STEVEN RAY GREEN AND ASSOCIATES 

NATIONALLY CERTIFIED COURT REPORTERS 

404/733-6070 

THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 

convenes the 

WORKING GROUP MEETING 

ADVISORY BOARD ON 

 

RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 

LINDE SITE PROFILE

 

The verbatim transcript of the Working 

Group Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 

Worker Health held in Las Vegas, Nevada on 

January 8, 2008. 
2

C O N T E N T S

Jan. 08, 2008 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 6 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO 

INTRODUCTION BY CHAIR 12 

COMMENTS BY DR. STEVE OSTROW, SC&A 14 

COMMENTS BY MR. JOE GUIDO, ORAU 16 

DISCUSSION BETWEEN NIOSH AND SC&A 21 

RADON DATA ISSUE 27 

RAFFINATES 32 

EXTERNAL DOSE MODEL 45 

BURLAP BAG ISSUE 55 

OUTDOOR SOURCES OF RADIATION 78 

WRAP-UP 78 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 82 
3

TRANSCRIPT LEGEND

The following transcript contains quoted material. Such 

material is reproduced as read or spoken. 

In the following transcript: a dash (--) indicates 

an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 

sentence. An ellipsis (. . .) indicates halting speech 

or an unfinished sentence in dialogue or omission(s) of 

word(s) when reading written material. 

-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 

of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 

reported. 

-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 

the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 

available. 

-- "uh-huh" represents an affirmative response, and 

"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 

 -- "*" denotes a spelling based on phonetics, 

without reference available. 

-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 

failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 
4

 P A R T I C I P A N T S 

(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 

BOARD MEMBERS

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D. 

Senior Science Advisor 

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Washington, DC 

 

 

MEMBERSHIP

BEACH, Josie 

Nuclear Chemical Operator 

Hanford Reservation 

Richland, Washington 

GIBSON, Michael H. 

President 

Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union 

Local 5-4200 

Miamisburg, Ohio 

1 LOCKEY, James, M.D. 

2 Professor, Department of Environmental Health 

3 College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati 

ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D. 

Professor Emeritus 

University of Florida 

Elysian, Minnesota 
5

IDENTIFIED PARTICIPANTS

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH 

BEHLING, HANS, SC&A 

BERMINGHAM, SARA, SEN. SCHUMER 

BONSIGNORE, ANTOINETTE, CLAIMANT 

CHANG, CHIA-CHIA, NIOSH 

CRAWFORD, CHRIS, NIOSH 

ELLIOTT, LARRY, NIOSH 

GUIDO, JOE, ORAU 

HOFF, JENNIFER, ORAU 

HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS 

HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 

NETON, JIM, NIOSH 

OSTROW, STEVE, SC&A 

ZYTONE, ABE, SC&A 
6

P R O C E E D I N G S

1 (8:08 a.m.) 

2 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO

3 DR. WADE: Good morning, this is Lew Wade, 

4 and I’m sitting with the work group. And 

5 we’re going to begin our deliberations. This 

6 is the work group looking at Linde Ceramics 

7 site profile, chaired by Dr. Roessler, 

8 members: Beach, Gibson and Lockey. Beach, 

9 Gibson and Lockey are here in Las Vegas around 

10 the meeting table. Dr. Roessler is 

11 participating by telephone in Minnesota where 

12 it’s cold and blustery. 

13 If I’m not mistaken, Gen, have you 

14 asked Dr. Lockey to chair this meeting? 

15 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): No, I asked 

16 him if he could be my backup in case I didn’t 

17 participate, so I’m prepared to chair it. 

18 DR. WADE: Very good, thank you. We’re 

19 pleased that you’re able to do that. 

20 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Jim will help 

21 since he’s onsite. 
7

1 DR. WADE: Okay, and he’ll make sage and 

2 wise comments at the appropriate time. 

3 What we’ll do is we’ll begin with some 

4 introductions around the room here, then we’ll 

5 have our friends by telephone introduce, and 

6 then we’ll begin the important deliberations 

7 of the work group. Let me start by asking are 

8 there any other Board members who are 

9 participating on this call by telephone other 

10 than Dr. Roessler? 

11 (no response) 

12 DR. WADE: Any other Board members on this 

13 call? 

14 (no response) 

15 DR. WADE: The reason I ask is that we 

16 technically can’t have a quorum of the Board, 

17 and we don’t. We simply have the four work 

18 group members participating. 

19 Now by way of introduction in the 

20 room, and again I would ask that the 

21 NIOSH/SC&A team, NIOSH/ORAU and SC&A 

22 participants identify whether or not they’re 

23 conflicted for the Linde site. 

24 This is Lew Wade. I work for NIOSH 

25 and serve the Advisory Board. 
8

1 MR. GIBSON: Mike Gibson, Advisory Board. 

2 MS. BEACH: Josie Beach, Advisory Board. 

3 DR. LOCKEY: Jim Lockey, Advisory Board. 

4 MR. CRAWFORD: Chris Crawford with OCAS, not 

5 conflicted. 

6 MR. GUIDO: Joe Guido, ORAU team, not 

7 conflicted. 

8 DR. OSTROW: Steve Ostrow, SC&A, not 

9 conflicted. 

10 DR. MAURO: John Mauro, SC&A, not 

11 conflicted. 

12 DR. WADE: Please shout out. 

13 MS. BONSIGNORE: I’m Antoinette Bonsignore 

14 with the (inaudible) facility. 

15 MS. ADAMS: Nancy Adams, NIOSH contractor, 

16 not conflicted. 

17 MS. CHANG: Chia-Chia Chang, NIOSH, not 

18 conflicted. 

19 DR. NETON: Jim Neton, NIOSH, not 

20 conflicted. 

21 MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS, not 

22 conflicted. 

23 MR. ELLIOTT: Larry Elliott, NISOH, not 

24 conflicted. 

25 MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Liz Homoki-Titus, HHS, 
9

1 not conflicted. 

2 DR. WADE: Gen, just as a sound check, were 

3 you able to hear everyone first around the 

4 table and then back away from the table? 

5 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): I could hear 

6 Joe Guido and that’s very important. I could 

7 not hear Steve Ostrow very well, and it will 

8 be very important at least for me to hear him. 

9 I can hear John Mauro, Jim Neton, Larry and 

10 Liz. 

11 DR. WADE: So you heard everyone at the 

12 table except Steve. So Steve is now 

13 repositioning. 

14 Steve, could you do a sound check, 

15 please? 

16 DR. OSTROW: Can you hear me now, Gen? 

17 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Oh, I can hear 

18 you fine. That’s good. 

19 DR. WADE: And again please shout out if 

20 anyone making a statement here is not 

21 completely understandable. Again, we can 

22 adjust the microphone positions. 

23 Let’s now go to those on the telephone 

24 and start with members of the NIOSH and ORAU 

25 team. Any other NIOSH/ORAU team members on 
10

1 the telephone? 

2 MS. HOFF (by Telephone): Jennifer Hoff, 

3 ORAU team, no conflict. 

4 DR. WADE: Welcome. 

5 Other members of the NIOSH/ORAU team? 

6 (no response) 

7 DR. WADE: How about members of the SC&A 

8 team? 

9 DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Hans Behling, 

10 SC&A, no conflict. 

11 DR. WADE: Good morning, Hans. 

12 DR. BEHLING (by Telephone): Good morning. 

13 DR. WADE: Other members of the SC&A team? 

14 MR. ZYTONE: Abe Zytone. 

15 DR. WADE: We have a new member. 

16 You’re going to have to sit and speak 

17 into the microphone and identify yourself, 

18 please. 

19 MR. ZYTONE: Abe Zytone. 

20 DR. WADE: Abe, are you, do you have 

21 conflicts relative to the Linde site? 

22 MR. ZYTONE: No. 

23 DR. WADE: Okay, thank you. 

24 What about now other federal employees 

25 who are on the call by virtue of their 
11

1 employment? Any other feds on this call who 

2 are working on this call? 

3 MS. BERMINGHAM: I’m not sure if I count. 

4 This is Sara Bermingham in Senator Schumer’s 

5 office. 

6 DR. WADE: You certainly count. Thank you. 

7 Any other federal employees on the 

8 call? 

9 (no response) 

10 DR. WADE: Are there any petitioners, 

11 workers, worker representatives on the call 

12 who would like to be identified for the 

13 record? 

14 (no response) 

15 DR. WADE: Any other members of Congress or 

16 their staff on the call who would like to be 

17 identified? 

18 (no response) 

19 DR. WADE: Is there anyone else on the call 

20 who would like to be identified for the 

21 record? 

22 (no response) 

23 DR. WADE: Okay, I think those are our 

24 introductions. Very briefly again if you’re 

25 not speaking, please mute the instrument that 
12

1 you’re using so we don’t pick up background 

2 noises. Be mindful of background noises where 

3 you are. They might be routine and common to 

4 you, but they can be very distracting to 

5 others. So just police your own area relative 

6 to your phone system. And again, if you have 

7 any trouble at any point, just call out, and 

8 we’ll make the necessary adjustments. 

9 With that, Gen, it’s all yours. 

10 INTRODUCTION BY CHAIR

11 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): I’d like to 

12 make a few comments before we delve into the 

13 review of the matrix. First of all with 

14 regard to our work group activities, we held 

our first meeting on March 26th 15 , 2007, and at 

16 that time we looked at 22 issues raised by 

17 SC&A after their review of the Linde site 

18 profile which by the way is called a TBD on 

19 the website. NIOSH and the ORAU team, Chris 

20 Crawford and Joe Guido, then went over those 

21 issues and came up with their response in 

22 November of this year. 

23 Then Steve Ostrow -- and thank you, 

24 Steve, for your promptness on this -- of SC&A 

25 assessed the NIOSH response to see which items 
13

1 are now closed and which ones are still open. 

2 I want to comment that it’s helpful I think to 

3 remember that all atomic workers employees who 

4 worked at the Linde Ceramics plant from 

October 1st, 1942 through October 31st 5 , 1947, 

6 are an SEC. I think we need to keep those 

7 dates in mind. 

