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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + +

WORK GROUP ON WELDON SPRING

+ + + + +

TUESDAY

NOVEMBER 29, 2011

+ + + + +

 The Work Group convened via 

teleconference at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Standard 

Time, Michael H. Gibson, Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

MICHAEL H. GIBSON, Chairman

RICHARD LEMEN, Member
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

ISAF AL-NABULSI, DOE

RON BUCHANAN, SC&A

STU HINNEFELD, DCAS

KAREN JOHNSON

MARY JOHNSON

JENNY LIN, HHS

JOHN MAURO, SC&A

ROBERT MORRIS, ORAU Team

MARK ROLFES, DCAS

TINA TRIPLETT
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C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S 

Welcome and introductions ................. 3

Remaining Issues from Matrix

Data Completeness ................... 7

Blunders ............................ 11

Coworkers, unmonitored workers,

 unmonitored work periods ...... 66

Radon model ......................... 93

Recycled uranium ................... 100

Neutron calculations ............... 103

Off/normal/accidents/incidents ..... 106

Geometry in extremity monitoring ... 108

Petitioner Questions/Comments ............ 110

Report and Recommendations to the Board .. 113

Meeting Adjourned ........................ 120

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

2 9:05 a.m.

3 MR. KATZ: Okay. So, I think we're 

4 all here. Let's get started. This is the 

5 Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, 

6 Weldon Spring Work Group, and let's begin with 

7 roll call.

8 (Roll call.)

9 MR. KATZ: All right, good. I 

10 think we're set to go then. A few reminders. 

11 Everyone when they're listening, except when 

12 they're speaking to the group, please mute 

13 your phones.

14 You can press *6 if you don't have 

15 a mute button, to mute your phone. And then 

16 *6 to take your phone back off of mute.

17 And, also, if you need to leave 

18 the call at any point, please do not put the 

19 call on hold, but hang up and call back in 

20 because the hold will upset the call for 

21 everyone else.
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1 I have sent out an agenda for the 

2 meeting. It should be getting posted this 

3 morning, if it's not posted. I also asked 

4 that it be sent to the petitioners, but this 

5 was all done last night.

6 I don't know whether it's arrived, 

7 but it's a very brief and simple agenda and 

8 I'll let Mike go through it if he wants. And 

9 that's it.

10 It's your meeting, Mike.

11 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. Thanks, 

12 Ted.

13 Well, I guess we can just jump 

14 right into the agenda and get to the first 

15 issue. We're going to discuss the remaining 

16 issues from the matrix, and the first one is 

17 the data completeness, Section 1a.

18 So, it looks like we have a NIOSH 

19 position, SC&A review, NIOSH reply, and an 

20 SC&A response.

21 SC&A, do you want to briefly tell 
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1 us where you stand on the issue?

2 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. We discussed 

3 this at the September 13th meeting. We 

4 presented our report to the Working Group 

5 there.

6 We found out, just to summarize --

7 I'll do a brief summary of these issues so 

8 that everybody is on the same page.

9 This was mainly was the data 

10 records verified and adequate. And we found 

11 that NIOSH is not going to use the CER 

12 database. And so, they're only using the 

13 original handwritten or computerized 

14 datasheets, the original ones, photocopies of 

15 them.

16 And so, that takes out the 

17 question of accuracy, because these are 

18 photographs of the original records and they 

19 are legible.

20 And so, that came up in the May 

21 meeting then, are they complete and -- and 
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1 complete, yes.

2 And so, the Work Group charged 

3 SC&A with doing an initial test to see if 

4 there was any problems with the completeness 

5 of the data like was there gaps in certain 

6 years or anything.

7 And so, we submitted a plan and 

8 that was approved. And then SC&A conducted an 

9 initial, brief analysis of the data then in 

10 June and July, sent that to the Work Group on 

11 the 15th of August, and then presented that at 

12 the September 13th meeting.

13 And, essentially, we found that in 

14 this initial test -- we tested 15 cases of 

15 workers that were likely to have been exposed 

16 and, therefore, should have been externally 

17 monitored and bioassayed the majority of the 

18 time, and we came up with a final report which 

19 went out on the 15th of August, which showed 

20 around 90 to 95 percent of the workers, for 

21 these 15 workers, that they were badged or 
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1 bioassayed during their work period at Weldon 

2 Spring.

3 And so, we presented that for the 

4 Work Group's consideration on the last 

5 meeting. And we have no more input into that 

6 at this time. We were not charged with any 

7 other task for that.

8 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. And just 

9 for my benefit, can I ask NIOSH why they chose 

10 not to use the CER database?

11 MR. ROLFES: The CER database 

12 hasn't been needed, because we currently 

13 believe that the people who needed to be 

14 monitored were monitored and we have 

15 monitoring data for each of the claimants that 

16 was involved in uranium production processes 

17 at the Weldon Spring plant.

18 So, we haven't had a situation 

19 where we needed to use the CER data.

20 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. This is Ron.

21 The CER database, the way I 
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1 understand it, did not contain any data that 

2 the original handwritten ones contained -- it 

3 didn't contain any additional data. And there 

4 was a question of whether it contained all the 

5 original data, and so that was the original 

6 question on the CER database.

7 And so, we feel that it's best not 

8 to use CER database.

9 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. Dr. Lemen, 

10 do you have any thoughts on this issue?

11 MEMBER LEMEN: No, I don't.

12 Do you hear me?

13 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Yes. Is there 

14 any comments from the petitioners on this 

15 issue?

16 MS. JOHNSON: I don't think we have 

17 any more questions at this time.

18 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. So, are we 

19 ready to close Issue 1a?

20 COURT REPORTER: If you could 

21 please identify yourself.
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1 MS. JOHNSON: I'm sorry. This is 

2 Karen Johnson.

3 COURT REPORTER: Thank you.

4 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Dr. Lemen, are 

5 you comfortable with closing 1a then?

6 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes.

7 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. We'll 

8 consider that closed and we'll move on to the 

9 next bullet, which is blunders, 1b.

10 Who wants to take that? Is it 

11 DCAS or --

12 MR. ROLFES: That's fine. Mike, I 

13 can take care of that. This is Mark.

14 Yes, I realize it's late in the --

15 I didn't give you much time to take a look at 

16 this since I only was able to get the 

17 electronic copy out to you yesterday.

18 The majority of the report is the 

19 exact same as the original revision that we 

20 had sent out. However, we were asked by SC&A 

21 and the Work Group, I believe it was at the 
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1 last Work Group meeting, if we could quantify 

2 how the blunders would impact the doses that 

3 we would assign during the dose reconstruction 

4 process.

5 And so what we went back and did 

6 was to look at each individual blunder and 

7 determine -- we looked specifically at the 

8 arithmetical errors. We looked at how those 

9 arithmetical errors would impact the thorium 

10 intake rate.

11 And at the 95th percentile, in 

12 summary, the -- let me pull that up here. It 

13 was roughly four percent. So, the thorium 

14 intake rate after incorporating the blunders, 

15 the thorium intake rate at the 95th percentile 

16 went up by four percent.

17 So, not a very significant amount, 

18 but that will be included in the revised 

19 intake approach for thorium.

20 I'm trying to find the page on 

21 which the report states that. Okay. All 
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1 right. Here we go. I can read that summary. 

2 It's on Page 7 of 14. It's under Impact of 

3 Blunders on Dose Reconstruction.

4 And the median, the distribution 

5 with blunders was 2.3 percent higher than the 

6 baseline without the blunders. At the 95th 

7 percentile, the distribution with the blunders 

8 incorporated was 3.7 percent higher than the 

9 baseline.

10 So, the 95th percentile thorium 

11 intake rate would be about four percent higher 

12 with the blunders incorporated, and that's all 

13 I have in there. That was the only thing that 

14 was new from the previous report.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: I'd like to discuss 

16 this a little more if that's okay with you, 

17 Mike.

18 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Absolutely.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Mark, I'm a 

20 little concerned here about the use of the 

21 word thorium.
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1 Is that a correct term here on 

2 Page 7 where it says, the increase in 95 

3 percent of the thorium intake?

4 MR. ROLFES: Yes, it would be the 

5 thorium intake rate would increase by a factor 

6 of four percent.

7 DR. BUCHANAN: But this data that 

8 was used to create this to look at these 

9 blunders, the -- didn't include any thorium 

10 data. This is all uranium data, air sampling 

11 data.

12 MR. ROLFES: The majority of it was 

13 uranium. But the methodology used for the 

14 uranium daily weighted exposure evaluation and 

15 the thorium daily weighted exposure evaluation 

16 was essentially the same. So, it's sort of 

17 independent of the radionuclide.

18 Now, that being said, the majority 

19 of the daily weighted exposure reports were 

20 for uranium. However, there are thorium 

21 results contained within this.
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1 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, the 82, I 

2 assume that these -- on the front -- on Page 

3 4, it says there is 36 reports for thorium and 

4 scores of other reports. And I assume that 

5 that's referring -- the data used was the 82 

6 cases or the 82 datasheets listed there in the 

7 appendix; is that correct?

8 MR. ROLFES: The 82 cases, I'm not 

9 sure where the --

10 DR. BUCHANAN: Or line. It says, 

11 line. Line 82.

12 MR. ROLFES: Oh, okay.

13 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes.

14 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: There's one through 

16 82. So, I assume that this data is what was 

17 used to derive the figures and tables --

18 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: -- in the revised 

20 report.

21 MR. ROLFES: You're correct. That 
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1 is correct. Everything from Attachment 1, 

2 those were the blunders. They're on Page 10 

3 of 14 -- 10 through 14 of the report.

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Right. Now, if you 

5 go through those, there is only a couple that 

6 is past -- thorium was used 1963 to 1964 -- I 

7 mean, 1966. '63 to '66 occasionally.

8 And if you go through there, 

9 they're all -- anything in a '63 to '66 time 

10 frame is labeled uranium, except for '56 and 

11 '57.

12 MR. ROLFES: Okay.

13 DR. BUCHANAN: And if you look at 

14 that reference ID, this appears to be uranium 

15 too. It doesn't state that, but from the 

16 building and the process it looks like 

17 uranium. And there was no blunders on '56 and 

18 '57.

19 So, it looks like all this 

20 information that is in the tables and in the 

21 front of the revised paper, came from uranium 
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1 air sampling.

2 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

3 DR. BUCHANAN: And so, I guess you 

4 know SC&A just, of course, received this 

5 yesterday. And so, we haven't went completely 

6 through it.

7 But a preliminary look at it, it 

8 looks like that the, you know, I agree with 

9 your analysis if we didn't use the word 

10 thorium there on Page 7. But it bothers me 

11 that we're using this uranium data and we're 

12 extrapolating it and we're stating it for 

13 thorium.

14 The question is, is this, I mean, 

15 shouldn't we say that this is uranium intake? 

16 And then if we're going to use it for 

17 thorium, extrapolate it to thorium.

18 MR. ROLFES: Well, I guess it 

19 depends -- if you'd like for us to remove the 

20 word "thorium," we can say that the majority 

21 of the data were for uranium. However, 
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1 there's no reason to believe that the 

2 evaluation methodology would be any different 

3 for uranium than it would be for thorium, I 

4 guess.

