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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

+ + + + +

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

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77th MEETING

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WEDNESDAY

MAY 25, 2011

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

Central Daylight Time, in the Crowne Plaza St. 

Louis-Downtown, 200 North Fourth Street, St. 

Louis, MO, James M. Melius, Chairman, 

presiding.

PRESENT:

JAMES M. MELIUS, Chairman

HENRY ANDERSON, Member

JOSIE BEACH, Member

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member*

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Member

MARK GRIFFON, Member

RICHARD LEMEN, Member

JAMES E. LOCKEY

WANDA I. MUNN, Member
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PRESENT(continued):

ROBERT W. PRESLEY, Member

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member*

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

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor

AL-NABULSI, ISAF, DOE

ANDERSON, LOIS*

BURGOS, ZAIDA, NIOSH

DAVIES, LOIS*

ELLISON, CHRIS, DCAS

FESTER, THOMAS*

FITZGERALD, JOSEPH, SC&A

FOULDES, TOM*

FUORTES, LARS

GLOVER, SAM, DCAS

HINNEFELD, STU, DCAS

JOHNSON, MARY*

KINMAN, JOSH, DCAS

KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL

LEITON, RACHEL, DOE

LEWIS, GREG, DOE

LIN, JENNY, HHS

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A

McFEE, MATT, ORAU Team

NETON, JIM, DCAS

RABINOWITZ, RANDY

RAFKY, MICHAEL, HHS

ROLFES, MARK, DCAS

RUTHERFORD, LAVON, DCAS

STEINBERG, GARY, DOL

STIVER, JOHN, SC&A

TAULBEE, TIM, DCAS

TRIPLETT, TINA

VALERO, OSCAR* 

WADE, LEW, NIOSH Contractor

WEST, TONY

ZINK, BRIAN

*Participating via telephone
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

2 8:29 a.m.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good morning 

4 everybody, we'll get started this morning. 

5 And we'll start with the usual, general work 

6 from Ted here, announcements and so forth.

7 MR. KATZ: Right. Good morning 

8 and welcome everybody on the line and in the 

9 room, Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

10 Health. This is the 77th meeting, Day 2.

11 The first announcement to make, I 

12 think everyone in the room probably knows, but 

13 for people on the line, we have a schedule 

14 change today. We, if you see the Agenda, if 

15 you don't have the Agenda, it's on the web, on 

16 the NIOSH webpage under the Board and under 

17 the Meeting Section.

18 We had scheduled for Savannah 

19 River Site to be the first item on the Agenda 

20 at 8:30, but we've moved that to accommodate a 

21 Board Member who's coming in a little late 

22 this morning, to 11:00 a.m.
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1 And I believe we've gotten a hold 

2 of the petitioners on this. So, Savannah 

3 River will be 11:00 a.m., and in its place 

4 this morning we have a work session from 8:30 

5 to 9:30.

6 Let me also note, again, for 

7 people on the line, all of the presentations 

8 should be, for this meeting, should be on the 

9 web at this point. And they're also at that 

10 same Board, the Board's section of the DCAS 

11 web page, under Meetings.

12 Last thing, just to note, for 

13 people on the line again, is please mute your 

14 phone while you're listening. If you don't 

15 have a mute button, use *6.

16 And then if you were to address 

17 the group, you would press *6 again, to come 

18 off of mute. There is a public session today, 

19 it's at 5:30 this evening. And that covers 

20 the items for the meeting, thanks.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Do you want us 

22 to check on Board Members --
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1 MR. KATZ: Yes, roll call for 

2 Board Members. We have Members in the room I 

3 can see, but a number of Members are in other 

4 places. Let me just check and have you speak 

5 up. Dr. Ziemer, others who might be on the 

6 line?

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Paul Ziemer is 

8 here.

9 MR. KATZ: Any other Board Members 

10 on the line?

11 (No response.)

12 MR. KATZ: Very good.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And we are 

14 expecting Mark Griffon to be arriving a little 

15 bit later. He emailed me at 5:00 a.m. to get 

16 some information about the meeting. I didn't 

17 answer.

18 (Laughter.)

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: At least, not at 

20 5:00 a.m. What I thought we'd do this 

21 morning, up until time for the Sandia 

22 presentation, is we would go through our Work 
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1 Group reports and Subcommittee reports, at 

2 least, I think we can get most of them done. 

3 We do have a few Chairs that are missing so 

4 we'll have to skip over those.

5 And I think the first one is, on 

6 my list, is Brookhaven.

7 MEMBER BEACH: At this time 

8 there's no change from my last update, other 

9 than I believe that I reported at the big 

10 teleconference.

11 There is a Work Group meeting 

12 scheduled, half a day on July 7, for 

13 Brookhaven.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Fernald 

15 we've heard from. Hanford, we talked a little 

16 bit about, during the public comment period 

17 yesterday, and we will hear a little bit later 

18 this afternoon, about the NIOSH Evaluation of 

19 the most recent petition from Hanford.

20 Meanwhile, we've been working, 

21 SC&A has been working, there's been a number 

22 of changes in that, so we've sort of regrouped 
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1 and identifying sort of key issues going 

2 forward on that. We'll have to then figure 

3 out how to handle the new petition also, at 

4 some point, depending on how we handle that.

5 I know, Arjun, do you want to say 

6 a few words about this?

7 DR. MAKHIJANI: Thank you, Dr. 

8 Melius. Our direction from the Work Group has 

9 been to review the updated Site Profile from 

10 2010, of NIOSH from the remaining SEC period, 

11 because that's where the dose reconstruction 

12 method is defined.

13 So I've gone over the matrix for 

14 the issues that still need to be resolved and 

15 I'm preparing a report.

16 We've completed the evaluation of 

17 the completeness and adequacy of the data for 

18 various radionuclides. And so the report is 

19 rather long. And, as I mentioned yesterday, 

20 we've done the interviews for Building 324, 

21 and are evaluating that for the SEC period.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. And so we 
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1 would be expecting your report --

2 DR. MAKHIJANI: In early June, 

3 maybe at the end of the first --

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

5 DR. MAKHIJANI: In the first ten 

6 days of June we will send the report for the 

7 DOE for review. And maybe a Work Group 

8 meeting in July.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So, Members of 

10 that Work Group, if you take note and we will 

11 circulate some dates and set up a meeting 

12 sometime in July, for that one.

13 Thank you, Arjun, for that. 

14 Idaho, I know, Phil?

15 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: We are 

16 scheduled to meet --

17 MR. KATZ: Phil, your mic is not 

18 on.

19 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: We are 

20 scheduled to meet on June 21st, in Cincinnati 

21 for a Work Group session.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And are we 
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1 expecting all reports and updates and 

2 responses from NIOSH and so forth to be ready 

3 by then?

4 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. I 

6 couldn't quite tell from the schedule and so 

7 forth. Good, okay. Dr. Ziemer, Lawrence 

8 Berkeley.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Nothing to report 

10 on Lawrence Berkeley.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thanks, 

12 sorry to surprise you there. Linde, Gen?

13 MEMBER ROESSLER: We're scheduled 

14 for a Work Group meeting on July 7th. We're 

15 sharing the day with the Brookhaven Work 

16 Group. Linde will be meeting in the afternoon 

17 at 1:00, and we'll begin our deliberations on 

18 SEC Petition 154.

19 And I understand that SC&A will 

20 have their comments to us in time for that 

21 meeting.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you. 
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1 LANL we'll have to postpone until Mark gets 

2 here. Mound.

3 MEMBER BEACH: At this time there 

4 is no change for Mound, other than expected 

5 documents from NIOSH have been pushed back 

6 until I believe the May time frame.

7 So, as soon as we have those in 

8 hand, there's three outstanding reports we're 

9 waiting for. They're pretty encumbered, 

10 they're large reports. 

11 Once we have the reports we'll 

12 schedule a Work Group meeting. So hopefully 

13 before the August meeting.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. Pantex, 

15 Brad isn't here. I think Greg Lewis gave the 

16 update on that when we had some discussion at 

17 the time.

18 And someone correct me if I'm 

19 wrong, from the Work Group, but the, there are 

20 plans for both a meeting in Germantown to go 

21 over documents, as well as possibly a site 

22 visit, if I understood correctly, in early 
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1 June?

2 MR. LEWIS: Yes, this is Greg 

3 Lewis. There's a meeting scheduled for I 

4 think June 16th or 13th --

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

6 MR. LEWIS: -- in Germantown. And 

7 then I believe that SC&A is also going to be 

8 visiting Pantex sometime in mid June, although 

9 I'm not certain.

10 MEMBER BEACH: The week of the 

11 20th.

12 MR. LEWIS: The week of the 20th, 

13 okay.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And so forth. 

15 And, I think, my understanding is that those 

16 meetings will help to resolve issues related 

17 to Pantex and so I don't think it's -- it's 

18 even foreseeable we may have some resolution 

19 of that for August meeting.

20 We'll see. I may be optimistic 

21 but, I think, they're making significant 

22 progress, as I understand it.
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1 I know, Joe, do you want to have 

2 anything to add?

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Not too much. I 

4 think we have a lot of activity over the next 

5 four to five weeks. We just had a Work Group 

6 meeting, SC&A did an onsite classified review.

7 The Board is of course going to do 

8 its classified review in a couple of weeks for 

9 the onsite at Pantex in three weeks, as Greg 

10 noted.

11 And there's a number of documents 

12 going back and forth, including updated 

13 matrix, so I think there's been a lot of 

14 progress over the last month or two.

15 And, as you were saying, I think 

16 we're hopeful that in the next month or so, we 

17 can kind of get these things to closure.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thanks, 

19 Joe. Pinellas, Phil.

20 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Nothing new at 

21 this point. There have been some new 

22 documents, but we're having the same issues at 
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1 Pinellas that we are having at Mound. 

2 Since they're already putting, 

3 SC&A and NIOSH, putting the effort in at 

4 Mound, it would just be a duplication.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, so, so I 

6 understand sort of the game plan would be to 

7 wait for the Mound --

8 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Correct.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, report --

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: If we can 

11 settle those issues there, then we can settle 

12 anything at Pinellas.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, that makes 

14 sense and so forth. And you're on the Mound 

15 Work Group. Good, okay. Piqua, Dr. Poston is 

16 not here, so I don't think we have an update 

17 on that. Did they meet?

18 MR. KATZ: They did meet and they 

19 did agree on recommendations and so on, so 

20 that will be ready for August.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. Now that 

22 LaVon has left the room, we can tell him that 
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1 he's about to, don't do too far, LaVon.

2 We go through these reports, we 

3 may put you on.

4 (Laughter.)

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I should have 

6 let him get farther. Portsmouth, Paducah, K7 25. I think this has a new name.

8 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, that's the 

9 gaseous diffusion plants and we are scheduled 

10 to meet on July 6. NIOSH has issued some new 

11 papers that SC&A still has to respond to.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. I feel 

13 like we're having a naming contest for that, 

14 get a new acronym or something for that. 

15 Rocky, we have to wait for Mark.

16 Santa Susana, I don't think, Mike 

17 Gibson, you're not on the line, are you? I 

18 haven't heard him, okay. Josie?

19 MEMBER BEACH: We have nothing 

20 planned for Santa Susana, but I believe we 

21 have documents due some time towards the end 

22 of the year.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. 

2 DR. NETON: We are working on 

3 those and I suspect within the next few weeks 

4 or so we'll have a proposition.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, so we may 

6 need a Work Group meeting once those documents 

7 are out? Okay.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: Dr. Melius?

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Ziemer here. On 

11 Santa Susana, I'm just looking at the DCAS 

12 matrix. They have several deliverables that 

13 show up for July 11th and 18th.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: So, I think that's 

16 what Josie was referring to.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, and Jim 

18 Neton confirmed that. We need to follow up 

19 and make sure Mike knows that and we can get 

20 that Work Group together at some point.

21 Or I don't know if they're going 

22 to want SC&A to review, but I think they 
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1 probably need to meet first and do that.

2 Savannah River we'll hear from in 

3 a little bit, when Mark Griffon gets here, 

4 hopefully. And, if Mark doesn't get here, 

5 we'll hear about it.

6 And Science Issues, I don't 

7 believe this Committee has met. We have a 

8 charge for that Committee to review and so 

9 forth.

10 Dr. Ziemer, not to put you on the 

11 spot, I don't know if you were listening when 

12 we were talking yesterday about CLL, I believe 

13 you were on the line.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And we wanted 

16 the Science Work Group to review it. David 

17 Richardson has a conflict on that. So he 

18 wouldn't be able to participate.

19 Would you be willing to Chair that 

20 meeting?

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: I could do that. 

22 I heard another pretty good suggestion 
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1 yesterday for Dr. Lemen, but if he's not 

2 available, I will do it.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: He appears to be 

4 reluctant.

5 (Laughter.)

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, I will work 

7 with Ted --

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, that's what 

9 I thought. Thank you very much, Dr. Ziemer. 

10 The Special Exposure Cohort Issues group did 

11 have a conference call and discussion on 

12 General Electric, and we'll report on that 

13 later this afternoon.

14 Subcommittee on Dose 

15 Reconstruction. Mark is not here, so I think 

16 we'll postpone that. 

17 I was going to skip over 

18 Procedures, but Wanda, I can tell is ready.

19 MEMBER MUNN: Oh, good.

20 (Laughter.)

21 MEMBER MUNN: Procedures has only 

22 met twice this year. We have quite a gap 
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1 between our last meeting and our next one 

2 upcoming in July, because of other activities 

3 and the absence of a couple of our Members 

4 being out of the country for a while.

5 We have quite a bit on our plate, 

6 and we'll have a full agenda in July, when we 

7 do meet on the 14th. We have taken a look at 

8 our last meeting at some 14 of our two pagers 

9 that we are just about ready to put up on the 

10 website.

11 They are not quite ready yet 

12 because one of our Members wanted to make one 

13 or two minor adjustments, at least do a little 

14 editing before that happens. We also have 

15 another group of two pagers, just slightly 

16 larger than that, that are ready for us to 

17 address at this next meeting.

18 The really good news is that in 

19 the interim, our IT folks have finally gotten 

20 together the new format and new Working 

21 Regulations for our internal electronic matrix 

22 that we use to track things with.
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1 And we haven't taken it out for a 

2 dry run yet. We'll be doing that in July. 

3 But, we're very pleased that it's reached the 

4 point it has and thank all of the people who 

5 have been involved in them.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Any 

7 questions for Wanda?

8 (No response.)

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

10 MR. KATZ: If I could just add 

11 something. Wanda, the other thing that's 

12 important that we'll be taking up at this 

13 meeting is the portion of the Norton SEC 

14 petition that is yet to be considered by the 

15 Board.

16 MEMBER MUNN: Thank you, Ted. 

17 Yes, there are a couple of items which we 

18 haven't had before, which will be new. Norton 

19 will be one of them.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thanks. 

21 TBD-6000, Paul?

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, Paul Ziemer 
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1 and I'm here on TBD-6000. The Work Group 

2 hasn't met since late last year because we've 

3 been awaiting some deliverables from NIOSH.

4 But I can now report on the status 

5 of those. First of all, on the main document, 

6 TBD-6000, all of the matrix issues have been 

7 resolved by the end of our last meeting.

8 And I can now report to you, this 

9 is in the deliverable list that the Board 

10 Members got in the last few days, that we have 

11 a June 20th, date listed for delivery and for 

12 the revision of TBD-6000.

13 So I believe that means we'll be 

14 in a position also for the old Dose 

15 Reconstruction Sheet reviewed for updating.

16 And of course the Work Group 

17 doesn't do that, but the fact that there will 

18 be a revised TBD available, I think will be 

19 good news for the petitioners as well as for 

20 the claimants, at least General Steel 

21 Industries.

22 The other thing to report is that 
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1 for General Steel Industries, we now have the 

2 commitment from NIOSH for, on the so-called 

3 path forward, for four deliverables on July 

4 29th, dealing with radiography with radium 

5 sources and by St. Louis testing, and by 

6 portable x-ray sources and cobalt-60.

7 So all the radiography documents 

8 are going to be addressed in terms of source 

9 terms. And so the Work Group will plan to 

10 meet, we have to give SC&A time to review 

11 those documents.

12 And we'll need to, at this 

13 meeting, I think, this week we will meet to 

14 authorize SC&A to go ahead and review those 

15 documents when they become available.

16 And then the Work Group would meet 

17 probably late August or early September. I 

18 thought late August, although I've already 

19 heard from SC&A that their staff people might 

20 not be available until early September.

21 But, in any event, we will meet as 

22 soon as we can after the documents are 
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1 reviewed. There is another set of documents 

2 that are shown as having a deliverable date in 

3 December.

4 And these deal with betatron 

5 source terms, both the old and new betatron. 

6 Some activation issues for air activation and 

7 activation from uranium that was tested or 

8 handled in the betatron and steel activation 

9 from the betatron.

10 And then some related issues with 

11 the dose modeling and the film badge records 

12 in terms of determining the extent to which 

13 those complement or supplement each other.

14 So we have two sets of 

15 deliverables. I know, as far as the 

16 petitioners are concerned, they will be 

17 concerned about the fact that some of these 

18 deliverables will not show up now until 

19 December, which means we would get into, you 

20 know, February or so, before we could resolve 

21 everything.

22 And you heard the concerns 
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1 expressed by the Illinois Representative 

2 yesterday about this particular facility and 

3 the concerns the petitioners have about the 

4 time that has elapsed.

5 Anyway, that is what we have, what 

6 we see coming down the pike. I would 

7 certainly be my wish that we resolve all of 

8 these as quickly as we can upon receipt of the 

9 documents.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you, 

11 Paul. And I'll make a note, we will task 

12 SC&A, see if there are any other items that we 

13 need to task them with that come out of this 

14 session. TBD-6001, Henry.

15 MEMBER ANDERSON: We held our 

16 second meeting on May 16th, and we spent 

17 considerable time, because it was our second 

18 meeting, we felt we needed to have a name 

19 change, since we were disbanded as 6001.

20 So we're now going to be known as 

21 the Uranium Refining AWEs Work Group. So, 

22 that's the first thing.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: URAW.

2 MEMBER ANDERSON: URAW, right, 

3 URAW. 

4 (Laughter.)

5 MEMBER ANDERSON: But at our May 

6 16th meeting we made great progress and we're 

7 just about closing out Hooker Electrochemical. 

8 What remains there is we're doing a very 

9 careful review of the use of the Surrogate 

10 Data there, but all the other issues have been 

11 resolved there.

12 So we're hoping in August to be 

13 able to have a final recommendation for the 

14 Board. ElectroMet, we also reviewed and we're 

15 narrowing down the number of issues there, as 

16 well. And then United Nuclear is our third 

17 site that we're just getting started on.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. 

19 Surrogate Data is gone, I think we got rid of 

20 that last meeting. Weldon Spring we'll hear 

21 from I think later on today.

22 And then Worker Outreach, I don't 
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1 believe Mike is on. Josie, do you want to 

2 update?

3 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, with Kathy's 

4 help I threw together a quick update this 

5 morning. And Wanda, I know you're on the Work 

6 Group, so if I miss anything, help me out, 

7 thank you.

8 We had our last Work Group meeting 

9 on December 16, and the focus of that meeting 

10 was to review the matrix items for OCAS PROC11 12. That procedure we had five findings and 

12 five observations, so we reviewed all those.

13 We also did a follow up review of 

14 the Outreach Tracking System. During the 

15 October Work Group meeting, the Work Group 

16 agreed to focus on Objective 3, of our 

17 Implementation Plan, and Rocky Flats was 

18 chosen as the pilot site for the review of the 

19 workers' comments and how their comments are 

20 integrated into the technical work documents.

21 The plan was approved with some 

22 minor changes. Those changes were forwarded 
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1 to our Federal Official, Ted Katz, and the 

2 Office of General Counsel for approval.

3 That approval came back and the 

4 work began on January 5th. Let's see, the 

5 Objective 3, right now is about 50 percent 

6 complete. The Progress Report for that should 

7 be coming out.

8 The Work Group Members should be 

9 seeing that shortly. But at this time we've 

10 kind of put a hold on Objective 3 review, 

11 because the Work Group needs to get back 

12 together.

13 Kathy, the task lead, for SC&A 

14 needs some more guidance from the Work Group 

15 at this time. So we're hoping to get together 

16 with Mike and come up with a Work Group 

17 meeting shortly.

18 I do know there were several 

19 action items that came out of that list. Some 

20 that I do know of for SC&A, was they were 

21 required to provide documents that were 

22 necessary for the worker comments review.
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1 And I know NIOSH has supplied most 

2 of those documents by March. Wanda do you 

3 remember any other actions? I reviewed the 

4 transcript briefly, but didn't really pinpoint 

5 anything in the time I had this morning.

6 MEMBER MUNN: No, Josie, I haven't 

7 reviewed the transcript myself and I've slept 

8 since then, so. No, I don't remember anything 

9 else.

10 MEMBER BEACH: I know there 

11 several, most of them were pertaining to the 

12 procedure. But I think we're fairly close to 

13 coming to closure on PROC-12.

14 Unless anybody else has anything 

15 else, that's all I have.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, is 

17 this Rip Van Munn?

18 (Laughter)

19 MEMBER MUNN: Works for me.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: You looked well 

21 rested here. That concludes our, at least the 

22 reports, the Work Group Reports and 
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1 Subcommittee Reports that we have people 

2 available for. We'll surprise Mark.

3 John and Ted, do we have any 

4 tasking to do, relative to SC&A? Other, we 

5 have this GSI issue, I'm just asking if 

6 there's some more general stuff that we need 

7 to try to do at this meeting?

8 MR. KATZ: No, not that I'm aware 

9 of. John, do you have anything you're aware 

10 of?

11 MEMBER BEACH: While he's coming 

12 to the mic, I noticed that in the tasking that 

13 was sent out for SC&A, the Norton -- we had 

14 asked them to provide a review of OTIB-70, I 

15 believe, and I didn't notice that in that list 

16 that came out. So I wanted to ask about that.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Go ahead, John.

18 DR. MAURO: I'll start with that. 

19 Norton is, the Draft Report is in my hands, 

20 regarding, it was part of this Procedures. I 

21 sent it over to Procedures. 

22 Issues had to do with OTIB-70. If 
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1 you recall, the Norton turned out to be an 

2 OTIB-70 issue for the residual period.

3 So, in effect, our review of 

4 Norton is complete and it has to do with the 

5 degree to which, that we feel comfortable with 

6 the way in which the residual period is being 

7 handled.

8 And that really relies on our 

9 review of OTIB-70, it's all interrelated. And 

10 we will see a report very soon, I've already, 

11 and Bill Thurber is working, it's done.

12 As far as other places, regarding 

13 the matters that were just discussed, where we 

14 can see some work, the only thing I would say 

15 is that we're probably at a point where we 

16 should be thinking about cases.

17 The next set, the 15th set, and 

18 also the set of cases that need to be, I 

19 noticed it before, the DR Subcommittee and the 

20 cases that need to be identified for our 

21 review of the PERs.

22 As sort of something that's been 
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1 languishing, as you know, we have completed a 

2 review of a number of PERs, but the work on 

3 them has never really been completed. 

4 Because the last piece is to 

5 select cases, that would then evaluate the 

6 degree to which the PER was implemented. So 

7 we need, we do, I would request that the Board 

8 order the DR Subcommittee, start to consider 

9 the 15th set of DRs to review, the next set, 

10 and also DRs for, that support the PER Review 

11 Process.

12 MR. KATZ: So just to add to what 

13 John just said. The DR Subcommittee has sort 

14 of taken first steps on both of these. 

15 Because we've asked, I believe, DCAS to 

16 develop a new roster for the 15th, whatever it 

17 is, whatever set number we're on now, we did 

18 that at the last Dose Reconstruction meeting, 

19 a Subcommittee meeting. 

20 So that should be going forward 

21 and they should be compiling that initial 

22 roster of possible cases and they're supposed 
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1 to be taking up, we tried to get that done in 

2 the last DR Subcommittee, but we should get 

3 that done in this one.

4 The assignment of cases for the 

5 PER that we were going to start with, which is 

6 the lymphoma one, I believe.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, good. 

8 Since there doesn't appear to be any other 

9 tasking, at least general tasking we need to 

10 do for SC&A, why don't we take care of this 

11 GSI issue.

12 And, Paul, do you want to tell us 

13 what --

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: You need a motion?

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think we need 

16 a motion, yes, from the Work Group Chair.

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Sure. I move that 

18 we task SC&A to review the four documents that 

19 DCAS is scheduled to release on July 29th, 

20 dealing with radiography at General Steel 

21 Industries.

22 And to report their results to the 
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1 Work Group, soon thereafter as they are able 

2 to.

3 MEMBER BEACH: I second that.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Second from 

5 Josie. Any discussion?

6 (No response.)

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If not, all in 

8 favor, say aye.

9 (Chorus of ayes.)

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Opposed? 

11 Abstained?

12 (No response.)

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you. 

14 I don't believe we have any other Board Work 

15 Session issues at this point in time. So, I 

16 think we would, might take the time now to 

17 hear from LaVon.

18 And we should all listen carefully 

19 to LaVon, since we have, we can't really start 

20 Sandia until 9:30, until the petitioners are 

21 around. So we have a half hour to ask 

22 questions.
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1 MR. RUTHERFORD: Great. 

2 (Pause.)

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We just added 

4 this time to the question period.

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: That was my 

6 method of cutting on time. All right, thank 

7 you, Dr. Melius. I'm going to talk about our 

8 status of upcoming SEC petitions.

9 We routinely do this presentation 

10 at the Board Meetings to give the Board some 

11 information on the petitions that are in the 

12 evaluation phase and upcoming 83.14s that we 

13 have.

14 The Board uses this information to 

15 prepare for upcoming Work Group Meetings and 

16 as well as Advisory Board Meetings.

17 As of May 9th, and this has 

18 changed a little bit. We had 186 petitions. 

19 We have one petition in the qualification 

20 process, 113 petitions have qualified for 

21 evaluation. And of those 113, five 

22 evaluations are in progress.
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1 And that number is a little less 

2 and you'll see why. NIOSH Evaluation, we've 

3 completed 108, and we have 13 evaluations with 

4 the Advisory Board.

5 And 72 petitions that didn't 

6 qualify. Again, as a, now this is as of May 

7 2nd, we have Hanford, this, it says these are 

8 petitions that are currently in the evaluation 

9 process.

10 However, Hanford is complete now. 

11 At the time of preparing for the 

12 presentation, Hanford was not complete. Dr. 

13 Glover will be presenting that later today and 

14 will give much more information than I'm 

15 prepared to.

16 Sandia National Lab, again this 

17 evaluation was not complete when I prepared 

18 the presentation, it is now complete. And Dr. 

19 Glover will be presenting that one shortly 

20 after my presentation.

21 Clinton Engineering Works, this 

22 one has, was delayed a little while. During 
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1 our evaluation, we uncovered some information 

2 that went to the facility designation 

3 question.

4 We sent that information to the 

5 Department of Labor, and we are waiting for 

6 them to come back with a finding on that 

7 review.

8 We anticipate having that very 

9 shortly and we will, we do plan on presenting 

10 Clinton Engineering Works at the August Board 

11 Meeting.

12 W.R. Grace, and this one is in 

13 Curtis Bay, Maryland. This was received on 

14 December 21st of last year and we are almost 

15 complete with the evaluation on W.R. Grace.

16 And we anticipate concluding it in 

17 early June or mid-June, actually. And we will 

18 present that Evaluation Report at the August 

19 Board Meeting.

20 The Ames Laboratory and Y-12 were 

21 both 83.14s. These came about as a result of 

22 our review of SEC Class Definitions.
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1 We had identified some claims that 

2 we felt probably should have fit into the 

3 existing Class Definitions and recognized that 

4 the Class Definitions were difficult to 

5 administer.

6 These were Class Definitions that 

7 were defined fairly early in the, after 

8 promulgating the rule in 2004. And so these 

9 were pretty early Class Definitions.

