there is variation in the PoCs from 

9 the review.

10 The fact that, if there is a 

11 difference of average of two percent between the 

12 PoCs, you would think that already we might find 

13 some that disagreed. The fact that they didn't, 

14 I think, is the most impressive thing.

15 I agree with you, though, that we can 

16 go further in checking what components contribute 

17 to the differences and is there one that's 

18 consistent. And I will certainly, I think -- I 

19 agree with you. We should do that, and we will.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah, but if there's -

21 - in the sample you have here, the 25, I mean, if 

22 you're applying 2.5 percent as your average 

23 difference, it's just a question of time until 
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1 there's a compensation difference.

2 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Absolutely.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: And I also think that 

4 when you're doing your blind reviews, there's a 

5 lot of pressure to bring it to -- to limit the 

6 difference between the two.

7 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I don't see how. 

8 If it's blind, how is it that we're bringing them 

9 together?

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, if you're doing 

11 your review and so forth. So I just think a 

12 statistical approach is sort of the wrong focus 

13 at this point in time. I don't even know if 

14 you'll ever get up to a number that will be --

15 and I don't think looking at compensation/non16 compensation, it's the components of the dose 

17 reconstruction methods that I think need to be 

18 the focus. And blind reviews is one way of 

19 getting it.

20 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Well, I guess I 

21 agree that certainly these should be looked at. 

22 It was not given that when we started that we 

23 would have agreement, given the complexity, as 
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1 Wanda Munn said. I mean, the complexity of the 

2 calculations, it was not given that they would 

3 agree. And they will not agree, at some point. 

4 That must be the case that we'll come across 

5 blinds that won't.

6 But, perhaps, not knowing what the 

7 results will be from the different groups, I am 

8 most impressed at the agreement.

9 However, you're absolutely right, and 

10 Dr. Anderson, if we can look at components, I'd 

11 take that as something that the Subcommittee 

12 should do.

13 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, Wanda, and then 

14 Josie.

15 MEMBER MUNN: I'd like to point, 

16 however, that what we do when we are looking at 

17 these, when we are looking at the final results, 

18 is we discuss the reason for the differences. 

19 You can see that in our transcripts.

20 Unless I was seriously mistaken at the 

21 time we undertook this particular portion of the 

22 program, it was the intent to not have people do 

23 exactly the same thing. It was the intent to 
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1 have two different expert groups look at the same 

2 material, performing a review in the way that 

3 they would do so. 

4 And I don't remember any instance in 

5 the reporting of these comparisons where it was 

6 not acceptable and understandable to the 

7 Committee Members what those differences were at 

8 the time that they were discussed. I guess those 

9 differences could be compiled and codified in 

10 some way.

11 I guess my only point is to point out 

12 that your concern about why they are different is 

13 what we discussed.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, that should be 

15 reported as part of your reporting to the Board.

16 Secondly, remember these are not --

17 originally our blind reviews were that our 

18 contractor would start de novo with basically a 

19 person and a site and a work history, the 

20 available information, and sort of start from 

21 scratch. And we decided that was not publicly 

22 feasible because sites are complicated. They'd 

23 have to sort of recreate all the procedures that 
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1 are being used currently by ORAU and NIOSH for 

2 doing these dose reconstructions.

3 So what they're doing is applying the 

4 same procedures, essentially. At least that's my 

5 understanding. And so it is a question somewhat 

6 of interpretation. It's also the way that ORAU 

7 has done, and I think done a good job, of sort of 

8 pulling it together and providing some 

9 consistency in how to interpret certain issues. 

10 And there's some issues that are not documented 

11 for Board purposes, or even for SC&A to have 

12 access to, that ORAU uses, which makes sense for 

13 them to do.

14 And so we're essentially applying the 

15 same procedures, at least as they're published 

16 for us to use, to the same set of data, the same 

17 set of information.

18 So I think what's important is, one, 

19 you have to some extent what the agreement is 

20 when SC&A does that, but also where are there 

21 differences and what could be done to assure that 

22 those differences are minimized in the future? 

23 That there's some uncertainty about the process 
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1 or whatever that's being implied or the source of 

2 the data. A lot of times it's just that the data 

3 is so weak that it's hard to -- you're going to 

4 end up with differences no matter what happens 

5 because there's so little information about a 

6 site.

7 Henry?

8 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yeah, I think this 

9 shows that the methodology that's being used must 

10 be quite prescriptive and understood by the 

11 various groups evaluating, which is a good thing.

12 On the other hand, I think part of the 

13 goal here ought to be, can this be improved? Now, 

14 the results are one thing. As I look at this, 

15 there were only six that were chosen that started 

16 with an award and a PoC over 50 percent. And so 

17 there was two-thirds of them that started below 

18 because we want to be claimant-favorable and see 

19 did they under estimate what it could be.

20 On the other hand, another issue would 

21 be, did you go the other direction, that by 

22 looking at it, whoever was doing it, was looking 

23 that it's awful close, you want to be claimant-
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1 favorable, and so subjectively perhaps moved it 

2 up a tenth of a point and the person gets awarded.

3 So, I think it's useful to take a look 

4 at is there a part of this that could be tightened 

5 up with instructions in some way, for the 

6 methodology? So, the good news is the decisions 

7 appear to have been correct, regardless of the 

8 number chosen, but it would've been nice to know 

9 can it be improved.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Josie, who I forgot 

11 about. And then David, I think.

12 MEMBER BEACH: No, I am in agreement 

13 with the discussion today. I think we do, like 

14 Wanda pointed out, discuss this during our 

15 Subcommittee meetings. We talk about the 

16 differences and why they're there, but we could 

17 go this step further and report it out. And it 

18 makes good sense to make sure people understand 

19 what, why, and what needs to be improved on, much 

20 of what Andy said.

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yeah, we certainly 

22 could.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: David.
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1 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yeah, I've been 

2 struggling with the question of, if the average 

3 error was two percent, and even if you had one 

4 standard deviation off that, you're already at 

5 around five percent. So if that was just a random 

6 error, and we've got cases that are chosen, I 

7 don't know what the average value is, around 48 

8 percent or something like that, we should be 

9 seeing flipping back and forth across the 

10 average.

11 But what Henry is pointing out is 

12 there is one small set of cases, which are those 

13 which came in above 50 percent. And if you look 

14 at the average error for those, it's very close 

15 to zero and there's not a tail going towards 

16 overestimation of those. So they're at the same 

17 value, but it's not as though when ORAU returned 

18 a value of 50 percent we see SC&A coming up with 

19 two percent greater than that or five percent 

20 greater than that. It's very close to zero, and, 

21 actually, tends to be a little bit negative when 

22 SC&A is doing it. So they're not being overly 

23 generous and overestimating those which are above 
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1 50 percent. 

2 And then you've got the other group, 

3 which is below. And there's a tail there which 

4 goes down to ten percent. 

5 So there's something going on with 

6 these distributions of errors, which we could 

7 take more of a look at. It's not as though it's 

8 a normal distribution around each case, and it's 

9 partly dependent on these two classes of cases 

10 that we're looking at.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: That's a good point, 

12 Dave.

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yeah, okay. Well14 taken. Well-taken.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Any Board Member --

16 Bill, first. Then I'll go to the phone.

17 MEMBER FIELD: Yeah, I think, looking 

18 at this like from 20,000 feet, if I was the 

19 claimant, I think what I'd be reassured about is, 

20 as Dave was saying, there doesn't seem to be a 

21 systematic bias on NIOSH's part to minimize dose 

22 reconstructions. I mean, at that level, I think 

23 that that's something that we can take from this 
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1 and be reassured from.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Or if there is, it's 

3 hidden away in all the procedures. I don't want 

4 to over-interpret that.

5 Board Members on the phone, did any of 

6 you have questions or comments?

7 Okay, hearing none, thank you, David.

8 Now we'll continue this dose 

9 reconstruction review focus.

10 So we've been working on the Dose 

11 Reconstruction Review Methods, the Work Group 

12 has, and Mark, as a subcontractor or contractor 

13 to NIOSH, has put together a report for them 

14 looking at a couple sites. And I'll let him 

15 present that. 

16 And then after he presents, I will do 

17 a short presentation just trying to get us 

18 focused on what do we do next in terms of changing 

19 our approach to dose reconstruction reviews.

20 Dose Reconstruction Review Methods

21 MR. GRIFFON: Thanks, Jim. I'm here 

22 to give an overview of the report I did on 

23 professional judgments in dose reconstruction. 
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1 And I think, after Dave's presentation, it's 

2 hopefully a timely topic that I'm on the agenda 

3 right after Dave. I think during his 

4 presentation he mentioned professional judgment 

5 several times. And I think when the Board 

6 mentions looking at the components that might 

7 have contributed to differences, I think some of 

8 those are where I started to dive into in my 

9 review here.

10 So the scope of what I was trying to 

11 look at was, where are professional judgments 

12 necessary in dose reconstructions? And I looked 

13 at it through the lens of a DOE sample site and 

14 an AWE sample site, hoping to get a lot of the 

15 trends for the gamut of the program.

16 Could the judgments result in 

17 potential inconsistencies? That's one major part 

18 of this. And the key, I guess -- for me, anyway 

19 -- is what approaches can be used to assess where 

20 these professional judgments can result in 

21 significant inconsistencies? 

22 And, you know, the assessments can 

23 come at several different levels, and I'll get 
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1 into that when I present my recommendations. I 

2 think that the Board can look at this, NIOSH can 

3 look at this, and ORAU, internally, may have some 

4 things that they can do to look at these issues.

5 So, to start my assessment of this, I 

6 looked at two site: Savannah River as one 

7 example, and Linde Ceramics was my AWE example 

8 site.

9 I actually tried to do a real dive 

10 into the data. Some of you that remember me being 

11 on the Board, I do like to get down to the 

12 details. I got much further down into the details 

13 this time during this review.

14 MEMBER MUNN: You certainly reminded 

15 me of that.

16 MR. GRIFFON: I'll take that as a 

17 compliment, Wanda. Thank you.

18 But I also tried to, and I hope this 

19 came through in the report, I tried to look at 

20 the micro level, but also tried to step back and 

21 think of what programmatically can be done to 

22 look at these questions.

23 So I looked at Technical Basis 
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1 Documents, the Technical Information Bulletins, 

2 procedures, SC&A reviews of these various 

3 documents. And, very importantly, the next to 

4 last bullet, looked at the internal guidance 

5 documents. And for Savannah River, I think if I 

6 have this number -- I know the number's in the 

7 report -- I think it was 12 different iterations 

8 of DR guidance through the program. 

9 And I would say that's a very good 

10 thing. That means that internally there is 

11 continuous improvement. So they're refining. As 

12 issues come up, they're refining this guidance to 

13 help the individual DR staff resolve problems. 

14 And it adds to consistency. So that's a good 

15 thing. But I'd just mention that's a different 

16 type of document. It's in the case files but 

17 it's not a control document.

18 Lastly, I reviewed a bunch of 

19 individual cases. I didn't do a random selection 

20 from NOCTS, but I tried to look at best estimate 

21 cases. If you go in the NOCTS system, I tried to 

22 pick cases that were done with full internal or 

23 full external dose reconstruction or both. 
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1 Usually, that'll give you best estimate cases. 

2 That's not a perfect way to sort the cases, but 

3 that's what I used. I also took some cases out 

4 of the ORAU QA database, some cases that they had 

5 come across in their reviews, and out of the 

6 Board's Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee cases.

7 And I mention these two things last. 

8 I looked at the process from sort of the beginning 

9 to the end. And there's a useful procedure that 

10 I just want to highlight here that gives a good 

11 overview of the whole process, and that's PROC12 106, Roadmap to Reconstructing Dose. And I've 

13 got a couple slides coming up on that in a second.

14 And then I also looked at the QA/QC 

15 program. And when I looked at this, I looked at 

16 it in the lens of the systems that exist in the 

17 dose reconstruction program that may be useful in 

18 improving, or in reducing the inconsistencies 

19 around professional judgments. So I think that's 

20 important. I was trying to look at the process, 

21 not if there is inconsistencies. Although we do 

22 want to identify those, or the Board may choose 

23 to try to hone in and identify where these 
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1 inconsistencies occur. 

2 Also, I want to look up the line and 

3 say, what was the cause and can we be more 

4 prescriptive? It may be that that's impossible. 

5 But are there other systems that could be put in 

6 place to reduce those inconsistencies? And one 

7 possible system is a QA/QC system.

8 Okay, these next couple slides, 

9 they're in the back in an attachment in my report. 

10 I think they're readable in there.

11 But the main point I want to make on 

12 these is that I looked at this from the beginning, 

13 the overall process. And the top box there sort 

14 of identifies where the case is coming in, the 

15 data that comes in, the case prep work.

16 And then there's logic for all of the 

17 various components, including the interview 

18 component, calculating the environmental or 

19 ambient doses, the medical, external, and 

20 internal doses.

21 And if you look onto these, these two 

22 are blowups from the subsections in the last 

23 diagram. The external dose reconstruction. And 
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1 I raise this because immediately there's an 

2 assumption. The assumption is, do we have 

3 adequate monitoring data to reconstruct dose? So 

4 that's the first assumption an individual dose 

5 reconstructor has to make.

6 Some of this -- and as we go through 

7 these, you look at these logic trees, some of 

8 these are prescribed in guidance documents or in 

9 TIBs or in other things. Some of those end up 

10 being individual -- the individual dose 

11 reconstructor has to make that judgment.

12 In this case, if they don't have 

13 adequate monitoring data -- and I would argue 

14 that there is instances where this is a mix, too. 

15 Like over a portion of the period that you're 

16 doing dose reconstruction, there's adequate data, 

17 but there may be a portion later in the work 

18 history of the person that you don't. So it may 

19 not be just one answer here.

20 But to simplify it, assume you don't 

21 have adequate monitoring data, and then you're 

22 left with a couple questions. And it's a 

23 hierarchy of decisions. And that hierarchy comes 
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1 up not only in the DOE sites but also in the AWE 

2 sites.

3 So you may use coworker data or you 

4 may use source term data or area monitoring data. 

5 And I think the last one would be radiation 

6 limits, site administrative limits. So, here's 

7 some of the judgments that start the process for 

8 the individual dose reconstructor.

9 Similarly, the same thing on the 

10 internal dose reconstruction side. And this time 

11 the branches for the hierarchal decisions are off 

12 on the right instead of the left, but it's the 

13 same kind of decision that you have to make. Is 

14 the monitoring data adequate? If not, we have 

15 some other options that we can use.

16 Okay. So, the other thing in the 

17 report that I put together, I really, when I 

18 started this, was focused on the individual dose 

19 reconstructor sitting at his or her computer 

20 doing a case. But I realized quickly that there's 

21 a lot of these judgments that are going to come 

22 down to that person, but there's a lot of 

23 judgments that were made prior to this individual 
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1 working on the case.

2 And I would argue that, over the 

3 years, that's helped the process. I mean, I know 

4 that ORAU has told us for quite some time that 

5 the workbooks have come a long way since the early 

6 years. And now that some decisions that the 

7 individual dose reconstructor can make, once you 

8 make that decision in a workbook, it almost auto9 fills other fields with the data. So there's 

10 less individual decisions about, you know, dose 

11 for a certain year or time period. But these are 

12 judgments, nonetheless.

13 So I wanted to highlight that there 

14 are personal judgments that that individual has 

15 to make when doing a case. But there's also 

16 program judgments. And these program judgments 

17 are, I mean, part of what the Board has been 

18 reviewing for the last 12-14 years, going through 

19 the Procedures Subcommittee, reviewing the TIBs, 

20 going through the Site Profile reviews. The 

21 Board has looked a lot of these judgments that 

22 are included in these Technical Basis Documents.

23 Some are maybe still pending 
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1 evaluation by the Board. And other ones, I would 

2 argue, it may be useful to have a summary document 

3 to sort of outline where the Board came down on 

4 a particular judgment. And some of these we in 

5 the past labeled sort of "global issues," in some 

6 cases, and have been discussed and debated back 

7 and forth by SC&A, by the Board, by NIOSH. And 

8 if there's resolution, there was a history of 

9 discussions about it, it would probably be useful 

10 in assembling that and being clear where the 

11 final conclusion was.

12 So, on the personal judgment side, I 

13 will mention, I mean, a lot of these, as you look 

14 down this list, I don't think it's going to shock 

15 people. In fact, SC&A put out a memo and has 

16 weighed in on this topic prior to my looking at 

17 this. And I think there's quite a bit of overlap 

18 with some of the areas where they saw issues and 

19 what I found. But it's useful to go through just 

20 for a second. 

21 You know, I will say the work location 

22 and job title issues at the top of this slide 

23 come into play quite a bit. And calculating 
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1 missed internal dose, especially when there's in 

2 vivo and in vitro bioassay and lung or whole body 

3 counting data to deal with. And best estimate 

4 cases, and the judgments regarding calculating 

5 doses associated with incidents or events that 

6 might be mentioned in the interview records.

7 And let me just step back for one 

8 second on this. I think -- and I think Dave, in 

9 his presentation on the Subcommittee, alluded to 

10 this, is that the impact of what I'm reporting 

11 out on here is for probably a little less than 

12 five percent of all the cases. These are likely 

13 to impact the best estimate cases almost 

14 exclusively, because in the other cases you're 

15 making underestimates or overestimates and 

16 they're less likely impacted by these 

17 professional judgments. So you're looking at a 

18 smaller slice here; nonetheless important because 

19 you're close to the PoC in some cases.

20 Just to go a little further from the 

21 last slide, work location and/or job title, the 

22 impact that that may have in the individual -- or 

23 the effect they may have on the assigned doses. 
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1 And I tried to show that sometimes the decision 

2 on where to place a worker, or how you view that 

3 job, whether that job was likely to have a great 

4 deal of exposure, will impact or could impact 

5 several different things, including the photon 

6 dose, neutron doses, internal doses. And I sort 

7 of outlined some examples of each of those.

8 I mean, photon doses, even down to the 

9 energy percentages, can vary depending on what 

10 building you assign a worker to. So, they have 

11 some subtle little differences, but, at the end 

12 of the day, when you're dealing with cases that 

13 are very close to the 50 percent cut-off, they 

14 can be significant.

15 Also, the last one, the assumption 

16 regarding the missed dose, there's a question of 

17 missed or unmonitored doses. And whether you use 

18 a coworker model or whether you can just say, if 

19 it's a reported zero, you can assume limit of 

20 detection divided by two to estimate the missed 

21 dose.

22 There's also some cases where they can 

23 use a nearby. So if the worker worked in an area 
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1 before and after, and they assumed they worked in 

2 the same area during this unmonitored period, 

3 they can use a nearby approach.

4 The coworker question has come up 

5 quite often, even on the Dose Reconstruction 

6 Subcommittee, because there's options on the 

7 percentile. You can use a 50th or a 95th 

8 percentile of the coworker model to assign dose. 

9 And that is dependent on, sometimes, the job or 

10 location assumptions. So this gets back to the 

11 assumptions made by the dose reconstructor.

12 Just, again, filling in the gaps. I 

13 think I sort of mentioned this missed and 

14 unmonitored periods and using coworker or other 

15 approaches. 

16 For internal dose, there's also a 

17 question, in some cases I saw where there the 

18 monitoring ended but there was an assumption 

19 extending the intake values to the end of the 

20 employment. So there might not have been 

21 monitoring for the last five years of a worker's 

22 employment. How do you fill in that gap from the 

23 last monitoring result to the end of employment? 
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1 And there are some assumptions and different ways 

2 to do that.

3 Calculating internal doses. Again, 

4 judgments here. There's sometimes favorable 

5 approaches that can be used. Even in best 

6 estimate cases, there's more favorable 

7 approaches. You may use one chronic exposure for 

8 the entire period of employment, but there's 

9 other cases where they may break it up for obvious 

10 reasons and fit the data better. Or there's 

11 different intake periods, there's different times 

12 of intakes.

13 There's also judgments if you don't 

14 have -- the last point I'm making there, you may 

15 have bioassay data, but, depending on the area 

16 the person worked, you may make different 

17 assumptions regarding the plutonium-americium 

18 mix, and that can impact the intake that's 

19 calculated from that.

20 So, again, it goes back to several 

21 issues working together, but the work location 

22 and job can impact a lot of these things.

23 And the last one, estimating doses 
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1 from intakes. I know one that I will say I saw 

2 a lot on this is people that mentioned 

3 contamination events in their interviews, in the 

4 CATI interviews. And the reconstructor went back 

5 and found records that showed contamination 

6 events on or about the time that the person being 

7 interviewed mentioned. And they actually had 

8 specific contamination values, they had 

9 measurement values. So, in some cases, they were 

10 able to really fine-tune the skin dose 

11 calculations from those kind of values.

12 But there is a judgment here, again. 

13 You know, is there enough information? Do we 

14 have to go back for more information? Can we 

15 assume that the bioassay records that we have 

16 available would encompass the incident described 

17 in the interview? That sort of thing has to go 

18 on. So, another set of judgments.

19 Okay, then, to go back now to the 

20 program judgments. I just listed some as 

21 examples of what I'm thinking about when I'm 

22 thinking about program judgments.

23 One is dose from residual 
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1 contamination. So, you know, at the Atomic 

2 Weapons sites, oftentimes there's a residual 

3 period after the operational period ended. 

4 There's maybe some residual contamination there. 

5 Work continued. You know, people were still 

6 working there. And how that exposure is assessed 

7 is usually modeled in -- well, there's an 

8 approach in a Technical Information Bulletin, and 

9 I think there's site-specific guidance for some 

10 of the AWE sites on this, too. But that's a 

11 program judgment.

12 Again, for these kind of cases, the 

13 reconstructor will get down to -- it doesn't have 

14 to make this decision. This is already put into 

15 the matrix for them for an AWE type of case.

16 The highly insoluble plutonium issue 

17 just was mentioned again this morning, TIB-49. 

18 Here's one that may be less obvious, 

19 but uncertainty for internal and external doses. 

20 And there is some guidance. IG-001 talks about 

21 uncertainty for external doses. And I will get 

22 into that in the next slide, actually.

23 Just a blowup on this example, the 
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1 external dose uncertainty. There are several 

2 guidance documents. IG-001 talks about how to 

3 calculate the dose uncertainty. There was PROC4 6, TIB-12, a Monte Carlo approach for dose 

5 uncertainty calculations. And, for the example 

6 I reviewed, Savannah River Technical Basis 

7 Document has some pertinent information as well.

8 And the point I wanted to make here is 

9 that the Implementation Guide contains a formula 

10 that is used to do this calculation that feeds 

11 into the Monte Carlo analysis of this uncertainty 

12 calculation. But it is dependent on site13 specific information, the critical level, the 

14 critical number for the dosimeter, and the sigma 

15 star, which is the estimate of percent standard 

16 error for that type of dosimeter.

17 And those, I believe, for the most 

18 part, at least for Savannah River, they were 

19 included in the Technical Basis Document and had 

20 been discussed by the Board and the contractor. 

21 But it's one of these I think it's unclear to me 

22 whether some of those issues have been totally 

23 resolved or signed off sort of by the Board.
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1 Part of the reason for that is that 

2 they were considered, at the time, to be Site 

3 Profile issues. And there were so many bigger 

4 SEC-type issues that had to be handled by the 

5 Work Groups that they went down that path. But 

6 there may be some questions still to consider in 

7 this question of handling uncertainty.

8 Okay, so, to move into my 

9 recommendations that I made in this report. 

10 Recommendation 1 is basically to do some sort of 

11 assessment on these individual personal 

12 professional judgments that are made. And I 

13 think, to sort of pick up on what Dave was talking 

14 about with the Dose Reconstruction Subcommittee, 

15 one option may involve blind reviews. 

16 And I talked about possible ORAU, 

17 NIOSH, or Board blind reviews. And when I say 

18 ORAU, the idea I had there was to have two dose 

19 reconstructors on the ORAU team each take the 

20 case and separately work the case. And if they 

21 found discrepancies, it may be likely that it 

22 would help them to fine-tune their guidance to 

23 resolve some of those inconsistencies before they 
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1 got fully processed.

2 And then the next level, NIOSH blind 

3 reviews, I know NIOSH had done some blind reviews 

4 for quite some time. I think the number had 

5 reduced a little bit in the last couple years 

6 because of resource issues, but that may also be 

7 an avenue.

8 And then, of course, the Board. The 

9 other way to consider this, I think, and I think 

10 SC&A in their memo sort of alluded to this as 

11 well, is focused reviews. So, whether you can 

12 debate which of these issues might be most 

13 significant and perhaps do a more targeted 

14 review, focusing in on perhaps the application of 

15 the coworker models, whether the number of cases 

16 that involve coworker models, 50th or 95th 

17 percentile, look at the guidance and the 

18 professional judgment that led up to those 

19 decisions. See if it's done consistently, et 

20 cetera. That may be one area that is fruitful.

21 The one thing I would say on focused 

22 reviews is that I would think it might behoove 

23 the Board to look not only at an individual site 
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1 but across sites to see that there is consistency 

2 in some of these judgments. For instance, 

3 compare Savannah River cases and their approaches 

4 to Hanford, to LANL, to make sure there is 

5 consistency with how they're being done across 

6 different sites.

7 The last point should probably be 

8 Recommendation 1A, or it might even be included 

9 in a later recommendation that I have. But it's 

10 basically to look at refining the way NIOSH does 

11 their peer reviews. And currently, my 

12 understanding is that they, for their 

13 comprehensive or their extensive peer reviews, 

14 there's two different levels they do, there is a 

15 five percent sample that's selected from NOCTS. 

16 And it's a random sample. And I would say, 

17 perhaps for those comprehensive reviews, it's 

18 more important that it be biased toward these 

19 best estimate-type cases.

20 Now, I know you know you can say the 

21 Board is reviewing a lot of those cases. There's 

22 a lot of different reviews on these cases, but it 

23 may be worthwhile having NIOSH spending more of 
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1 their time on those comprehensive reviews on 

2 those best estimate cases.

3 Recommendation 2 goes to these program 

4 judgments. And this is basically to say that it 

5 might be useful to have nice, succinct summary 

6 documents on some of these more global issues. 

7 And I referenced Jim Neton did a report on 

8 estimating exposures during the residual period. 

9 And I think it was maybe 10 or 12 pages long, but 

10 it was a nice, succinct effort to say here's where 

11 the TIB started, here was SC&A's review, here was 

12 our Revision 1 of the TIB, and here is the Board's 

13 review, and here's where it stands, the final 

14 approved version by the Board.

15 And I think some of the other topics 

16 that I mentioned earlier might benefit from a 

17 similar document, especially, I mean, I've been 

18 around the program for a while, and to track some 

19 of these things through the Board Review System, 

20 the Board tracking system, and then back to 

21 transcripts and try to piece it together is time22 consuming to say the least. So I think that, in 

23 terms of archiving this program for the future, 
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1 I think that that might be time well spent, for 

2 some of these bigger issues, anyway.

3 Recommendation 3 talks about 

4 comparing the approaches on the AWE sites. And 

5 this is that question of the hierarchy of data 

6 use. And you probably want to look and compare 

7 has NIOSH done that consistently in terms of 

8 which data should be used over which other data, 

9 when available. And I stress that, when 

10 available. But you want to see if that's being 

11 done in a consistent fashion for these similar 

12 types of AWE sites.

13 So, Recommendation 4. And this I say 

14 consider because I hesitate to standardize. I 

15 know all these sites are very unique. But 

16 consider at least what should be in a DR guidance 

17 or DR notes for all these sites. And I think 

18 there's a fair amount of variability right now, 

19 but some of that is probably necessary because 

20 the sites are different. But there could be some 

21 major pieces that should be incorporated into all 

22 of them.

23 Recommendation 5 is recommending or 
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1 considering, again, reevaluation of cases by 

2 changes in the DR guidelines. And the reason I 

3 bring this up is it's the timeliness of the 

4 reevaluation.

5 When the Technical Basis Documents 

6 change, that will likely trigger some of these 

7 Program Evaluation Reviews. And it's no fault of 

8 ORAU's. There's delay in the Board reviewing the 

9 Technical Basis documents, so they don't want to 

10 update. I can understand that they don't want to 

11 constantly update the Technical Basis every time 

12 the Board comes out with recommending a change in 

13 a certain part of it. They're kind of waiting 

14 for all the recommendations to come up from the 

15 Board.

16 In the meantime, though, DR guidance 

17 has changed quite a bit and is it significant 

18 enough to say, oh, it's been eight years since 

19 we've had a Technical Basis update and the 

20 guidance has changed quite a bit in that 

21 meantime, should we trigger a PER type of review 

22 off of these guidance changes? And not just wait 

23 until the Technical Basis changes. So, that's 
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1 something to consider.

2 And then this last one I feel pretty 

3 strongly about. And I think I should say that, 

4 as I reviewed this, it was clear how the growth 

5 of the program from 2000 up until now, that these 

6 DR guidelines are included in every case file 

7 that you have. There's a lot more specifics in 

8 terms of being able to get the numbers that the 

9 staff person got. 

10 I would say, for the best estimate 

11 cases, though, there are some maybe best 

12 practices in some of those sites that I saw that 

13 might be incorporated in other sites. There's 

14 some very good language in the Hanford workbook 

15 on the usefulness of the timelines and the 

16 usefulness of, as I called it, sort of the case 

17 narrative, to aid not only in the internal 

18 reviews but also the external reviews.

19 So if you can point out, if the 

20 individual staff person says, "I made this 

21 judgment and this is my basis," it makes a heck 

22 of a lot easier on the Dose Reconstruction 

23 Subcommittee to say, "Okay, we agree or disagree 
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1 with that judgment and here's why."

2 So, better narratives and better 

3 timelines for the more complex or best estimate 

4 cases, at least.

5 And then just a couple more. And, 

6 again, I didn't really prioritize these. I think 

7 that's something that Stu has mentioned that's 

8 fair to -- you know, some of these may be -- all 

9 of these take resources. Some may be more of a 

10 bigger priority to the Board and to NIOSH than 

11 others.

12 But one thing that I noticed when I 

13 was doing the review was the tracking system, in 

14 2012, ORAU updated their QA/QC tracking database. 

15 And I think it may be useful to see if they can 

16 in some way be combined with a larger tracking 

17 system, including the Board findings. There may 

18 be some sort of field differences and things like 

19 that that have to be worked through, but it may 

20 give you a larger number of total entries to look 

21 at to see if there's any trends in maybe some 

22 professional judgments, other things, errors may 

23 jump out more quickly that we haven't thought 
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1 about. So, making this sort of combined tracking 

2 system I thought might be something to consider.

3 Then, I mentioned this one already, 

4 the increased level of peer review on NIOSH's 

5 side. I do want to note, during the review that 

6 ORAU pointed out to me that the best estimate 

7 cases, they do a double peer review now. I don't 

8 know when they instituted this, but they now do 

9 two peer reviews for all the best estimate cases. 

10 And I think that's a great -- you know, again, 

11 continuous improvement. That's a great 

12 improvement.

13 Then this other one, the CATI 

14 information. And I say also other interview 

15 information, because there has been interviews 

16 that have been conducted through the SEC process 

17 and other processes.

18 And I found in review that there was 

19 some interesting information in the, I guess, 

20 "other" section or the incident section. And I 

21 thought at least a pilot project to see if 

22 extracting that information into a database and 

23 sort of looking at it in aggregate fashion, 
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1 whether that would have any utility.

2 And I certainly wouldn't recommend 

3 jumping in and saying, you know, make a master 

4 database out of the whole -- it's a huge 

5 undertaking and probably may not be worthwhile. 

6 But there were some -- and, specifically, I 

7 looked at certain job titles that I looked at the 

8 interview data. And it was incredible the amount 

9 of information they had in those incident and 

10 other work sections. Not always, however, with 

11 great dates or times. You know, that is one of 

12 the problems. But I thought at least it might be 

13 useful to do a subsection of one of the sites in 

14 a pilot fashion, see what can come out of it, and 

15 see if that can in any way be used to improve or 

16 enhance the dose reconstruction, the overall Site 

17 Profile, perhaps.

18 And that's really it, I think. The 

19 last thing I wanted to say, you know, I think 

20 it's useful to look at these judgments, the 

21 personal judgments. And again, my focus, the 

22 lens that I was putting on this, is how to reduce 

23 potential inconsistencies. And assessing and 
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1 finding the inconsistencies is one thing, but 

2 then going up the stream a little bit and looking 

3 at systems -- and when I say systems it may be 

4 the dose reconstruction guidelines. You know, 

5 can we be more prescriptive in this area? Can we 

6 have better, more clearer guidance for making 

7 these judgments to assure that it's done in a 

8 consistent fashion? But it may come down to, you 

9 know, can we change our QA process or QC process 

10 for these types of cases to assure that we catch 

11 inconsistencies that way? 

12 I know there's other things that can 

13 be improved in the in-house level. I know that 

14 ORAU has, for the Savannah River team, they have 

15 number of dose reconstructors that focus on 

16 Savannah River cases. They often have team 

17 meetings with the whole group. My understanding 

18 is there is also another level of meetings that 

19 occurs which sort of looks at cross-site issues. 

20 And I think so putting systems in 

21 place like that, or improving those systems, 

22 might be useful in, again, identifying these 

23 areas where there's inconsistencies and assuring 
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1 that, across the complex, across all cases, that 

2 there's a level of consistency that occurs.

3 And I'm not trying to suggest that 

4 there's a great degree of inconsistency right now 

5 but that would be a way for continuous 

6 improvement.

7 And that's all I have.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, thank you, Mark.

9 Questions for Mark? All of you 

10 thoroughly read the report.

11 Wanda, go to it.

12 MEMBER MUNN: Not questions, just 

13 comments.

14 Mark, you've reminded me what we mean 

15 when we say regularity. And I'll have to admit 

16 I was gobsmacked just trying to follow the 

17 pathways that you have followed yourself in 

18 coming to these conclusions and presenting this. 

19 It just simply outdid me. And 

20 actually forced me from the technical into the 

21 existential philosophy of where in the world 

22 we're going here. There's enough material here 

23 for me to contemplate and discuss the individual 
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1 recommendations for weeks. I couldn't possibly 

2 do it in one or two meetings.

3 First of all, thank you for such a 

4 thorough review. I don't believe anybody could 

5 ask for more. 

6 My first thought, after I got as far 

7 through it as I could, was to read your 

8 conclusions and say, well, to what end? But I'm 

9 not going to ask that question here because, 

10 obviously, we all know the same platitudes, to do 

11 better, to do the best we can, to get the best 

12 fairness, to be consistent, although I would even 

13 argue that inconsistency is necessary when you 

14 have the scope of individual cases that you have 

15 here.

16 But all I'm going to really comment on 

17 is the fact that I don't believe that one can 

18 remove judgment from what we do in our daily 

19 lives, and certainly not from what we do in 

20 programs of this magnitude. Even the choice of 

21 the word judgment is in itself judgmental.

22 You called what we do here on the 

23 Board an evaluation. But the truth of the matter 
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1 is, what we do here is express our judgment. And 

2 in everything I see that you suggested here, 

3 ultimately what is happening is you're asking 

4 judgments to be placed on other people's 

5 judgments. That's what we all do. We are making 

6 choices in everything we do.