5 Would you agree with that, or --

6 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, I don't know, 

7 because that brings up the second question we 

8 still have from our September issue. And that 

9 is the, you know, whether this data represents 

10 the majority of the working condition, because 

11 it was a limited availability of data.

12 I guess my problem -- okay. First 

13 of all, are you saying that there will be no 

14 adjustments then made because it's only four 

15 percent, to either uranium or thorium?

16 Is that the bottom line on that, 

17 or will there be an adjustment made?

18 MR. ROLFES: Well, for the uranium 

19 intakes, we wouldn't be using air sampling 

20 data to assign the uranium intakes. We would 

21 assign the uranium intake based upon 
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1 urinalysis data in the individual's file.

2 For thorium, we do have thorium in 

3 vivo counts. However, the way they were 

4 reported, an actual value wasn't reported to 

5 us. It was just as a fraction of a 

6 permissible lung burden.

7 They basically had identified 

8 exposure bands, three different exposure 

9 bands; for a person who wasn't occupationally 

10 exposed, someone who had some exposure, and 

11 someone who was around the maximum permissible 

12 lung burden of thorium.

13 So, we agreed not to use those in 

14 vivo results. So, we said that we would rely 

15 upon the daily weighted exposure evaluations 

16 to assign thorium intakes to essentially 

17 unmonitored thorium workers.

18 So, based upon our analysis of the 

19 blunders, which, as you said, the majority of 

20 the daily weighted exposure evaluations were 

21 for uranium, however, there were some for 
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1 thorium, our evaluation of all those blunders 

2 contained in the daily weighted exposure 

3 reports we found that the 95th percentile 

4 intake rate would be about four percent higher 

5 when incorporating the effects of the errors, 

6 the arithmetic errors or blunders.

7 And so, we are proposing to 

8 increase the thorium intake rate based upon 

9 the daily weighted exposure Evaluation Report, 

10 by four percent. So, we're going to increase 

11 the 95th percentile thorium intake by four 

12 percent.

13 DR. BUCHANAN: And that would be a 

14 revision to the TBD?

15 MR. ROLFES: That's correct.

16 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Now, you 

17 state that daily weighted average will not be 

18 used for uranium -- okay, maybe you're going 

19 to cover this in the next topic, the coworker 

20 data.

21 So, people that weren't monitored 
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1 that should have been monitored for uranium, 

2 you're going to use coworker bioassay data as 

3 opposed to air intake; is that correct?

4 MR. ROLFES: If there is an 

5 individual who does not have any monitoring 

6 data and was a production worker or had 

7 potential exposure in the production area, we 

8 would assign an intake to them based upon 

9 coworker urinalysis data or coworker intake 

10 model.

11 We wouldn't be using the daily 

12 weighted exposure reports for uranium intake 

13 since we have quite a bit of uranium 

14 urinalysis data.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So, this 

16 clarifies -- let me check and make sure if I 

17 had any other questions on that.

18 DR. MAURO: Ron, while you're 

19 looking into that, this is John Mauro. I also 

20 have a couple of simple questions.

21 The genesis of the breathing zone 
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1 approach and the DWE and the blunders issue, 

2 really started with Fernald and the work that 

3 we did with Bob Morris and the work we did on 

4 Fernald, and quite a bit of time was spent.

5 And as I recall, and I'll get to 

6 my point, the philosophy was you -- there's a 

7 time period when air -- breathing zone samples 

8 were collected in locations where we know 

9 people or we suspected people were working 

10 with thorium in addition to uranium.

11 And breathing zone data, quite a 

12 bit, this is now Fernald, quite a bit of 

13 breathing zone data was available. And it was 

14 judged that those breathing zone data can be 

15 used to come up with DWEs and weighed and 

16 using the Strom approach, fundamental 

17 approach, I know it's different a little bit 

18 the way it was done on Fernald, but we 

19 reviewed that and we came away favorably 

20 inclined that, yes, you did basically use the 

21 Strom approach.
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1 Now, where I'm headed with this is 

2 in your circumstance at Weldon, it sounds like 

3 a very analogous situation whereby you have a 

4 period of time for a group of workers, and I'm 

5 not sure if you make a distinction, where you 

6 suspect or have strong evidence that they did 

7 in fact work with thorium-232. And you do 

8 have considerable breathing zone data such 

9 that you could generate DWEs.

10 But we all recognized at the time 

11 of Fernald, that it's possible that a 

12 significant fraction of the counts on that 

13 breathing zone data, which is simply dpm per 

14 cubic meter, was, in fact, alphas that were 

15 counted that were from uranium as opposed to 

16 thorium.

17 But to be claimant-favorable, 

18 we'll assume that it was thorium. And we 

19 agreed that that approach, in fact, is -- errs 

20 on the side of the claimant, because the 

21 uranium is going to be reconstructed using 
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1 bioassay. And then you're going to add in the 

2 thorium dose based on these breathing zone 

3 samples, which could very well be some mixture 

4 of thorium and uranium, but assuming that it's 

5 all thorium.

6 Is this the approach you are 

7 fundamentally using here at Weldon?

8 MR. ROLFES: Dr. Mauro, this is 

9 Mark and, essentially, what we would be doing 

10 with the Weldon Spring plant, it is very 

11 similar.

12 We would be reconstructing uranium 

13 intakes based upon urinalysis data. And then 

14 adding a thorium intake on top of that based 

15 upon the daily weighted exposure results.

16 DR. MAURO: But those DWEs, they're 

17 based on gross alpha air counts, which could 

18 be any combination of thorium and/or uranium.

19 MR. ROLFES: That is possible.

20 However, one, you know, it all 

21 depends on a specific operation. In some 
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1 cases, it could be both uranium and thorium. 

2 In other cases, it would probably just be 

3 plain thorium.

4 DR. MAURO: Okay. So, you have a 

5 pretty good handle on who the thorium workers 

6 were where you're going to do this?

7 MR. ROLFES: We have information on 

8 which plants -- I think in our Evaluation 

9 Report, we provided a chart which showed which 

10 plants were involved in thorium operations 

11 during which years.

12 DR. MAURO: Okay. Again, I was 

13 hoping to get my sort of bearings.

14 Now, with regard to blunders, in 

15 the Strom paper, their analysis of the 

16 blunders, I recall, had a substantially -- and 

17 they actually went back, in other words, maybe 

18 for the benefit of the Work Group, to -- what 

19 they did in the Strom paper, say, they went 

20 back to the original data and saw how many, I 

21 guess, typos there were in converting and 
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1 taking the data off the original sheets and 

2 what affect -- how extensive those blunders 

3 were.

4 And I forget the percentage of 

5 blunders, but it was like ten percent. I 

6 forget the number, but it had -- if I 

7 remember, it had a fairly big effect when they 

8 corrected for the blunders.

9 MR. ROLFES: Yes.

10 DR. MAURO: In other words, the 

11 report said, okay, when we correct for the 

12 blunders, the results changed. And my 

13 recollection, it was a relatively large change 

14 not on the order of a few percent.

15 And I think when they did that, 

16 they actually corrected for the blunders 

17 because they had the data. And they found the 

18 transcription errors, et cetera, et cetera, 

19 and corrected for them to see, okay, how did 

20 the blunders affect the results.

21 Now, in this case, of course, you 
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1 have data. You don't know if there are any 

2 blunders. There may not be any in the data 

3 that you have, or there may be some.

4 How did you -- and I didn't read 

5 your report, but, mechanistically, how did you 

6 take your original set of whatever this data 

7 set is that you're working with, these 

8 breathing zone measurements and dpm per cubic 

9 meter from -- in other words, the source data 

10 that was used to derive the DWEs, how did you 

11 actually introduce how blunders would affect 

12 that?

13 That is, what assumptions did you 

14 make and how did you mechanically go through 

15 the process to say, okay, this is what would 

16 happen if we had certain percentage of random 

17 blunders in the way in which information was 

18 transcribed?

19 MR. ROLFES: Our original report 

20 does give -- in both the original report and 

21 the revision, we've gone through how we've 
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1 identified the blunders, the type of blunder, 

2 whether it was a typographical blunder, a 

3 mathematic or an arithmetic error, and a self4 contradiction blunder. There were three 

5 different types. And then we also assigned a 

6 value that that error had on the reported air 

7 concentration.

8 What we've now done, we've gone 

9 back and done a Monte Carlo simulation. And I 

10 don't know if I have Bob Morris on the phone 

11 or not, but if he's out there -- Bob, are you 

12 out there?

13 (No response.)

14 MR. ROLFES: No, probably not, but 

15 I believe he is the one who has completed the 

16 analysis.

17 What we've done is gone through 

18 each of the blunders, corrected it, and come 

19 up with this new four percent 95th percentile 

20 --

21 DR. MAURO: Oh. Oh, so you 
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1 actually -- oh, okay. I have to say --

2 forgive me. I thought that you had a data 

3 set.

4 I'm sorry for interrupting, but, 

5 see, I thought you had a data set of numbers 

6 that you worked with where you don't know 

7 where or if there are any blunders.

8 You're saying you actually could 

9 go back to the original measurements the way 

10 Strom did, I guess, and you actually found 

11 where the people who were doing the DWE 

12 calculations made blunders. You're in a 

13 position to go back to the original 

14 measurements that were -- and determine if 

15 there were blunders. So, I guess I 

16 misunderstood conceptually what was done here.

17 I thought you actually had a set 

18 of DWEs and said that embedded in them may be 

19 some blunders of the nature that occurred in 

20 the Strom work and somehow, you know, made 

21 some assumptions regarding how many there 
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1 might be and randomly assigned blunders, I 

2 guess.

3 And I have to admit that my 

4 recollection of the details of it is not 

5 perfect, but I remember it being somewhat 

6 substantial in the Strom work, but it sounds 

7 like it's not here. And that may be simply 

8 because there were fewer blunders here.

9 And I may misunderstand exactly 

10 what was done for you to capture the effect of 

11 the blunders and the mechanics you went 

12 through, but it sounds like you were able to 

13 go through the original data and identify what 

14 blunders there were.

15 MR. ROLFES: Correct. In 

16 Attachment 1 of our report on Page 10 when Ron 

17 Buchanan had mentioned the 82 different lines, 

18 those are the blunders which we have 

19 identified from various Site Research Database 

20 documents.

21 And we've got the title of the 
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1 document from the SRDB, the date that the data 

2 were collected, the page where the report was, 

3 the number of operations represented. For 

4 example, they might have air-sampled somebody 

5 machining a piece of uranium. They might have 

6 air-sampled somebody dumping green salt.

7 So, each one of those operations 

8 was reported in each of the daily weighted 

9 exposure results.

10 DR. MAURO: And you actually found 

11 places where the transcription from the 

12 original data into the DWE calculation, that 

13 there were these certain errors or types of 

14 errors.

15 MR. ROLFES: That's correct.

16 DR. MAURO: And you found them, 

17 corrected them, and redid your Monte Carlo 

18 simulation for the DWEs.

19 MR. ROLFES: And revised our 

20 thorium intake rate or our intake rate based 

21 upon the daily weighted exposure results.
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1 DR. MAURO: I understand.

2 MR. ROLFES: And at the 95th 

3 percentile, our intake rate was about four 

4 percent higher.