10 Prior to the involvement that 

11 we've had with the Department of Labor. We 

12 anticipate completing those 83.14s in July and 

13 early August, and presenting those at the 

14 August Board Meeting.

15 In addition, we were also going to 

16 present the second part of our Vitro 

17 Manufacturing evaluation. We had held up the 

18 post-1960 period on that one, because we were 

19 waiting determination from General Counsel, on 

20 whether Port Hope material would be covered 

21 exposure or not. We have a finding from 

22 General Counsel on that, and we're moving 
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1 forward to completing that second part of the 

2 evaluation.

3 And we will present that one at 

4 the August meeting. Additionally, Grand 

5 Junction Operations Office, we, if you 

6 remember, we pulled back on the post-1975 

7 period evaluation, because we uncovered 

8 information prior to our presentation, I 

9 believe, at the Santa Fe Meeting.

10 And we are working towards 

11 completing that post-1975 Revision to the 

12 Evaluation. And we anticipate presenting 

13 that, as well, at the meeting.

14 Also, Hangar 481, which is another 

15 one that's with the Advisory Board, we're 

16 waiting for, we had sent a number of questions 

17 to the Office of Secure Transport, and we 

18 have, they have responded to those questions.

19 However, their responses are under 

20 review at this time. And we do anticipate 

21 having those back very shortly. And that 

22 information provided to the Board, sometime, I 
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1 would suspect, in late June.

2 Which should allow the Advisory 

3 Board to move forward with Hangar 481, as 

4 well.

5 And then I know Dr. Melius will 

6 speak later on General Electric. We are 

7 working a couple of the issues that the SEC 

8 Work Group identified.

9 And we anticipate having answers 

10 for that Work Group within the next couple of 

11 weeks. And that's pretty much it. So, I will 

12 say, just in summary, the ones that we will 

13 present, we anticipate presenting at the 

14 August meeting, are Vitro Manufacturing, Grand 

15 Junction Operations Office.

16 We should, hopefully we'll be 

17 ready for Hangar 481 to move forward. And 

18 then we'll present W.R. Grace, Ames and Y-12 

19 83.14s. Okay, questions.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Questions for La 

21 Von? You know, I would just comment that if, 

22 depending on how some of the other older sites 
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1 work out, you know, we are, where we stand 

2 with Savannah River, Fernald.

3 We are either going to have a 

4 very, have to have an extended meeting in 

5 August or we're going to have to defer some of 

6 these, or move some of them forward.

7 In our discussions on GE and we'll 

8 talk a little bit more about this later. But, 

9 in detail, we did say that we may try to, if 

10 it's possible, resolve that and do that on the 

11 July conference call.

12 And I'm afraid, what I'm concerned 

13 about is that with some of these 83.14s, which 

14 are easier to do on, by conference call. We 

15 have Ames and Y-12 here, for example, coming 

16 up that I don't think will be ready for the 

17 conference call.

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: We may have Ames 

19 ready in time.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, I think it 

21 may, since these are Class Definition changes, 

22 they should be fairly straightforward. 
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1 So, if possible, we'd like to get 

2 them on the July conference call. And I just 

3 want to alert people and we'll just sort of 

4 see. It's hard to sort of figure out what's 

5 going to be ready, when, on some of these 

6 other older sites.

7 But I think they should have some 

8 precedent. And since people waited so long 

9 and do that, and we just may not have time to 

10 get through everything.

11 But, to the extent we could move 

12 it up, or move some of these, if they're more 

13 straightforward to the follow up conference 

14 call after the August meeting.

15 So that was sort of my thinking, 

16 and Ted and I have talked a little bit about 

17 this and I just wanted to mention it to the 

18 other Board Members.

19 MR. RUTHERFORD: I will add, I can 

20 check on Y-12 as well. I mean I generally 

21 know we're pretty close on that one. And 

22 there's no, I will throw up, you know, the 
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1 Curtis Bay, Maryland one is --

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Please don't 

3 throw up.

4 (Laughter.)

5 MR. RUTHERFORD: The Curtis Bay, 

6 Maryland, I honestly feel it's fairly 

7 straightforward. And it's a couple year 

8 period and I think that evaluation is very 

9 close to being complete.

10 I can give the, Dr. Melius and Ted 

11 an update, by email, shortly after I get back, 

12 exactly when those, you know, maybe we can 

13 move those forward.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Because we don't 

15 want to delay and some of these may not take 

16 long, but some of them are going to involve, 

17 at least some discussion, in the limited time. 

18 And so then I'm afraid if we do 

19 some of the older, larger sites, that's going 

20 to involve, fairly, we're going to have to 

21 leave a significant amount of time for 

22 discussion on those.
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1 They're not going to be 

2 straightforward Board deliberations on that. 

3 Stu?

4 MR. HINNEFELD: In the interest of 

5 waiting for Savannah River or Sandia, I want 

6 to make sure either I have the correct 

7 understanding or we didn't leave a missed 

8 impression about Hangar 481, response from 

9 Office of Secure Transport.

10 You said they had responded. Now, 

11 in fact, they have drafted a response.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: That's what I 

13 said. I said they responded, we did not 

14 receive it until --

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, you didn't 

16 say we didn't receive it.

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: I said --

18 MR. HINNEFELD: You said they had 

19 responded and it was under review. That would 

20 imply that we got it, we sent it to DOE for 

21 review. 

22 We don't have it yet. They are 
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1 getting it cleared through their Security 

2 Reviewers. We have not recieved it yet. I 

3 just want to clear up the misunderstanding on 

4 my part. 

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thanks for the 

6 clarification. Any, yes, Josie.

7 MEMBER BEACH: You mentioned on 

8 Grand Junction, it wasn't on your report.

9 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right.

10 MEMBER BEACH: You're just going 

11 to report on those later years?

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, we're going 

13 to report on the post-1975 years.

14 MEMBER BEACH: Thank you.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Is that residual 

16 period?

17 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, actually it's 

18 a DOE facility and so it's not --

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, so it's 

20 not --

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: It's an 

22 operational period. It has a, there was a 
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1 number of questions that were brought up late. 

2 We had actually found a document, just after 

3 we issued the Evaluation Report, that kind of 

4 gave us an indication that there may have been 

5 thorium used in the post-1975 period that 

6 wasn't previously identified.

7 So that's why we pulled the 

8 Evaluation for the post-`75 period and back.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, okay, 

10 good. Wanda?

11 MEMBER MUNN: Just in response to 

12 your comment, I wanted to make sure that all 

13 of the Board understood the Tri-Cities is very 

14 hospitable.

15 We would have no objection to your 

16 extending your time there, as our needs would 

17 require us to do.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. I 

19 would report at this time, you know, a 

20 Conflict of Interest form for the Tri-Cities 

21 Chamber of Commerce?

22 (Laughter.)
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1 MEMBER MUNN: I'll speak with 

2 Counsel about that.

3 MEMBER ROESSLER: I think I'm 

4 really expanding on what Wanda was trying to 

5 say. But I think we, with the full agenda, we 

6 should plan on going for a full day on the 

7 third day.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That may, that 

9 was, I think maybe and I think we've done that 

10 before. Given the airline schedule also for 

11 those of us from the east coast, a full three 

12 days may be more practical there, too.

13 It's a little tricky to get out 

14 and get back to the east coast, yes, do that.

15 MEMBER BEACH: Plan early.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We will try to, 

17 do it this way. We will work with, Ted and I 

18 will work with Stu and LaVon and DCAS, trying 

19 to figure out the schedule and what's going to 

20 be practical to do.

21 And we will let you know by email, 

22 as we pin that down and so forth, so that you 
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1 can plan accordingly, because I think it will 

2 be, airline scheduling is going to be an 

3 issue.

4 It's a general issue anyway. I 

5 mean, even for this meeting. Any other Board 

6 Members with questions, yes, Josie?

7 MEMBER BEACH: This isn't for you, 

8 Brad texted me and he wanted you to know that 

9 he was online and had a Pantex report for you, 

10 just letting you know.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Welcome, Brad, 

12 we apologize for not noting you earlier. 

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: I thought you 

14 were just ignoring me when Dr. Ziemer chimed 

15 in and said he was here and you never 

16 acknowledged me, but I understand.

17 (Laughter.)

18 MR. KATZ: Brad, we never heard 

19 you, but sorry.

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: Oh, I know that. 

21 That's why I sent Josie, because when you went 

22 into the Pantex, I was trying to talk, so I 
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1 figured you couldn't hear me.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Anything to add. 

3 If you heard that, anything to add beyond 

4 what Joe and we have Greg Lewis. We had DOE 

5 reporting on your behalf.

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: I've been here 

7 from the very beginning. There was nothing to 

8 add, they covered all the meetings we've got 

9 coming up and everything else. I just wanted 

10 to try to figure out how come you couldn't 

11 hear me.

12 (Laughter.)

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Any 

14 other missing Board Members to report? Okay, 

15 since it's almost 9:15, and I think we've 

16 exhausted our questions for LaVon, but we may 

17 call him back, if you have others.

18 Why don't we take a 15 minute 

19 break and be back in here 9:30 sharp. We will 

20 do Sandia then. 

21 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

22 proceeding went off the record at 9:15 a.m. 
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1 and came back on at 9:32 a.m.)

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If we could get 

3 ready to reconvene now. We've got a 

4 petitioner that's going to be on the line. 

5 Okay, Ted, do you want to?

6 MR. KATZ: Just for the record, 

7 Mr. Schofield has recused himself from this 

8 session.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And, for the 

10 record, we have an unconfirmed report that 

11 Mark Griffon is on the way in from the 

12 airport. We track everybody now.

13 No, he emailed me, so, he should 

14 be here, we'll be able to do Savannah River 

15 on, as scheduled. First time now we're back 

16 is for the Sandia National Laboratories and 

17 Sam Glover is going to present and I believe 

18 the petitioner is alerted and may very well 

19 be on the line.

20 And after Sam's presentation, 

21 after the Board Members have had a chance to 

22 ask questions, we'll ask for any comments from 
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1 the petitioners. So, Sam, go ahead.

2 DR. GLOVER: Ted, do you need to 

3 verify that they're on the line?

4 MR. KATZ: I mean it's time, I 

5 don't think we do, thanks.

6 DR. GLOVER: Thank you, Dr. 

7 Melius, Members of the Board. I'd like to 

8 present Sandia National Laboratories Exposure 

9 Cohort Petition Report.

10 I would first like to start off by 

11 thanking members of my team. Tim Adler and 

12 his folks did a really good job, they really 

13 worked hard with me on this.

14 I'd like to also thank Scott 

15 Stafford and the DOE folks at Sandia. They 

16 really have worked hard to get us access to 

17 the data and people.

18 And, of course, Greg Lewis and the 

19 DOE, you'll see that they're also helping us 

20 do a lot of work, ongoing, even after this 

21 petition report.

22 So petition overview, the petition 
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1 was received on January 19th, 2010. The 

2 petitioner proposed the following Class 

3 Definition.

4 All employees who've worked within 

5 the Sandia National Laboratory Reactor 

6 Division from January 1, 1957, through 

7 December 31st, 1962. The petition qualified 

8 for evaluation on April 13th, 2010. The 

9 petition basis was radiation monitoring 

10 records from members of the proposed Class 

11 have been lost, falsified or destroyed.

12 Monitoring data retrieval problems 

13 incurred by NIOSH while processing individual 

14 claims and performance site data capture, were 

15 in support of this petition basis.

16 NIOSH evaluated the following 

17 Class. All employees who worked at Sandia 

18 National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New 

19 Mexico, from January 1st, 1949, through 

20 December 31st, 1962.

21 You can see we backed it up beyond 

22 the 1957, which the petitioner had asked for. 
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1 And I would also say that NIOSH will address 

2 the period covering 1963 through the early 

3 1990s in a separate report.

4 Sources of available information 

5 are those that are typically used by us. The 

6 Technical Information Bulletins, the TIBs. We 

7 interviewed many employees of Sandia. We 

8 certainly looked at existing Claimant files, 

9 documentation provided by the petitioner.

10 We have over 2,400 documents that 

11 have been obtained from Sandia. We had 12 

12 data capture visits to Sandia. We had data 

13 capture related to Sandia, across the DOE 

14 complex.

15 We certainly looked at the OSTI 

16 databases as well as Internet resources. Just 

17 to give you a feel for the dose 

18 reconstructions that have been done. There 

19 have been 346 cases submitted to NIOSH.

20 Claims with employment during the 

21 period evaluated, there's 193. Dose 

22 reconstruction completed for claims, 154. 
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1 Claims containing internal dosimetry is 11. 

2 Claims containing external dosimetry is 88. 

3 A little bit of background on 

4 Sandia. In 1945, the Z-Division from Los 

5 Alamos, moved from, moved down to what was to 

6 become the Sandia National Laboratory in 

7 Albuquerque. So, in, the covered period for 

8 Sandia National Lab, was established by the 

9 Department of Labor in 1949.

10 So we've got a little four year 

11 gap. We have a letter to them to address this 

12 early four year period, but in 1949, is the 

13 beginning of our, the covered exposure period 

14 for Sandia National Laboratories.

15 Its early occupations were weapons 

16 assembly, weapons ordnance engineering and 

17 production coordination amongst various atomic 

18 energy commissioned facilities, such as 

19 Clarksville, Medina and Pantex.

20 In the early 1950s, they expanded 

21 their activities to support fuel testing and 

22 atmospheric tests. They further expanded its 
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1 capabilities in the late 1950s when testing 

2 moratoriums were set in place, providing 

3 accelerators and reactors to test weapons 

4 components.

5 Sandia is now divided into five 

6 technical areas. Technical Area 1 nominally 

7 has electron and ion beam accelerators. They 

8 also have a Toxic Metals Machine Shop.

9 TA-II was weapons components 

10 assembly and waste handling and barrel. TA11 III, Radioactive Mixed Waste Landfills. TA12 IV, Neutron Generator Test Equipment. And TA13 V includes Reactors and Hot Cell Facilities.

14 This is a map. You can see that 

15 the colored areas are only a small part of 

16 this large facility that they actually are a 

17 part of.

18 So when you go to Sandia, you're 

19 actually at a large Air Force Base, so you're 

20 mixed into an unusual atmosphere for a DOE 

21 facility.

22 Potential external radiological 
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1 exposure during the Class, are the full gamut. 

2 We have photon exposures related to weapons 

3 assembly.

4 Generators,accelerators, materials 

5 returned from weapons testings. So they would 

6 bring the materials back to the site. You had 

7 beta exposures from activated components.

8 Materials returned from weapons 

9 testing and air filters from cloud sampling. 

10 Neutron, the neutrons, we have weapons 

11 assembly, accelerators, reactors and neutron 

12 sources.

13 And I will also say that Sandia 

14 National Lab's dosimetry system did not 

15 measure neutrons until 1958. Internal 

16 radiological exposures also cover a broad 

17 gamut. 

18 They include plutonium, tritium, 

19 uranium, americium, fission and activation 

20 products and other radionuclides which we've 

21 seen in the air sampling data, including 

22 manganese-54, zinc-65, sodium-22, cobalt-57, 
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1 thorium, polonium-210, radium-226, and carbon2 14.

3 So this has a bit of a 

4 Brookhavenish feel. The Health Physics were 

5 the responsibility of the Industrial Hygiene 

6 Division, prior to 1957. At which point 

7 Health Physics Section was formed. NIOSH 

8 located minimal documentation regarding the 

9 practices and requirements during the 

10 evaluation period.

11 Monitoring requirements were 

12 developed based on the judgement of 

13 departments, divisions and supervisors.

14 Interviews indicated that coverage 

15 was temporal and ad hoc in nature. If they 

16 felt they needed coverage, they provided 

17 coverage.

18 Availability of monitoring data is 

19 a significant concern. November 2009, NIOSH 

20 notified DOE the case responses were 

21 incomplete, particularly as related to 

22 internal dosimetry.
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1 That basically we had found data, 

2 during our data captures, which showed that we 

3 had more data than what was being provided.

4 DOE and Sandia Laboratories have 

5 implemented a massive records indexing effort, 

6 which they feel will fix the issues. 

7 Approximately 1.1 million records. Scanning 

8 is complete, but I don't believe the QC has 

9 been completely validated.

10 Indexing is approximately 40 

11 percent complete, based on my last report on 

12 this. And they expect still it will take six 

13 to nine months to complete this.

14 In January of 2010, we re15 requested the records for all the Sandia cases 

16 that had basically not been paid, had not been 

17 compensated, which we did, actually.

18 So we have a request to DOE to get 

19 all the data for those cases. Unlike many DOE 

20 facilities, Sandia National Laboratory did not 

21 report or at least if they did report it, we 

22 haven't found the reports of how many bioassay 
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1 samples they did.

2 So we don't know what the target 

3 is. Hanford monthly reports how many urine 

4 samples, how many fecal samples, ad nauseam. 

5 You know exactly what the number 

6 is, should be. We have no idea what the 

7 target number is. Based on interviews it's 

8 thought to be small.

9 I've also obtained copies of some 

10 bioassay records, part of it is site data 

11 capture and claimant data requests. The 

12 number of samples by year are provided in the 

13 following table.

14 You see that in the early years we 

15 have nothing. Beginning in '55, we start 

16 seeing some tritium data, some early plutonium 

17 data.

18 But it is pretty spotty. Not 

19 enough to create coworker data sets. External 

20 dosimetry results are centralized from the 

21 beginning. So, personnel data requests seem 

22 fairly complete.
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1 We also have the Atomic Energy 

2 Commission Monitoring Reports available during 

3 this time frame. So we have a ballpark idea 

4 of what fraction of the employees were 

5 monitored.

6 Documentation of pre-1950s 

7 external dosimetry program has not been 

8 obtained by NIOSH. The post-1950 

9 documentation, in the case of all workers in 

10 radiation areas were to be badged.

11 This just gives you a feel for the 

12 total employees, certainly after 1958, what 

13 the total number of employees would be and the 

14 total of number of employees not monitored 

15 would be.

16 And also the doses incurred. In 

17 the '49 to '57 time frame, they didn't track 

18 that as part of these records. They changed 

19 that report in 1958.

20 You can see, even from '58 on, a 

21 larger portion of the workers were not 

22 monitored. Feasability of dose 
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1 reconstruction. NIOSH determined that 

2 monitoring data, process information, 

3 monitoring program information, are 

4 insufficient to support bounding internal 

5 doses for the evaluated Class.

6 There are indications additional 

7 data exists, microfilm, microfiche, but these

8 data are not readily accessible, based on a 

9 lack of internal monitoring, program 

10 documentation and source term information for 

11 the evaluated period, NIOSH feels it can not 

12 establish a bounding approach, even if the 

13 microfilm/microfiche data become available.

14 NIOSH concludes it cannot bound 

15 internal doses for the period of January 1, 

16 1949, through December 31, 1962, but will 

17 continue to assess post-1962 dose 

18 reconstruction feasibility in a subsequent 

19 Evaluation Report.

20 Regarding non-SEC claims, although

21 NIOSH found it is not possible to completely 

22 reconstruct internal radiation doses for the 
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1 proposed Class, NIOSH intends to use any 

2 internal and external monitoring data that may 

3 become available for an individual claim that 

4 can be interpreted using existing NIOSH dose 

5 reconstructing processes or procedures.

6 NIOSH recommended Class, all 

7 employees of the Department of Energy, its 

8 predecessor agencies, its Contractors and 

9 Subcontrators who worked in any area of Sandia 

10 National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New 

11 Mexico, from January 1, 1949, through December 

12 31st, 1962, for a number of work days 

13 aggregating at least 250 work days.

14 Occurring either solely under this 

15 employment or a combination with work days 

16 within the parameters established for one or 

17 more other classes of employees in the Special 

18 Exposure Cohort.

19 And our summary of recommendations 

20 is that internal dosimetry is not feasible. 

21 That we believe that the external dosimetry 

22 records can be reconstructed, including 
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1 medical X-ray. Thank you very much.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Sam. 

3 Questions for Sam? Yes, Bill.

4 MEMBER FIELD: Sam, I was just 

5 wondering, how did the periods, were these the 

6 periods that were requested by the petitioner? 

7 Because I'm looking at '62. Why '62, and not 

8 '63, or '64?

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That was going to 

10 be my question, too.

11 DR. GLOVER: In order to --

12 through '62, is what he had asked for. I'd be 

13 remiss in saying Sandia was a 83.14, possible, 

14 we were evaluating them in an 83.14, when this 

15 came in.

16 They asked through '62, in order 

17 to get this done in a timely fashion. We 

18 wanted to get this to the petitioner, and not 

19 have them wait any longer.

20 Because of the ongoing data 

21 capture efforts by DOE, trying to fix this, 

22 we've seen the 180 days. And so we really 
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1 felt this time was necessary to get this 

2 report done.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So, essentially, 

4 1962, is sort of an arbitrary designation.

5 DR. GLOVER: Only that's where he 

6 stopped, yes.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, fine, 

8 that's helpful. Bob?

9 MEMBER PRESLEY: Sam, do we know 

10 when they transferred the teardown operations 

11 to either Medina or Pantex? Do we have that 

12 date when they transferred that stuff? When 

13 they transferred those operations?

14 DR. GLOVER: The assembly, the 

15 actual weapons assembly type work?

16 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes, 

17 assembly/disassembly.

18 DR. GLOVER: It was around 

19 '57/'58, is when they stopped doing that, 

20 according to our documentation.

21 MEMBER PRESLEY: Okay, okay.

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Dr. Melius?
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Paul, go 

2 ahead.

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: LaVon, can you 

4 clarify the neutron exposure that you show 

5 reconstruction feasible, but I thought you 

6 indicated that you have no neutron data prior 

7 to '58 maybe.

8 Are you just saying that where you 

9 have neutrons you will use it if there's a 

10 person not eligible for the SEC?

11 DR. GLOVER: Basically, we do not 

12 have neutron data before 1958, as far as badge 

13 information. In the TBD right now, there is a 

14 back extrapolation of the N/P ratio. We have 

15 data that is contemporaneous to other 

16 facilities who would have done weapons 

17 handling.

18 And we would propose to use N/P 

19 ratio-type data to do that.

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, thank you.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Josie, then 

22 Wanda.
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1 MEMBER BEACH: I have a question, 

2 Sam, on the external monitoring for the period 

3 of '49, to '57. It doesn't look like you have 

4 a whole lot of data, and I was wondering if 

5 you could go in to a little more detail of 

6 that time period?

7 DR. GLOVER: Again, it was, it's 

8 not well documented. They chose to monitor 

9 who they monitored. And so we don't have a 

10 great breadth of information.

11 We are going to use the data that 

12 is available to us, to do dose reconstruction 

13 on the non-SEC cancers as best we can. 

14 MEMBER BEACH: You're going to the 

15 data from that time period or for a later time 

16 period back to that time period?

17 DR. GLOVER: We would use their 

18 data. The activity has significantly changed 

19 the function of time. You've got weapons 

20 handling early and then it goes to, it's an 

21 evolving complex.

22 It would be very hard to back 
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1 extrapolate.

2 MEMBER BEACH: Okay, the other 

3 question I had was on incidents. I noticed 

4 that in the ER Report, there was only one in 

5 the Site Profile actually had a couple of 

6 others listed.

7 Where are those documented or 

8 where, I guess I was wondering why there was a 

9 discrepancy between the two?

10 DR. GLOVER: I'd have to go back 

11 and double check. I recall the one, 

12 particular one with an accelerator, but I'd 

13 have to look. So, I apologize, I just don't 

14 recall.

15 MEMBER BEACH: No, that's fine, 

16 thanks.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Wanda, then 

18 Henry.

19 MEMBER MUNN: Just curious about 

20 the microfiche data that you mentioned. Do we 

21 know what's on that data? Are you likely to 

22 be able to find some internal exposures that 
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1 you don't have now?

2 As you began to go through that 

3 material, do you think it's even there?

4 DR. GLOVER: We have seen 

5 indications that there is some internal 

6 dosimetry data in there. We believe, based on 

7 all the discussions we've had with the staff, 

8 and we've had some great cooperation.

9 Again, we had the guy who started 

10 in the early years, and we talked to them. 

11 There's just not a lot of bioassay. Even if 

12 we had everything.

13 We hope that those microfiche, 

14 there were several times where they started 

15 doing all this microfilm, and then they went 

16 back, is our understanding, and made it 

17 complete. And so we're hoping that this will 

18 allow the DOE to provide complete responses.

19 At this time we're not, you know, 

20 we don't know the full extent, if everything 

21 is there.

22 MEMBER MUNN: And you don't have a 
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1 real feel for how long it's going to take for 

2 them to get through that and get it to you?

3 DR. GLOVER: I could defer to 

4 Greg, if you'd like. I understand it's going 

5 to be six to nine months. Budgeting always, 

6 you know, this is not a cheap process to get 

7 all that in.

8 MEMBER MUNN: I understand, yes, 

9 thanks.

10 DR. GLOVER: They are committed to 

11 helping us, though.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Henry.

13 MEMBER ANDERSON: I was just 

14 wondering, in your one slide, you indicated 

15 that 154 have been, dose reconstructions 

16 completed for people who were employed during 

17 the period.

18 How were those reconstructions 

19 done for the time period?

20 DR. GLOVER: As best as we could.

21 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, okay.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Can I just, a 
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1 quick follow up on that. How many of those

2 were with PoCs over 50?

3 DR. GLOVER: I did not check that 

4 statistic, I apologize.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: For future 

6 reference, that's sometimes helpful when we're 

7 dealing with these, that information. Just to 

8 give us a sense of what has gone on at the 

9 site and so forth.

10 So, Stu, if you could make a note 

11 of that, and where it's feasible to get the 

12 information and so forth.

13 MR. HINNEFELD: I would just offer 

14 on that question about, you know, how did you 

15 do 150, I think a number of those were done 

16 before we actually recognized that Sandia had 

17 additional data that we weren't getting, on 

18 their individual exposures.

19 I mean that's a fairly recent, not 

20 in the last few weeks, but in the ten years, 

21 that's a fairly recent discovery on our part.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thanks, Stu.
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1 MEMBER PRESLEY: A little 

2 information on microfiche and microfilm. We 

3 didn't start microfiche until late '60s. And 

4 one of the problems that we're having and I 

5 think you all are probably having, and I don't 

6 know whether the Board knows it or not.

7 We're finding microfiche, but we 

8 don't have anything to read them on. A lot of 

9 the microfiche are classified and the design 

10 labs and places like that, have got rid of all 

11 of their readers.

12 And right now we're having a 

13 problem finding somebody with a classified 

14 reader to read the silly things. So, that may 

15 be one of the problems that they're running 

16 into, that I'm aware of.

17 And, the other thing is, are we, 

18 when are we going to be ready for, to vote on 

19 this petition?

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, when we're 

21 done discussing and hearing from the 

22 petitioner.
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1 MEMBER PRESLEY: Holler at me.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Greg, can 

3 someone explain to me what a classified 

4 reader? I know what a microfiche reader is. 

5 I got back. But I don't know what a 

6 classified one is.

7 DR. GLOVER: They are actually in 

8 classified space and they have, so they 

9 actually have to be able to be cleaned and 

10 wiped, and sometimes then can't print.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, okay --

12 DR. GLOVER: Sandia actually has 

13 one.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I thought like a 

15 special lens or something. I just was trying 

16 to, maybe I'm not supposed to know that.

17 MR. LEWIS: And this is Greg. 

18 Just to declare, I mean Sam kind of clarified 

19 already. But they do have a classified 

20 reader, that's not the issue there.

21 The issue there is the time it's 

22 taken to scan and get this into an electronic 
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1 format. We've had to actually hand-key 

2 everything. It's taken much longer than 

3 expected, because it's hard to read, it's 

4 handwritten data.

5 Some of it we're hand-keying the 

6 best interpretation we have but we're not sure 

7 that it's correct. You know, our people are 

8 just trying to interpret the handwriting and 

9 the faded information as best they can.

10 And the QC process, as you can 

11 imagine, is a little bit difficult there. So 

12 that's what's taken much longer than expected.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We understand, I 

14 think we all appreciate the effort that DOE is 

15 making here.

16 MEMBER BEACH: The other question 

17 I have, Sam, is the number of employees and 

18 the number that are monitored, are you able to 

19 put these employees in the locations readily?