8 In order to follow this discussion, 

9 work group members, if you have three 

10 documents, I think we can get through this 

11 fairly easily. The most important one is 

SC&A’s January 3rd 12 , 2008, latest assessment, 

13 and this is the matrix we will cover. NIOSH’s 

November 29th 14 , 2007 document which is titled, 

15 “NIOSH Response: Linde’s TBD Issues,” will be 

16 helpful. And then also the TBD is on the 

website, and that’s dated January 19th 17 , 2006. 

18 We are going to then look at this SC&A 

19 matrix. There are still six open items: 

20 number two, seven, eight, 13, 17 and 22. 

21 Again, I appreciate Steve’s quick response to 

22 this in putting it together because it has 

23 gone to NIOSH. So I’m assuming they have seen 

24 this, NIOSH and ORAU, and will be able to 

25 respond. 
14

1 We do have a short time this morning. 

2 There’s another group meeting at ten, and I 

3 think we’ll have to be done probably about, 

4 you know, before that. So I would suggest, 

5 Lew, that about 9:45 we need to stop and 

6 evaluate where we are. 

7 DR. WADE: I’ll mark that down. 

8 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): So I think at 

9 this point we’ll turn it over to Steve and 

10 Joe, Steve with SC&A and Joe with the 

11 NIOSH/ORAU team. 

12 Probably, Steve, you will want to lead 

13 it? 

14 COMMENTS BY DR. STEVE OSTROW, SC&A

15 DR. OSTROW: Okay, that sounds good. 

16 As you said we had the 22 comments and 

17 NIOSH produced a quite extensive document on 

November 29th 18 , a 25-page response to our 

19 comments that is very good. It’s very 

20 detailed. 

21 It turned out that a number of our 

22 comments were related to each other so in a 

23 couple of cases, one NIOSH comment -- several 

24 of our comments that really puts those issues 

25 to bed. There were certain different 
15

1 categories. One of them was on the internal 

2 exposure model. 

3 We had some questions about the 

4 original way that it was done. Originally 

5 they were using air concentration data as a 

6 basis for the occupational internal dose 

7 estimation. After our discussion at the last 

8 meeting, NIOSH is now using a different model. 

9 They are using a coworker bioassay model that, 

10 and this basically answers a number of our 

11 questions on your model. 

12 We still have, we basically accept, we 

13 agree with their approach that they’re using 

14 the methodology from ORAU Procedure 0095 which 

15 is generating summary statistics for coworker 

16 bioassay data. That’s their basic methodology 

17 they’re using. And we support the approach. 

18 We had reviewed this in a different task. We 

19 were looking at the individual procedures. 

20 On comment two we still had marked it 

21 as open because we just had a short question 

22 about it. I’ll just read what I’ve written. 

23 The NIOSH response states that -- and this is 

24 a quotation -- “the intakes calculated using 

25 coworker data extending through January 1950 
16

1 during Step III operations, were extended 

2 through the end of the operations period which 

3 is currently listed as 12/31/53 by DOL because 

4 these intakes are believed to be bounding 

5 during the final decontamination phases at the 

6 site.” 

7 And our only comment is I’d like NIOSH 

8 to just elaborate a little bit, go one step 

9 further and just state why you think these 

10 intakes are bounding. 

11 COMMENTS BY MR. JOE GUIDO, ORAU

12 MR. GUIDO: Sure, sure. I mean, well, one 

13 thing is to look at -- I should identify 

14 myself I guess. This is Joe Guido. One thing 

15 you need to look at is what activities 

16 occurred in that period because the coworker 

17 data that we’re using appears to be joining 

18 the Step III operations. And the final sample 

19 in that is labeled a determination sample. 

20 And if you look at the, there’s 

21 reports, they’re not the monthly reports, but 

22 there’s like monthly operation reports that 

23 give you the staffing level of Linde over a 

24 period of time. And if you look at those 

25 reports, the staffing level was obviously 
17

1 decreasing very quickly in that period. So by 

2 the end of 1950 there were very few people 

3 left at the Linde site doing very much. 

4 And the only activity that was there 

5 relevant would be the decontamination that was 

6 remaining. And the decontamination reports 

7 that you look are also authored in the 1950-

8 ’54 period. Most of the decontamination was 

9 actually done, and then there was 

10 communication back and forth about little, 

11 limited activities that were going on as far 

12 as -- and there was some significant activity, 

13 sandblasting, flame cutting and stuff to get 

14 the last of the contamination out of the 

15 building. 

16 What makes me believe that we’re still 

17 being claimant favorable and bounding is there 

18 is some documentation, summary documentation 

19 of the airborne levels during that 

decontamination, and that’s in a May 3rd 20 , 1954 

21 memo. It’s a summary. The summary levels 

22 talks about the average 48-channel air samples 

23 found to be, the average is 78 DPM per cubic 

24 meter, and the high is 720 DPM per cubic 

25 meter. So if you look at that airborne level 
18

1 that was occurring during the D&D that’s still 

2 bounded by what we are giving them from the 

3 coworker data. 

4 DR. MAURO: What is that, the operational 

5 data that you’re saying, what is that 

6 distribution compared to the -- 

7 MR. GUIDO: It’s much higher than, it’s a 

8 higher level than that. 

9 DR. MAURO: Factor of two, ten? 

10 MR. GUIDO: At least 33 mag*, so 33 times 70 

11 at the start versus, so we’re about a factor 

12 of ten. 

13 DR. MAURO: Factor of ten. 

14 MR. GUIDO: And then the other thing that’s 

15 of interest is even in that same memo they’re 

16 saying how the dust concentrations were much 

17 lower during the previous decontamination 

18 except one or two which happened in the ’49 

19 period, the earlier period. So I think that’s 

20 why it’s bounding. Plus the struggle with all 

21 this of course is that the number of workers 

22 that were really exposed to that are probably 

23 quite small, but I guess that’s not an issue 

24 here. 

25 DR. OSTROW: Joe, I didn’t catch it. When 
19

1 was this memo you’re referring to, what was 

2 that -- 

MR. GUIDO: May 3rd 3 , 1954. Actually, do you 

4 have -- I’m not sure if it’s on the Linde -- I 

5 don’t know what access you have to the Linde 

6 data that we have. We used site research 

7 database reference numbers, and the reference 

8 number would be 35-732. It’s page, that’s a 

9 53-page document. It’s one of those documents 

10 that’s a compilation of memos so you’d have to 

11 look at page 20 of that. It’s an individual 

12 memo. 

13 DR. OSTROW: So it’s 35-732? 

14 MR. GUIDO: Yes. And if you need to go 

15 further it’s a memo from Klevins (ph). I 

16 guess he was the industrial hygienist, branch 

17 section for (inaudible) Linde. So he, they 

18 were basically summarizing the data that they 

19 had collected during that operation. 

20 MS. BEACH: Can you find that on the O 

21 drive? 

22 MR. GUIDO: Yes, if you go into the site 

23 research database tool, there’s a tab like 

24 three pages down where you can just enter the 

25 reference ID, and you can just type in that 
20

1 reference ID, that 35-732. And like I say 

2 that’s a, it’s a hard one because it’s just a 

3 compilation of lots of memos so you have to go 

4 to page 20 of the PDF, and you’ll find it. If 

5 not, let me know. You can give me 

6 (inaudible). 

7 MS. BEACH: I know how to get there. 

8 MR. GUIDO: I mean, the other thing you can 

9 tab Linde and get all of that and just scroll 

10 through this one because it’s probably near 

11 the end. 

12 DR. NETON: This is Jim. I’m not sure that 

13 the work group has access to these, the site 

14 research database tool. What we’ve done is 

15 we’ve put those on the O drive under the 

16 Board’s folder. It’s our X drive. 

17 Chris, are you familiar with that? 

18 MR. CRAWFORD: I’m familiar with the 

19 contents, but I don’t know how to access it. 

20 DR. NETON: We can make that available on 

21 the -- 

22 MS. BEACH: I’ve actually been on it, but I 

23 was having trouble last night getting into the 

24 ones I was trying to look at. 

25 DR. NETON: I’ll talk to Chris, and we’ll 
21

1 put that document on the O drive that you 

2 normally access. 

3 MR. GUIDO: I have it up here on the screen 

4 if anyone wants to look at it. 

5 DISCUSSION BETWEEN NIOSH AND SC&A

6 DR. OSTROW: I think that that answers my 

7 question. I just wanted to know what your 

8 reference was basically for doing this. So as 

9 far as SC&A is concerned, we think NIOSH 

10 answered our comment to satisfaction now. 

11 And I just mentioned the NIOSH 

12 document where they responded to us, the 

November 29th 13 document. They had organized it, 

14 not comment by comment by comment but 

15 basically by topic. And this topic which is 

16 their Section 2.0 on urinalysis data actually 

17 deals with a number of our comments, comments 

18 two, three, four, nine, ten, 12, 19 and 21. 

19 And basically it answers the, either all or 

20 most of our comments in those issues. 

21 Let’s see, what’s the next one that -- 

22 DR. MAURO: Steve, I just wanted to make 

23 sure I got the line because I think I got the 

24 linkage of how this works. So you have these 

25 bioassay data, urine sample data, taken during 
22

1 the phase three operations at Linde. And 

2 there’s a distribution of values, and it’s a 

3 large enough sample. I understand it’s a 

4 fairly large sample. 

 You used the upper 84th 5 percentile. In 

6 other words in that distribution now when 

7 you’re reconstructing the doses for a worker, 

8 you’re assigning to that worker, let’s say he 

9 does not have a bioassay sample, you’re going 

to be assigning the upper 84th 10 percentile to 

11 the -- 

12 MR. GUIDO: We defined the distribution for 

13 a geometric mean and geometric standard 

deviation to use the 95th 14 percentile. 

DR. MAURO: Oh, use the 95th 15 percentile? 

16 DR. OSTROW: Oh, because I was wondering 

17 because the ORAU Procedure 0095 goes up only 

to the 84th 18 percentile, right? 

19 MR. GUIDO: Well, I think the Procedure 

20 defines calculating those values, I mean doing 

21 dose reconstruction it just depends on how 

you, it’s applied, you know, apply the 95th 22 

23 percentile. 

24 DR. MAURO: That’s where I’m going with 

25 this. In other words I’m visualizing. You 
23

1 have this dataset. You have a nice 

2 distribution of numbers, and now you have a 

3 worker that you want to reconstruct his, 

4 during that time period, the Phase III time 

5 period that you don’t have bioassay data. 