5 DR. MAURO: I understand.

6 MR. ROLFES: So, we've gone back 

7 and corrected.

8 Now, what you were referring to, 

9 the Dan Strom Health Physics Journal article, 

10 I believe, based upon their analysis, there 

11 were some underestimates by about a factor of 

12 ten.

13 DR. MAURO: Right.

14 MR. ROLFES: And some overestimates 

15 of a factor of two or three. So, yes, the 

16 data are tighter here, I guess you should say, 

17 with the four percent error at the 95th 

18 percentile.

19 So, we've agreed to increase our 

20 thorium or intake rate based upon the daily 

21 weighted exposure results.
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1 DR. MAURO: I understand.

2 MR. ROLFES: By a factor of four 

3 percent.

4 DR. MAURO: I think, you know, I 

5 haven't read the report and of course SC&A 

6 hasn't reviewed it, but, in concept, what you 

7 described to me sounds like an appropriate 

8 strategy.

9 Ron, I mean, I don't want to jump 

10 the gun. Do you feel that we should take a 

11 closer look at this in light of the fact we've 

12 only had it for a day or so?

13 (No response.)

14 DR. MAURO: I don't know if Ron 

15 heard me.

16 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Well, this is 

17 Mike. I think you should take a closer look 

18 at it.

19 DR. MAURO: Yes, because I 

20 understand conceptually now what was done. 

21 And, as I said, I haven't read it, but a lot 
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1 of work went into this at Fernald. And I 

2 guess I would hate to just jump to the 

3 conclusion based on a relatively brief 

4 conversation.

5 It may not take us very long, 

6 because we are very familiar with the subject. 

7 And it would be great to have Ron and John 

8 Stiver, who did a lot of the heavy lifting on 

9 Fernald, and of course our statistician Harry 

10 Chmelynski, take a look at it.

11 Hopefully, we can get back to you 

12 quickly, but it would be a good idea just to 

13 put this to bed in a way that we feel we took 

14 a closer look at it.

15 Because, quite frankly, it is a 

16 very favorable finding that the blunder rate 

17 was relatively low and had relatively --

18 virtually zero effect as compared to what was 

19 observed in the Strom data.

20 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, this is Ron. I 

21 agree.
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1 SC&A has only briefly reviewed 

2 this latest information. And we will -- I 

3 will work with John Stiver on this and try to 

4 turn this around and get our evaluation to the 

5 Work Group as soon as possible.

6 I did have a question kind of 

7 related to John's summary there, Mark. We see 

8 on Page 4 that we had 36 thorium data and 

9 scores of other data, DWA reports.

10 Now, that brings down to the 

11 question is that the 82 lines you have listed 

12 in the attachment, the reason that -- you had 

13 a lot to begin with, and then we came out with 

14 82.

15 I assume that that's because a lot 

16 of them didn't have the original data that you 

17 go back and trace the actual calculations so 

18 that you could look for blunders; is that 

19 correct?

20 MR. ROLFES: Ron, I think I just 

21 may have -- I had a lightbulb come on in my 
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1 head here.

2 You had mentioned earlier that 

3 everything that you had looked at from Lines 1 

4 through 82 appeared to be uranium. This title 

5 that is presented here is the title of the 

6 Site Research Database document and not 

7 necessarily the title of the daily weighted 

8 exposure report.

9 So, whoever -- it's possible that 

10 there are thorium data embedded in each of 

11 these reports, but not represented in the 

12 title.

13 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

14 MR. ROLFES: Sometimes the title of 

15 the document doesn't always reflect the 

16 contents of it. That might be part of the 

17 confusion from earlier on.

18 There are thorium data here. And 

19 as you pointed out, it did say that there were 

20 36 daily weighted exposure reports that 

21 represented thorium operations.
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1 DR. BUCHANAN: But is it correct to 

2 say that there was quite a few daily weighted 

3 average reports, but not all of them had the 

4 original data that you could check the 

5 calculations?

6 Is that true, or not?

7 MR. ROLFES: I'll have to get back 

8 to you on that. I'm not certain if the raw 

9 data were included in every daily weighted 

10 exposure report or not. I can check up on 

11 that and get an answer for you.

12 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, it would be 

13 interesting to know that if there was a lot 

14 more daily weighted average reports, but not 

15 the original calculations, or this is all 

16 there is.

17 I mean, you analyzed every one 

18 that was there, because they all had the 

19 original calculations.

20 That would be helpful to know if 

21 Bob Morris maybe would know that offhand.
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1 MR. ROLFES: Okay. I want to say 

2 that these were all of the reports that we had 

3 and we had identified. So, to confirm that 

4 I'm going -- I'll get back to you to confirm 

5 that.

6 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Okay, yes.

7 So, on Point Number 2, blunders, 

8 which we will -- SC&A will try to wrap up this 

9 issue and send a final report to the Work 

10 Group as soon as possible.

11 MR. KATZ: This is Ted, Ron and 

12 John and Mark. Just some context, I think, is 

13 needed here.

14 Can you clarify, is this at this 

15 point an SEC issue, or a TBD issue? Because 

16 we have a Board meeting next week and Weldon 

17 is on the agenda for the Board meeting.

18 So, timing in terms of Ron's 

19 follow-up if this is a TBD issue, that's one 

20 thing. If it's an SEC issue, it's another.

21 DR. MAURO: Can I take a shot at 
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1 that, Ron, if you don't mind?

2 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, go ahead.

3 DR. MAURO: I think Ron's last 

4 question goes to the heart of that, and let me 

5 explain.

6 Let's say that all of the data 

7 that was used to produce the DWEs that are in 

8 your report, was in fact the raw data -- the 

9 data -- the raw data itself was available for 

10 all of the measurements, all of the DWE 

11 analysis, and they went back and looked at all 

12 of the data.

13 And that would mean that you had a 

14 complete sample -- it's not a sample any 

15 longer. You scrubbed the whole data set to 

16 check for blunders. And all we would do is to 

17 see if what you did was in fact appropriate, 

18 we check it and say -- and that would make 

19 this -- and if there were any errors or any 

20 aspects to the way in which the mechanics was 

21 done, it's something that could be fixed, 
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1 which makes it a Site Profile issue, okay?

2 However, let's say it turns out 

3 that the actual raw data that was available to 

4 check for blunders represents a very, very 

5 small percentage of the total data set that 

6 was used to develop the DWEs. There might be 

7 some question whether or not that data set is 

8 representative enough in order for you to 

9 assign a blunder estimate.

10 Do you see where I'm going? Which 

11 means there is a data adequacy issue that is 

12 if you really don't have very much of the 

13 original raw data to check for blunders, it 

14 puts you in a position where you don't really 

15 know whether or not you've evaluated the 

16 blunders adequately. And then, it becomes an 

17 SEC issue.

18 So, the bottom line is it would be 

19 a great idea if, Mark, maybe you could confirm 

20 with Bob Morris the degree to which the data 

21 set that you were able to check for blunders 
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1 represents a large fraction of the total data 

2 set that was used to develop the DWEs.

3 Now, if it was a very small 

4 fraction, there's a problem. If it was a 

5 large fraction and this becomes a statistical 

6 question, if you have a large enough fraction 

7 of it, you have a representative sample. And 

8 in theory, you could live with that.

9 So, I mean, so perhaps this 

10 question could be answered pretty quickly. 

11 Namely, I'll call it the Bob Morris question. 

12 And if the answer to the Bob Morris question 

13 is, yes, we had a substantial amount of data, 

14 if not all data or maybe more than 50, 60 

15 percent, I'm throwing a number out, well, you 

16 know you really captured most of it. And, 

17 therefore, your representation of the blunders 

18 is a fair representation.

19 Then I would say if you could come 

20 back with this, I would say, yes, this is a 

21 Site Profile issue, not an SEC.
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1 MR. KATZ: Okay. But, John, I 

2 mean, you say size. I mean, it's really --

3 it's not sample size, it's whether the sample 

4 is representative, right?

5 DR. MAURO: Exactly. Is it 

6 representative? That's what I mean by that.

7 And if a large percentage of the 

8 data, you know, what you want to do is walk 

9 away with confidence that when you did the 

10 blunder analysis, where you found the blunders 

11 and corrected them and measured the degree to 

12 which it affected your outcome, that sample or 

13 that analysis was representative -- I think 

14 that's a better term -- was representative of 

15 the full data set that was used to derive the 

16 DWEs.

17 And if one could walk away and 

18 say, yes, it was representative, and then 

19 after that say, and the mechanics, the way in 

20 which it was implemented, it was 

21 scientifically sound, the issue is taken care 
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1 of.

2 MR. ROLFES: Okay. John, this is 

3 Mark Rolfes again. And to address maybe the 

4 representative of the sampling to present a 

5 little bit along that line, I can, from our 

6 results portion of this report on Page 5, the 

7 first paragraph describes the documents and 

8 how much data and the representativeness of 

9 that data, I guess.

10 DR. MAURO: Okay.

11 MR. ROLFES: It says, in the nine 

12 SRDB documents located that contained dust 

13 studies and DWA evaluations, there were 81 

14 pages that contained calculations of interest 

15 for evaluating whether they were blunders. 

16 These pages contained 1,405 different 

17 operations that were used to estimate the 

18 blunder rate.

19 Though there's 1,400 different 

20 operations that are sampled, on Page 6 we've 

21 summarized the occurrence of the blunders from 
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1 those 1,405 operations.

2 And of those 1,405 operations, 95 

3 percent of the -- of the operations sampled, 

4 which was roughly 1,339 occurrences, there 

5 were no blunders.

6 DR. MAURO: Oh, so you looked at 

7 everything. That's what I'm hearing. I mean, 

8 the full data, you had access to the full 

9 original 1,300 individual --

10 MR. ROLFES: Operations.

11 DR. MAURO: -- one-minute samples 

12 or whatever they were. These are usually 

13 relatively brief samples.

14 So, you had access to the original 

15 data for everything that went into the DWEs.

16 MR. ROLFES: It appears that way.

17 DR. MAURO: Yes.

18 MR. MORRIS: Mark, this is Bob 

19 Morris.

20 MR. ROLFES: Oh, hi, Bob. How are 

21 you?
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1 MR. MORRIS: Hi, good. I just 

2 joined.

3 Do you want to set the stage and 

4 I'll answer the questions I think that are out 

5 there?

6 MR. ROLFES: Yes. John Mauro was 

7 just asking about the representativeness of 

8 the daily weighted exposure results.

9 And I guess basically if you could 

10 summarize what you did in this most revision 

11 of the report -- I've explained that the 95th 

12 percentile intake rate that we would be 

13 assigning in dose reconstruction, increased 

14 after we've evaluated the arithmetic blunders 

15 and their impact. The 95th percentile intake 

16 rate increases by a factor of four percent.

17 MR. MORRIS: Okay.

18 MR. ROLFES: So, John Mauro was 

19 asking if we had the original data to go back 

20 and correct the blunder. And so, that's what 

21 we were discussing at this time.
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1 MR. MORRIS: Okay. Great. Is Ted 

2 there?

3 MR. ROLFES: Yes, he is.

4 MR. MORRIS: Okay. Ted, this is 

5 Robert Morris with ORAU team. I have no 

6 conflicts on Weldon Spring.