20 DR. GLOVER: We do not feel we can 

21 put people in places, based on their, really 

22 they have some phone books or some logs, it 
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1 lists where people had an office.

2 But we don't believe that we can 

3 put people in places.

4 MEMBER BEACH: Okay, thanks.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

6 questions for Sam from Board Members?

7 Yes, Bill?

8 MEMBER FIELD: I just had a 

9 question about the size, Sam, real quick, size 

10 of the workforce? From the monitoring data it 

11 looks like it was in '58, low were 7,000, and 

12 then it dropped to 6,000, 5,000, 4,000.

13 So it decreased over time, it 

14 looks like from this. Is that realistic to 

15 the size of the workforce, once we're set on 

16 the external dosimetry?

17 DR. GLOVER: I would say in '49, 

18 your workforce is probably a couple of 

19 hundred. Then they began to ramp up. Based 

20 on just my recollection on how the Z Division, 

21 you know, they started as just a small 

22 division that translocated down to Los Alamos, 
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1 then ramped up to fill this new mission. And 

2 then in the early '60s, things would have been 

3 maybe pushed to Pantex, Clarksville, Medina.

4 There were lots of things going on 

5 with, so I would have to double check, but 

6 that's the best information I have regarding 

7 that.

8 MEMBER FIELD: And the people you 

9 do have bio-monitoring data for, does it look 

10 like they were getting a lot of exposure? Or 

11 do you have any ballpark figure on that?

12 DR. GLOVER: We put these, you 

13 know, what bioassay we do have we've graphed 

14 and what is the range, you know, fairly large. 

15 We don't see the magnitude of dosimetry that 

16 you would, per se, say the Hanford Z, or the 

17 Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plants.

18 But, again, it's also very unclear 

19 with the source terms that we have, will we 

20 have captured the breadth that we need to.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thanks. 

22 Sam, I just wanted, I thought it was a very 
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1 good report and I think it clearly explained 

2 things, and I forgot, Dick, okay, Mr. Lemen. 

3 But I do want to compliment NIOSH and whoever 

4 was involved in putting this together.

5 MEMBER LEMEN: Sam, maybe you 

6 covered this and I missed it. But on your 

7 table where you had total number of employees 

8 and number of employees not monitored, that's 

9 the exposure data submitted.

10 How come you don't have the number 

11 of employees from '49 to '57?

12 DR. GLOVER: Those, the DOE Report 

13 changed. So they didn't report that in the 

14 beginning.

15 MEMBER LEMEN: There's no way to 

16 get that number? I mean you said a few 

17 moments ago, the reason I asked it. Because 

18 you said a few moments ago there was about 100 

19 in '49? How do you know that?

20 DR. GLOVER: I just, based on the 

21 Z-Division, what they, you know, reading some 

22 of the quarterly reports. This was extracted 
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1 from the annual reports of the AEC. And so 

2 that's where this table comes from. 

3 I could extrapolate probably from 

4 other reports if we had to.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Josie, you have 

6 another question? No, okay. I think you can 

7 sit down now, Sam, thanks. Are the 

8 petitioners on the line? No. Paul, did you 

9 have more or anybody?

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: I have no more 

11 questions.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, now can we 

13 hear from the petitioner, if you'd like to 

14 make comments, you don't need to?

15 DR. FUORTES: I don't know if you 

16 can hear me, I'm on speaker phone.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, we can.

18 DR. FUORTES: Thank you very much. 

19 This is Lars Fuortes from Iowa City and I 

20 want to thank Dr. Glover and the folks at 

21 NIOSH incredibly for this, this result in the 

22 process.
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1 The dates, the reason for the 

2 limitation of the dates was that this was 

3 based on the oral history and work records 

4 obtained regarding one employee who I'd 

5 interviewed at the Ames Lab, who used to work 

6 at Sandia.

7 So it was an entirely arbitrary 

8 time frame. And I'm very impressed by the 

9 speed with which NIOSH processed this.

10 I would like the Board and NIOSH 

11 to please consider this same process for other 

12 facilities, such as Pantex, for whom you might 

13 have very similar tables indicating a dearth 

14 of exposure data for workers prior to a 

15 particular time frame.

16 NIOSH is in a position, and the 

17 Board, I would think, to set those time frames 

18 which they can agree there's not sufficient 

19 exposure data.

20 But thank you very much for having 

21 done this at Sandia and beg that you look into 

22 this process for the folks at Pantex and other 
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1 sites as well. Thanks, again.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you. 

3 Okay, Board Members, comments, further 

4 questions, discussion?

5 (No response.)

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Do we hear 

7 suggestion, suggested Board action?

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: Can you hear me?

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, so sorry. 

10 Yes, hi Brad, go ahead.

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: Listen, I just 

12 had one question especially pertaining with 

13 Pantex and Clarksville. Do we have a clear, 

14 is there, can you see a change at Sandia when 

15 these, when everything kind of got centralized 

16 at Pantex?

17 I'm just wondering if Sam could, 

18 has seen any documentation. Because it seems 

19 like that's when Sandia's kind of mission 

20 would have changed a little bit.

21 DR. GLOVER: Sandia continued to 

22 go out to Medina and Clarksville, after they 
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1 stopped doing it there, eventually. But we 

2 have indicated that we have found microfilm 

3 and microfiche associated with these other 

4 facilities.

5 And have let SC&A and others in 

6 NIOSH who are part of that review. It is very 

7 difficult to work in that area, because we had 

8 to find the right thread buried in these 

9 classified microfilms that are not indexed 

10 well.

11 And so it is a great deal of 

12 effort to find those source terms and activity 

13 reports.

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay, well I just 

15 wanted to see if there was something to clear 

16 it up. I'm concerned about Pantex and Medina 

17 and those.

18 I'm just looking for a common 

19 thread there that maybe we can see a change. 

20 Thank you very much. Your presentation was 

21 very good.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Back on Sandia, 
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1 Wanda.

2 MEMBER MUNN: I'm ready to make a 

3 motion if you are ready to receive it?

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, I am.

5 MEMBER MUNN: I move that we 

6 accept the NIOSH recommendation that all 

7 employees of DOE and its predecessor agencies 

8 or Contractors and Subcontractors who worked 

9 at Sandia National Laboratories in 

10 Albuquerque, New Mexico, from January 1, 1949, 

11 through December 31, 1962, for the number of 

12 aggregated 250 workdays, be accepted as 

13 presented by NIOSH.

14 MEMBER FIELD: Second.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Bill, no, Bill 

16 was there first. We go by, I've got my 

17 stopwatch.

18 (Laughter.)

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any further 

20 discussion?

21 (No response.)

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I would like to 
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1 offer, I believe we can do this as a friendly 

2 amendment. Ted, do you want to pass these 

3 around? I think there are enough going this 

4 way.

5 And I will point out, ahead of 

6 time, that we've changed the letter slightly. 

7 The standardized letter, and it's going to be 

8 probably changed again. And I'll also point 

9 out that we checked and the actual designation 

10 and I believe the DOE facilities databases, 

11 Sandia National Laboratories.

12 So, it certainly is referred, 

13 commonly, as Sandia National Laboratory, but 

14 whatever. So, for official communication 

15 purposes, we do that.

16 So, a few minor changes in this 

17 letter, as I, I'll read, go through, but 

18 nothing that I think is substantial from 

19 what's in front of you.

20 The Advisory Board on Radiation 

21 Worker Health, the Board, has evaluated 

22 Special Exposure Cohort petition 00162, 
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1 concerning workers at Sandia National 

2 Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, under 

3 the statutory requirements established by the 

4 Energy Employees Occupational Illness 

5 Compensation Program Act of 2000, EEOICPA, and 

6 incorporated to 42 CFR 83.13.

7 The Board respectfully recommends 

8 that SEC staffs be accorded to all employees 

9 of the Department of Energy, predecessor 

10 agencies and its Contractors and 

11 Subcontractors who worked in any area of 

12 Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, 

13 New Mexico from January 1, 1949, through 

14 December 31, 1962.

15 For a number of work days, 

16 aggregating at least 250 work days occurring 

17 either solely under this employment or in 

18 combination with work days within the 

19 parameters established for one or more other 

20 Classes of employees included in the SEC.

21 This recommendation is based on 

22 the following factors. Individuals working at 
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1 the Sandia National Laboratories, during the 

2 time period in question, worked on nuclear 

3 weapon production and related operations.

4 The National Institute for 

5 Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH, review 

6 of available monitoring data, as well as 

7 available process and source term information. 

8 Various production activities at the Sandia 

9 National Laboratories, found that NIOSH lacked 

10 adequate information necessary to complete 

11 individual dose reconstructions with 

12 sufficient accuracy for internal radiological 

13 exposures to plutonium, tritium and other 

14 radionuclides during the time period in 

15 question.

16 The Board concurs with this 

17 determination. Three, NIOSH determined that 

18 health may have been in danger for these 

19 Sandia National Laboratories workers during 

20 the time period in question.

21 The Board also concurs with this 

22 determination. Based on these considerations, 
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1 discussions held at the May 24th to 26th, 

2 2011, Board Meeting, held in St. Louis, 

3 Missouri, the Board recommends that the Class 

4 covering all employees of the Department of 

5 Energy, its predecessor agencies, Contractors 

6 and Subcontractors who worked in any area at 

7 Sandia National Laboratories, in Albuquerque, 

8 New Mexico, from January 1st, 1949, through 

9 December 31st, 1962, for a number of work days 

10 aggregating at least 250 work days occurring 

11 either solely under this employment or in 

12 combination with work days within the 

13 parameters established for one or more other 

14 Classes of employees included in the SEC, be 

15 added to the SEC.

16 Enclosed is supporting 

17 documentation from the Board Meeting where 

18 this SEC Class was discussed. This 

19 documentation includes transcripts of the 

20 deliberations, copies of the petition, NIOSH 

21 review thereof, and related materials.

22 The meeting's items aren't 
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1 available at this time, they will follow 

2 shortly. So will you accept that as a 

3 friendly amendment? Thank you.

4 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. Any 

6 further discussion?

7 (No response.)

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Ted, do the roll 

9 call.

10 MR. KATZ: Dr. Anderson?

11 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

12 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach?

13 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

14 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson?

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

16 MR. KATZ: Dr. Field?

17 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

18 MR. KATZ: Mr. Gibson is absent. 

19 Mr. Griffon?

20 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes.

21 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lemen?

22 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes.
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1 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lockey?

2 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes.

3 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius?

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

5 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn?

6 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

7 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston is absent, 

8 but would also recuse from this, in any event. 

9 Mr. Presley?

10 MEMBER PRESLEY: Yes.

11 MR. KATZ: Dr. Richardson is 

12 absent, I don't have to collect his vote. Dr. 

13 Roessler?

14 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

15 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield has 

16 recused, and Dr. Ziemer?

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

18 MR. KATZ: So, all in favor, the 

19 motion passes. I'll collect the extra votes.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, and 

21 if anybody has, finds any other typos or 

22 changes in the letter, let me know. Pass it 
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1 back.

2 We'll take care of those. Sam, 

3 good, since you were heading towards the --

4 yes, well, don't go away.

5 Do we have, I'm trying to figure 

6 out, we need to form a Work Group on Sandia. 

7 We have Site Profile review I believe that 

8 SC&A has done, that we have not set up a Work 

9 Group to review, if my memory is correct.

10 And Josie reminded me. And we 

11 also have this, I think, a second report 

12 coming from NIOSH, if I understood you 

13 correctly?

14 DR. GLOVER: There will be a 

15 second report, yes.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Do we have an 

17 estimate on the timing on that?

18 DR. GLOVER: It's based on DOE's 

19 response time. We're looking at about a year.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So --

21 DR. GLOVER: Although my boss 

22 could change my mind one way or the other, but 
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1 I believe that's probably right.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Josie.

3 MEMBER BEACH: Sam, can you tell 

4 us what years those, that next report is 

5 covering?

6 DR. GLOVER: That would go from 

7 the beginning of, the end of this one, '63, 

8 and about through the early '90s, when CEP 

9 data was the data falsification at CEP.

10 There was an issue where they 

11 falsified data. So we'd be looking about that 

12 time frame.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: What I would 

14 propose as a way going forward, is that we 

15 probably should, it probably is timely at 

16 least to form a Work Group on Sandia.

17 And since we have the Site Profile 

18 review, aren't there going to have to be some, 

19 at least initial review of that Site Profile 

20 and some thought given to how, what issues may 

21 come up in terms of the additional years and 

22 so forth.
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1 Because I don't think we want to 

2 spend a lot of time on Site Profile issues 

3 that may, sort of get changed by an SEC 

4 evaluation.

5 I suspect some of them may already 

6 have, but at least if we got some initial 

7 review going. Because, again, while we're, I 

8 don't think we should postpone too long 

9 dealing with the Sandia Site Profile.

10 And I think we also, while it's 

11 sort of fresh in our minds, and reviewing it 

12 is probably more appropriate to start work on 

13 that. So, other Board Members have, yes.

14 MEMBER BEACH: I'm wondering if we 

15 could task SC&A to review the Evaluation 

16 Report. I don't think that's been done.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, but, what 

18 parts of the Evaluation Report? Because the, 

19 we've accepted that and I believe that the 

20 doses for which NIOSH can, says that they can, 

21 the external doses, essentially.

22 They say they can construct, and 
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1 those should be covered in the Site Profile. 

2 I think the question is going to be to what 

3 extent the Site Profile and the SC&A review of 

4 that Site Profile, may not reflect some of the 

5 newer information that came up in the SEC 

6 Evaluation.

7 But, I think perhaps a meeting of 

8 the group to, before they do any further 

9 tasking, can sort of review the issues and see 

10 where that is.

11 I think a meeting with NIOSH, 

12 maybe even done by conference call, I don't 

13 know. But could, rather than have a separate 

14 review of the Evaluation Report.

15 Now, it may turn out that the Site 

16 Profile needs to be changed, I don't, Sam, do 

17 you have any thoughts on that? Or you've been 

18 probably busy --

19 DR. GLOVER: I believe there are 

20 revisions that are required to the Site 

21 Profile. And the post-'62, time frame. But I 

22 did want to remind that you guys had tasked 
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1 SC&A to accompany us on some of these visits.

2 And so some of this, because it is 

3 classified, it's hard to get to these things. 

4 So they've been participating with us, so 

5 they are able to stay abreast of what the 

6 current, what we are seeing down there.

7 I do not believe we've created an 

8 issues matrix, and so perhaps that's a good 

9 place to start.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Exactly. And I 

11 also think that since, remember we had tasked 

12 SC&A to go out to Sandia because the nature of 

13 some of these interviews and difficulties of 

14 trying to do them again, so, repeating them.

15 So there is information there. And 

16 I think it's worth getting at least started. 

17 It may not be on sort of a fast track review, 

18 but it certainly will be helpful to get going.

19 Anybody else have comments? If 

20 not, I think we need a motion to form a Work 

21 Group?

22 MEMBER PRESLEY: So moved.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, Bob moved, 

2 seconded by Wanda?

3 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And to that, all 

5 in favor say aye.

6 (Chorus of ayes.)

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Opposed?

8 (No response.)

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, and you 

10 can let me know, since there are a number of 

11 Board Members who are not here, and give them 

12 a fair opportunity to volunteer.

13 I will circulate an email asking 

14 for volunteers for this Work Group and then 

15 make the appointment, hopefully between now 

16 and our July meeting, if I can track everybody 

17 down for that.

18 Okay, we have some time. We have 

19 scheduled the review of Savannah River until 

20 11:00, but, not to put you on the spot, Mark, 

21 but now that we've got you here, we're going 

22 to, yes, we're going to keep it at 11:00.
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1 However, are you ready? And we 

2 can put this off to this afternoon but I think 

3 we have some other Board work time later. But 

4 there are some Work Group Reports and 

5 Subcommittee Report on the Dose Reconstruction 

6 Committee that we'd like to hear from.

7 And LANL, I believe, is the other 

8 outstanding Work Group that we haven't heard 

9 from and is not scheduled elsewhere on the 

10 agenda.

11 I don't know if you want, rather 

12 do those later or, since you're just off the 

13 plane? Yes, okay, we'll do that this 

14 afternoon.

15 Then, I believe we then will, we 

16 will then take a break until 11:00 and if we 

17 can be in here about five of 11:00 to get 

18 started with Savannah River. Yes? 

19 Yes, well, that's, I think we've 

20 pretty much dealt our Board work time issues 

21 and we're tied down on some of these petitions 

22 in terms of timing.
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1 So, this, yes, we'll make up for 

2 this in lovely, beautiful Tri-Cities.

3 MEMBER MUNN: As requested.

4 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

5 went off the record at 

6 10:12 a.m. and resumed at 

7 11:02 a.m.)

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think we're 

9 ready to reconvene the Board Meeting. We will 

10 now discuss the Savannah River SEC petition, 

11 and I believe Tim Taulbee is going to lead 

12 off, and then we'll hear from Mark Griffon, 

13 from the Work Group. So, Tim, go ahead.

14 DR. TAULBEE: Thank you, Dr. 

15 Melius, Members of the Board. The goal of my 

16 presentation here is to give you an update on 

17 where we are with some of the priority issues 

18 that SC&A and the Work Group have identified.

19 And first let me go through what 

20 those priority issues are. I've got the seven 

21 of them listed here. Issues 1 and 2 are 

22 thorium-related.
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1 We've got these divided by 

2 different time periods as to whether thorium 

3 metal was worked with or thorium oxide. And 

4 then the exotic radionuclides, the trivalents, 

5 the neptunium mixed fission products, cobalt6 60 and then other exotics.

7 The bulk of this presentation will 

8 be on the first two issues there: the thorium. 

9 And my goal here is to try and give you an 

10 overview of the SRS isotope production.

11 As you know, Savannah River was 

12 one of the sites that made materials, 

13 specifically plutonium-239, was their primary 

14 mission.

15 But they also made other isotopes, 

16 as well. Plutonium-238, using neptunium as a 

17 target, but for thorium, what their main goal 

18 was, was uranium-233, that was what they were 

19 trying to produce.

20 And in order to do that, they 

21 would use thorium, in this process. So I'm 

22 going to walk through the different steps of 
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1 the isotope production so that you can see 

2 where thorium was worked with, at the Savannah 

3 River Site, using thorium as the example and 

4 going through this, so that I can identify it 

5 and illustrate it for the Board.

6 The three basic steps are a target 

7 manufacture. You start with a material and 

8 then you put it into a reactor, that would be 

9 target irradiation of 100 areas.

10 It would absorb neutrons and 

11 undergo some nuclear reactions to produce the 

12 material you are interested in. In this case, 

13 uranium-233. But to get the uranium-233 out 

14 of this target material, you have to go 

15 through some chemical separations.

16 And so these are the three main 

17 processes that Savannah River went through 

18 whenever they made any material, plutonium19 239, uranium-233, plutonium-238, et cetera.

20 So you start with the target 

21 manufacturing and the location of where this 

22 was conducted was up here in this corner, that 
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1 you can see up here in the 300 area.

2 It's also called the M area. And 

3 from prior to 1965, to make uranium-233, they 

4 primarily used thorium metal. Post-1965, the 

5 used thorium oxide.

6 And so that's why we've divided 

7 Issue 1 and Issue 2, there separately. The 

8 main operations in target manufacturing is 

9 material canning.

10 And that is to put this material, 

11 this thorium metal into a can, if you will, an 

12 aluminum can and -- before they put it into a 

13 reactor. Now, on-site, they did on-site 

14 canning prior to 1955.

15 They were using a dipping method, 

16 and I'll get into that a little more later. 

17 But the bulk of it, from 1955 to 1964, was 

18 actually using a different method, a hot press 

19 bonded method.

20 And these were actually canned 

21 off-site, at Sylvania. Now, starting in 1964, 

22 again, with thorium oxide, they moved it back 
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1 on site in order to do that.

2 The main operations within this 

3 area, after the canning, is you would weld the 

4 endcap on, you'd do pressure tests. You'd do 

5 radiography on these end smears before they 

6 would be sent to the reactors for target 

7 irradiation.

8 And here you can see the five 

9 production reactors. Again, M area was way up 

10 here, and now the production reactors are all 

11 kind of in a semi-circle here, about the 

12 center of the site. These canned thorium 

13 slugs would be coming in. The outside jacket 

14 is all aluminum and in the assembly area at 

15 the reactors, these encapsulated thorium slugs 

16 would be loaded into long assemblies to be 

17 lowered into the reactor.

18 So these, about ten inches to 12 

19 inch slugs would be hand put into an assembly. 

20 Now, once they're into an assembly, then they 

21 would be sent into the reactor and irradiated 

22 for some specified time period in order to 
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1 make the uranium-233.

2 Following the irradiation, they 

3 would be moved, pulled out of the reactor, 

4 transferred through a channel, into the 

5 disassembly area or the disassembly pool, and 

6 these thorium slugs would be unloaded from the 

7 assembly, and allowed to cool for 30 to 90 

8 days, depending on what the specifications 

9 were.

10 After the irradiation, after the 

11 cooling took place -- the main purpose of 

12 that, by the way, was to allow short-lived 

13 fission products to decay out -- the slugs 

14 would then be sent to chemical separations. 

15 Now prior to 1964, I've got this slide here 

16 because at that point, pre-1964, these slugs 

17 were shipped off-site to Oak Ridge National 

18 Laboratory for the actual chemical separation.

19 It wasn't done at Savannah River. 

20 Now some of these slugs would be, a sample 

21 would be taken from them and those samples 

22 would be sent up to the 700 area, into the 
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1 high-level cave areas, for analysis.

2 There is also some non-destructive 

3 testing that would be done there at the 

4 reactors as well, where they do visual 

5 inspections and that type of thing.

6 But prior to 1964, there wasn't 

7 any thorium separations that were going on in 

8 the 200 areas. Post-1964, that changed. This 

9 is when they introduced the thorex process 

10 there in the 200 H Canyon.

11 And the first campaign took place 

12 in 1964, when they did this. And, initially, 

13 thorium was actually treated as a waste 

14 product.

15 So, when they separated it or 

16 dissolved the thorium down, they kept the 

17 mixed fission products with the thorium and 

18 sent it right out to the waste tanks.

19 So there really wasn't any 

20 handling. It went from the canyon directly 

21 into the waste tanks. Now in later campaigns, 

22 they introduced an additional stream to 
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1 recover the thorium.

2 And so they recovered the thorium 

3 as thorium nitrate and they sent it to 

4 Fernald. So at that point, they started 

5 pumping it into rail cars and then they would 

6 send it up to Fernald.

7 So within the chemical 

8 separations, again, the product was uranium9 233, that was what they were going after. And 

10 so in this latter time period, after that 

11 first campaign, you had three waste, you had 

12 three product, or three streams of material: 

13 the uranium-233 that went to the B-Line, the 

14 mixed fission products which went out to the 

15 waste tanks, and then the recovered thorium 

16 nitrate which was pumped into rail cars and 

17 sent to Fernald.

18 So for our evaluation, of these 

19 three steps for the U-233 production, we 

20 originally felt that the main exposures were 

21 in the 300 area. This is where un22 encapsulated material was handled. This is 
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1 where they would be doing work with the 

2 thorium in a form that could result in 

3 airborne radioactivity and inhalation hazards.

4 In the 100 areas, this is 

5 encapsulated material. And then, in the 200 

6 area, again the material wasn't present until 

7 1964, and after '64, this was a wet process.

8 So of these three different steps, 

9 we felt the 300 area was the largest or of the 

10 greatest concern. So, let me go into a little 

11 more detail about the 300 area at this time. 

12 And this was, again, a thorium canning method. 

13 Now prior to 1955, they used a dipping 

14 method, and so what you'd take is a thorium 

15 slug and you put it inside a can, but you 

16 needed to seal the edges of it.

17 And so, in order to do this, they 

18 would dip it in a molten aluminum silica bath 

19 and you can see here in the picture that 

20 that's what workers are doing. They have 

21 tongs that they're dipping them down into the 

22 bath.
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1 Sometimes the slugs coming from 

2 the rolling mill wouldn't fit inside the cans. 

3 So they had to do lathing and other cutting, 

4 that type of thing, in order to get them in 

5 the cans initially.

6 So there was some potential for 

7 exposure in this area, during this process. 

8 Now, in later years, after 1956, they had two 

9 simultaneous canning operations going on. The 

10 dipping method and then the hot press bonded 

11 method which was done by Sylvania. Now, what 

12 turned out was the hot press bonded method was 

13 a better method compared to the dipping. They 

14 had less slug failures. In failures, I mean 

15 when they do the pressure tests in an 

16 autoclave. And so they had a higher 

17 acceptance rating.

18 So, they went solely with the hot 

19 press bonded method, starting in about 1956. 

20 So the slugs would then come from Sylvania, 

21 mostly canned, not completely canned, and 

22 Savannah River would finish them. They would 
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1 weld the ends on, and then they would do all 

2 the pressure testing for them.

3 So this process was very similar 

4 to uranium canning. Using the dipping method 

5 and the hot press bonded method. And so, what 

6 we had for dose reconstruction was we had a 

7 lot of uranium bioassay data available, and

8 since the processes were similar, we felt we 

9 could use the uranium bioassay to determine 

10 what a mass intake would be.

11 Recognizing it's a different 

12 material, but if you go back to mass, how much 

13 would be breathed into an individual? We 

14 could determine the mass, and assuming an 

15 equal mass of thorium, calculate the dose out.

16 And so we felt that this was 

17 bounding primarily because of the thorium slug 

18 production. And when you look at the number 

19 of slugs produced of uranium targets versus 

20 the number of thorium targets, you'll see that 

21 the actual thorium fraction in the greatest, 

22 the largest year, was still less than five 
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1 percent.

2 So the bulk of their operation was 

3 producing plutonium-239, and the amount of 

4 thorium was actually rather small, when you 

5 think about it on a large scale. Because, you 

6 know, in this case 16,000 slugs sounds like a 

7 lot, but compared to 400,000, we feel that 

8 this pretty similar or a bounding type of 

9 approach.

10 So we cut that off, though, at 

11 1965, because the whole operation changed. 

12 They were no longer working with metal; they 

13 started working with thorium oxide, which is a 

14 powder. And in order to can that material, 

15 they actually used vibration and compaction. 

16 Totally different than what they were doing 

17 with uranium metal.

18 So we couldn't use the uranium 

19 bioassay anymore. So we wanted to look at, 

20 was there any other data, any other method to 

21 estimate dose.

22 And because this was a powder type 
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1 of operation, Savannah River actually used a 

2 glove box to do this work. And here's a 

3 picture of the thorium glove box that was in 

4 the 300 area. And a worker is standing there. 

5 And what you'll see here in the lower right6 hand corner, in this area right here, is some 

7 completed thorium slugs.

8 You'll see them laying there in a 

9 tray, after they've gone through the 

10 compaction and all of the other work 

11 associated with it.

12 Well, on the backside of this 

13 glove box, if you look here at the top. Up 

14 here, this is the ventilation coming out of 

15 the top of the glove box.

16 And this line comes right down 

17 here into this HEPA filtration system. So 

18 right there next to the glove box was the air 

19 recovery unit for the glove box, where they 

20 were pulling the samples, or pulling air 

21 through the glove box.

22 And you also notice there, behind 
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1 the chain rope, materials coming out of the 

2 glove box were bagged for radiation control. 

3 Now, one of the things that we wanted to look 

4 at was, is there any air sampling data? And 

5 there is for this particular area.

6 And this particular plot that I'm 

7 showing here is that, one of the concerns was 

8 we don't have air sampling data for the 

9 entire time period, from 1964 through 1971.

10 And the reason for this was that 

11 these campaigns were periodic. And here, you 

12 can see on the graph, the bars are when the 

13 campaigns transpired and the individual black 

14 dots are when we have air sample data with --

15 the magnitude of those samples are.

16 So, one wouldn't expect that there 

17 would be a lot of air sample data when they 

18 weren't doing any work in that particular 

19 area.

20 But, in this case, we have the air 

21 sample data when they were doing this work. 