7 And although I'm not, in any way, 

8 dismissing any of the points that you've said 

9 here, I can't get past the fact that what I see 

10 here is an enormous extension of the problem. 

11 That's what I meant when I said, to what end? 

12 Whether it's going to make anybody any happier, 

13 whether it's going to provide what adds up to 

14 about a quarter of a million dollar assignment to 

15 more people, I don't know that. And I don't think 

16 any of us know that. But, certainly, it does not 

17 meet one of my preferred goals, which is to 

18 establish and adhere to a program which had all 

19 the best intentions in the world when we began.

20 So, I just want us to be aware of the 

21 fact that everything that I've seen suggested 

22 here, although I have no objection to any of it, 

23 I see most of them as being an attempt at greater 
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1 precision that, ultimately, boils down to our 

2 making a judgment about judgments that have 

3 already been made, or judgments that will be made 

4 in the future, based on judgments that we've 

5 already made.

6 But it's certainly been an interesting 

7 study and is beneficial from the point of view of 

8 identifying where the marks are. Thanks for 

9 doing it.

10 MR. KATZ: Before we go on to others, 

11 there are people on the phone who are carrying on 

12 conversations, and I guess they are more audible 

13 for folks on the phone than they are in the room, 

14 but it's important that we put an end to that, 

15 please.

16 So, people on the phone, everybody 

17 should have their phone muted. And if you don't 

18 have a mute button, press *6. That will mute 

19 your phone and then you can carry on with your 

20 conversations without disturbing everyone else.

21 So, again, *6 will mute your phone for 

22 this conference line so that everyone else can 

23 hear well. Thank you.
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1 OPERATOR: And excuse me, sir, this is 

2 the operator. If you'd like, as the leader, you 

3 can press *4 and that will mute everybody but the 

4 person presenting.

5 MR. KATZ: Yeah, the trouble with that 

6 is that we have people on the line that we do 

7 need to hear from and we don't want to mute them. 

8 But thank you.

9 OPERATOR: Okay, you're welcome. 

10 Enjoy your conference.

11 MR. KATZ: Thanks.

12 MR. GRIFFON: Wanda, I know there 

13 wasn't a question in there, but I do want to say 

14 that I think there was something you said that I 

15 think is very important, that in the professional 

16 judgment, in these judgments that are made, I 

17 think there's a line that people are going to 

18 find between can we prescribe a direction or 

19 guidance to handle a certain issue or there's 

20 just individual unique cases that you have to 

21 have some flexibility?

22 So I think overprescribing can be a 

23 problem, too. So I don't want say -- that's why 
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1 I said there's multiple systems to consider and 

2 maybe trying to -- and I am looking at the 

3 continuous improvement. And also I need to 

4 highlight again that I'm talking, where these 

5 issues have an impact, I believe, is the five 

6 percent of the cases. And it's the five percent 

7 of the cases that the Board is focused on in the 

8 DR Subcommittee reviews. So, they've gotten a 

9 lot of attention.

10 But we're not talking about the 

11 majority of the cases being processed. It's this 

12 smaller group that's close to the 50th 

13 percentile.

14 But, anyway, thank you for your 

15 comments.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Josie.

17 MEMBER BEACH: Mark, your report is 

18 excellent, a lot of things to think about. I 

19 particularly like the transparency part of it 

20 with your Recommendation 6. I think that would 

21 bring in a little bit more transparency, not that 

22 anybody did anything wrong, but how it was done, 

23 why it was done, so that others can follow it 
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1 later. Thank you.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Other questions or 

3 comments? 

4 MEMBER ROESSLER: Jim, this is Gen.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

6 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes, I would like to 

7 either agree or disagree with Wanda, just to 

8 liven things up a little bit, but I appreciate 

9 Ted's comments about muting. I think that helps. 

10 But I know Wanda will be talking again later. So 

11 I would recommend, Wanda, that you get closer to 

12 the mike and speak a little louder so we can hear 

13 you. That's one comment.

14 The other one is by sitting here and 

15 listening to both of these reports, I think 

16 things have come a long ways on this subject. 

17 And I think the Subcommittee has a lot to work 

18 on. And I think, under Dave's leadership, that 

19 they'll go quite a long ways on it.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Dave.

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Just a comment. 

22 First, it was an excellent report; difficult 

23 because it is granular. But I did find your 
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1 distinction between personal and programmatic 

2 judgments useful. And it seemed to me that a 

3 focus on the programmatic judgments is probably 

4 what we can best consider, because those are 

5 judgments that we've built into the process and 

6 it may be that they should be considered, 

7 reconsidered, modified.

8 So, those programmatic judgments, I 

9 think, are what I would certainly like most to 

10 focus on.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: David Richardson.

12 MEMBER RICHARDSON: One of your 

13 recommendations was considering more systematic 

14 use of CATI and other interview information. One 

15 question was -- well, first an observation. I 

16 know that that's been a point that you've raised 

17 maybe for a decade. Do you still, in your 

18 reviews, do you still find cases where that 

19 information's not being drawn upon?

20 MR. GRIFFON: I think it's certainly 

21 considered in all the dose reconstructions. All 

22 the ones I reviewed certainly considered it. I 

23 think that what I wanted to point out, I didn't 
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1 get it down into whether they made the proper 

2 judgment, but, in most cases, and this has been 

3 pointed out before, there's limited information. 

4 Some of them mentioned an incident that they were 

5 exposed to plutonium, they got an intake of 

6 plutonium sometime in the '80s, you know, and 

7 it's very hard to connect that back to their 

8 individual dose records and things like that.

9 But, when they have dose records over 

10 the course of their history, usually the way it's 

11 considered is, like, you know, do we find any 

12 reports of these, official reports of this 

13 incident? If not, does the person have bioassay 

14 records all around that time period that would 

15 give the opportunity to reconstruct the dose? 

16 And if so, then it's reasonable to assume that 

17 they can reconstruct dose from those personal 

18 records.

19 There was one in particular that I 

20 found where there was an external exposure 

21 mentioned in the CATI to a californium-252 

22 neutron source. And I believe there was a 

23 correction, based on the person's interview 
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1 record, that quite significantly increased the 

2 estimate of exposure for that time period for 

3 that person. And then that raises the question 

4 of, you know, if you collect this data in 

5 aggregate, maybe there's other people that worked 

6 in that area during that time period that you may 

7 assess their dose differently.

8 But for the most part, definitely, 

9 they considered all the incidents in the 

10 interview information.

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So, in the sense 

12 of being systematic with that information, when 

13 something is noted, it's flagged and then the 

14 judgment about its relevance is documented?

15 MR. GRIFFON: Right. Right.

16 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay.

17 MR. GRIFFON: Yes.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Henry? And this will 

19 be the last comment. We need a break, especially 

20 since we need to take a taxi to find the restrooms 

21 in this building.

22 MEMBER ANDERSON: I just wanted to say 

23 I found it a very useful review. And I think 
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1 having all that documentation there, although it 

2 seems overwhelming, it is very helpful for moving 

3 forward. 

4 And I would point out that the program 

5 is now settling in and is old enough so that 

6 there's staff turnover, both at ORAU and at 

7 NIOSH, and it will be important for new staff 

8 coming in. We'll have new approaches to 

9 judgments to be able to look at this, and, NIOSH, 

10 as part of your training, deal with that. So the 

11 new staff is where a lot of the risk or the 

12 differences could potentially occur.

13 And also I like your recommendations, 

14 three of them being kind of firm and the others 

15 being considerations. So I think that's 

16 important. 

17 But I would say Recommendation 1 

18 follows on our earlier discussion. And I think 

19 the Committee has done -- and is spending a great 

20 deal of time and effort and resources on 

21 reviewing these cases. And I think if we now use 

22 your focus to see whether, out of those, we can

23 capture some of the data specific to these types 
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1 of issues, that may be an easy way to not have to 

2 do something additional, but simply continue with 

3 what we're doing and capture a better set of data 

4 that everybody can use. It's there, but having 

5 to go back through and sort it out takes a lot of 

6 time and effort. But if we just do it going 

7 forward, put it into our system, I think that 

8 would be very helpful.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. So let's break. 

10 We'll come back with further discussion on this 

11 issue later in the meeting. Since I have a short 

12 presentation, but Wanda's comments took up all my 

13 time, but I'm not going to intrude on her time. 

14 I know better. But we have some other Board work 

15 time that we'll handle it.

16 Thank you very much, Mark.

17 MR. GRIFFON: Thank you all.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Don't go away and try 

19 to get back as promptly as you can around 11 

20 o'clock because we do have a petition and a 

21 petitioner on the line. So we need to move it 

22 along on that.

23 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 
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1 went off the record at 10:45 a.m. and resumed at 

2 11:04 a.m.)

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, if everyone can 

4 get seated? Yeah, get seated. At least stop 

5 talking. You can stand up and not talk, whatever 

6 you want to do, but just don't talk, and hopefully 

7 people are back on the phone. We know the people 

8 on the phone weren't talking, just people in the 

9 room we were pointing out.

10 So we start now with Ames Laboratory, 

11 the SEC petition 83.14, and Tom Tomes, Tomes?

12 MR. TOMES: Tomes.

13 CHAIR MELIUS: Tomes, Tom Tomes, okay.

14 MR. TOMES: Either way will work.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, I have the same 

16 problem. I can't remember how to pronounce my 

17 name anymore, so from NIOSH. We'll start. 

18 Welcome.

19 Ames Laboratory SEC Petition

20 (1971 - 1989; Ames IA)

21 MR. TOMES: I'm here to give a NIOSH 

22 Evaluation Report for SEC 245. SEC 245 is with 

23 Ames Laboratory for the period of 1971 through 
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1 1989. 

2 A little background on Ames 

3 Laboratory, it's located on the campus of Iowa 

4 State University in Ames, Iowa. There are two 

5 specific locations. One is on the main campus 

6 which consists of a few buildings, and there's a 

7 remote campus location about a mile away that's 

8 the location of the former Ames Lab Research 

9 Reactor and a couple other facilities.

10 Ames Laboratory is a DOE covered

11 facility from 1942 to present. They have engaged 

12 in various research in material science and 

13 theory. In their early years of operation, they 

14 developed methods and produced uranium and 

15 thorium. 

16 They produced approximately 1,000 

17 tons of uranium metal during World War II, and 

18 they produced thorium metal, about 65 tons from 

19 the 1940s through 1953. Those operations 

20 resulted in contamination of a few buildings on 

21 the site.

22 The background for this petition is a 

23 review of the Ames Site Profile. NIOSH has a 
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1 Technical Basis Document, TBD, that is used as a 

2 guide for dose reconstructions. SC&A provided a 

3 review of that report to the Board in August of 

4 2013. 

5 The review contained 22 findings on 

6 various aspects of the internal dose and external 

7 doses. NIOSH has provided a response to the Ames 

8 Laboratory Work Group, the two White Papers on a 

9 number of those findings, but among those 

10 findings were comments that certain intakes 

11 lacked the basis for dose reconstruction. 

12 In an attempt to resolve those 

13 findings, we have done - we contacted Ames 

14 Laboratory and requested additional documents. 

15 We've received those documents, reviewed them, 

16 requested more documents, and finally we made a 

17 trip out to Ames Laboratory and went through the 

18 records and got more documents. That was done in 

19 June of this past year. 

20 We have now gone through those records 

21 and we have determined that we do not have enough 

22 information to fully reconstruct internal doses 

23 prior to 1990 which prompted the 83.14 petition.
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1 NIOSH believes that the available 

2 monitoring data and the information in the Site 

3 Profile are sufficient to reconstruct external 

4 doses. Adverse external dose findings in the 

5 Site Profile review by SC&A, but we believe those 

6 are Site Profile issues that can be resolved.

7 There are four previous SEC Classes 

8 established for Ames Laboratory. The first of 

9 those was SEC 38. That period covered the Class 

10 from 1942 through 1954. The basis for that 

11 determination was insufficient internal dose 

12 monitoring for thorium and plutonium. I believe 

13 this was on the slide that was also for that 

14 determination.

15 The conclusion also - they also made 

16 a conclusion that there was insufficient external 

17 dose monitoring data prior to 1953. That 

18 particular petition covered five facilities that 

19 were identified as being involved in the process.

20 SEC petition 75 resulted in a Class 

21 added from 1955 through 1970. The basis for that 

22 determination was insufficient monitoring data 

23 for thorium worked in Wilhelm Hall. Wilhelm Hall 
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1 was the location of the thorium production, most 

2 of the thorium production work from 1949 through 

3 1953. The SEC Class 75 determined that there's 

4 insufficient data to reconstruct doses to 

5 maintenance workers who performed renovation work 

6 in that facility.

7 A third Class was added, SEC Class 

8 added at Ames Laboratory. That covered the 

9 period from 1955 through 1960 for work and 

10 research, studying research work in Spedding 

11 Hall. Spedding Hall had several laboratories for 

12 research in radioactive materials. It also had 

13 a hot cell in the facility.

14 Those three Classes combined comprise 

15 a Class from 1942 through 1970 for various 

16 workers and facilities. A fourth Class was 

17 added, SEC 185, which redefined those Classes to 

18 include all employees in all areas from 1942 

19 through 1970.

20 In SEC 245, NIOSH proposed that all -

21 to add a Class for all employees of the Department 

22 of Energy, predecessor agencies, and their 

23 contractors and subcontractors who worked in any 
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1 areas of the facility from 1971 through 1989. 

2 The basis is insufficient monitoring data and 

3 process information to reconstruct internal dose.

4 There are 123 claims that NIOSH has 

5 received with employment in the period evaluated 

6 by SEC 245. Of those 123 claims, 16 have tritium 

7 bioassay data. The tritium bioassay was a 

8 routine monitoring program for the Ames Lab 

9 Research Reactor during operation and 

10 decommissioning. A few of those 16 claims have 

11 a couple other incidental miscellaneous bioassay 

12 data. Twenty-one of the 123 claims employed in 

13 that period have external dosimetry data.

14 Ames Laboratory operations, we've 

15 grouped those into three basic aspects of 

16 operations with potential radiation exposure. 

17 One of those is the research and development of 

18 various radionuclides. 

19 The other is the operation of the Ames 

20 Laboratory Research Reactor which was a five 

21 megawatt heavy water research reactor. And 

22 finally, a third category considered the 

23 remediation of past contamination primarily from 
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1 the production era of 1942 through 1953.

2 In the research and development, the 

3 research started in 1942 in the early days of the 

4 Manhattan Engineer District Project, the 

5 Manhattan Project. They did laboratory research 

6 work with uranium, thorium, and plutonium. They 

7 worked with rare earth metals, fission products, 

8 activation products, and other various 

9 radionuclides.

10 Various equipment and devices were 

11 used and they had facilities, box facilities for 

12 work with plutonium and uranium. 

13 They also had additional work beyond 

14 the laboratory work. They had the Metals 

15 Development Building that was built specifically 

16 to process studies larger than laboratory scale 

17 work. They processed uranium and thorium metals 

18 up to 25 pound batches. 

19 This work was processed in various -

20 in other facilities, the chemical processes. The 

21 Metals Development Building had a machine shop 

22 that produced materials for use in ground and at 

23 the machine shop for further studies at the 
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1 laboratory.

2 The Ames Laboratory Research Reactor 

3 was operated from 1965 through 1977. The 

4 decommissioning work was completed in 1981. Also 

5 located near the Research Reactor facility 

6 location were a couple other buildings, including 

7 some burial grounds where contaminated debris was 

8 buried in the early years of operation.

9 The reactor facility was also the 

10 location of a waste disposal building, and that 

11 building still exists and it houses the Alpha 

12 Operations Facility which was built initially in 

13 the mid-1980s for low box work with uranium and 

14 plutonium to support their ICP work, research 

15 work.

16 The other category, next category of 

17 work is the remediation work at the facility. 

18 Wilhelm Hall, as I mentioned earlier, was the 

19 location of most of the thorium production work. 

20 It was built in 1949. Previously, the thorium 

21 production work occurred in Annex 1, Chemistry 

22 Annex 1 and Chemistry Annex 2. All of those 

23 facilities were contaminated as a result of the 
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1 production work.

2 Annex 1 was demolished in 1954. Annex 

3 2 was demolished in 1972. Wilhelm Hall is still 

4 an operating facility that has had various 

5 projects over the years for remediating areas 

6 that were contaminated and identifying 

7 contaminated areas. 

8 Some of the areas that were 

9 contaminated included duct work, pipe tunnels, 

10 inaccessible areas that are under furniture 

11 fixtures and things like that that they have had 

12 to track over the years.

13 Other remediation work that was done 

14 during the evaluated period was the Gillman Hall 

15 stairwells. Gillman Hall was the chemistry 

16 building. It was known as the chemistry building 

17 back in 1942. 

18 That building was the site of the 

19 initial work with uranium production. About a 

20 third of the metal that was used in the CP-1 Pile 

21 was produced in Gillman Hall and parts of that 

22 facility were contaminated. In 1943, that work 

23 was transitioned from that facility into Annex 1 
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1 and Annex 2.

2 Other remediation work in the 

3 evaluated period was a block house as I mentioned 

4 earlier was located out near the Ames Reactor. 

5 That was demolished, and there was also thorium 

6 contaminated debris in soils that were excavated. 

7 Those were from previous work at the site. 

8 To support the remediation work, they 

9 operated a waste handling building. The waste 

10 handling building received all of the radioactive 

11 materials on site and packaged them for shipment 

12 off site, and there are records from people who 

13 worked there that they had some potential 

14 exposures in that facility. They wore 

15 respirators.

16 The radiological monitoring data is 

17 fairly limited during this period. There are 

18 some environmental air samples from 1980 to 1982. 

19 There are some air samples from Spedding Hall and 

20 Wilhelm Hall. They are insufficient to 

21 characterize intakes for all workers, and there 

22 are a few air samples from the Alpha Operations 

23 Facilities in the mid to late 80s.
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1 In addition to this data, there is 

2 also, I mentioned they had a routine tritium 

3 monitoring program. That was in place during 

4 both the operation of the research reactor and in 

5 the decommissioning, and those data are 

6 sufficient for those workers who were monitored.

7 There is also a substantial amount of 

8 loose contamination survey data available in more 

9 recent years. Some of that is a significant 

10 amount of smear data, and most of that data, the 

11 majority of that data is available from 1983 

12 forward, and that's when they started doing a 

13 more concentrated effort to identify contaminated 

14 areas in the previously used facilities. 

15 The data is not sufficient to 

16 characterize work during all of the remediation 

17 - exposures during a lot of the remediation work. 

18 Much of that data is verifying clean condition 

19 after some of that work was done.

20 For the internal dose feasibility, 

21 NIOSH concludes that the tritium bioassay data 

22 from Ames Laboratory work are sufficient to use 

23 to estimate dose. However, we have no 
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1 information on which to estimate intakes from 

2 fission products or activation products from that 

3 facility.

4 The research and development work, 

5 there are insufficient data also to estimate 

6 intakes from the various radionuclides that we 

7 use in that work, and NIOSH concludes that some 

8 of those operations had the potential for 

9 internal dose to the workers.

10 For the remediation work, the primary 

11 exposures are thorium and uranium. There was a 

12 significant thorium and uranium contamination in 

13 several facilities, and those have been 

14 gradually, during the early years, gradually 

15 remediated. Again, the data that I discussed as 

16 available earlier is insufficient to write an 

17 estimate intake for those operations.

18 And the conclusion for SEC 245 is that 

19 there is insufficient monitoring data or process 

20 information to reconstruct internal doses from 

21 1971 through 1989. For the post 1989 period, we 

22 still have some work to do on that. 

23 We are - much of the data we received 
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1 in our research in response to the findings 

2 indicated some additional radiological work that 

3 we did not settle previously in the Technical 

4 Basis Documents, so we're continuing to review 

5 those and address findings in the Site Profile.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, questions?

7 MEMBER ROESSLER: Jim, this is Gen.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, go ahead, Gen.

9 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay, Tom, you 

10 mentioned work that you're doing after the 1989 

11 period, but wasn't this end date chosen because 

12 most of the radiological work had ceased at the 

13 end of 1989?

14 MR. TOMES: Yes, it was. The 

15 discussion I had in here on the remediation work, 

16 much of it was done, but not all of it was done. 

17 There was still some work done on remediation of 

18 pipe tunnels and things in Wilhelm Hall, and we 

19 have some comments to look at on that. 

20 The operation of the Alpha Operations 

21 Facility was ongoing past 1990, but I agree that 

22 according to what we found out, there was not 

23 significant operations past 1989, that the 
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1 exposures should have been reduced at that point.

2 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay, the other 

3 comment I have is you mentioned 123 claims, and 

4 I was wondering how many potential people would 

5 be in the Class, but I think Chris Crawford 

6 mentioned that this morning. I think at Ames he 

7 mentioned 350. Is that right?

8 MR. TOMES: Well, the 123 claims are 

9 the claims that we've identified as of whenever 

10 this date we did this check a few weeks ago that 

11 had employment during the 1971 through 1989 

12 period, so those claimants who had a covered 

13 cancer and 250 days would be some portion of those 

14 123 claims.

15 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay, that's the end 

16 of my comments.

17 DR. NETON: This is Jim Neton. I think 

18 it's actually somewhat less than the 123 because 

19 that's anyone who had employment in that period, 

20 but there's a number of people that had worked 

21 prior in the previous SECs. I think I want to 

22 say the number is in the 50, 60 range. It's in 

23 the Evaluation Report. There's a table that 
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1 contains that number.

2 MR. TOMES: That's correct. The 

3 presentation just had an abbreviation, but 

4 there's a table in it.

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Could I ask for a 

6 follow up to that because there's a distinction 

7 between the number of claims you have and the 

8 question which is, "What is the size of the 

9 Class?" And my understanding, and you can 

10 correct me if I'm wrong, would be that in this 

11 case, the DOE or its predecessors had a contract, 

12 grants or contracts, with an organization, and 

13 that was the university. Is that right?

14 MR. TOMES: The facility started out 

15 as under contract to the Manhattan Engineer 

16 District.

17 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yeah.

18 MR. TOMES: And after World War II, 

19 they established Ames Laboratory.

20 MEMBER RICHARDSON: But it's here the 

21 contract is with Iowa State.

22 MR. TOMES: Well, they are the 

23 operating contractors.
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1 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Right, and the 

2 documents, I mean, we went through this before, 

3 but the documents sort of describe, at least for 

4 some period of time, there were no operational -

5 there were no controls, restrictions over 

6 entering the chemistry building and some of these 

7 other buildings which were university facilities. 

8 So is - I mean, I've always had this in my head 

9 that the potential size of this Class is 

10 enormous.

11 MEMBER ROESSLER: But according to 

12 Chris Crawford, I thought he mentioned the 

13 potential Class was 350.

14 MR. CRAWFORD: This is Chris Crawford, 

15 Gen. The information on the slide that I had for 

16 Ames said that a total of 950 claims have been 

17 filed. I might point out that 291 have Part B 

18 approvals already. 299 have Part E approvals 

19 already. 

20 NIOSH has done 186 dose 

21 reconstructions. That's the kind of information 

22 I have here, but it doesn't lay out how many are 

23 in SEC Classes.
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1 MEMBER ROESSLER: So is the - somebody 

2 said they thought the Class was enormous. I think 

3 we need to have a little better number on that.

4 MEMBER RICHARDSON: See, I was going 

5 through my head. It's Iowa State employees at 

6 this period would be those, and they don't - and 

7 there's no - you said that you can't identify who 

8 went into which buildings in which locations, but 

9 again, maybe I'm misunderstanding.

10 MR. TOMES: I believe we were talking 

11 about Ames Laboratory employees as determined by 

12 the Department of Labor.

13 MEMBER ROESSLER: It's probably - it's 

14 not pertinent to a decision here, but I thought 

15 it was - just out of curiosity, what is the 

16 number?

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: You can't define a 

18 number because it's going to be whatever number 

19 employees or people that get a cancer and file a 

20 claim that DOL determines has covered employment, 

21 but as Dr. Richardson mentioned, that could be a 

22 very large number.

23 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: My recollection is that 

2 we had resolved that, so it wasn't the entire 

3 university was covered, because I think it came 

4 up many years ago when we were first doing the 

5 Ames issue, and I think we straightened it out in 

6 terms of how the contract was defined and who it 

7 was with, but I don't recollect that.

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: Jim, this is Brad. I 

9 think that you're correct in that. I thought 

10 that we had taken care of this earlier on with 

11 Ames, that it wasn't the whole university.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah, we were - it was 

13 a concern, so, yeah, I don't want to dismiss it. 

14 We had the same issue with MIT and the laboratory 

15 up there. It looked like every graduate student 

16 at MIT because it would be employed, I mean, 

17 potentially employed, so how do you narrow it 

18 down, but that got taken care of when they sort 

19 of redesignated the facility, but I think it's 

20 the facility definition that also plays a part.

21 MR. TOMES: I believe there are 

22 currently approximately 725 workers at the 

23 facility full and part time, so over the years, 
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1 it could be a substantial number of claims.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Which was, Jim, you had 

3 a clarification? No, confusion.

4 DR. NETON: I agree with you. I think 

5 we had this discussion at one of the earlier four 

6 SECs that have already been established, and the 

7 work is covered at Ames Laboratory, not the 

8 University of Iowa, and I'm not sure exactly how 

9 Department of Labor parses that out, but we did 

10 have this discussion and we have the claims we 

11 have. 

12 I just checked their - right now, we 

13 have 57 people who started employment during this 

14 covered period that we're discussing. How many 

15 more could apply, you know, who knows?

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Could someone try to 

17 get some clarification on that so that we - not 

18 immediately, but hopefully while we're still 

19 thinking about it before we leave here or 

20 something? I don't think it necessarily needs to 

21 hold up our decision on this SEC, but any other 

22 - Josie, yeah, go ahead.

23 MEMBER BEACH: Not for Tom, but just 
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1 in general. I know there's a Work Group formed 

2 for Ames. Do we have a recommendation or has the 

3 Work Group met on this at all?

4 CHAIR MELIUS: The Work Group has not 

5 met on this, no. Remember, this is the one, this 

6 is the report that DOE had to, you know, 

7 facilitate its quick review which we thank DOE 

8 for. I'm not sure why it got hung up at NIOSH 

9 for so long, but they got it through, so that's 

10 fine. Any other comments or questions? Yes, 

11 Lorraine? Loretta, excuse me.

12 MEMBER VALERIO: So if I am 

13 understanding correctly for the internal dose 

14 feasibility, that the ongoing remediation beyond 

15 the 1980s is focused primarily on thorium and 

16 uranium?

17 MR. TOMES: The only ones that I know 

18 of is some occasional work that was done on the 

19 pipe tunnels in the Wilhelm Hall. In the late 

20 1980s when they were instituting additional 

21 controls as far as DOE Order 5480, they had an 

22 increased effort to identify those areas, and 

23 there was some work done on washing those tunnels 
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1 down and remediating those in the 1990s, so there 

2 is at least some potential exposures to consider, 

3 but it was not routine work going on.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, any more 

5 questions or comments? I think I need to hear -

6 it's an 83.14. Do I get a recommendation from 

7 the Board? It's an 83.14 petition. Yeah, there 

8 is a - is the petitioner supposed to be on the 

9 line? Not for - okay. That's what I thought. 

10 Okay, so does someone want to recommend an 

11 action? David, just speak into the microphone, 

12 please.

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I'll recommend as 

14 Chair of the Work Group, the Ames Work Group, 

15 that we accept this as an SEC.

16 MEMBER BEACH: I'm going to second it.

17 MEMBER CLAWSON: I wanted to second 

18 it.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: Brad, you're out of 

20 order. You weren't called on.

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: Sorry.

22 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, and let me just 

23 for the record read the Class Definition into the 
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1 record. All employees of the Department of 

2 Energy, its predecessor agencies, and their 

3 contractors or subcontractors who worked in any 

4 area of the Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa during 

5 the period from January 1, 1971 through December 

6 31, 1989 for a number of work days aggregating at 

7 least 250 work days occurring either solely under 

8 this employment or in combination with work days 

9 within the parameters established for one or more 

10 other Classes of employees included in the 

11 Special Exposure Cohort. So no further 

12 discussion. Can we - Ted, do your -

13 MR. KATZ: Sure, Anderson?

14 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

15 MR. KATZ: Beach?

16 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

17 MR. KATZ: Clawson?

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

19 MR. KATZ: Field?

20 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

21 MR. KATZ: Kotelchuck?

22 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

23 MR. KATZ: Lemen?
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1 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes. Did you hear me?

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Not now. Our eardrums 

3 are all punctured.

4 MEMBER LEMEN: I don't know what's -

5 from my end.

6 MR. KATZ: Lockey?

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: Melius?

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

10 MR. KATZ: Munn?

11 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

12 MR. KATZ: Poston? John Poston? 

13 Maybe you're on mute. I'll come back. 

14 Richardson?

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

16 MR. KATZ: Roessler?

17 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

18 MR. KATZ: Schofield?

19 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

20 MR. KATZ: Valerio?

21 MEMBER VALERIO: Yes.

22 MR. KATZ: Ziemer? Paul? Perhaps 

23 you're on mute too. Oh, Paul may be absent for 
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1 - he has a short period when he can't make it. 

2 Let me just go back. Dr. Poston, John, are you 

3 on the line, but on mute? Okay, then, well, I 

4 have two -

5 CHAIR MELIUS: He said, yes, he's on 

6 mute.

7 MR. KATZ: I have not heard it. Yeah, 

8 so, anyway, we have two absentee votes. I may 

9 try to collect those later in the meeting, but 

10 otherwise - the motion passes.

11 MEMBER BEACH: And then, Jim, just to 

12 further, the Work Group will take up any further 

13 issues on like the -

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Oh, yeah.

15 MEMBER POSTON: Ted?

16 MR. KATZ: Oh, there he is.

17 MEMBER POSTON: Ted?

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah, just go, John.

19 MEMBER POSTON: This is John. I hit 

20 the wrong button and hung up. That was an 

21 ulterior motive, I guess.

22 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

23 MEMBER POSTON: But I vote yes.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, thank you. 

2 Thanks, John. Ted's handing out the letter, so 

3 I'm filling in for him.

4 MEMBER POSTON: And I'll try not to 

5 hit the hang up button this time.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, so again, I'll 

7 read into the record. The Advisory Board on 

8 Radiation Worker Health, the Board, has evaluated 

9 SEC Petition 00245 concerning workers at the Ames 

10 Laboratory and the statutory requirements 

11 established, incorporated into 42 CFR Section 

12 83.13. 

13 The Board respectfully recommends 

14 that SEC status be accorded to, "all employees of 

15 the Department of Energy, its predecessor 

16 agencies, and their contractors or subcontractors 

17 who worked in any area of the Ames Laboratory in 

18 Ames, Iowa during the period from January 1, 1971 

19 through December 31, 1989 for a number of work 

20 days aggregating at least 250 work days occurring 

21 either solely under this employment or in 

22 combination with work days within the parameters 

23 established for one or more other Classes of 
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1 employees included in the Special Exposure 

2 Cohort."

3 This recommendation is based on the 

4 following factors. During this time period, the 

5 Ames Laboratory was involved in research and 

6 development work related to the production of 

7 nuclear weapons. This work included some 

8 remediation work on contaminated facilities.

9 Two, NIOSH found that there were 

10 insufficient biological monitoring data, air 

11 monitoring data, or process and radiological 

12 source information at this facility in order to 

13 complete individual dose reconstructions 

14 involving internal radiation exposures with 

15 sufficient accuracy for Ames Laboratory workers 

16 during the time period in question. The Board 

17 concurs with this conclusion.

18 Three, NIOSH determined that health 

19 may have been in danger for the workers exposed 

20 to radiation at the Ames Laboratory during the 

21 time period in question. The Board also concurs 

22 with this determination.

23 Based on these considerations and 
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1 discussions held at our December 13 and 14, 2017 

2 Board meeting held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 

3 the Board recommends that this Class be added to 

4 the SEC.

5 Enclosed is the documentation from the 

6 Board meeting where this SEC Class was discussed. 

7 Documentation includes copies of the petition, 

8 the NIOSH review thereof, and related materials. 

9 If any of these items are not available at this 

10 time, they will follow shortly.

11 If anybody has grammatical or other 

12 changes, let me know, but that will be the letter 

13 that will go forward to the Secretary. 

14 Okay, so we have some time. I thought 

15 we would, rather than impinge on Wanda's time and 

16 getting myself into big trouble, I thought we 

17 would take up some follow up on the dose 

18 reconstruction review methods if I do that 

19 quickly, but just, I have a short presentation 

20 that just sort of - it's a laundry list of some 

21 of the things under consideration. 

22 We've heard Mark's recommendations. 

23 There were some other recommendations that we had 
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1 talked about internally, as well as within the 

2 Work Group, and then there were also some 

3 recommendations, or suggestions, I should say, 

4 from SC&A from John Mauro, Rose, and others there 

5 that are on this list. 

6 It's in no priority order or anything, 

7 but I thought we want to get going on this, and 

8 I would appreciate input from the Board on where 

9 we should start with whatever we decide to do on 

10 changes to our methods for doing dose 

11 reconstruction reviews.

12 We will take any recommendations the 

13 Board Members have, others, and back to another 

14 Work Group meeting, and then come back to the 

15 Board with a set of recommendations for starting 

16 to implement some changes to that. I think this 

17 will be sort of an ongoing process for a while 

18 while we, until we get some results and see what 

19 works, what doesn't work, and so forth.

20 So I just have four cryptic slides, 

21 but we'll go through some of this. First of all, 

22 I'm going to begin with sort of some of the 

23 considerations we need to sort of think about in 
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1 terms of how we approach changes to our dose 

2 reconstruction reviews. 

3 And we've largely talked about it 

4 within the Work Group changes that had to do with 

5 consistency, but also, I think, accuracy and 

6 consistency are the issues that we're sort of 

7 focusing on. 

8 We also have to consider do we do that 

9 looking at just a single site, or do we look for 

10 consistency across multiple sites? Are dose 

11 constructions for similar types of exposures, or 

12 work tasks, or work operations done similarly at 

13 each site? And that may be because of some 

14 differences in terms of how and when Site 

15 Profiles get reviewed and procedures get 

16 reviewed. That may be something that we want to 

17 sort of focus on over multiple sites.

18 I think another general 

19 consideration, are we using all of the available 

20 information that's available for that particular 

21 site or on that particular issue? 

22 Another consideration is I think we 

23 want to focus our efforts on significant 
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1 exposures, meaning not on trivial exposures or 

2 things that are really very unlikely to affect 

3 dose reconstruction outcomes, but rather it has 

4 to be something meaningful. 

5 That's a slippery - a little difficult 

6 to define. We've tried that before in looking at 

7 this and trying to focus, but I think it is 

8 something to take into account.

9 And then I think one other thing as 

10 Mark mentioned a little bit and it came up in our 

11 discussions, do we do a separate type of 

12 evaluation or do we try to incorporate some of 

13 this evaluation into our ongoing reviews, either 

14 our blind reviews, or more likely, our primary 

15 reviews as sort of an add-on to those which has 

16 advantages in terms of we've got the committee 

17 all set up, and the cases selected, and so forth? 