7 MR. KATZ: Yes, thanks, Bob, for 

8 that.

9 MR. MORRIS: Okay. Let's see. 

10 After the last critique of the DWE blunder 

11 analysis that SC&A produced, they said in Work 

12 Group session, well, what impact does that 

13 have on what the ultimate dose reconstruction 

14 values might be, the intake rates that could 

15 be derived out of that?

16 And I think our position was, 

17 well, there's not very much impact, because 

18 with the data already having a geometric 

19 standard deviation of the log-normal 

20 distribution defined at being a value of five, 

21 which is a factor, a multiplier -- or divider 
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1 by five of the data, he said that probably is 

2 wide enough to include any kind of small 

3 incident errors like this that could occur.

4 A fair question came out. Well, I 

5 think you should prove that. And so, that's 

6 what we set about to do in the latest 

7 revision.

8 And we used the same data set that 

9 you had seen before, John. And then what we 

10 did was actually take every individual error 

11 that was identified and the value it would 

12 have taken for that error to have gone to 

13 zero.

14 So, sometimes it was 

15 underestimated by a factor of ten. I think 

16 that happened twice. Most often it was an 

17 underestimate by a factor of two or less. And 

18 so, we put together a distribution of discrete 

19 values that would have happened to make the 

20 correction come back to the correct value.

21 DR. MAURO: Bob, I'm sorry to 
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1 interrupt. Real quick question.

2 Those numbers, the factor of ten 

3 above and two less, that was the Strom work. 

4 In other words, those were the numbers -- the 

5 errors that they found in the work --

6 MR. MORRIS: Well, we actually went 

7 in and looked at -- we found -- when we could 

8 identify -- we went through the entire data 

9 set that was available to us in the SRDB.

10 DR. MAURO: Okay. Good. So, when 

11 you just said those numbers, it just turns out 

12 that the kinds of errors that you observed in 

13 your own database for the work there at 

14 Weldon, were not unlike the numbers that were 

15 observed by Strom in his work.

16 MR. MORRIS: I think that's right, 

17 yes.

18 DR. MAURO: Which is -- well, very 

19 interesting. Good. Keep going. This is 

20 good.

21 MR. MORRIS: Okay. So, then at 
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1 that point we took a Monte Carlo analysis 

2 approach and said, okay, here is the data, 

3 here is the log-normal distribution with a 

4 geometric mean of one and a GSD of five. And 

5 if we superimpose an error set on top of that, 

6 what does the resulting log-normal 

7 distribution look like?

8 And it turns out when you inject, 

9 you know, if you take 10,000 incidences of the 

10 calculation, you actually inject errors at the 

11 tiny rate of the three or four percent rate 

12 that we found, you inject those errors 

13 actually to emulate exactly what we observed 

14 and let the iteration happen over and over and 

15 over again, it turns out that at the median --

16 I don't have the paper open in front of me 

17 right now. So, you'll have to -- you probably 

18 can quote the number better than I can.

19 At the median, there's about a two 

20 percent difference in the value that would 

21 have been calculated as the intake rate. And 
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1 at the 95th percentile, there's about a four 

2 percent increase.

3 DR. MAURO: No, I think I've got 

4 it. But now for the last question, which is 

5 really where this began, it had to do with 

6 when you went back to the original data set, 

7 these thousand -- 1,300 or whatever actual 

8 measurements where you found the, I guess, 

9 what you called transcription-type blunders or 

10 whatever-type blunders they were --

11 MR. MORRIS: And there were also 

12 arithmetic blunders that happened over and 

13 over again. The same blunder at the same spot 

14 in the calculation.

15 DR. MAURO: Got it. Now, when you 

16 did that work-up, here was the question that 

17 Ted asked and it goes to the heart of whether 

18 this could be an SEC or not an SEC issue, were 

19 you working -- ultimately, the DWEs that you 

20 derived come from this original data set that 

21 you just described.
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1 Did you have access to the full 

2 data set that was used to go from the original 

3 measurements, these individual three-minute 

4 air samples or whatever they are, and did you 

5 have access to the full data set that was used 

6 to derive your DWEs or --

7 MR. MORRIS: Yes. And that's why 

8 these data were actually analyzed.

9 DR. MAURO: Oh, then that's great. 

10 Because, you see, the question that we asked 

11 and Ron originally asked was, sometimes you 

12 don't have access to the full original data 

13 set and you had to check your blunders based 

14 on some subset of the set of data that was 

15 actually available to derive the DWEs. You 

16 didn't have --

17 MR. MORRIS: That's true. And in 

18 the majority, you know, there are hundreds of 

19 -- I'm making -- I don't know. I couldn't 

20 back this number up, but my perception is 

21 there are a hundred or so daily weighted 
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1 exposure reports at Weldon Spring.

2 And of those, we found complete 

3 data sets accessible on only a few. Five 

4 percent of those, maybe. But those were the 

5 five percent that were represented in the 

6 analysis that we reported on.

7 DR. MAURO: And with that, that's 

8 how you -- that's what you used to derive your 

9 DWEs?

10 MR. MORRIS: In our test case 

11 looking for blunders, it is.

12 DR. MAURO: In the test case. So, 

13 okay.

14 So, ultimately, when you are about 

15 to assign an intake rate for thorium which is 

16 at your upper 95th percentile --

17 MR. MORRIS: Right.

18 DR. MAURO: -- based on your DWE 

19 analysis, you say, okay, here's the number, 

20 whatever it is, becquerels per day.

21 MR. MORRIS: Yes.
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1 DR. MAURO: This is our 95th 

2 percentile.

3 MR. MORRIS: Okay. I'm sorry. I 

4 didn't mean to interrupt you, John.

5 DR. MAURO: I'm just trying to get 

6 my thought across.

7 That calculation goes to --

8 originates with the data set of measurements 

9 that we use to derive that distribution of 

10 DWEs. And the data set that is -- the DWE 

11 that you derived comes from this data set of 

12 some -- I thought I heard 1,300 measurements, 

13 a number on that order.

14 These original 1,300 measurements 

15 sorted as you sorted them out and worked with 

16 them, you went through a process and came up 

17 with a 95th percentile daily weighted intake 

18 rate for these workers.

19 Were you able to look at the full 

20 set of data, the original data, that was used 

21 to derive that intake rate and check for those 
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1 blunders, or did you only look at a small 

2 portion of that data for blunders?

3 MR. MORRIS: Okay. I think I have 

4 answered that, but I'll try one more time 

5 because I have a feeling you didn't --

6 DR. MAURO: Yes, sometimes this 

7 whole DWE process is complicated.

8 MR. MORRIS: I don't want to leave 

9 you misled.

10 DR. MAURO: I understand. And I 

11 appreciate the difficulty here.

12 MR. MORRIS: Okay. Let's say that 

13 you were a thorium worker during a sol-gel 

14 process. We probably did not find the full 

15 data set for the DWE analysis that was done to 

16 represent an intake rate.

17 There is assembly level intake 

18 rate that is available in the records from 

19 Weldon Spring which would say for this kind of 

20 work by this kind of worker at this location 

21 at this time, this was the daily weighted 
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1 exposure this person received.

2 We take that value, put a 

3 geometric distribution around it, assume that 

4 it's the median of the log-normal 

5 distribution, and then put a GSD of five 

6 around that number to allow for the high-range 

7 excursions that could have occurred on a daily 

8 basis.

9 DR. MAURO: Okay.

10 MR. MORRIS: All we have is the 

11 one-day estimate, for example.

12 DR. MAURO: Right.

13 MR. MORRIS: Okay. Now, the 

14 question was, well, what impact do the 

15 blunders have on that, the arithmetic errors, 

16 the transcription errors, the little mistakes 

17 that happened?

18 And what we found by sampling the 

19 few cases where we have the entire data set 

20 available --

21 DR. MAURO: Okay.
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1 MR MORRIS: -- we found that in 

2 those cases where we could assess it, it had 

3 about a four percent impact at the 95th 

4 percentile.

5 DR. MAURO: Oh, okay. So, I think 

6 we've got -- I think you've explained it well.

7 So, there really was a sample, in 

8 other words, you were able to access certain 

9 source data that really represented only a 

10 fraction of the total data set.

11 MR. MORRIS: Right.

12 DR. MAURO: And it was that, what 

13 was available to you was a fraction of the 

14 total data set.

15 Assuming that fraction is 

16 representative of all the data --

17 MR. MORRIS: Right.

18 DR. MAURO: -- in theory, your 

19 blunder analysis holds up, assuming that it's 

20 representative.

21 Now, the degree to which it's 
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1 representative, right now of course I would 

2 say is there any reason why that data set that 

3 you used to evaluate your blunders was not 

4 representative?

5 MR. MORRIS: Okay. Let me weigh in 

6 on that.

7 DR. MAURO: Okay.

8 MR. MORRIS: Potentially, yes, it 

9 happened from different years than the years 

10 we were most interested in.

11 DR. MAURO: Yes.

12 MR. MORRIS: But on the other hand, 

13 it was a relatively small and stable core of 

14 people who were making the assessments.

15 DR. MAURO: Okay.

16 MR. MORRIS: And they only got more 

17 experienced with it as time went on. It turns 

18 out, if I recall correctly, the years when we 

19 found example cases that we could take all the 

20 way to the analysis end point were earlier in 

21 the process at Weldon Spring than when the 
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1 thorium work we were really focused on 

2 occurred.

3 So, like I said, there were only 

4 two or three or maybe four people involved in 

5 making these calculations and it appeared to 

6 us like we had no reason to think what we got 

7 wasn't representative of what happened.

8 DR. MAURO: I hear you. I think I 

9 could answer Ted's question now.

10 I think we have to leave it as an 

11 SEC issue until we have a chance to take a 

12 look at this particular matter. I mean, the 

13 fact that it was some relatively small portion 

14 of the complete data set that was used to 

15 evaluate the magnitude of blunders and their 

16 impact on the outcome -- and, Bob, I 

17 understand what you're saying. And I think 

18 you're probably right, that is, that the 

19 sample that you did work with to check 

20 blunders is probably representative. There's 

21 nothing about why it should be biased.
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1 MR. MORRIS: We didn't pick it as a 

2 biased sample.

3 DR. MAURO: No, I understand. It 

4 was what was available to you.

5 MR. MORRIS: Right.

6 DR. MAURO: And I think we need to 

7 look at that, Mike and Ted, the rest of the 

8 Work Group, and as part of our evaluation.

9 So, my recommendation based on 

10 what I just heard, and certainly I would 

11 welcome any feedback from -- I hate to jump 

12 the gun from Ron, but I think we leave it as 

13 an SEC issue until we can put this to bed.

14 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: And this is Mike. 

15 I totally agree. If we don't have the full 

16 set of data, then this needs to be looked into 

17 further.

18 Secondly, one thing just for my 

19 information, where did we come up with this

20 "blunder" word?

21 MR. MORRIS: That is a word that is 
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1 actually -- it came out of the Dan Strom 

2 paper. And it is a -- "blunder" is a 

3 technical term in one of the ISO standards 

4 that they used to make the judgement against.