6 And so from that distribution you’re 

7 going to pick either some value or some 

8 distribution. My understanding is that you’re 

9 planning on automatically assigning as a 

default the upper 84th 10 percentile. Or is it a 

11 judgment call on a case-by-case basis? 

MR. GUIDO: I don’t know where the 84th 12 

13 percentile assignment comes from. I’ve never 

14 -- 

15 DR. MAURO: Okay, that’s the one signet. 

DR. NETON: Yeah, I think the 84th 16 percentile 

17 is used to calculate the geometric standard 

deviation distribution, 84th over the 50th 18 and 

19 get the GSD of the distribution. That’s never 

20 really been assigned to workers. 

21 DR. MAURO: Okay, so what would be assigned 

22 to so-called worker that we don’t have 

23 bioassay -- 

24 DR. NETON: What Joe is saying here is that 

25 for a worker who was not monitored and should 
24

1 have been monitored, we’re going to assign the 

95th 2 percentile. That doesn’t mean that some 

people might not get the 50th 3 percentile if 

4 they were not routinely involved in radiologic 

5 operations. 

6 DR. MAURO: And that we covered -- 

7 DR. NETON: That’s covered in this, yeah. 

8 DR. MAURO: Now the next level -- I’m just 

9 trying to put this whole thing in a nice 

10 package for myself. The next level is then 

11 you have a period of time where you enter a 

12 post-Phase III operation where you move into a 

13 D&D mode. 

14 DR. NETON: Right. 

15 DR. MAURO: Now what I’m hearing is that 

16 you’re going to use the distribution from the 

Phase III exposures, let’s say the 95th 17 

18 percentile, to the D&D workers also. And the 

19 reason you feel that’s claimant favorable, and 

20 I understand what you’re saying, it says, 

21 well, we have a hook on the problem. 

22 Namely, we’ve got air sampling data 

23 during Phase III. We’ve got air sampling data 

24 during the D&D operation, and there’s evidence 

25 that the levels, the airborne dust levels, 
25

1 during the D&D were substantively lower than 

2 they were during Phase III by it sounded like 

3 almost a factor of ten. So on that basis you 

4 feel comfortable that you’ve got it, you’ve 

5 got this problem in a box. 

6 MR. GUIDO: Right, and we’re not comfortable 

7 enough with just using the, you know, this 

8 summary air data is just not in a format 

9 where, I mean, the best thing to do is if we 

10 had specific data during that period. We just 

11 don’t have the high quality data. In other 

12 words the understanding of the data to just 

13 use it directly. In other words if we were to 

14 use the lower concentration during D&D, that 

15 would probably be better. 

16 DR. MAURO: But in this case because of the 

17 limited data, but some evidence that -- 

18 MR. GUIDO: It’s bounding. 

19 DR. MAURO: -- that you’re bounding it. 

20 Okay, I got it. 

21 MR. GUIDO: I hope you like the format I 

22 tried to put on this because I know it was 

23 like from March to now, a long time. That’s 

24 why I linked all of those together. 

25 DR. OSTROW: Yeah, it’s a good thing. Yeah, 
26

1 it’s easier this way rather than just 

2 repeating it ten times, you know, same thing. 

3 It’s easier when you grouped it. 

4 Okay, so the next thing that we had 

5 considered open was our comment number seven. 

6 That was on radon. 

7 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): This is Gen. 

8 It’s a little hard to hear, but I assume what 

9 happened on comment two is that John Mauro has 

10 accepted your bounding procedure? 

11 DR. MAURO: Yes, SC&A has looked at this. 

12 We discussed it. I just tried to capture the 

13 sense of it as I understand it and as we 

14 discussed it. And, yes, we find that 

15 scientifically sound and a compelling position 

16 to take, claimant favorable and scientifically 

17 valid. 

18 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Okay, thank 

19 you. 

20 So go ahead then, Steve. 

21 DR. WADE: Steve, please speak up, Steve, if 

22 you will. 

23 DR. OSTROW: Okay, I’m sorry. 

24 MR. GUIDO: I’m loud enough where I probably 

25 don’t need that. 
27

1 DR. OSTROW: Yeah, I’m moving the microphone 

2 around a little bit. 

3 You hear me okay now, Gen? 

4 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): I was on mute. 

5 I can hear you, Steve, but speak as loudly as 

6 you can. 

7 DR. OSTROW: I can be quite loud. It’s 

8 good. I’m from New York, and usually I’m 

9 louder than this. 

10 RADON DATA ISSUE

11 Next is item number seven which is on 

12 the radon data. Our original comment was that 

13 we wanted NIOSH to elaborate on the location 

14 of ores that could be producing the radon, and 

15 the treatment system and basically what 

16 happened to the radon-producing isotopes and 

17 tailings piles. And NIOSH answered this with, 

18 let’s see, which comment is it? Oh, there it 

19 is. It’s section three, “Treatment of Radon 

20 Data”. Okay, that’s covered then in section 

21 four in raffinates. 

22 NIOSH apparently did some research 

23 into the documents and tried to identify where 

24 all the raffinates, the African ores and the 

25 raffinates ended up, looking at different data 
28

1 sources. And they produced a table on this. 

2 And we think it’s pretty thorough. We just 

3 had one further comment though. We just 

4 wanted to know that based on all the data that 

5 NIOSH had looked at, were there any other 

6 sources of radon that were identified other 

7 than the ores that are identified in this 

8 table. 

9 MR. GUIDO: I mean there’s, we didn’t find 

10 any evidence of any other, you know, the 

11 material, the raffinate materials, all the 

12 evidence was that was removed from the site as 

13 far as being a bulk source of activity. 

14 There’s nothing else that we found I could 

15 find in any of the references. I probably 

16 read through several, probably all the leading 

17 references a couple times trying to find other 

18 documentation. Everything went to the 

19 national (inaudible) and (inaudible). It 

20 created quite a big mess as far as moving 

21 those piles of stuff around. 

22 And then there also is the 

23 segregation. Some of them went to 

24 (inaudible). I guess the issue was the 

25 radium-bearing material was a resource at the 
29

1 time so it moved, you know, to one location 

2 and then the other stuff wasn’t really useful, 

3 but it was moved offsite. That’s all I could 

4 find. 

5 And the radon samples we’re using, I 

6 think the question there was the 1945 period. 

7 There really are some radon measurements in 

8 the 1977 in the further surveys which are 

9 quite low. Now I know that understanding a 

10 lot of time has passed. And what we’re 

11 proposing for that period is like a ten 

12 picocuries per liter assignment based on the 

13 concentrations during the period of domestic 

14 ore processing which would be the lower 

15 radium-containing ores. 

16 And the idea being that during the 

17 real period we’re talking about they weren’t 

18 doing any ore production. This is not to say 

19 that there wasn’t maybe some radon emanation 

20 from some ore that accumulated in a corner 

21 somewhere we just don’t know about. But the 

22 idea would be that those levels shouldn’t have 

23 been higher. They should have been bounded by 

24 the levels during, when they were processing 

25 ores. 
30

1 And then if you look at the surveys in 

2 the late ‘70s, in the later periods when they 

3 did do surveys of the buildings, there were 

4 some radon measures that were quite low. So 

5 it wasn’t like there were pockets of material 

6 still there. And that’s the best we can do 

7 with the information we have, unfortunately. 

8 DR. MAURO: This is John. When we were 

9 discussing this as it was explained to me by 

10 Steve is that during the SEC period it was 

11 prior to the end of the SEC period that there 

12 were no longer any raffinates or pitchblende 

13 being processed or raffinates in storage or 

14 being handled onsite. That’s, from our 

15 experience in working at so many of these 

16 other uranium ore processing sites, we’re 

17 always very sensitive to the radon and the 

18 raffinate and the thorium associated with the 

19 raffinate question. 

20 And the answer that you provided here 

21 is very, you know, the evidence is that it 

22 looks like there wasn’t, that that material 

23 was removed during the SEC period. And you 

24 really don’t have an inventory onsite for the 

25 time period of interest here. And we found 
31

1 that to be, that is really the rock you’re 

2 standing on, and we accept that. And that 

3 being the case, we concur. 

4 DR. LOCKEY: What was your higher bound 

5 level you were using? 

6 MR. GUIDO: Ten picocuries per liter is 

7 what’s assigned for -- 

8 DR. LOCKEY: What was that based on again? 

9 MR. GUIDO: That was based on the radon 

10 measurements during the processing of domestic 

11 ores at Linde. They had a period where they 

12 did African ore processing, and then they did 

13 a period of doing domestic. I think the 

14 domestic ores were eight percent uranium. I’d 

15 have to look that up, but it was lower 

16 concentration of uranium in the ore as opposed 

17 to the African ores they were doing. But they 

18 did radon measurements during the processing 

19 of that ore. 

20 DR. LOCKEY: And the reason they used 

21 domestic versus African? 

22 MR. GUIDO: Well, the African ore is much 

23 higher, the idea being during the time when 

24 they were doing any ore processing at all, 

25 just to bound that exposure we used the 
32

1 domestic ore radon levels. It would seem 

2 reasonable because the African ore was first, 

3 you know, they did that. They stopped that 

4 then did domestic ore processing. And then 

5 they started moving on to concentrates and 

6 stuff, and then they shut that down completely 

7 and moved to other operations which was 

8 concentrates of uranium oxides. 

9 DR. OSTROW: This is Steve again. I think 

10 we conclude based on what we’ve just heard 

11 SC&A considers that comment seven is closed 

12 now. 

13 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Thank you. 

14 What I think I heard John Mauro say is the 

15 reason it’s closed is because the material was 

16 removed before the period of interest. And so 

17 what NIOSH is going to do is use a ten 

18 picocurie per liter bounding number. 

19 DR. MAURO: That’s correct. 

20 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Okay, thanks. 

21 RAFFINATES

22 DR. OSTROW: Comment number eight that I had 

23 was on the, comment seven was radon. Comment 

24 eight is on the raffinates in particular. And 

25 NIOSH discussed that in Section 4.0 of their 
33

1 recent report. We had a further comment on 

2 that. Let me see what it was. 