18 So, and it may depend on what the subject is we're 

19 focusing on.

20 And then one of the other sort of 

21 bigger questions, I think, is do we expand our 

22 procedure reviews? And that means do we go father 

23 down into the dose reconstruction process? 
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1 Mark used the term program judgments

2 where there's some sort of documentation or 

3 procedure that's set up that's below the level of 

4 a Site Profile or TIB, and one that is not usually 

5 reviewed by the Board. I'm not sure all of them 

6 are even reviewed by NIOSH. 

7 They're sort of implementation 

8 documents and so forth, but, you know, may or may 

9 not have, you know, a significant potential for 

10 doing dose reconstructions and affecting the 

11 outcomes of those. And again, for some, it's a 

12 question of resources. For some, the question is 

13 how, you know, what's involved in that particular 

14 documentation? 

15 I think our Dose Reconstruction Review 

16 Committee has run into those occasionally, and 

17 they're trying to resolve discrepancies between 

18 SC&A's review and the ORAU dose reconstruction.

19 Another one that Mark mentioned is how 

20 we utilize CATI information. And if you go back 

21 to meeting 20 or something like that, at the 

22 beginning of this process, we had a large 

23 discussion of even as part of dose reconstruction
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1 reviews doing separate interviews, additional 

2 interviews with the claimants as a way of seeing 

3 what kind of information was obtained or not 

4 obtained in that process. 

5 That made everybody very nervous, but 

6 we decided not to do it, implement that, but I 

7 think in between doing that and just sort of 

8 accepting what's in there now, I think taking a 

9 better look at what's in the CATI, are there 

10 better ways of using that information to confirm 

11 or to modify dose reconstruction is something 

12 worth looking into.

13 Again, Mark mentioned this, and he 

14 also mentioned this next issue which is how to 

15 handle incidents. It's again been an issue that 

16 we've struggled with for a long time. Again, now 

17 that we have more data and information, is there 

18 better ways of - and we've got essentially more 

19 claims to look at. Is there a better way of using 

20 that available data in some way and doing it more 

21 consistently so that all claimants get a fair 

22 evaluation? 

23 And again, we always run into the 
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1 problem that a lot of these CATI interviews about 

2 incidents and so forth where they come up, some 

3 people know about them, but then you have 

4 survivors who may have, obviously have a lot less 

5 information on what their spouse or parent may 

6 have been doing.

7 Again, these mostly come from Mark and 

8 the assignment of coworker dose to individuals, 

9 and how that's done procedurally and the judgment 

10 that's involved in that. Again, this came from 

11 SC&A location of skin cancers, some consistency 

12 in how that's done because that can make a change 

13 in terms of the dose reconstruction process, the 

14 various uses of in vitro and in vivo data.

15 Again, Mark already mentioned 

16 assignment of work title or how someone's 

17 exposure is judged or work tasks are judged. He 

18 had some examples of that in his report. 

19 Assignment of glove box correction factors again 

20 is something that may affect dose.

21 I think one issue, I think this is in 

22 Mark's report, was consistency of approach of 

23 using data across multiple AWE sites. This may 
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1 be sort of a question of timing of when Site 

2 Profiles were done and so forth, and I think how 

3 is that being - you know, how is that resolved 

4 and is that being done the same at every site in 

5 terms of how those judgments are being made?

6 And again, Mark, I think, elaborated 

7 on this, assignment of exposure area for 

8 individuals within a given facility. How is that 

9 judged and how is that consistent? Are the dose 

10 reconstructions consistent in doing that, various 

11 site assignments within large facilities, people 

12 moving from within a facility, and how is that 

13 evaluated and taken into account in dose 

14 reconstruction? 

15 And again, more technically, 

16 assignment of missed dose and judgments that are 

17 made about that in terms of within the dose 

18 reconstruction process, how do you handle 

19 discrepancies in what monitoring data is 

20 available or when the data has inconsistency in 

21 various sources about that monitoring data, and 

22 the residual contamination issue which is, I 

23 think, really also the issue of consistency among 
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1 multiple AWE sites, but goes beyond that, and 

2 then assignment of various percentiles and so 

3 forth in terms of the 95th, or 50th percentile, 

4 or 75th, or whatever, for a dose reconstruction.

5 There's a lot of things we could look 

6 at, and I'm not sure, you know, what's the most 

7 important or whatever, but if people have ideas, 

8 Board Members, on what, thoughts on what we 

9 should be doing or where they think - or based on 

10 their experience? 

11 We've all looked at individual dose 

12 reconstructions. Obviously our - Dave's 

13 committee has done it a lot more and seen a lot 

14 more than all of us, the rest of us, but I think 

15 I would be interested in everyone's input and 

16 thoughts, maybe now or maybe later, about what we 

17 should be focusing on, what they think ought to 

18 be our priorities for getting this process 

19 started.

20 So let me open it up if you have 

21 suggestions. I'll call on everybody except 

22 Wanda.

23 MEMBER MUNN: You don't want that.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: Questions, comments? 

2 If not, our committee will make a decision. Dave?

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: It does seem to me 

4 that many of the ones that I consider of most 

5 significant concern relate to AWE sites, the 

6 assignment of coworker dose, the assignment of 

7 work title for AWEs which is discussed in the 

8 report, residual handling of residual 

9 contamination. 

10 So it seems to me that to begin the -

11 if those are priorities to begin with, we should 

12 begin to start looking more at AWE sites in the 

13 review process.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah, I would agree 

15 with that because I think it's probably where 

16 there's a lot of judgment involved, and enough 

17 similarities among those sites in terms of the 

18 type of work that was done that it would probably 

19 make sense to see how that's being handled across 

20 the sites, and obviously the issues with 

21 contamination and so forth. Henry?

22 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yeah, I would agree 

23 with that. I think the CATI information is one 
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1 that's worth looking at as to how the CATI 

2 information is utilized other than, you know, 

3 identifying a series or have a separate list of 

4 incidents, then going back to the site 

5 information to see if you could identify an 

6 incident. 

7 I would be interested in what is done 

8 when you can't find the documentation for an 

9 incident that the CATI report seems sufficiently 

10 specific, that are you going to ignore it because 

11 there's no documentation for it, or how is that 

12 information subsequently used? 

13 Because that could make quite a 

14 difference in your dose reconstruction if you 

15 accept CATI information without follow up or 

16 subsequent documentation for such an incident. 

17 How does a reviewer review that? 

18 You look at it and, "Well, this sounds 

19 like the type of incident that we've seen at other 

20 facilities, and therefore it would not be 

21 unexpected in this particular circumstance, so 

22 it's consistent with the overall look at other 

23 sites and other things." How is that currently 
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1 handled? 

2 In the specific reviews that I've 

3 done, I haven't had any where that's come up, and 

4 I don't know how often this is, and maybe the 

5 committee has some thoughts on that. 

6 So it may be an unnecessary concern 

7 for something that doesn't happen very often, but 

8 the CATI information does seem to be quite rich 

9 in many cases, and therefore probably in more 

10 times than not, you actually go back and find 

11 that there is a mention in somebody else's report 

12 or something of such an incident to then utilize 

13 it, so it's useful, but when you can't do that, 

14 what happens?

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Dave?

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Well, the CATI 

17 information I found, well, generally, it seems to 

18 be handled that - for each individual case, 

19 there's a report of CATI info, you know, some 

20 CATI report, and then it's said, "Well, to what 

21 extent can we check it for this person?" 

22 And I wonder for DOE facilities where 

23 it seems - I wondered if there's ways of gathering 
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1 the CATI reports, having a report on the CATI 

2 reports from one particular facility to help us 

3 pin down some information about that, or if it's 

4 not coworker data, but to see whether there are 

5 similarities perhaps in exposures, in external 

6 exposures at the sites where incidents have been 

7 reported with a certain amount of consistency, 

8 and that would be DOE sites as opposed to the 

9 earlier discussion which I suggested that we go 

10 AWE.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Yeah, I think one of 

12 the questions would be: can you look at other 

13 CATI interviews for people with similar, you 

14 know, work, and time periods, and locations, and 

15 so forth? And then -

16 MEMBER ANDERSON: Is there some coding 

17 on it? That would be the question. Most of this 

18 seems most of the cases are focused on the 

19 individual as opposed to a surveillance system 

20 where we could sum up how many CATI reports there 

21 are in X, Y, Z. 

22 We really don't have a data capture 

23 that can support that, so if that couldn't be 
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1 done, then we need to think about is there a way 

2 to put a key word search or something like that 

3 into the CATI system going forward as opposed to 

4 trying to reconstruct some of it.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: But I think it's also 

6 are there other dose reconstructions for people 

7 at that site where incidents were documented and 

8 there's follow-up exposure information that would 

9 weigh into the judgment of the dose reconstructor 

10 on whether or not that was a real incident or, 

11 you know, they had enough information to take it 

12 into account? Because again, this is dose 

13 reconstruction, so it's not if that had more 

14 information than just there was an incident on 

15 that. Wanda, I can't ignore you.

16 MEMBER MUNN: In the same vein, the 

17 only one of the suggested potential review 

18 targets that I can support most enthusiastically 

19 is the focus on significant exposures. 

20 So we have spent a great deal of time 

21 over the years with lesser small exposures that 

22 we had asked the question in deliberation, "Is 

23 this going to significantly impact anything?" and 
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1 the answer is always, "No," except if there is 

2 something that was felt was necessary for 

3 completion. And I certainly agree focusing on 

4 significant exposures is a lofty goal and one we 

5 should pursue at all costs.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Dave?

7 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Agreed.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: We'd better stop there. 

9 Other thoughts or suggestions?

10 MEMBER BEACH: I'm just going to throw 

11 my hat in for the timeline again, that way you'll 

12 know it's in the open of what was done, and what 

13 wasn't done, or why it was done, or - I think 

14 that's a value.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: I think it's also - I 

16 mean, in all, particularly in Mark's report, but 

17 I think we have to sort of think about speaking 

18 thereof, but, I mean, again, we're going to have 

19 to coordinate what we do with NIOSH and do that 

20 because I think, you know, there are some 

21 suggestions from Mark's report that sort of 

22 focused more on NIOSH and ORAU. 

23 Are they - do you just target them on 
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1 certain types of dose reconstructions or, you 

2 know, are they worth the effort to, you know, 

3 have that documentation? But certainly it's 

4 helpful in cases you're reviewing. Stu, do you 

5 have any thoughts on that? 

6 Lavon did it, Lavon. He was the last 

7 one up there.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, I'm on now? 

9 Okay, I have two conflicting overall responses to 

10 recommendations like this. One is that we at 

11 NIOSH of course are very interested in doing 

12 quality dose reconstructions and consistent dose 

13 reconstructions, and making sure that everyone 

14 gets the same shake when they come into the 

15 program, so we're interested in paying attention 

16 and doing really good work. 

17 My conflicting response is that all of 

18 the effort we put into this evaluation effort is 

19 effort we don't have available to do dose 

20 reconstructions and site research for Site 

21 Profile and SEC work, so I'm fundamentally 

22 conflicted.

23 I think in terms of a timeline, which 
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1 is extremely attractive, and it's attractive to 

2 me because it provides a clear and unambiguous 

3 record of the government's decision, that's what 

4 I like and that's why I say we're not doing this 

5 for reviewers. 

6 We're building a clear and unambiguous 

7 record of the decision. While I like that, that 

8 is the only recommendation that our contractor 

9 gave me a response on saying that this could take 

10 quite a bit of effort. It may be that they 

11 haven't really evaluated it in full, but it's a 

12 significant effort change in their view.

13 I think what Mark said was, "Well, 

14 maybe you only do that for best estimates." I 

15 think Mark said that in his recommendation, which 

16 certainly limits the number of times you would 

17 require that sort of timeline or case narrative 

18 to be included, so something -

19 And again, that reminds me of another 

20 part, another response to Mark's recommendation. 

21 Certainly Mark's recommendations are clearly our 

22 actions, NIOSH's actions, or ORAU's actions. 

23 Others are sort of open and could be 
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1 taken on by the Board through its contractor or 

2 taken on by NIOSH maybe by a contractor, so there 

3 are a number of things like that to think about 

4 as we go forward on this. 

5 I'm thinking of a compilation of CATI 

6 information for instance. For a Board's DR 

7 Subcommittee review, that takes it pretty far 

8 afield from the kinds of things it has typically 

9 reviewed. 

10 That doesn't mean it can't do it, but 

11 it's pretty far afield of what they've typically 

12 done, and a contractor might be better, you know, 

13 better established to set that as a task, you 

14 know, with some discussion, determine a likely 

15 site and maybe a subset of years, and do things 

16 like that. 

17 And similarly, an evaluation of AWE 

18 sites and are they using the information that's 

19 generally used for AWE sites, which is really 

20 TBD-6000, is that being consistently applied? 

21 Now, we've done that for TIB-70. We 

22 went back with TIB-70 and residual contamination 

23 to a lot of AWE sites and changed the method so 
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1 that it all aligned with TIB-70. We've already 

2 done that, but in terms of the operational 

3 period, maybe that would be something to look at. 

4 So I have a lot of responses, none of them very 

5 coherent.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: I thought they were 

7 reasonably coherent, as well as any of us can do 

8 in this very complicated procedure we call dose 

9 reconstruction. Dave, go ahead.

10 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yeah, I am also 

11 conflicted in terms of chairing the RRSC because 

12 we're already doing blinds in our, you know, one 

13 percent of reviews, and if we - even the things 

14 that I've suggested, if they come to our 

15 Subcommittee, then we will not get as much done 

16 as we've been getting recently. 

17 So it's not as - I see heads shaking. 

18 I'd be interested from other Members of the 

19 Committee. I'm a little worried about getting 

20 overwhelmed with more tasks for that 

21 Subcommittee, but of course we will do what we're 

22 asked.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, you were telling 
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1 us how much more efficient you were recently, so 

2 I thought you had free time.

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right, that is the 

4 one thing that we may have a little more time 

5 now, but I'm not sure how much more time. 

6 MEMBER BEACH: I was simply shaking my 

7 head because I was assuming it was going to go to 

8 the other Work Group, the special dose 

9 reconstruction, so, which you're also on.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Since I have a conflict 

11 there, I will say that we, you know, sort of 

12 viewed this other Work Group as sort of an 

13 overview, you know, of the process, not actually 

14 doing any work.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Just making judgments.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: That's right. That's 

17 right, but we also overlap with the dose 

18 reconstruction, so, you know, so it's a little 

19 more complicated. Any other comments?

20 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yeah, I've got one 

21 comment in these CATI interviews. So for many of 

22 these sites, we have a pretty good handle on the 

23 materials that were processed there, but in these 
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1 CATI interviews, you may actually -

2 If we can build, I don't know, maybe 

3 a minor database, they could ask these people 

4 about how the materials were handled, and that 

5 would give you an idea whether most of the time 

6 they were, you know, 10 feet away from the 

7 material, or whether it was very close, hands on, 

8 right up next to their body when they were 

9 handling these materials. 

10 That would help the person doing dose 

11 reconstruction being able to look at say, "Okay, 

12 well, they probably got a little more dose 

13 because the majority of the people that worked 

14 there, the way this was done at this facility, 

15 they would be up close to the material," or maybe 

16 a lot of it was more remotely handled.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: The thing with changing 

18 the CATI interview is that it gets into issues of 

19 OMB approval. It's a time consuming 

20 administrative function, so I think we have to 

21 think is it really worthwhile doing that and so 

22 forth?

23 I think the other thing we have to 
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1 recognize with the CATI interviews, again, a lot 

2 of times it's survivors, so less detailed, but, 

3 you know, the people doing the primary dose 

4 reconstruction at ORAU I think are pretty 

5 familiar with those sites. 

6 I mean, they focus on certain sites 

7 only is my understanding, and obviously the 

8 people that have worked on the Site Profiles are 

9 often there, so I think they have a lot of 

10 knowledge on the sites that we wouldn't have. 

11 I've been impressed in the individual 

12 dose reconstructions I've looked at that they do 

13 pay attention. They document what's in the CATI 

14 interviews and, you know, pay reasonable 

15 attention to it. I couldn't ask for more but to 

16 do that. 

17 But again, I think it goes back to 

18 some of what Mark's suggestions are. You know, 

19 what is the basis for some of these decisions 

20 that are made programmatically as opposed to 

21 individually?

22 Again, I want to clarify it came up in 

23 our Work Group call, but, you know, I don't think 
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1 it's the Board's function to oversee individual 

2 dose reconstructors, so we're not looking at, you 

3 know, who is good, who is bad, or whatever. 

4 I think they're all pretty good, but 

5 that's, you know, ORAU's job mainly, I mean, the 

6 internal process, and I think they have a pretty 

7 good process and apply it, and so we're looking 

8 sort of, you know, sort of by site and so forth, 

9 and trying to go beyond what can be done to 

10 improve the overall process, but it's not, you 

11 know, it's not by saying, "Well, you know, we 

12 don't need these - these people aren't doing as 

13 good a job." That's not our place or I don't 

14 think we have the capability of judging that at 

15 all.

16 And I think certainly we've seen the 

17 quality assurance sort of approaches, and the 

18 ways of oversight and procedures have much 

19 improved over what they were at meeting 20 or 

20 however many years ago when we started talking 

21 about this.

22 Also, the best example we have of 

23 missing data from our past history is the 
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1 original Quality Assurance Recommendation Report 

2 that Wanda, were you on that? We still have never 

3 located the report. That was before we had 

4 transcripts of our Work Group meetings.

5 So, Dave, did you have a question? So 

6 why don't we wrap up since it's a hike to get to 

7 lunch. I think maybe we could use our Santa Fe 

8 restaurant list because I think we're on the 

9 outskirts of Santa Fe, but whatever. So we'll 

10 reconvene at 2:00 and we'll talk procedure 

11 reviews with Wanda and company, so thank you all.

12 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

13 went off the record at 12:04 p.m. and resumed at 

14 2:01 p.m.)

15 MR. KATZ: Okay. Welcome back, 

16 everyone, to the Advisory Board of Radiation and 

17 Worker Health, the afternoon session. Let me 

18 just note a couple of things for people who may 

19 have joined us, be joining us, newly joining us 

20 this afternoon.

21 There is a public comment session 

22 today that begins at 6 o'clock. And if you plan 

23 on giving comments by phone, I don't see any new 
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1 people in the room, but by phone, please be here 

2 at the beginning of that period, 6 o'clock. 

3 Because I don't know how long that session will 

4 go for.

5 And when we have, when we run out of 

6 comments we'll end the session. We won't wait 

7 all the way through 7 o'clock if we don't have 

8 commenters here.

9 Also again, for people who are just 

10 joining us if you want to see the agenda and the 

11 materials for the meeting, those are posted on 

12 the NIOSH website, under the Board section 

13 Schedule of Meetings, today's date.

14 You can pull up presentations and 

15 background reading materials for the meeting as 

16 well, and follow along that way. You can also 

17 follow along the presentations themselves by 

18 Skype. And the Skype address, that's an internet 

19 address, is specified on the top of the agenda, 

20 which you'll find on that website. So, you can 

21 do that either way.

22 Let me just check and see about my 

23 Board Members who are on the line. All the folks 
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1 in the room are in the room. But let me check 

2 and see that we have again our Board Members that 

3 are joining us by phone. I can call your names, 

4 or you can just speak up.

5 (Roll call.)

6 MR. KATZ: Paul, while I have you, we 

7 did vote on the AIMS petition, and it passed. Do 

8 you, are you prepared to vote?

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: I am prepared to vote 

10 tonight, as I indicated to you in my email. And 

11 I vote yes.

12 MR. KATZ: Okay.

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: I'm supporting NIOSH 

14 recommendations.

15 MR. KATZ: Okay. Thanks, Paul. So 

16 then, that's everybody. And, Paul, that's 

17 unanimous then. Okay. Dr. Melius.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, Ted, 

19 and everybody. And we will start again. I forgot 

20 to mention this point. This is meeting number 

21 120 of the Advisory Board. Not that we're 

22 counting, but some of us have been here a long 

23 time.
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1 So, we start with an update on 

2 procedures reviews on two of them, OTIB-20 and 

3 OTIB-52. And presenting will be Wanda Munn, 

4 who's the Chair of the PR Subcommittee, which is 

5 really the Procedures Review Subcommittee, not 

6 Public Relations. Though she does a little bit 

7 of that too.

8 Procedures Reviews: Use of Coworker Dosimetry

9 Data for External Dose Assignment (OTIB 20);

10 Parameters for Processing Claims for Construction 

11 Workers (OTIB 52)

12 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, a little. Thank 

13 you, Dr. Melius. We're going to talk about two 

14 of our complicated coworker and construction 

15 trades worker folks here this afternoon.

16 None of this should be very 

17 spectacular for any of you. I think you've all 

18 seen almost all of it before. This is more of a 

19 review than anything else. And at the end of the 

20 review I'll have a recommendation for you from 

21 the Subcommittee.

22 Use of Coworker Dosimetry Data for 

23 External Dose Assignment is the name of OTIB-20. 
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1 And it's the general information OTIB that allows 

2 dose reconstructors to assign doses for workers 

3 at any of the DOE sites that have limited 

4 monitoring data that gives a heart -- yes, 

5 accurate information.

6 This is not a new OTIB by any means. 

7 The first revision was issued in 2005. And we 

8 spent a number of years working through the 

9 findings on it.

10 The original revision had six 

11 findings. And we worked to resolve those for a 

12 couple of years. We were able to do that. And 

13 Rev 2 came out in 2008 as a result of the findings 

14 that we had closed on the original revision.

15 Rev 3 was then likewise the result of 

16 similar the revisions that were required. It was 

17 published in 2011. SC&A had done a pre-review to 

18 review whether there were sufficient changes in 

19 it to warrant a full review.

20 The first finding was, the 

21 applicability of the OTIB lacks clarity and 

22 prescriptive guidance. NIOSH responded, this is 

23 a general use document. And that if you want 
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1 specific site data we have to go to the specific 

2 sites.

3 This is intended to address coworker 

4 datasets for a number of DOE sites. If you want 

5 site specific information, then you have to go to 

6 that for prescriptive guidance on how to deal 

7 with the TIB.

8 Regarding the clarity, the purpose is 

9 stated very clearly. As you see on the screen, 

10 this TIB is to be used in conjunction with 

11 separate TIBs, or other approved documents that 

12 provide site specific coworker data. It was 

13 never intended to be a standalone document.

14 NIOSH and SC&A concurred that each one 

15 of the specific coworker TIBs should be used as 

16 a guide, and not as a substitute for a more site 

17 specific one. And also agreed that the only way 

18 to determine whether the judgments to use the 

19 coworker model was going to be done in a 

20 consistent manner is to review those dose 

21 reconstructions.

22 Resolution 2007, the Subcommittee 

23 found that NIOSH's response was acceptable, and 
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1 closed the finding.

2 Finding 2: Side stepping the use of 

3 the OTIB and coworker data requires the dose 

4 reconstructor to make a quantitative 

5 determination of what response to reasonable 

6 upper exposures that the unmonitored person may 

7 have received.

8 This is another one of those judgments 

9 we've been talking about all day. NIOSH 

10 explained, the context is critical. Use of 

11 coworker data as part of the hierarchy of data, 

12 we do rely on that hierarchy very heavily for the 

13 decisions that we make both in the dose 

14 reconstruction itself, and here at the Board, 

15 with the review there.

16 These types of data may be found in 

17 Site Profile documents, or in documents available 

18 through our database system. SC&A concurred. We 

19 closed that particular finding.

20 Finding 3: The OTIB stipulates that 

21 site specific coworker data might not be 

22 necessary for dose reconstruction. And the dose 

23 reconstructor may select "reasonable" upper 
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1 limits, provided POC is less than 45. This places 

2 an unreasonable burden on the dose reconstructor, 

3 and may lead to inconsistencies of, to the 

4 contractor.

5 NIOSH's response was the same as for 

6 Finding 2. It's in the hierarchy of data. And 

7 it is a part of the way we do business. SC&A 

8 concurred. And that was closed by the 

9 Subcommittee.

10 Finding 4: Dose reconstructors placed 

11 in a situation where again, "professional 

12 judgment" must be made. That is, 50th or 95th 

13 percentile dose. It's SC&A's opinion that data 

14 needed for these decisions are unlikely to be 

15 available to the dose reconstructor.

16 NIOSH responded, the DR staff will use 

17 PROC-6 to evaluate the claim. They don't work in 

18 a vacuum. Professional judgment is used during 

19 claim processing, supported by information from 

20 Site Profile documents and the coworker OTIBs,

21 the available records from the site, our database 

22 documents, discussions with other staff, and 

23 interaction with principal dosimetrists. 
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1 Assumptions made about the choice of 50th and 

2 95th percentile values have to be peer reviewed 

3 by other staff, as well as by OCAS staff. And 

4 that satisfied SC&A. And we closed that finding.

5 Finding 5: SC&A considers the 50th 

6 percentile constant value as one that is without 

7 scientific basis, and not favorable. NIOSH 

8 responded that the 50th percentile value is 

9 claimant favorable for certain types of energy 

10 employees, as described in the OTIB that was 

11 being reviewed.

12 In addition to using the 50th 

13 percentile measured dose, the claimant favorable 

14 quantity of missed dose is also added to the 50th 

15 percentile. Missed dose is, cannot be considered 

16 in any way other than claimant favorable.

17 A comparison of 50th percentile values 

18 of K-25 was conducted against values calculated 

19 using a maximum likelihood method. The results, 

20 which is contained, the results are shown in the 

21 table.

22 OTIB-20 shows the 50th percentile 

23 values consistently exceed the maximum likelihood 
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1 geometric mean values, and will generally exceed 

2 the maximum likelihood 95th percentile values as 

3 well.

4 We will pause while we get through 

5 here. Thank you, sir. Repeat that last sentence. 

6 The 50th percentile has consistently exceeded the 

7 maximum livelihood geometric main values, and 

8 will generally exceed the maximum livelihood 95th 

9 percentile values as well. SC&A concurred. We 

10 closed.

11 The last finding, there are multiple 

12 elements described in the guidance and use of 

13 this OTIB that require the dose reconstructor to 

14 make subjective decisions or require information 

15 that is not likely to be available.

16 The response was that the reviewer 

17 pre-supposes that information will not be 

18 available to make informed decisions. The 

19 variety of sources of information available to 

20 the dose reconstruction staff was a part of 

21 previous responses.

22 And the assertion that the DR staff 

23 can't resolve complex issues in a consistent 
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1 manner is just simply not true. The project has 

2 additional staff resources. They are available 

3 to assist the DR staff with respect to judgments 

4 on individual claims if necessary. And SC&A 

5 accepted that. We closed that in October of 2007.

6 So, the SC&A pre-review of OTIB-20, 

7 Revision 3. Because OTIB-20 had been revised at 

8 least twice since it had been last reviewed, the 

9 Procedures Subcommittee authorized SC&A to 

10 perform a pre-review to determine if there was 

11 sufficient technical changes for us to have 

12 another full review.

13 SC&A found that since the original 

14 review NIOSH had made two changes to the 

15 document, the K-25 example of coworker doses. 

16 They had been removed in response to a quality 

17 of, that ten year review comment of the quality 

18 of science.

19 Section 3 was modified as agreed on by 

20 the Subcommittee, NIOSH, and SC&A, to address a 

21 finding made by SC&A on OTIB-52, Revision 0. 

22 Neither of these changes to OTIB-20 is of a 

23 technical nature.
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1 Therefore, a full re-review is not 

2 required. And OTIB-20, Revision 3 may be 

3 accepted without further comment. The 

4 Subcommittee agreed with the recommendation, and 

5 we closed that issue. Any questions about what 

6 we've done with OTIB-20?

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Anybody with questions?

8 MEMBER MUNN: If not --

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, I do. So --

10 MEMBER MUNN: I didn't want you to do 

11 that. I was going on.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Sorry.

13 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, sir.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Can someone explain to 

15 me the, your last slide, the K-25 example? It 

16 says, Table 7.1-1 had been removed in response to 

17 the quality of science ten year review comment. 

18 I guess I missed what that was. What comment was 

19 it in response to?

20 DR. NETON: Wow, we're going back --

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

22 DR. NETON: -- years.

23 MEMBER MUNN: Ten to be exact. No, 
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1 not quite.

2 DR. NETON: My recollection was that 

3 it had something to do with the maximum 

4 likelihood approach that we adopted. We had a 

5 couple of different coworker models for K-25 at 

6 the time.

7 And I think that we had, we're no 

8 longer using the approach that was listed in the 

9 TIB, at the time. But that's the best I can 

10 remember. Something like that.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

12 DR. NETON: We could get you that 

13 information if you want.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: I'm just curious on 

15 that. But don't go away, because I have a follow16 up.

17 DR. NETON: I definitely remember 

18 removing it personally from the --

19 (Laughter.)

20 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. Yes.

21 DR. NETON: I just don't remember 

22 exactly why we --

23 CHAIR MELIUS: I'm --
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1 DR. NETON: I'm sure though --

2 CHAIR MELIUS: I was about to say, 

3 maybe the person who removed it is here, but, he 

4 can help us. But --

5 DR. NETON: I think I was involved.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: I guess not. But you 

7 do a lot of work. And so, we understand.

8 MEMBER MUNN: The ten year review 

9 actually is very effective in getting changes 

10 made.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. My other question 

12 is, and again, given the timeframe, Bob, I don't, 

13 wouldn't expect that, sort of the coworker 

14 guidelines that you and we have been working on 

15 would --

16 How, what's your plans for 

17 incorporating them into this document, or into, 

18 how would this, how would it get incorporated 

19 into dose reconstruction?

20 DR. NETON: You mean, like the IMP 

21 guide, just as we would find?

22 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

23 DR. NETON: It wouldn't necessarily 
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1 affect this TIB. This TIB is more generic guides 

2 about using 50th percentile, 95th percentile, 

3 that kind of stuff. That would more relate to 

4 TIB-52. TIB-52, if you remember, was a review of 

5 coworkers for construction trade workers --

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Right, yes.

7 DR. NETON: -- in the -- That one has 

8 some very prescriptive multipliers on external 

9 dose, and such, for various sites. I think there 

10 would be a complete rework of TIB-52, if we can 

11 decide on the IMP guide's --

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Yes.

13 DR. NETON: -- criteria.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: But, would you like 

15 reference it in -- I'm trying to understand how 

16 these are used. And that's something to do with 

17 our dose reconstruction review methods issues. 

18 And if you'd like to reference?

19 DR. NETON: I guess --

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Or the --

21 DR. NETON: -- I hadn't thought that 

22 through completely.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.
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1 DR. NETON: I know TIB-52 will have to 

2 go away.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

4 DR. NETON: Now, it maybe it would 

5 just be, go away. And we'd write another TIB 

6 that would essentially be the procedure that 

7 implements the --

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

9 DR. NETON: -- implementation.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Right, right. Yes. 

11 But I would think like for external dose, and 

12 TIB-20, that you would be using both documents in 

13 some way.

14 DR. NETON: Yes.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: But they provide 

16 different types of guidance.

17 DR. NETON: I don't think that TIB-20 

18 prescribes how to develop the coworker models, 

19 per se.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Right.

21 DR. NETON: I think it tells us how 

22 to use the coworker models we have.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.
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1 DR. NETON: That's my recollection. 

2 Tim might have some better input.

3 DR. TAULBEE: The only additional 

4 input I would add is that for the coworker models 

5 themselves that we'll be developing under the 

6 criteria, they would be site specific from that 

7 standpoint.

8 This is more of a generic guidance of 

9 how to use that information. But the details of 

10 this would likely go into those individual 

11 coworker models.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. But we already 

13 have a draft of a general guidance for how those 

14 coworker responses will be evaluated, that would 

15 be to me a similar to 20 in terms of its --

16 DR. TAULBEE: Exactly.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: -- scope. Now, I don't 

18 know what we call it, or if we call it a TIB --

19 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: -- or what we end up 

21 calling it. But it's --

22 DR. NETON: Well, I mean, we have an 

23 IMP guide, IMP Guide 4 or 5. I've forgotten the 
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1 number of it.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

3 DR. NETON: I think they would have to 

4 be proceduralized to some extent.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

6 DR. NETON: The IMP guide as written, 

7 by nature, pretty broad brush strokes. And we'd 

8 have to adopt something a little more specific to 

9 -- It couldn't be completely prescriptive. It's 

10 been said that it would be site specific. But it 

11 would be a little more, using the term from this 

12 morning, a little more granular --

13 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

14 DR. NETON: As to how you would 

15 approach it.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, yes. Okay. Okay. 

17 Thanks, Jim and Tim. Other questions, Board 

18 Members, on the phone or --

19 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Could I ask about, 

20 just in reading Finding 6 it's sort of, it sounds 

21 very similar to some of the issues that we talked 

22 about earlier today, which was, there are 

23 multiple elements in which a dose reconstructor 
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1 must make subjective decisions.

2 And the NIOSH response is, the 

3 assertion that the staff cannot resolve complex 

4 issues in a consistent manner is not true. So, 

5 it seems like somebody has pointed out that 

6 there's, decisions need to be made.

7 And the response is, don't assert that 

8 we don't do this consistently. But, which is, a 

9 response to an assertion with an assertion, as 

10 far as I could tell.

11 MEMBER MUNN: We, whenever we talk 

12 about consistency there is no question that the 

13 same guidance is available. I think that's where 

14 the consistency comes from.

15 What judgment needs to be made is 

16 often depending upon, especially in this type of 

17 TIB, which is, as I pointed out earlier, not a 

18 standalone document. It's a document that 

19 consistently refers you to the site documents for 

20 the specifics that need to be addressed.

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And that's, that 

22 was the issue that the, was being raised by saying 

23 that this required the dose reconstructor to make 
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1 subjective decisions?

2 MEMBER MUNN: I don't believe so. My 

3 memory is that it was a reassurance that the 

4 material was available consistently for different 

5 dose reconstructors to make those judgments. I 

6 think that's where the consistency comes in. 

7 Unless I'm seriously mistaken.

8 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I guess my 

9 question is about the finding, not about NIOSH's 

10 response. Finding 6.

11 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Can someone from SC&A 

13 help here? I don't know who --

14 MEMBER MUNN: But you're asking a 

15 question about only one part of the response. 

16 And I thought that was the part I was addressing. 

17 No?

18 MEMBER RICHARDSON: That's, perhaps 

19 it's fine. I mean, I was asking a question about 

20 the nature of the finding. I don't think the 

21 finding was that NIOSH provides a series of 

22 documents that people can refer to. I believe 

23 the finding was referring to subjective decision 
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1 making, which needed to be made by the dose 

2 reconstructor.

3 MEMBER MUNN: Require the dose 

4 reconstructor to make subjective decisions, or 

5 require information that is not likely to be 

6 available.