5 And so, it's not like, oh, a 

6 stupid mistake. A blunder is defined as one 

7 of about five different kind of errors that 

8 could occur, including transcription errors or 

9 arithmetic errors.

10 I've forgotten the other kinds, 

11 but really those are the two that can really 

12 stand out as being prominent.

13 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: This may be 

14 insignificant to a lot of you people, but if -

15 - where this word came from if we bring it 

16 into this program and into our reports, a 

17 blunder is just that. Something that happens 

18 on a football game on Sunday afternoon.

19 MR. MORRIS: No, that's not at all 

20 the context here. We've had this conversation 

21 in Work Group meetings and, I think, Dr. 
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1 Melius may have asked this question in an 

2 advisory group meeting once before.

3 A blunder is a technical term in 

4 the ISO standards that Dan Strom introduced 

5 when he analyzed the first AWE data set in 

6 this context.

7 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: I understand what 

8 you're saying. I'm not suggesting that's not 

9 true.

10 What I'm saying in essence, 

11 though, there's errors in monitoring workers 

12 and it should be looked at and worded as such.

13 The public and the claimants out 

14 there, they're not -- when they see this, 

15 they're not going to know about this ISO 

16 standard that accepts the word "blunder" and 

17 has a definition. They're going to look at it 

18 like I do, and it's like that we're not taking 

19 these errors very seriously.

20 MR. MORRIS: Well, I don't think --

21 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: I don't think it 
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1 should be in our reports.

2 MEMBER LEMEN: This is Dr. Lemen 

3 and I totally agree with what's being said, 

4 because I think "blunder" is so misleading a 

5 term.

6 Whoever introduced it, that may be 

7 the way ISO and others use it, but it's so 

8 correct that people that are not familiar with 

9 that, are not going to understand that. And 

10 it's just going to raise a lot of questions 

11 and concerns.

12 Is there some way we can change 

13 that terminology?

14 MR. MORRIS: I wouldn't do that 

15 myself. I think that that's more a decision 

16 you would have to direct at the Work Group 

17 level.

18 MEMBER LEMEN: Well, I'm asking 

19 that maybe should be an agenda item then, Ted, 

20 for us to talk about.

21 MR. KATZ: This is Ted.
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1 Dick, I mean, we're not there yet. 

2 But when we get to reporting from the Work 

3 Group, I mean, certainly this is something 

4 that you can talk about as well.

5 MEMBER LEMEN: I'm meaning at the 

6 Board meeting coming up next week.

7 MR. KATZ: Yes, I'm speaking 

8 exactly about that.

9 MEMBER LEMEN: Okay.

10 MR. KATZ: This Work Group has 

11 Weldon Spring as an agenda on the Board 

12 meeting next week. And most certainly you can 

13 address what your concerns may be about use of 

14 the term "blunder" as part of your report.

15 MEMBER LEMEN: Because I think 

16 Mike's point is really well taken at least by 

17 myself.

18 MS. JOHNSON: This is Karen 

19 Johnson, one of the petitioners.

20 I would have to wholeheartedly 

21 agree that the word "blunder" is just almost 
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1 insulting.

2 MEMBER LEMEN: It makes it sound 

3 like that it was really mistakes that are just 

4 inappropriate. And "blunder" has multiple 

5 meanings maybe in the scientific community and 

6 the non-scientific community, but it's a word 

7 that we should get away from, I think.

8 MR. MORRIS: This is Bob Morris 

9 again going back to one more thing you said, 

10 John.

11 DR. MAURO: Yes.

12 MR. MORRIS: You have had this data 

13 set in the original report. So, we didn't 

14 introduce any new data in this. We just re15 analyzed the data that you've already seen.

16 So, if that was the context of the 

17 recommendation that says it's still an SEC 

18 issue, you have had the same set of data the 

19 whole time.

20 So, the pedigree of where our data 

21 came from did not change.
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1 DR. MAURO: Okay, I hear what 

2 you're saying. I brought this up mainly as a 

3 bridge going back to Fernald where this issue 

4 was addressed.

5 And it sounds like this White 

6 Paper that came out recently explicitly 

7 addressed it, the error -- I'll use the term 

8 "error," calculational error or transcription 

9 error.

10 And you have actually gone through 

11 a process to characterize and quantify that 

12 error and found it to have a small effect on 

13 the outcome.

14 And I believe the question is --

15 and whether or not we analyzed it in the past, 

16 I can't speak to it, but it sounds like that 

17 you went through a process of looking through 

18 your data, your original data, which 

19 represents some subset or some portion of the 

20 full data set. You had access to the original 

21 data.
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1 We may have had access to that 

2 before, but I don't -- I think the question on 

3 the table is in coming up with your estimate 

4 of the magnitude of these errors, could we say 

5 with some degree of confidence that the data 

6 set that you worked with was representative of 

7 the full data set, so that we could have 

8 confidence that the upper bound that you're 

9 assigning with the four percent consideration 

10 is, in fact, a reasonable upper bound taking 

11 errors into consideration?

12 I don't think we've ever looked at 

13 that. Ron, did we ever look at that? This 

14 sounds new to me.

15 DR. BUCHANAN: No, no. We wrote --

16 we did a reply report on September 27th and 

17 distributed it to the workers and NIOSH. And 

18 in that, our two points were how was this 

19 going to be applied -- that was considering 

20 Revision 0 that they sent out on the 7th of 

21 September. NIOSH sent out the 7th of 
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1 September, the original report.

2 On the 27th of September, our 

3 reply was a summary, two points, how is it 

4 going to be applied? And I feel that that has 

5 been answered. Whether we agree with all the 

6 math, I think it's been answered.

7 And our other point was 

8 representation. Did the error analysis 

9 represent the original data and how could that 

10 be shown?

11 And so, I think that issue is the 

12 one that still remains.

13 DR. MAURO: Okay. So, we have not 

14 addressed that issue yet in any of our 

15 previous deliverables.

16 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, we addressed it 

17 on the 27th of September. We wrote the 

18 report. And in that we said we were concerned 

19 whether it represented -- we did not see any 

20 concrete basis saying that it was -- it 

21 represented all of the working conditions and 
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1 conditions that -- it might. We're just 

2 saying we didn't see that it was supportive.

3 DR. MAURO: But we did not --

4 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Excuse me. This 

5 is Mike.

6 DR. MAURO: -- actually take a 

7 position.

8 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: This is Mike.

9 DR. MAURO: I'm sorry, Mike.

10 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: It's obvious that 

11 there needs to be more work on this issue. 

12 So, rather than try to do it on the phone, 

13 let's just agree that we need to look at this 

14 further and maybe try to move on and keep the 

15 agenda rolling.

16 DR. MAURO: Okay.

17 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Is that alright 

18 with everyone?

19 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, that's okay.

20 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. So, let's 

21 move on to coworkers/unmonitored 
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1 workers/unmonitored work periods, Section 1d.

2 Who wants to take that?

3 DR. BUCHANAN: Well, this is Ron 

4 and I'll just give a -- the reason it's on the 

5 agenda is that we had asked -- on the action 

6 items from the last meeting on the 13th of 

7 September, the action items set out on 19th of 

8 May, we agreed that -- or NIOSH agreed to 

9 provide a method that would be used to assign 

10 doses to unmonitored workers that should have 

11 been monitored and bridge gaps and dose 

12 records for monitored workers, and NIOSH will 

13 evaluate petitioner's concern of unmonitored 

14 workers' access to the operating plant area.

15 And so, that's kind of two things 

16 in one there. Number 1, what is NIOSH's 

17 position on coworker -- we just talked about 

18 historian data. And we said we were going to 

19 use coworker data instead of the DWAs for 

20 uranium assignment of people that should have 

21 maybe been monitored that weren't.
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1 And, also, the petitioner brought 

2 up at the last meeting on the phone on 13th of 

3 September, about some people having access to 

4 the operating plant that weren't monitored.

5 And so, that's where that issue 

6 originated. And so, I'll turn it over to 

7 NIOSH to discuss their response to that action 

8 item.

9 MR. ROLFES: Okay. Let's see. I 

10 think the consistency of the approach to 

11 assigning dose is something that we would put 

12 into our Site Profile, because each claim is 

13 independent of other claims.

14 So, the facts of how we would 

15 complete one dose reconstruction would be 

16 based upon the details of that claim and type 

17 of cancer that that claimant had. So, that's 

18 something that's more specific to an 

19 individual dose reconstruction.

20 To speak to the other issue about 

21 administrative workers accessing the site and 
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1 not being monitored, we did look at a specific 

2 case to determine whether an administrative 

3 worker that wasn't involved in production 

4 would have been monitored.

5 And to date, reviews of records 

6 for people that may -- we've looked at cases 

7 and there have been some instances where 

8 people did not believe that they were 

9 monitored, but did enter the production area. 

10 And in our review of those cases, we have 

11 found monitoring data for those cases.

12 And during each dose 

13 reconstruction if there's an individual that 

14 has a concern that they had an exposure and 

15 didn't believe to be monitored, we would 

16 certainly look into that for each specific 

17 case.

18 Getting back to our original 

19 evaluation of the SEC petition we received, I 

20 don't have the exact number here in front of 

21 me. But from what I recall, roughly 90 
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1 percent of the Weldon Spring plant population 

2 did have monitoring for internal exposures to 

3 uranium. And this was done via urine 

4 sampling.

5 So, we did look into whether or 

6 not people could have gone into the production 

7 area and whether or not they were monitored. 

8 And the cases that we did look into did have 

9 monitoring data available.

10 So that's, I guess, about as much 

11 detail as I can provide.

12 DR. BUCHANAN: Now, this is Ron, 

13 SC&A.

14 Now, I don't believe that 90 

15 percent of everybody that worked there was 

16 bioassayed or external monitored.

17 Is that what you're saying?

18 MR. ROLFES: Yes, I'd have to go 

19 back to the original Evaluation Report and 

20 take a look. If you could bear with me for a 

21 minute, I could pull that up.
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1 DR. BUCHANAN: Because we found 

2 that out of the 15 cases we looked at, we 

3 found around 90 percent were bioassayed, but 

4 that was for production workers.

5 I don't believe that the entire 

6 population was routinely bioassayed or even on 

7 an annual or semiannual basis.

8 MR. ROLFES: Let me pull up the 

9 Evaluation Report and -- if you could bear 

10 with me for one more minute here, I have the 

11 report. I'm just trying to identify the --

12 there's a summary table which -- okay.

13 Let's see here. Of the number of 

14 claims that were submitted for dose 

15 reconstruction to NIOSH at the time the 

16 Evaluation Report was written, there were 258 

17 claims that we received from the Department of 

18 Labor.

19 Of those 258, there were 207 

20 individuals who had bioassay data in their 

21 files. So, that's 80 percent of the 
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1 individuals who were monitored for internal 

2 exposure.

3 And it's a little bit less than 

4 that for external exposure. It's 192 out of 

5 the 258. So, just under 80 percent.

6 So, it wasn't 90 percent. If I 

7 said that, I misspoke. It should be 80 

8 percent.

9 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, of the ones 

10 that filed claims.

11 MR. ROLFES: That's correct.

12 And then as you said from the SC&A 

13 sampling of the 15 cases, there were 93 

14 percent, I think, is what you found had 

15 monitoring data associated with them?