22 We obtained these air samples, as you saw, and 
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1 we confirmed through interviews with the 

2 Radiological Control Technician, who actually 

3 took them; he's still alive, and we 

4 interviewed him. And this samples were taken 

5 outside the glove box and he considered them 

6 breathing-zone equivalent.

7 Because he put it on a tripod type 

8 of stand and he would position that air 

9 sampler where the workers were working, at 

10 nose height.

11 So, in his opinion, these were

12 breathing-zone equivalent. So, based upon 

13 this air samples, we felt we could calculate 

14 the doses to the workers, during this thorium15 oxide time period.

16 So, again, our main impression was 

17 that the 300 area was the predominant exposure 

18 potential and we have methods to estimate 

19 those doses.

20 In early interviews with workers 

21 about the thorium operations, we did have 

22 indications that they did some research and 
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1 development work, but all the interviews 

2 indicated this was minor benchtop-type of 

3 levels, nothing significant.

4 SC&A in January of this year, in 

5 one of their findings, was that NIOSH did not 

6 address thorium exposures in other areas.

7 And so, at that time, we committed 

8 that we would go back to the site and look for 

9 thorium exposures in some of these other 

10 areas.

11 Now, what we wanted to go back and 

12 look at, was the material accountability 

13 ledgers or inventories. And this was 

14 conducted after the last Board Meeting. We 

15 did this in March.

16 And what was interesting about 

17 this was from our interviews, the people who 

18 worked with the material said that there was 

19 only small quantities, nothing significant.

20 That's not what the ledger showed 

21 us, when we looked at this in March. It was 

22 rather surprising, to be quite honest, in this 
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1 case. And two areas popped out and that was 

2 the 700 area and the TNX area.

3 Now, the 700 area was the research 

4 or Savannah River Laboratory. And, as best we 

5 can kind of figure, Savannah River methodology 

6 for starting a new process or improving a 

7 process, was they would start with lab work 

8 and deal with small quantities.

9 And then they would scale it up to 

10 a semi-works plant or pilot plant down at the 

11 TNX facility, before they turned it into full12 scale production in the canyons or up in the 

13 300 area for material canning.

14 So that was their general process, 

15 and what you'll see here on this map is the 

16 700 area is right next to M area, up there at 

17 the top, and the TNX area is down along the 

18 river.

19 So in the Savannah River, or in 

20 the 700 area, we've found lots of memos 

21 discussing benchtop thorium work in the B 

22 wing, Room 131, appears very often.
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1 And we also have indications of 

2 thorium work in the high level caves. This is 

3 a radiated thorium that actually came, 

4 initially, from Hanford. And then some of 

5 them from the reactor area, they would send 

6 back to 700 area for analysis.

7 But none of these really coincided 

8 with these large quantities we saw in the 

9 ledgers. What we found, in addition, on the 

10 back end of the 773 area, that laboratory, was 

11 a metallurgical research and development 

12 laboratory.

13 And is known to have a capability 

14 of manufacturing full-scale fuel and target 

15 assemblies. So, they had a lab that's best 

16 described as a very large garage in which they 

17 had a 300-ton press and other materials in 

18 there, so that they could do this research and 

19 development.

20 And our current belief is that 

21 most of the thorium work, that's accounting 

22 for these tons of material that we see in the 
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1 ledgers, was conducted here in this 

2 metallurgical laboratory.

3 So, that's one area that has us 

4 concerned, at this point. The other area is 

5 the TNX or the separation semi-works area.

6 And the ledgers indicate 

7 intermittent work, 1954 to 1956, and then '64 

8 to '68. The '54 to '56, was more canning type 

9 of work that they were doing down there.

10 And '64 to '68, was actually 

11 dissolving. And this slide might be different 

12 than what you got in your handouts, and I 

13 apologize for that. In reviewing this 

14 presentation yesterday, I ran into -- this 

15 said irradiated thorium and that's incorrect. 

16 This slide is correct. 

17 The work involved dissolving 

18 unirradiated thorium. And so these were not, 

19 these are not high-level gamma slugs that they 

20 were handling and which you'd have lots of 

21 shielding to protect you.

22 These were normal uranium slugs 
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1 that they were dissolving down in preparation 

2 for the separations canyons.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The time frame 

4 changed also, yes.

5 DR. TAULBEE: Yes, that is 

6 correct, as well. I apologize for that. So 

7 that was, and this is the case where they 

8 would be working from beaker-type of levels 

9 and now moving into tanks and drums on the 

10 order of 50 gallons to 100 gallons type of 

11 operations, in preparation to move to the 

12 canyons.

13 Now, a lot of the early memos 

14 actually mention a thorium separations 

15 building. And especially in the early years, 

16 1953, '54, and '55.

17 What's interesting about that is 

18 they are a little misleading in that they did 

19 build a building to do thorium separations, 

20 but the AEC cancelled it in 1956.

21 So the building was actually 

22 built; it was never put into production. So, 
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1 a great deal of the information we have is 

2 about building this building and it never 

3 handled thorium.

4 But other areas there at the TNX 

5 certainly did during this time frame. So, 

6 kind of an overview, this slide is intended to 

7 try and show you where we feel that dose 

8 reconstruction is feasible and areas where we 

9 have concerns and likely could be a problem.

10 So, to kind of go from the top, or 

11 actually let me walk through, based upon the 

12 process. Again, the 300 area, I showed you 

13 the pre-metal or the metal workings as well as 

14 the thorium oxide time frame.

15 And we feel the entire time period 

16 we have a pretty good method of estimating 

17 dose. Now, in the reactors, that would be 

18 encapsulated material, so there really isn't 

19 a significant or any airborne hazard in that 

20 area.

21 The canyon areas didn't start up 

22 until 1964. Actually, that could have been 
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1 1965; the first irradiation started in '64, 

2 and there is a delay between irradiation and 

3 separations.

4 And so that area, even though it's 

5 in the canyons, it would be taking some 

6 samples coming out of the processes at 

7 different time periods.

8 And then at the end, the tail end, 

9 they'd be pumping that into the rail cars to 

10 send to Fernald.

11 The 700 area is where they did a 

12 lot of research early on, up until 1956, and 

13 then it appears that, at that time period, 

14 most of the thorium research stopped for a set 

15 time period.

16 It didn't completely shut down 

17 immediately and when it started back up was 

18 really in the '60 to '61 time frame, when they 

19 started working with some of the thorium 

20 oxide, in preparation.

21 The CMX facility listed there --

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Can I interrupt, 
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1 just --

2 DR. TAULBEE: Sure.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- I'm a little 

4 confused on the color coding here.

5 DR. TAULBEE: Yes.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: For 

7 unencapsulated thorium, you have three 

8 different colors. Is that degree of exposure 

9 or is that, I mean it's a nice slide but --

10 (Laughter.)

11 DR. TAULBEE: That is what I'm 

12 trying to convey at this point.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, so it's 

14 low, medium, high?

15 DR. TAULBEE: Effectively, yes.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, okay, no 

17 that's very good. 

18 DR. TAULBEE: That's what I'm 

19 trying to convey, anyway, I'm sorry. But, 

20 yes, so, during that '57 to 1960 time period 

21 in the 700 lab, because there wasn't much 

22 thorium work going on or research, we consider 
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1 that to be a low time period.

2 But there would be residual 

3 material around. In the CMX facility, this 

4 was the reactor pilot plant or semi-works, if 

5 you will. And what they would be doing there, 

6 is they would be testing these fuel elements. 

7 They'd be heating up the water to see how 

8 they behaved in that encapsulated form within 

9 the reactor. It's not actually running a 

10 critical experiment or critical reaction, but 

11 they would be doing the thermodynamics 

12 associated with the reactor there in the CMX.

13 Right next to it is TNX, which is 

14 the semi-works, and there they would be 

15 working with it in an unencapsulated form.

16 The next one down is the 777M 

17 laboratory or this physics laboratory. And 

18 this one is, was very difficult for me to try 

19 and put into a bin.

20 Because some of the material was, 

21 that they worked with there were bare thorium 

22 slugs, not canned. Now, they didn't 
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1 physically do anything with them, cutting or 

2 anything like that on them.

3 They were doing reactivity tests. 

4 And so they'd be loading them into a critical 

5 pile and determining what the effect on the 

6 other fuel elements surrounding nearby would 

7 be.

8 And so, but they had both bare 

9 thorium slugs and encapsulated. So that was 

10 where they were doing that work.

11 So it's really a low, 

12 unencapsulated hazard, but there was some that 

13 was unencapsulated. And then the kind of 

14 grayed areas there, is when thorium was not 

15 present.

16 So, what you can see is that 

17 you've got a really big mix here at the site. 

18 In some areas the exposure is minimal, and 

19 then in other areas, it could be rather large.

20 So our time line, in evaluating 

21 this, is we anticipate submitting to the Board 

22 a revised Evaluation Report addendum or an 
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1 83.14 for your consideration at the August 

2 meeting.

3 So we're wrapping this up. We 

4 have since the last Board meeting in February, 

5 we've conducted additional interviews within, 

6 more individuals who worked with thorium in 

7 the 1950s.

8 We've identified them from some of 

9 the memos that we found in March. As these 

10 were the people doing the work. And, again, 

11 all of them are, have indicated during the 

12 interviews, that they only worked with small 

13 quantities, in fact, in every single case.

14 The interesting part is that we've 

15 specifically started asking about the metal 

16 laboratory, and we haven't found anybody that 

17 actually worked there. And all the 

18 interviewees have indicated that they really 

19 didn't know much of what was going on in that 

20 particular part of the laboratory.

21 So, from their knowledge, the lab 

22 part, the small individual labs where they'd 
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1 have benchtop work, it was very small. But the 

2 metallurgical laboratory, very likely had or 

3 all of those large quantities, these tons of 

4 thorium that we cite.

5 Early next month, we're going to 

6 follow one last thread down at Savannah River, 

7 and this is a box that was identified back in 

8 the March time frame, I guess it was April, 

9 I'm sorry.

10 And the line there in italics, A 

11 Pu results Pu controlled thorium log '54 to 

12 '58, is the only indication we have on this 

13 box. It's in the Atlanta Federal Records 

14 Center.

15 The site is pulling it back so we 

16 can look at it. And based upon other boxes of 

17 this type of information, my interpretation is 

18 that the A stands for A area, which would be 

19 the 700 area. Pu results are the plutonium 

20 bioassay for A area, controlled blanks and 

21 spikes. And then the thorium log. This could 

22 be a thorium bioassay log book or air samples.
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1 We just don't know, from this 

2 standpoint. And then the time periods, '54 to 

3 '58, which is that early area there for the 

4 Savannah River laboratory.

5 But we do, like I said, the first 

6 week of June, we will look at this and we will 

7 wrap up all of the thorium work before your 

8 August Board Meeting.

9 So, with that, let me switch now, 

10 gears, and go to the exotic radionuclides. If 

11 you recall, the Savannah River petition is for 

12 construction trades-based.

13 Oh, I'm sorry, I do need to go 

14 back, I apologize for this. On this slide, I 

15 didn't get down to the central shops area.

16 One of the things that's important 

17 to remember, because this is a construction 

18 trades SEC, is that although thorium wasn't 

19 present at the central shops, all of those 

20 construction trades workers down at the 

21 central shops could go to any of these areas.

22 So, a very likely could have gone 
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1 to the 700 area, if they went to the central 

2 shops, picked up their badge that morning, 

3 they could go to the 700 area.

4 They could go to the TNX. Where 

5 they got farmed out to is really not 

6 trackable. So, I've included it there as a, 

7 kind of a gray type of area, because if we 

8 were to recommend a Class, the people with the 

9 construction trades in the central shops, 

10 would be included because we just can't track 

11 where they went, as well as we can all of the 

12 other workers.

13 So, again, this is construction 

14 trades. Generally, with exotic radionuclides 

15 there's less bioassay for construction trades 

16 workers compared to operations workers.

17 And a concern has been raised as 

18 to whether the coworker models, that we've 

19 proposed in our SEC Evaluation Report, are 

20 applicable to construction trades workers.

21 And the main reason is because of 

22 the difference in the nature of the work. 
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1 They have a potential for higher intensity 

2 exposure, but less frequent. So how that 

3 plays out is uncertain.

4 Now with exotic radionuclides, 

5 what we proposed is to use the coworker 

6 models. Now at Savannah River, we actually 

7 have a large quantity of data, and so we're 

8 proposing to compare construction trades 

9 workers to all monitored workers.

10 And so we developed first the all 

11 monitored worker/coworker model, and then 

12 develop a construction trades worker model, 

13 and then do a hypothesis test to compare the 

14 two models, to see if there's a difference.

15 When we compared them for tritium, 

16 because that was the easiest to do, back in 

17 December of this past year, we didn't see any 

18 difference between construction trades and the 

19 all monitored workers. But for exotic 

20 radionuclides, it could be different; we just 

21 don't know. In this particular case, for 

22 bioassay samples for coworker models, the 
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1 first bullet there, the trivalents, 

2 americium, curium, californium, we have about 

3 13,000 urinalysis samples between '64 and 1980 

4 for that trivalent series.

5 Neptunium we have about 3,000, 

6 plus the NOCTS whole body counts. These would 

7 be whole body count data that's within the 

8 NOCTS data set.

9 And then for mixed fission 

10 products, there's 49,000 urinalysis samples, 

11 as well as the NOCTS whole body counts.

12 Now, for the trivalents, 

13 americium, curium and californium, I believe 

14 during our Work Group meeting in February, I 

15 had incorrectly spoken and said that we would 

16 be able to provide this data set to the Work 

17 Group and such that you all could do analysis 

18 on them simultaneously with us, by May, I 

19 believe.

20 Well, what turned out was we were 

21 trying to just use the NOCTS data and we 

22 didn't have the full data set. And what 
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1 turned out was we didn't have sufficient data 

2 to do the comparison.

3 So, back in March, we started 

4 coding those 13,000 americium, curium and 

5 californium samples. That coding effort 

6 should be completed by the middle of June, and 

7 then we can begin on that analysis part.

8 For neptunium, all of that data 

9 has been coded. The mixed fission products 

10 were currently under evaluation. Now, during 

11 my presentation to the Board in February, when 

12 I was discussing the tritium and I believe Dr. 

13 Richardson asked about, or maybe it was Dr. 

14 Field, about how we selected who was a 

15 construction trade and who wasn't.

16 And I indicated at that time we 

17 were using self-reported data. And there 

18 appeared to be some concern from that. Well, 

19 at Savannah River we have all of the work 

20 history cards for people who worked there.

21 So, one of the steps that we can 

22 do is go through each bioassay sample within 
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1 that time period and actually code their 

2 actual job. This is very time-consuming.

3 I would like to be able to use the 

4 self-reported data that we can readily get. 

5 It's already electronic from with NOCTS, but 

6 our current path is to use the work history 

7 cards.

8 The bottom line with this is that 

9 to complete all three of these analyses, 

10 taking this path, has pushed the actual time 

11 line out about a year, out to May.

12 And so that has some concerns in 

13 and of itself, that we wouldn't get this 

14 answer for a very long time in going down this 

15 path.

16 The final issue is the time line 

17 for the other exotics. And back in March, 

18 when we were there at the site, we went 

19 through the Savannah River Laboratory Monthly 

20 Reports.

21 And we selected excerpts from 

22 those reports that talked about other 
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1 radionuclides, such as polonium, thulium and 

2 technetium, actually, and several other ones 

3 that they worked with.

4 And so we've begun to build a 

5 matrix of when they worked with some of these 

6 small projects. Those excerpts are currently 

7 undergoing classification review, so we 

8 haven't gotten them yet.

9 But this was all done within the 

10 classified vault with SC&A's assistance, as 

11 well. And, so with that, I'd be happy to 

12 answer any questions.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Tim, 

14 and can I remind people on the phone that, 

15 please mute your phones. If you don't have a 

16 mute on the phone, *6, works, we're hearing 

17 some background, an occasional sneeze, but it 

18 would be helpful, thank you.

19 Board Members with questions? Why 

20 don't I start off because maybe Bill or Tim, 

21 someone can sort of refresh my memory on the 

22 concern about using the self-reported, you 
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1 know, work data. As to why that would be a, 

2 to what degree it would be a problem or do we 

3 know, so I just don't quite understand it.

4 DR. TAULBEE: I believe the 

5 concern dealt with, that if you have people 

6 who are actually not a construction trades 

7 worker, it would be in that pile that your 

8 hypothesis testing could be flawed, that if 

9 you didn't see a difference it would be more 

10 biased towards the null of never seeing 

11 anything, is what they were concerned about.

12 And I can't remember, I think it 

13 was Dr. Richardson, is that correct, who 

14 brought that up.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It actually 

16 sounds like a David Richardson question. 

17 Because it certainly does change the task. 

18 And I think it somewhat depends on -- the 

19 amount of bias is going to depend on how much 

20 misclassification there is, and so forth.

21 And I don't know if there's a way 

22 of sort of evaluating that before embarking 
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1 on, you know, if you did a comparison on a 

2 sub-sample or sample of those that you could 

3 determine to what extent there is, how 

4 significant the Misclassification is.

5 I think it's hard to judge from a 

6 distance because it somewhat depends on how 

7 you're classifying and so forth.

8 DR. TAULBEE: One interesting part 

9 about that component right there is that once 

10 we, if we go down the path and code all the 

11 work histories for the trivalents, we do have 

12 that electronic data set so those two could 

13 actually be compared.

14 MEMBER FIELD: Just so the next 

15 time you speak, you can say it was me that 

16 asked this question, okay?

17 (Laughter.)

18 DR. TAULBEE: I'm sorry.

19 MEMBER FIELD: With the workers, I 

20 guess the concern would be for self-reported 

21 information for the next of kin that may not 

22 know that information. So it would be a good 
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1 number of folks, I would imagine, that would 

2 construction workers that if they weren't able 

3 to self-report, you would never know. Is that 

4 correct?

5 DR. TAULBEE: That is correct to 

6 some degree. If they were monitored for 

7 external radiation, and 80 percent of the 

8 claimant population was monitored, we would 

9 have the indication based upon their badge 

10 number, as to which they were.

11 So we could augment some of that 

12 to reduce the misclassification, but you're 

13 absolutely right. If they were not monitored, 

14 then they could be misclassified.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: By the way, the 

16 trick is to attribute the comment to a Board 

17 Member who is not present. And that way --

18 so, Mark was the one that asked all the 

19 questions and we blamed everything on 

20 yesterday, before he got here.

21 Wanda, and then Josie.

22 MEMBER MUNN: It would seem just -
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1 - nothing scientific -- just common sense 

2 would tell one that a construction worker 

3 would be more likely to self-identify, or the 

4 family would be more likely to know that that 

5 person was a construction worker than would be 

6 true of almost any other designation, because 

7 if a person works in construction, they work 

8 in construction. Whether, regardless of who 

9 their employer is, it's not likely that they 

10 would be mistaken as a laboratory technician, 

11 for example.

12 It just, on the other hand, 

13 families frequently don't know what the work 

14 is that a person does, if they do not have a 

15 clear designated trade of that sort.

16 It just seems reasonable to me 

17 that you'd more likely know that.

18 MEMBER FIELD: I guess it depends 

19 on if construction workers have classification 

20 or not. I don't know that, for the site. If 

21 they do, then the family may not know.

22 MEMBER MUNN: No, I was thinking 
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1 in terms of self-classification here.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Tim, do you want 

3 to respond?

4 DR. TAULBEE: I believe what Ms. 

5 Munn is getting at is absolutely right. If 

6 somebody was a carpenter the family would 

7 generally know that they were a carpenter or a 

8 plumber or a pipefitter or that type of a job.

9 So, I think that misclassification 

10 would be minimal but I can't rule it out.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, okay. 

12 Josie, you had a question or no, okay. Phil?

13 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: What about 

14 those people who migrated from construction 

15 jobs into, like, lab workers or whatever?

16 DR. TAULBEE: By the way that 

17 we're going through -- and that's one of the 

18 problems that you identified there with the 

19 self-report -- because it's generic over the 

20 whole time period. By going through the work 

21 history cards, which is taking us a 

22 significant effort in order to do that, we're 
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1 pairing the individual bioassay with what 

2 their job was at that time. So it would 

3 change and it would track a person going 

4 through starting out in construction and then 

5 maybe moving into a foreman or even to a 

6 laboratory person. So, it would track that.

7 That's the, one of the major 

8 benefits of the work history cards. But it is 

9 a very time-consuming effort.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, Board 

11 Members on the phone, do you have any 

12 questions?

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Ziemer, here, I 

14 don't have any questions, I just appreciate 

15 the presentation the Tim Taulbee has given.

16 MEMBER CLAWSON: This is Brad, I 

17 don't have any comments.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thanks. 

19 And, by the way, that was one of our Board 

20 Members sneezing, not someone on the phone. 

21 So, just to clarify that.

22 Okay, why don't we hear from Mark, 
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1 now. Don't go too far away, Tim, because we 

2 may have more questions.

3 MEMBER GRIFFON: My comments will 

4 actually be pretty brief because I think Tim 

5 went over a lot of the same ground. I wasn't 

6 sure exactly how much of an update he was 

7 going to give with regard to the thorium 

8 issue.

9 So I think I can shorten this a 

10 little bit. Now, I just have to find it. 

11 Okay, so just to give an overview of where the 

12 Work Group has been on these issues.

13 And I think I used this, a similar 

14 slide last time, that I gave an update. But 

15 there are 25 issues, and I think Tim touched 

16 on a lot of this.

17 Twenty-one remained at that point, 

18 because we kind of merged a couple. And we 

19 really closed out two items regarding external 

20 exposure and the use of the electronic 

21 database for external exposure, co-worker 

22 model, closed out at least with regard to an 
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1 SEC issue, may still have some Site Profile 

2 questions, but closed out for the SEC review.

3 Of the 19 remaining, there is 14 

4 that are focused on internal dose. So the 

5 highlight of the issues is mainly the internal 

6 dose issues.

7 And the last bullet there says, 

8 there are several items that we went through 

9 the petition, we asked SC&A to go through the 

10 petition.

11 And the petitioner has been, to 

12 some extent, involved in the meetings and 

13 issues that have come up in that regard, we've 

14 basically, I believe, all of them have fit 

15 into other matrix items at this point.

16 So we're capturing all the other 

17 petitioner items, but they all fit into these 

18 19 remaining issues.

19 The focus here for me is going to 

20 be the thorium question. And as Tim pointed 

21 out, it's broken up into this '53 to '65, and 

22 '65 to '71, and I'm going to say two different 
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1 words here. And beyond, is the question that 

2 I think has been raised.

3 So there's a question of this '71 

4 cutoff or further regarding the thorium 

5 question.

6 This summarizes a little bit of 

7 where we're at. In April 28, 2010, NIOSH 

8 published an addendum to its ER Report. Tim 

9 went through a lot of this.

10 It focused on the 300 M area, and 

11 I guess the key bullet here, I'm skipping some 

12 things because it would be redundant from what 

13 we've heard already.

14 The key bullet here is that NIOSH 

15 did not examine work on thorium in any other 

16 area during the '53 to '65 period.

17 The one last bullet there is that 

18 also one of the rationale for the approach 

19 presented to us was that they found the 

20 bioassay work sheets that they concluded were 

21 all, all the results were below the MDA.

22 This was actually a success of the 
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1 Work Group process. We actually got off-line 

2 for a second and had everybody look at the 

3 same computer, and we determined, no, in fact 

4 there were some that were over the MDA.

5 Something, a little mini-win for 

6 the Work Group, which I was quite proud of, we 

7 actually got some work done.

8 Overall conclusions for this first 

9 period, '53 to '65, this is SC&A's overall 

10 conclusions. The key there, again, is in the 

11 first bullet. 

12 The concern of, that it omits 

13 several source terms and this is still an 

14 ongoing project, obviously Tim has discussed.

15 The second item is there's still 

16 some questions remain, from SC&A's standpoint 

17 about the scientific validity of the approach.

18 There's a limited number of air 

19 samples for this early time period. Only 

20 about half of them were alpha-counted and 

21 there's some question about the conversion 

22 from the counts on the air sample to actual 
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1 airborne concentrations.

2 So you have CPM, is the way 

3 they're recorded, I believe. And there's some 

4 question about how that's converted, based on 

5 calibration factors and other information.

6 Time from sample to count time, 

7 things like that. And, finally, the 

8 representativeness of the air samples they, I 

9 think Tim did touch on that a little this 

10 morning, that they've interviewed some 

11 technicians and that's more information than I 

12 had heard before, regarding whether these are 

13 representative of worker samples or the 

14 exposures the worker would have received.

15 The last item is something that 

16 wasn't really hit on too much, but it related 

17 to this thorium issue, there was a question on 

18 the thoron dose reconstruction with radon19 220.

20 The second time period, '65 and 

21 after, as I say in this slide, again, the 

22 report focused on the thorium oxide, as Tim 
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1 outlined in very great detail in his 

2 presentation.

3 They went from the thorium metal 

4 to the thorium oxide, in the 300 area. But 

5 we're pointing out here that this -- only 

6 recover the thorium oxide in that one area, 

7 the 300 M area.

8 Use of the air samples from '64, 

9 to '68, to draw conclusions for that entire 

10 period, '65 to '71. And I would say possibly 

11 further than '71, is some of the information 

12 that SC&A has gathered that it may went, gone 

13 beyond that.

14 And then the last item, is just 

15 consistent with what was just said. That 

16 there's a data-capture effort and I believe 

17 SC&A is working with NIOSH in that regard.

18 The preliminary review, again, 

19 this is talking about that second time period, 

20 '65 to '71. And I think, one of the key 

21 points on this slide is that we had asked, and 

22 this is key throughout the whole time period, 
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1 that we had asked SC&A to consider 

2 construction workers and non-construction 

3 worker data.

4 And partially because it's all 

5 being rolled together, this is operations data 

6 and even though the petition focuses on 

7 construction workers, we ask that SC&A 

8 consider the ability to reconstruct doses for 

9 both those groups.

10 And I guess one point I would make 

11 here is that I think NIOSH, in their 

12 consideration of an approach or a possible 

13 83.14, as Tim described in his one slide, I 

14 think NIOSH should also consider, if they are 

15 going to move in the direction of 83.14, 

16 whether it applies to construction workers and 

17 possibly non-construction workers, NIOSH can 

18 redefine that Class.

19 And SC&A did point out that there, 

20 these findings that they're finding, related 

21 to the thorium reconstruction effort, apply to 

22 both those populations. And here, now this 
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1 might be a little confusing, but it, because 

2 the first bullet point points out that these 

3 things apply to that whole time period.

4 Even though I was just talking 

5 about the second, '65 to '71, time period. 

6 But this points out, and it's not inconsistent 

7 with Tim's slide. I guess part of the effort 

8 going forward is going to be that SC&A NIOSH 

9 have to compare their lists of possible areas 

10 of concern because I'm not sure if all these 

11 areas that I underlined, including the 200 

12 area, 773 area, if I'm correct, that fits into 

13 the 700 series of buildings.

14 So that may have been touched on 

15 by what Tim presented. But I don't know that 

16 he touched on some of these other areas. Like 

17 the Building 643 G and the 100 reactor area.

18 So again, we, I think we need to 

19 get SC&A and NIOSH to make sure that all these 

20 areas of potential concern, potential thorium 

21 exposure are considered. Then there are some 

22 questions that SC&A raised about even the 
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1 reconstruction effort on the 300M area, 

2 notwithstanding the concerns about other 

3 areas.

4 And one is that, looking at the 

5 underlying things here, NIOSH has not 

6 discussed recycled thorium, so the thorium 

7 that may contain uranium-233 and other 

8 isotopes after it's been irradiated, whether 

9 that came back in the 300M area.

10 The second bullet focuses on the 

11 past 1971, kind of thing, the question of, 

12 SC&A seems to have some documented evidence 

13 that it may have extended into, up to 1980, so 

14 SC&A has raised that concern.

15 The third bullet talks about the 

16 other described work other than the thorium 

17 oxide in the '65 and later period, may have 

18 been going on in this 300M building.