7 And the earlier part of the response 

8 says that that's a pre-supposition that it won't 

9 be available. That there's adequate information 

10 for the dose reconstructor to make that 

11 assessment --

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

13 MEMBER MUNN: -- consistently.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: If you're looking at 

15 this over all sites, that's not true. I mean, 

16 some sites it may be available. Some sites it 

17 may not be. Or some, you know, it seems to me 

18 it's --

19 MEMBER MUNN: This bears on why OTIB20 52 is so essential in the past, because of the 

21 selection of sites. And goes to the rest of my 

22 presentation, which ends up with the 

23 recommendation to review the new PER.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. But NIOSH's 

2 response doesn't seem to be in that direction. I 

3 guess we're struggling trying to --

4 MEMBER MUNN: But this response was in 

5 2007.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, it's now ten 

7 years later. So, which we're still going along 

8 with, we're trying to understand. And has SC&A's 

9 comments been addressed? We're trying to 

10 understand what SC&A's comments are. I mean, 

11 that's the -- Yes, yes.

12 MEMBER MUNN: Thanks, John.

13 MR. STIVER: Yes. This particular 

14 response predates my association with the program 

15 by 15, 20 years.

16 (Laughter.)

17 MR. STIVER: Having said that, I would 

18 say, just following the logic here, and I think 

19 there was since that finding a pre-supposition 

20 that these types of data, and so forth, won't, 

21 might not be available. It turns out that they 

22 are. I don't --

23 CHAIR MELIUS: They're always 
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1 available?

2 MR. STIVER: Not always.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Well then --

4 MR. STIVER: It's hard for me to say 

5 right now. I don't know if anybody who was 

6 associated with that -- I don't know if Kathy 

7 Behling is on the phone. She's quite a bit closer 

8 to these than I am. If she's on, maybe she might 

9 take a crack at it.

10 MS. K. BEHLING: Yes, John, I'm on the 

11 phone. This is Kathy Behling. As we are 

12 continuing to say, this was done back in 2007. 

13 And at the time I believe this finding was based 

14 on the fact that, I'm not sure that all of the 

15 sites at that time actually had coworker models.

16 And so, our comment had to do with the 

17 generic nature of this OTIB. And the fact that 

18 there may be some decisions required by the dose 

19 reconstructor that they may not be, they may not 

20 have information available to them. Because I 

21 don't believe that all the sites had coworker 

22 models at that time. Does that answer the 

23 question?
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: Not really. But it 

2 helped, it helps. So --

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Could I ask, since 

4 you're on the phone, and maybe you have a better 

5 recollection and -- I was also puzzled by Finding 

6 5, which said that the 50th percentile as a 

7 constant value is without basis, and not claimant 

8 favorable.

9 And the response was, the 50th 

10 percentile is claimant favorable for certain

11 types of energy employees, which it seems obvious 

12 it's claimant favorable for 50 percent of the 

13 employees, and it's not claimant favorable for 

14 the other 50 percent. What was the meaning of 

15 that response?

16 MS. K. BEHLING: What they were 

17 referring to is, when they're talking about 

18 certain types of energy employees, they're 

19 referring to administrative staff.

20 Typically they will look at the job 

21 function. And based on that job function they 

22 will determine if that should be a 50th 

23 percentile or a 95th percentile value applied. 
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1 But it has to do with job types.

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes. But that 

3 wasn't what this finding is. I believe, as I'm 

4 reading the finding it says, considering the 50th 

5 percentile constant value, which would not be a

6 value which is job dependent, is it?

7 I was reading this to imply that there 

8 are decision points at which a constant value is 

9 used for a coworker assignment.

10 MS. K. BEHLING: Unless I'm mistaken, 

11 and I'm not the one that did this review. But I 

12 was around at that time. I really think that 

13 they were referring to just the 50th percentile 

14 of values used in that OTIB being applied to a 

15 particular administrative staff type person.

16 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay.

17 MS. K. BEHLING: Sorry I can't answer 

18 it better than that. I can look into it for you 

19 if you like.

20 DR. NETON: I might be able to shed a 

21 little light on the answer. We use the 50th 

22 percentile as a constant for external coworker 

23 models for exactly the Class of workers that 
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1 Kathy was referring to, the administrative folks, 

2 or people who worked in radiological areas, who 

3 had access to sources, but didn't work with them 

4 directly.

5 They would receive the 50th percentile 

6 as well as the 95th percentile. It would be a 

7 constant from the distribution. But we always 

8 put some uncertainty associated with the dose 

9 results in the IREP input file.

10 And typically for a garden variety 

11 film badge that would plus or minus 20 percent, 

12 as a normal distribution. That's pretty standard 

13 practice for us in the external dose 

14 reconstruction coworker area.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Thank you.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Could we get 

17 clarification on these points, you know, either 

18 at a subsequent meeting, or in writing, or 

19 something?

20 I mean, I know it's hard to go back 

21 and, you know, something that's been revised 

22 since that time. And we're looking at a review 

23 that was done in 2007. A lot's happened in the 
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1 program in the last ten years.

2 But if we're going to present this I 

3 think it's got to be presented more clearly, so 

4 that at least the findings can be, make sense. I 

5 mean, again, I'm not faulting that it, I know 

6 it's hard to do. But it's, to do it in a short 

7 time period.

8 Because I'm sure a lot more effort 

9 went into the discussion, and so forth. But we

10 need something short of reading a transcript with 

11 something more than just a sort of general, you 

12 know, a few bullet points I think on --

13 DR. NETON: Do you want all the 

14 findings, or just the --

15 CHAIR MELIUS: The ones we've raised 

16 --

17 DR. NETON: -- couple --

18 CHAIR MELIUS: -- questions, 5, 6, and 

19 then --

20 DR. NETON: Five and 6?

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, yes.

22 MEMBER MUNN: Well, this probably 

23 bears directly on our Procedure Committee's 
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1 recommendation to do a full review of the new 

2 PER-62, for this particular procedure.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. I mean, I think 

4 we're sort of struggling with what we have, a 

5 bunch of procedures that haven't been reviewed. 

6 And we're trying to catch, or they're reviewed 

7 some time ago, and they haven't been, you know, 

8 brought before Subcommittee or the Board.

9 And so, we're trying to catch up. And 

10 I'm not sure what the best procedure is for doing 

11 that. But I don't think it's very satisfactory 

12 to have it, to be presenting, and then when Board 

13 Members have questions about it, we don't have a, 

14 we can't resolve them here. Or we're, different 

15 interpretations and -- Because, you know --

16 MEMBER MUNN: That's true.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: I don't expect anybody 

18 to remember what happened ten years ago either. 

19 But I think it's that and, you know --

20 MEMBER MUNN: Well, the good news is 

21 the new PER was just issued last month.

22 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

23 MEMBER MUNN: And so, any review that 
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1 would take place under the new PER-20, I mean, 

2 PER-67, 62, sorry, would certainly encompass all 

3 changes that have occurred, and particularly have 

4 bearing on the difficulty involved in choosing 

5 which sites are typical for use in this 

6 particular OTIB.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Okay. Any other 

8 questions or comments? Okay. On to 52.

9 MR. KATZ: While we're waiting for 

10 this, folks on the phone, some people have some 

11 open lines. Can you please mute your phones? 

12 And press *6 to mute your phone if you don't have 

13 a mute button, *6. Thanks. Sounds like that 

14 fixed it.

15 Someone just took themselves off mute 

16 and rejoined the problem. But so, whoever just 

17 came just off of mute, if you could go back on 

18 mute that would be great. Thanks.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: You're effective, Ted. 

20 That's good.

21 MEMBER MUNN: Those of you who've read 

22 this document know that, and who've been with us 

23 for more than three years, know that this is a 
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1 major document, and one that we have worked on, 

2 and worked with at considerable length.

3 I would like to call your attention to 

4 one error on the face page. This is not Redondo 

5 Beach, California, for which I am sincerely 

6 sorry. Although Albuquerque has its beauties, 

7 there is no sea breeze here.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: We were looking all 

9 over for the ocean.

10 MEMBER MUNN: I'm sorry. I blew it.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: We got lots of dust for 

12 you.

13 MEMBER MUNN: Well, that's good. The 

14 title of the OTIB is "Parameters to Consider When 

15 Processing Claims for Construction Trade 

16 Workers." It's a guidance document for the dose 

17 reconstruction for unmonitored construction 

18 trade folks.

19 The original issuance was in the year 

20 2006. And SC&A identified 16 findings from that. 

21 Two years later, after considerable discussion, 

22 we closed five of those.

23 Rev 1 was issued in 2011. And the 
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1 SC&A review of Rev 1, which was involved in the 

2 remaining, what did we say, ten findings, no, 11 

3 findings, was addressed in 2014.

4 The first finding, the OTIB does not 

5 address differences in doses received by 

6 different construction occupations. It was 

7 determined that this finding issue was addressed 

8 by Finding 16. So, it was combined with that 

9 finding. It's not unusual for the largest number 

10 of, the large number of findings, as we did in 

11 this case.

12 We transferred it to Finding 16, and 

13 also Finding 1. And therefore, in 2011 NIOSH 

14 issued Rev 3, with the requested changes. And 

15 that should clear up what we had outstanding at 

16 that point.

17 There's something about my finger and 

18 this particular button that does not communicate. 

19 Oh, now it communicates. And goes further than 

20 we wanted.

21 The dose databases, Finding 3, do not 

22 always identify who were construction trade 

23 workers. And for construction trade workers, 
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1 what were their jobs.

2 NIOSH indicated that the dose 

3 databases were the best available source of 

4 information for more than 179,000 bioassay 

5 values, and 216,000 external dose values for 

6 construction trade workers that existed on the 

7 analysis.

8 The criteria used to identify them 

9 were either set at the time the record was created 

10 by the site personnel themselves, or were 

11 identified in the OTIB in a description of the 

12 database query. The Committee was satisfied with 

13 the response, and closed the finding.

14 Finding 4: NIOSH did not make 

15 modifications to the internal dose calculation 

16 methodology, as they indicated and the Center to 

17 Protect Workers' Rights said they would.

18 NIOSH responded that the agreed on 

19 modifications, which were to increase the 

20 geometric standard deviation had resulted in 

21 implausibly large values.

22 As you may have remembered, you know,

23 reasonable values are a part of our framework. A 
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1 better course of action was available based on 

2 actual bioassay data than assumed intakes that 

3 were based on air concentration.

4 The method that resulted from that is 

5 believed to provide a more site specific based 

6 approach to dose reconstruction. And therefore, 

7 more favorable to the claimant. We agreed and 

8 closed the finding.

9 Finding 5: Plutonium and/or uranium 

10 were used to compare internal construction trade 

11 workers to all monitored workers. What about 

12 other radionuclides?

13 NIOSH said, the vast majority of 

14 bioassay data in the DOE complex are for 

15 plutonium and uranium. We've certainly seen 

16 plenty of evidence of that.

17 Data on the others are limited in 

18 timeframe and number of results. Consequently, 

19 meaningful comparisons between the two for less 

20 prominent radionuclides were not judged to be 

21 feasible.

22 SC&A asked for a series of follow-ups, 

23 there was significant discussion over a period of 
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1 time. NIOSH then prepared changes to the OTIB2 52, to satisfy the concerns that the contractor 

3 was raising. And issued Rev 1 in 2011.

4 SC&A reviewed the document. Based on 

5 the change and its acceptance this Committee 

6 closed the finding.

7 OTIB-52 does not address how to 

8 determine construction trade worker doses at 

9 sites that do not have a coworker model, was 

10 Finding 6.

11 And NIOSH's response, yes. For those 

12 sites that had no coworker studies the dose for 

13 construction trade workers is reconstructed the 

14 same way as for other unmonitored workers with 

15 the same potential for exposure or intakes.

16 The site TBD provides direction on how 

17 to assign internal and external doses. And then 

18 the appropriate adjustment factors are defined in 

19 OTIB-52. We were satisfied with that response, 

20 and closed the finding.

21 Finding 7, does not address how to 

22 determine neutron doses for the construction 

23 workers. Response was, external doses are not 
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1 intentionally differentiated according to gamma 

2 or neutron. So, there's no inherent bias in the 

3 reconstruction of a neutron dose on a likely 

4 basis.

5 Excuse me. I'm sorry for the musical 

6 background. Now, the neutron dose is normally 

7 associated with access to SNM. And that requires 

8 a security clearance or security escort.

9 Workers with those clearances were 

10 known and likely to be monitored. And since 

11 that's the case it is reasonable to assume that 

12 a neutron dose would be higher in the group of 

13 all monitored workers than in the somewhat more 

14 transient construction worker group. That was 

15 agreed, and we closed the finding.

16 Finding 8: Savannah River Site 

17 external doses are from HPAREH. NIOSH needs to 

18 evaluate other dose databases like Fayerweather 

19 and SRS-ABST.

20 NIOSH responded, no additional value 

21 is gained in this case by expanding the resources 

22 to study the contents of the other, less complete 

23 databases. The position was taken that HPAREH 
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1 was in fact the most complete information that 

2 was available.

3 There's no reason to believe that 

4 including the Fayerweather database in this 

5 particular TIB analysis would change the results 

6 for the SRS or for the ratio of 1.4 that was 

7 agreed to be applied to external coworker models 

8 there. Satisfactory response. We closed the 

9 finding.

10 Finding 9: Evaluation is based on DOE 

11 annual exposure report. NIOSH needs to address 

12 the Master Update Dump dose database for INEL, 

13 sorry, INL.

14 NIOSH responded that the Master Update 

15 list database covers the time period prior to 

16 1986. The data in the Annual Reports is 

17 equivalent, because the Annual Report was created 

18 from that data for the overlapping time periods.

19 SC&A disagreed with that, presented 

20 evidence showing that the data were not 

21 equivalent. NIOSH presented its proposed changes 

22 to the 52 OTIB to address the issue. And then 

23 issued Revision 1 in 2011.
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1 SC&A reviewed the document, found it 

2 to be acceptable. We closed the issue.

3 Finding 10: For post-1974 the ratio 

4 of penetrating doses experienced by construction 

5 workers to other workers shown in the OTIB does 

6 not agree with the INL epidemiology study that 

7 NIOSH made in 2005. That indicated a correction 

8 factor closer to two, and possibly higher than 

9 that for some job types.

10 NIOSH responded, the unmonitored 

11 construction trade workers at INL would not have 

12 worked in a radiation area. So, assigning the 

13 CTW a dose equal to 1.4 times the non14 construction trade worker dose would be very 

15 claimant favorable.

16 SC&A disagreed, requested additional 

17 information. NIOSH presented its proposed 

18 changes, and then issued Revision 1 in February 

19 of 2011.

20 SC&A reviewed that document also. 

21 NIOSH added a new paragraph that explains the 

22 NIOSH 2005 data were not used, because the 

23 service workers were grouped with the 
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1 construction trade workers, a practice that 

2 inconsistent with the approach taken in this 

3 OTIB. Agreed and closed.

4 Finding 11: Claimant favorability of 

5 OTIB-52 approach for INL's early period internal 

6 dose, that is up to 1965, cannot be determined.

7 NIOSH explained that the reason 

8 pipefitters at Savannah River received higher 

9 doses during the 1960s was, the major 

10 modifications were taking place in the F and H 

11 Canyons during that time.

12 Those are classified workers. All 

13 workers would have to have been monitored. And 

14 any unmonitored construction trade workers would 

15 have received lower exposures.

16 SC&A presented evidence that led them 

17 to believe that INL pre 1965 internal dose is not 

18 well known or documented. NIOSH made the changes 

19 that were necessary in Revision 1 regarding this 

20 issue. SC&A concurred with those. And the 

21 Subcommittee closed the finding.

22 Finding 12: The REX dose database was 

23 not used. NIOSH needs to compare results based 
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1 on the REX database to those given in OTIB-52.

2 NIOSH's response was that electronic 

3 access to the REX database was not available at 

4 the time that the report was drafted. But that 

5 the data in REMS were derived from the data in 

6 REX, and they're assumed to be adequately 

7 representative of the ratio of CTW and AMW doses.

8 SC&A explained that Section 6 of this 

9 OTIB needs to be revised to indicate the Hanford 

10 analysis was based on REX data provided by the 

11 site expert, and wasn't based on the references 

12 provided in this current version of the OTIB.

13 NIOSH presented its proposed changes 

14 to address the issue. Issued Revision 1 in 2011. 

15 SC&A reviewed that document, and based on the 

16 change made the finding was closed.

17 Finding 13: Construction trade worker 

18 doses need to be compared consistently to other 

19 AMW or non CTWs. Currently different sections 

20 perform different comparisons.

21 NIOSH's response. Because 

22 construction trade doses are similar to that or 

23 higher than the AMW doses, the calculated ratios 
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1 which are used to form an adjustment factor are 

2 largely to be similar or higher when no 

3 construction trade worker is used in the -- when 

4 non CTW data is used in the denominator, instead 

5 of AMW.

6 The baseline method is to use AMW in 

7 the denominator. But the ratio would tend to be 

8 more favorable to the construction worker 

9 population when non CTW data were used.

10 Regardless of the comparison method 

11 the outcome would still be favorable to the 

12 construction trade workers, because the 

13 correction is typically applied to doses on a 

14 site specific coworker model, based on data for 

15 all monitored workers. Again, the key being site 

16 specific coworker models.

17 SC&A examined the Savannah River 

18 HPAREH penetrating data from '53 to '99, and 

19 determined that NIOSH's response is correct. And 

20 recommended closure, which the Subcommittee 

21 accepted, and closed the finding.

22 Finding 14: The handling of missing 

23 dose needs to be consistent. Currently some 
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1 sections include missing dose, while others do 

2 not.

3 It was explained that regardless of 

4 how missed dose was treated, the site specific 

5 comparison between CTWs and AMWs was fair, 

6 because missed dose was handled consistently for 

7 both groups within each site. Again, site 

8 specificity.

9 SC&A requested additional discussion 

10 on how the adjustment factors were selected, and 

11 why the dose ratios calculated using different 

12 methodologies can be compared.

13 There was quite a bit of discussion 

14 about that. It was determined that both average 

15 adjusted CTW to AMW ratios are less than the 

16 recommended correction factor. In addition, 

17 NIOSH added some appropriate wording to Section 

18 4 of OTIB-52. And the Subcommittee closed the 

19 finding.

20 Finding 15: No instructions are given 

21 for what to do if high or low cumulative exposures 

22 are suspected.

23 NIOSH indicated that the normal 
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1 assessment methods defined in OTIB-20 for these 

2 types of exposures is the applicable reference. 

3 The method in OTIB-52 doesn't change when either 

4 low or high cumulative exposures are expected to 

5 be seen.

6 The Subcommittee agreed that OTIB-20 

7 was a better document, better placed to address 

8 the issue than transferring the finding to the 

9 OTIB. And in 2011 NIOSH issued Rev 3 of OTIB10 20, with the requested change that had been 

11 discussed, to address what we were seeing in the 

12 OTIB-52 finding. The Subcommittee was satisfied 

13 the change addressed the concern appropriately, 

14 and closed the finding.

15 Some construction occupations, 

16 Finding 16, that is, pipefitters, received 

17 exposures larger than the average construction 

18 trade worker exposure.

19 The average number of such groups may 

20 consistently receive external exposures above the 

21 95th percentile, but possibly not by much. 

22 Occupational details in the data are not 

23 plentiful enough to decide a percentile value.
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1 SC&A recommended that this issue be 

2 transferred to OTIB-20, alerting the dose 

3 reconstructor that certain CTWs, especially 

4 pipefitters, may have received higher exposures 

5 than the entire construction trade worker group 

6 as a whole.

7 And therefore, additional 

8 conservatism should be included in the dose 

9 reconstruction when the claimant belonged to 

10 pipefitters or similar kinds of trades.

11 The Subcommittee agreed that OTIB-20 

12 was a better place to have the issue addressed, 

13 and they transferred the finding. And Revision 

14 3, as we said earlier, was issued in 2011, 

15 addressing this particular concern. And there 

16 was, therefore, closure, which we did. Any 

17 questions?

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Questions, comments 

19 from the Board?

20 MEMBER BEACH: I just have a brief 

21 comment. As you were giving your report I went 

22 on to the BRS, and was looking at the information 

23 that's in the BRS.
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1 Because they do go back several years. 

2 And not all of these are created equally. As in, 

3 some of the links are there. Some of them say 

4 they're there, and they're not there.

5 So, it's really, I think something for 

6 us to look at moving forward is how we are 

7 documenting the changes and the comments to be, 

8 so that we could actually go back and look --

9 MR. KATZ: Hold on, Josie. Josie, we 

10 can't hear it. But apparently there's a dog 

11 barking on the phone. And other people are, 

12 cannot hear. So, whoever has a dog, your phone's 

13 not muted. And if you press *66 that will mute 

14 your phone. But --

15 CHAIR MELIUS: *6.

16 MR. KATZ: *6, sorry. But --

17 CHAIR MELIUS: No wonder it's not --

18 MR. KATZ: *6, yes. 66, no. But, 

19 yes. I don't know if that problem, has that taken 

20 care of it? Can you hear it on the phone? Do we 

21 still have a dog barking on the phone? No? Okay.

22 MEMBER MUNN: We don't care whether it 

23 was Lady or the Tramp. Just don't want to hear 
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1 it. Thank you, Josie. It's very interesting 

2 information. And I have not checked that 

3 personally.

4 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

5 MEMBER MUNN: And for those of us who 

6 hold our database near and dear to our heart --

7 MEMBER BEACH: Well, if you go back 

8 just in OTIB-20, and you try to retrack that, 

9 some of the information there is there. But then 

10 it goes on for several blocks of people putting 

11 stuff in with no real information that's helpful.

12 So, it's just something that moving 

13 forward, and possibly backwards, we should make 

14 sure that's, that tool is being used like it 

15 should be.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Well, I will make 

17 certain that I go through and see what you're 

18 talking about. Certainly at our next Procedures 

19 --

20 MEMBER BEACH: Well, if you just look 

21 at these two, they're pretty good examples --

22 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

23 MEMBER BEACH: -- of what's missing.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. And that's what we 

2 don't want to happen. The whole purpose in our 

3 database is to try to be able to go back 17 years 

4 later and look at it. So, thank you. We'll 

5 address that in Committee. Anyone else?

6 CHAIR MELIUS: I just have a comment, 

7 as I think Jim Neton already addressed it. But 

8 it seems that there's a lot of updating to do in 

9 this that, because there's a lot of activity at 

10 the sites with, we're wrestling with now between 

11 Savannah River, Idaho, some changes at Hanford, 

12 and so forth.

13 And so, I think update is going to be 

14 in order, and generally the issues with the 

15 coworker models, and so forth. So, I think we'll 

16 probably have to come back to this. And I'm not 

17 sure spending a lot of time on these individual 

18 issues at this time is helpful.

19 DR. NETON: I agree with you, Jim, 

20 that it needs to be updated. But I'm not exactly 

21 sure at what point that should occur. We continue 

22 to do dose reconstructions using TIB-52, using 

23 that 1.4 multiplier. I don't want to back it out 
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1 without having some other document to use.

2 And as you know, we're in the testing 

3 phase with Savannah River of a draft 

4 implementation guide. So, until that's wrapped 

5 up I don't know that we can really do much.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: I wasn't suggesting 

7 doing it until --

8 DR. NETON: Okay.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: -- some of these are 

10 wrapped up. And I'm not sure what the timeframe 

11 will be, or the right timing is. And it seems to 

12 me that you've already addressed a number of the 

13 earlier review comments.

14 And so, I don't think we're in 

15 necessarily bad shape on that one. It just seems 

16 to me that there's a lot of, you know, we could 

17 spend a lot of time talking about some of these 

18 individual site things. But it's, they're 

19 changing. And so, it doesn't make sense right 

20 now to --

21 DR. NETON: Yes. And I would, I 

22 remember going back. And there were multiple, 

23 multiple meetings on this TIB-52 arose. And so 
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1 the little sound bites that were there aren't 

2 representative of the volume of discussions that 

3 occurred on those individual pieces.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Oh, yes. No. And I 

5 remember some of that occurring within the Board, 

6 and not just within the Procedures group.

7 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, that's quite true.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Every time --

10 CHAIR MELIUS: It's like a task --

11 MEMBER MUNN: -- the group was 

12 available --

13 CHAIR MELIUS: I remember asking, Mel 

14 Chew was involved. I was asking him questions. 

15 Pinning him down that not every site was equal, 

16 which was the early claim and, or premise. I 

17 shouldn't say claim, but premise for that.

18 MEMBER MUNN: And thank you for that 

19 segue. Not all sides being equal --

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

21 MEMBER MUNN: -- brings us to the good 

22 news that PER-62, as I mentioned earlier, was 

23 issued last month. And one of the 
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1 recommendations that we had from our contractor 

2 at this most recent meeting, was that they be 

3 appointed to full review of that PER.

4 Specifically because of the 

5 complexity that we keep running into in trying to 

6 establish which sites should be included in the 

7 PER process that's used to develop the population 

8 of claims for what we use here.

9 So, we discussed it in Committee, and 

10 agreed that this particular PER, because of its 

11 wide applicability, and because of the current 

12 status of 52, should indeed be passed to SC&A. 

13 And this is the recommendation from the Site 

14 Procedures Review Subcommittee, that the Board 

15 take action in that regard.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

17 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I have a question, 

18 or a comment, as it goes.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: You need to be quick, 

20 Dave. Because we're already over, and we have 

21 Savannah River waiting.

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay, this is 

23 Finding 8. It's regarding whether only using 
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1 HPAREH, or using other sources of dosimetry 

2 information.

3 The NIOSH response is two assertions. 

4 No additional value is gained by including that 

5 other information. And there's no reason to 

6 believe that including that other information 

7 would change results.

8 Just to be clear, the HPAREH database 

9 was a dosimetry database for workers who were 

10 actively employed in 1979 or later. So, the other 

11 information is largely fleshing out information 

12 for all workers who terminated prior to 1979.

13 I would question whether or not there 

14 is value to be gained from studying workers who 

15 terminated prior to 1979, given what we know 

16 about the exposure distributions at the site.

17 And I have no reason to believe or not 

18 to believe that it would change the results. I 

19 think I would be agnostic on that point.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. That's a good 

21 point. 

22 MEMBER MUNN: And I am not familiar 

23 with the database enough to make a statement. 
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1 This is, I'm assuming this is an item that will 

2 be covered during our further deliberations?

3 DR. NETON: This was extensively 

4 covered during the discussions, I don't --

5 MEMBER MUNN: I know it was.

6 DR. NETON: -- recall the exact 

7 rationale behind why we believe that at this 

8 point, but I know we didn't just make those 

9 assertions without any backup information.

10 And we had, I think, a fairly lengthy 

11 discussion. We can go back through the 

12 transcripts and rehash all that again, but it's 

13 certainly a lot more information there than just 

14 these two statements are cryptically cited here.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Oh, yes. I think the 

16 completion of the data in each case was the big 

17 issue in whether or not they overlapped. But 

18 you're saying they don't overlap?

19 MEMBER RICHARDSON: They certainly 

20 don't overlap. HPAREH was created as an 

21 electronic database for workers actively employed 

22 in 1979.

23 MEMBER MUNN: 1979, yes. I 
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1 understand.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Maybe since it's been 

3 raised could you clarify that, whatever is 

4 appropriate means of doing it short of sending us 

5 50 transcripts?

6 But whatever you think succinctly and 

7 fairly and comprehensively summarizes what the 

8 discussions were. Because I think that's a good 

9 point because the early years are important.

10 Anything else? Okay, because we need 

11 to move on to Savannah River. Thank you very 

12 much, Wanda.

13 MEMBER MUNN: Are we going to move on 

14 the recommendation for PER-62?

15 CHAIR MELIUS: I'm thinking we don't 

16 need to, do we? Do we need to --

17 Okay. So, we have a motion to pass 

18 PER-62.

19 Voice vote. All in favor say aye?

20 (Chorus of aye.)

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Opposed? Abstain? 

22 Okay.

23 MEMBER BEACH: And we have others that 
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1 need to be tasked too, will we do that during the 

2 break?

3 CHAIR MELIUS: We do all of them 

4 during the work session. Yes, that's what I 

5 thought. Okay.

6 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, perfect.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Then why were you 

8 bugging me?

9 MEMBER MUNN: I wasn't bugging you.

10 (Laughter.)

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, moving on to, 

12 hopefully I have this right, I don't know, Brad 

13 is supposed to say something initially. Do you 

14 have him with you or --

15 Okay. Yes, you can talk later, Brad, 

16 okay? Yes.

17 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay, that sounds 

18 good with me.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: So we'll hear first 

20 from Tim and then next after that SC&A will 

21 present and we'll have some discussion. And I 

22 don't know if the petitioners want to make a 

23 comment today.
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1 Somebody know? Okay.

2 Savannah River Site SEC Petition 

3 Update (1972-2007; Aiken, SC) 

4 DR. TAULBEE: Just a second to get to 

5 the beginning of the slide presentation here. 

6 Let it catch up. Thank you, Dr. Melius.

7 I'm going to give an update on the 

8 Savannah River Site subcontractor monitoring as 

9 a short overview. Or, before I get started let 

10 me recognize the ORAU team that has done 

11 significant work in the past few months. Led by 

12 Mike Mahathy and Matt Arno and Nancy Chalmers and 

13 Liz Brackett and others, have been doing a 

14 tremendous amount of work gathering the 

15 information that I'll be presenting here today, 

16 so I really want to thank them and appreciate 

17 their work here.

18 As an overview, I'm going to give a 

19 brief synopsis of what we presented back in 

20 August to the Board. And then we're going to go 

21 through our concerns with the SC&A Subcontractor 

22 Monitoring Report, particularly the 39-day 

23 criteria that was used.
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1 We reevaluated the SC&A data that they 

2 collected. Also going to go through some NOCTS 

3 data and then talk about the notice of violation 

4 that has undergone a significant discussion. And 

5 then wrap up with the status of issues that the 

6 Work Group is still addressing.

7 So, just as a quick recap. We did a 

8 job plan analysis where we evaluated job plans at 

9 the Savannah River Site that required respiratory 

10 use and we found that 68 percent of the 

11 subcontractors had direct monitoring.

12 And if you consider other 

13 subcontractors who signed in on that same job 

14 plan doing the same work, in the same 

15 radiological environment with the same source 

16 term, that number increased to 92 percent of the 

17 subcontractors had either direct monitoring or a 

18 coworker was monitored.

19 We concluded that a coworker model 

20 would be sufficiently accurate based on this 

21 information. SC&A, in their analysis, looked at 

22 RWPs in the 1990's and they looked at what 

23 percentage of them left bioassay within 30 days 
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1 post-RWP.

2 And they came up with 66 percent 

3 compliance rate. And that number increased to 80 

4 percent when they considered 90 days post-RWP.

5 And when the RWP specified bioassay, 

6 those numbers increased slightly to 71 percent 

7 and 84 percent. So this is what was presented 

8 back in August at the Board meeting when we 

9 basically ran out of time.

10 Our concern with SC&A's report was the 

11 use of the 30 day and 90 day criteria for 

12 bioassay. Thirty day is appropriate for tritium. 

13 Tritium has a ten day biological half-life. But 

14 a 100 millirem tritium dose is still detectable 

15 after 70 days.

16 However, for the non-tritium, through 

17 the procedure, annual monitoring was usually the 

18 requirement for non-tritium, or actinide samples. 

19 Plus SC&A excluded a significant number of 

20 monitored subcontractors from their analysis and 

21 indicated they weren't monitored when in fact 

22 they were monitored.

23 We believe a more fitting analysis 
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1 would divide the bioassay data into tritium and 

2 non-tritium categories and use the appropriate 

3 time interval for each category. And I'll 

4 explain why in the next slides here.

5 But before I do so, I want to briefly 

6 describe a little bit of the radiological work 

7 control and bioassay monitoring in Savannah 

8 River. And it starts with a radiation worker 

9 attending Rad Worker II training. We're looking 

10 at the 1990's here and so they had to go through 

11 training.

12 When they completed their training and 

13 they were issued a radiation qualifications 

14 badge, an RQB, and I've got an example of this 

15 over here to the right. And you can see the big 

16 Rad II indicating their training level, the dates 

17 of when they do the whole-body count or chest 

18 counts.

19 And the bottom line there is the 

20 bioassay codes. It's hard to read on here but 

21 it's PU-02, EU-02 and SR-01.

22 This corresponds to be monitored for 

23 plutonium twice per year, enriched uranium twice 
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1 per year and strontium-90 once per year.

2 So when a worker signs in on a 

3 radiation work permit, they check their 

4 qualification, they check the bioassay 

5 requirements against the RWP and the radiation 

6 qualifications badge to see if they are on a 

7 routine program. The worker conducts their work 

8 and then they leave a bioassay sample based upon 

9 either the routine schedule or the job specific 

10 requirement.

11 Now, graphically, this is what this 

12 looks like. The worker signs in on an RWP 

13 requiring bioassay, worker participates in a 

14 routine bioassay sampling program for the 

15 radionuclides specified on the RWP, yes, then 

16 they submit their sample based upon their routine 

17 schedule. If the answer is no, then they go 

18 through the job specific bioassay sampling.

19 So consider four, or five construction 

20 trades workers, say carpenters, working in an 

21 area, a plutonium area. Four of them routinely 

22 work in that area and are on routine plutonium 

23 bioassay.
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1 One of them has been pulled from the 

2 reactor area, where they're on routine tritium 

3 bioassay and strontium-90. And then, so from 

4 that particular case, those four carpenters would 

5 then, submitting under the routine schedule and 

6 the one from the reactor areas would be using the 

7 job specific component.

8 In SC&A's analysis, what they did was 

9 they looked at workers signing in on the RWP and 

10 then 30 to 90 days, did they have a sample. They 

11 weren't looking at this routine monitoring.

12 So if a subcontractor was scheduled to 

13 leave a sample, wasn't scheduled for another 100 

14 days, there won't be a sample, but they were in 

15 fact monitored. And what we found from our

16 analysis is that a significant fraction of the 

17 monitoring population was monitored to be a 

18 routine bioassay based upon their radiation 

19 qualification.

20 Okay. When we reevaluated SC&A's 

21 data, we broke it down into tritium and into non22 tritium. With the tritium evaluation we found 

23 that 119, or 108 of the 119 subcontractors on 
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1 RWPs that had potential for tritium exposure, 

2 have bioassay data. So this is 90.8 percent.

3 The mean number of days between the 

4 RWP and bioassay was seven and a half days. 

5 Eighty-nine percent were on routine prescheduled 

6 bioassay for tritium. This is what was called T7 30, they were required to leave a tritium sample 

8 once every 30 days.

9 When you considered the coworker, like 

10 we did on our job plan analysis, this increases 

11 to 98 percent recovered either under personal 

12 data or a coworker working on the same RWP had a 

13 bioassay sample.

14 Now, with regards to tritium, if you 

15 look at the box plots, this is of the DuPont 

16 construction, trades workers and subcontractor 

17 construction trade workers, you'll see that since 

18 1973 the 95th percentile of the dose distribution 

19 for subcontractor construction trades workers, 

20 has been less than 100 millirem. For DuPont 

21 construction trades workers, it's been since 

22 1980.

23 If you go all the way out to the 1988 
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1 time period, where we've presented data here, the 

2 50th percentiles for these two groups are 5 and 

3 10 millirem. With the upper bounds being less 

4 than 50 millirem. So we're looking at fairly low 

5 doses for these workers at Savannah River.