3 This is a little bit of a technical 

4 question, and I’ll read it, but I hope NIOSH 

5 people reading it, what I’ve written. Table 

6 4-2 of their recent report presents isotopic 

7 data to soils and sediments in various site 

8 locations. And Table 4-3 presents progeny to 

9 uranium ratios for several isotopes. That’s 

10 in the new document. 

11 Going back to Linde’s site profile, 

12 Table 5 of this site profile presents uranium 

13 intake fractions for several nuclides which 

14 were determined by assuming secular 

15 equilibrium of the uranium progeny. It’s not 

16 clear to SC&A how Table 4-2 of the new NIOSH 

17 response relates to Table 5 of the TBD and how 

18 the former values are intended for use in dose 

19 reconstruction. I mean, we couldn’t, we’re 

20 not claiming that they’re incorrect. We just 

21 didn’t exactly see how they’re connected to 

22 each other. 

23 MR. GUIDO: Right, well, yeah, and the 

24 tabulation that’s there was done in response 

25 to just the question of what kind of 
34

1 information you have on raffinate ratios on 

2 the nuclides. That was the raw format of it. 

3 Now, how it gets incorporated into a revision 

4 of a TBD that’s used by dose reconstructions 

5 is another matter. 

6 However, I think that the pertinent 

7 table here, the Table 4.2, is the summary. 

8 And then there’s another table in the 

9 response, Table 4-3, which kind of like it 

10 boils it all down to what’s the minimum and 

11 maximum nuclides and ratio we found, like one12 to-30 radium, 4-to-32 actinium protactinium, 

13 sometimes there are nuclides that we’re really 

14 interested in here, you know, large doses. 

15 The table in the TBD, Table 5, is 

16 meant purely to give dose reconstructors an 

17 idea of how you’re dealing with uranium ore. 

18 Here’s what secular equilibrium for uranium 

19 ore looks like. And some of it is not 

20 necessarily obvious because when you’re 

21 talking about total uranium, you have Uranium22 238 and 234. 

23 You have to break those in half and 

24 necessarily exactly in half. You know, many 

25 of the actinium and (inaudible) daughters. So 
35

1 that table’s there to kind of break all that 

2 down so that we’re all on a common page as far 

3 as dose reconstruction. That still would 

4 stand in a revision of the TBD because that’s 

5 still pertinent information for uranium ore. 

6 Now what we’re talking about here with 

7 the raffinates is really the salient point is 

8 the dose reconstruction during the non-SEC 

9 periods. We’re in the period post-1947 no 

10 longer dealing with ores, but the reality is 

11 when we look at the data for the material 

12 that’s residual, that’s still there, it had, 

13 all of you know it obviously had Thorium-230, 

14 radium and other nuclides there. 

15 So the intent would be during dose 

16 reconstruction for those periods you’d need to 

17 account for that exposure. The current TBD 

18 during that period would just give folks just 

19 uranium exposures under the idea that that’s, 

20 you’re dealing with uranium concentrates for 

21 uranium oxide, and really all their daughters 

22 are pretty much gone. But I think the 

23 evidence is that there was residual material. 

24 And unfortunately, when we, like 

25 looking at that bioassay data that we 
36

1 summarized, that’s uranium bioassay data. 

2 Most of that uranium is probably lost during 

3 the processing of uranium oxide and really 

4 doesn’t contain any progeny still. But you do 

5 have the uranium progeny there as far as the 

6 residual surface contamination inventory 

7 because they found it in ’77. 

8 And so you have no choice but during 

9 dose reconstruction to account for that 

10 exposure. Because when you’re looking at the 

11 uranium bioassay data, you know how much, you 

12 know, we had a good handle on how much uranium 

13 was inhaled by these workers. We just don’t 

14 know what uranium. Was it re-suspended 

15 uranium that’s in this matrix containing the 

16 raffinates, containing the other nuclides or 

17 was it process emissions. Most of it probably 

18 is, but we don’t know where that is. 

19 What, you know, that’s the whole 

20 problem we have with these kinds of sites. So 

21 we have to be claimant favorable and take the 

22 bounding approach which is to use the ratios 

23 from the re-suspended material which these 

24 represent. I mean, that’s what the Table 4-2 

25 and the Table 4-3, the summary, represents 
37

1 isotopic ratios on the debris and stuff. And 

2 that’s what I tried to pick. 

3 I tried to pick values that were -- 

4 it’s very relevant. It was dust and debris 

5 from overhead rafters and in drains and stuff 

6 like that which is, I think, pretty good 

7 representation of what was in the fallout per 

8 se in the building like (inaudible) were 

9 talking about. It may not necessarily be 

10 representative of what was in the air. What 

11 was in the air was what was emitted from the 

12 process. 

13 But that’s the best we can do to make 

14 sure that we’re bounding exposures. So that’s 

15 where we’re -- Now that would have to be 

16 rolled into the revision of the TBD and how we 

17 use it. But it would not be a direct 

18 replacement, Table 5. This is more 

19 information for, a set up, like I say, a 

20 starting point. 

21 DR. MAURO: So if I’m doing the dose 

22 reconstruction on a worker during the, well, I 

23 guess it would be during either Phase III, or 

24 I guess you’re not doing it during Phase III 

25 because that’s covered. No, it’s not. 
38

1 MR. GUIDO: (Inaudible) is the period we’re 

2 talking about. 

3 DR. MAURO: It is, Phase III, and then 

4 that’s separate from the D&D. 

5 MR. GUIDO: And the D&D. 

6 DR. MAURO: Now, I have my bioassay data for 

7 uranium. I assume that’s milligrams per 

8 liter? In other words -- 

9 MR. GUIDO: Right, yeah, however you want 

10 to, it’s going to turn into a picocurie intake 

11 -- 

12 DR. MAURO: You’re going to get that now, 

13 and then you’re saying, okay, but we have to 

14 assume that some of that if I know the intake 

15 of Uranium-234, I’m going to make some 

16 assumption that there’s some 230. There may 

17 be some Radium-226 there, and the way you’re 

18 getting a hook onto that is based on the 

19 samples that were taken from the rafters where 

20 it demonstrates, yeah, there’s still some 

21 residue of raffinates around even though they 

22 were shipped off earlier during the SEC, but 

23 there’s still some residue around. Now you’re 

24 saying you have a degree of confidence that 

25 that ratio as obtained from these samples 
39

1 probably places an upper bound because in all 

2 likelihood the actual uranium they’re 

3 inhaling, it was Phase III process uranium. 

4 And any thorium that might be there, but 

5 you’re going to assign it based on the sample. 

6 MR. GUIDO: Right, right. 

7 DR. MAURO: So that’s, my reaction to that 

8 is that is claimant favorable because you’re 

9 assuming all of the uranium they handled is 

10 contaminated to a certain degree with some of 

11 these thorium isotopes when in fact probably 

12 that, to a lesser degree because it’s not part 

13 of the process. It may be something that 

14 might have been re-suspended off the rafters -

15 - 

16 MR. GUIDO: If we could get a better idea of 

17 the resuspension of the inhalation that was 

18 occurring that is driving these bioassay 

19 samples, if we can get an idea of how much of 

20 that was process emission versus resuspension 

21 -- 

22 DR. MAURO: Are you going to try to do that 

23 or are you just going to study -- 

24 MR. GUIDO: I don’t think we have the data 

25 to do that. 
40

1 DR. MAURO: Okay, so you’re going to stay 

2 with this ratio. 

3 MR. GUIDO: Yeah. 

4 DR. MAURO: By the way where are you on 

5 that? How far, in other words let’s say 

6 you’re talking Thorium-230. For every 

7 picocurie of 234, what are you assuming the 

8 picocuries -- 

9 MR. GUIDO: It’s point -- but the range of 

10 data in the debris that was there was from 

11 0.0018 to 0.7135, seventy percent. 

12 DR. MAURO: You’re talking about the degree 

13 of equilibrium. Is that what you’re saying? 

14 MR. GUIDO: Yeah, effectively that’s what 

15 that becomes. 

16 DR. MAURO: So are you using 0.7 as your -- 

17 MR. GUIDO: Yeah, that’s what we wrote in 

18 the TBD, but I mean, I don’t see a choice 

19 there. If we don’t have a lot data to build 

20 the distribution on this. We have limited 

21 amounts of data on here. 

22 DR. MAURO: So what I’m hearing then is that 

23 in selecting the isotopic mix for Phase III 

24 and D&D, you’re going to tend toward the 

25 higher end of the contribution of the thorium, 
41

1 because thorium’s, of course, in a very, the 

2 Thorium-230 is the one we are concerned about 

3 because that has the highest dose conversion 

4 factor. 

5 MR. GUIDO: And this ought to be worded 

6 relative to the TBD and technically put in 

7 there, but I mean, that’s with the data. 

8 That’s the data we have right now. 

9 DR. MAURO: But that’s where you’re headed, 

10 going toward the high end of that sample taken 

11 from the rafters. 

12 MR. GUIDO: The rafters, drains. I started 

13 to say there wasn’t a whole lot of, but most 

14 of it sewers, rafters, things, you know, where 

15 stuff accumulated which probably represented 

16 stuff that was there. 

17 DR. MAURO: No, I understand. 

18 DR. LOCKEY: One question, that Thorium-230 

19 probably is more representative of Phase I and 

20 Phase II? 

21 DR. MAURO: That’s what I’m hearing. Now 

22 there may have been some also produced during 

23 the other ores, the Canadian ores or wherever 

24 they got them from. I mean not the Congo 

25 ores. 
42

1 MR. GUIDO: Right, but it was also that same 

2 work processing, it’s still the, all this 

3 material was during the SEC period, but it 

4 still was there as far as debris in the 

5 building because they found it in the ‘70s. 

6 It was still there. But the material coming 

7 in during the Phase III, the uranium oxide, 

8 wouldn’t have had these nuclides. They found 

9 little traces, but generally you’re not going 

10 to have these nuclides in there. 

11 DR. LOCKEY: So that’s a claimant friendly 

12 approach. 

13 DR. MAURO: That’s how I see it, yeah. 

14 DR. OSTROW: Okay, if no one else has any 

15 more comments on that, I think the -- 

16 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Steve, 

17 everybody was fading out in the discussions 

18 there. I did hear John Mauro say that he 

19 thought the approach was claimant favorable, 

20 but I would like to have somebody summarize 

21 what the conclusion is on this comment. Maybe 

22 John could do it? 

23 DR. MAURO: I’d be glad to. The concern has 

24 to do with, it looks like there is a good 

25 handle on the uranium intake. In other words 
43

1 they have the data, and have captured a 

2 claimant favorable approach for dealing with 

3 intakes of uranium. 