19 And then the combined exposure of 

20 thorium and enriched uranium in the 300M 

21 area, how that will be dealt with. So several 

22 other issues, even in the 300M area were 
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1 raised by SC&A.

2 Conclusions on the '65 to '71 and 

3 beyond time frame. You know, it goes back to 

4 these main themes, is that the question on the 

5 source terms. Were all source terms 

6 considered in the 300M area? Questioning of 

7 the adequacy of the air sampling data. The 

8 time coverage, but also the questions related 

9 to the actual using the count data and how 

10 converting that to airborne concentrations.

11 And then the processing beyond 

12 '71. And this is the last slide. It just 

13 lists the, it lists the reports that have gone 

14 back and forth between SC&A and NIOSH, and I 

15 guess a memo to me.

16 So that's all I had. I think Tim 

17 did a very good job and Tim's presentation 

18 actually went beyond where we were at the last 

19 Work Group meeting, so there was some new 

20 information put on the table by NIOSH. So 

21 that's just sort of an update of where the 

22 Work Group has been.
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1 I think it looks clear that we'll 

2 have to have another meeting before the August 

3 meeting and hopefully we can come to some 

4 decisions on thorium by the August meeting, 

5 and that's all I have.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Mark. 

7 Any questions for Mark? Yes, Bill.

8 MEMBER FIELD: Mark, you have 

9 mentioned the one slide, there was questions 

10 with counting methods for the thoron. Was 

11 there any thoron measurements performed at 

12 all?

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: Thoron 

14 measurements were very limited, but I'll, 

15 maybe I'll bring Arjun up to say how limited, 

16 or Tim could speak to it.

17 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, there were 

18 some measurements where there were counts done 

19 of the air samples repeatedly, so that thoron 

20 could be inferred from those counts because of 

21 the decay of the short-lived radionuclides.

22 And those samples were limited. 
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1 There was some counting problems and there 

2 were very few samples.

3 DR. TAULBEE: In that thorium 

4 area, there were times where we had the 

5 initial count, the 24-hour count and the 72-

6 hour count.

7 MEMBER GRIFFON: How many, you 

8 said limited, Arjun, but do you recall how 

9 many?

10 DR. MAKHIJANI: I think I, in the 

11 earlier, '53 to '65 period, there were only 

12 eight samples, but three or four of them were 

13 actually beta-counted.

14 So I think only four usable 

15 samples and almost all of them were in a 

16 limited period. I think three of the four 

17 were on the same day, actually. And then 

18 there was one on another day, '54 and '55. So 

19 the '53 to '65 period is essentially not 

20 covered. So we didn't think, at least in that 

21 earlier period, there was a basis to do thoron 

22 dose estimation.
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1 In '65 to '71, I don't remember, 

2 if you give me a minute, I'll look at the 

3 report.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, anybody 

5 else have questions? Can we figure out the 

6 timetable for this? Does NIOSH have an idea 

7 when, or whether either assuming an addendum 

8 or an 83.14 is done, what the timing of that 

9 will be?

10 Obviously, as Mark said, we'll 

11 need a Work Group meeting before August.

12 MR. RUTHERFORD: Our full 

13 intention is to have something prepared for 

14 the Board and be ready for the Board to take 

15 action in August.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, what I'm 

17 asking --

18 MR. RUTHERFORD: For the Work 

19 Group, okay. I think that it will depend on 

20 what Tim finds out in early June. We can give 

21 Mark an update as soon as Tim finds out what 

22 he finds out in early June, we can give an 
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1 update, as quickly after that, when the report 

2 will be ready.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, good.

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: We could probably 

5 schedule our meeting near the next Board 

6 Meeting. I think it's pretty evident that 

7 you'll need as much time as possible.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Then two sort of 

9 follow-ups on that. One is maybe this is 

10 planned already or maybe this is 

11 inappropriate, so tell me, but for this data 

12 capture that's coming up in early June, does 

13 it make any sense to have SC&A present for 

14 that or involved in that?

15 Just, again, in terms of 

16 facilitating this process.

17 DR. TAULBEE: It's obviously up to 

18 the Board, as to whether you want that or not. 

19 If there's thorium information in that log 

20 book, we will capture the whole thing.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

22 DR. TAULBEE: So.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Can someone with 

2 more knowledge on this weigh in? I just 

3 don't, I want to get it, if we're going to do 

4 it we've got to decide now, that's all.

5 If it's not worth doing, I'm not 

6 pushing it unnecessarily, that's all.

7 DR. MAKHIJANI: Dr. Melius, I 

8 don't know if this classified or non9 classified, the classified visit.

10 DR. TAULBEE: It's not in the 

11 classified vault, but Savannah River does 

12 require, in order to get access onto site, you 

13 have to have a Q clearance.

14 DR. MAKHIJANI: No, we would send 

15 a pre-cleared person, but the reason for my 

16 question was, if there is some classified 

17 documents or some review issues, it would be 

18 better if somebody from SC&A were there, so we 

19 could have some idea at least for, among the 

20 people who have clearance, what is going on.

21 If the documents can be 

22 immediately posted, there would be no need. 
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1 Otherwise, I think, since the time frame is 

2 very short, if it's unclassified and we can 

3 make our notes, then we would have a basis for 

4 discussion, rather than waiting.

5 So I don't know what the time 

6 frame would be for posting the documents. If 

7 they were immediately posted --

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: If it's not an 

9 issue with NIOSH, I just assumed we should 

10 have SC&A represented. Then they are up to 

11 speed and they can, you know, we can get a 

12 full briefing for the Work Group.

13 But if it's not an issue with 

14 NIOSH, I think we should just plan for that.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: No, we're 

16 certainly amenable to that and let's 

17 facilitate this as much as we can.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And then my 

19 follow-up issue, sort of related to timing and 

20 so forth, is, I think we also want to 

21 authorize SC&A to review the, whatever, if 

22 NIOSH produces a report, when they produce the 
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1 report, so it's ready for the Work Group and 

2 for the Board Meeting.

3 At least, you know, again it's 

4 going to depend on timing, but at least some 

5 review of that, and if there are issues that 

6 need to be raised. Does that make sense, 

7 Mark?

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I think in 

9 terms of actions, that makes a lot of sense 

10 that we'll, instead of waiting for the Work 

11 Group to test them, to review the product that 

12 comes to us in early August.

13 We should say that now, that we 

14 would like you to review that product.

15 DR. MAKHIJANI: One last thing, 

16 Dr. Melius.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Sure.

18 DR. MAKHIJANI: We'd just 

19 appreciate a coordination of the dates because 

20 we've got limited Q-cleared people and just 

21 make sure that we can send someone.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, probably 
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1 you can work out with -- yes. So, Mark, do 

2 you want to, then, make a motion to authorize 

3 SC&A to do the review?

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: Does that require 

5 a motion?

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, either the 

7 Work Group or the Board has to do it, correct?

8 MR. KATZ: Well, this really 

9 underway already and then Work Group --

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, okay, fine 

11 then. I'm just trying to --

12 MEMBER GRIFFON: It's just ongoing 

13 work.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, I just want 

15 to make sure we get it. Don't come back in in 

16 August and say, why didn't we do this and so 

17 forth.

18 Any other comments or questions or 

19 things we need. I'd like to thank both Tim 

20 and Mark. I know that some of us are 

21 reviewing and reacting on the fly to 

22 information, but I think this is helpful in 
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1 terms of trying to expedite this going 

2 forward.

3 I know it's a big site and it's 

4 very complicated and it's hard to get a handle 

5 on it. And I think, hopefully this is a good 

6 way forward on this and we'll be able to 

7 certainly make significant progress by August.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: Dr. Melius?

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Paul, I'm 

10 sorry.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Paul Ziemer here. 

12 I wasn't able to locate a copy of Mark 

13 Griffon's slides. Were those distributed or 

14 can I get a copy?

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We will all get 

16 a copy. They were not distributed.

17 MEMBER GRIFFON: Those were 

18 drafted in the Boston Express bus this 

19 morning. 

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And then 

21 slightly modified in the, when our break, in 

22 order to react to, at least initially react to 
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1 Tim's presentation.

2 When I say this is like you're on 

3 the fly, it was, and we appreciate everybody's 

4 effort. It was not, kind of like a well 

5 planned effort on this one.

6 But I think it was very helpful 

7 and we will get those distributed to 

8 everybody. And certainly things like, I don't 

9 know if it's a technical call or how we work 

10 this, but trying to resolve this, the issues 

11 on different areas where thorium was used and 

12 the building nomenclature sort of issues, 

13 whatever you call it. Or, you know, getting 

14 those, I think we can get that done soon, I 

15 think that would be helpful also, if only not 

16 to confuse us Board Members who are not as 

17 involved in this effort.

18 MEMBER GRIFFON: Right, I guess 

19 that is a part that I would urge NIOSH and, 

20 Arjun, I guess you're the point of contact on 

21 that.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, he does.
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1 MEMBER GRIFFON: Because there, at 

2 least to me, it seemed to be like some areas 

3 that I mentioned in my slides that SC&A had 

4 pointed out as potential thorium-exposure 

5 issues were not captured in NIOSH's, so, yes, 

6 go ahead, Arjun.

7 DR. MAKHIJANI: Yes, thank you, 

8 Mark. We, I also noted the same thing. And I 

9 just wanted to put a caveat that what we did 

10 was just to illustrate that there were many 

11 areas where thorium work happened.

12 We, I stated in our report, we 

13 made no attempt to make a comprehensive 

14 catalog or time frame or buildings, but there 

15 were many examples that came up on a simple 

16 thorium word search. And we gave some 

17 examples, many examples, actually.

18 So we haven't done a comprehensive 

19 thing. But I did note that like the 643 G 

20 area and the burial grounds and so on, were 

21 not covered in the NIOSH presentation.

22 MEMBER GRIFFON: I guess I would 
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1 hope that, in whatever form NIOSH presents, 

2 whether it's 83.14 or a revised approach, that 

3 they do a comprehensive -- if those other 

4 areas are insignificant quantities or things 

5 like that, as long as you can account for it.

6 And, as Arjun said, there may be 

7 others that are not included in SC&A. They 

8 pointed those out as examples.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, I think to 

10 the extent it's feasible for NIOSH to do that 

11 between now, and I'm not sure. It seems like 

12 a fairly complicated site.

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: But at least to 

14 address the ones that are on the table.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: On the table, 

16 yes, yes. And, no, and that's something that 

17 certainly needs to be dealt with in the 

18 future, going forward on this. Good.

19 Okay, again, thank everybody. We 

20 will take our break now and we will be back 

21 here at 1:30. Ted, do you have any 

22 announcements to make?
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1 MR. KATZ: No, no announcements. 

2 But at 1:30, we'll have Hanford.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And we Hanford 

4 and so we need to start, since we'll have 

5 petitioners online, we would like to start 

6 directly at 1:30, so be on time if we can, 

7 plenty of time.

8 I should make the announcement, 

9 the hotel told us yesterday they had a soup 

10 and sandwich special. I'm assuming it's there 

11 today. 

12 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off 

13 the record at 12:03 p.m. 

14 and resumed at 1:35 p.m.)

15

16

17

18

19 A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N

20 1:35 p.m.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, if 

22 everyone gets seated. We've got our music 
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1 off, our people on. We've got Dr. Lemen in 

2 the middle here.

3 Finally, did someone take his 

4 chair? If the Members of the Board could take 

5 their chair -- the esteemed Members of the 

6 Board.

7 MR. KATZ: I think I heard Dr. 

8 Ziemer on the phone, is that correct?

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: I am here. I'm 

10 not able to be esteemed and take a chair 

11 there, but I will be on the line.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Dr. Ziemer, you 

13 are esteemed, even from a distance.

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, what does 

15 that say about me, then?

16 (Laughter.)

17 MR. KATZ: So we have Mr. Clawson, 

18 too, the esteemed Mr. Clawson, that's nice.

19 MEMBER CLAWSON: Oh, there we go, 

20 yes.

21 MR. KATZ: Do we have any other 

22 Board Members on the line?
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1 (No response.)

2 MR. KATZ: Okay, very good.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, Ted will 

4 now remind you --

5 MR. KATZ: Let me remind, yes, 

6 please, everyone on the phone line, mute your 

7 phone. And if you don't have a mute button, 

8 press * and then 6 and that will mute your 

9 phone, thank you.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. This 

11 afternoon we will start with a presentation on 

12 the new Hanford SEC petition on the plutonium 

13 finishing plant and Sam Glover is going to 

14 present.

15 And I believe we then may hear 

16 from the petitioners a little bit later. 

17 Usually our procedure, so the petitioners 

18 know, is we hear from NIOSH, the Board Members 

19 ask about the NIOSH presentation. Then we'll 

20 give an opportunity for the petitioners to 

21 speak, if they wish. 

22 MR. KATZ: Just for the record, 
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1 Ms. Beach and Ms. Munn have both recused 

2 themselves from this session.

3 DR. GLOVER: Dr. Melius, Members 

4 of the Board, I'm going to change gears from 

5 Sandia to Hanford. And so we're talking about 

6 a special, a new Special Exposure Cohort 

7 Petition Evaluation Report and this was 

8 received November 10th, 2009.

9 The petitioner proposed a Class 

10 very late in the time frame and very specific. 

11 And that's something we'll talk about. But 

12 their proposed Class was: all personnel who 

13 were internally monitored by urine or fecal 

14 measurements, who worked at the plutonium 

15 finishing plant in the 200 area at the Hanford 

16 site, from January 1, 1987, through December 

17 31, 1989.

18 So on May 3rd, 2010, the petition 

19 qualified for evaluation. And it qualified 

20 under the basis that radiation monitoring 

21 records for members of a Class -- proposed 

22 Class had been lost, falsified or destroyed. 
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1 That was the proposal.

2 So, we'll go into that a little 

3 bit more, but let me -- the backdrop, you guys 

4 are pretty well versed, and we've talked 

5 about Hanford quite a bit.

6 There are three current SEC 

7 Classes that have been enacted for Hanford. 

8 There was a Class enacted from October 1, 

9 1943, through August 31st, 1946, for selected 

10 areas within Hanford.

11 And that was SEC-57-1. Then a 

12 second Class from September 1, 1946, through 

13 December 31, 1968. Again, for selected areas 

14 within Hanford, was 57-2.

15 After we looked at those Classes 

16 and how they were being -- the inability to 

17 properly implement them, a third Class, a 

18 subsuming Class was added more recently as 

19 SEC-152, from October 1, 1943, through June 

20 30, 1972, for all areas of Hanford.

21 SEC-57 actually was a compilation 

22 of several SEC petitions. Actually, 
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1 originally requested from '43, to I believe 

2 the early 1990s or around 1990.

3 So, it actually is an ongoing 

4 still with the Board, we're continuing to 

5 review those later years.

6 So we again continued to review 

7 post-1972. The time frame associated with 

8 SEC-155 was encompassed by 57, however, this 

9 SEC-155 was so specific and so focused on the 

10 data falsification, which really wasn't 

11 brought up in this separate SEC petition, that 

12 it was deemed appropriate for a separate 

13 review.

14 The petitioner's specific evidence 

15 of accusations by the US EPA of purposeful 

16 wrongdoing by US Testing resulted in NIOSH 

17 determining that issues regarding quality of 

18 bioassay data required further investigation 

19 as a separate issue from the continuing Board 

20 Evaluation.

21 The intent of NIOSH's separate 

22 Evaluation in this report for SEC-155 is to 
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1 ensure that issues identified with US 

2 Testing's non-bioassay analytical programs, 

3 did not also adversely affect the company's 

4 bioassay analysis operations in Richland, 

5 Washington.

6 So what did we look at? Kind of 

7 the standard, to some degree, the Technical 

8 Basis Documents, the information we've done, 

9 the Technical Information Bulletins.

10 We interviewed several people who 

11 we thought would have information regarding 

12 this process or this time frame. Obviously 

13 looking at do we have existing claimant files, 

14 documentation provided by the petitioner.

15 We collected over 7,500, and these 

16 are really SRDB entries, but they may contain 

17 numerous documents and, in some cases, are 

18 well over 300 to 400 pages.

19 We also had data captures at 

20 Hanford and at the Office of the Inspector 

21 General for DOE. We want to start out by 

22 saying that the interviews with the eight 
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1 workers, none of the statements collaborated 

2 the falsification of data from the radio 

3 bioassay program.

4 So I was going to start with that 

5 aspect. A bit about the previous dose 

6 reconstructions, we have 4,034 claims 

7 submitted to NIOSH.

8 Claims within the time frame was 

9 1,347. Claims containing internal dosimetry, 

10 914. Claims with external dosimetry are 

11 1,310.

12 We did not break out specifically 

13 the plutonium finishing plant as part of this. 

14 That may or may not be readily done, but not 

15 within the existing NOCTS.

16 NIOSH evaluated the time period 

17 requested by the petitioner, January 1, 1987, 

18 through December 31, 1989. The location was 

19 specified as employees who worked at the 

20 plutonium finishing plant.

21 Evaluation was primarily focused 

22 on the program which applies to all of 
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1 Hanford. This would be a, if they were 

2 falsifying data, it really wouldn't be just 

3 the plutonium finishing plant, it would be a 

4 broad scope problem.

5 The Evaluation does not repeat the 

6 discussions from the Evaluation Report for 

7 SEC-57 or SEC-152. We describe briefly the 

8 activities at the plutonium finishing plant 

9 during the time period in question.

10 The focus of the Evaluation was on 

11 data falsification and not source-term-related 

12 information. Very briefly then, on the 

13 plutonium finishing plant, in this late time 

14 frame, they had weapons grade metal 

15 production, occurring in the remote mechanical 

16 C line.

17 The plutonium reclamation facility 

18 was operational, miscellaneous treatment 

19 system glove box operations, analytical 

20 laboratory operations, they had development 

21 laboratory operations.

22 They also had polycube processing, 
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1 which is an unusual material mixture of 

2 polystyrene and plutonium oxide, they were 

3 using to do criticality experiments.

4 They were basically handling that 

5 probably for disposal purposes, how to break 

6 that down and get that into -- they had a 

7 large variety of metal handling and operations 

8 going on in this late time frame.

9 So potential radiation exposures 

10 during the Class period. They certainly have 

11 internal exposure to plutonium finishing 

12 plant, to a broad spectrum of internal 

13 emitters, particularly plutonium and 

14 americium. External sources of exposure, 

15 really not the driving source here, because 

16 we're really looking at falsification of 

17 bioassay data.

18 But they do certainly have 

19 photon/beta exposure from various activities, 

20 as well as neutron exposure. Internal 

21 monitoring data, US Testing processed several 

22 thousand bioassay samples during the period in 
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1 question.

2 Urinalysis was the principle 

3 plutonium method. Workers deemed to have a 

4 higher risk or those involved in potential 

5 incidents may also had fecal samples.

6 Americium was typically monitored 

7 by in vivo measurements. And so, while there 

8 are some americium measurements that were done 

9 by US Testing, those are usually corroborated 

10 by a separate method, which was in vivo 

11 measurements.

12 External monitoring data that's 

13 available is extensive. Monitoring results 

14 are available for the beta photon, as well as 

15 neutrons, in this time frame.

16 A little background on US Testing. 

17 US Testing began providing analytical 

18 services to Hanford in 1965, so this company 

19 did the work for a long time for Hanford, 

20 including the bioassay.

21 US Testing's radioanalytical 

22 facilities were located in Richland, 
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1 Washington, and the Richland facility also did 

2 non-radiological analyses.

3 US Testing had another laboratory 

4 in Hoboken, New Jersey, and they also perform 

5 non-radiological analyses. Pacific Northwest 

6 National Laboratories was responsible for 

7 overseeing the quality of the data produced by 

8 US Testing from 1979 to 1991. They had a 

9 Quality Assurance Program, including blind 

10 bioassay samples. Approximately 250 blanks 

11 and QC samples during the 1987 through '89 

12 time frame.

13 Annual reports during the time 

14 period of interest were reviewed by NIOSH as 

15 part of this evaluation.

16 Additional information on US 

17 Testing audits. PNNL conducted a lengthy 

18 procurement process prior to the awarding of 

19 the September 1988 contract. 

20 They included technical and 

21 quality assurance control evaluations. They 

22 further evaluated data quality provided by US 
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1 Testing in the fall of 1989, and they 

2 presented the results to Westinghouse Hanford 

3 Company, US EPA, US DOE and the state of 

4 Washington.

5 US Testing participated in an 

6 ongoing external quality assessment program, 

7 conducted by the DOE Environmental 

8 Measurements Laboratory, formerly the Health 

9 and Safety Lab, and the EPA Intercomparison 

10 Quality Control Programs.

11 However, in 1990, April 25th, US 

12 EPA suspended US Testing from federal 

13 contracts. The Notice of Suspension alleged 

14 that the management of US Testing conspired, 

15 directed and carried out, and otherwise 

16 condoned a scheme to defraud the United States 

17 Government in its performance at the 

18 facilities in Richland, Washington and 

19 Hoboken, New Jersey.

20 The Notice also alleges that this 

21 scheme resulted in the submission of false, 

22 inaccurate and the unreliable test results and 
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1 data. Suspension was related to EPA's 

2 investigation of US Testing is related to 

3 falsification of environmental, non4 radiological sample data.

5 US Testing admitted wrongdoing and 

6 pleaded guilty to the felony on April 17, 

7 1991. US EPA's suspension of US Testing 

8 caused US DOE to order PNNL to review US 

9 Testing's data quality.

10 In the beginning of May, 1990, 

11 PNNL conducted two separate activities. It 

12 conducted a formal audit of past US Testing 

13 activities, including data traceability.

14 They also had a three-week on-site 

15 performance-based technical oversight of 

16 current US Testing practices.

17 On June 1, 1990, the US DOE 

18 announced the contract with US Testing was 

19 being terminated for default. Termination was 

20 based on findings that US Testing had sent 

21 certain samples to its Hoboken facility 

22 without appropriate quality control, quality 
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1 assurance as required by the Battelle 

2 contract. They also say that US Testing 

3 billed the government through Battelle for 

4 these samples.

5 The samples were dioxin and total 

6 petroleum hydrocarbons. They were non7 radiological. Westinghouse Hanford, US EPA, 

8 US DOE and the state of Washington also 

9 performed independent evaluations of US 

10 Testing.

11 A significant report was produced 

12 by the University of Washington called the 

13 Omenn Report. They evaluated data from 1983, 

14 to 1990, from US Testing, focusing on in vitro 

15 bioassay data.

16 In 1992, PNNL summarized the 

17 series of reviews as they relate to the 

18 quality and usability of US Testing data. The 

19 report concluded that the data produced under 

20 the Battelle contract with US Testing are 

21 technically supportable for the purpose of 

22 which they are collected. And all activities 
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1 performed to date support the technical 

2 credibility of the data provided by the US 

3 Testing Richland Laboratory.

4 No indication from any evaluation, 

5 audit or surveillance of the data from US 

6 Testing facility was technically compromised.

7 The feasibility of dose 

8 reconstruction, based on our review, NIOSH 

9 found no support for an SEC based on 

10 falsification of data.

11 NIOSH and the Advisory Board 

12 continue to evaluate various SEC-related 

13 issues in the 1972 to 1990 period. The NIOSH 

14 recommendation, NIOSH has obtained numerous 

15 documents containing monitoring results, 

16 bioassay program audit reports, independent 

17 bioassay program data evaluations, as well as 

18 Hanford process and source-term information.

19 In addition, several individuals 

20 with first-hand knowledge of the contractor 

21 bioassay laboratory issues during the period 

22 under the evaluation were interviewed.
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1 Employee-specific information 

2 provided through the EEOICPA claims process 

3 and Technical Basis Documents written by NIOSH 

4 have also been available for the evaluation.

5 Based on its analysis of these 

6 available resources, NIOSH found no part of 

7 the Class, under this very specific 

8 evaluation, from this very focused 

9 falsification issue, for which estimated 

10 radiation doses with sufficient accuracy could 

11 not be performed.

12 So, based on this evaluation we 

13 say that we have a feasibility of yes and 

14 health endangerment is not applicable.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thanks, 

16 Sam. Questions for Sam? Bill.

17 MEMBER FIELD: Sam, on your one 

18 slide, it talks about the Quality Assurance 

19 Program and it indicates there were about 250 

20 blanks. Were there spikes as well?

21 DR. GLOVER: Yes, there were QC 

22 samples, as well, and they did evaluate those.
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1 MEMBER FIELD: Do you know how 

2 many there were?

3 DR. GLOVER: I don't, I mean it's 

4 not a tremendous amount. It's in the order 

5 of, I would say in that two-year period they 

6 had --

7 MEMBER FIELD: I'm just wondering 

8 --

9 DR. GLOVER: My recollection is 

10 there were 60 to 70ish numbers in a year. 

11 It's not a tremendously large number. We do 

12 have that in the Evaluation Report. And I 

13 apologize, I simply don't remember.

14 MEMBER FIELD: And that looks 

15 pretty good?

16 DR. GLOVER: They had the typical 

17 problems that -- you know, you had some bias. 

18 They performed within acceptance of say, ANSI 

19 criteria.

20 They had some MDA issues, but 

21 nothing that said that they were falsifying 

22 data, things that you would find in a normal 
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1 laboratory.

2 MEMBER FIELD: Because my 

3 understanding would be that the data 

4 falsification was reducing concentration, so 

5 is that correct? Or was it increasing -- I 

6 can't imagine why they would want to increase 

7 it.

8 DR. GLOVER: In the, for these 

9 non-radiological samples, there were several 

10 things apparently happened. They sent samples 

11 and there was not an appropriate QC sample 

12 process at this facility.

13 They used a facility that was not 

14 approved to do the work for what they were 

15 paid for. And so, because they didn't have 

16 that QC in place, it invalidated those. At 

17 least, you know, it makes them suspect.

18 And so that was a large part of 

19 it.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: If I might, Sam, 

21 some environmental samples also have a 

22 timeliness requirement; they have to be 
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1 analyzed within a certain amount of time.

2 And they didn't, and they 

3 essentially rigged the record to make it look 

4 like they did.

5 MEMBER FIELD: But your evidence 

6 to believe that the data was reliable was 

7 based mostly on the QA program they had in 

8 place? Or the spikes? I'm just trying to 

9 figure out what's the primary evidence you're 

10 using to, I guess, convince yourself and 

11 others that the program was reliable?

12 DR. GLOVER: So the only thing 

13 that we found where they basically caused this 

14 problem, that they were doing, they had 

15 separate facilities for doing a separate 

16 laboratory.

17 It was not intermixed. It was a 

18 non-radiological facility where they did this 

19 kind of bioassay -- not bioassay but 

20 environmental measurements.

21 You see evidence of the fraud that 

22 was related to that. All of the reports, all 
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1 of the audits, you know, because you would 

2 check, you know, with the sample, you would go 

3 back to the counter data and say, okay, what 

4 does my counter have to say? What did this 

5 sample look like when it was counted? Does 

6 that, is that something I can relate back to 

7 the sample?

8 Now the Omenn Report is very 

9 clear, that they say it would take 50 man10 years to go through all of the stuff.

11 It is, you know, from, they looked 

12 at '83, to '89, a tremendous amount of work. 

13 They selected some samples. They had DOE, the 

14 Radiological and Environmental Sciences Lab, 

15 RESL, come up from Idaho.

16 They also conducted, and they also 

17 report that, you know, they don't see anywhere 

18 where they've got this falsification. They 

19 had a QC program in place, US Testing had its 

20 own internal standards.

21 PNNL was providing them blind 

22 samples. Which, as the petitioner reported 
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1 out, there was some americium deviations. 

2 They had some MDA issues.

3 But not where you're seeing, it 

4 just doesn't -- there's nothing there. It's 

5 proving the negative. But we found nothing 

6 that can corroborate it.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Jim.

8 MEMBER LOCKEY: Just to follow up 

9 on Bill's question, in the non-radiology lab, 

10 was there any evidence of actual falsification 

11 of data, or was it more quality control, lack 

12 -- was it a procedure problem or were they 

13 actually falsifying data?

14 DR. GLOVER: There was some 

15 discussion of peak shaving, where they were 

16 manipulating chromatography data.