6 Even though there's a pretty high 

7 potential here. So there's a large number of 

8 bioassay samples. I mean, we're talking in the 

9 range of 20,000 tritium bioassay. And so we've 

10 got a significantly monitored workforce that is 

11 showing quite low doses.

12 So our conclusion is the tritium 

13 monitoring for subcontractors is not really a 

14 dose reconstruction issue, but we have sufficient 

15 information.

16 So now let's look at non-tritium. 

17 Because this would be your plutoniums, your 

18 americium, curium, californiums, neptuniums.

19 Sorry about this thing jumping around, 

20 I have no idea why.

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Be nice to it.

22 (Laughter.)

23 DR. TAULBEE: Yes. I really have no 
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1 idea. The NIOSH, our reevaluation, found 102 

2 subcontractors on RWPs that had the potential for 

3 plutonium exposure. Eighty-nine of the 102, or 

4 87 percent, have bioassay data.

5 The mean number of days between the 

6 RWP and the bioassay was 125 days. This gets 

7 into that routine monitoring of they were 

8 monitored but it wasn't within that 90 day 

9 criteria that SC&A used.

10 Eighty percent of these were on 

11 prescheduled monitoring. So they typically used 

12 some of the same workers going into that area. 

13 But occasionally pulled from other areas.

14 You would have some job specific 

15 coming in, but you have a large number of 

16 subcontractor construction trades working in the 

17 same area. When you considered the coworker, 

18 again, this increases to 98 percent.

19 So, due to the notice of violation 

20 that SC&A brought up during the last Board 

21 meeting, where they were talking large numbers 

22 of subcontractors not being monitored or missing 

23 job specific bioassay monitoring, we decided to 
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1 go to NOCTS and look at what do we have. Do we 

2 see this large missing bioassay. There's a large 

3 number of these subcontractors not monitored.

4 So we queried NOCTS to identify 

5 workers with construction trades work with job 

6 titles. We found 412 claimants between 1991 and 

7 1997. We reviewed each claim to determine 

8 whether they were a subcontractor or a prime.

9 We removed all the Westinghouse 

10 construction trades workers. These would be your 

11 formally DuPont construction trades that were 

12 electricians, millwrights, mechanics, et cetera.

13 And this was a labor-intensive process 

14 of going through each individual claim looking to 

15 identify who was their employer.

16 We removed the Westinghouse Savannah 

17 River crane operators and riggers who primarily 

18 worked in the separations area. Crane operators 

19 worked over the top of the canyons.

20 These people weren't even considered 

21 DuPont construction or Westinghouse 

22 construction, they were operations workers. Even 

23 though they had these job titles, these were the 
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1 operations folks that they reported to in the 

2 management chain, were a monitored group.

3 This left us with 371 construction 

4 trades workers who were subcontracted between 

5 1991 and 1997. This is a pretty significant 

6 population to look at for monitoring.

7 We did look at the distribution by 

8 craft and we found that 59 percent were 

9 electricians, pipefitters, carpenters and 

10 laborers. Again, this is 371 workers.

11 The distribution matched well with 

12 what we found from our random sample in our job 

13 plan analysis. Of where pipefitters, 

14 electricians, carpenters made up 50 percent.

15 What we found from this analysis was 

16 that 339 of the 371, or 91.4 percent of the 

17 subcontractors in NOCTS, have some form of 

18 internal monitoring. Either non-tritium 

19 bioassay, tritium bioassay and/or in vivo 

20 bioassay during their work at Savannah River 

21 between '91 and '97.

22 Only 32 subcontractors in NOCTS have 

23 no internal monitoring data. Of these 32, only 
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1 four have external monitoring indicating 

2 radiological work. This is a time period where 

3 you would have, you would be wearing a TLD. A 

4 badge.

5 Again, sorry, for the slides flipping 

6 here. And so without having the TLD badge, there 

7 is no indication that they were really working in 

8 a radiological area.

9 We believe that the monitoring data 

10 from the 339 monitored workers can be used to 

11 bound the dose to the 32 unmonitored workers. 

12 Again, that distribution in the bottom follows 

13 what we found within the other samples.

14 This slide I'm not going to go through 

15 all the details of, but it does give the details 

16 of the subcontractor data that we have by year. 

17 The important point here, that I wanted to point 

18 out, was the internal monitoring, those with 

19 internal monitoring.

20 You can see it's a substantial 

21 population. And when you consider that from 

22 those who were externally monitored, you're 

23 looking at greater than 90 percent across each of 
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1 those years.

2 The bottom line, the bottom row, is 

3 the one I want to focus on. And these are the 

4 number that were externally monitored with no 

5 internal monitoring data. And you can see we're 

6 looking at single digits for most years.

7 Now, I want to go through the details 

8 of this monitoring data. And on the website, 

9 we've downloaded the slides. There is a download 

10 of all 371 workers.

11 And you'll see this particular 

12 depiction that I got here. And I want to try and 

13 go through this briefly with you all.

14 All 371 that are on the website are 

15 sorted by crafts. You can look at it by craft as 

16 well.

17 But in the first case the electrician, 

18 the red indicates no internal monitoring, the 

19 green indicates internal monitoring. '91 through 

20 '93 was the only three years that that person 

21 worked.

22 They had no external monitoring and 

23 internal monitoring. They likely did not enter 
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1 a radiological area during that time period.

2 The second electrician would be 

3 somebody who was monitored externally for all 

4 five years, '91 through '95. And they had at 

5 least actinide urine bioassay.

6 Most likely they would have some 

7 tritium as well as whole-body count. They used 

8 a hierarchy of actinide, tritium and whole-body 

9 count for our graph year.

10 Many of the people who have actinide 

11 monitoring also have whole-body count. Some of 

12 them do have tritium as well.

13 The next person that I want to go 

14 through is the painter, where you can see for 

15 three years you've got actinide monitoring, two 

16 years of tritium monitoring, another year of 

17 actinide monitoring and tritium monitoring.

18 This is likely switching between the 

19 work of plutonium facilities versus the reactor 

20 facilities.

21 The heavy equipment operator that you

22 see is all red is who the coworker model would be 

23 applied to. This is somebody who has external 
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1 monitoring data but no internal monitoring data. 

2 This is who we are trying to develop this coworker 

3 model for to reconstruct their dose.

4 Yet, the last one that I want to point 

5 out is second from the bottom, the sheet metal 

6 worker. And this is somebody who is monitored 

7 for external in 1991 but has no internal 

8 monitoring.

9 But 1992 through 1997 has extensive 

10 external, or actinide monitoring. And we can use 

11 that latter data to bound if there were any 

12 potential intakes in that first year of their 

13 employment.

14 So this person wouldn't necessarily 

15 need a coworker model from that standpoint, that 

16 their latter bioassay data would bound what their 

17 exposure could have been.

18 So, I've just presented three 

19 different groups. The first was our job plan 

20 analysis, the second was SC&A's analysis and then 

21 this NOCTS analysis.

22 And so, when you look at all of these 

23 as subcontractors with monitoring data, the 
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1 percentage of subcontractors, you can see how 

2 this all kind of plays out on a per year basis 

3 and where we've got overlap. In our job plan 

4 analysis, we saw a low of around 55 percent and 

5 a high of 80 percent. With the overall being 68 

6 percent.

7 In the SC&A analysis you can see that 

8 a low is around 70 percent and a few years there 

9 was 100 percent. All of them. Okay.

10 But again, these are both samples. 

11 Ours is a random sample, SC&A's is more of a grab 

12 sample.

13 The green bars are the NOCTS data when 

14 you include the whole-body count. But the other 

15 two analyses did not include whole-body count, it 

16 was just urine.

17 So that's why we presented the gray 

18 boxes here that are hashed so that you can see 

19 apples to apples here in the comparison. And you 

20 can see everything kind of matches reasonably.

21 The two red bars are the assessments 

22 that were talked about in the SC&A report. In 

23 particular, the emphasis on the latter one, the 
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1 full assessment, where there are 29 percent 

2 monitored.

3 But, again, this is job specific 

4 monitoring and a large fraction of the 

5 subcontractors are monitored under routine 

6 monitoring, okay. The difference is that 

7 separation, when you sign in on the RWP, what 

8 your radiation qualification badge said to do. 

9 That's the difference.

10 In the report, SC&A concluded that the 

11 bioassay data set for construction trade workers, 

12 subcontractors specifically, and CTWs generally, 

13 is demonstratively incomplete for 1989 through 

14 1998, and likely before that time period, and 

15 does not satisfy the criteria set forth in 

16 NIOSH's criteria for evaluation in these coworker 

17 data sets.

18 We respectfully disagree with this. 

19 We believe that 90.8 percent and 87.3 percent 

20 direct monitoring for subcontractors is not 

21 demonstratively incomplete. Is it incomplete, 

22 yes. If it were complete, we wouldn't need a 

23 coworker model for these workers.
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1 We believe this does satisfy the 

2 criteria set forth in the implementation data. 

3 Furthermore, the NOCTS data set, these are the 

4 actual claimants, indicates that subcontractors 

5 were monitored. Evaluation indicates that 91.6 

6 percent of the subcontractors were claimants, 

7 between '91 and '97, have some form of internal 

8 monitoring of data between either in vivo or in 

9 vitro.

10 So now I'm going to switch gears a 

11 little bit to begin discussion on the notice of 

12 violation. And I first want to start this off 

13 with a discussion of the individual monitoring 

14 requirements for internal dose under 10 CFR 835.

15 The regulation states that for 

16 purposes of monitoring individual exposures to 

17 internal radiation, internal dose evaluation 

18 programs, including routine bioassay programs, 

19 shall be conducted for radiological workers, who 

20 under typical conditions, are likely to receive 

21 0.1 rem or more committed effective dose 

22 equivalent and/or 5 rems or more committed dose 

23 equivalent to any organ or tissue, from all 
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1 occupational intakes in a year.

2 There's a DOE standard of 1128-98 

3 Section 5.3.2 that describes the monitoring 

4 requirements and selection of employees for 

5 bioassay programs. It states, workers who are 

6 considered likely to have intakes resulting in 

7 excess of 100 millirems CEDE are required to 

8 participate in a bioassay program.

9 However, because of the extensive 

10 radiological control practices in plutonium 

11 facilities, including a high degree of engineer 

12 barrier containment, no typical plutonium worker 

13 is likely to have intakes of 100 millirem CEDE or 

14 more.

15 However, this should not be used as an 

16 excuse to exclude workers from routine bioassay. 

17 Although no one should be considered likely to 

18 have intakes resulting in 100 millirem CEDE.

19 Some workers, not all, are at 

20 significantly higher risk for incurring an intake 

21 than others and should be on a routine bioassay 

22 program. Okay.

23 And we see this with the Savannah 
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1 River monitoring. There's a large number of 

2 subcontractors who are going into the area 

3 routinely, they're on the routine bioassay 

4 monitoring program.

5 Are they at a higher risk, yes, they 

6 are. This is part of the surveillance that 

7 Savannah River was doing.

8 This standard is the standard today. 

9 I'll go back up here. It was originated in June 

10 1998, reaffirmed by DOE in 2003 and they made 

11 small changes in language in 2005. This is the 

12 current monitoring practice that you'll see 

13 throughout the complex of plutonium facilities at 

14 all the DOE sites.

15 SRS used a defense-in-depth approach 

16 for radiation control. First, they had a zero 

17 intake policy, they had engineering controls, 

18 procedural controls, they used PPE and then they 

19 had a surveillance program to verify that these 

20 controls worked.

21 This is what their surveillance 

22 consisted of, air monitoring all of the areas, 

23 facility contamination surveys, personal 
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1 contamination surveys of people coming out of the 

2 areas.

3 The first two of these are designed to 

4 prevent exposures. To make sure that there isn't 

5 an intake.

6 The latter two are to check to verify 

7 that an intake didn't happen. That would be your 

8 personal contamination surveys and a routine 

9 bioassay. So all of these play together as part 

10 of your surveillance program.

11 So, in our efforts to evaluate this 

12 notice of violation we made some data requests. 

13 We requested information from both Department of 

14 Energy Headquarters and the Savannah River Site. 

15 The two parties in this notice of violation.

16 SRS provided over a thousand pages of 

17 information. DOE Headquarters provided just the 

18 final NTS report, which was eight pages, and 

19 indicated they did not retain any other 

20 information regarding this violation.

21 We asked and didn't get anything. We 

22 asked for notes, conference summaries. SRS 

23 actually provided more, some of the DOE generated 
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1 documents that DOE did not provide.

2 We sent a follow-up request to SRS in 

3 September of 2017 specifically requesting their 

4 internal assessments that were listed in the NTS 

5 report, as well as some of the other documents.

6 Around the beginning of the fiscal 

7 year, and so there was funding issues, and so 

8 their response, they have not responded yet but 

9 they are looking for that information at this 

10 time. We don't have it.

11 And now let me go through, I skipped 

12 a bunch of slides here. I'm sorry. Okay, so 

13 let's go through the notice of violation very 

14 briefly. So, again, I apologize.

15 This was a 10 CFR 830.120 violation 

16 that occurred. And it required the work be 

17 performed to establish administrative controls 

18 using approved procedures. That was Part 1 of 

19 the violation.

20 Part 2 was, and I'm not going to read 

21 this whole thing, I want to focus on the Bullet 

22 3. And it states, that direction shall include 

23 identifying the causes of problems and working to 
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1 prevent recurrence.

2 And I'm going to demonstrate that 

3 there was a recurrence that resulted that was 

4 part of why they were fined. At least that's 

5 what I believe it is. I haven't gotten any 

6 information from DOE Headquarters.

7 For the first part, DOE in their 

8 violation, their notice of violation, stated, 

9 however, between January 1st, 1996 and September 

10 20th, 1997, Westinghouse Savannah River Facility 

11 Evaluation Board reports identified that, one, 

12 workers were on incorrect bioassay programs as 

13 identified by the radiation qualification badge 

14 and consequently did not submit job specific 

15 bioassay sampling as required.

16 This is the one that caused me the 

17 most concern when I went through here, people 

18 being on the incorrect bioassay. And it's 

19 important to try and do the follow-up from these 

20 types of violations.

21 And so what Savannah River did for 

22 their corrective action is they sent 4,000 form 

23 letters on February 19th, 1998 and mailed them to 
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1 every site employee and subcontractor currently 

2 on routine bioassay, asking them to compare the 

3 bioassay codes on their RQB, radiation 

4 qualification badge, and those listed in the 

5 letter, which came from their database. And they 

6 found less than 100 discrepancies.

7 Were there discrepancies, yes. Were 

8 people not following the procedure because 

9 they're weren't on there, yes. But the effect is 

10 less than two and a half percent.

11 So is this really going to have a 

12 major impact on the coworker model, I don't 

13 believe so. Not when you're looking at the 

14 thousands of samples.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Do you have their 

16 response rates?

17 DR. TAULBEE: No, they're looking into 

18 thousands of samplings.

19 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Do you know the, 

20 it was 100 percent response rate to the form 

21 letter?

22 DR. TAULBEE: This is what they 

23 reported, yes.
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1 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay.

2 DR. TAULBEE: In the second component 

3 of the violation, this is where that recurrence 

4 comes into play.

5 Contrary to the above, processes to 

6 detect and prevent quality problems were not 

7 adequately established and implemented and 

8 corrective actions did not prevent recurrence of 

9 this job specific bioassay issue, in that in 

10 November of 1995, DOE identified to Westinghouse 

11 Savannah River the radiation work permit 

12 prescribed bioassay sampling requirements were 

13 not effectively implemented and that 23 percent 

14 of the workers did not submit bioassay samples as 

15 required.

16 Corrective actions were implemented 

17 by Westinghouse Savannah River. However, the 

18 corrective actions were not effective to prevent 

19 recurrence in that the nonparticipation by 

20 radiation workers, a job specific portion of the 

21 bioassay program, continued through 1996 and 

22 increased to a level of nonparticipation of 79 

23 percent by the second quarter of 1997.
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1 So they were identified with a problem 

2 in 1995, implemented corrective actions and it 

3 got worse. Okay. So this is what they were fined 

4 for.

5 Now, SC&A in the report indicated that 

6 Savannah River had a chronic history of wide 

7 noncompliance. Well, the only data we have is 

8 November of 1995 to July of 1997. Which is 26 

9 months.

10 We have three data points. First one 

11 is November of 1995, where there is a 77 percent

12 participation rate. April of '97 where there's 

13 33 and July of '97 where there's 21.

14 So this decrease in my opinion, is why 

15 they ended up being fined for procedural and 

16 allowing a recurrence to occur.

17 But this is just the job specific 

18 portion of that bioassay surveillance that I was 

19 pointing out earlier.

20 The routine bioassay is what's used to 

21 check for, verify effectiveness of the procedural 

22 and engineering controls. And to trigger for 

23 cause bioassay.
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1 It was requested from workers who have 

2 a reasonable potential for intakes but who SRS 

3 was confident didn't have intakes in excess of 

4 two percent of the annual limit. They were trying 

5 to control so that there would be no intakes.

6 Westinghouse further stated, during 

7 the enforcement conference, that the workers 

8 themselves were the last line of defense in the 

9 worker workplace indicator program, which was the 

10 reason why a confirmatory program for workers was 

11 conducted.

12 So this is the expected monitoring 

13 that I showed you earlier. Where a worker is 

14 signing in on an RWP, participates in a routine 

15 program. Data goes to the right. If they were 

16 not on a routine program they got job specific.

17 This is what was actually happening. 

18 And I apologize for this slide being so busy, I 

19 was going to walk through all the red steps.

20 But basically, in the limited 

21 assessment, this is the only data that we have to 

22 date, is there were 3,200 samples. Ninety-five 

23 percent of them were routine bioassay, five 
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1 percent of them were job specific.

2 They reported the 95 percent were 

3 compliance in this limited assessment. Five 

4 percent, the group going down, they had a 33 

5 percent compliance, 67 percent noncompliance. 

6 Sixty-seven percent of five percent comes out to 

7 3.35 percent or 107 samples.

8 Thirty-three percent were compliant 

9 for various reasons. Some cases RadCon failed to 

10 submit a sample and other cases they failed to 

11 notify people.

12 Anyway, the bottom line here is we 

13 ended up with 96.65 percent of 3,200 samples, 

14 were actually received during this particular 

15 incident.

16 The full assessment of the bioassay 

17 requirements states about 21 percent compliance 

18 on the job specific. So that 33 percent 

19 compliance drops to 21 percent in that second 

20 quarter.

21 We don't know what that full 

22 complement of samples is. That's not in the 

23 assessment. It's part of why we requested this 
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1 data.

2 We do know, from the records, that 

3 1997, a total number of samples not received was 

4 256. That we know. That's in the report.

5 They also, this is because this was 

6 the population that they did follow-up on. They 

7 went back and got bioassay from all 256 and there 

8 were no intakes amongst any of these workers.

9 So there is three components to the 

10 Savannah River surveillance program under the 

11 bioassay monitoring. The first was the routine 

12 actinide samples. And here is the data that was 

13 presented during the enforcement conference.

14 And you can see that the number of 

15 samples in 1997, the number of samples received, 

16 is over 9,000. The number that were initially 

17 positive were 105. So you can see from a 

18 confirmatory standpoint these would be false 

19 positives.

20 The actual number of intakes, two. So 

21 you're looking at less than .1 percent of all the 

22 people who were being monitored. And this is a 

23 large number of samples. So this table indicates 
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1 very good radiological control at the facility.

2 Again, the internal dosimetry stated 

3 that this was the final check from a confirmatory 

4 standpoint.

5 The second component was this job 

6 specific part, component. And so in this case 

7 they estimated 1,500 bioassay samples were under 

8 the job specific methodology.

9 So when you combine these two together 

10 you're looking at around 11,000 samples total. 

11 For actinides. This is the highest job specific 

12 component we've seen anywhere, in any of the 

13 records.

14 We've seen anywhere from 89 percent 

15 from our analysis. Here you're looking at, it 

16 looks like 14 percent. So 85 percent or greater 

17 are routine bioassay at the site.

18 The final component is the special 

19 actinide monitoring that was conducted. And this 

20 would be sampling for cause.

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Excuse me, Tim, you got 

22 five minutes.

23 DR. TAULBEE: Okay. Well, you've got 
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1 the data. I want to get to a couple of slides.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: That's why I told you.

3 DR. TAULBEE: Okay, thank you. The 

4 implications from the dose reconstruction 

5 standpoint is we disagree with SC&A's conclusion 

6 that this notice of violation would prohibit dose 

7 reconstruction for subcontractor construction 

8 trades workers.

9 The job specific bioassay, in 

10 conjunction with the routine monitoring, is used 

11 for surveillance. The routine or prescheduled 

12 bioassay monitoring was the primary method that 

13 was used at the site.

14 In their enforcement action, DOE 

15 acknowledged the rigorous radiological control 

16 program. The enforcement meeting, they stated 

17 that DOE was aware of all radionuclides other 

18 than tritium. Westinghouse internal dosimetry 

19 does not knowingly permit any worker to be 

20 exposed to airborne radioactivity.

21 Further, it's noted Westinghouse has 

22 implemented a rigorous program of comprehensive 

23 field indicators during work activities, a signal 
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1 for unexpected radiological conditions may have 

2 led to potential occupational intakes.

3 Nonetheless, DOE also appreciates the 

4 potential exists to overlook worker exposures to 

5 radioactive materials due to unrecognized field 

6 conditions or other types of personal error.

7 This latter statement here by DOE I 

8 actually disagree with. And the reason I state 

9 that is I think the potential existed when they 

10 had this gap of monitoring where people were not 

11 complying but they went back and re-sampled 

12 everybody.

13 And so from that standpoint, the 256 

14 workers that didn't need the sample, the re15 sample, but did not find intakes, there is no 

16 doubt that there's no potential that was missed 

17 from this standpoint.

18 It's important to note that because of 

19 the re-sampling there is no missing bioassay data 

20 in 1996, regardless of these assessments of the 

21 initial participation rate. There's no effect on 

22 the coworker model as we have all of the data 

23 from the sampling.
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1 The site also evaluated for the 

2 potential samples in 1996 concluded that those 

3 workers didn't have a potential for an intake.

4 Next slide. So there's no evidence -

5 - well, actually, let me skip this one. I 

6 apologize.

7 I want to emphasize the significant 

8 work place monitoring. An individual monitoring 

9 that was available through the surveillance 

10 program.

11 This is the number of actinide 

12 bioassay results by year, from 1991 through 2002. 

13 And the number of workers that were monitored.

14 And you'll see that it peaks in 1992 

15 at around 18,000 actinide bioassay samples 

16 distributed amongst 10,000 workers. This 

17 decreases over time. As you'll see across all of 

18 the sites, as people began to be more, reduce 

19 their bioassay monitoring program, to where 

20 you're down to around 6,000 bioassay samples 

21 amongst 2,500 workers in 2002.

22 So, contrary to what people might be 

23 thinking is that when you get into the modern 
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1 era, that there is more bioassay data available. 

2 What you'll see at Savannah River and other sites 

3 is the exact opposite. You will see less in this 

4 model.

5 Next, I want to just briefly touch on, 

6 at Savannah River there has been over 1,500 

7 actinide intakes over the course of their 

8 history. What you'll see here from this 

9 particular graph is that they dramatically drop 

10 off after 1991.

11 Which would be the end of the Cold War 

12 as well as implementation of 2-4-80 and the 

13 beginning of the RadCon and all of those changes.

14 This next slide is the actual 

15 committed effective dose equivalent for all of 

16 these 1,500. And this is quite impressive when 

17 you look at it.

18 From the 1955 time period, the startup 

19 of plutonium operations, you'll see more intakes 

20 of plutonium. When the transplutonium started in 

21 the early 1970's, you'll see a lot more of 

22 americium, tritium, californium intakes. But 

23 then you get out to 1991 and you see very few 
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1 intakes comparably, and the doses are lower.

2 The green line that just populated 

3 here is the monitoring that the DOE talked about, 

4 100 millirem.

5 Savannah River had a 2 rem 

6 administrative limit. As you can see, all of 

7 their internal doses were generally below that 

8 level. Except two exceptions under this latter 

9 time period. And the red line there is the actual 

10 regulatory limit.

11 So you can see they were controlling 

12 the actinide exposures quite well with very few 

13 exposures, over-exposures.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: You got one minute.

15 DR. TAULBEE: So our conclusion is 

16 that dose reconstruction is feasible and 

17 sufficiently accurate through the use of coworker 

18 models for those that did not participate or 

19 leave bioassay sample or have internal 

20 monitoring.

21 Individual data can be used to 

22 estimate person of dose for missing data in 

23 previous years without needing a coworker model. 
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1 For those with no internal monitoring data, NIOSH 

2 believes that the monitoring data for the 339 

3 internally monitored subcontractor coworkers, 

4 could be used to bound the dose to the 32 

5 unmonitored subcontractor workers.

6 The next slides were all just where 

7 we're at with the Work Group but I will --

8 CHAIR MELIUS: People can read those. 

9 We have them. Okay.

10 DR. TAULBEE: Thank you.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, let's get SC&A. 

12 We'll save, if we have time, we'll do questions 

13 a little bit later. Okay, you got 30 seconds.

14 MR. FITZGERALD: How much do I have?

15 (Laughter.)

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Thirty seconds.

17 MR. FITZGERALD: Not as many slides.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. We'll save LaVon 

19 till tomorrow afternoon. What time is your 

20 plane?

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: 2 o'clock. I'll do 

22 it like Jim did, and then shut it.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Oh, no, we want to hear 
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1 the presentation though. We'll tape it. Thank 

2 you, Tim, for your presentation by the way. Sorry 

3 I had to rush you.

4 MR. FITZGERALD: Good afternoon, Joe 

5 Fitzgerald here. We're going to do a tandem 

6 presentation.

7 Bob Barton is here, he's done a lot of 

8 the coworker modeling support work for the Board. 

9 He's going to tackle that part. This works great. 

10 We know who you are in the Work Group.

11 Okay, I want to touch on this 

12 completeness issue that Tim has spent some time 

13 talking about. And just a real quick history.

14 I mean, we basically went into this 

15 doing a broader review, if you recall. There was

16 some concern about maybe the 773A review, basic 

17 job plans that he had proposed a year ago. It 

18 was only one facility and there was a need to get 

19 a more representative sample.

20 The Board tasked us with a broader 

21 review over more timeframe. And like the 773A 

22 review, we based it on, instead of construction 

23 job plans, something similar, RWPs. That was the 
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1 tag that we, or the hook that we used to get to 

2 the subcontractors. So that made an RWP based 

3 subcontractor review.

4 Now, the issue, when we got into the 

5 RWPs themselves, one, we found only, I think it 

6 was 13 over almost 15 years. Obviously, we only 

7 had a small sample total. Okay, that was a big 

8 concern.

9 The original intent was to do a 

10 individual-by-individual, new client-by-new 

11 client match. Pretty similar to what NIOSH did. 

12 We couldn't do that, the RWPs were so incomplete.

13 And the RWPs themselves were 

14 inconsistent. There was different flavors and it 

15 was pretty remarkable in that timeframe to 

16 actually identify that.

17 And as we later discovered through the 

18 notice of violation, that was something that the 

19 site had to go through a number of corrective 

20 actions to come up with a uniformed RWP system in 

21 the late '90's. Which, again, is pretty 

22 surprising. So there was some background as to 

23 why that happened.
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1 But as a little bit of reasoning why 

2 we went to the 30 to 90 day was recognizing these 

3 disparities, recognizing the incompleteness of 

4 the documents that we are using. In fact, a 

5 number of them even had nuclides that were 

6 specifically listed. Or they were incomplete.

7 We decided to go with 30 and 90, 

8 specifically to go toward the intermittent 

9 subcontractor issue. We were concerned about, in 

10 the '90's in particular. Where there was a heavy 

11 influx of subcontractors at Westinghouse.

12 This was a new evolution of work, pay 

13 reactor, restart DND, waste management. So you 

14 had, unlike the DuPont era, you had a lot of these 

15 transient subcontractors coming on, doing a job, 

16 leaving.

17 We were concerned that if in fact you 

18 had a RWP written for a job specific bioassay, we 

19 were looking to see if there was a bioassay for 

20 that subcontractor within the 30 to 90 day 

21 timeframe.

22 Now, hindsight is great. All the 

23 research, the thousands of pages that Tim refers 
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1 to, we've learned a lot. And I'll grant you, 

2 NIOSH has certainly learned, and we have learned 

3 from their page, that the way the job is specific 

4 bioassay process worked with badging, what have 

5 you, we would have been, you know, if we were to 

6 do it over again we would have went with 180 days 

7 because that 90 day timeframe we were clearly 

8 missing some workers.

9 But as I indicated, and this is on the 

10 next one actually. There it is. Yes, it makes 

11 a difference. But since it was 20 percent of our

12 total, it probably would raise the upper bound to 

13 about 90 percent as opposed to 84 percent. 

14 Something like that.

15 And, again, the issue that still 

16 concerns us is, if in fact you had subcontractors 

17 on a biannual actinide bioassay basis, you had 

18 workers in specific RWP prescribed work that 

19 included job specific bioassays. If these 

20 workers were in and out, 180 days you might not 

21 get them, it would be gone from the site. That 

22 would be essentially a lost bioassay.

23 So, again, yes, we understand that. 
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1 It certainly would make a difference in terms of 

2 that statistic. Of course our concern is the 

3 questioning of the transiency.

4 And we'll keep going back to this 

5 question of the NOV, just for shorthand. We hit 

6 upon this NOV almost at the very tail end of this 

7 review onsite, going through the noncompliance 

8 tracking system.

9 And we cited it in our report only as, 

10 almost a post-script, just to alert the Work 

11 Group in NIOSH that, yes, oh by the way, as we 

12 were struggling to come up with RWPs to do this 

13 survey, here is a situation where Westinghouse 

14 actually did self-surveys and were looking at 100 

15 percent of the RWPs and were coming up with 

16 percentages that were much worse than what we had 

17 come up with.

18 So that was a, sort of a red flag 

19 alert, this is something that would certainly 

20 bear further looking down the road. This has a 

21 lag.

22 (Laughter.)

23 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, into the notice 
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1 of violation. I was a little concerned about the 

2 one slide where we're quoted as saying that the 

3 NOV would prohibit dose reconstruction. 

4 Actually, I went back to double check that 

5 because I don't think I used the word prohibit.

6 Certainly we were concerned and 

7 certainly we felt that this really deserved a 

8 high level of attention, which I think obviously 

9 is the given. But the implications for us, really 

10 on the NOV is, less the ins and outs of what the 

11 regulatory basis was 10 CFR 120, 835, it was less 

12 that.

13 And the fact that this was an instance 

14 where you actually, in terms of the NOV process 

15 itself, it was defining that there was a systemic 

16 or procedural issue involved.

17 And I think when Tim pointed out that, 

18 hey, we only have three data points, how can these 

19 be chronic. Well, '95 was when they identified 

20 that there was a issue systemically in terms of 

21 the subcontractors not leaving samples.

22 And this was found by Savannah River, 

23 the Field Office. And then of course they did 
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1 re-sampling and changes and processes trying to 

2 correct this.

3 But this was not something that began 

4 on November '95, okay. And when the DOE looked 

5 at this and Savannah River looked at this, this 

6 was a persistent issue, as they called it. 

7 Something that was clearly was embedded.

8 And when they did the root cause 

9 analysis, it was because the administrative 

10 procedures, and I think Tim had mapped out that 

11 large flow diagram, the administrative procedures 

12 did not hold the managers, the HPs and the workers 

13 themselves accountable.

14 It wasn't an accountability process 

15 where they could not work without leaving a 

16 sample. It allowed them, in fact, collectively 

17 allowed them to defeat the system. So therefore 

18 you end up with percentages like 21 percent, 30 

19 percent. It was not a functional system.

20 So we were concerned about that. 

21 That's one reason this was a milestone that we 

22 wanted to address.

23 And certainly DOE heard the 
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1 Westinghouse arguments about the strength of our 

2 program, the field indicators, the low levels of 

3 intake, everything you've heard today. And they 

4 did not credit that because in the final 

5 analysis, you don't know what you don't know. If 

6 you don't have the bioassay data, you don't have 

7 any verification.

8 I mean, you can have a good program, 

9 you certainly can have intakes because of a 

10 worker error, a failure of equipment, maybe 

11 somebody didn't take the suit off right, it 

12 happens all the time. And I think DOE had a very 

13 balanced review on that.

14 They basically said, yes, we can't 

15 argue with the trends, we can't argue with the 

16 intake history, you have a strong program. 

17 However, and this is where the violation came in, 

18 you can't assure that for job specific bioassays 

19 you're not going to have intake. And you won't 

20 be able to find it otherwise.

21 And the other thing that I thought was 

22 significant on this was the fact that you had 

23 contemporary Westinghouse self-surveys. They 
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1 literally, and this was under the gun no less, 

2 literally went out and self-surveyed their job 

3 specific bioassay program.

4 And I agree. 1997 they went through, 

5 and you can understand given the onus of 

6 enforcement action, and scrubbed that thoroughly. 

7 Did a re-sampling on all the people that were 

8 missed and came up with no intakes for 1997, only.

9 But the significance of this issue 

10 isn't the result for '97 so much as it is a marker 

11 for the previous years saying, okay, clearly 

12 bioassays were not been collected for RWP 

13 prescribed job specific bioassays. I think this 

14 was somewhat missed in all the discussion.

15 We're talking about radiological work 

16 permits, we're talking about, not the typical 

17 routine work. This is work that was different, 

18 involved a different mix of new clients perhaps 

19 and it involved source terms that would require 

20 a RWP.

21 And when you're missing your bioassays 

22 from that class of work, then I think there is a 

23 concern that you're talking about potential 
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1 exposures that are out of the norm for what you 

2 might see in routine operations.

3 And I think this is a root of an issue 

4 that we'll talk about further. But when we're 

5 talking about what do you do about a gap like 

6 this. And particularly in the context of 

7 coworker model.

8 I think one thing you have to keep in 

9 mind is this is RWP work. Job specific bioassays 

10 targeted to new clients that may not be your norm. 

11 And whatever you do, you have to come up with an 

12 approach, which is going to make that whole.

13 That's the significance.

14 MR. BARTON: Okay, I'm going to talk 

15 a little bit about representativeness and how it 

16 relates to when we actually constructor our co17 worker models.

18 The one thing I wanted to point out 

19 from NIOSH's presentation, they said that 91 

20 percent of the subcontractor claims have internal 

21 monitoring. We don't disagree with that. There 

22 is a lot of data out there. But I want to stress, 

23 it is routine data.
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1 The group of workers that we don't 

2 have data for are those who were monitored, or 

3 were supposed to be monitored, by the job 

4 specific bioassay program.

5 So the key question becomes, does all 

6 that data that we have here, which is primarily 

7 routine, probably almost all routine, has that 

8 data effectively bound the exposures experienced 

9 by those workers who weren't routinely monitored, 

10 but should have been monitored with the job 

11 specific bioassays?