4 But then the question becomes, well, 

5 what about the thorium and maybe radium, and 

6 other residual material. Well, that could be 

7 a very significant problem if you’re dealing 

8 with large quantities of raffinates that may 

9 have been produced during the processing of, 

10 let’s say, pitchblende or Congo ore. And that 

11 becomes a real serious problem which was 

12 turned out to be extremely serious, for 

13 example, down at Mallinckrodt. 

14 But in this case our understanding is, 

15 well, it’s not as serious because all of the 

16 raffinates were cleared away during the SEC 

17 period. So in other words after the SEC 

18 periods these large inventories of raffinates 

19 with the thorium problems were gone. But, and 

20 then you move into this Phase III where there 

21 was processing going on, and there certainly 

22 was some residue left over that could have 

23 included thorium, perhaps some radium, and 

24 that residue is not of a magnitude of concern 

25 the same as you would have like, for example, 
44

1 raffinates associated with pitchblende ore. 

2 But it’s still some residue, and you 

3 can’t ignore it. In other words you can’t 

4 just say, well, during Phase III and during 

5 D&D we’re just going to completely disregard 

6 the potential contribution of thorium. And 

7 they said they didn’t do that. What they did 

8 is they had to get a handle on what 

9 contribution this residue of thorium and 

10 radium might have played on the intake. 

11 So what they did is they have swipe 

12 samples or samples collected from drains, from 

13 rafters and other locations where some residue 

14 from previous operations during the SEC period 

15 were still around. And it’s possible that 

16 material could have been re-suspended and 

17 inhaled. 

18 So the approach that’s being taken is 

19 that, okay, we know the ratio of the uranium 

20 to the Thorium-230 in some of this residue 

21 collected from the drains and other locations. 

22 We’re going to assume that that ratio holds 

23 and is applicable to people working during 

24 Phase III and during D&D. 

25 When, in fact, that’s pretty claimant 
45

1 favorable because that material is less likely 

2 to be the material that’s being airborne and 

3 inhaled. It’s more likely to be this fresh 

4 material that’s being processed. So by 

5 assuming that that material has the same ratio 

6 as what’s in this residue on the rafters, it 

7 seems to be very claimant favorable in terms 

8 of making sure that they’re not 

9 underestimating the contribution of the 

10 thorium dose during Phase III and during D&D. 

11 Did I capture that correctly? 

12 MR. GUIDO: Yeah, absolutely. 

13 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Good, I’m glad 

14 that’s on the record. So Table 4-3 is 

15 important then in this part. 

16 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

17 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): In the NIOSH 

18 document. John, I’ll try to shorten that a 

19 bit for my summary. 

20 I would ask in the next comment 

21 discussion if you and Joe could speak louder, 

22 it would help. There’s a lot of noise on the 

23 line. Thank you. 

24 EXTERNAL DOSE MODEL

25 DR. OSTROW: The next open item that we had 
46

1 was item number 13, comment number 13, which, 

2 let’s see, this is on the, we’re finished with 

3 internal dose. Thirteen and the ones after 

4 that are on external dose model. Thirteen was 

5 multi-part. 

6 We had raised several questions about 

7 the external dose model, and actually had six 

8 comments on it. Section 6 of NIOSH’s 

9 response, that’s the recent November one, 

10 responded to our six individual comments. And 

11 the first one was -- I don’t want to read the 

12 whole thing because it’s so lengthy, but we 

13 had a comment on one of the methodologies that 

14 why NIOSH picked a factor of three rather than 

15 a factor of four. 

16 That’s for, that doesn’t seem much but 

17 -- hang on one second. I have to go back to 

18 the original comment to see what the 

19 significance of this is. Can you just hang on 

20 one second? I’m looking for my original 

21 comment here. Okay, here we go. My comment 

22 was actually summarized in the NIOSH document 

23 from November, in Section 6. I’m not quite 

24 sure how to summarize this. It’s like a whole 

25 page written here. It has to do with Footnote 
47

1 C of Table 13. 

2 MR. GUIDO: I can help you. I mean, what 

3 this comes down to here is that we had a data, 

4 the problem was that a lot of the data that 

5 we’re talking about is very early data where 

6 it was just recorded as units of 

7 (unintelligible) per hour, total beta plus 

8 gamma. So you’ve got to extract because of 

9 the purpose of this program you’ve got to 

10 extract how much was a beta component and how 

11 much was the gamma component. 

12 And one of the ways we did that, the 

13 ratio, the beta ratio and the gamma ratio was 

14 different. We chose to use the average of 

15 those two. I think your comment is, yeah, 

16 that may be claimant favorable but just go 

17 ahead use the actual. And I think probably 

18 just go ahead do what you suggested there. In 

19 other words just use the beta ratio and the 

20 gamma ratio as separate ratios. And that’s 

21 fine. 

22 DR. OSTROW: I was just wondering, was there 

23 any particular reason you didn’t want to -- 

24 MR. GUIDO: No, I think it’s simplicity. 

25 Because really the gamma component is 
48

1 relatively insignificant as far as impacting, 

2 you know, the whole job here is to do the dose 

3 reconstruction, be claimant favorable, and we 

4 have to look at the end point which is how 

5 it’s going to affect the calculation. 

6 I mean, it’s a sensitivity analysis 

7 kind of thing. You know, we’re looking at a 

8 very low assignment anyway, so to use a factor 

9 of three instead of 1.2. I mean, the factor 

10 is like 1.2. We chose to use three. Well, 

11 three times 15 micro an hour versus one times 

12 it, you know, it’s not a big impact, and it 

13 makes it simpler for the process of dose 

14 reconstruction. 

15 And in the process if the dose 

16 reconstructor does it, or the peer reviewer 

17 who does it, NIOSH looks at a beta, so you 

18 know, you have all this layers of review, and 

19 if you could simplify the calculation without 

20 affecting claimant favorability and without 

21 being overly claimant favorable, like I said, 

22 the impact here is very low. It’s a 

23 multiplier of a very low number. But we can 

24 go ahead and just use the actual. I mean, 

25 it’s not like that complex to do that. 
49

1 DR. OSTROW: We agree with you that it’s not 

2 a, doesn’t have any material affect on the 

3 answer, it just looks more accurate to do it 

4 separately, two separate factors. 

5 MR. GUIDO: There’s just a, there’s always a 

6 tradeoff of accuracy versus simplicity, and I 

7 didn’t author this document, but I know that’s 

8 what the process is always looking at. How 

9 can we make the process simpler without 

10 affecting the outcome and be claimant 

11 favorable because in the end that leads to 

12 fewer errors and it leads to a more 

13 streamlining. We don’t want to spend a bunch 

14 of money, but we feel the easier we can make 

15 these dose reconstructors the more efficient 

16 it is. That’s sensible. But we could do 

17 that, and that’s fine. I’ll write that note 

18 down for -- I don’t think this is something we 

19 need to do a page change, a change, we’re not 

20 talking about something of that significance, 

21 but when this document gets reviewed, we can 

22 make that comment. 

23 DR. LOCKEY: Jim Lockey, one question. 

24 What’s the standard practice in another SEC if 

25 you do a similar -- 
50

1 MR. GUIDO: For these kinds of things? 

2 DR. LOCKEY: Yes. 

3 MR. GUIDO: Yeah, there’s always a desire to 

4 try to be efficient, trying to develop 

5 methodologies when you’re trying to give dose 

6 reconstructors a way to compile exposure 

7 matrices to try to be efficient and stay 

8 claimant favorable. I’m not sure about this 

9 one. 

10 Like I say, I didn’t write, I don’t 

11 know whether I would have done this myself or 

12 not, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable because 

13 of the magnitude of value we’re talking about. 

14 It seems like we’re going to do the factor of 

15 three instead of 1.2. That’s double what it 

16 should be, but it’s double a very small number 

17 of external dose, and it does simplify the 

18 calculations. 

19 DR. LOCKEY: Jim Lockey. From my 

20 perspective if it doesn’t make a big 

21 difference and is claimant friendly, and it 

22 simplifies the calculation, then leave it 

23 alone. 

24 DR. OSTROW: Okay, SC&A doesn’t want to make 

25 a strong case one way or the other. We agree 
51

1 it doesn’t affect the answer materially. 

2 MR. GUIDO: Yeah, I didn’t, you know, I’m 

3 not very strongly motivated in either 

4 direction. I’m just willing to go either way, 

5 just move forward I guess. I mean, it’s 

6 really not, it’s not going to impact. 

7 DR. WADE: And someone with the wisdom of 

8 Solomon needs to resolve this. 

9 Gen, are you aware of the situation? 

10 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Yes, I am. It 

11 seems like somebody needs to pick a number, 

12 and we ought to move on. 

13 MR. GUIDO: I’m hearing just leave it alone, 

14 and I’m always for leaving things alone. 

15 DR. WADE: And SC&A’s okay with that? 

16 DR. OSTROW: SC&A’s okay with it. We could 

17 leave it up to NIOSH to do it either way. 

18 MR. GUIDO: Okay. 

19 DR. OSTROW: But we’re still under comment 

20 13, but there are six sub-comments on it, and 

21 this was just, that was just sub-comment one. 

22 Sub-comment two we accepted already. 

23 Sub-comment three, we accepted NIOSH’s 

24 explanation. That relates to survey data, 

25 1976 survey data. We accept their explanation 
52

1 as to why the survey data was used, but we 

2 still had a question. 

3 This is going back to the TBD, Table 

4 13, which estimated beta and gamma dose rates. 

5 And the first table Footnote D that’s derived 

6 from Table 14, Building 30 radiation survey 

7 values, we weren’t, looking at it weren’t 

8 clear how the Table 13 data has gotten into 

9 the Table 14 data that’s referred to in that 

10 footnote. 