17 And so, there was some appearance 

18 that there was some actual falsification of 

19 data.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And then, in 

21 addition, there was apparently, at least as I 

22 read it, false reporting of their QAQC methods 
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1 so that it sort of, essentially covered up 

2 what they were doing.

3 I mean, dioxin sampling is 

4 complicated and requires a lot of QAQC samples 

5 to keep it, maintaining it right. And so 

6 that's one reason it is so expensive to do.

7 And this time there's obviously a 

8 lot of it going on and a fair amount of 

9 competition for doing this. Because I worked 

10 at the State Health Department down in New 

11 York and we were doing a lot of dioxin work at 

12 the time.

13 And so it's --

14 MEMBER LOCKEY: And you're 

15 counting on the lab to do it correctly.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right. And 

17 there are a number that are trying to get into 

18 the business and so forth. And I don't know 

19 the details on this problem, but again, it's 

20 that.

21 And certainly in the -- looking on 

22 page 9 of your report, there certainly were 
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1 some concerns raised about whether these 

2 problems also carried over to the Richland Lab 

3 and other types of samples with that.

4 I think, as Sam says, this is all 

5 a very hard situation to evaluate, because 

6 you're trying to, again, prove the negative, 

7 and it's difficult.

8 Other people, Board Members on the 

9 phone have any questions?

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: I have no 

11 questions. This is Ziemer.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Brad?

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: This is Brad. I 

14 was just involved, I was involved with some of 

15 the interviews that were held up there at 

16 Hanford, and you know, this is what came out 

17 of some of the key people who were involved 

18 with this.

19 It just kind of overflows from 

20 there, at a facility that they found no 

21 evidence of anything at Hanford.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, any other 
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1 Board Members? If not, I'd like to hear from 

2 the -- if the petitioners wish to speak?

3 MR. FOULDES: This is Tom Fouldes, 

4 F-o-u-l-d-e-s, and I'm the counsel for the 

5 claimant, [identifying information redacted],

6 who is the petitioner on SEC-155.

7 And just in the way of a few 

8 general comments, before I get into details, 

9 there is, in some of the written interviews 

10 that were obtained by the Environmental 

11 Protection Agency, which led to the 

12 disqualification of UST to do any further 

13 testing in any federal facility, these 

14 interviews concern activities in 1987, '88, 

15 and they, some of them, some of the comments 

16 are information that relates directly to 

17 activities at the Richland Testing facility, 

18 as distinguished from the other facility run 

19 by UST in Hoboken, New Jersey.

20 But there's no question that a 

21 review of these interviews, which I hope the 

22 Advisory Board has an opportunity to go over, 
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1 implicates fraudulent activities in the 

2 testing of samples at Richland.

3 Okay, now I'll put that aside. 

4 And of course it is curious, it's somewhat of 

5 a contradiction that Battelle, after first 

6 suing UST for fraud, following the disclosures 

7 by EPA, and eventually that suit was resolved 

8 with a guilty finding on behalf of UST.

9 But then when it came to determine 

10 whether or not the pedigree of this data that 

11 was developed over the years '87, '88, '89 was 

12 adequate, US Battelle managed to come up with 

13 a finding in its studies and some of which are 

14 listed in the report to the Board from NIOSH, 

15 that basically the data was reliable.

16 And of course, obviously that's in 

17 total contradiction to the lawsuit that was 

18 brought by Battelle.

19 But leaving that now, and going to 

20 the presentation provided by NIOSH, they do 

21 have various reports that were created by 

22 Battelle, which understandably is in a sense 
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1 trying to make sure that they kind of -- they 

2 have the basic contractual responsibility for 

3 this testing, and so it's no surprise that 

4 their retrospective studies show that 

5 basically it was reliable.

6 But now, also, though, however, 

7 the NIOSH, and correct me if I'm wrong, 

8 because I could have missed this. We didn't 

9 get the announcement of this hearing until 

10 late last week, and it wasn't until I got back 

11 out of town early this week, that I had an 

12 opportunity to go through it.

13 But what I have seen so far is 

14 that NIOSH has presented, as I said, the audit 

15 is really done by Battelle or for Battelle.

16 And then also, however, an audit that was done 

17 for them was by the University of Washington. 

18 And the University of Washington examination 

19 was by -- they appointed, they engaged, well, 

20 first of all, it was the University of 

21 Washington Department of Public Health and 

22 Community Medicine and they engaged the 
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1 service of a biostatistician, a Gerald van 

2 Belle, and then an Associate Professor, Dr. 

3 Paulman, who was Professor of Environmental 

4 Chemistry.

5 And Dr. Michael O'Brien, a Health 

6 Physicist. And I'm not suggesting that these 

7 were not good people, except they didn't have 

8 the same degree of specialization that was 

9 done in another study, which I do not believe 

10 has been presented to the Board.

11 And that was an oversight of the 

12 US Testing Company, analytical procedures and 

13 protocol. And that was done by, signed off by 

14 a B.C. Woods of the Environmental Protection 

15 Agency and Laboratory, Region 10.

16 And Mr. L.C. Spearin of Department 

17 of Ecology, Quality Assurance Section of the 

18 State of Washington. A Mr. Alvin of the 

19 Washington Department of Health, and Mr. 

20 Kasch, K-a-s-c-h, who is with the Department 

21 of Energy itself. They went forward and 

22 engaged some specialist, L.M. Albin, who -- he 
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1 was from the Health and Radiation Protection 

2 Division.

3 MR. KATZ: Excuse me, Mr. Fouldes, 

4 if you would please, the last couple of 

5 sentences you said were almost inaudible. But 

6 much of your talk, you're very hard to hear.

7 I wonder if you're on a speaker 

8 phone or --

9 MR. FOULDES: Okay, well, I can 

10 just briefly wrap this up. He was a 

11 radiological health expert.

12 And then there was two more, from 

13 some other laboratories, that were specialists 

14 in radiological bioassay and radiation 

15 counting.

16 And they, in their report, 

17 Appendix F of their report contains numerous 

18 references, which I won't take the Board's 

19 time to go through, but they all relate to the 

20 lack of adequacy in procedures and in testing 

21 protocols that were being utilized to spite 

22 the testing company, US Testing, on bioassay 
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1 samples and it would seem impossible if -- to 

2 anyone thoroughly reviewing the very detailed 

3 report in Appendix F, to conclude that the 

4 testing results done by this laboratory on 

5 bioassay, and in this case particularly, this 

6 particular petitioner is relying on the 

7 bioassay results from his fecal samples.

8 And there does not appear to be 

9 any basis of reliability suggested in this 

10 detailed study that I referenced, made by 

11 these various names I've mentioned. And that 

12 concludes my remarks.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Mr. 

14 Fouldes. Sam, do you have any response? I 

15 don't know, it wasn't clear to me which 

16 reports were included in your review?

17 DR. GLOVER: Obviously, there were 

18 many, we looked at many things. We looked at 

19 those EPA documents that the Office of 

20 Inspector General had. We -- I can't remember 

21 which ones, I looked at so many.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.
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1 DR. GLOVER: We do agree with what 

2 he says on the environmental stuff. We agree 

3 that US Testing, in Richland, they were for 

4 part of this. So it wasn't just in Hoboken,

5 but it was the non-radiological samples.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right. Jim.

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: Sam, Gil Omenn did 

8 which review? Gil Omenn, is that the Omenn 

9 that you were --

10 DR. GLOVER: The Omenn Report?

11 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes.

12 DR. GLOVER: And we actually spoke 

13 with several members of his -- who were on 

14 that, as part of this review.

15 MEMBER LOCKEY: Is Gil, I don't 

16 know if Gil -- is he still alive? Did you 

17 speak with him?

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, he's --

19 DR. GLOVER: I'd have to --

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think he's at 

21 University of Michigan now?

22 MEMBER LOCKEY: I'm not sure, I'm 
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1 not sure where he is right now. I asked is --

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: He's no longer 

3 Dean at Seattle.

4 MEMBER LOCKEY: No.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I believe he's 

6 in Michigan, isn't he?

7 MEMBER LOCKEY: I was wondering 

8 whether, I was just curious whether you 

9 actually spoke with him or not about it?

10 DR. GLOVER: I think with 

11 availability, we spoke to two other members. 

12 I don't think we got to speak with him. I was 

13 actually, I think, at Sandia the week that we 

14 were able to talk to him. So I didn't get to 

15 participate.

16 MR. VALERO: Hello?

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

18 MR. VALERO: Hi, I'm sorry, my 

19 name is Oscar Valero and I'm a petitioner at 

20 the Hanford site.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

22 MR. VALERO: I temporarily got 
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1 disconnected but I'm back online.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, did you 

3 wish to speak? I understood Mr. Fouldes to 

4 say that he was speaking on your behalf, so I 

5 didn't know if you, do you wish to speak in 

6 addition to him?

7 MR. VALERO: Yes, I do, sir.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, then go 

9 ahead.

10 MR. VALERO: All right, and I'll 

11 make this brief, gentlemen and ladies. I do 

12 have a prepared statement, so I'm just going 

13 to read from the statement.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Fine, thank you.

15 MR. VALERO: Thank you. As I 

16 said, my name is Oscar Valero, I'm from the 

17 Hanford site. Let me first say, thank you for 

18 providing me with this opportunity.

19 I understand this is a scientific20 based information, but let me also appeal to 

21 the sentiments of your heart and that you will 

22 do the righteous thing and your actions will 
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1 right a wrong. The actions of deceit and 

2 ultimate betrayal of trust, due to the 

3 unethical acts for personal gain, have never 

4 been so blatant.

5 A true disregard for my wellbeing 

6 and threatening my life and the livelihood of 

7 my family and numerous other victims of this 

8 tragedy.

9 We, as courageous Americans, have 

10 paid a high price for our service. We've 

11 incurred disabling and/or fatal illnesses as a 

12 result of exposure to radiation chemicals and 

13 other hazards that are unique to the weapons 

14 production and testing.

15 I ask that you adopt this as a key 

16 petition and justify the award of full medical 

17 and monetary compensation for the victims of 

18 this tragedy, due to the neglectful actions, 

19 again, for personal gain, by US Testing. Of 

20 which, none of this should have occurred, if 

21 the company had not been engulfed by greed.

22 The evidence you seek has been 
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1 previously outlined in various documents. 

2 These reference to EPA referral memoranda, 

3 dated April 4, 1989, which is further 

4 substantiated by supporting data, based on 

5 interviews of numerous US Testing personnel, 

6 conducted by the Office of Inspector General 

7 Office of Investigations dated June 6, 1989.

8 The facts are many, guys, but for 

9 the sake of time, here are two. Number one, 

10 the SEC report, page 32 of 58, states "NIOSH 

11 did not find bioassay data produced by US 

12 Testing to have been effective."

13 However, the action referral 

14 memorandum, item 9, states the contract was 

15 lab-specific. Neither lab, whether it's 

16 Hanford or the one in Hoboken, New Jersey, was 

17 listed as an alternate site to perform work on 

18 a contract basis.

19 Based on the Office of Inspector 

20 General, the interview they conducted also 

21 cites numerous chain of custody and protocol 

22 violations. Second fact, the SEC report, page 
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1 29 of 58, states: "sample card and final 

2 results were not found." And: "incomplete 

3 record for one sample result."

4 To me this lends credence to 

5 incomplete, inaccurate record keeping, and 

6 really does cast doubt on accuracy of samples.

7 The two above statements are from 

8 NIOSH themselves. The Office of the Inspector 

9 General from their interview states: "two 

10 separate log books were kept, they were 

11 maintained."

12 Other facts still remain, such as 

13 cut and paste activities. As I mentioned 

14 before, the two separate log books, backdating 

15 of sample results.

16 Doctoring samples and the use of 

17 illegal drugs by management of US Testing. 

18 Ladies and gentlemen, these are the facts and 

19 many more can be found in the Office of 

20 Inspector General report dated June 6, 1989, 

21 which I'm sure you have.

22 These interviews are first-hand 
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1 witness accounts, conducted by credible 

2 people, the Inspector General's office, who 

3 took an oath to uphold the law.

4 The outcome of their investigation 

5 substantiates the facts that create and 

6 establish reasonable doubt and question the 

7 credibility of the US Testing, which is 

8 further supported by the EPA referral 

9 memorandum fact section.

10 Because of the unscrupulous 

11 actions of US Testing, many people have 

12 incurred unjust suffering. To rely on an 

13 organization, complete strangers, that have 

14 the responsibility to analyze samples and you 

15 entrust them to be honest, because they have 

16 the educational knowledge and experience, is 

17 where my trust was.

18 Ladies and gentlemen, pardon the 

19 pause, but this is difficult for me. You say 

20 you want facts? Here are some more 

21 undisputable facts.

22 I have Stage 3 stomach cancer. 
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1 Two-thirds of my stomach were surgically 

2 removed, 50 percent of my esophagus was 

3 surgically removed.

4 I have irreparable damage to the 

5 left side of my heart, due to radiation 

6 treatments. I have incurred financial 

7 hardship.

8 I live with these physical 

9 limitations. My family and I bear emotional 

10 scars and psychological trauma. Our lives 

11 have been affected and changed forever.

12 All these are facts that have been 

13 forcibly and permanently etched into my life. 

14 One can choose to dispute the evidence before 

15 you, but science can only presume facts based 

16 on data analysis and can be manipulated to 

17 support the desired outcome.

18 No data analysis or computer 

19 programs can dispute the above-mentioned 

20 facts. But one main ingredient is missing, 

21 one that we tend to sometimes overlook, and 

22 it's called ethics. In this case, it's 
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1 economics over ethics. These people whom I 

2 entrusted to analyze these samples and provide 

3 honest results, failed in their ethics.

4 Because they knowingly and 

5 willfully were aware of what they were doing. 

6 They just didn't care, and, in turn, placed 

7 my life and my family's livelihood in 

8 jeopardy, for their own self gain, for their 

9 greed.

10 NIOSH further states on page 46 of 

11 the handout, NIOSH, on no part of the Class, 

12 which it cannot estimate radiation doses with 

13 sufficient accuracy.

14 I must ask, how can an estimate be 

15 accurate when I myself have had three 

16 different dose reconstructions with three 

17 different results?

18 I question US Testing protocols, 

19 ethics and methodology, which is why they were 

20 terminated, such as higher management's use of 

21 illegal drugs on company time and premises. 

22 You'll find this information on those reports 
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1 that I mentioned above.

2 These people were tasked with 

3 making major decisions, but were under the 

4 influence at the time certain critical 

5 decisions were made.

6 Again, I must ask, where is the 

7 credibility in this? Where are the ethics? 

8 Ladies and gentlemen, the decay of the human 

9 spirit for personal company gain has never 

10 been so evident, as it is with this company 

11 that I once trusted.

12 In essence, in my case, I have 

13 been left raped, stripped from my being, 

14 betrayed by those I once trusted.

15 I ask that you, right or wrong, 

16 this is your opportunity to make a positive 

17 difference in people's lives. The power to do 

18 the righteous thing is, in the name of 

19 humanity and justice, in your hands.

20 Don't turn your back on these 

21 courageous Americans, who defended our 

22 national security for the freedoms we enjoy.
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1 We didn't use bullets and 

2 missiles, but we worked in glove boxes in 

3 high-hazard environments such as chemical and 

4 radiological processes.

5 In closing, just let me reiterate. 

6 I appeal to your consciousness and sentiments 

7 of your heart. Because no one should go 

8 through what these families and I have gone 

9 through.

10 And to approve this SEC petition, 

11 to compensate some of us, those courageous 

12 Americans who have unnecessarily suffered and 

13 those who have died.

14 This would be the righteous thing 

15 to do. And I thank you for your time.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Any 

17 further questions or comments from Board 

18 Members?

19 (No response.)

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any suggestions 

21 on steps forward? I think one of my questions 

22 would be as to whether the reviews looked at 
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1 this from the perspective, not of the NIOSH 

2 review, but the other reviews on the 

3 laboratory, were they looked at from a 

4 perspective of whether these were reliable in 

5 terms of environmental monitoring or workplace 

6 monitoring, as opposed to dose reconstruction, 

7 which might have a different criteria to it, I 

8 don't know.

9 Also, I think there's an awful lot 

10 of information here, and though I think NIOSH 

11 did a good job of summarizing it, I think our 

12 past practice has been, in the situation, to 

13 at least do some initial review on this 

14 information, before trying to reach a 

15 conclusion.

16 So one step would be to refer it 

17 to the Hanford Work Group for further 

18 evaluation. Is that --

19 MEMBER LOCKEY: I concur with 

20 that, I think that's a good idea.

21 MR. VALERO: If I may, just one 

22 quick 30-second statement?
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If it's quick, 

2 please.

3 MR. VALERO: Yes, it is. Again, 

4 my name is Oscar Valero from the Hanford site. 

5 I want to make sure that the Board has access 

6 to and has received and/or reviewed the 

7 following documents:

8 Action Referral Memorandum from 

9 the US EPA, April 4, 1989. Both interviews, 

10 two interviews from the Office of Inspector 

11 General, the Office of Investigations. 

12 One dated August 15, 1989, and one 

13 dated June 5, 1989. Thank you.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Go ahead, 

15 Mark.

16 MEMBER GRIFFON: I was just going 

17 to make a motion that the Board refer this to 

18 the Hanford Work Group for further review.

19 MEMBER LOCKEY: I'll second that.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Second from Jim 

21 Lockey. Any further discussion?

22 (No response.)
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If not, all in 

2 favor, say aye.

3 (Chorus of ayes.)

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Opposed?

5 (No response.)

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, good, 

7 thank you. Next item of business, at 3:15 we 

8 need to do the GE, and I believe we need to do 

9 that on time, since the petitioner may be on 

10 the line for that.

11 Mark, are you ready to do your two 

12 reports? Okay, so Mark, I don't know which 

13 you want to do first. We have LANL and the 

14 Dose Reconstruction Review Group, so we'll let 

15 you choose.

16 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach and Ms. Munn 

17 can come back to the table. I don't see -- is 

18 Ms. Munn out of the room? Could someone maybe 

19 -- thank you, Jenny.

20 MEMBER GRIFFON: I can do the Dose 

21 Reconstruction Subcommittee update first. 

22 They'll both be quick updates.
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1 The Dose Reconstruction 

2 Subcommittee had a meeting recently in 

3 Cincinnati and it was actually more of a field 

4 trip.

5 We took a field trip to the ORAU, 

6 O-R-A-U offices. And the intent of the field 

7 trip was to get a little better understanding 

8 of the QAQC program that ORAU and NIOSH 

9 undergo in their dose reconstruction program.

10 And just sort of walk it through 

11 from start to finish. And the notion of the 

12 trip was to have a meeting at ORAU and then to 

13 go across town and visit the NIOSH offices and 

14 see what they do on their side of the shop.

15 Because it took a little longer 

16 than we anticipated, we ended up spending the 

17 whole time at ORAU. We did get an in-depth 

18 presentation from the ORAU folks on their QAQC 

19 program and the procedures they go through in 

20 the dose reconstruction process.

21 And I think most importantly, we 

22 also got to go out on the floor, talk to a 
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1 couple of the staff, including a data entry 

2 supervisor and actually oversee some of the 

3 data entry work that was ongoing.

4 I think, you know, part of the 

5 question there was our concern about some of 

6 the QAQC findings that we had in the first 100 

7 cases that we reviewed, some of them involved 

8 sort of keying errors or data entry.

9 At least it seems to be related to 

10 sort of data entry questions, so we wanted to 

11 observe the process and see the working 

12 conditions, see the sort of quality of data 

13 that the data entry folks had to deal with, in 

14 terms of looking at the original hard copy 

15 data and transferring it into a spreadsheet 

16 format and that was very useful.

17 Just to get that firsthand 

18 observation. We also, the other useful part 

19 of the trip was that we were able to sort of 

20 see the state of the quality assurance/quality 

21 control program as it exists now.

22 And I think part of the challenge 
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1 for the Subcommittee, in our review, has been 

2 since we're lagging the program a little bit, 

3 we're finding errors that, in many cases, we 

4 believe some of the updates that NIOSH has 

5 done have corrected or, you know, will 

6 minimize many of those errors.

7 So we sort of -- we have some 

8 further assessment to do with this, but it was 

9 at least some reassurance that some of the 

10 comments, even though we haven't ever wrapped 

11 up our first 100 cases report officially, you 

12 know, it's clear that our work on this Board 

13 is affecting the program, in a good way, in 

14 terms of NIOSH actually making several of 

15 these changes.

16 Some examples, I guess a couple of 

17 the most obvious examples were ways in which 

18 they've modified their approach from a 

19 computer standpoint and from a software 

20 standpoint to allow -- or avoid, I should say, 

21 these, what we were referring to as cut and 

22 paste errors.
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1 And basically some of the ways 

2 they've done that is to actually avoid, you 

3 know, not making the dose reconstructor have 

4 to take data from one spreadsheet, copy it and 

5 put it into something else. It's more 

6 automated software now, so the transfer is in 

7 the program, so that avoids these sort of 

8 keying errors or cut and paste errors.

9 So some of the automation stuff we 

10 were able to observe. And, like I said, 

11 because we're lagging on our case reviews, a 

12 lot of times we're looking at dose 

13 reconstructions that were done in the earlier 

14 years still.

15 We're not able to see these 

16 changes that have taken place. So that was 

17 useful. We do plan on following up and seeing 

18 the NIOSH side of the system to sort of round 

19 out how, once the cases go from ORAU over to 

20 the NIOSH side, what does NIOSH do in terms of 

21 its Quality Assurance Program?

22 And I think we scheduled that, I'm 
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1 trying to remember the date, in July sometime.

2 MR. KATZ: We have a, I think we 

3 scheduled a Dose Reconstruction meeting for 

4 July 15th.

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay, maybe we 

6 were --

7 MR. KATZ: So, maybe we were 

8 thinking about piggybacking on that?

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, there was 

10 some discussion --

11 MR. KATZ: Because it's a NIOSH 

12 facility.

13 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay, so we have 

14 a meeting scheduled for July 15th. But I 

15 think we did, we did all commit, when we were 

16 there, to doing a follow up on-site meeting at 

17 NIOSH, a walk-through at the NIOSH facility.

18 So that's sort of just a status 

19 update. The rest of our ongoing case review 

20 work, I think, is still standing since the 

21 last Board Meeting. I don't think we have any 

22 update on that front.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Mark, and I may 

2 have missed this. But the in-depth reviews, 

3 what did we call them --

4 MEMBER GRIFFON: Oh, the blind?

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Blind reviews, 

6 yes.

7 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: What's the 

9 status on that?

10 MEMBER GRIFFON: The blind 

11 reviews, the status is sort of, I mean, SC&A 

12 has completed, I think we only asked them to 

13 do two blind reviews.

14 We have not brought those up in 

15 our Subcommittee meeting, but we can. We may 

16 want to prioritize those and if, you know, 

17 probably something we should do, because we 

18 talked about possibly doing more, but we 

19 wanted to look at two as an initial sample, to 

20 see if it was a fruitful effort.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I'm just 

22 thinking that, one, it's been a long time, and 
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1 we talked about these for a long time. So, I 

2 think we need to assess how useful they are 

3 and whether a sample, how much a sample of two 

4 can tell us. I think it can tell us 

5 something.

6 Secondly, in the context of the 

7 ten-year review and so forth, is it time for 

8 us to think about how we go about doing the 

9 dose reconstruction reviews and to what extent 

10 those, you know, we might do more blind 

11 reviews or some other changes and so forth.

12 So I think it would be useful if 

13 the Subcommittee could --

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, and we, I 

15 will commit to putting that on our next 

16 agenda. I think that's a -- I think it's just 

17 been overlooked because we were so behind on 

18 old matrices that we kind of just kept 

19 plugging away at the old matrices.

20 But I agree that it should be 

21 added to our next matrix, so that will be 

22 done.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, good. 

2 Anybody else have questions for Mark?

3 (No response.)

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Board Members on 

5 the phone have questions?

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: No questions.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thanks. 

8 Okay, do you want to go on to LANL?

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: Sure. LANL will 

10 be a quick one. I see Joe Fitzgerald is here 

11 if people want a real, more in depth update.

12 But really it's sort of, we're 

13 plugging away on the last years of the SEC 

14 petition there. This has been taken in 

15 pieces, as people remember.

16 And we're in the farther-out 

17 years, I'm forgetting the dates right now, but 

18 we had a meeting recently, early May, I 

19 believe.

20 And we continued along the same

21 matrix. We don't have any real recommendation 

22 from the Work Group at this point.
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1 I think if we, we do plan to 

2 schedule another Work Group Meeting. I 

3 haven't set a date yet because there were some 

4 significant action items from NIOSH and some 

5 of it is pretty labor-intensive and they might 

6 have competing priorities. So we didn't want 

7 to set a date yet for a follow-up.

8 But the work continues on the Work 

9 Group.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I was just 

11 looking at their report, and it says, "respond 

12 to Work Group issues to be determined."

13 (Laughter.)

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That's not 

15 helpful for this context.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu. I 

17 don't think I've determined it since I got 

18 here, so we'll have to provide updated 

19 information.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, could you?

21 This is the only time we've asked you.

22 MEMBER GRIFFON: After the LANL 
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1 Work Group meeting, as is my custom at these 

2 meetings usually, anyway, I did update the 

3 matrix in real time and we forwarded it 

4 around.

5 So that should be able to inform 

6 NIOSH on what the outstanding actions are.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So the 

8 issues don't need to be determined, just the 

9 actions? Timing of the actions.

10 MEMBER GRIFFON: Timing, yes.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, do that. 

12 Any Board Members have questions for Mark, 

13 including those on the phone?

14 (No response.)

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. One other 

16 issue: first of all, let's talk a little bit 

17 about schedule. We have a GE update we'll do 

18 at 3:25 with the petitioner.

19 We have a Weldon Spring update at 

20 4:45, and again we should do that at that 

21 time, simply because the petitioners will be 

22 listening in.
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1 And then the petitioners will be 

2 probably talking in the public comment period 

3 on that. We got a communication from them; 

4 due to the weather, they are not planning to 

5 come into the meeting, but will be commenting 

6 by phone for that.

7 Tomorrow morning we have a report 

8 on the Quality of Science Report, as part of 

9 the ten-year review from Doug Daniels. That's 

10 scheduled for 8:30.

11 We're hoping that he makes in 

12 tonight from, I forget where he's doing a --

13 involved in a data capture, I believe, for 

14 Chicago, okay.

15 So he can just hop on a river 

16 boat. The river is flowing pretty well, so it 

17 should be quick. But hopefully he'll make it 

18 down tonight. We'll do that. And then my 

19 plan would be that we would then be able to 

20 finish up at 9:30 tomorrow morning.

21 So, if that helps you with your 

22 plans. I don't think we'll have any other 
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1 Board actions to take after that. So after 

2 Doug's presentation and questions, then we 

3 will plan on adjourning the meeting.

4 So if that helps you with, people 

5 with their travel plans and so forth; I hope 

6 it does.

7 Though with airline schedules, I 

8 suspect we're all pretty much locked in to 

9 what we're doing. One other item that we 

10 should talk about now or, if you prefer, there 

11 should be some time after the GE session, so 

12 that should not be a long session, is how we 

13 want to handle the ten-year review and our 

14 communications on that. I think Lew laid out 

15 sort of the schedule for that.

16 And that there will be other 

17 opportunity to comment as this evolves, both 

18 on the individual reports, as well as, I think 

19 NIOSH has plans for actions and follow-up.

20 And I think, in particular, I 

21 think it's an issue of how we feel in terms of 

22 what we think and do we want to make 
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1 recommendations in terms of prioritizing 

2 recommendations. Or, I guess, saying that we 

3 disagree with the recommendations, don't think 

4 they should be considered and do that.

5 Now it's a long list of 

6 recommendations, and so it's not easy to go 

7 through and there's some repetition there. 

8 And, at the same time, I think there's a 

9 number of recommendations that some 

10 prioritization makes sense, given just the 

11 scope of these, and so forth.