16 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, that was of the 

17 people you'd expect that worked in the 

18 production area.

19 MR. ROLFES: Yes, correct.

20 So, for the entire population 

21 which would include both the production 
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1 workers and administrative workers and other 

2 site support personnel when you look at the 

3 total number of people monitored for our 

4 claimant population, roughly 80 percent of the 

5 population for which we received claims, 80 

6 percent of the population was monitored.

7 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. To summarize 

8 for the Work Group, we're saying that we will 

9 not construct -- that NIOSH does not plan to 

10 construct a table listing external -- coworker 

11 external doses and coworker uranium and 

12 thorium intake to be used by the dose 

13 reconstructor for individual cases; is that 

14 correct?

15 MR. ROLFES: At this time, we 

16 haven't identified any cases where a coworker 

17 intake model has been needed. So, at this 

18 time, we don't intend to develop such a table 

19 for intake rates.

20 DR. BUCHANAN: And so, if you come 

21 up to a person that appeared that should have 
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1 been monitored, but wasn't monitored --

2 MR. ROLFES: Then at that time, it 

3 would be appropriate to develop a coworker 

4 intake model either based upon the data that 

5 we have available to us for the whole 

6 population, or any data representative of that 

7 person's exposure or anything that would be 

8 claimant-favorable for that specific case to 

9 be completed.

10 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So, as far 

11 as, I guess, to the Work Group, SC&A can only 

12 say that we can't evaluate a coworker model, 

13 because one has not been proposed other than 

14 what Mark just said.

15 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: This is Mike.

16 So, is NIOSH saying that coworker 

17 data is not -- a coworker model is not needed 

18 at this point, but you'll develop one if 

19 claims come in?

20 Is that what you're saying?

21 MR. ROLFES: Yes. If there is a 
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1 case, for example, that we receive for a 

2 production worker that was not monitored, at 

3 that time we would have to assign a coworker 

4 intake for that case.

5 And so, to my knowledge, we 

6 haven't received any such cases based on our 

7 review of the records. And, also, SC&A's 

8 sampling of the 15 cases for production 

9 workers, they found that 95 percent of the 

10 people, the production workers were monitored.

11 Our evaluation found that 80 

12 percent of the entire claimant population from 

13 the Weldon Spring plant was monitored. And 

14 so, we haven't readily identified anyone that 

15 needs a coworker intake model to complete 

16 their dose reconstruction at this time.

17 However, if we do in the future, 

18 then a coworker intake model may need to be 

19 completed.

20 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Dick, do you have 

21 any comments on this?
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1 MEMBER LEMEN: No, not really, 

2 except I'm kind of like you, Mike. I think 

3 I'm a little unclear of what they're really 

4 planning on doing here.

5 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Yes.

6 MEMBER LEMEN: I don't think it's 

7 been explained to me enough that I know 

8 exactly what's going to happen at this stage.

9 Are you going to go ahead and do 

10 dose reconstruction on all the ones you have 

11 right now with no coworker data?

12 MR. ROLFES: That's correct. We 

13 would complete dose reconstructions on the 

14 cases where we have bioassay data. For 

15 example, to estimate the uranium intake, we 

16 would use that individual's data.

17 Now, the situation where we would 

18 need a coworker intake model would be if we 

19 had a production worker that never provided a 

20 urine sample and we didn't have any other 

21 method of estimating how much uranium he could 
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1 have inhaled, for example.

2 MEMBER LEMEN: Because when you 

3 were bouncing around the 80 percent and 90 

4 percent of the production workers, how many do 

5 you have actual data you can do dose 

6 reconstruction on?

7 MR. ROLFES: Well, we haven't gone 

8 through specific to production workers. We 

9 evaluated the entire population.

10 SC&A sampled the production worker 

11 population, the 15 cases -- say randomly 

12 sampled 15 production worker cases -- and 

13 found, was it, 93 or 95 percent of those had 

14 data.

15 MEMBER LEMEN: Well, that leaves a 

16 question to me, how long before you will know 

17 how many you can do dose reconstruction on and 

18 make a decision on that so we can determine 

19 whether or not we want to go with a Class on 

20 this or whether we want to go with individual 

21 dose reconstruction?
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1 MR. ROLFES: Well, I can --

2 MEMBER LEMEN: The time frame.

3 MR. ROLFES: I can speak for our 

4 current claimant population. We haven't 

5 encountered any cases where we've needed a 

6 coworker model to date.

7 I can't predict future claims 

8 since we are still receiving claims from the 

9 Department of Labor. We haven't identified 

10 any claims where we have needed a coworker 

11 intake model at this point.

12 MR. KATZ: Mark, this is Ted.

13 Maybe it would be helpful -- I 

14 mean, how many claims have you already run 

15 dose reconstructions for?

16 MR. ROLFES: At the time the 

17 Evaluation Report was completed, we had 

18 received 258 claims from the Department of 

19 Labor. And at that time, we had -- let's see. 

20 244 of those cases out of the 258, met the 

21 Class Definition criteria for the covered 
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1 years of employment from 1957 through 1967.

2 Of those 244 cases, NIOSH had 

3 completed 180 via dose reconstruction. And I 

4 can pull up some more recent numbers for you 

5 if you can give me just one minute.

6 Okay. We have received 268 claims 

7 for Weldon Spring plant. We have completed 

8 215 dose reconstructions out of those 268, and 

9 then 52 cases have been pulled.

10 MR. KATZ: Have been what?

11 MR. ROLFES: Pulled. Which means 

12 that they were removed from NIOSH by the 

13 Department of Labor likely because they were 

14 in another SEC Class.

15 So, currently there is one Weldon 

16 Spring plant dose reconstruction that is 

17 outstanding to be completed.

18 MEMBER LEMEN: And have you sent 

19 all the ones back to the Department of Labor 

20 or where are the ones that you've completed? 

21 What's the status of those?
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1 MR. ROLFES: Of the -- let's see. 

2 Of the 215 dose reconstructions that have been 

3 completed, the -- it's roughly half were 

4 greater than 50 percent Probability of 

5 Causation, and half were less than 50 percent 

6 Probability of Causation.

7 As far as which step in the 

8 administration process of finalizing the 

9 claims, I really couldn't speak to that. I 

10 don't have those numbers available and, 

11 ultimately, it's the Department of Labor who 

12 would make the compensation decision for each 

13 claim.

14 MEMBER LEMEN: So, about half of 

15 the claims, you're saying, qualify for 

16 compensation at this time?

17 MR. ROLFES: That is correct.

18 MEMBER LEMEN: And you don't know 

19 what the time frame in getting those claims to 

20 the claimants are at this time?

21 MR. ROLFES: The recommended --
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1 well, excuse me. The dose reconstruction 

2 reports have already been completed to 

3 determine whether or not the Probability of 

4 Causation would exceed 50 percent or be less 

5 than 50 percent. So, those claimants have 

6 already received answers at least from NIOSH.

7 They may not have received a final 

8 decision from the Department of Labor yet, 

9 though.

10 MEMBER LEMEN: Okay.

11 MR. ROLFES: So, as far as what 

12 NIOSH has in its queue of claims that we have 

13 not yet completed a dose estimate or a dose 

14 reconstruction report for, we only have one 

15 case that is currently outstanding.

16 MEMBER LEMEN: So, of all the cases 

17 that have sent in and dose reconstruction has 

18 been determined, and you have one outstanding, 

19 all of those cases had been notified to the 

20 individual claimants telling them that they 

21 qualify or don't qualify.
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1 MR. ROLFES: That is correct.

2 MEMBER LEMEN: With the exception 

3 of one.

4 MR. ROLFES: That is correct, with 

5 the exception of one.

6 MEMBER LEMEN: Okay. Thank you.

7 MR. ROLFES: You're welcome.

8 MS. JOHNSON: This is Karen 

9 Johnson. I have a question about the 

10 administrative staff.

11 Do you know approximately how 

12 often they were monitored?

13 MR. ROLFES: It all depends on the 

14 individuals and the history of their exposure 

15 potential, essentially.

16 If they had a potential for 

17 exposure and went into the production area or 

18 some other area where they could have possibly 

19 had an exposure, they could have been sampled 

20 following that potential exposure or they 

21 could have been routinely monitored.
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1 We would have to take a look at a 

2 specific case. I don't think there's a hard 

3 and fast rule for how often someone would be 

4 sampled.

5 MS. JOHNSON: Okay. I'm just 

6 asking, because we have a lot of office staff 

7 who say they were able to walk wherever they 

8 wanted. There were no restrictions placed on 

9 anyone.

10 And they, other than maybe an 

11 annual exam, don't recall ever being 

12 monitored.

13 MR. ROLFES: That's certainly 

14 possible. And if one takes a look at 

15 someone's urinalysis records, for example, if 

16 we only have a couple of urine samples to 

17 estimate someone's intake, the intake estimate 

18 is actually likely going to be a little bit 

19 higher, a little more claimant-favorable, than 

20 a detailed analysis of day-by-day acute 

21 intakes.
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1 So, if you're exposed to enough 

2 uranium, you'll continue to excrete it for 

3 months to years at a time. It depends upon 

4 the solubility of the uranium to which you're 

5 exposed.

6 And when NIOSH completes a dose 

7 reconstruction using those urine sample 

8 results, we would use the uranium solubility 

9 that results in the most claimant-favorable 

10 intake for that specific claim.

11 DR. MAURO: Mark, to follow up on 

12 that question by Karen, so out of the 200 or 

13 so cases that you performed DRs, in every case 

14 you used the bioassay -- for the internal 

15 dose, you used the bioassay data for that 

16 worker.

17 In some cases, the workers may 

18 have had fairly frequent bioassay, and some 

19 cases, as Karen pointed out, they may have 

20 been relatively infrequent such as 

21 administrative workers.
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1 Is it your experience that the 

2 ones with minimal frequency was once a year? 

3 I'm trying to get to the need for a coworker 

4 model.

5 And what I'm hearing is that, 

6 well, in one respect you were able to do all 

7 these dose reconstructions without resorting 

8 to a coworker model, even administrative 

9 workers who actually had sufficient data, from 

10 your perspective, to actually reconstruct 

11 their doses using their own bioassay data.

12 MR. ROLFES: I'm sorry, John. If 

13 there was a question in there, I --

14 DR. MAURO: Yes, I guess the 

15 question is -- I'll make it two questions.

16 One, so out of all those 200 or so 

17 workers, you never had to resort to a coworker 

18 model?

19 MR. ROLFES: To my knowledge, that 

20 is correct. Since there is no coworker model 

21 developed, there hasn't been one, per se, to 
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1 rely on.

2 Now, very early on in the program 

3 we could have completed some dose 

4 reconstructions using coworker or coworker5 like data.

6 I don't know if that happened with 

7 Weldon Spring plant. However, there could be 

8 a case or two out there, for example, where we 

9 know so and so worked with so and so. And one 

10 person had monitoring data, but the other 

11 didn't.

12 And so, early on we may have used 

13 information from a coworker -- or, excuse me, 

14 from a computer-assisted telephone interview 

15 report and identified coworker bioassay data 

16 from people doing the same job who were 

17 identified in that CATI, for example, and we 

18 may have completed a case using another 

19 individual's bioassay data, for example, but 

20 that would be the exception from the norm.