11 MR. GUIDO: Sure. The issue here is the 

12 same kind of thing. The 1949-’50 surveys 

13 (unintelligible) per hour total beta plus 

14 gamma, and in the interests of trying to break 

15 that into a gamma component and beta 

16 component, that’s what this, that’s what we’re 

17 talking about here, this process. And what 

18 the Table 14 data -- and stop me if I’m not 

19 answering the question -- but the Table 14 

20 what they did is, is that that was a more 

21 contemporary survey where they had beta 

22 measurements and gamma measurements. 

23 And from those kind of extracted, you 

24 know, a percentage of how much gamma radiation 

25 versus beta radiation was there. And then 
53

1 that ratio was applied to the readings in 

2 1950s. Basically, what you’re trying to do is 

3 break out the value; in other words it’s 0.311 

4 is the tabulated contact per hour level in 

5 1949, and we need to figure out how much of 

6 that 0.311 was beta radiation, and how much of 

7 it was gamma radiation. 

8 DR. OSTROW: Use of the Table 14 the, which 

9 was taken later, which were broken out, so you 

10 can use the same ratio backwards in time to do 

11 that. 

12 MR. GUIDO: Yeah. And the idea it’s not the 

13 same, it’s not necessarily the same levels, 

14 but it’s the same material. 

15 DR. OSTROW: SC&A accepts that explanation. 

16 DR. WADE: Were you able to follow that, 

17 Gen? 

18 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): I think it’s 

19 based on Table 14 in the TBD. Maybe explained 

20 where the numbers came from? 

21 DR. OSTROW: The Table 14 TBD, which was 

22 survey data for Building 30, had separate beta 

23 and gamma listings, and NIOSH used the ratios, 

24 the beta-gamma ratios, and applied it to the 

25 Table 13, which was for an earlier period, 
54

1 under the assumption that it’s basically the 

2 same isotopic composition. And we think 

3 that’s a good approach. It’s reasonable. 

4 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Okay, that 

5 sounds good. 

6 DR. WADE: Okay, that summary worked for 

7 you, Gen? 

8 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Yes. So in 

9 other words they’ve explained where the 

10 numbers have come from. 

11 DR. WADE: And the reasonableness of what 

12 they’ve done. 

13 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Yeah, okay. 

14 DR. OSTROW: Sub-comment four, nothing 

15 further. Sub-comment five -- we’re still 

16 under major comment 13 -- sub-comment five we 

17 agree with NIOSH said that they would clarify 

18 some footnotes in this table and made a 

19 revision. That wasn’t the major issue. Even 

20 though we had problems with it, we just put 

21 the footnotes weren’t very clear. 

22 MR. GUIDO: It was difficult for me even to 

23 reconstruct it when I went through it and 

24 tried to figure out, and I had the 

25 spreadsheet. So I understand. It was a 
55

1 complex -- 

2 DR. OSTROW: It was a very complex table 

3 with a lot of stuff crammed into one table. 

4 But basically that closes that out. We 

5 recommend that closes out our comment 13, that 

6 all the issues under that are taken care of 

7 now. So we’d recommend that comment 13 is 

8 closed as far as SC&A is concerned. 

9 DR. WADE: Gen, did you hear that? 

10 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): I did. That 

11 sounds good. 

12 DR. WADE: Okay, thank you. 

13 On to, is it 17? 

14 BURLAP BAG ISSUE

15 DR. OSTROW: Seventeen. This is the burlap 

16 bag issue that we had talked about a couple of 

17 times. Here we have a little bit of a 

18 disconnect. It turns out these burlap bags to 

19 bring ore into the site, lots and lots, 

20 thousands and thousands of bags, people 

21 carrying them around. We wanted to know what 

22 happened to the burlap bags. NIOSH did an 

23 investigation of what, where the burlap bags 

24 ended up, and there’s an extensive table on 

25 that. 
56

1 MR. GUIDO: It’s in Table 5-1 in our 

2 response, page 12, a tabulation on that. 

3 DR. OSTROW: Anyway, NIOSH looked at the 

4 records and tried to tabulate where all of the 

5 burlap bags ended up. And it looks like to me 

6 that they were washed out, they had an 

7 incinerator. Some were taken offsite, but 

8 basically they think there were a lot of 

9 dispositions of the bags in the range of tens 

10 of thousands of them. 

11 Now here’s where the disconnect is. 

12 That we had done site interviews with some of 

13 the site experts who were actually at the 

14 time. According to my comment 17 on page five 

15 of my recent document in January, a site 

16 expert interview asserted that thousands of 

17 burlap bags were still stacked behind Building 

18 30 after 1950. 

19 The direct quotation is, “During the 

20 MED period they stacked all the contaminated 

21 burlap bags in storage area Building 30. 

22 These contaminated bags were kept in there 

23 until they were moved to be burned and 

24 incinerated in the late 1950s. Many of the 

25 people working in Building 30 including 
57

1 Operation personnel, secretaries and 

2 maintenance workers, would sit on those bags 

3 resting or eating their lunch, and this went 

4 on for many years.” 

5 So we have, at least the workers 

6 thought that the bags were still there until 

7 the late 1950s which doesn’t seem -- They were 

8 sitting there eating their lunch. That 

9 doesn’t seem to agree with the data that you 

10 have. 

11 MR. GUIDO: And you know, this is a 

12 difficult subject. We’re dealing with 

13 memories of people who are probably passionate 

14 about what they remember, and the only thing I 

15 can add, I mean, we have two pieces of 

16 information which to me are compelling. 

17 We have 1944 documentation of memos 

18 between Linde and the AEC saying, hey, here’s 

19 what we’re going to do. We’re going to -- 

20 because, well, the overriding issue here is 

21 that uranium ore remained in the bags after 

22 they dumped them. And they were the resource. 

23 They didn’t burn these bags because it was 

24 waste disposal practice. They burned these 

25 bags to track the uranium out. 
58

1 It was a resource. They knew they had 

2 held up in the bags, and they had this process 

3 where they would shake them over, you know, 

4 shake them. They washed them to get stuff out 

5 just to extract the uranium. And they burned 

6 them to extract uranium. They took the burned 

7 debris and put it back in. 

8 So what we have is we have memos from 

9 Linde to the AEC, communication back and forth 

10 saying, hey, this is what we’re going to do. 

11 We’re going to wash them; we’re going to burn 

12 them. We’re going to take the debris and put 

13 it back in to get the uranium out. 

14 We have process manuals from Linde 

15 saying here’s what we’re going to do. In 

16 other words not communication between the AEC 

17 and Linde, but Linde’s procedures saying 

18 here’s how we handle ore bags. We wash them 

19 and burn them. 

20 But the compelling piece is in 1981 an 

21 interview was conducted with a former Linde 

22 employee who talked about a lot of things, 

23 talked about a lot of different sites, Simonds 

24 Saw and Linde activities. And his description 

25 of the period at Linde talks about that we 
59

1 washed the bags; we burned the bags, and the 

2 incinerator was in place by 1944. He was very 

3 clear that by October of ’44 the incinerator 

4 was up and running. 

5 That matches with an AEC memo where a 

6 HASL person came to Linde and said, hey -- and 

7 this is an October memo said, hey, the 

8 incinerator’s been running for a few days now. 

9 This is what they’re doing and actually even 

10 went as far as talking about the fact they had 

11 19,000 bags stacked up which matches with, you 

12 know, 19,000, that’s a lot of burlap bags. 

13 That matches with what you’re, so I’m 

14 not sure what the, you know, I’d like to think 

15 that someone’s recollection of 1950s 

16 activities in 1980 are probably better than 

17 recollection of 1950 activities as seen from 

18 2000. But I can’t, I don’t know. 

19 The other thing I can say is that, 

20 that ore bags, burlap bags, were probably used 

21 for a lot of things. The burlap bags that 

22 were burned were specifically ore bags because 

23 I mean this was a commercial operation. They 

24 probably had it to make money, and that whole 

25 part of the process was not Waste Management. 
60

1 That was extracting uranium. 

2 So it’s not inconceivable to me, and 

3 I’m, this is just conjecture, but it’s not 

4 inconceivable to me that if there were other 

5 kinds of bags or stuff around at the site, 

6 that those probably would not have been burned 

7 since they weren’t; the burning was for 

8 extracting uranium. 

9 So there’s a couple, I don’t know that 

10 we’re ever going to resolve this. I mean, if 

11 you look at the weight of the evidence, you 

12 know, AEC, the Linde memos, Linde procedures, 

13 and then those are confirmed by a 1980 

14 interview, that’s compelling to me. I’m not 

15 being disrespectful to the individual who 

16 mentioned this. I mean, I understand people 

17 are passionate about what they remember. 

18 That’s the best I could do. 

19 DR. OSTROW: I understand what you’re 

20 saying. I’m not sure how we go about 

21 resolving this. 

22 MS. BEACH: So is it your contention that 

23 they were keeping up with the burning of the 

24 bags? It was my understanding they were 

25 storing the bags because the burning was 
61

1 taking longer. 

2 MR. GUIDO: Well, the memo that talks about 

3 the backlog of 19,000 bags was a 1944 memo 

4 when they first started the incineration. So 

5 I think the original process was to wash them, 

6 then they stored the washed ones, and then 

7 they started sorting them. And the interview 

8 in 1981 talks about the fact that, well, 

9 there’s a timeline that was provided in the 

10 interview. And the timeline has a period 

11 where they were done burning all the bags. 

12 And you’ve got to understand that the 

13 bags we’re talking about are receipt of 

14 uranium ore which stopped in like around ’44. 

15 It’s not like they continued to receive 

16 uranium ore. All the uranium ore received was 

17 ’43 and ’44. So by 1945 they were done even 

18 accumulating bags. So if they were starting 

19 to burn in October of ’44, and the process was 

20 to recover the uranium in these bags as a 

21 resource, I just can’t believe that they would 

22 leave them. 

23 Plus, you know, you have -- and that’s 

24 not just my belief. We’re talking about 

25 having an interview from someone who said that 
62

1 here’s what they did. They burned them, and 

2 they finished burning them like I think it was 

3 ’46. I don’t know if I compiled that in the -

4 - 

5 Did I put the, when they stopped 

6 burning the bags in here? Yeah, 6/26/46. So 

7 I mean they burned them for over a year, a 

8 process of going through these. 

9 DR. LOCKEY: (Inaudible). 

10 MR. GUIDO: Well, I mean, I think there’s 

11 always drums of material arriving because they 

12 were seeing ore, and they were seeing 

13 concentrates. And concentrates were coming in 

14 barrels, drums or 75 -- what did they call it? 