12 What was the actual exposure potential 

13 for some of this off normal transient work and 

14 can we relate it to those routinely monitored 

15 workers, which includes both subcontractors, 

16 regular construction workers, operational 

17 workers, can we relate what the people who were 

18 purely under the job specific program we're doing 

19 to those who were routinely monitored.

20 More concerns about, why is this a 

21 concern for us. Well, when you have interviews 

22 with former SRS subcontract workers that indicate 

23 they were brought onsite to do more contaminated 
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1 work, to save exposure of the onsite construction 

2 trades workers. Those are not my words, those 

3 are NIOSH's words.

4 Now, if you have a bunch of these 

5 workers who are onsite for a short duration, 

6 possibly being brought in to do the heavier more 

7 contaminated work, those workers are not going to 

8 be on a routine program. If you're only there 

9 for a few weeks or a month to come in and do a 

10 dirty job and then you're sent offsite, that's 

11 why the job specific program existed.

12 Because you couldn't wait a year or 

13 six months to finally sample those people because 

14 they're not there anymore. So you put them on a 

15 job specific sample related to that specific task 

16 that they were supposed to leave. And that system 

17 was not working.

18 From the co-worker criteria, also 

19 referred to as the IMP guide today, for routine 

20 monitoring programs, now we're talking routine 

21 again, you have to review the program, it must be 

22 established who was monitored and why they were 

23 monitored.
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1 In the evaluation, there must be some 

2 demonstration that the monitored population 

3 consisted of, one, a representative sample of the 

4 exposed population, or two, the workers with the 

5 highest exposure potential.

6 So here's the key question. What is 

7 the Class of workers with the highest potential 

8 for exposure?

9 Now, as I said before, NIOSH went in 

10 and analyzed NOCTS data for plutonium. From the 

11 '50's all the way to the late '80's.

12 And they found that in certain years 

13 in the late '70's and 1980's, at the 95th 

14 percentile you would have factored a two to five 

15 difference between the monitored subcontractors, 

16 which is obviously going to be primarily routine 

17 because the job specific program is broken, and 

18 the regular construction trades. That gives us 

19 a little pause anyway.

20 And we're not even talking about job 

21 specific here because we can't compare them. 

22 Which is the last bullet here. Because we have 

23 such completeness issues with the job specific 
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1 monitoring program, we can't make any meaningful 

2 numerical comparison about what the exposure 

3 potential was for those workers, to the routinely 

4 monitored population.

5 And that was actually a question 

6 raised by Board Members in August. And that was 

7 what prompted NIOSH to go and look at that NOCTS 

8 data and to do that comparison of the 95th 

9 percentile. And NIOSH then concluded that there 

10 is no systemic difference between the DuPont 

11 constructions and the subcontract constructions.

12 And the reasoning behind that is when 

13 you go in to construct a co-worker model, you fit 

14 into a lot of years where your kind of looking at 

15 the midpoint and you put an intake regime to that. 

16 And so the outlier values way up at the 95th 

17 percentile might not have very much of an effect 

18 under the final intakes.

19 While we agree that that's true when 

20 you're actually constructing a co-worker model, 

21 we disagree that in this context, which is SEC 

22 not co-worker construction, that looking at that 

23 highest group of exposed workers, determining who 
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1 they are and seeing is there another group out 

2 there who potentially aren't even covered by 

3 those workers, that's where it becomes an SEC 

4 potential issue.

5 And I'm going to show you just a 

6 couple of graphs from that NIOSH memo. This is 

7 the plutonium graph from the '50's up to the late 

8 '80's. It has the DuPont CTWs, subcontract and 

9 also operations in there. It's kind of busy.

10 I looked at it and I said, well, let's 

11 just look at the post-SEC period, so roughly 1972 

12 and on, let's get rid of operations. And this is 

13 what gave us pause.

14 The red line with the peaks where you 

15 subcontract workers. And again, we're still 

16 comparing routine bioassay here because we simply 

17 don't have the information to make any numerical 

18 comparisons like this for job specific because 

19 they really weren't being done.

20 And I note here that recently NIOSH 

21 had identified, one of the peaks there had an 

22 error in it. And I'll also note that, while Tim 

23 didn't get to it, they're currently doing a re-
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1 analysis using not just NOCTS data, but also log 

2 book data to kind of take another look at this 

3 issue. Because it is rather concerning to see 

4 something like that.

5 And this is a quote, again, from that 

6 same memo. The highlighted portions, 

7 subcontractors, CTW, indicated that they were 

8 called in for more contaminated work to save the 

9 exposure of onsite CTWs. The 95th percentile of 

10 the subcontractors CTWs is a factor of two to 

11 five higher.

12 Now again, as of today, because new 

13 analysis is in the works, just take this for what 

14 it is. It sounds like NIOSH wants to revise it 

15 based on a fuller data set. We don't know what 

16 that's going to say, but again, the caveat is 

17 we're looking at routine monitoring, we're 

18 comparing routine monitoring, we don't have a job 

19 specific portion.

20 And really, we don't have a way to 

21 meaningfully compare what that exposure potential 

22 was to all of those routine workers with the 

23 thousands of samples that we do have.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay. There were a 

2 number of implications that Tim touched on at the 

3 end of his presentation, I guess, some of them. 

4 I don't know if he got to all of them. But I 

5 went ahead and addressed each one of them. And 

6 I want to go through each of them. But I thought 

7 it was a pretty good list. And we think these 

8 are pretty significant and relevant to the 

9 overall question.

10 The first one is that there was no 

11 effect in the coworker model for 1997, as all the 

12 worker data had been collected and evaluated. 

13 And we tend to agree with that.

14 You know, I think it was something we 

15 were not aware of this past summer. It was one 

16 of these where going back to the site, and 

17 establishing that they had done a resampling 

18 under the weight of an NOV. They went back and, 

19 understandably, resampled every one of the 

20 missing 256 workers and did not find any intakes.

21 However, you know, as I indicate, our 

22 concern is, okay, it sort of gets this off the 

23 hook for '97, but they did not do that for '96. 
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1 It wasn't cost effective. They didn't feel they 

2 were going to find anything.

3 And we're not sure about the previous 

4 years, and I think, as Tim indicated, NIOSH is 

5 trying to go back now and see if the site did any 

6 further surveying.

7 But our issue, and notwithstanding the 

8 comment that the chronic only began in November 

9 of '95, which we disagree with, is what are the 

10 implications for the previous years? I mean, 

11 yes, there was 256 subcontractors that were 

12 missed, the jobs that had bioassays were at 21 

13 percent, completeness rate.

14 Well, what was the situation in '96, 

15 '95, '94. This was 100 percent sampled. Do we 

16 have anything that would give us any indication 

17 that this is typical?

18 I recall, from the operational history 

19 of Savannah River, the heaviest influx of 

20 subcontractors was the K reactor re-start in the 

21 early '90s, the D&D that came soon after that, 

22 waste management.

23 So, you know, I don't know what we're 
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1 talking about in terms of numbers. But certainly 

2 the concern would be we have a gap. And there's 

3 a need for a co-worker model. And, you know, do 

4 we actually know what numbers the jobs, the 

5 locations.

6 You know, I just indicated earlier 

7 what really hamstrings us now is the addition of 

8 the RWPs. You know, that would give you a record 

9 of who was doing what work, what nuclides, what 

10 locations. I mean, that would be the roadmap.

11 But given what we have found, that 

12 seems to be missing, by and large. So the concern 

13 is, okay, we don't have the bioassays. We don't 

14 have a complete set of RWPs.

15 How would one characterize the, you 

16 know, the workers that we're actually talking 

17 about, and how would we develop a coworker model 

18 that would be founded on bounding whatever dose 

19 this group would represent, understanding this 

20 group was doing RWP prescribed, you know, work 

21 whose exposure potential may not necessarily 

22 match that of the routine worker doing typical 

23 work. So that's the concern on that one.
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1 Okay, next one. DOE acknowledged 

2 rigorous radiological control programs during the 

3 enforcement meeting. And it's our responses. 

4 That's fine. We don't take issue that Savannah 

5 River had a sound radiological control program.

6 I mean, this is the mid to late 1990s. 

7 Post 835 one would expect that. Although I think 

8 it was pretty clear the administrative controls, 

9 the procedural implementation that led to the 

10 deficiencies on the jobs with the bioassays was 

11 pretty poor.

12 I mean, the system was something that 

13 wasn't working. It hadn't worked in some time. 

14 It's not clear on how long, but certainly 

15 whatever procedures were in place weren't 

16 accountable to making sure these bioassays were 

17 collected and weren't very amenable to corrective 

18 action which is one reason I agree with Tim.

19 I mean, I think it's pretty clear it 

20 was getting worse. And the NOV was cited. Now 

21 when I say worse, I put quotation marks around 

22 that, because I don't know what the sample size 

23 was in '95. Certainly it was a lot more limited 
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1 in '96, I'm sorry, earlier in '97. So it really 

2 sort of depends on what sample you take to what 

3 percentage you get.

4 But we're concerned very, very 

5 specifically with the repetitive nature, and I 

6 just use word that DOE used, of the 

7 nonparticipation by workers who were required to 

8 get bioassays by their RWPs at relatively high 

9 rates.

10 And, you know, I find it kind of 

11 enlightening that we're, you know, saying that 

12 ten percent's fine, 15 percent's not too bad. I 

13 go back ten years in this program, and we were 

14 excited about five percent, you know, five 

15 percent lacking in terms of completeness.

16 And we went through all kinds of 

17 gyrations to try and figure out where that five 

18 percent was. So we're up to the double digits, 

19 and we're, in some cases, okay with that.

20 Anyway, that's the concern. And yes, 

21 the overriding concern is that the potential does 

22 exist to overlook worker exposure and to 

23 radioactive material due to these unrecognizable 
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1 conditions and other types of personal error.

2 So I think that was the -- and that's 

3 our concern too, that no matter how good the 

4 routine program is, and it's very sound, if you 

5 don't have a working bioassay program for your 

6 RWP bioassays, I think it's a big gap. And it's 

7 one that's going to require certainly some 

8 attention to a coworker model.

9 But the other concern is that SC&A has 

10 not demonstrated a subcontractor for primarily or 

11 only monitored the job specific bioassays that 

12 would bias the coworker model.

13 Actually, I am sympathetic to this 

14 particular one and sent a note in to the Work 

15 Group about a month and a half ago that said, you 

16 know, this is -- and I can't say this was my idea. 

17 I think Stu came up with the original reflection 

18 that, you know, we don't really know who makes up 

19 the so-called job specific bioassays. It 

20 probably is a loss of contractors, maybe some in21 house staff and other CTWs.

22 So we really don't know. And I think 

23 the notion was, well, we do have the 1997 group 
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1 cohort, the 256. And wouldn't it be interesting 

2 to know what that makeup is? I agree, I think it 

3 would be. And I have recommended that to the 

4 Work Group.

5 So yes, we have not demonstrated it, 

6 because we have not had the tasking or 

7 opportunity to do so. But I would think that 

8 would be a good idea. Now, the only admonition 

9 is that's going to give you snapshot of the makeup 

10 of 1997.

11 And that makeup is going to be 

12 different every year going back just simply 

13 because you always had a different mix of subs 

14 doing different kinds of activities. But yet it 

15 still would be illustrative of what you're 

16 dealing with. Right now we think your 

17 subcontractors are making up the most of that. 

18 We don't know for sure.

19 The other concern was even a larger 

20 percentage of subcontractors use a job-specific 

21 bioassay compared to Westinghouse employees. A 

22 larger fraction of subcontractor CTWs were 

23 monitored via routine bioassays.
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1 I think that's true, but as we have 

2 noted earlier, we take exception that NIOSH has 

3 demonstrated there's no systemic difference or 

4 systematic difference between the in-house CTWs 

5 and the subcontractor CTWs.

6 And typical routine work and RWP work, 

7 now, I think this is where you get down to the 

8 rougher question, is are the workers doing RWP 

9 work the same as the workers doing typical work. 

10 And can you envelope or bound these workers, 

11 meaning the RWP workers, the workers that were 

12 doing the RWP work, with the routine pre13 scheduled bioassay work.

14 And I think that's a key question 

15 which I don't think has been fully answered. And 

16 I think that's one that would, I think, resolve 

17 some of our concerns. Because I think that's 

18 where, you know, one can take care of these gaps 

19 and feel confident that whatever data you're 

20 applying is in fact, you know, is the bounded 

21 data.

22 Okay, this is almost done. There is 

23 no evidence of a workplace exposure nor 
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1 indication that there was a mis-intake of 

2 radionuclides at Savannah River. This was pretty 

3 much Westinghouse's argument with DOE in the 

4 enforcement action.

5 And I'm not going to go back over 

6 this, but DOE certainly emphasized that they 

7 can't overlook the potential for errors or other 

8 unrecognized conditions leading to an intake, 

9 okay.

10 You know, even if you have one or two 

11 intakes in the entire complex at Savannah River 

12 a year, it doesn't mean you're not going to have 

13 one in your RWP program with job specific 

14 bioassays, okay. And the rest of this, I think, 

15 is pretty clear.

16 We went back and did a cursory look in 

17 the SRDB and NOCTS. And we've identified 

18 instances, as did DOE, actually, in the NOV, 

19 where you have positive intakes that were only 

20 picked up in the bioassays. They were not picked 

21 up in the Field Indicator Program. And, you know, 

22 we'll be identifying that to NIOSH after the 

23 meeting.
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1 But we didn't want to put the Privacy 

2 Act information, you know, put it up on the slide. 

3 But I think this, again, underscores the fact 

4 that, you know, the bioassay program not only is 

5 your last resort, but it's a necessary component 

6 in terms of actually identifying intakes that 

7 might be missed otherwise.

8 And again to emphasize, we're talking 

9 transient subcontractors. Savannah River did not 

10 have a fully functional termination bioassay 

11 program until the corrective action took place 

12 after this NOV.

13 So if you have in and out 

14 subcontractors, transient subcontractors, that 

15 missed bioassays as part of their RWPs who left 

16 the site, there wasn't an accountable system that 

17 would have picked them up, necessarily.

18 MEMBER BEACH: Jim, can I ask a 

19 question?

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Are you done?

21 MR. FITZGERALD: I just want to just 

22 do the conclusions, and I'm done.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, real quick.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Quickly.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Real quick. Okay. 

4 Again, the Westinghouse self-surveys, in our 

5 view, are the most valid reviews of the job6 specific bioassay completeness. They were 100 

7 percent re-sampling that was done 

8 contemporaneously back 20 years ago, not sort of 

9 this, you know, we'll see if we find job plans or 

10 RWPs and see where they pan out. This was done 

11 contemporaneous with the concerns that were 

12 expressed back in the '90s.

13 And representatives in this is the 

14 key, as Bob pointed out, as far as the coworker 

15 model is concerned. And I already talked about 

16 the RWPs and some of the deficiencies on that.

17 And at the Work Group meeting, I think 

18 NIOSH indicated and showed some raw data in terms 

19 of the NOCTS review that they referred to that 

20 we'll hopefully see toward the end of the year.

21 And again, we'll take a look at it. 

22 But I think our concern is that this is sort of 

23 the cart before the horse. We haven't had a 
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1 chance to be convinced that the data sets are 

2 truly, you know, similar, that you would be able 

3 to apply the coworker data as indicated or 

4 proposed. So again, we're still concerned about 

5 that particular issue.

6 Okay, questions?

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you. Josie?

8 MEMBER BEACH: I just wanted to -- we

9 might have talked about this, but what are the 

10 numbers of the transient workers that we're 

11 talking about versus the subcontractors? I'm 

12 just curious.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: We have no idea.

14 MEMBER BEACH: Are we talking 

15 hundreds, or thousands, or just --

16 MR. FITZGERALD: I think in terms of 

17 subcontractors, there were thousands. But as far 

18 as the level of transiency, you know, days versus 

19 weeks, versus -- some of them worked side by side 

20 with CTWs. They were effectively permanent staff 

21 that were just simply, in this case, say Bechtel 

22 subcontractors in the '90s, you know, back to 

23 Savannah River full time. And I think as Tim was 
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1 indicating, yes, they were routinely monitored. 

2 So in terms of the transiency, that's something 

3 that has not been, I think, measured or 

4 estimated.

5 MEMBER BEACH: It's important.

6 DR. TAULBEE: Can I give a follow-up 

7 to that? What we're going to be doing, because 

8 this was an issue that came up within the Work 

9 Group, we're going to be looking at the NOCTS 

10 claimants and looking for where there's breaks of 

11 employment.

12 And those workers we will be calling 

13 transients, that they left the site and then came 

14 back for whatever reason. And we typically see 

15 a two or three-year gap in between their 

16 employment.

17 And we're going to be looking at their 

18 bioassay compared to the people who were there 

19 during that entire time period that you're 

20 calling more routine, if you will. So that's the 

21 comparison that we committed to do to the worker. 

22 And we're still working on that.

23 MEMBER BEACH: That's still going to 
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1 be kind of a guestimate though, it sounds like.

2 DR. TAULBEE: It will be -- the only 

3 way to do what you're asking is to go through all 

4 of the RWPs and compile a name -- compile names 

5 to try and determine that.

6 MEMBER BEACH: And I wasn't asking, I 

7 was just --

8 CHAIR MELIUS: But the RWPs aren't 

9 available, right, for some of those time periods 

10 or --

11 DR. TAULBEE: No, actually, and I 

12 hadn't had a chance to talk to Joe about this, 

13 but I believe we might have found a large number 

14 of particular boxes of RWPs --

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, okay.

16 MEMBER BEACH: And I want to be clear. 

17 I wasn't asking for you to do anything. I just 

18 was simply asking if there was a number.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: It would be an 

20 enormous task to try to engage in numbers, you 

21 know, what the status of all the subcontractors 

22 were. But, you know, again, I think our concern 

23 would be more on the transient subcontractors.
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1 I really don't have as much of an 

2 issue for the full time subcontractors that work 

3 side by side with the other CTWs at the site. 

4 And they're doing the same work, they're probably 

5 routinely monitored. And I think the data that 

6 Tim has talked to is fine.

7 But I think that doesn't work as well 

8 for the ones that are more transient, who fall 

9 under the job-specific bioassays, who are doing 

10 work that isn't your typical work, isn't your 

11 routine work. So that's where, I think, the split 

12 is.

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: Jim, this is Brad. 

14 Can I make a comment please?

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

16 MEMBER CLAWSON: One of the things 

17 that I just heard from Tim that really bothers me 

18 is, in the interviews that we got in there, we 

19 have people that have worked for four or five 

20 different contractors. They have stayed there at 

21 Savannah River, but there are four or five 

22 different contractors.

23 Short term work, they may have a break 
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1 in work of only a week or two weeks throughout 

2 the whole year. So to be able to do that and be 

3 able to say that they're the transient force, 

4 this is what I made a comment on so many times 

5 that Savannah River is different than all the 

6 other sites.

7 Usually they -- each site usually has 

8 their own union or their own workers. These used 

9 tradespeople. They could come, and they could 

10 go. You'll have ones that are workers for the 

11 prime for four or five years. But a big project 

12 will come along and be able to make more money. 

13 They'll trade and go to it. But they'll still 

14 show up as construction trades.

15 This is why this site is so unique. 

16 And I know people don't agree with it, but they 

17 really ought to look at it. And this is why I 

18 see that what Tim's saying is not going to buy us 

19 anything.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, let's see, okay.

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well --

22 CHAIR MELIUS: To be fair. I mean, 

23 we need to --
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: That's all well and 

2 fine. But also too, I just want to mention how 

3 long we have been waiting.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, I think we know 

5 that. Yes. I just want to say to the Board I 

6 think this is an ongoing effort. And I think 

7 everybody's working hard, and finding new data, 

8 new information that helps to address these 

9 questions.

10 And though there's a, you know, little 

11 bit of a rivalry, it's a friendly sort of 

12 exchange, I think, in terms of the information 

13 and so forth. I think we all get sort of carried 

14 away in terms of absolutes. It can be done, or 

15 it can't -- well, I think the question's going be 

16 done in a coworker model that is satisfactory.

17 How will it be done? Do you separate 

18 out construction workers, do you try to separate 

19 out the transient workers? But I'm not sure 

20 that's possible, but things like that. So 

21 there's some issues to be dealt with here.

22 But I think both NIOSH and SC&A put a 

23 lot of effort into doing this and doing it in a 
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1 fair way so that -- and it's hard to talk about 

2 here. We're not ready for a conclusion yet.

3 And we need to -- we have ongoing 

4 reports being produced and so forth. So I don't 

5 want to spend a lot of time on questions, mainly 

6 also because we're running very late. So, Dave, 

7 do you have one quick question? And then -- okay.

8 MEMBER BEACH: One quick. There was 

9 a lot of points and questions raised in SC&A 

10 slides. And I'm assuming NIOSH will get to those 

11 in discussions during your Work Group?

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. I think where 

13 this is going to be resolved is in the Working 

14 Group.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. And I want to 

16 echo that. This is so dynamic that, you know, 

17 there's information coming in every week that, 

18 you know, it's kind of hard to know exactly where 

19 everything is until you actually see the 

20 information.

21 And my problem, of course, is that you 

22 have a position. But that position is modified 

23 based on new information. And it doesn't mean 
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1 it's wrong at the time that it was made, it just 

2 happened to be superseded by new information.

3 So I would say the so-called 30-90 day 

4 thing was superseded by new information on how 

5 the actinides were addressed. And that's fine. 

6 I think, again, we are learning and researching 

7 as we go.

8 MEMBER BEACH: One more quick comment. 

9 There was a lot of discussion, and it feels like 

10 we are rushed. I didn't have time to ask Tim the 

11 questions on his slides. And I won't belabor it, 

12 but maybe more time the next time this comes 

13 before the Board.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Oh, you'll have more 

15 time. And if we -- Tim, are you here tomorrow 

16 morning? Okay. So during our Board work session, 

17 which is where I think we can have time for more 

18 Board questions for both Tim and for SC&A. So 

19 I'll do that.

20 But again, recognizing that there are 

21 more reports to come, and I don't think, you know, 

22 don't expect resolution that easy. I think it's 

23 important that we have the Board briefed on this 
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1 as we go along. Because if not, you get 

2 overwhelmed at the end. And it's very easy to -

3 - we get overwhelmed on the way, let alone on 

4 this particular site, do that.

5 I don't know if the petitioners are on 

6 the line and wish to say anything. It's 6:30 

7 back east or close to it, 6:15.

8 Okay. Hearing no one, I think maybe 

9 they'll come on in the public comment period or 

10 something, but time for that.

11 I think what we will do is take our 

12 break now. And as I said, I was going to schedule 

13 LaVon for tomorrow afternoon. But he said 

14 something about wanting to leave. So we'll come 

15 back. And we're due back here in about, let's 

16 say 20 minutes to be realistic, and then we'll 

17 hear from LaVon. We'll go into our Board work 

18 session. Then at 5:30, we will hear from LaVon 

19 again.

20 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

21 went off the record at 4:20 p.m. and resumed at 

22 4:47 p.m.)

23 CHAIR MELIUS: So we will start by 
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1 hearing from LaVon.

2 MR. RUTHERFORD: Thank you, Dr. 

3 Melius.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Chair. Chair Melius.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: Dr. Chair Melius.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'm going to give 

8 NIOSH the SEC update.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Still that's like a C+, 

10 C- maybe.

11 SEC Petitions Status Update

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'm working on it. 

13 I'm working on it. I'll see if it gets better.

14 We give this update to the Advisory 

15 Board in preparation for future Work Group 

16 meetings and --

17 CHAIR MELIUS: You know, I had to 

18 apologize to Dr. Ziemer last time.

19 (Laughter)

20 MR. RUTHERFORD: I'm not going to 

21 comment on that.

22 We're going to talk about SEC 

23 petitions that are in qualification, under 
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1 evaluation, currently under Board review, and 

2 potential 83.14s.

3 Okay, summary petitions, we have up to 

4 245 petitions. We have three petitions that are 

5 in the qualification process, two that are in the 

6 evaluation process, and nine reports that are 

7 with the Advisory Board at some stage, meaning 

8 that they haven't reached full disposition.

9 Okay, Wah Chang, this is 1973 to 2017, 

10 Board Members may remember that we actually had 

11 another petition for Wah Chang that was up 

12 through 2009. We did fully -- that petition was 

13 fully dispositioned. The operational period was 

14 added and the residual period was denied.

15 We got this petition that actually 

16 goes beyond what was previously evaluated, but no 

17 new information or exposure potential was 

18 provided by the petitioner. So based on that, 

19 that would not affect our DR methodology, so we 

20 are not qualifying this petition. And I'll take 

21 questions on that in a little bit.

22 Okay, Y-12, another petition in 

23 qualification, this petition is 1981 to present. 
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1 And it is -- currently we are responding to the 

2 petitioner's response to our proposed finding. 

3 And we do expect that qualification determination 

4 later this month.

5 Another Pinellas plant petition is in 

6 qualification. This petition covers the entire 

7 period as previous ones have. This is for all 

8 employees. We are currently -- it indicates we 

9 are responding to petitioner's response to our 

10 proposed finding.

11 That's not exactly true. We are 

12 actually working on our professional judgement 

13 that will provide the proposed finding. We 

14 expect that proposed finding letter out to the 

15 petitioner later this month. A qualification 

16 determination will be finalized between now and 

17 early January.

18 We have two petitions, as I mentioned, 

19 that are in the evaluation phase, Sandia National 

20 Lab, this is a petition that covered a very broad 

21 petition period. We concluded or we added a Class 

22 up through 1994, and then this addendum's going 

23 to address the remaining years. And we 
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1 anticipate the completion of that addendum in 

2 March. I'm also going to be providing a little 

3 more detailed information later on this 

4 afternoon.

5 Lawrence Livermore National Lab, 

6 again, is another petition that covers a broad 

7 period of time. We actually have the remaining 

8 years of 1990 to 2014 that we are doing addendum 

9 to address. This one is going to follow the 

10 Sandia petition.

11 And all three, or I should say I want 

12 to remind everyone that all of these, the Sandia 

13 addendum, the Lawrence Livermore addendum, the 

14 Los Alamos petition -- evaluation I presented at 

15 last Board meeting, all cover the 10 CFR 835 time 

16 period which I really think needs to be looked at 

17 closer by the Board.

18 So petitions under Advisory Board 

19 review, Hanford, this petition will be -- we 

20 actually dispositioned the entire period up 

21 through 1990. That's what the end-period was for 

22 that petition.

23 However, one of the prime contractors 
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1 were left out of that Class. We are fully 

2 evaluating the prime contractors for their 

3 bioassay to ensure that their bioassay 

4 commitments were met. And that's in progress. I 

5 think it's covered under my work coordination 

6 document a little bit.

7 We also recently provided the issues 

8 matrix, an updated issues matrix. The remaining 

9 issues, this petition's gone on for quite some 

10 period of time. And so it took some going back 

11 between us, SC&A, and working out, and coming up 

12 with a good issues matrix that we've just 

13 provided to Board not long ago, anyway, and it'll 

14 be ready for future work for the meeting.

15 Savannah River Site, I think we've 

16 heard enough on Savannah River today. So Los 

17 Alamos National Lab, we wanted the SCS -- we 

18 presented -- SC&A presented their review at the 

19 last Advisory Board meeting. We are responding 

20 to SC&A's review. We're working on that report 

21 now.

22 We're also -- we had requested from 

23 the site additional information on NTS report 484 
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1 which was identified by SC&A in their review. We 

2 did get those documents last week, finally. 

3 We've had them in the queue for quite some time. 

4 And it took a long time to get them from the site. 

5 We will make those available to SC&A and the Work 

6 Group in the Advisory Board's folder.

7 INL, the initial proposed Class is 

8 still under review. And the rest of the 

9 evaluation as well.

10 Argonne National Lab West is, again, 

11 with the Advisory Board and SC&A.

12 Area IV, Santa Susana, an update by 

13 the Work Group in the SC&A is scheduled for 

14 tomorrow. That report was presented at the last 

15 meeting.

16 Metals and Controls was another report 

17 that was presented at the last Advisory Board 

18 meeting. And it's with SC&A to review at this 

19 time. There was some additional interviews and 

20 work that was done on Metals and Controls since 

21 the last Board meeting.

22 So these are the petitions that I just 

23 went through that have, in the remaining years, 
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1 that still need to be addressed or we're working 

2 to address with the Advisory Board.

3 Potential 83.14s, this is the Sandia 

4 National Lab at Albuquerque. Again, this is the 

5 old Z Division at LANL. The Department of Labor 

6 has been processing these cases that come in 

7 under the -- it appears that they've been 

8 processing them under the LANL SEC. So we have 

9 not received at litmus claim to move this 83.14 

10 forward.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Come on, spit it out.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. I'm waiting 

13 for it to -- I guess, okay, questions. Specific 

14 questions on Wah Chang? No questions on Wah 

15 Chang?

16 CHAIR MELIUS: No. You answered them.

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: All right. I thought 

18 that might be something.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: It was going to be, but 

20 it's not now.

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

22 CHAIR MELIUS: You gave us the answer 

23 already.
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: All right.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: You explained it.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Any Board Members with 

5 questions for LaVon?

6 (No audible response.)

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Saving them up for --

8 MR. RUTHERFORD: Sandia?

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Sandia.

10 MEMBER BEACH: I've got a quick one. 

11 Did Monsanto, did that fall off.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, it fell off 

13 because --

14 MEMBER BEACH: It did last week.

15 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

16 MEMBER BEACH: At last meeting.

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, it fell off. 

18 And the reason why it fell off is because of the 

19 designation that -- the Department of Labor 

20 changed it. Actually, when they changed their 

21 designation, I'm not sure of the date, but they 

22 changed that designation and ultimately ended up 

23 grabbing those six to nine months that we were 
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1 missing before. And so everyone was included. 

2 That's why it dropped off.

3 MEMBER BEACH: I thought I remembered 

4 that. Thank you.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: All right.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you, LaVon. You 

7 can sit down for a little bit and give Stu some 

8 time to gear up for the next one. But we'll do 

9 some Board work first.

10 So I'll try to do a few of these items 

11 while we can. But we have the scheduling for our 

12 meeting for April 11th and 12th. We need to pick 

13 a location. Why we're asking about Wah Chang was 

14 whether it was worth going out to Oregon. But I 

15 think the --

16 MEMBER BEACH: Very nice time to be

17 there.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, I --

19 (Off the record comments)

20 CHAIR MELIUS: So we, Ted, you don't 

21 like this. I blame this on Ted. Ted said let's 

22 go back Chicago in April, Argonne East. And then 

23 the other possibility he suggested was 
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1 Providence, it's actually Attleboro, 

2 Massachusetts, which is near Providence, sort of 

3 halfway between Boston and Providence. But 

4 that's Metals and Controls. I'm not sure where 

5 we'll be with that yet and whether we need more 

6 information or whether we may be too early in the 

7 information gathering.

8 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. We might be close 

9 to Work Group meeting by then but --

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

11 MEMBER BEACH: -- we'll see.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. And then the 

13 other suggestion was Oak Ridge.

14 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes, Jim, this is 

15 Gen. I got a note from Dr. Lara Hughes who's the 

16 NIOSH lead on Oak Ridge.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

18 MEMBER ROESSLER: It looks like 

19 they're -- she said the report that we've been 

20 looking for is to be released in the near future. 

21 It sounds like it's pretty close. And I don't 

22 know if that -- maybe Lara is on the phone and 

23 can tell you what the status would be for that.
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1 (Off the record comments)

2 She doesn't give us, you know, any 

3 indication if it's months, or weeks, or -- but 

4 she does say the initial draft has been reviewed 

5 by DCAS, and the report is being finalized. So 

6 to me it sounds pretty close.

7 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. Dr. Roessler, 

8 this is LaVon Rutherford. Yes, you're correct. 

9 That report is going to the Work Group very soon. 

10 We actually went through our review. I would 

11 expect it out next couple of weeks.

12 (Off the record comments)

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, this is a 200-

14 page report though, I will say.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: So can the Work Group 

16 do a summary for us, you know, like a ten-page 

17 CliffsNotes of --

18 MEMBER ROESSLER: Well, I don't know 

19 what the intent was of suggesting Oak Ridge. To 

20 me, it seems a bit early. But that's up to you.

21 CHAIR MELIUS: I think the issue for 

22 choosing is that we want information. It would 

23 be useful to get information from people there. 
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1 And it's the same on Argonne, I think it's between 

2 Chicago and Oak Ridge.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: I think Oak Ridge 

4 would be great for getting some additional 

5 information. Because there are some things that 

6 we're going to be moving forward with that if we 

7 can get some additional information from the work 

8 force there it'd be great.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Sounds like Oak 

10 Ridge. Yes. But I think if we can get into Oak 

11 Ridge, wasn't the last time we were out -- weren't 

12 we up in Knoxville or something? And we didn't 

13 get almost any turnout from the group.

14 MR. KATZ: So we want to be in Oak 

15 Ridge, is that what you're saying?

16 CHAIR MELIUS: If we can. I mean, I 

17 think there's one choice there that -- at least 

18 the last time we were there, it was one that could 

19 accommodate the meeting.

20 MR. KATZ: And if that's the best --

21 does that mean you don't want to do that or --

22 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, I -- going up to 

23 Knoxville, I think, was the other one.
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1 MR. KATZ: Yes, we didn't -- yes, 

2 you're right. We didn't get --

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

4 MR. KATZ: -- participation. But, 

5 Tim, go ahead.

6 DR. TAULBEE: Having been to Oak Ridge 

7 quite a bit, you don't necessarily have to go all 

8 the way to Knoxville. If you go into the 

9 outskirts of Knoxville, in between Knoxville and 

10 Oak Ridge, there is a lot of hotels that could 

11 probably accommodate you --

12 MR. KATZ: Oh, okay.

13 DR. TAULBEE: -- to look at that would 

14 be more convenient for the people who work at Oak 

15 Ridge.

16 MR. KATZ: Okay. Thanks a lot, Tim, 

17 that's helpful. Okay, then we'll shoot for, if 

18 not in Oak Ridge, reasonably close.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. Well, Nashville's 

20 easier to get to but --

21 MEMBER ROESSLER: It's not close.

22 CHAIR MELIUS: So the next item we 

23 have is our teleconference for the week of 
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1 October 15th or 22nd.

2 MR. KATZ: Correct. And that's just 

3 -- remember, that's just about the right timing. 

4 But obviously we can move from those weeks.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: So don't we get into 

6 Health Physics Society? Is that -- or that's 

7 spring?

8 MR. KATZ: No, that's in the summer.

9 (Off the record comments)

10 MR. KATZ: Yes, that's summer. So 

11 October 15th or 22nd, that week, those weeks next 

12 year. So if we do it on a Wednesday, that being, 

13 you know, the 17th.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: The 17th's okay?

15 MR. KATZ: The 17th work for everyone? 

16 And for Board Members on the line too?

17 MEMBER ROESSLER: Sounds okay with me.

18 MR. KATZ: The 17th.

19 MEMBER LEMEN: This is Dick, it's okay 

20 with me.