21 So, there could be a situation 
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1 like that early on, if that answers your 

2 question.

3 DR. MAURO: Yes, it does.

4 To help out a little, when we 

5 originally evaluated this, and certainly Ron 

6 could help out, and we sampled those 15 

7 workers, we did find, we did concur that, yes, 

8 for the workers that we sampled and looked 

9 very carefully at their historical records, it 

10 was a complete record.

11 Karen raised an interesting 

12 question. Sounds like that certainly our 

13 sampling focused in, I believe, on operators, 

14 people who you would expect to have the high15 end exposures. And it certainly appeared that 

16 for those that we sampled, there was quite a 

17 bit of data for those workers.

18 Karen's question goes toward what 

19 about administrative workers who may not have 

20 been sampled/bioassayed as frequently?

21 What I'm hearing is that you do 
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1 run into those and you do have data for them. 

2 And even if it's annual data, you have a 

3 mechanism to use that annual data, bioassay 

4 data, in a manner that will place a plausible 

5 upper bound on the intake for those workers 

6 also. 

7 Would that be a true statement?

8 MR. ROLFES: Yes. There are cases 

9 where we have administrative workers that 

10 provided annual samples, annual urine samples, 

11 which we've used to estimate people's uranium 

12 intakes.

13 And so, as I said earlier, when we 

14 make assumptions about a chronic exposure 

15 duration, that alone even if we know that a 

16 person in an administrative fashion didn't 

17 spend 100 percent of their time in a 

18 production area, if they had a couple of 

19 uranium urinalyses over one each year, we 

20 would assume that they had a chronic exposure 

21 for the entire duration of their employment in 
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1 that job capacity, or the entire time period 

2 from the first bioassay sample, or a little 

3 bit of time before that bioassay sample such 

4 as the employment start date all the way 

5 through the date of the last bioassay sample.

6 So, even if the person says, I 

7 only intermittently entered a production area, 

8 but we had bioassay data for each year that 

9 they could have potentially entered the 

10 production area, we would assign a chronic 

11 intake for that entire time period that was 

12 represented there.

13 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: This is Mike. 

14 And I guess I don't see that -- maybe in most 

15 cases it's claimant-favorable, but there could 

16 be the situation where an administrative 

17 worker walked through the production plant the 

18 day after they left the bioassay and got an 

19 acute exposure. And then 365 days later 

20 you're still seeing some excretion.

21 By assigning a chronic dose all 
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1 year, that would in no way cover the big, 

2 acute exposure that happened the day after 

3 their last bioassay.

4 MR. ROLFES: We have looked into 

5 this. And the acute intake would have to be 

6 so large as to be something that couldn't have 

7 occurred without some sort of medical -- we've 

8 discussed this a little bit with Fernald, and 

9 you would have to have something that would be 

10 physiologically impossible almost.

11 And so, by assigning an intake 

12 over that entire year chronically, typically 

13 will result in a more realistic -- and it 

14 typically does result in a little bit higher 

15 total intake than just a single, acute intake.

16 So, yes, that is something that 

17 can't be ruled out. It is possible that that 

18 could occur. However, the likelihood of it 

19 occurring and resulting in an intake higher 

20 than what we would assign by our assumption of 

21 a chronic intake over an entire year, it's not 
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1 likely. It's not likely that an acute intake 

2 would exceed our total chronic intake.

3 DR. MAURO: Mike, this is John.

4 This issue has come up quite some 

5 time ago on other sites.

6 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Right. I think I 

7 brought it up.

8 DR. MAURO: Yes. And at the time, 

9 Jim had performed a number of what-if analyses 

10 and did demonstrate to SC&A satisfaction, that 

11 that strategy that was just described by Mark, 

12 SC&A did find favorably.

13 So, it's sort of a generic issue 

14 that applies across the board on how dose 

15 reconstructions are done everywhere.

16 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Sure. 

17 Absolutely.

18 DR. MAURO: And it was something 

19 that we did look at. And I don't want to say 

20 that it doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't 

21 need to be looked at some more. But I can say 
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1 we did look at it in the past, and SC&A did 

2 find favorably with that strategy.

3 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Well, we can look 

4 at it more on a site-wide basis.

5 DR. MAURO: Sure.

6 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: I just wanted to 

7 raise the point again, because it is feasible.

8 Okay. Anything else on this issue 

9 or -- Dr. Lemen, do you have any comments or -

10 - 

11 MEMBER LEMEN: No, I don't at this 

12 time.

13 DR. MAURO: I'm sorry to interrupt. 

14 This is John again. I do have something.

15 One of the things that we did find 

16 when we -- and, again, Ron, please correct me 

17 if I'm misrepresenting this in any way. That 

18 when we did look at those 15 cases and we 

19 found -- and we looked at the cases that we 

20 felt confident did represent the folks that 

21 have the highest potential for exposure, and 
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1 we did find a rather complete data set for 

2 those workers, that left us with information 

3 that also led us to the conclusion that if the 

4 day did come when a coworker model had to be 

5 developed, it could be developed because the 

6 data for -- the problem always is can you 

7 build a coworker model if you need one?

8 And the reason why you can't 

9 sometimes is you just don't know whether you 

10 have sufficient data for the limiting groups 

11 of workers to build a coworker model from that 

12 would place a plausible upper bound.

13 Our work has shown the work we 

14 did, which was -- it has shown that there does 

15 certainly appear to be sufficient data for the 

16 limiting group.

17 And, Ron, because of the 

18 importance of the statement I just made as my 

19 understanding of where we came out from the 

20 work that we talked about in the past, did I 

21 fairly characterize that SC&A finding and 
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1 position?

2 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes. This is Ron. 

3 Yes, the SC&A found that there is -- appears 

4 to be sufficient data for both bioassay and 

5 external monitoring to create a data -- for 

6 coworker data if needed.

7 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. So, this 

8 is Mike. We'll leave that one as is and we'll 

9 come back to it if it's ever needed.

10 Is that all right with everyone?

11 (No response.)

12 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Hearing no 

13 objections, let's move on to radon model, 

14 Four.

15 MR. KATZ: Mike, this is Ted.

16 In terms of reporting out since 

17 this is one of your issues, SEC issues, I 

18 think you and Dick need to come to a 

19 conclusion on your own, I mean, not - I mean, 

20 SC&A has given you its recommendation, but you 

21 all need to as a Work Group, come down to a 
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1 position on that.

2 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: I would say that 

3 we can close it --

4 MR. KATZ: Okay.

5 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: -- given the 

6 fact that SC&A thinks that it can be done if 

7 needed, and also that we have the other Work 

8 Groups that do the coworker studies and stuff.

9 Is that agreeable to you, Dr. 

10 Lemen?

11 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes, it is.

12 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay.

13 MEMBER LEMEN: It takes me a minute 

14 to get my mute off.

15 MR. KATZ: Thanks, Mike.

16 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: All right. So, 

17 who wants to take the radon model?

18 MR. ROLFES: This is Mark. I can 

19 give you the latest update.

20 There really isn't any new 

21 information. I guess we had proposed a new 
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1 methodology to assign radon intakes to Weldon 

2 Spring plant workers and I believe SC&A 

3 ultimately has come to agreement with our 

4 proposed approach. I don't think there's 

5 anything that's been discussed since that 

6 time.

7 We did agree that that White Paper 

8 would be incorporated into the TBD ultimately 

9 when the TBD is revised, if it hasn't been 

10 yet.

11 I don't believe there's anything 

12 other than that.

13 DR. BUCHANAN: This is Ron.

14 No, as we left it last time, there 

15 was no action items on Item Number 4, 

16 radon/thoron.

17 As Mark said, they -- originally 

18 SC&A objected to the model. NIOSH came out 

19 with a revised, highly-conservative model.

20 We reviewed that. Now, this was 

21 in tandem with Fernald, because they had 
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1 similar issues. I believe it was Fernald.

2 We did last time at the September 

3 13th meeting, we did recommend that the model 

4 was acceptable. We did discuss last time that 

5 the Advisory Board in the past had not 

6 accepted some radon models when there wasn't 

7 any measurements to benchmark those models. 

8 However, the other models previously did use 

9 an air-exchange rate.

10 In this case, the model was ultra11 conservative and it did not use any air12 exchange rate. And so, we have no further 

13 input on that.

14 I think that the Work Group can 

15 decide on that and present it to the Board for 

16 their discussion.

17 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: So, was there 

18 radon monitoring at Weldon Spring, or is this 

19 one of the places where we viewed surrogate 

20 data from another plant?

21 DR. BUCHANAN: No, we did not use 
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1 -- NIOSH did not propose to use any surrogate 

2 data like from Fernald or anywhere.

3 Essentially, it was there was no 

4 radon monitoring, to answer your question, or 

5 thoron monitoring. The method used was to 

6 look at the throughput of uranium. Take the 

7 maximum throughput per year, within a year, 

8 and calculate that there was a conservative 

9 amount of radium in the uranium and that all 

10 the radon was released from a material into a 

11 closed room, and then what the maximum 

12 concentration would be in that room, and then 

13 assign that intake.

14 And that would apply to radon, and 

15 also the thorium input and its resulting 

16 concentration.

17 And so, that would be a maximum 

18 limit that could be present to the workers in 

19 any room.

20 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Dr. Lemen, do 

21 you have any thoughts on this issue?
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1 MEMBER LEMEN: I don't.

2 DR. MAURO: Mike, this is John 

3 Mauro. Would you mind if I just add a little 

4 bit to what Ron said that I think is important 

5 to not only you folks, but also to the full 

6 Board.

7 You may recall that there was 

8 another site, Blockson, where a radon model 

9 was used. It was a rather sophisticated 

10 model. Took into consideration a lot of 

11 processes that were at play and there was a 

12 Monte Carlo. And if you remember, there was 

13 quite a bit of discussion on it. And in the 

14 end, the Board voted down to use a model to 

15 predict the concentration of radon in the 

16 room.

17 We are in a very similar situation 

18 here. Again, a model is being used to predict 

19 the radon concentration in a building.

20 The only difference with here, the 

21 important difference, not the only difference, 
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1 but the important difference is here they're 

2 assuming the room is, for all intents and 

3 purposes, sealed.

4 That is, any radon that becomes 

5 airborne never leaves. The only way it leaves 

6 is by radioactive decay.

7 So, what this does is it creates 

8 the circumstances where you place an upper 

9 bound on what the levels might be in the room 

10 as a way to tap it. And there would be 

11 variable doubt that that represents an upper 

12 bound, because it's not leaving. And of 

13 course we know that there is ventilation in 

14 buildings where you would expect something to 

15 leave. But, nevertheless, it is a model.

16 SC&A finds this to be certainly a 

17 bounding scenario. The exposures could not be 

18 higher than the ones that are being calculated 

19 for thoron -- this is for both thoron and 

20 radon.

21 Nevertheless, I think it's 
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1 important to let everyone know that we are in 

2 the similar situation that we were with 

3 Blockson where there may be some Members of 

4 the Board that are not comfortable with models 

5 and would rather have some type of measurement 

6 data.