15 Seven pound -- 

16 DR. LOCKEY: So the bags had stopped in ’44, 

17 is that what you’re saying? 

18 MR. GUIDO: Yeah, ’44, when the concentrates 

19 weren’t received in bags. And you know, even 

20 if they were, the issue here relates to 

21 uranium progeny. I see this more of an 

22 external dose issue instead of an internal 

23 dose. I mean, because we’re already assuming 

24 quite a high uranium intake for these workers. 

25 I don’t think you could achieve that uranium 
63

1 intake from disturbing these washed bags. 

2 What we’re really talking about is if 

3 there really were bags with, I think it was 

4 like a couple pounds each bag estimated. And 

5 they had an estimate of how much ore was left 

6 in the bags is why they washed them. But if 

7 you really had those bags there and they sat, 

8 it would probably be a significant radiation 

9 source. 

10 Not significant in the form of if you 

11 sat on them two or three hours a day, you 

12 would get some external exposure and maybe in 

13 a pattern that we may not have reconstructed 

14 as far as, you know, the cancers that aren’t 

15 going to get very much exposure are prostate 

16 cancers. Well, if you’re sitting on bags 

17 containing the right material, the dose to the 

18 prostate is going to be much more significant 

19 than anything you’d estimate. And I think 

20 it’s a significant issue if it occurred, you 

21 know, with uranium ore. 

22 That’s why I’m not sure that it would 

23 be much of in issue if it was just 

24 concentrates. But we have documentation on 

25 how the concentrates came. They didn’t come 
64

1 in bags. 

2 DR. WADE: What’s SC&A’s reaction, and then 

3 we have to hear the pleasure of the work group 

4 in terms of how to proceed. 

5 John or Steve? 

6 DR. MAURO: I can take a shot at it. And I 

7 guess we’re in the situation we’ve been in 

8 before. I think your arguments, the weight of 

9 evidence argument that you’re making is very 

10 strong. I mean, you have lots of records. 

11 But at the same time I really am hesitant to 

12 discount the statement made by a person who 

13 was there. 

14 So we have these two pieces of 

15 information, and we’re at a place where some 

16 judgment call could be made. The judgments 

17 could be one of two things, that the weight of 

18 evidence is such that the scenarios where 

19 people are sitting on ore bags containing 

20 residue really didn’t happen. Or if there’s 

21 a, you want to go the other route that says, 

22 well, you know, this person said this was 

23 going on, and if you were to factor that in -- 

24 and you described it very well -- 

25 Let’s say we were to give the benefit 
65

1 of the doubt to this question, if there is any 

2 doubt, what the implications are. Well, the 

3 implications are a skin dose and a prostate 

4 dose that might be underestimated. And so I 

5 think the issue is very well defined. It’s 

6 not like there’s any ambiguity about what the 

7 issue is and what its significance is. The 

8 problem is we’re at a point where it’s not, 

9 there’s a scientific question. It’s almost 

10 like what do you do when you’re in a situation 

11 like this. 

12 MR. GUIDO: I do have one other piece of 

13 information which may be, I don’t know if 

14 it’ll help, but -- and maybe this really 

15 doesn’t matter -- but if there were bags of 

16 these, if these ore bags existed as an ore bag 

17 as a significant source of radiation, the 1952 

18 survey of the site done by HASL contains 

19 diagrams of those buildings and of this area. 

20 And there is no depiction of these materials 

21 there. 

22 Now I don’t know, I can’t conjecture 

23 would they have drawn it in, but these were 

24 scientists whose job it was to characterize 

25 the external radiation exposure at the site 
66

1 when Linde was about to abandon it. You know, 

2 Linde was about to turn over. So if these 

3 bags existed as a significant source of 

4 radiation, it would seem like -- 

5 DR. MAURO: They would have captured it. 

6 MR. GUIDO: -- had it on the map, and it 

7 isn’t. But I didn’t mean to derail your -- 

8 DR. MAURO: No, no -- 

9 MR. GUIDO: -- I just wanted to add that -- 

10 DR. MAURO: -- that’s another level -- 

11 MR. GUIDO: -- another layer -- 

12 DR. MAURO: -- of weight of evidence. I 

13 understand what you’re saying. 

14 DR. WADE: So, Gen, I mean the issues are 

15 clearly on the table. Classically, what would 

16 happen now is the work group could either 

17 discuss this and make a decision. That 

18 decision could be to allow NIOSH to continue 

19 what it’s doing. It could be to ask NIOSH to 

20 change what it’s doing. Or it could be to 

21 pull another string to see if it’s possible to 

22 shed further light on the issue. How would 

23 you like to proceed today? Would you like to 

24 have a discussion? Would you like to table 

25 that discussion for another time? How would 
67

1 you like to proceed on this issue today given 

2 the fact that we have a half an hour of usable 

3 time in front of us today? 

4 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): I was just 

5 going to say we do have time. I would like to 

6 hear the work group members’ response to this 

7 and their advice as to how we should proceed. 

8 DR. WADE: Okay, let’s just do that. We’ll 

9 start with Dr. Lockey. 

10 Would you have anything you’d like to 

11 offer, Dr. Lockey? 

12 DR. LOCKEY: Maybe I’d like to ask about the 

13 economics of recovering the ore during that 

14 period of time. How critical was that? Was 

15 that a high priority for, in this industry? 

16 MR. GUIDO: I think uranium was a resource 

17 at that time. I think this is the ’48-’49 

18 period where they were ramping up production 

19 at the reactors, the Hanford reactors needed 

20 uranium. I think there was, I don’t know, 

21 shortage isn’t a good word, but this is the 

22 early ‘50s is when they started looking at 

23 uranium tracking for phosphate facilities, 

24 which in that, you know, you’re talking about 

25 very low concentration material trying to get 
68

1 out. I would imagine this was a valuable 

2 commodity, and if they -- I thought I put it 

3 in here about how much uranium was in each 

4 bag. It was significant I think. 

5 Yeah, 19,000 bags with a pound and a 

6 half of uranium ore in it, you know, probably 

7 like 20,000 pounds of uranium. I don’t know 

8 what their (inaudible) was. That seems 

9 significant. 

10 MR. ELLIOTT: We know it was a precious 

11 commodity. We know that from our Bethlehem 

12 Steel site experience and other sites where 

13 they were trying to recover as much as they 

14 could. 

15 DR. LOCKEY: So that was my next question. 

16 If you look at other sites was this a common 

17 practice to recover as much as possible in 

18 this type of situation? 

19 MR. ELLIOTT: And from the literature that 

20 we’ve looked at for Bethlehem Steel and other 

21 sites, yes, I think I would say that’s what 

22 we’ve come away with. That it was a precious 

23 commodity, and they were trying to recover and 

24 find and develop these other processes like in 

25 the phosphate industry, ways to gain more 
69

1 uranium. 

2 DR. LOCKEY: I guess my comment then would 

3 be that if this was the common practice at 

4 that time to try to recover as much as 

5 possible because it was a valuable commodity, 

6 then the weight of the evidence to me would be 

7 that the bags, when the bags were recycled, 

8 and there were no longer any available to be 

9 burned, then the process, then that stopped. 

10 And that sounds like what you have outlined 

11 for us. 

12 I don’t want to discount what other 

13 individuals were saying, but it would appear 

14 that the weight of the evidence is that this 

15 was a valuable commodity. It was being 

16 shipped in. They put in place a mechanism to 

17 recycle it. When the recycling process was 

18 finished, then that recycling process was shut 

19 down. 

20 DR. WADE: Josie, do you have a comment? 

21 MS. BEACH: I would just like to know, the 

22 comment that John mentioned. I heard the 

23 comment Joe mentioned. I forgot exactly what 

24 the comment from the other petitioner or 

25 person was that what timeframe those bags were 
70

1 sitting out there. Because it’s pretty clear 

2 -- 

3 DR. MAURO: Steve, do you have that time 

4 period? 

5 MR. GUIDO: But then there’s a linear 

6 description. I mean, they described a bunch 

7 of bags sitting around, and then they burned 

8 them. But the timeframe that they’re 

9 describing I think is off by about five or six 

10 years. 

11 DR. OSTROW: Yeah, our site expert that we 

12 had looked at was talking about the bags being 

13 there in the late ‘50s. And the evidence that 

14 NIOSH came up with and all that what they were 

15 going by the about ten years earlier. And 

16 it’s about ten years’ difference. 

17 MS. BEACH: I guess that’s the only question 

18 I would have because it’s very clear from your 

19 timeline that in ’44 they were washed, and 

20 then they were stored waiting to be 

21 incinerated. So that’s what I’d like to see 

22 cleared up, is just the timeline. 

23 DR. WADE: Mike, a comment? 

24 MR. GIBSON: Was this the interview that 

took place on April 10th 25 of ’81? 
71

1 MR. GUIDO: Yes. 

2 MR. GIBSON: It just seems that he goes into 

3 some detail about the process and so I’m 

4 always hesitant not to give the added weight 

5 to the worker’s comments. It’s not, he 

6 doesn’t seem to be vague about any of the 

7 process, so I’d have to believe what it says. 

8 He remembered the time and the process. 

9 DR. WADE: We have the ’81 interview, and 

10 then we have another worker interview in 2000, 

11 and they’re in dispute. 

12 MR. GUIDO: But what’s interesting here is 

13 what they’re saying is the same. The 

14 interview that you have in 2000 is describing 

15 the same process; the only difference is the 

16 timeline. And I don’t remember if you asked 

17 what I did 15 years ago, but here we are 

18 asking workers what they did 50 years ago and 

19 asking them for dates. 

20 And here you asked this worker what he 

21 did 30 years ago and asked him for dates. And 

22 the dates that this worker gave in 1980 match 

23 up with the documentation that we have for 

24 Linde. Like in other words we just had the 

25 Linde to AEC memos, those are hard because 
72

1 that could just be describing what they intend 

2 to do, what they’re going to do. You know 

3 what I mean? We do have the memo from HASL 

4 saying, hey, they started incinerating so we 

5 know they actually did follow through. They 

6 were incinerating in ’44. 