21 CHAIR MELIUS: All right. We're going 

22 to move it now, Dick, because you just busted our 

23 --
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: It's okay with Ziemer.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

3 MR. KATZ: Thanks, Paul.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, you're overruled 

5 then. We're back to the 17th.

6 MR. KATZ: Okay. So we'll say 10/17 

7 for the teleconference. And that'll, as usual, 

8 be 11:00 a.m. Eastern time. Okay, and then for 

9 full Board meeting, face to face meeting, that's 

10 approximately right, December 3rd or 10th, those 

11 weeks.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: And I can tell you I 

13 can't do the week of the 3rd.

14 MR. KATZ: How about the week of the 

15 10th, December 10th?

16 CHAIR MELIUS: The 10th, I can do.

17 MR. KATZ: And others, the week of 

18 December 10th, next year?

19 (Off the record comments)

20 MR. KATZ: Okay. So then 12th and 

21 13th, Wednesday, Thursday, would be the best, if 

22 that works for everybody. Okay. And I'm 

23 assuming, I'm not hearing any squawks from 
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1 online. So folks on the phone, I'm assuming 

2 that's okay with you too.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: And why don't you email 

4 those out, because I'm not sure everybody's still 

5 on the line.

6 MR. KATZ: Okay, I'll do that. So 

7 anyway, December 12th through 13th.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Make a note then lose 

9 the document.

10 MR. KATZ: Huh?

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Make yourself a note 

12 then lose the document.

13 MR. KATZ: Yes. I could do that.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: But do you have the 

15 list of Work Groups?

16 MR. KATZ: I do.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. I'm going to 

18 start going through our Work Groups and updates. 

19 Of course, NIOSH and SC&A, if you can be alert on 

20 this, so when we ask where are our reports you'll 

21 be ready to answer. And we'll start with Ames.

22 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I think we've 

23 talked about Ames today.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, we've got the Site 

2 Profile stuff, right?

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right. But the 

4 question is --

5 MR. KATZ: Dave, can you talk in the 

6 mic?

7 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Site Profile has 

8 come out. Are we -- since we've already decided 

9 on an SEC for that, is it that the Work Group 

10 should go over the PER?

11 No, I don't see -- I'm not sure 

12 functionally what we have to do.

13 MR. KATZ: There's a whole lot of Site 

14 Profile work that's about ready to be addressed. 

15 That's what the Work Group would deal with, the 

16 Site Profile work.

17 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay, fine. Then 

18 --

19 CHAIR MELIUS: We have a Site Profile, 

20 and the question is do we have an SC&A review of 

21 that Site Profile?

22 MR. KATZ: Yes. And NIOSH is just 

23 finishing up with responses to that.
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1 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: All right. That's 

2 fine.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: And the dates for those 

4 responses? We're playing good cop, bad cop here. 

5 I'm not sure which is which.

6 MR. RUTHERFORD: I don't have a good 

7 date for the response, because one thing we have

8 to do is we've got to go through and look at what 

9 was dispositioned by the Evaluation Report and 

10 the Class that came through with it.

11 I mean, some of those, the recent --

12 some of the Site Profile issues were the specific 

13 reason why we ended up doing the 83.14. And so 

14 we've got to see what's left of that and then 

15 respond to those.

16 We also did get additional data that 

17 Tom talked about that addresses that 1990 period 

18 and beyond. And so we're evaluating that data 

19 right now to come up with a good response for

20 SC&A. So I don't have a date right now.

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: But is there an 

22 SEC -- a request for an SEC for 1990 and beyond?

23 MR. KATZ: No. Not at this time, no.
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1 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right, okay. So 

2 we have some activities to do, so we'll schedule 

3 a meeting.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, I think you have 

5 to wait for NIOSH to respond.

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: So, like, are you not 

8 being able to estimate it when in the next three 

9 months, or when in the next six months?

10 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I would say about 

11 three months but --

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: You know --

14 CHAIR MELIUS: We're going to make you 

15 commit here, one way or the other.

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: I will give you my 

17 best estimate, you know. And then I'll get beat 

18 up later, but that's fine. I want to say the 

19 next three months we'll have an update to the 

20 Work Group where we are within -- we should have 

21 an update to the Work Group on what's the 

22 remaining issues to be addressed and a status on 

23 addressing those within the next month, I would 
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1 think. And then we should be able to -- Tom's 

2 been working on closing those issues out for a 

3 while.

4 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I'll be in touch 

5 with you.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: And just for the 

7 record, when you say beat up, it's not a physical 

8 beating, it's just a, you know, ballfield sort 

9 of, you know, we'll remind him what he initially 

10 guaranteed to the Board. I don't want anybody to 

11 be, you know, get the wrong impression, LaVon.

12 Argonne East?

13 No, no. Steal his fishing pole. 

14 Okay, Argonne East? Brad, are you on?

15 (No audible response.)

16 CHAIR MELIUS: I guess Brad is either 

17 -- we'll get back to you, Brad. I think Blockson, 

18 I don't think we have any --

19 Okay. Brookhaven? Josie, that's you?

20 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. There is actually 

21 nothing to report. I believe we're finished. 

22 We're waiting for NIOSH, for the last TBD update. 

23 And it was pushed back to January of 2018, so 
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1 maybe next month. It changes every meeting.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. And then it 

3 would be a review. So it'd be some time.

4 MEMBER BEACH: A Work Group --

5 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Carborundum, 

6 Gen? Gen may be on mute.

7 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay, I'm off mute 

8 now.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

10 MEMBER ROESSLER: My notes say that I 

11 should look at the SC&A Board coordination 

12 updates to comment here. But maybe SC&A can --

13 I think there's something there that we should be 

14 talking about, but I can't remember what it is.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

16 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, I'm not SC&A, 

17 but this is LaVon Rutherford. We are actually -

18 - DCAS is providing a response to the Work Group 

19 on open issues and a schedule for February.

20 MEMBER ROESSLER: Thank you, LaVon.

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Good. So it'll be a 

22 few months then, February.

23 Dose reconstruction review methods 
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1 we've really reported on. Fernald, Brad, 

2 anything to report.

3 (No audible response.)

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Stu, you --

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, NIOSH fairly 

6 recently submitted our most recent approach. 

7 There are, like four Site Profile issues 

8 remaining. And we submitted our most recent 

9 document to the Work Group relatively recently. 

10 And I think when SC&A is ready, and the Work 

11 Group's ready, we can go ahead with our Work Group 

12 meeting.

13 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. And has SC&A 

14 been tasked on that one?

15 MR. STIVER: Yeah. We didn't receive 

16 formal tasking for that particular thing. It was 

17 kind of an ongoing exchange. So once we get a 

18 chance to look at it, then our response will 

19 probably be a few weeks. We can think about 

20 scheduling the Work Group.

21 MR. KATZ: I actually did send an 

22 email, responding to you saying, yes, go forward. 

23 So that was tasked.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: So you're tasked. 

2 Grand Junction, anything left to do?

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: I don't think so.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. What?

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: After the disposition 

6 of the SEC, which we completed a Board meeting or 

7 two ago, we are now working on changing our 

8 methodology into a Technical Basis Document. We 

9 don't have a date yet, because that actually is 

10 getting laid out into the project plan at this 

11 time.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Hanford, Joe, do you 

13 want to update? Somehow, there's some updating 

14 that I didn't get told about, like a matrix.

15 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes. Anyway, the 

16 issues matrix has been an ongoing thing. I think 

17 it was mentioned a little earlier where we have 

18 spent time going back and forth with NIOSH trying 

19 to come up with a consensus matrix.

20 This has a long history, probably 

21 three or four years. So it's actually a good 

22 exercise at this stage. And we did complete that. 

23 And it's been sent to the Work Group. And that 
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1 was going to be the basis for a Work Group 

2 meeting, sort of a, again, an index of 

3 outstanding issues and the status of issues. So 

4 we're waiting on what the next step will be.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: The Work Group Chair, 

6 I don't believe received that.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Huh?

8 CHAIR MELIUS: But I'll --

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: I was going to say, 

10 NIOSH sent it out. I don't know --

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Well, they --

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: The distribution 

13 should have included --

14 CHAIR MELIUS: LaVon, LaVon, the one 

15 --

16 I wouldn't kid you, LaVon. We'll 

17 track it. I knew that you were working on it.

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: No. It's, I mean, I 

19 checked --

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Don't worry about it. 

21 Just get it to me.

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: We'll get it to you.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Lots of reasons, 
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1 could have got lost in email whatever. But I 

2 think, again, for the Board Members, it's mostly 

3 focusing now on the production workers and so 

4 forth, and some of the issues that we've had with 

5 construction workers there and so forth, so 

6 pulling it back together --

7 INL, Argonne West?

8 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Actually, Tim's got 

9 an update for us on some new information coming 

10 out.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Oh, so how many boxes 

12 this time?

13 DR. TAULBEE: No, no, no. Not related 

14 to boxes. But this is bad news but good news 

15 toward the end of this.

16 (Laughter.)

17 DR. TAULBEE: The bad news is we 

18 started -- this is in follow-up to SC&A's 30 

19 claims to evaluate whether the temporary badge 

20 reports -- temporary badge information made it 

21 into the indexing that the Department of Energy 

22 did last year. And so the Department of Energy 

23 responded to 23 of the 30.
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1 And so as we were beginning to get 

2 them packaged up to be sent over, we noticed that 

3 what we got in the new responses, which were 

4 extensive for most of the employees, contained 

5 the little cards that we pointed out to both Josie 

6 and to Gen when we were up there, that those were 

7 all included.

8 But the actual temporary badge reports 

9 that covered from '63 to '67 were not in this 

10 group. So we contacted DOE and said why are these 

11 not indexed? Why are we not receiving these for 

12 these workers?

13 And they acknowledged that they missed 

14 a set for coding purposes. And so they have added 

15 that. And this all occurred around the first of 

16 October when nobody had any money from Department 

17 of Energy headquarters. They've gotten the money 

18 now. They had to submit a request.

19 They have started coding that 

20 information. And the expected completion of that 

21 additional coding is the end of January. However, 

22 it'll take another month to get it into the system 

23 and QA'd so make sure everything made it. And 
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1 then they can restart that process.

2 So the bad news is that they started 

3 this and identified a very large set of the 

4 temporary badge reports that they had not coded. 

5 But the good news is they're correcting it.

6 I apologized for the delay to Phil, 

7 giving him an update on this. But I didn't get 

8 a date of the completion of January and February 

9 until last Friday.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you. Well, oh -

11 -

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: I do have a quick --

13 back to Hanford. It was sent to your CDC email 

14 address, I don't know if you didn't get it or 

15 not, on November 29th.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. And Joe was 

17 copied as well as John Stiver, I believe. Yeah, 

18 all right.

19 MR. BARTON: Just one more thing on 

20 INL. Tim mentioned that there's going to be some 

21 more coding going on. That also affects the V&V 

22 activity we're going to put together for the 83.14 

23 period which was '74 to 1980.
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1 What I would suggest, that while that 

2 coding is going on, there is an interim report 

3 much like the proposal we put together. However, 

4 it's not going to be a complete report, obviously. 

5 Because all the coding hasn't been done. So we 

6 are not in a position to request those records 

7 yet.

8 And also, we came across an issue when 

9 we were trying to develop the V&V study. And not 

10 all of the temporary badge reports were captured 

11 by NIOSH either. So we'll have to discuss what 

12 we have there and what options we have for 

13 performing V&V activity during that 83.14 period. 

14 So I would expect to have an interim report, not 

15 a very long one, for the Work Group to consider 

16 early January.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: Just to go a little bit 

18 farther, I don't know if this is more for NIOSH, 

19 both of you, actually. Like, how would we know 

20 that they didn't miss more? This is a little bit 

21 worrisome when you tell me that there's lots of 

22 data that they didn't -- the data of most interest 

23 to us but beyond that --
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1 DR. TAULBEE: That's easy to explain. 

2 And you can actually look at the dates to see 

3 whether or not you've got them.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: I believe you.

5 DR. TAULBEE: So from that standpoint, 

6 there's a date on the top of each of those forms. 

7 How these were missed was we captured them earlier 

8 than the bulk of the other temporary badge 

9 reports. We captured these for CPP back when we 

10 were trying to address those issues back in April 

11 of 2014 or 2015, I guess it was.

12 And when DOE went to the coding, that 

13 was because we had captured them earlier there on 

14 a different directory. And so it didn't get 

15 included into that group. Now, the new reports 

16 that Bob's talking about, I'm actually not sure 

17 what that is.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

19 MR. BARTON: Just to clarify, and you 

20 might know a little bit more, it appears that the 

21 temporary badge reports that NIOSH captured 

22 during their site visits only covered 1975 and 

23 1976. So there's about a three or four-year 
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1 period where we don't have temporary badge 

2 reports that we could even look through to see if 

3 they're missing from the claim files.

4 And also, even for those years, it 

5 appears they were pulling mostly the positive 

6 entries. And it's the zero entries that we're 

7 really concerned with, because those are the ones 

8 that were left out of the claimant files that 

9 would really be used to determine any sort of SEC 

10 determination.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Why don't the two of you 

12 talk and sort of -- Tim looks puzzled. And we're 

13 not going -- not the best place here to involve 

14 all of us in explaining. Two of you can do it 

15 better.

16 Dr. Ziemer, if you're on the line, we 

17 have Lawrence Berkeley.

18 (No audible response.)

19 CHAIR MELIUS: Dr. Ziemer?

20 (No audible response.)

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. LANL?

22 MEMBER BEACH: We heard a little bit 

23 from LaVon. He sent a note out. Thank you for 
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1 that, LaVon. The Board Member, the last Board 

2 Member or, excuse me, the last Board meeting in 

3 August we heard from a lot of individuals that we 

4 decided that we would like to interview.

5 So I hear from LaVon that NIOSH is 

6 going to set those up for the early part of 

7 January. So hopefully we'll hear something about 

8 those interviews soon.

9 NIOSH expects to have a response to 

10 SC&A's addendum. The addendum went out in July 

11 of 2017. And that's expected in March. And NIOSH 

12 is also preparing a document. We asked them to 

13 identify all the petitioners' issues, get them 

14 into one format and give us a response on where 

15 they are with those petitioners' concerns. And 

16 I believe we're expecting to see that in March as 

17 LaVon indicated.

18 And then there's the documents that 

19 LaVon mentioned earlier that they just received, 

20 I think, a couple of days ago. And how soon do 

21 you think -- well, you'll send us a notice when 

22 they're ready for the Work Group to look at. So 

23 I expect we'll see that shortly.
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. The only 

2 clarification is we're going to start scheduling 

3 the interviews in January. I don't know if 

4 they'll occur in January, because we've got to 

5 get everybody's -- we've got to figure out Work 

6 Group members that want to attend. And everybody 

7 that's --

8 MEMBER BEACH: Got you. And one more 

9 question while you're up there. The county 

10 workers, it wasn't part of your note, is that 

11 something that's --

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: I got it on there. I 

13 didn't have it on -- I didn't send it in the note, 

14 but it is part of our --

15 MEMBER BEACH: It is part of what 

16 you're looking at?

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes.

18 MEMBER BEACH: Perfect, okay. Then I 

19 have nothing else on that except waiting to hear 

20 from NIOSH.

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Joe?

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, LaVon, this is 

23 Ziemer. I hit the disconnect button instead of 
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1 the mute button and got off the line. But you 

2 asked about Lawrence Berkeley.

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, okay. Go ahead.

4 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. So NIOSH issued 

5 an internal dosimetry dose reconstruction 

6 methodology document late this fall. And SC&A is 

7 currently reviewing that. And my understanding 

8 from the SC&A report is that they expect to have 

9 comments on this by March of 2018, at which point 

10 the Work Group can take a look at where we are on 

11 that.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Thank you. I 

13 think Joe was just about to brief us on that. But 

14 your timing was very good.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, yes. Maybe Joe 

16 has some additional updates on that.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: No, he says no. He was 

18 going to say the same thing you just did. So 

19 that's great.

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay. He's sticking 

21 to the March 2018 date then. Is that what you're 

22 saying?

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, yes.
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, sounds good.

2 CHAIR MELIUS: It's in the transcript.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, thanks.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you, Paul. Okay, 

5 metals and controls, Josie?

6 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. So you heard a 

7 little bit from LaVon. He keeps stealing 

8 everything. The Work Group was formed after the 

9 August Board meeting.

10 NIOSH, DCAS, and SC&A went out and 

11 conducted worker interviews in October, the 24th 

12 through the 26th. There were some questions from 

13 those interviews. SC&A had a technical call in 

14 November to clarify some of the information that 

15 they gathered during the interviews. And I think 

16 SC&A has what they needed now and knows where to 

17 find the information.

18 I'm expecting to schedule a Work Group 

19 meeting sometime next year. I'm going to be very 

20 vague on that, because I'm not sure when -- I 

21 believe SC&A's -- we're waiting for a response 

22 from SC&A before we can move forward. And I don't 

23 know what the timeline of that is yet. I was 
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1 going to ask John, thank you.

2 MR. STIVER: Yes, we're on schedule 

3 for a February 2018 delivery.

4 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. And then, while 

5 you're up there, there's going to be some more 

6 worker interviews. Do you know when that's going 

7 to get scheduled? I think it was just phone 

8 interviews.

9 MR. STIVER: Yes. John Mauro was kind 

10 of leading that up. I'll have to talk with him 

11 and get back with you. But it's coming up pretty 

12 soon.

13 MEMBER BEACH: Okay, thank you.

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Good, okay. Josie, 

15 Mound?

16 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. Okay, so we are 

17 complete with Mound except for the external TBD. 

18 We completed all the internals. And from what I 

19 understand on the DCAS' website, that TBD is 

20 expected in April. Once the TBD is out, of

21 course, we'll have a Work Group meeting and a 

22 follow-up.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Great. Brad, I don't 
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1 know if you're on. Nevada Test Site?

2 (No audible response.)

3 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. I think Brad has 

4 disappeared. And why don't we finish up here 

5 with -- go ahead.

6 DR. NETON: I think I can add a little 

7 information on the Nevada Test Site. We were --

8 if I remember, I think we were trying to close 

9 out the Site Profile review. And an issue arose 

10 about the sufficient accuracy of the 

11 reconstruction of the external doses. Oh no, I'm 

12 sorry, that's Pacific Proving Grounds. Wrong 

13 site.

14 Nevada Test Site had to do with -- No, 

15 not the beta dose. It had to do with --

16 MEMBER BEACH: Photon to photon?

17 DR. NETON: No. Beta gamma ratios, 

18 right. Yes. And I really can't add anything to 

19 that. I got that mixed up with the Pacific 

20 Proving Grounds, sorry.

21 MR. KATZ: John, I think you can add 

22 to it, though. Because SC&A has a deliverable 

23 waiting on --
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1 MR. STIVER: Yes, Lin Anspaugh has 

2 reviewed that document. And he has a -- we have 

3 a technical commentary that is in internal review 

4 now.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: See, Jim, be careful 

6 when you volunteer, right. But thanks for that. 

7 And let's finish up with Oak Ridge National 

8 Laboratory, X-10. Gen?

9 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes, am I off mute?

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, we can hear you.

11 MEMBER ROESSLER: Okay, good. Okay, 

12 well we already know that a report is expected 

13 out in a couple weeks and I think LaVon said it's 

14 250 pages.

15 This will be the report that they have 

16 been talking about on the exotic radionuclides 

17 and added to that will be two White Papers on 

18 iodine and plutonium-241 and these were 

19 operations that were actually at Y-12.

20 Dr. Hughes says the first draft will 

21 be looking at all the radionuclides from the 

22 isotope production facilities and comparing the 

23 years of production with internal monitoring 
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1 capability.

2 So we expect that very soon, and I 

3 will mention that Work Group consists of me as 

4 Chair, Bill Field, Loretta, Dr. Lemen, so 

5 somewhere along the line we'll need to begin our 

6 Work Group meetings.

7 Board Work Session

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Great, thank 

9 you, Gen. So we will come back to the other Work 

10 Groups and Subcommittees tomorrow during our work 

11 session, do that, and I want to move on now to 

12 Sandia.

13 For those of you that, I noticed a 

14 number people just came in, how we will work this 

15 is we will have a presentation from NIOSH, from 

16 LaVon Rutherford about the work on the SEC 

17 petition and an update from him.

18 Mainly when that is over we will --

19 and the Board Members had a chance to ask 

20 questions about his presentation then we'll go 

21 into the public comment period, and so we'll open 

22 that up.

23 It helps that if we ask you to, if you 
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1 wish to make a public comment to go to the, and 

2 sign up out front to do that because we work off 

3 that list, but it's not exclusive, so as we're 

4 going through public comments and we go through 

5 that list and you still have questions that came 

6 up or you want to add to or something we do let 

7 people comment on that.

8 And then just before the public 

9 comment period Ted Katz will give the 

10 instructions and so forth, from Ted. So let's 

11 start now with LaVon.

12 Sandia SEC Petition (1995-2011;

13 Albuquerque, NM) Update

14 MR. RUTHERFORD: Thank you, Chair. 

15 All right, I am going to give an update on SEC16 188. This is LaVon Rutherford. I am a Special 

17 Exposure Cohort Health Physics Team Leader.

18 I am not the lead for Sandia, Chuck 

19 Nelson is, but he was unable to make it to this 

20 meeting.

21 Okay. The petitioner petitioned for, 

22 and you'll catch a theme throughout this Class, 

23 all security inspectors, security clerks, 
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1 fireman, non-regular recurrent security 

2 inspectors, basically all security officers at 

3 Sandia from January 1, 1963, through May 21, 2011.

4 The petitioner's basis was a lack of 

5 monitoring data. We went back and we looked at 

6 it and we determined that that lack of monitoring 

7 data actually was an issue for all personnel, not 

8 just security inspectors and so on.

9 So the Class evaluated was all 

10 employees from January 1, 1963, through May 21, 

11 2011.

12 You may remember SEC-162, we actually 

13 added a Class at Sandia that, and it was from 

14 January 1, 1949, through December 31, 1962, and 

15 it was for all employees, and this had that same 

16 theme of a lack of monitoring data.

17 Okay, come on. Okay, under SEC-188, 

18 which is this petition, we actually added a Class 

19 in 2012. So they had petitioned from 1963 to 

20 2011 and we added from 1963 to 1994 because of a 

21 lack of available monitoring data.

22 So our addendum, which is scheduled to 

23 be completed in March of this year, is going to 
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1 look at internal monitoring program completeness, 

2 is this data available to us to reconstruct dose 

3 and sufficiency, and it's going to look at all 

4 workers from 1995 to May 21, 2011, with an 

5 emphasis on security guards because that was the, 

6 we got a lot of input from the security guards 

7 and our emphasis is going to be evaluating their 

8 potential exposure, whether the site took that 

9 into consideration, because we have a lack of 

10 monitoring data for security officers.

11 So we looked at internal and external 

12 assessments of the radiological program. We are 

13 reviewing again the monitoring data completeness, 

14 sufficiency, and compliance with 10 CFR 835, 

15 again recognizing the fact that if the site makes 

16 a determination that exposure would not exceed 

17 100 millirem they did not have to do personal 

18 monitoring, they would rely on area monitoring or 

19 BZ data.

20 So since our last designation we have 

21 actually had seven data capture efforts that 

22 included 20 trips to the site. We have captured 

23 761 relevant documents since the last SEC, this 
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1 includes now over 4,000 documents for Sandia.

2 We have conduced 17 interviews with 15 

3 people, and so we obviously interviewed a couple 

4 people twice. We also actually met again with 

5 the security guards last night at their union 

6 hall, a few of the security guards, and they 

7 reemphasized the same thing that they had 

8 previously told us.

9 On our data captures we have captured 

10 radiological documents, program, you know, 

11 radiation protection program, policies, 

12 procedures, internal memos.

13 Some of those internal memos 

14 associated with actual concerns by the security 

15 guards of their lack of monitoring in 1992/'93 

16 timeframe.

17 Radiation work permits, we've captured 

18 quite a sum of radiation work permits over the 

19 period. Radiological surveys, contamination 

20 surveys, incident reports, air monitoring data, 

21 internal dosimetry records, breathing zone 

22 monitoring, and DAC air tracking, which is 

23 basically your tracking of your breathing zone 
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1 data as it measures up against the DAC, or derived 

2 air concentration.

3 So we are looking at fitness of the 

4 monitoring program, data collection and 

5 availability, and program compliance with 10 CFR 

6 835.

7 Just as we did with LANL we pulled 

8 non-compliance tracking system reports. We are 

9 looking for 10 CFR 835 violations, site 

10 responses, and corrective actions.

11 We have also looked at the current 

12 supporting process, or current supporting system. 

13 We have had worker interviews by security 

14 workers, and, again, we talked with them again 

15 last night.

16 We talked to health physics personnel, 

17 we wanted to understand their program, how their 

18 program changed from prior to, from the 1994 

19 period on.

20 We have talked to dosimetry, including 

21 dosimetry staff members, industrial hygienists, 

22 database manager, how is the data contained now, 

23 how is it in the system, as well as a researcher.
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1 So in conclusion we have done all of 

2 our data capture efforts, everything, we have 

3 compiled it together. We have made one more 

4 request to the site for information.

5 They have indicated that they will 

6 have that to us in a time period enough for us to 

7 evaluate that data to complete our report in time 

8 for March.

9 However, that is a critical element of 

10 making our determination, and so, as I said, we 

11 have talked with Greg Lewis on this as well, we 

12 told him the importance of that, and we've talked 

13 with site personnel there as well.

14 So, again, we are on track for

15 completing the report in March and presenting 

16 that at the April meeting. Have questions?

17 CHAIR MELIUS: Questions from the 

18 Board Members?

19 (No audible response.)

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. I would just add 

21 for those in the audience maybe involved in Sandia 

22 is that what would happen if the report comes out 

23 in March, the Board is having its next meeting 
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1 April 11th and 12th, and so if the recommendation 

2 is for an SEC the general, the Board would review 

3 it at that time and it may very well recommend it 

4 at that point, but there is some questions that 

5 could hold it up a little bit longer.

6 If they do not recommend an SEC then 

7 we would put that report into review by our 

8 contractor most likely and then would bring it 

9 back to the Board for final action hopefully 

10 sometime within a few months.

11 So, again, it depends how big the 

12 report is and what the issues are and if more 

13 information is needed, but we should be able to 

14 -- we'll know in March and then by our April Board 

15 Meeting where it will be presented to us, and so 

16 there will be additional discussion at that point 

17 in time. Anybody else, any questions, comments 

18 from the Board?

19 MEMBER ROESSLER: Jim, this is Gen.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, go ahead.

21 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes, I would like to 

22 convey my compliments to the hotel sound group 

23 there. For those of us who have to participate 
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1 by phone it makes a huge difference to be able to 

2 hear everything and it has really been good this 

3 time.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. Thank you. Yes, 

5 they get the 2017 award or something for best 

6 telephone, maybe the best one of the decade, I 

7 don't know. It's good.

8 MR. KATZ: It's been great, but I hate 

9 for people to be counting their chickens before 

10 they hatch, so, please, hang on to that thought.

11 Public Comment

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes. So I think we can 

13 move into our public comment period if there is 

14 no more comments or questions. I'll go out and 

15 get the list from you.

16 MR. KATZ: Okay. So while Dr. Melius 

17 is getting the roster of who signed up just let 

18 me explain how this works.

19 For people giving public comment, 

20 whether they are in the room or on the line, it's 

21 very simple, but you may not all realize it but 

22 this meeting, the court reporter right here, 

23 James, these meetings are all transcribed and 
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1 published on the NIOSH website for the whole, for 

2 everyone in the public.

3 So everything you say gets captured 

4 and reported out, so if you have very private 

5 things to say about yourself those will get 

6 published, so you just should know that.

7 And also understand though on the 

8 other hand if you have very private things to say 

9 about other people who are not yourself, anybody, 

10 even family, that information does get redacted 

11 to protect their privacy because they are not 

12 here to tell us that they want this information 

13 out in the public domain. So that's just a basic 

14 understanding you should have in giving comments 

15 for us. Thanks.

16 CHAIR MELIUS: And to start with, I 

17 understand that the petitioner, Sandia petitioner 

18 is here, and wished to make comments now. Mr. 

19 Giron, is that -- Hi, and welcome. Thank you.

20 MR. GIRON: Hello, Chairman, and 

21 Members of this Board, thank you for allowing me 

22 to speak tonight.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.
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1 MR. GIRON: I spoke with you guys last 

2 year in December in Santa Fe and I am going to go 

3 ahead and just touch on some of the points that 

4 I did because I have some other things I have 

5 here.

6 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, go ahead.

7 MR. GIRON: Okay. Sandia SPOs were 

8 treated different than any other Sandians. The 

9 security policy and protection of SNL was given 

10 more priority than the safety and conditions of 

11 our workplace.

12 Sandia SPOs routinely patrolled all 

13 areas of the Sandia National Laboratory. Their 

14 areas contained hazards to include S&M, 

15 radioactive material, radioactive waste, 

16 radiological producing machines, hazardous 

17 chemicals, biological hazards.

18 SPOs manned temporary S&M projects, to 

19 include Tonopah Test Range, 6580 Hot Cell, New 

20 Cable Site, Old Cable Site, 6505, 6536, and due 

21 to the temporary nature of some of these projects 

22 there were no built in safety precautions.

23 SPOs manned permanent 24/7 posts in 
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1 radiological areas of Building 6597 and 6590. The 

2 areas that were supposed manned were not 

3 designated for a safe work environment for them, 

4 they were just incorporated in the current 

5 testing facilities.

6 SPOs, we could never leave these 

7 areas. We had to eat and use the restroom in 

8 these facilities just due to our security 

9 posture.

10 Radiological monitors routinely went 

11 off in these areas. When these alarms went off 

12 they did not evacuate. So that goes to what you 

13 just said about the fitness for the monitoring.

14 These alarms often went off during 

15 non-operational hours. During these hours there 

16 was no RAD techs on duty to assess these alarms. 

17 Testing personnel and reactor operators evacuated 

18 the areas immediately during the shots, SPOs 

19 remained in place.

20 SPOs were only given a TLD to wear 

21 with no procedures in place to make sure the TLDs 

22 were worn. SPOs were never given any internal 

23 monitoring and operating personnel for these 
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1 areas were given internal monitoring and other 

2 external monitoring devices to wear.

3 I have worked at Sandia for 30 years, 

4 I have been blessed, I had a good job, I have 

5 been able to provide for my family. I am not 

6 here to point fingers at my management or nothing 

7 like that.

8 I believe in the 30 years all of my 

9 managers there that made us work in these 

10 conditions I believe they had no ill will towards 

11 us.

12 They just didn't understand how to do 

13 the -- I mean all of a sudden we get 835 thrown 

14 at us and it reminds me of that little yellow 

15 rope that was going to save us from everything.

16 I was 20-something at the time and I 

17 didn't have any courage to I guess understand 

18 that, you know, this probably isn't a good idea, 

19 but you guys right now sit and you guys could 

20 have that courage to do something and go forward 

21 with.

22 There is people that call me still. I 

23 have a friend, I graduated high school with him, 
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1 he died, he was 40-something years old, lung 

2 cancer. Never smoked. He was a state champion 

3 wrestler.

4 His wife calls and I still have no 

5 answers. I believe, I mean I have worked at 

6 Sandia for a long time and I have worked on the 

7 labor side and I understand they are going to 

8 drag their feet when giving you this information, 

9 that's just the way it is.

10 835 was implemented and it showed, it 

11 told Sandia, it told you how we were going to do 

12 things, but that's not the way it happened on the 

13 shop floor.

14 I mean I wish I would have the courage 

15 to stand up and do the right thing. You guys can 

16 make a difference for all the people's lives right 

17 now.

18 I would like to submit this just for 

19 the record just so I can make sure you guys have 

20 it.

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, yes.

22 MR. GIRON: Last year in December I 

23 asked what else can we do on our side of the house 
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1 to get this thing going forward. That was 

2 December 2016, now we are December 2017 and we 

3 are still waiting for the same information. What 

4 else can we do at our end of the house?

5 CHAIR MELIUS: I don't think there is 

6 anything that you can do at your end. I think it 

7 is at our end, at NIOSH, the Department of Energy, 

8 and Sandia to make sure the information gets to 

9 us in time for the March release of the report 

10 and that will, we have had, according to LaVon we 

11 have assurances, reassurance that that will take 

12 place.

13 If it doesn't NIOSH will complain, we 

14 will complain, and we may just have to go ahead 

15 anyway. If the information is not available then, 

16 you know, we'll have to decide based on what 

17 information we have.

18 MR. GIRON: That's what I wanted to 

19 hear.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, yes. And, again, 

21 and then if -- I am not predicting this, but if 

22 there are parts of it that NIOSH says no on or 

23 doesn't believe that SEC is warranted then the 
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1 Board, with our contractor, we do a very thorough 

2 review and question that and we have overturned 

3 a lot of their recommendations, so it's not over 

4 then either.

5 But hopefully in March, by that time 

6 they'll have the information, the report will be 

7 out, and by April we can move ahead.

8 MR. GIRON: Thank you, Chairman and 

9 Members of the Board.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Okay, anybody 

11 else from Sandia that is in the audience that 

12 wishes to make comments? Yes? Just identify 

13 yourself when you get to the mic and --

14 MS. ALLEN: Hi. My name is Kelley 

15 Allen and I was the President of OPEIU Local 251 

16 for seven years, and I don't know if this pertains 

17 to what we are talking about, but I want to make 

18 you guys aware that for seven years I sat in 

19 Building 803 and I just found out that that 

20 building has been cleaned out and no one is 

21 allowed to be in it because it is being abated, 

22 basically gutted for all of the asbestos that was 

23 in it and Sandia never notified me of anything, 
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1 they never said, oh, gee, sorry, or, you know, 

2 you shouldn't have been in there, or you need to 

3 be aware, or anything.

4 I found out from, you know, coworkers 

5 that 803 has been deemed uninhabitable and I sat 

6 there for seven years while I was at Sandia, so 

7 I just wanted to make that comment.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you. This 

9 program doesn't cover the asbestos but the other 

10 Department of Labor program does cover asbestos11 related diseases and so forth.

12 MS. ALLEN: Okay.

13 CHAIR MELIUS: And I know they have a 

14 separate Advisory Board and they are addressing 

15 the issues with asbestos right now.

16 MS. ALLEN: Okay.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: And if you could give 

18 me your name and information I can forward it to 

19 that Board for --

20 MS. ALLEN: Okay. I signed in, so --

21 CHAIR MELIUS: You signed in?

22 MS. ALLEN: Yes.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, I've got your --
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1 MS. ALLEN: I don't know if I am on 

2 the public comment sheet or the regular sign-in, 

3 Kelley Allen was my name.

4 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, Kelley Allen. 

5 And do you have an email or something?

6 MS. ALLEN: I do.

7 CHAIR MELIUS: Just give it to 

8 outside, whoever is sitting at the table out 

9 there, that would be helpful.

10 MS. ALLEN: Okay. Thank you.

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Or give it to Stu. And 

12 the reason I bring that up is just that the 

13 asbestos issue, they are trying to decide a cutoff 

14 date and so I want to make sure that they have 

15 the information on an issue like that.