12 I just didn't know if people had 

13 thoughts on how we should approach that. Do 

14 we approach it as just individual Board 

15 Members commenting to Dr. Howard and to the 

16 Docket? Or do you want to try to do anything 

17 in a group fashion? And I don't have any 

18 great ideas on how to do it as a group 

19 fashion, because it's unwieldy. 

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: Dr. Melius?

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Dr. Ziemer?

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I'll just 
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1 start it off to get some ideas on the floor, 

2 because I think it's important that we have 

3 input.

4 But as a practical matter, these 

5 are a number of pretty thoughtful documents 

6 that contain a number of recommendations.

7 I think, in many cases, we might 

8 be able to, you know, go through and say, yes, 

9 we all agree with this, or whatever.

10 But, in terms of the timing, it 

11 seems to me it will be very difficult to 

12 systematically have the Board develop a 

13 consensus recommendation or agreements on 

14 particular items.

15 So, just as a practical matter, it 

16 just occurred to me that it might just be as 

17 valuable to have individual Board Members 

18 provide their comments.

19 This would allow two things. One, 

20 I think a more timely input to Dr. Wade, so 

21 that they can bring things to closure.

22 And, number two, it would not 
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1 necessarily require consensus. And, in fact, 

2 there may be a number of items where we don't 

3 necessarily agree with each other, either on 

4 the finding or the conclusion or the 

5 recommendation.

6 Why not just say, okay, provide 

7 your comments. Again, this is off the top of 

8 my head. I don't object to doing it as a 

9 Board, I'd be glad to do that.

10 But, it seems to me, that it's as 

11 important to get individual viewpoints on the 

12 record as well.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. No, I 

14 would agree with you, Dr. Ziemer. I just sort 

15 of wanted to provide the opportunity. I think 

16 if there were, if people feel or a Board 

17 Member feels strongly about -- that they 

18 disagree, particularly with one of the 

19 priority recommendations. Or that they have, 

20 think that there's another recommendation that 

21 should be getting more serious consideration 

22 than was presented by Dr. Wade, that we should 
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1 -- one, obviously to make individual comments. 

2 But even though there may not be agreement on 

3 the Board on a viewpoint or something, it 

4 sounds like there'd be some benefit to airing 

5 that and having some discussion of it.

6 I agree with you, on a practical 

7 level, it's going to be hard for us to respond 

8 as a group on these.

9 But if there were things that 

10 struck people from the presentation yesterday 

11 or after they thought about it or talked about 

12 it over lunch or breakfast or dinner or 

13 whatever, at least we'd have the opportunity.

14 Wanda is reaching for her -- it's 

15 sign that she's on the verge. So I'm going to 

16 stop talking here and see if Wanda does want 

17 to speak. Yes, she does, okay. Go ahead, 

18 Wanda.

19 MEMBER MUNN: It would seem 

20 logical that individuals would more likely be 

21 able to cast their perceptions as they wished 

22 by doing any comments individually directly to 
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1 Dr. Wade, rather than having the Board 

2 wordsmith them and perhaps dilute some major 

3 item that an individual might feel 

4 appropriate.

5 It would seem logical that if any 

6 of our Board Members had serious concerns with 

7 respect to the prioritization that Dr. Wade 

8 and his colleagues have already made on those 

9 points, that it would behoove us to bring 

10 those to your attention, as the Chair of the 

11 Board, and request that the Board perhaps 

12 visit that particular aspect, but not the 

13 individual comments that each of the Board 

14 Members might make.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: What I was going 

16 to -- I think that's a good idea. And it's 

17 common you and I have similar viewpoints on 

18 many things. And what I thought is that these 

19 will be posted and maybe we'll charge our DFO 

20 with making sure that, I think to the extent 

21 that, as we submit these, that these get 

22 circulated to all of the other Board Members, 
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1 so we keep up. And then I will work to 

2 identify issues that -- either where there's 

3 disagreement or where it might warrant further 

4 discussion by the Board for our Board 

5 conference call.

6 And again, it would just be trying 

7 to elaborate and maybe fine tune. Because I 

8 think, as Lew Wade pointed our on behalf of 

9 Dr. Howard, I think NIOSH really is looking 

10 for input on this and involvement of the 

11 Board.

12 And certainly we're going to be 

13 involved and affected by the implementation of 

14 these recommendations as they go forward. And 

15 some adjustments in how we work and how NIOSH 

16 works and our activities.

17 So, it's as much to encourage 

18 involvement in this process and I think we'll 

19 do as you suggested, Wanda, I think would be 

20 probably the best way of going forward.

21 I just didn't know if anybody had 

22 already noticed things that were concerning to 
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1 them or, you know, sort of, these are big 

2 reports and to do it out of context and to do 

3 it quickly is difficult. Mark, you weren't 

4 here yesterday to go through, either.

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: But I was on the 

6 phone on this part of it. The only -- I agree 

7 with you and Wanda on most of this.

8 The one possible exception I would 

9 make is, it may be useful for the Dose 

10 Reconstruction Subcommittee to weigh in on the 

11 dose reconstruction recommendations. I'm 

12 looking down them and I'm not sure they're --

13 I think there might be quite a bit of 

14 agreement and it might be actually very 

15 consistent with our first 100 cases report on 

16 several fronts.

17 And, you know, it might be useful 

18 for us to consider those and try to close out 

19 our first 100 cases report and submit them 

20 back to the Board, and that way we could weigh 

21 in on that front.

22 So the Secretary has a group. You 
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1 know, other items that are reported on, I 

2 think it would make more sense to weigh in 

3 individually.

4 But on that front, I thought it 

5 might be, since we have a body of work that 

6 we've done in that area, it might be useful to 

7 weigh in as a whole.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: You know, I 

9 think that would be excellent. And if you're 

10 doing a meeting before our next Board call, 

11 and certainly there's this recommendation on 

12 should NIOSH do away with the over- and under13 estimates.

14 And I think that's the kind of 

15 thing that your Subcommittee, you know, 

16 probably is in the best position to comment 

17 on. So, that's an excellent idea. Henry.

18 MEMBER ANDERSON: I was going to 

19 push it back to that Committee too. But I 

20 think the other thing that would be worth 

21 doing would be to have -- there's a lot of 

22 recommendations here, and the likelihood that 
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1 they'll all be moved on is probably remote. 

2 So, it might -- one approach would be, rather 

3 than to comment you like something or not, 

4 which of these do we as a, we may want to 

5 discuss, as a Board do we feel are the most 

6 important that ought to get the priority to 

7 move forward?

8 Now I don't know, maybe NIOSH is 

9 going to act on all of those, but there's a 

10 lot of lists there that, in the shorter term, 

11 we may want to say, like the over- and under-, 

12 this is an area that's going to take a lot of 

13 work. It ought to be worked on. And others, 

14 while they're important, could wait.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, and I 

16 think, sort of the, what they you call it? 

17 The target list or the straw person or 

18 whatever, for review, was Lew's list of 

19 priorities and I think one thing it will help 

20 clarify that.

21 I think I've got them all marked 

22 off, but I might have missed one, but I'll 
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1 work with Ted, because we have a number of 

2 Board Members who are absent. And I think we 

3 also need to communicate this issue and a 

4 number of other issues that have come up with 

5 them, before the next Board Meeting.

6 So I think, and we'll copy the 

7 entire Board on that, so that they, you have 

8 this list and so forth and move forward. But 

9 that's exactly what I had in mind.

10 I just want to make sure that if 

11 we disagree with Lew's list, positive or 

12 negatively, in terms of making a 

13 recommendation, that we do that, and now Lew's 

14 is going to meet, has a meeting with -- an 

15 internal meeting, I believe in a couple of 

16 weeks.

17 And, again, report back to us if 

18 there are changes in the priorities based on 

19 that meeting or questions about how to 

20 implement or something.

21 It's an ongoing, iterative process 

22 and there's no finalization, it's just making 
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1 sure that I think we stay engaged with it.

2 DR. WADE: If I may, even more 

3 important than the Wade list of priorities, 

4 will be the Howard list of priorities. And 

5 that will be available come the middle of 

6 June, and you'll have that before your next 

7 call. And you can react to that list as well.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, we're 

9 confident that Dr. Howard's list will be close 

10 to the esteemed Dr. Wade's list.

11 DR. WADE: The man is no fool.

12 (Laughter.)

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Some of us may 

14 even suspect that Dr. Howard may have, just 

15 osmosis, sort of communicated some of these 

16 ideas, in terms of discussion, casual 

17 conversations over coffee.

18 Any other comments or suggestions 

19 on our ten-year effort? 

20 (No response.)

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, why don't 

22 we take a break, half hour? 3:15 we'll do GE. 
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1 Again, I apologize, we'll probably be, I 

2 don't think it will necessarily take too long, 

3 and then we'll probably have another break. 

4 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

5 matter went off the record at 2:46 p.m. and 

6 resumed at 3:17 p.m.)

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, we will 

8 reconvene. The next item on our agenda is the 

9 GE Evendale SEC petition. And even though I'm 

10 listed here, I have drafted the distinguished 

11 LaVon Rutherford to do a summary of the 

12 changes to the SEC.

13 There's an amended Evaluation 

14 Report, I guess you'd call it. That's been 

15 done. It's got several changes in it, though. 

16 I think the bottom line is the same. I'll let 

17 LaVon talk briefly about what those changes 

18 were, and then I will speak to the Work Group 

19 review and what the Work Group believes should 

20 happen next.

21 MR. RUTHERFORD: We did issue a 

22 revised Evaluation Report for GE. The focus 
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1 of the revised Evaluation Report was to pull 

2 in all the information that we had uncovered 

3 from the time we initially issued Rev 0 of the 

4 report and pull that into this revision.

5 Some of the key things that were 

6 added in that report were just after we had 

7 issued Rev 0. We received some data, a 

8 significant amount of data, from General 

9 Electric, which included some external 

10 monitoring data. A very little internal 

11 monitoring data. But the monitoring data 

12 focused from the aircraft nuclear propulsion 

13 operations starting in the '50s, up through 

14 the 1970 period.

15 The report actually laid out where 

16 we determined that, even though we had this 

17 new data, that was identified, mainly external 

18 data, our feasibility finding was the same.

19 And the reasons behind that were 

20 tied to the personal monitoring data did not 

21 include identifiers. Identifiers such as 

22 location, job activities. We had a few that 
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1 indicated locations, however, the majority of 

2 that data really did not provide specific job 

3 location, activities, to tie those individuals 

4 to that.

5 We also got a little additional 

6 information on the processes that were taking 

7 place during that time period. We updated the 

8 report to include that.

9 And some additional interviews 

10 that had occurred during the time period. And 

11 then we provided that all to the Work Group. 

12 There may have been one or two additional 

13 items, I can't remember.

14 And then we had the Work Group 

15 meeting that was a few weeks ago. You can 

16 take it from there or I can tell them what the 

17 results were.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, I'll go on 

19 from there. I'll do that. But thank you, 

20 LaVon. The Work Group met by conference call 

21 a couple of weeks ago, and we discussed the 

22 revised report and had a fairly -- about an 
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1 hour's discussion with NIOSH staff and among 

2 ourselves, about the report.

3 And, while I don't think that the 

4 -- based on looking at the report and 

5 reviewing the new information, the new 

6 sampling data, exposure data, that I don't 

7 think the Board has any -- or the Work Group, 

8 excuse me, has any -- I think they basically 

9 agree with NIOSH's recommendation that doses 

10 cannot be reconstructed for those that worked 

11 in that part of the GE facility.

12 I think there's still some 

13 questions about the Class definition. Let me 

14 just add that Jim Lockey also joined us for 

15 that call, since he had expressed an interest 

16 earlier and been involved in the Board 

17 discussions on that.

18 So we agreed with the --

19 Whoever is on the line, could you 

20 please mute your phone, because we are hearing 

21 your background conversations. If you don't 

22 have a mute button, then do *6. Ted has 
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1 taught me.

2 And, okay, back on the track here.

3 So the issue is the Class definition, which 

4 NIOSH was basically feeling that they did not 

5 have adequate information to be able to 

6 restrict that, so was recommending that 

7 everybody that worked in the facility during 

8 that time period should be included in the 

9 Class.

10 I think the Work Group still had 

11 some concerns about that, and recommended we 

12 reached an agreement with NIOSH to go forward 

13 on some additional fact-finding.

14 One is related. There was a list 

15 of, what appeared to be people that had worked 

16 in the radiological operations at the 

17 facility, that was referenced in the report.

18 It may have been even two of them, 

19 I can't recall. And we were trying to 

20 understand that list and so forth. It 

21 appeared to be something that was used for, 

22 actually for a reunion or some sort of social 
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1 event involving those people.

2 But it was useful, it did have 

3 names and addresses and so we were trying to 

4 understand that, and particularly trying to 

5 understand how that compared with people that 

6 had applied for compensation and some of the 

7 other information that had been gathered from 

8 the interviews with people that had worked at 

9 the facility.

10 We also wanted some follow-up 

11 information on exactly how the buildings were 

12 set up and what were the restrictions on 

13 people going in.

14 Some of that information had been 

15 collected so early, before the more recent 

16 data and so forth had been collected, so there 

17 was, we thought it would be useful to go on 

18 and gather further information on that, so we 

19 better understood that information.

20 We're hesitating here, for those 

21 on the line, because there's a siren blowing 

22 in the background.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: While Ted is 

2 out, why don't we continue a little bit? So 

3 we recommended that NIOSH go back and do 

4 further work, report back to the Work Group on 

5 that, and then the Work Group will probably 

6 meet again by conference call.

7 And we may even be able to take 

8 this up at our July conference call. You 

9 know, again, depending on the information. I 

10 don't know, Paul, Josie or Jim Lockey, do you 

11 have anything to add to that?

12 MEMBER LOCKEY: No, I think you 

13 have summarized it.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Dr. Melius, one 

15 comment.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, Paul.

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: Ziemer here. I 

18 had raised an issue of how we might consider 

19 having claimants self-identify their access to 

20 the work area. There was some discussion in 

21 the Work Group that maybe we could discuss 

22 these ideas with Rachel in DOL. I don't know 
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1 if that's been done or it's the proper time to 

2 do that, or will that be done sort of offline?

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, this may 

4 be a time to at least raise it initially, 

5 since Rachel is in the audience and may want 

6 to comment. I don't know if NIOSH has spoken 

7 to her about it.

8 I'm going to let her -- she's 

9 actually at the microphone, Paul.

10 MS. LEITON: Yes, we had spoken a 

11 little bit about this with NIOSH and I'm not 

12 sure if I completely understand the idea --

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, the idea is 

14 this. The starting point right now is that 

15 everyone who is on the GE site is a potential 

16 claimant.

17 MS. LEITON: Right.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: So my idea was 

19 that there are certainly people who worked on 

20 that site, who know that they never were in 

21 the buildings of question. 

22 So all you really, and there may 
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1 even be some honest people who worked for GE, 

2 I'm going to concede that. And, if so, why 

3 not ask claimants simply to provide an 

4 affidavit that they had access to or that they 

5 spent some time in the building in question?

6 I mean, we know where the work was 

7 done. The problem seems to be that we can't 

8 tell who might or might not have gone into 

9 those buildings.

10 Obviously, if a person isn't sure, 

11 you give them the benefit of the doubt. But 

12 there are many people who will know that they 

13 never went in or near those buildings, and why 

14 include them as claimants?

15 It's not fair to others who have 

16 legitimate claims. So my idea was, not to put 

17 the burden on NIOSH or on Department of Labor

18 to place the people, but simply to ask them to 

19 affirm that they had spent time in the 

20 buildings in question.

21 MS. LEITON: Okay, let me just 

22 summarize and make sure I'm understanding. 
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1 This is assuming that you made the Class 

2 limited to certain buildings.

3 Then when DOL went to verify 

4 employment, you're suggesting that we rely 

5 solely on what the employee says as placing 

6 them in the Class or not, assuming that those 

7 who weren't in the buildings are going to tell 

8 us they're not. Is that, am I getting that

9 right?

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, and in the 

11 worst case, everybody lies to you and you're 

12 no worse off than you would be if you assumed 

13 everybody is in the cohort.

14 I'm saying, I would bet you 

15 there's a good fraction of honest people who 

16 worked for GE, who aren't going to make claims 

17 if they knew they weren't in that area.

18 MS. LEITON: In our experience, 

19 that's really just not the case. 

20 Unfortunately, I mean, I know that there's 

21 some honest people out there, but when the 

22 $150,000 is on the line -- you know, we've got 
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1 a certain adjudication process which includes 

2 affidavits.

3 But when we just have one 

4 affidavit from a person whose self-interest is 

5 to say that they're in a building and that's 

6 it, without any verification that they were 

7 there -- it's just, it's not administrable.

8 It would cross all of our sites. 

9 People would just -- they would say, well, I 

10 said I was in the building at Rocky Flats, and 

11 I said I was in this building, why don't you 

12 just take my statement as well?

13 We really need more solid 

14 verification from Department of Energy 

15 somewhere that these people worked in a 

16 building.

17 So if you were to go and say, 

18 these buildings --

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: So you don't accept 

20 affidavits per se?

21 MS. LEITON: We do accept them, 

22 but we accept them in conjunction with other -
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1 - either affidavits, like supervisory 

2 documentation or some kind of evidence that 

3 they were actually there.

4 But a self-serving affidavit in 

5 and of itself alone is not going to be 

6 sufficient to meet the burden of proof, I'm 

7 afraid.

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, I didn't 

9 realize that. I have been given the 

10 impression that affidavits were accepted per 

11 se. But you need an independent verification.

12 MS. LEITON: Yes, unfortunately, 

13 just because --

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: I got it, I got 

15 it.

16 MS. LEITON: -- it would cross our 

17 entire program.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: It was an idea 

19 that I thought, it couldn't be any worse than 

20 you would have to start with. There might 

21 actually be people who, I mean -- well, I just 

22 don't know that everybody would lie for 
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1 $150,000.

2 MS. LEITON: Right, I understand 

3 the concept.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: What about, do 

5 you accept coworker affidavits?

6 MS. LEITON: In some situations, 

7 we would accept coworker affidavits. Usually, 

8 it's more prominent if we have something from 

9 a supervisor that, you know, that worked there 

10 with them.

11 We can accept that, it's just, it 

12 gets a little bit iffy when, you know, there's 

13 a cohort of people and they all work there and 

14 they all are going to say, hey, look, if you 

15 say you were there and I'll say you were there 

16 -- it gets a little bit sketchy there.

17 And we have this issue only, you 

18 know, if it were just this one facility and it 

19 weren't going to be, it's just that it will 

20 run throughout the entire program.

21 They'll start doing this 

22 everywhere. And they'll say, if you did it at 
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1 GE, why didn't you do it everywhere else?

2 And that would just kind of -- the 

3 credibility of what we're doing would be 

4 diminished.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, well, thank 

7 you.

8 MS. LEITON: Sorry, that's 

9 probably not the answer you wanted to hear.

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: No, I was trying 

11 to find a way to sort of make it more fair, in 

12 terms of this particular site where we know 

13 the work is restricted to a pretty small area.

14 And it's not like some of the 

15 other sites, where you're going from one 

16 building to another and there's nuclear work 

17 going on all over the place. This is very 

18 much more restricted.

19 MS. LEITON: I understand that.

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: And we had a 

21 similar case in Oak Ridge, except the site was 

22 much smaller, so we kind of grit our teeth a 
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1 little bit and went with it that way with 

2 covering everybody at the Oak Ridge Hospital.

3 MS. LEITON: I understand.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you, 

5 Rachel. Any other questions or comments from 

6 Board Members on this? Yes, Bill.

7 MEMBER FIELD: Yes, I just had a 

8 question. At one point, maybe half a year ago 

9 or so there was discussion of documents being 

10 in the UK. I guess that's not, there's 

11 nothing at -- I just want to get some 

12 clarification on that.

13 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes, we got a 

14 follow-on, I can't remember exactly when, but 

15 another follow-on that came back and said that 

16 they've searched like 50,000-something, large 

17 number of stuff, and then there was no 

18 documents there. Or they provided everything.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. We found 

20 significant, or NIOSH found significantly more 

21 documents, information on this. I think, as 

22 LaVon said, it wasn't necessarily helpful in 
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1 terms of identifying work areas or people for 

2 dose reconstruction purposes.

3 But I think there was some, there 

4 was cooperation. So it's not a question of 

5 lack of cooperation, but rather that there 

6 doesn't appear to be records and I'm not sure 

7 if we ever quite understand the reasons for 

8 that and so forth.

9 Or maybe they are yet to be 

10 discovered somewhere. Any other questions? 

11 So, if not, we will be reporting back to you, 

12 possibly as early as the July meeting, if not 

13 at the August meeting, on that.

14 That concludes this session. We 

15 need to reconvene at 4:45, since that's when 

16 we've scheduled the Weldon Spring update. That 

17 will be relatively brief.

18 Dr. Lemen is going to do that, so 

19 I would suggest we break again until then. 

20 And I would suggest that since there is a --

21 my understanding is there's a tornado warning 

22 until 4:00, so people should probably not stay 
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1 in the room but rather in the hallways or 

2 something, and certainly stay away from the 

3 windows, which are over there behind the 

4 curtains. Yes, an hour and 15 minutes. Or go 

5 up to your rooms, but be careful in the 

6 elevators. 

7 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

8 went off the record at 3:33 p.m. and resumed 

9 at 4:48 p.m.)

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, we'll 

11 reconvene and our speaker disappeared. Let me 

12 explain, we're doing a little change in 

13 schedule here. Hopefully, this will be

14 helpful.

15 First we have an update, Richard 

16 Lemen will give it on the Weldon Spring Work 

17 Group and the review of the Weldon Spring SEC.

18 And then what we'll do is we have 

19 a public comment period scheduled for 5:30. 

20 We know there's some people here already, and 

21 rather than hold you up and especially given 

22 the weather and so forth, we will go right 
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1 into the public comment period after Dr. Lemen 

2 speaks.

3 But we will certainly hold the 

4 public comment period open through 5:30 and a 

5 little bit after, for other people that may 

6 want to be calling in.

7 Some have already indicated to us, 

8 including one of the petitioners, that they 

9 might call in a little bit later. And there 

10 may be some other people, too.

11 But hopefully that will facilitate 

12 those of you that need to get home tonight and 

13 have a longer drive in this weather.

14 So, we'll start with Dr. Lemen. 

15 Ted, do you want to check the line?

16 MR. KATZ: Two things, yes. Let 

17 me check the line, just to see. Do we have 

18 Board Members on the line?

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, Paul Ziemer 

20 on the line.

21 MR. KATZ: Great, Paul. Any other 

22 Board Members?
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1 (No response.)

2 MR. KATZ: I also just wanted to 

3 announce for everyone in here who -- some 

4 folks might be a little nervous about the 

5 situation here.

6 The people in the hotel are 

7 monitoring the weather, and if things start to 

8 look truly dicey, they'll come and let us know 

9 and there's a route out to a safer place. 

10 Which would be, just to tell you about it so 

11 you have it in your head anyway, is we go back 

12 through the glass doors to the lobby and then 

13 down out from the lobby into the parking 

14 garage.

15 And we keep going down to the 

16 bottom of the parking garage. But that's the 

17 safest place to be if there is a tornado in 

18 the area, and that's what we would do, just to 

19 let you know.

20 But the hotel people are watching 

21 and they will come and speak to us if it's 

22 starting to look iffy.
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1 MEMBER BEACH: Someone told Zaida 

2 that it was downgraded from a warning to a 

3 watch.

4 MR. KATZ: Understood, I heard 

5 that, but who knows what will happen over the 

6 next 45 minutes or an hour.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Just so everyone 

8 knows that -- I don't want Wanda to worry.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Really? 

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Mike Gibson, who 

11 is the Chair of the Work Group, couldn't be 

12 here this week for the meeting, so Dr. Richard 

13 Lemen, who is another Member of the Work Group 

14 and Member of the Board, will be giving us the 

15 update. Dick.

16 MEMBER LEMEN: Thanks, Dr. Melius. 

17 As Jim said, Mike Gibson is not here. I'm on 

18 this Work Group, as is Robert Presley, and I'm 

19 going to briefly go through the slides that 

20 Mike had had prepared for today.

21 A brief review of the Weldon 

22 Spring site, and I think you all have a 
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1 handout, so I'm not going to go through each 

2 of these. You can read those. Does everyone 

3 have a handout, is that right?

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I believe so.

5 MEMBER LEMEN: Okay. As you can 

6 see, the dates that are applicable in the 

7 brief history here. This is, the site is west 

8 of St. Louis and this is a diagram of the 

9 site.

10 This is a photo of the engineering 

11 disposal cell, as it appeared in 2008. To 

12 recap the Weldon Spring Site Profile and the 

13 SEC activities, in June of 2005, NIOSH issued 

14 their Site Report.

15 And in March of 2009, SC&A issued 

16 the Weldon Spring Site Profile Review. And in 

17 September of 2009, the SEC-00143 was 

18 qualified.

19 And then in April of 2010, NIOSH 

20 issued an Evaluation Report, and the first 

21 Working Group meeting was held on October of 

22 last year. The second meeting was January of 
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1 this year, and the third meeting was earlier 

2 this month of this year.

3 I'll give you the summary first, 

4 and then I'll address each of these nine 

5 items. But the summary of the SEC issues from 

6 '57 to '67 are, one, accuracy and completeness 

7 of the internal and external dose data, 

8 including air and coworker data.

9 Secondly, the lack of egress 

10 monitoring. Third, the lack of dose records 

11 from 1967. Fourth, the no radon or thoron 

12 measurements.

13 Five, validity of method used to 

14 assess recycling uranium intakes. Six, lack 

15 of neutron dose data. Seven, lack of air 

16 measurements at quarry and raffinate pits 

17 during 1957 through '67.

18 And, eight, impact of accidents --

19 incidents on dose reconstruction. And 

20 finally, geometry and extremity monitoring.

21 There were 28 Site Profile issues 

22 identified. Most of these Site Profile issues 
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1 have been incorporated into the SEC issues, or 

2 have been addressed and/or are being 

3 addressed.

4 As far as number one, that we just 

5 went through the nine, the accuracy and 

6 completeness of data. The accuracy of data: 

7 the dose reconstructors use only photocopies 

8 of the original Weldon Spring data sheets.

9 And electronic or CER databases 

10 are not used for the dose reconstruction. 

11 Completeness of the data is an issue, and 

12 that's not yet been verified.

13 And presently, NIOSH is addressing 

14 that. Second, the lack of egress monitoring, 

15 sufficient bioassay data to reconstruct dose, 

16 if ingestion did occur, is being looked at.

17 Second, external exposure 

18 addressed by monitoring and skin dose 

19 calculations. And third, issue is presently 

20 being closed because of these issues being 

21 addressed.

22 Third, the lack of dose records 
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1 for 1967 has been an issue. And indications 

2 are that 1967 may have been a transition year.

3 Operational period, external and 

4 internal data sufficient to bound dose 

5 incurred during 1967.

6 And the issue has presently been 

7 closed because of that decision. The fourth, 

8 no radon or thoron measurements. NIOSH 

9 performed analysis of potential environmental 

10 and/or radon and thoron intakes, and issued 

11 response on April the 21st, 2011.

12 SC&A is presently reviewing 

13 NIOSH's response and its SEC implications, and 

14 we'll hear more about this as this progresses. 

15 Fifthly, the validity and method used to 

16 assign recycled uranium intakes, the method is 

17 presently being addressed to determine if 

18 consistent and appropriate intakes are being 

19 applied during dose reconstruction.

20 The sixth issue, the lack of 

21 neutron dose data, there is, as you see, a 

22 lack of that at Weldon Spring. The Fernald 
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1 neutron dose method can be used as surrogate, 

2 because of similar materials, according to the 

3 NIOSH Evaluation.

4 SC&A and NIOSH are presently 

5 evaluating Weldon Spring's neutron dose 

6 assignment methodology to see if this really 

7 will be effective.

8 Seventh, the lack of air 

9 measurements at the quarry and raffinate pits 

10 during 1957 to 1967. Measurements were 

11 performed in the latter period and appear to 

12 be acceptable to operational period, because 

13 the quarry and pits not released to DOD and 

14 conditions remained fairly constant.