7 So having the ’81 interview match up, 

8 to me those dates seem credible. The other 

9 interview, the process is right. It’s just a 

10 matter of the dates. And I guess I can’t see, 

11 I can easily see how, you know, late ’50s, 

12 late ‘40s maybe, the question would be what 

13 that worker who said that, would they have 

14 been there in the ‘40s? That could be a 

15 thread that you could pull. 

16 DR. WADE: Gen, do you have anything you’d 

17 like to add at this point? 

18 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Yes, I think I 

19 haven’t heard everything, but I think my 

20 concern is like Mike’s, for the workers and 

21 are we giving proper credence to what they 

22 remember. And I wanted to follow up on what I 

23 heard John Mauro start to say about giving the 

24 benefit of the doubt. I would like to ask 

25 NIOSH how significant would that be or how 
73

1 much of a problem would that be to use that 

2 approach? 

3 DR. WADE: I think what Gen is asking is if 

4 you were to assume that the second interview 

5 was the one you were going to take, and there 

6 was a pile of bags sitting around with 19,000 

7 pounds of uranium left in them, what would be 

8 the issue? What would you have to do? What 

9 could you do in terms of taking that into 

10 account in terms of certain dose 

11 reconstructions? 

12 MR. GUIDO: You would have to (inaudible). 

13 And the problem here is because the problem 

14 with uranium ore, it’s not just uranium, I 

15 think we’ve done scenarios with very close 

16 quarters of uranium metal, and we wouldn’t 

17 have much of an issue. With the uranium ore 

18 we would have a little bit of an issue as far 

19 as exposure. 

20 We would have to take a look at, we 

21 would basically do an exposure, an external 

22 exposure model for someone sitting on those. 

23 You know, you’re talking about the prostate 

24 would probably be the ones that get some 

25 external dose. We would have to go through 
74

1 and do that. I don’t have those calculations 

2 done. 

3 DR. WADE: Gen, I might make a suggestion. 

4 Again, this is a clear issue of facts around 

5 the table. What the work group could do is 

6 ask NIOSH to just summarize these arguments in 

7 a standalone document. I think we know 

8 exactly what’s been put into play. There’ve 

9 been questions asked by Dr. Lockey about the 

10 economic importance. 

11 I think if NIOSH could prepare a 

12 document that would present all of the facts, 

13 explore them as they’ve been explored and 

14 render its conclusion, then the work group 

15 could look at that document and decide how it 

16 would want to proceed. So you could stop 

17 there. You could ask NIOSH to go further and 

18 ask them to develop an exposure scenario if, 

19 but I think it might be more reasonable to 

20 have NIOSH summarize what’s on the table, 

21 bring that back to the work group, let the 

22 work group look at that and then decide upon a 

23 course of action. 

24 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): I like that 

25 suggestion because I’ve seen from other 
75

1 situations where if something doesn’t seem to 

2 be completely resolved, it pops up again. I 

3 think it would be well for the work group to 

4 ask NIOSH to do this and really try to bring 

5 it to completion. 

6 DR. WADE: Is that understood here? 

7 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Do other work 

8 group members feel that’s a good approach? 

9 DR. WADE: We’ve got two, three head nods. 

10 MR. GUIDO: Can I ask something? In doing 

11 that could we ask or could you guys also ask 

12 if we could take a look at that interview a 

13 little, you know, to pull a thread on the 

14 interview and see if the individual who 

15 recollected this, you know, about the 

16 timeframe. In other words maybe you can kind 

17 of pursue or is it possible that we’re talking 

18 about the late ‘40s timeframe as opposed to 

19 the late ‘50s. 

20 DR. OSTROW: Would you like us to revisit 

21 the original interview -- 

22 MR. GUIDO: Yeah, does that sound 

23 reasonable? 

24 DR. WADE: I think that would be very 

25 reasonable. As part of this sort of getting 
76

1 all the facts, explored and put together in a 

2 document and then brought to the work group. 

3 DR. OSTROW: You’re going to prepare the 

4 main document, and we’ll try to find our -- 

5 MR. GUIDO: We could coordinate. 

6 DR. OSTROW: -- to include in the whole 

7 document. 

8 MR. GUIDO: Yeah, I mean, I’d be willing to 

9 coordinate with you, just one document versus 

10 two documents. We could kind of produce one 

11 summary. 

12 DR. WADE: So to follow the classic approach 

13 of the work group, there could be a technical 

14 call that would take place between NIOSH and 

15 SC&A where these issues would be discussed and 

16 a document would result that would be brought 

17 back to the work group. If such a call takes 

18 place, John, following our normal procedures, 

19 would you let the work group know of that call 

20 so that work group members could listen if 

21 they would like? 

22 And then you would produce a summary 

23 record of the call and then a document would 

24 be forthcoming that would come back to the 

25 work group. I think it’s worth it. In my 
77

1 view there’s been excellent quality work done 

2 all around this issue. The thing to do is 

3 collect it, put it together and then let 

4 reasonable people look at it and draw their 

5 conclusions. 

6 DR. LOCKEY: Jim Lockey. Do you also 

7 include what was standard practice in the 

8 industry during that time like at other sites 

9 in relationship to recycling or recovering? 

10 DR. MAURO: Would you like that to be done 

11 by NIOSH or SC&A or both? 

12 DR. NETON: We can do that. We already have 

13 the documentation on that for Bethlehem Steel. 

14 We’ve already gone through and evaluated the 

15 recycle program as they called it back in that 

16 time period, a formal program initiated by the 

17 AEC. 

18 DR. WADE: I think any of the issues that 

19 have been raised, you should try to the degree 

20 possible to explore and summarize. Again, I 

21 know that everybody is busy and has lots to 

22 do, but this is an issue that is best looked 

23 at completely now in an attempt to be laid to 

24 rest, otherwise we’ll be revisiting it and 

25 spend more time than it would take to do it 
78

1 right now. 

2 DR. OSTROW: Okay, sounds good. 

3 OUTDOOR SOURCES OF RADIATION

4 DR. WADE: And that’s 17. We’re on to 22. 

5 DR. OSTROW: We’re getting there. 

6 MR. GUIDO: I think this refers back to 17, 

7 so I think we’re... 

8 DR. OSTROW: Okay, let me just see what 

9 22... Okay, yeah, I was just reading our 

10 comment 22 which was on the whether NIOSH 

11 accounted for all outdoor sources of 

12 radiation. And this basically says that to 

13 comment 17 that we just did, so I think 

14 whatever we do on 17, we also answer 22. So 

15 we had tied the two together, and they’ll both 

16 be resolved together, 17 and 22. 

17 DR. WADE: Is that the end of the list? 

18 DR. OSTROW: Yep, that’s the end of the 

19 list. 

20 WRAP-UP

21 DR. WADE: Gen, it’s back to you. You’ve 

22 been through all the items and we have one, I 

23 think we’ve taken those and left one 

24 outstanding action item which is a technical 

25 call between the parties on this issue of the 
79

1 burlap bags and surrounding issues. I don’t 

2 know if you want to explore a timeline for 

3 that call or how you would like to proceed. 

4 Any sense of when a call like that might take 

5 place and be most fruitful? 

6 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): I think it 

7 would be good, we have a few minutes left, 

8 while everybody’s there to try and pick a time 

9 to do the call and make sure that NIOSH and, 

10 especially NIOSH, has a chance to do what 

11 we’ve asked them to do. 

12 Any suggestions? 

13 DR. OSTROW: I suggest what we do is once we 

14 get back to our offices and look at the stuff 

15 that we have, you know, back and forth and 

16 just, this way we can see how much work it’s 

17 going to be for both organizations and can 

18 have a timeline then. 

19 DR. WADE: When you said get back to your 

20 room, you mean in this hotel? 

21 DR. OSTROW: Back to the offices. 

22 DR. WADE: I didn’t know if you have an 

23 answer the end of the week or not. 

24 DR. OSTROW: So we’ll have a timeline by, I 

25 guess, next week. 
80

1 MR. GUIDO: That sounds good. I’m not sure 

2 of the stuff, the recycling stuff. Is that 

3 put together in a form we can -- 

4 DR. NETON: There are documents out there. 

5 We’re going to have to summarize them a little 

6 better, but we can get it. 

7 DR. WADE: Gen, what they’re saying is they 

8 want to go back to their caves and sort of 

9 look at what they’ve got there and then the 

10 beginning of the week put their heads together 

11 and suggest a timeframe for the call to you 

12 early next week, make a suggestion of the 

13 timeframe for the call early next week. 

14 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): So who’s 

15 taking the lead on this? 

16 DR. OSTROW: Joe from NIOSH and Steve from 

17 SC&A. 

18 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Okay, so 

19 you’re going to put your heads together and 

20 come up with the suggested time. 

21 DR. OSTROW: Yes, we will. 

22 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): And then let 

23 everybody know. 

24 DR. OSTROW: That’s exactly. 

25 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Okay, what 
81

1 about Jim and Josie and Mike? Does this sound 

2 good for you? 

3 MS. BEACH: Yes. 

4 DR. LOCKEY: It’s fine, yes. 

5 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Okay, then I 

6 think we’ve reached the end of our meeting 

7 unless there’s something else that you can 

8 think of. 

9 DR. WADE: No, but I would like to commend 

10 all parties, particularly the technical 

11 principals, I mean, if there was to be a model 

12 of how the process should work, this would be 

13 it in my opinion. So my compliments to all of 

14 you. You still have work to do but the work 

15 from my perspective is excellent, so thank 

16 you. 

17 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): Gee, then, are 

18 we finished? 

19 DR. WADE: We can be if you like. 

20 DR. ROESSLER (by Telephone): All right, 

21 thank you to everybody, to Steve and Joe 

22 especially, and to the work group. 

23 DR. WADE: So all Board members are off the 

24 clock. 

25 (Whereupon, the working group adjourned at 9:30 a.m.) 
82

1 CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER 

STATE OF GEORGIA 

COUNTY OF FULTON 

 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 

Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 

above and foregoing on the day of Jan. 08, 

2008; I, Steven Ray Green, then transcribed the 

proceedings, and it is a true and accurate 

transcript of the testimony captioned herein. 

 I further certify that I am neither kin 

nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 

have any interest in the cause named herein. 

 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 

29th day of Jan., 2008. 

______________________________ 

STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR, CVR-CM 

CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 

CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102