16 Anybody else related to Sandia in 

17 terms of making public comments?

18 (No audible response.)

19 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. And then Andrew 

20 you are here?

21 MR. EVASKOVICH: Thank you, Dr. Melius 

22 and Board Members. My name is Andrew Evaskovich. 

23 I am the Petitioner for LANL and I have some 
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1 comments concerning post-'95 and gross alpha 

2 assessment.

3 The Department of Labor issued an 

4 EEOICPA Circular Number 15-06, December 17 of 

5 2014, and it concerned post-1995 occupational 

6 toxic exposure guidance.

7 Basically they said that post-'95 

8 would be considered, that it would be considered 

9 in compliance and they rescinded this circular 

10 using Circular Number 17-04, February 2, 2017, 

11 and that was under the recommendation of the other 

12 Advisory Board, the Advisory Board on Toxic 

13 Substance and Workers Health.

14 Now to the response to a White Paper, 

15 Method to Assess Internal Dose Using Gross Alpha, 

16 Beta, and Gamma Bioassay and Air Monitoring at 

17 the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

18 I was sent this Paper by Josh Kinman 

19 so I am assuming it is going to be referenced as 

20 far as LANL goes. Before the advent of whole 

21 body counting radiation protection policy for 

22 mixed fission products was open to the collection 

23 of bioassay samples for gross beta and assigned 
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1 a dose to the most limiting radionuclide.

2 For this reason bioassay results for 

3 our spectrum of radionuclides from this source 

4 term are not expected. From the RCT study guide 

5 discussing air sampling silicon semiconductor 

6 detectors are used to obtain good energy 

7 resolution but the resolution is limited by the 

8 energy loss of alpha particles emerging from the 

9 filter.

10 Alphas emitted by the radionuclides 

11 embedded deeper in the filter have to pass through 

12 more filter material than those near the surface, 

13 hence they'll lose more energy.

14 This energy loss produces a long tail 

15 of low energy on the side of the peak. The EPA 

16 issued a guidance on -- let's see. The evaluation 

17 of gross alpha and uranium measurements for MCL 

18 compliance.

19 To understand why GAA of some samples 

20 can change substantially with time one must know 

21 what the radiological composition of the sample 

22 residue is at the time that the sample is prepared 

23 and how the activities of the radionuclides 
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1 evolve with time.

2 In this effort it is necessary to 

3 consider the three important points in time. One, 

4 the sample collection time, two, the sample 

5 preparation time, which is the time at which the 

6 residue is heated over a flame and radon is 

7 quantitatively lost, and, three, the sample 

8 analysis time, at which time the alpha particle 

9 emission rate of the residue is measured with a 

10 gas proportional counter.

11 And further it goes on, it can be 

12 difficult to accurately determine the 

13 efficiencies and actual sample residues. First, 

14 geometries of such residues are highly variable 

15 and difficult to characterize which would cause 

16 the uncertainties in the efficiencies to be 

17 unacceptably large.

18 Second, the radionuclide of interest 

19 is often part of the decay chain. Where it is 

20 apparent in a series of its progeny it would be 

21 difficult to measure the efficiency for one 

22 radionuclide when there are many present 

23 simultaneously.
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1 For larger numbers of radioactive 

2 atoms the number of possible outcomes increases 

3 and the number of counts detected increases. If 

4 one had two samples that were identical in every 

5 aspect, or respect, if one were to count both 

6 samples for equal periods of time, the two count 

7 totals would usually differ, sometimes 

8 significantly.

9 The degree of uniformity of one radial 

10 distribution may depend on a particular analyst's 

11 technique and may vary from one analyst to 

12 another.

13 There is no guarantee that the sample 

14 residue is homogeneous or that an alpha emitter 

15 is homogeneously distributed throughout the 

16 sample residue.

17 And from the Handbook of Radioactivity 

18 Analysis by Michael F. L'Annunziata, systems 

19 intended to detect airborne releases by the use 

20 of air samplers introduce complex techniques, if 

21 early warning is required, because of the 

22 presence of natural decay products of radon and 

23 thoron.
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1 However, if time can be allowed for 

2 these to decay, a simple measurement of gross 

3 alpha- or gross beta-activity will indicate 

4 whether conditions are seriously abnormal, 

5 although it must be remembered that gross 

6 activity results cannot be interpreted in terms 

7 of hazard to man.

8 And finally, the gross activity method 

9 is considered to be a screening activity at best. 

10 For example, Oural et al (1988) have shown that 

11 gross-alpha activity can underestimate actual 

12 activity because of partial volatilization of 

13 radon, short-lived radon daughters and polonium 

14 during the evaporation on the planchet.

15 So basically my argument is by using 

16 the gross alpha, beta, and gamma assessments in 

17 order to determine dose, will not work. And those 

18 are my comments. Thank you.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Thank you, 

20 Andrew. We'll ask NIOSH to respond to that 

21 comment.

22 (Off microphone comments)

23 MR. RUTHERFORD: I want to respond 
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1 only in that we have no intentions of using that 

2 Lawrence Berkeley National Lab White Paper. I am 

3 not sure why Andrew got it in that situation, but 

4 --

5 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. I noticed a few 

6 more people coming in. Is there anybody else 

7 that wishes to speak regarding the New Mexico 

8 sites? If not we're going to move on to probably 

9 some other sites.

10 (No audible answer)

11 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Anybody else 

12 sign up out there?

13 (Off microphone comment)

14 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. I am a little 

15 confused. D'Lanie Blaze, aren't you going to 

16 speak tomorrow for the petition presentation?

17 MS. BLAZE: Yes.

18 CHAIR MELIUS: So what's --

19 MS. BLAZE: This is about something 

20 else.

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

22 MS. BLAZE: Thank you, Dr. Melius and 

23 the Advisory Board. I am D'Lanie Blaze of Core 
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1 Advocacy for Nuclear and Aerospace Workers, 

2 representing Santa Susana Field Laboratories and 

3 its associated sites.

4 There are two topics that I will 

5 address today. Over a decade ago the World Health 

6 Organization and the American and European 

7 Lymphoma Classification Schemes accepted that 

8 chronic lymphocytic leukemia is a radiogenic 

9 cancer, analogous with small lymphocytic 

10 lymphoma, SLL.

11 The global scientific and medical 

12 community acknowledged that chronic lymphocytic 

13 leukemia, or CLL, is not only a disease that is 

14 caused by exposure to ionizing radiation, but 

15 that it's the same as SLL.

16 So both conditions were reclassified 

17 and became referenced singularly as CLL/SLL. 

18 That reclassification was acknowledged by the 

19 Department of Labor even back in 2008 when they 

20 were denying a claimant based on his diagnosis 

21 with CLL.

22 As we are aware SLL has resided on the 

23 list of specified cancers recognized as a 
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1 radiogenic cancer since the beginning, but those 

2 suffering from CLL were summarily disqualified 

3 from EEOICPA based on nothing more than a 

4 consonant in their medical record.

5 In 2011, a good ten years behind 

6 relevant science, the Department of Labor 

7 acknowledged that CLL can be caused by exposure 

8 to ionizing radiation, but it still has not been 

9 added to the list and those with CLL must undergo 

10 dose reconstruction while those with SLL qualify 

11 for the SEC.

12 NIOSH claimed that more organ-specific 

13 dose reconstruction would be required before it 

14 could acknowledge the findings of the global 

15 scientific community and reconcile CLL's addition 

16 to the list.

17 It has been about seven years. 20 CFR 

18 30.5 (dd)(6) defines a specified cancer as quote, 

19 the physiological condition or conditions that 

20 are recognized by the National Cancer Institute 

21 under those names or nomenclature or under any 

22 previously accepted or commonly used name or 

23 nomenclature, end quote.
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1 NCI defines the condition as a 

2 singular disease referring to it as chronic 

3 lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphoma, 

4 and further specifies, quote, chronic lymphocytic 

5 leukemia and small lymphocytic lymphoma are the 

6 same disease. CLL/SLL is a type of non-Hodgkin's 

7 lymphoma that is also called CLL/SLL.

8 Pursuant to 20 CFR 30.5 (dd)(6) I 

9 respectfully request an update to the list of 

10 specified cancers to include CLL alongside SLL 

11 reflective of the accepted nomenclature and the 

12 statute.

13 The second topic pertains to Santa 

14 Susana's SEC-156 from 1959 to '64. Upon its 

15 initiation NIOSH saw the need to initiate SEC-168 

16 for De Soto Facility to cover the same time 

17 period.

18 That decision was based on Santa 

19 Susana and De Soto's shared contractor operations 

20 and employees, as NIOSH recognized that both 

21 facilities jointly participated in concert and in 

22 support of the same Department of Energy programs 

23 resulting in shared work processes, poorly 
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1 documented worker rotation between the sites, 

2 shared materials and handling practices, the same 

3 health physics oversight program and records 

4 keeping procedures, and ultimately the same data 

5 limitations in dose reconstruction.

6 NIOSH relies on the same Site Profile 

7 and Technical Basis Documents, or TBDs, to 

8 conduct dose reconstruction for workers at both 

9 sites. Excuse me one moment.

10 (Off the record comments)

11 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: De Soto site and 

12 which site?

13 MS. BLAZE: I'm sorry?

14 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: De Soto site and 

15 which?

16 MS. BLAZE: Santa Susana Area 4.

17 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

18 MS. BLAZE: So predictably, when NIOSH 

19 initiated SEC-234 for Santa Susana to cover 1988 

20 many wondered why a similar Class was not 

21 initiated for the De Soto Facility.

22 In response to my request for 

23 clarification NIOSH confirmed that Santa Susana 
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1 and De Soto Facility, quote, really represent a 

2 single entity when it comes to operating 

3 contractor and employment, end quote, citing all 

4 the similarities that I just went over.

5 But NIOSH specified that SEC-234 had 

6 been initiated at Santa Susana based on an 

7 inability to reconstruct dose for americium and 

8 thorium and NIOSH stated that it decided there 

9 would be no need for a similar SEC at De Soto 

10 Facility because De Soto Facility did not use 

11 americium or thorium.

12 NIOSH TBD-4, ETEC's Occupational 

13 Environmental Dose, considered to be part of the 

14 Site Profile and used in dose reconstruction for 

15 Santa Susana and De Soto confirms the presence of 

16 americium and thorium in stack effluent between 

17 1955 and 1999 at both sites.

18 Since NIOSH has not demonstrated that 

19 it can reconstruct dose for americium and thorium 

20 after 1988, there are concerns about Santa Susana 

21 site remediation workers that are likely to 

22 encounter these materials during the remediation 

23 period, but, further, there is clearly a need to 
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1 more closely examine the operations of the De 

2 Soto Facility.

3 The ORAU internal coworker dosimetry 

4 data for Santa Susana Area IV and De Soto Facility 

5 in 2014 specifically describes thorium grinding 

6 processes at De Soto Facility Building 001 in 

7 1979 and it includes a citation to historical 

8 facility documentation confirming that process.

9 Further, in 1999 the Boeing Company's 

10 radiological survey of De Soto Building 104 

11 confirmed the presence of thorium products. So 

12 this information certainly prompted a deeper look 

13 into the site's history beginning with the 

14 contractor special nuclear materials licenses 

15 issued by the Atomic Energy Commission and later 

16 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

17 North American Aviation and its 

18 corporate successors maintained current licenses 

19 that specified the storage and use of special 

20 nuclear materials, including americium and 

21 thorium at De Soto Facility and at Area 4.

22 Considered to be headquarters, the De 

23 Soto Facility received the shipments of the 
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1 special nuclear materials and stored them at the 

2 Building 1 SS vault prior to transporting them to 

3 Santa Susana Area 4, Building 64, Special Nuclear 

4 Materials Storage Facility.

5 Rockwell International renewed these 

6 licenses in 1995 and modified them to include the 

7 D&D and site remediation activities at both De 

8 Soto and Santa Susana.

9 NIOSH is in possession of the Boeing 

10 incident report database and De Soto Facility 

11 logbook, both of which contain detailed reports 

12 that document incidents with and the use of 

13 storage of americium and thorium at De Soto 

14 Facility well into the site remediation period 

15 and chronicle routine shipments to and from Santa 

16 Susana's Building 64.

17 So considering the potential for 

18 cross-contamination of locations in personnel a 

19 look at Santa Susana's Building 64 shows that it 

20 was built to handle, store and repackage 

21 fissionable material and special nuclear 

22 materials, including normal and depleted uranium, 

23 plutonium, thorium and U-233.
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1 It housed special fuel casks and 

2 radioactive waste that was generated by all DOE 

3 Area 4 programs and routinely transferred spent 

4 sodium reactor experiment, or SRE, 

5 uranium/thorium fuel to De Soto Facility where 

6 the uranium/thorium elements were extracted.

7 In 1988 Rockwell surveyed Building 64 

8 at Area 4 and found it to be contaminated with 

9 uranium and thorium thought to have been 

10 generated by dust resulting from the handling of 

11 bare metallic pieces.

12 The De Soto Facility also maintained 

13 dedicated areas for fuel fabrication and analysis 

14 of spent fuel associated with the SNAP program. 

15 In 2009 EPA's radiological study of Santa Susana 

16 Area 4 identified americium and thorium to be 

17 among the radionuclides of concern at every 

18 location associated with SNAP operations.

19 EPA also identified those materials at 

20 approximately 60 Area 4 locations, the majority 

21 of which shared processes, materials and 

22 employees with De Soto Facility, including D&D 

23 and site remediation workers, well after 1988, 
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1 and most of those locations are not included in 

2 the Site Profile.

3 Historical documentation shows that, 

4 in the 1990s, Santa Susana and De Soto Facility 

5 were jointly involved in the Transuranic 

6 Management through Pyropartitioning Program.

7 The TBDs list this process as pro8 partitioning and that is incorrect, it is 

9 pyropartitioning program, otherwise known as the 

10 TRUMP-S, which is quite unfortunate.

11 Not only is it clear that transuranic 

12 materials were taken to De Soto Facility, but 

13 questions are now raised about the integrity of 

14 environmental data that has been provided to 

15 NIOSH which has been based on the premise that no 

16 incineration of radioactive waste ever occurred 

17 at Santa Susana.

18 TRUMP-S and the Molten Salt Coal 

19 Gasification programs were in part based on 

20 researching combustion of transuranic materials 

21 as a potential waste disposal method.

22 Now the combustion of transuranic 

23 waste at Santa Susana and the presence of 
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1 transuranic materials at De Soto Facility call 

2 into question the current Site Profile and all 

3 TBDs as well as NIOSH's assertions about dose 

4 reconstruction accuracy.

5 The process, the program, the 

6 materials, the practices, the facilities, and the 

7 associated environmental data are all missing 

8 from the Site Profile. Records show that ETEC 

9 facilities --

10 CHAIR MELIUS: You need to wrap up in 

11 the next minute.

12 MS. BLAZE: Yes, sir. ETEC facilities 

13 involved in these processes existed at Area 1, 

14 Area 4 and De Soto. The former worker interview 

15 final report contains employees' consistent 

16 descriptions of shared processes, worker rotation 

17 between the sites for all years of site 

18 operations.

19 I respectfully submit a new SEC 

20 petition for De Soto Facility, 1965 to '95, along 

21 with the supporting documentation that I have 

22 just addressed, and I also request that all 

23 evidence submitted for Santa Susana and its 
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1 related sites is considered as relevant to all 

2 pending SEC petitions based on the established 

3 contractor and operational relationship between 

4 the sites.

5 As NIOSH has stated, these sites 

6 represent a single entity when it comes to 

7 operations and employment. I thank you for your 

8 time and your review of the information.

9 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Thank you. I 

10 don't think we have anyone else signed up.

11 Do we have anybody on the phone who 

12 wishes to make public comments?

13 MS. CARROLL: I would like to make a 

14 comment.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: Please identify 

16 yourself.

17 MS. CARROLL: My name is Stephanie 

18 Carroll. I am a professional authorized for 

19 claimants under EEOICPA and can be reached at 

20 atomicworkeradvocacy@gmail.com. I don't mind if 

21 that is in the record.

22 I have three concerns that I would 

23 like to address today, the first being regarding 
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1 my comments on the Savannah River SEC. I 

2 represent the lead scientist of the Critical Mass 

3 Lab at Rocky Flats.

4 During the interviews by NIOSH for the 

5 Rocky Flats SEC, the lead scientist site expert 

6 insisted that neutron flux and fission product 

7 count was impossible to determine for the reactor 

8 fuel later sent -- transferred to the Savannah 

9 River Site.

10 The evaluation by the Board until the 

11 time of the vote to deny the SEC for Rocky Flats 

12 concentrated the evaluation on the Pu production 

13 time period which ended in 1989.

14 In 1995/1996 -- we still aren't sure 

15 of the exact time, but it was in one of those two 

16 years or both -- reactor fuel from the tank farm 

17 at the Critical Mass Lab was sent to the Savannah 

18 River Site.

19 FL-10s were used for transport and a 

20 variance was needed to use these out-of-date 

21 containers to deliver the reactor fuel. If the 

22 lead scientist to this day contends that he cannot 

23 characterize the fuel, then we should assume it 
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1 was not well characterized at the time of 

2 packaging, processing, transporting or disposal.

3 During the Board review of the Rocky 

4 Flats petition, LaVon Rutherford committed to 

5 reviewing the waste characterization of the 

6 transferred Critical Mass Lab reactor fuel to 

7 Savannah River to try to determine neutron flux 

8 and fission products.

9 The offer by NIOSH to review the 

10 record at Savannah River was never followed up on 

11 and the vote to close the CML issues was done and 

12 the SEC expansion was denied.

13 I would suggest to the petitioner of 

14 the Savannah River SEC that they request NIOSH to 

15 follow through with the offer to characterize the 

16 fuel that was delivered in out-of-date containers 

17 without proper characterization.

18 I assume that the material was not 

19 referred to as reactor fuel because it was not 

20 until the 2000s that DOE even admitted that there 

21 were four reactors onsite at Rocky Flats.

22 My second concern is with regards to 

23 the CATI that was discussed earlier today and the 
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1 claimant reports of incidents that were 

2 referenced earlier.

3 The Board questioned how the reported 

4 incidents are reflected in the dose 

5 reconstruction. The answer was it was done by 

6 taking information into account of the reported 

7 incident and searching personal dose with the 

8 assumption that all incidents are characterized 

9 by personal dose records.

10 Mark Griffon gave an example of a 

11 reported californium-242 incident. The CATI 

12 reported this incident, the worker did. 

13 Monitoring was searched and not found and the 

14 dose reconstruction added dose for californium15 242 to reflect the dose from the incident of this 

16 particular worker in his dose reconstruction, his 

17 or her.

18 It seems that this CATI should have 

19 led to a possible SEC issue, being exposure to 

20 californium-242 without any monitoring. Was this 

21 ever done? If not, why wasn't it done and can we 

22 get that done?

23 I think that is something that the 
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1 Board should look into is this exposure to 

2 californium.

3 And then one last very small comment, 

4 concern over the extensive -- I have concern over 

5 the extensive conversation today by the Board on 

6 the number of potential claims for the Ames Lab 

7 SEC.

8 I believe that the Board was not 

9 mandated nor did Congress intend for the Board to 

10 consider number of claimants in their evaluation 

11 of the SEC petitions.

12 Considering that the petitioners are 

13 held to ten-minute presentations any valuable 

14 time spent on this issue should be reevaluated. 

15 I thank you for your accepting my comments and 

16 thank you very much for your work.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Thank you. 

18 Anybody else on the phone that wishes to make 

19 public comments?

20 MS. HAND: Yes, this is Donna Hand.

21 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Go ahead, Donna.

22 MS. HAND: Okay. I am sure you all 

23 remember your description of your duties is to 
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1 develop the guidelines and the methods and the 

2 scientific validity and quality of the dose 

3 reconstruction as well as SEC members.

4 The professional judgments that keep 

5 on coming up must be within the four corners of 

6 the statute and the regulations. So, yes, you 

7 have discretion to make professional judgments 

8 but you still have to be inside that statute and 

9 the regulations.

10 The methodology is in 42 CFR 82 and 

11 when NIOSH, I think, had said we're changing our 

12 methodology, you cannot change the methodology 

13 without putting it into a notice and comments. 

14 You could change your application of your 

15 methodology but you can't change the methodology.

16 Guidelines are in 42 CFR 81. You can 

17 change the application of your guidelines but you 

18 cannot change the guidelines again without public 

19 comments, notice and comments.

20 When they do the internal dose they 

21 only do the inhalation and ingestion. They forget 

22 the skin dose, the skin absorption dose, and 

23 that's usually 50 percent of the inhalation dose, 
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1 specifically with tritium, everybody, and that's 

2 not calculated at all for everybody, they leave 

3 that out completely.

4 You all also have been sent an email 

5 requesting the scientific validation of the metal 

6 tritides dose and the sufficiency of data for 

7 internal dose.

8 That was sent to the Board on December 

9 the 12th and requesting their answers, because 

10 you are supposed to be uniformed that can the 

11 Board state with scientific validity that metal 

12 tritides dose can be sufficiently accurate for 

13 the internal dose to the workers by using the 

14 tritium urine bioassay alone.

15 And the reason why this question is to 

16 the Board is because a lot of sites do have metal 

17 tritides and they are saying that they can 

18 calculate with the tritium bioassay whenever DOE 

19 and the other scientist says he cannot use that 

20 to calculate.

21 Again, thank you for your time and the 

22 other issues will be brought as per email. Thank 

23 you.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: Thank you. Anybody 

2 else on the telephone who wishes to make public 

3 comment?

4 (No response.)

5 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Anybody else in 

6 the audience that wishes to make public comment?

7 (No response.)

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay. Identify 

9 yourself, please.

10 MR. IRWIN: Hi, I am Peter Irwin. I 

11 am with Sandia.

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

13 MR. IRWIN: Based on earlier comments 

14 we are confused as to what exactly they are 

15 waiting on, which paperwork, and we are 

16 requesting in writing the specifics of what 

17 paperwork they are waiting on Sandia to provide.

18 We have heard since this petition was 

19 first put out that Sandia has paperwork that they 

20 could maybe extend the petition or stop it there, 

21 and to this day we still do not know what 

22 paperwork they are waiting on.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: Jim Neton, LaVon is out 
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1 of the room, I don't --

2 (Off-microphone comment)

3 MR. IRWIN: But we would like it in 

4 writing.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, okay, I know. I'm 

6 trying to give you both, so --

7 (Off microphone comment)

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay, we will get it in 

9 writing to you, but if LaVon comes back in, I 

10 don't know if there are security issues regarding 

11 the data. I don't want to say anything directly. 

12 Would somebody else like to speak?

13 MS. JACQUEZ-ORTIZ: Dr. Melius and 

14 Members of the Board, the congressional offices 

15 here in New Mexico want to ensure that we are 

16 supporting the petitioners to the extent possible 

17 and also as appropriate.

18 We are also confused as to the delay 

19 on this petition. Obviously, the claimants here 

20 have waited a long time, they are very eager for 

21 some decision, some resolution.

22 If we were to initiate a communication 

23 to the agencies, I think it is unclear as to what 
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1 really is holding this up, and so that clarity I 

2 think would be helpful not only to the petitioners 

3 but to the advocates, especially the 

4 congressional offices.

5 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, I think we will, 

6 we can get that to you.

7 MS. JACQUEZ-ORTIZ: Thank you.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: I just don't know the 

9 specifics myself and it wasn't mentioned, and 

10 LaVon is not here. Is --

11 (Off-mic comment.)

12 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes, go get him. He 

13 was out talking to D'Lanie.

14 MALE PARTICIPANT: Yes.

15 CHAIR MELIUS: If you can just wait a 

16 second, we'll see if we can find LaVon.

17 MEMBER BEACH: Dr. Lemen is the Chair 

18 of that Work Group. I don't know if he would 

19 know.

20 CHAIR MELIUS: He wouldn't. So did 

21 Jim fill you in on the request?

22 MR. RUTHERFORD: He briefly did. What 

23 information we are waiting for for Sandia, is 
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1 that correct?

2 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

3 MR. RUTHERFORD: We are waiting for 

4 updated dosimetry information. They provided us 

5 electronic database in the past; we want an 

6 updated one.

7 We're looking to see if that updated 

8 information includes specific internal data that 

9 we found.

10 CHAIR MELIUS: Okay.

11 MR. RUTHERFORD: And it is critical 

12 because it's the data that we would get from the 

13 Department of Energy. We are ensuring that we 

14 are getting from DOE all the internal data for 

15 dose reconstruction, you know, because we had 

16 indications we weren't getting it in the past.

17 CHAIR MELIUS: Right.

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay.

19 CHAIR MELIUS: So and then I think the 

20 request is -- can we put that in writing, Stu, to 

21 them?

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes.

23 CHAIR MELIUS: So we'll have that on 
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1 record. And as I said earlier, and I think LaVon 

2 has said also, if there is some delay beyond 

3 what's been promised or whatever you want to call 

4 it, assured we will let everybody know also.

5 Any other, anybody else wish to make 

6 public comment?

7 (No response.)

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Ted, you have one --

9 MR. KATZ: Do you want to do it or you 

10 want me to do it?

11 (Off-microphone comments.)

12 MR. KATZ: So I have a comment in 

13 writing from Dr. McKeel that he asked that I read 

14 for him into the record, and he has an additional 

15 couple of spreadsheets related to this public 

16 comment which will be appended to the transcript 

17 as he has requested, as written submissions.

18 Good evening. I am Dr. McKeel, SEC 

19 co-petitioner for the General Steel Industries 

20 and Dow Chemical Illinois and Texas City 

21 Chemicals AWE sites.

22 My comments address NIOSH PER-80 Rev 

23 0 issued by NIOSH on 08/30/2017. NIOSH redacted 
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1 dose reconstruction development reports based on 

2 Appendix BB Revs 2 and 3 for 71 GSI cases 

3 indicated six cases had PER-80 PoCs, that's 

4 Probability of Causation, greater than 50 

5 percent, the compensation limit for part B.

6 My analysis confirmed that six GSI 

7 PER-80 cases had probably-compensable PER PoCs of 

8 50.8 percent, 53.09 percent, a GSI and Dow dual 

9 employee, 54.77 percent, 70.93 percent, 73.81 

10 percent and 81.91 percent.

11 The dose reconstruction development 

12 report process has not been described by DCAS on 

13 the NIOSH website to my knowledge. I obtained 

14 these 71 DRDR by a CDC FOIA request and created 

15 a spreadsheet that DFO Ted Katz circulated to all 

16 Board and TBD-6000 Work Group members this past 

17 week.

18 The fact that 12 cases were GSI and 

19 Dow in Illinois dual employees was a major 

20 impetus. The reason is that, to my knowledge, 

21 this Board, DCAS, SC&A and ORAU have never 

22 explicitly outlined any procedures for assessing 

23 claims and cases with dual employment at EEOICPA-
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1 covered sites and the dose-reconstruction 

2 complexity that fact introduces.

3 Of the 12 dual GSI plus Dow Illinois 

4 dual employment cases the PER-80 PoC percentage

5 for one was 53.09 percent, an increase from 37.2 

6 percent.

7 Nine other GSI-Dow dual employment 

8 cases fell short of 50 percent under PER-80 even 

9 though the average PoC increased from 24.5 

10 percent pre-PER-80 to 35.74 percent post-PER 

11 based on PER-80.

12 The remaining two GSI dual employment 

13 cases actually suffered losses of PER PoCs: 31.82 

14 percent pre-PER loss to PER-80 equals 21.37 

15 percent for one, and a loss from pre-PER 35.5 

16 percent to a major PER-80 loss equal to 7.99 

17 percent for another.

18 The redaction of all personal 

19 identifying information, including some doses and 

20 job titles and years worked, made further 

21 analysis of why these DRDR pre- and post-PER-80 

22 values changed as they did.

23 The DRDR reports failed to state which 
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1 Appendix C revision was used for Dow total dose

2 and PoC calculations. Clearly, these unredacted 

3 data need to be examined by SC&A and/or ORAU to 

4 assess the accuracy and validity of the NIOSH 

5 DRDR reports, all of which were formulated by a 

6 single DCAS individual.

7 Six additional GSI employees 

8 experienced losses of PER-80 PoC percentages 

9 compared to pre-PER PoCs. The term, quote, 

10 internal and external doses were prorated, 

11 unquote, was introduced in many of the 71 PER-80 

12 DRDR reports.

13 NIOSH needs to define what this 

14 prorated terminology indicates in terms of 

15 specific methodology used to make this 

16 determination.

17 Finally, and extremely important, 15 

18 PER-80 cases had PER PoCs that fell between 40 

19 percent and 49.99 percent. My strong 

20 recommendation is that each of these cases merits

21 individual methodologic analysis by SC&A.

22 The present scheme of making thousands 

23 of iterations of IREP is scientifically 
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1 inadequate to this necessary data analysis and 

2 quality control work of the ABRWH.

3 Cases 52, 68 and 70 are particularly 

4 pertinent in this regard, as follows, in Case 52, 

5 the pre-PER PoC was 49.02 percent, just under the 

6 compensation limit.

7 It is concerning the PER-80 PoC 

8 percentage only increased to 49.52 percent. The 

9 average pre/post PER-80 PoC increase was from 

10 18.56 percent to 45.44 percent for these 15 cases, 

11 including Case 52.

12 In Case 68, the pre-PER PoC of 46.75 

13 percent dropped slightly to a PER-80 PoC of 45.65 

14 percent, again a paradoxical PoC loss.

15 In Case 70 the pre-PoC loss was 49.33 

16 percent, extremely close to the compensation 

17 limit and PER-80 DRDR PoC value decreased to 44.27 

18 percent.

19 Very clearly, Quality Assurance and 

20 being fair to claimants, that is claimant21 favorability, considerations demand that SC&A 

22 conduct a thorough analysis, including preferably 

23 a blind review, of at least three of these GSI 
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1 cases using Appendix BB Rev 2/3 as primary DR 

2 guidance.

3 In conclusion, on Comment 1 the PER4 80 spreadsheet analyses I have just described is 

5 the third such detailed PER DRDR data analysis I 

6 have performed.

7 I also conducted similar analyses and 

8 reported the results to the Board for GSI PER-57, 

9 where 100 new cases were flagged with PoCs greater 

10 than 50 percent, and for Dow Madison Ill., PER11 58.

12 For all three PERs, I experienced 

13 great difficulty in getting information about 

14 SC&A, the TBD-6000 Work Group and the ABRWH 

15 Subcommittees being tasked to review my 

16 spreadsheet analyses of the DRDR reports obtained 

17 by the FOIA process in all the cases.

18 In the case of PER-80, I had to make 

19 five requests to the DFO, Board Chair, TBD-6000 

20 Chair and the Procedures Review Subcommittee 

21 Chair before the DFO informed me that SC&A had 

22 already been tasked by the Procedures Review 

23 Subcommittee.
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: The ten minutes are 

2 almost up.

3 MR. KATZ: Okay. I'll hurry. 

4 Subcommittee to request to obtain further 

5 information about the timing of the release of 

6 SC&A's review of PER-80 to the public is pending.

7 My analyses were limited in scope by 

8 the heavy redaction of the DRDR reports imposed 

9 by the CDC FOIA Office. I judged some of these 

10 redactions to be unnecessary according to the 

11 Privacy Act of 1974.

12 I should mention that all three DRDR 

13 I have examined from GSI and Dow sites and PERs 

14 57, 58, and 80 are the work product of a single 

15 person at DCAS.

16 Only one or two persons at SC&A have 

17 reviewed the GSI material. For that reason I 

18 believe PER-80 needs to be analyzed by different 

19 scientists at SC&A and DCAS under the auspices of 

20 the full ABRWH.

21 Let me see if I can -- okay. Continue?

22 CHAIR MELIUS: No.

23 MR. KATZ: Oh, yes, so let me just --
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1 CHAIR MELIUS: The Board has received 

2 all this.

3 MR. KATZ: Okay. Well, the Board has, 

4 this letter goes on, second comment, but the Board 

5 has this letter and the rest of the written 

6 comment can be included in writing in the 

7 transcript for the rest of the public.

8 CHAIR MELIUS: Yes.

9 MR. KATZ: Okay, that concludes that 

10 comment.

11 Adjourn 

12 CHAIR MELIUS: And I believe this 

13 concludes our public comment session.

14 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

15 went off the record at 6:27 p.m.)

16 The remainder of Dr. McKeel's public 

17 comment that was to be added in the transcript is 

18 as follows:

19 My second comment is brief. The SINEW 

20 Steering Committee and representatives from 

21 several Congressional offices, including then 

22 Illinois Senators Obama and Durbin, searched for 

23 information about truckload quantities of 
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1 magnesium-thorium, mag-thor, alloy plates from 

2 Dow Madison Illinois site to the U.S. DOE Rocky 

3 Flats Nuclear weapons plant, RFP, beginning in 

4 earnest in 2006.

5 See 46 pages of mag-thor affidavits 

6 under the Dow Illinois SEC Docket 113 of the NIOSH 

7 website www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/. Both the RF 3 

8 Work Group and DCAS and SC&A have searched for 

9 proof that RFP actually received and used the 

10 mag-thor alloy plates from Dow Chemical in 

11 Illinois.

12 More recently, the names of multiple, 

13 almost a dozen, RFP workers at the Building 440 

14 Mod Center and knowledgeable RFP shipping and 

15 materials records personnel who could be 

16 interviewed have been garnered by the efforts of 

17 the SEC co-petitioners at Dow in Illinois and RFP 

18 working in concert with RFP worker advocates.

19 We question why these new mag-thor 

20 information sources at RFP have not been 

21 interviewed. The results achieved to date from 

22 2006 by the Board and RF Work Group in learning 

23 about mag-thor activity at RFP have been minimal 
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1 and are not confirmatory of information the 

2 RF/Dow IL team has gathered.

3 Both co-petitioners believe that 

4 relevant RFP records were transferred from RFP 

5 following plant closure in 2006 to Los Alamos 

6 National Laboratory (LANL) here in New Mexico.

7 These records are now controlled by 

8 NNSA. I filed a FOIA request in 2013 with NNSA 

9 that yielded no, zero, responsive RFP records. I 

10 then appealed and was told that 127 out of 400 

11 RFP LANL boxes were examined.

12 NNSA said this was a "sufficient 

13 search" under FOIA rules. I strongly disagreed 

14 with NNSA because I believe all of the RFP records 

15 at LANL under NNSA's stewardship need to be 

16 searched.

17 The RFP SEC-192 co-petitioner wants to 

18 search the same RFP/LANLnnsa records for 

19 information beyond the mag-thor issue that may be 

20 pertinent to an administrative review related to 

21 SEC-192.

22 She was recently informed by DCAS that 

23 an index of the LANL RFP records had been created. 
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1 The Director of the U.S. DOE Office of Worker 

2 Screening and Compensation Support further 

3 informed her the total number of RFP records 

4 actually at LANL is 5,000, not 400 or 900 as I 

5 have been told.

6 This particular point needs to be 

7 clarified for the official record with solid 

8 written proof. Thank you for your attention. Dan 

9 McKeel.

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11 

12 

13 

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17