15 The issue has presently been 

16 closed and is not considered an issue any 

17 longer.

18 Number eight, the impact of 

19 accidents or incidents on dose reconstruction.

20 Bioassay data is available for workers with 

21 accidents and claims reviewed. The 

22 accidents/incidents are factored into the dose 
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1 response process on an individual case-by-case 

2 basis. NIOSH is to provide a statement to the 

3 Working Group concerning claimant-favorability 

4 for using group bioassay monitoring. So we're 

5 awaiting that information.

6 And lastly, the geometry and 

7 extremity monitoring, NIOSH is currently 

8 evaluating methods used at other DOE uranium 

9 sites for dosimetry, geometric and extremity 

10 monitoring and the impact on recorded doses at 

11 the Weldon Spring site.

12 So, in summary, the Weldon Spring 

13 Working Group, NIOSH and SC&A have been 

14 actively working on the SEC and Site Profile 

15 issues during the last year.

16 We've had three meetings, as you 

17 can see, starting in October of last year. 

18 And then another in January and another in May 

19 of this year.

20 The progress has been made on each 

21 of the nine SEC issues, as you had seen in the 

22 nine issues I just presented. And several 
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1 important areas are yet to be evaluated, which 

2 I pointed out among the nine areas.

3 So that's my presentation from the 

4 Board Working Group. I don't know if SC&A or 

5 NIOSH wants to make any comments at this time 

6 or not.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Stu or anybody, 

8 I'm not sure who is involved from -- Mark's 

9 the lead, okay, I didn't know that. Okay, 

10 Mark.

11 MR. ROLFES: Thank you, Dr. Lemen. 

12 I did have one additional update, since I've 

13 come back into the office, we do have an 

14 additional response ready for the Work Group.

15 I should be able to send that 

16 within the next couple of weeks. It is an 

17 updated response on recycled uranium, so that 

18 was one of the nine issues that had been 

19 discussed previously.

20 And we do have a new White Paper 

21 to deliver on that.

22 MEMBER LEMEN: We will be looking 
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1 forward to get that. 

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: One of my 

3 questions, and maybe while you're both up 

4 there, is sort of, I didn't quite understand 

5 the schedule on all of this, in terms of the 

6 various reports and so forth.

7 MEMBER LEMEN: Well, we're hoping 

8 that in our next Working Group Meeting, that 

9 we'll have answers to all of these issues.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

11 MEMBER LEMEN: And that's what we 

12 had decided. We haven't set a next date yet, 

13 but it will be in the next couple of months.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

15 MEMBER LEMEN: So we hope to have 

16 it completed in the next couple of months.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

18 MR. ROLFES: So I think we should 

19 have some tentative information, at least, in 

20 the next couple of months, certainly.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, so this 

22 would be potential closure of this --
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1 MEMBER LEMEN: We're hoping by the 

2 August meeting.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: August meeting.

4 MEMBER LEMEN: We would have 

5 something a little bit more finite for you.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, good, 

7 thanks. Joe, who is behind you?

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Actually, Ron 

9 Buchanan is our lead on this Work Group, he 

10 couldn't be here. But the one thing I would 

11 add is that, at the Work Group we decided 

12 that, from a data accuracy standpoint, what we 

13 need to do is submit a sampling plan to the 

14 Work Group, on how we would actually sample 

15 for the accuracy of the database and that 

16 sampling plan was developed and submitted to 

17 the Work Group last week.

18 And we didn't hear any objections 

19 and we're hoping NIOSH had a copy of that as 

20 well. Okay, we need to make sure you have a 

21 copy. And we're going to proceed with that 

22 over the next three or four weeks.
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1 MEMBER LEMEN: I'm not sure that 

2 Mike sent that on to NIOSH.

3 MR. FITZGERALD: Oh, okay. That 

4 might be the issue.

5 MEMBER LEMEN: I'll check and find 

6 out what's wrong.

7 MR. FITZGERALD: We'll make sure 

8 that gets around so everybody has a copy.

9 MEMBER LEMEN: Can you go ahead 

10 and send it to NIOSH?

11 MR. FITZGERALD: I'll go ahead and 

12 make sure that --

13 MR. KATZ: I think we have that, 

14 so I think I have it too and we can 

15 distribute. But I think it just came in last 

16 week. We just got it, really.

17 MEMBER LEMEN: It's very new.

18 MR. KATZ: Yes, so, I think we 

19 probably need a little -- the Work Group 

20 Members need a little bit of time to look at 

21 it and make sure that they're --

22 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, particularly 
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1 at this meeting, I just want to make sure 

2 everyone is aware that that is in, it's being 

3 looked at.

4 MR. KATZ: Right, give them a 

5 chance to give a thumbs up before you proceed.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Again, the only 

7 thing that we'll be doing from our standpoint, 

8 is that sampling.

9 MEMBER LEMEN: Again, I think 

10 we'll have most everything we need to address 

11 this in much more detail with some finality in 

12 August.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, very good. 

14 Board Members have questions for Dr. Lemen?

15 (No response.)

16 MEMBER LEMEN: Good, I don't have 

17 any good answers. 

18 (Laughter.)

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Board Members on 

20 the phone, any -- Paul, do you have any?

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: No questions.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you.
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1 MEMBER LEMEN: Thank you, Paul.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: For those of you 

3 that live here locally, Dr. Lemen happens to 

4 be from Missouri, you may have detected in his 

5 accent from California, Missouri, I believe. 

6 South California, is that right?

7 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: He's going to 

9 his high school reunion. Tenth, right?

10 (Laughter.)

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: This weekend. 

12 We all wish, right? Why don't we go into --

13 at least start the public comment period. 

14 Ted, do you want to --

15 MR. KATZ: Yes, let me just 

16 explain some ground rules for public comments. 

17 As you may or may not have noted, because I 

18 think some people here have just joined us 

19 recently this afternoon.

20 All of the proceedings of the 

21 Board are fully transcribed verbatim. So 

22 whatever you might say in your public comments 
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1 will be captured and will end up in a 

2 transcript of the Board that will be on the 

3 public website available to everybody.

4 Everything you say, everything you 

5 say personally about yourself will be 

6 included. If you include personal details 

7 about other individuals, however, we'll redact 

8 that information to the extent that it 

9 protects the privacy of whoever you might 

10 speak about.

11 So, though it will all be heard 

12 here, when the transcript is published, we 

13 would leave out whatever details would 

14 identify those other individuals you might 

15 speak about.

16 And if you want to see the full 

17 rules about this Redaction Policy, as it's 

18 called, it's on the website. It's also out on 

19 the table with the other papers.

20 But it's on our NIOSH website 

21 under the Board section of the NIOSH OCAS --

22 or I think it's still called OCAS -- web page. 
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1 Okay, that's it, thanks.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Anybody, any of 

3 the petitioners here that would like to make 

4 comments? Okay. Would you mind stepping to 

5 the mic and, again, don't be intimidated by 

6 the big group, okay? We're actually very 

7 friendly.

8 MS. TRIPLETT: My name is Tina 

9 Triplett. I'm one of the co-petitioners for 

10 the Weldon Spring plant and I basically just 

11 have a statement that I'd like to read.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, go ahead, 

13 Tina.

14 MS. TRIPLETT: The original intent 

15 of this Act was to compensate sick and dying 

16 nuclear workers for their sacrifices to this 

17 country in a timely and fair manner.

18 I had faith in this compensation 

19 program when it was first implemented. But 

20 the frustration that continues to escalate 

21 from the lack of progress is overwhelming.

22 There appears to be no sense of 
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1 urgency to pay these workers and their 

2 families. It appears at times those 

3 administering the program lose focus and often 

4 forget that there are claimant survivors and 

5 petitioners desperately waiting of answers 

6 that they deserve. The burden of proof placed 

7 on these individuals seeking compensation is 

8 insurmountable and there's a lack of full 

9 disclosure with Freedom of Information Act 

10 requests.

11 This whole process is a vicious 

12 circle, and while administering agencies are 

13 battling out their differences, people are 

14 dying. Thank you.

15 I fully understand that there is a 

16 process and I appreciate all the hard work by 

17 everyone. But there comes a time when a 

18 decision has to be made.

19 This program does not have to 

20 generate years of discussions to declare work 

21 sites Special Exposure Cohorts. There has to 

22 be accountability to getting issues addressed 
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1 in an efficient manner.

2 The concern about Walden Spring 

3 hard copy records versus the CER database is 

4 troubling. NIOSH has been unable to either 

5 produce Walden Spring plant hard copy records 

6 or produce validations for these records 

7 within the CER database.

8 Many Weldon Spring plant records 

9 have also been destroyed and have never been 

10 located. As previously noted, Walden Spring 

11 plant records from the shelf list V2161 has 

12 never been found, because they were already 

13 beyond the destruction date.

14 Furthermore, in a letter from 

15 Belcher, Area Manager, to Roth, the Director 

16 of Research and Developmental Division and 

17 reference to Mallinckrodt Chemical Works 

18 Health Protection Records from November 2nd, 

19 1966, it was noted, quote, "in addition to the 

20 types of records proposed in a recent letter 

21 to Mallinckrodt Chemical Works for transfer to 

22 Oak Ridge, the following records deserve 
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1 ultimate disposal consideration:

2 Medical X-ray files, film used in 

3 dosimetry, in-plant sampling records, and 

4 environmental sampling records," unquote. 

5 There is no complete list of records available 

6 for the Weldon Spring plant which leads to 

7 huge data gaps.

8 And, as a result, NIOSH makes 

9 assumptions and lacks the ability to perform 

10 dose reconstructions with sufficient accuracy 

11 and plausibility.

12 In addition to the concern of hard 

13 copy validation, I'd like to address the memo 

14 from Mallinckrodt's own Health and Safety 

15 Manager, Mont Mason.

16 This has yet to have been 

17 addressed. In Mason's memo, uranium and urine 

18 report from August 1975, Mason addressed the 

19 following:

20 Number one, uranium and urine is 

21 not an indicator of body burden and no 

22 relationship of fixed internal deposition on 
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1 radiation dose.

2 Numbers were controlled numbers to 

3 take action for exposure to dust. Number two, 

4 Mason never claimed a correlation between the 

5 urine uranium values as a finite burden of 

6 uranium. The title of uranium and urine on 

7 Weldon Spring printouts as, quote, "internal 

8 exposure," unquote, was incorrect and grossly 

9 misleading.

10 Uranium and urine simply means a 

11 milligram per liter of uranium in a spot urine 

12 sample. Number three, there were omissions in 

13 the uranium and urine data on tape at CTC.

14 Number four, the reading of .000 

15 used as a "no record of exposure" is 

16 incorrect, because it leaves the impression 

17 that tests were made with zero results. But, 

18 in many cases, there were no tests made.

19 Number five, there was a problem 

20 matching name information from records to 

21 Social Security Numbers in CTC master file, 

22 800 no match Social Security Numbers and 300 
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1 no match alphas.

2 Number six, some employees' 

3 medical jackets have been removed or lost. 

4 And, number seven, data after shutdown has 

5 been copied, keypunched and taped, but the 

6 test for data shows that no match between tape 

7 totals and totals Mason could reconstruct.

8 Furthermore, a report issued to 

9 the Advisory Board in April of 2005, with 

10 respect to the previous Mallinckrodt 

11 petitions, and please let us not forget that 

12 this is Mallinckrodt, Weldon Spring plant, 

13 showed that the use of daily weighted averages 

14 is not claimant-favorable.

15 SC&A has already addressed that 

16 the use of DWA cannot establish bounding 

17 doses. Also, during the previous Mallinckrodt 

18 petitions, Mont Mason revealed liability 

19 concerns with data integrity for dose 

20 reconstruction.

21 In a memo dated October of '73 to 

22 Dr. Thomas Mancuso, Mason reported significant 
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1 liability concern, which affected how 

2 Mallinckrodt recorded its data on dust 

3 studies.

4 A dust evaluation from 1949 

5 resulted in the removal of 34 employees. 

6 Mason stated in light of growing awareness and 

7 presence of radioactive materials, carefully 

8 drafted explanations and responses were 

9 prepared in advance of announcing the transfer 

10 of people.

11 Managers, supervisors and medical 

12 staff and the Health Department were all 

13 coached and coordinated. As prior caution and 

14 upon the advice of an attorney, a formal 

15 report was never prepared on the study.

16 The company's own Health and 

17 Safety Director cast serious doubts on the 

18 reliability of Mallinckrodt's dust study.

19 This undermines the very basis for 

20 the use of Mallinckrodt records in dose 

21 reconstruction.

22 Another concern at the Weldon 
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1 Spring plant was the production or extraction 

2 of thorium during the operational period and 

3 the lack of the appropriate monitoring.

4 In a review of Mallinckrodt 

5 Chemical Works from 1965, it was stated that 

6 the conventional bioassay techniques were not 

7 adequate for monitoring potential thorium 

8 exposures as a result from current 

9 Mallinckrodt production operations.

10 Thorium pot denitration operations 

11 were observed to be poorly contained and 

12 visibly dusty. Particularly was thus noted 

13 during a hand scooping transfer procedure, 

14 which was being done outside the hood. 

15 Air movement in the vicinity was 

16 vigorously adverse to contamination control, 

17 due to a partially open outside door.

18 Area Manager Belcher also stated 

19 that thorium exposures were more than realized 

20 at the Weldon Spring plant. Records also 

21 indicate that thorium was extracted from the 

22 raffinates during the operational period.
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1 In an ORAU memo from September 16, 

2 1991, a floor plant study classification of 

3 radium, radon and thorium exposure indicated 

4 that in 1955, Mallinckrodt was asked by the 

5 AEC to extract thorium from raffinate residues 

6 on a production basis.

7 During this period, health hazards 

8 of thorium exposure were unknown. Hard copy 

9 records document Mallinckrodt's futile efforts 

10 to seek help from the AEC and government11 contracted laboratories for guidance on health 

12 hazards for setting the permissible body 

13 burden and concentrations in urine and air.

14 This sparked the AEC to begin 

15 animal experiments to determine thorium 

16 biological hazards.

17 Los Alamos agreed biological 

18 effect of thorium should be treated 

19 approximately equal to plutonium on a curie 

20 basis.

21 This pilot plant work continued 

22 until the shutdown of the duster site in 1958. 
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1 And from 1958 to 1966, the process was 

2 continued on a large-scale production basis at 

3 the Weldon Spring plant.

4 And, to the best of my knowledge 

5 and research, NIOSH has lacked the ability to 

6 reconstruct doses for internal thorium, and as 

7 a result, Special Exposure Cohorts have been 

8 granted.

9 There's no sufficient personnel 

10 and work place monitoring for thorium at the 

11 Weldon Spring plant. As a petitioner for the 

12 plant, I am beyond discouraged in the SEC 

13 process in the lack of communication and 

14 progression in granting cohorts. Weldon 

15 Spring plant workers and claimants are in 

16 desperate need of an expedited resolution. 

17 Thank you.

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Does 

19 anybody else wish to speak? Anybody else in 

20 the audience? Excuse me, who --

21 MS. JOHNSON: This is Mary 

22 Johnson, I would like to speak.
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, yes, 

2 you're one of the -- okay, go ahead. I just 

3 want to make sure the petitioners could speak 

4 first.

5 MS. JOHNSON: Okay, do you want me 

6 to wait?

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: NO, no, you can 

8 go ahead. You can go ahead, I'm sorry.

9 MS. JOHNSON: Okay, first I wanted 

10 to thank you for allowing me to speak today. 

11 And before I begin, I would like to tell the 

12 Advisory Board and NIOSH and SC&A that I have 

13 the utmost respect and admiration for the 

14 expertise and knowledge they bring.

15 And so the comments I make, I 

16 would like to not be taken personally, because 

17 my frustration is really about the 

18 administrators of this program.

19 I hope today to be a voice for the 

20 claimants and the workers and the survivors of 

21 the workers at the Mallinckrodt Weldon Spring 

22 site.
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1 I've read the dose reconstruction 

2 on my claim. I've read the Site Profile, 

3 NIOSH's evaluation, the SC&A reviews and 

4 responses, and I have listened to all of our 

5 Work Group meetings.

6 Additionally I, along with my 

7 daughter, [identifying information redacted], 

8 and Tina Triplett, who are both petitioners 

9 for the SEC on the Weldon Spring site, have 

10 exhaustively searched through documents at 

11 local libraries, Weldon Spring Interpretative 

12 Center, K: drives, private archives, online 

13 databases, employment records and various 

14 other sources.

15 Our searches and FOIA requests 

16 have produced virtually nothing regarding the 

17 Weldon Spring site. Never has anyone searched 

18 so thoroughly and obtained so little.

19 Instead, the most valuable 

20 information we seem to have obtained through 

21 the last ten years is through the sharing of 

22 stories and facts from the workers themselves, 
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1 much of which now is passed on by their 

2 survivors because so many of them have died.

3 But these workers' experiences 

4 don't seem to quite fit into the models used 

5 for dose reconstruction.

6 Therefore, to me, the one glaring 

7 absence in all of the science behind our 

8 claims is the human element. The amount of 

9 research and science in processing our claims 

10 and the SEC petition, to me are overwhelming 

11 and mind-boggling to the average claimant.

12 It's as if our SEC is on trial, 

13 but we have no representation. I do not 

14 believe in my heart that the Act of 2000 asks 

15 for this kind of seemingly obsessive 

16 scrutiny.

17 Executive Order 13179, which was 

18 signed by President Bill Clinton on December 

19 the 7th, 2000, also supports fair and timely 

20 compensation for these workers and their 

21 survivors, and states that we should ensure 

22 the program minimizes the administrative 
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1 burden on the workers and their survivors, and 

2 respects their dignity and privacy. It also 

3 states that all pertinent and available 

4 information for evaluating and processing 

5 claims be shared and provided to claimants.

6 Believe me when I say there is 

7 nothing, nothing timely about this program.

8 We are burdened and there is no dignity in 

9 being made to beg for a pittance that will 

10 never give back the hell that these workers or 

11 their loved ones -- who have died.

12 I urge you to remember that this 

13 is a compensation program first, not a 

14 research project. We're here in this 

15 situation today because the government and 

16 scientists, in their quest for an atomic bomb, 

17 forgot the human element and we are locked 

18 here in this compensation program because of 

19 research for answers which cannot always be 

20 clear. 

21 And, once again, it seems the

22 human element is becoming forgotten. Please 
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1 step back and remember the human elements, 

2 these workers and their survivors who have 

3 already waited far too long.

4 You know, I have attended some of 

5 these public meetings and ceremonies that 

6 we've had, and it's been mentioned in several 

7 instances what brave men and women these 

8 workers were and how they were heroes.

9 Maybe, but not in the usual 

10 manner. These men and women, many very young 

11 -- my husband was 18 -- didn't know what they 

12 were walking into, nor what the cost to them 

13 would be. Nor were they told or given the 

14 option, based on the information, of whether 

15 they wanted to work there or not. They didn't 

16 know they were walking into years of great 

17 health problems or even an early death.

18 They didn't know the harm they may 

19 have carried home to their loved ones. No 

20 one, no one, wants to be that kind of hero.

21 You may remember, [identifying 

22 information redacted], she was a claimant from 
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1 Weldon Spring site and [identifying 

2 information redacted]addressed the Board in 

3 years past, once in St. Louis and again in 

4 Chicago. And [identifying information 

5 redacted]suffered several years from very 

6 primary cancers. Two of them were quite rare.

7 [Identifying information redacted]

8 was denied, after each one of these cancers 

9 were diagnosed, she was denied her claim time 

10 and time again. [identifying information 

11 redacted] died August the 27th, 2010. And we 

12 promised [identifying information redacted]we 

13 would continue pushing for this compensation, 

14 and we will.

15 We need an answer. We need an 

16 answer now so we can determine in which 

17 direction we need to proceed. Thanks for 

18 allowing me to speak.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you. 

20 Is there anybody else in the audience that 

21 would like to provide public comments?

22 (No response.)
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Is there anybody 

2 on the phone that would like to provide public 

3 comments?

4 (No response.)

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, I guess 

6 what we'll do then is we will wait until 5:30 

7 and then we will continue the public comment 

8 period, that's the scheduled time. So why 

9 don't we break until the next ten or 15 

10 minutes? Thanks. 

11 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

12 went off the record at 5:19 p.m. and resumed 

13 at 5:32 p.m.)

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: If we could get 

15 seated we should get started again, we do have 

16 some people on the line. Excuse me, Denise, 

17 could we get seated, it's 5:30, we need to get 

18 started again.

19 This is the Advisory Board on 

20 Radiation and Work Health with a thunderstorm 

21 in the background, which you may hear on the 

22 microphones, and public comment period. And, 
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1 Ted, do you want to give the introduction?

2 MR. KATZ: Yes, good afternoon, 

3 for folks on the phone, I don't think we have 

4 new folks here in the room, but we've had a 

5 few comments already.

6 And we're ready for you on the 

7 line. Just to let you all know that your 

8 comments are being transcribed verbatim and 

9 they will appear in the transcript to this 

10 Board Meeting, which will be published on the 

11 NIOSH website for this program for all the 

12 public to see.

13 So everything you say personally 

14 about yourself will be captured in the 

15 transcript. However, just to let you know, 

16 anything you might say about a third party, 

17 another person, what you say would be redacted 

18 or edited to protect the privacy of that other 

19 person.

20 And if you're interested in seeing 

21 the full details of this Redaction Policy, 

22 they are on the NIOSH website under the Board 
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1 section of the NIOSH website.

2 Under "meetings," you'll see 

3 "Redaction Policy." That's what I'm speaking 

4 to here.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thanks, 

6 Ted. Is there anybody on the line, phone 

7 line, that would like to make public comments?

8 MR. FESTER: Yes, I would.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Can you please 

10 identify yourself?

11 MR. FESTER: Yes. My name is 

12 Thomas Fester, F-e-s-t-e-r, from Cincinnati, 

13 Ohio.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you, 

15 go ahead, Mr. Fester.

16 MR. FESTER: I worked at the GE 

17 facility during the case period, 1961 to 1970. 

18 I retired and developed bone cancer and, the 

19 bottom line is, they had to amputate my right 

20 leg. And of course Christ Hospital decided --

21 they wrote letters it was radiation that 

22 caused it.
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1 It might sound like I'm reading 

2 this off the paper, but I didn't write it. My 

3 points are, real quick, at GE, security was 

4 actually the main item, not radiation 

5 monitoring or any special precautions, no 

6 dosimeters, no warnings.

7 I listened to a meeting that you 

8 had on the GE facility and it seemed like the 

9 main concern was the number of claims, not 

10 anything else.

11 And I was really perturbed about 

12 that. But my point is there's only, from what 

13 I understand, there's only like 150 claims and 

14 even that, half of them are not even going to 

15 qualify for 21 cancers.

16 But what I wanted to get at was, 

17 like I said, your main concern would seem like 

18 the amount of claims -- and that shouldn't be 

19 it.

20 There's a lot of inconsistency in 

21 your stuff, from what I understand. I read in 

22 the paper and on the internet speaking of the 
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1 inconsistency. For instance, Bethlehem Steel, 

2 they had enough for a dose reconstruction but 

3 they didn't, they put in a petition for a SEC 

4 and it went right on through. Now this is 

5 like the fourth time for GE and we ain't got 

6 enough time.

7 And I'm sure that NIOSH has done 

8 extensive research on this facility and highly 

9 recommends this for an SEC. They cannot find 

10 answers to very big questions, and it seems 

11 like a lot of hem-haw going around. My point 

12 is, next week, next month, you talked about 

13 August, September, next year, will not solve 

14 anything.

15 Without -- I don't know, I've 

16 never heard of any kind of a plan of action. 

17 I don't know if you have one or anything. My 

18 last comment was, I wish you guys would 

19 reconsider and make this an SEC facility, for 

20 those who -- only for the those who qualify.

21 There's a lot of people out there, 

22 a lot of widows who lost -- right at the time 
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1 when you retire, they lost their husbands, men 

2 have lost their wives, their kids -- it's 

3 always at a critical time and it can't be, the 

4 number of claims shouldn't really have 

5 anything to do with it.

6 My point is, I don't see, I didn't 

7 hear anything about a plan of action. So 

8 postponing it just seems very ridiculous. 

9 That's all I wanted to say. I very appreciate 

10 the time.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. 

12 There is a plan of action. It may not have 

13 been spoken about in detail here, or you might 

14 have not been on the phone at the time we 

15 talked about it.

16 But there is a plan of action, and 

17 as we've said, we expect it to be completed in 

18 the next month or two.

19 MR. FESTER: Well, I hope my 

20 letter goes to heart and I appreciate the time 

21 to speak to you. Because we don't have a lot 

22 of time left.
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1 I'm in my 70s and when you lose 

2 your leg soon as you retire, I'm sure that if 

3 it hit home to some of you people, you might 

4 speed up the qualification a little bit, but 

5 thank you very much for your time.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, thank you. 

7 Anyone else on the phone?

8 MS. DAVIES: Yes, my name is Lois 

9 Davies. My father and I both worked at the 

10 General Electric Company at Evendale, in 

11 Cincinnati, Ohio.

12 We were both in the case period. 

13 My dad was a stationary engineer from the day 

14 General Electric opened. He took care of all 

15 the heating and air conditioning for all the 

16 buildings in Evendale and entered every 

17 building numerous times, because of his job, 

18 over the years.

19 And I was a secretary for 13 years 

20 at General Electric Company, and never -- I 

21 agree with the gentleman that just talked, 

22 that there was never, ever, never, never, 
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1 anything mentioned about toxic waste, any kind 

2 of danger to your health.

3 The only concern at that time was 

4 the security, the secret security, which I 

5 know was necessary, but because of the secret 

6 documents and things, there were many times 

7 that I would have to walk to numerous 

8 buildings to deliver a document.

9 And I also worked in numerous 

10 buildings because of different promotions,

11 which I know you mentioned, about depending on 

12 what buildings you worked in.

13 And all this information was given 

14 to them when I first submitted the 

15 information. But there was never, never 

16 mentioned anything about danger working in the 

17 buildings.

18 I've had breast cancer and I've 

19 taken chemo and radiation. I now have 

20 congestive heart failure, because of the 

21 chemo, because of the cancer. And my dad died 

22 of multiple myeloma.
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1 This has really been a nightmare. 

2 And, like I said, I've sent all the 

3 information that is necessary and it's just 

4 very upsetting that this has not been resolved 

5 and it just seems like there's just too many 

6 delays. And I do appreciate the time, thank 

7 you.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Is 

9 there anyone else on the phone who would like

10 to make public comments?

11 MS. ANDERSON: Yes, this is Lois 

12 Anderson. I am a widow of Ronald Anderson, he 

13 worked at General Electric for 30 years until 

14 he retired.

15 And in June, six years ago, we 

16 were at a meeting in Tri-County, I think that 

17 was the area. But anyway, he filled out the 

18 claim forms and they were sent to Cleveland.

19 He's gone now five years and they 

20 keep delaying it and delaying it and delaying 

21 it. My kids seem to think that this is a big 

22 joke, that you're all just waiting for me to 
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1 die.

2 So, I agree with Lois and Mr. 

3 Fester and I'd really appreciate if you would 

4 get some answers on this, because I think 

5 NIOSH has done everything they can possibly 

6 do.

7 And I thank you for the time and 

8 listening to me.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. 

10 Anybody else on the phone that wishes to make 

11 public comments?

12 (No response.)

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, one more 

14 time, anybody else that wishes to make public 

15 comments?

16 (No response.)

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, if not, 

18 that then closes the public comment session 

19 and the Board will reconvene tomorrow at 8:15 

20 -- roughly 8:15 to 8:30 with the schedule. 

21 And we believe Doug Daniels will 

22 be here, the speaker for tomorrow, and we'll 
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1 go from there.

2 MS. ANDERSON: Is that on the GE 

3 again at 8:15 in the morning?

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: No, no, we'll be 

5 speaking about some more general issues. 

6 They'll be no further discussion of GE at this 

7 meeting.

8 MS. ANDERSON: All right, thank 

9 you.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you.

11 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

12 matter went off the record at 5:41 p.m.)

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