7 But SC&A's position here is that 

8 there is -- that this does in fact represent 

9 an upper bound on what the concentration of 

10 radon and thoron could have been in that 

11 building.

12 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Well, this is 

13 one that personally I don't know that I'm 

14 comfortable with closing just for that issue. 

15 I do remember the Blockson discussions that 

16 we had for a long time.

17 I just don't know if I'm 

18 comfortable with closing this one. Maybe --

19 MEMBER LEMEN: I concur with you, 

20 Mike.

21 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Just throw it to 
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1 the Board and --

2 MEMBER LEMEN: Mike, I concur with 

3 you.

4 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay.

5 DR. MAURO: That's the reason I 

6 brought it up, because I knew this is a 

7 subject of great interest to many Members of 

8 the Board.

9 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: And we have some 

10 radon experts there, some of our newer

11 Members. So, I think this is one that maybe 

12 we just ought to throw out there to the Board.

13 MEMBER LEMEN: Agreed.

14 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. Anything 

15 else on the radon?

16 If not, let's move on to the 

17 neutron calculations.

18 DR. BUCHANAN: Could I interject 

19 here?

20 We did have -- if we're going to 

21 go in order here, we had action item for SEC 
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1 Issue Number 5. And that's the recycled 

2 uranium. We need to pencil that in, in 

3 between radon and neutron.

4 We had a recycled uranium -- SC&A 

5 had researched this in conjunction with 

6 Fernald, that's where the material came from, 

7 and found that the hundred parts per billion 

8 plutonium assignment from the uranium analysis 

9 was claimant-favorable.

10 However, we did not find 

11 necessarily in the dose reconstruction, that 

12 this was always being done. Our small sample 

13 showed that about half the time it wasn't 

14 being done.

15 NIOSH was going to check in and 

16 see if there needed to be a PER or something 

17 sent out and investigate that. And so, Mark, 

18 what's your status on that?

19 MR. ROLFES: That's correct. 

20 Essentially, once the Site Profile is 

21 ultimately revised after we receive the 
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1 recommendation from the Work Group, we would 

2 issue a Program Evaluation Report which would 

3 take a look at any previously completed dose 

4 reconstructions which had a Probability of 

5 Causation less than 50 percent.

6 And if the recycled uranium 

7 intakes were not previously assigned and the 

8 assignment of those intakes and the other 

9 updates to that dose reconstruction would 

10 affect the outcome of the Probability of 

11 Causation, meaning making it go from less than 

12 50 percent to greater than 50 percent 

13 Probability of Causation, we would work with 

14 the Department of Labor to have those claims 

15 sent back to NIOSH and have new dose 

16 reconstruction reports completed.

17 And so, that recycled uranium 

18 issue would be one of the things that we would 

19 look at when a Program Evaluation Report would 

20 be issued.

21 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, will there be a 
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1 PER issued -- or what did you say about 

2 issuing a PER?

3 MR. ROLFES: Yes, we would issue a 

4 recycled uranium Program Evaluation Report 

5 after the Working Group has made its 

6 recommendation and the Site Profile has been 

7 revised.

8 See, we'd also consider additional 

9 things that have been updated as a result of 

10 the Working Group process. Any changes, for 

11 example, since our radon model has changed or 

12 our thorium intake approach has been revised, 

13 those things would also need to be considered 

14 for each previously completed dose 

15 reconstruction that was less than 50 percent.

16 DR. BUCHANAN: So, you do it all at 

17 once rather than doing each one --

18 MR. ROLFES: Correct.

19 DR. BUCHANAN: -- and then redoing 

20 it when something else changed.

21 MR. ROLFES: That's correct.
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1 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. So, the 

2 Working Group, SC&A finds that acceptable and 

3 we have no further input on that issue.

4 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Dr. Lemen, do you 

5 have any thoughts on this?

6 MEMBER LEMEN: No, I'll defer and 

7 concur with SC&A.

8 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. I think we 

9 can close that one then.

10 Now, if we can move on to the 

11 neutron.

12 MR. ROLFES: Ron, would you like to 

13 start this or do you want me to summarize?

14 I think we've both come to 

15 agreement. We've both ultimately obtained the 

16 same answer for neutron-to-photon ratios. 

17 It's just SC&A had used a built-in conversion 

18 factor that NIOSH doesn't apply until we 

19 complete the individual dose reconstruction. 

20 It was just a method of how the calculations 

21 were completed. In the end, the same result 
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1 was obtained for the neutron-to-photon ratios.

2 I don't know if you have anything 

3 to add, Ron, or --

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes. Originally, 

5 SC&A did not agree with the method used to 

6 select the neutron-to-photon ratio.

7 Just a little background. A case 

8 made around uranium plants, you'll have a 

9 small amount of neutron dose. There was some 

10 NTA film used at Weldon Spring, but it wasn't 

11 recorded, apparently, and so -- neutron film, 

12 NTA film, and it wasn't recorded.

13 And so, how do you assign neutron 

14 dose? Well, there's a fairly constant ratio 

15 of neutron-to-gamma dose, photon dose. And 

16 so, the standard procedure is to assign that 

17 and say like a half a rem of neutrons per rem 

18 of photon if a person is working around that 

19 material.

20 And so, originally NIOSH had used 

21 some data from Fernald, which we really didn't 
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1 object to using that because it's a fairly 

2 constant ratio. But we did object to the way 

3 it was obtained.

4 And so, SC&A went out and did some 

5 calculations to see what they would arrive at. 

6 And through the exchange of information, we 

7 finally found out that we came out with the 

8 same numbers very close, 0.42 and 0.44 or 

9 something like that. Very close.

10 And so, I sent out an email, I 

11 believe, in -- recently since our last 

12 meeting, I sent out an email to the Work Group 

13 saying that we accept that number. I think 

14 that was on the 20th of September. And that 

15 we no longer have an issue on that.

16 And the Work Group can close that 

17 as far as the SC&A is concerned. That's up to 

18 you.

19 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Dr. Lemen, do you 

20 have any thoughts on this issue?

21 MEMBER LEMEN: No.
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1 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. I think I 

2 would agree to close that, too.

3 So, if there's nothing else under 

4 that issue, we can move to the 

5 off/normal/accidents and incidents.

6 DR. BUCHANAN: I would like to say 

7 something there. NIOSH, did you have anything 

8 on that?

9 I think that really should be 

10 Nine. I guess we can discuss it. We had no 

11 current action on our action item list from 

12 our 13th meeting. We had -- September 13th 

13 meeting we had no action items. And we left 

14 that up to the Work Group chair to close it if 

15 they wanted to.

16 We had no further task on that 

17 unless NIOSH has something new.

18 MR. ROLFES: No, there wasn't 

19 anything new, Ron. Your recollection is 

20 correct.

21 I think we had basically said 
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1 we've done all we can do on that issue, I 

2 believe, at the past couple of Working Group 

3 meetings. And that was another one of the 

4 things that you were going to leave up to the 

5 Working Group chair, I believe.

6 MR. KATZ: Right. Mike, this was 

7 one where Dick wasn't going to close it on his 

8 own. So, he wanted you to have the 

9 opportunity to read the transcript and the 

10 discussion tying this up.

11 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Yes, I've done 

12 part of that. It seems like there's been --

13 it's been fairly well discussed. And unless 

14 Dr. Lemen has any objections, I think we can 

15 close this.

16 MEMBER LEMEN: No objections.

17 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. So, now we 

18 will open the floor up to petitioners or 

19 claimants.

20 DR. BUCHANAN: We had one other 

21 item that wasn't on the agenda. It was on the 
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1 action item list that unfortunately wasn't on 

2 the agenda today. And that's Number 9, and 

3 that's geometry in extremity monitoring.

4 And last time we discussed this on 

5 September 13th, and NIOSH agreed to provide 

6 geometry correction factors and revised TBDs 

7 and establish a PER if necessary, to correct 

8 for geometry affect.

9 This comes from wearing the badge 

10 on the lapels to the radiation that might be 

11 assigned that would be higher -- the worker 

12 might get more dose to, say, the hands, the 

13 wrists, the arms or the legs or the torso as 

14 opposed to wearing it on his chest.

15 And so, NIOSH, did you have a 

16 response for that action item?

17 MR. ROLFES: Yes. Yes, Ron. This 

18 is Mark.

19 We did discuss this at the last 

20 Working Group, I believe. And we do now have 

21 a published DCAS TIB-13, which is Revision 1. 
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1 And the title of it is Selected Geometric 

2 Exposure Scenario Considerations for External 

3 Dose Reconstructions at Uranium Facilities.

4 So, that is something that will be 

5 considered in dose reconstruction for finding, 

6 for example, external dose to the lower torso, 

7 for example, when the badge is worn on the 

8 lapel or center mass of the chest.

9 So, we will need to put a 

10 statement into the Site Profile that will 

11 reference OTIB-13. And that will, I believe, 

12 close the geometry factors, Issue Number 9.

13 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. That was 

14 OTIB-13, and has that been posted yet?

15 MR. ROLFES: Yes. It's DCAS TIB16 13, Revision 1. And it was posted in November 

17 of 2010.

18 DR. BUCHANAN: Thank you.

19 MR. KATZ: Ron, just for the 

20 record, this Item 9, as well as the one that 

21 you raised that wasn't on the agenda, which 
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1 was Five, I think, these were, I think, 

2 already relegated as TBD matters. Which is 

3 why they're not on the agenda, because we're 

4 trying to get through the SEC matters for the 

5 upcoming meeting.

6 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Thanks, Ted. 

7 I just wanted to make sure the Work Group --

8 MR. KATZ: No, it's fine. It's 

9 fine. They haven't taken a lot of time. I 

10 just want to be clear as to how I set the 

11 agenda.

12 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Thanks.

13 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. Anything 

14 else before we get to listen to the 

15 petitioners and the claimants?

16 If not, Karen or Mary or Tina, the 

17 floor is open to you.

18 MS. JOHNSON: This is Karen.

19 I think at this time, I don't 

20 think I have anything else unless Tina does. 

21 We're kind of in the middle of going through 
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1 some of -- we've actually both just received 

2 part of our FOIA. So, we're still going 

3 through quite a few documents. So, we may 

4 have some questions in coming days.

5 Do you know if we still will be on 

6 the agenda for the Advisory Board meeting?

7 MR. KATZ: This is Ted, Karen.

8 It is on the agenda. It's -- I 

9 don't have the agenda in front of me. I think 

10 it's the first day though. Hold on a second. 

11 Let me look.

12 Yeah, it's on Wednesday at three 

13 o'clock in the afternoon, 3:15.

14 MS. JOHNSON: Okay.

15 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: So, this new data 

16 that you just got from your FOIA request, is 

17 there a lot of data?

18 Is it going to take you -- I guess 

19 my concern is if you may find substantive 

20 issues that you want the Board or the Work 

21 Group to consider and --
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1 MS. JOHNSON: We'd like to gather 

2 all of our documents that we've pulled 

3 together by the end of this week and forward 

4 it on to the Board and NIOSH and SC&A, if 

5 that's possible.

6 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Yes, I think Ted 

7 can make that happen, right, Ted?

8 MS. JOHNSON: Have it before the 

9 Board meeting?

10 MR. KATZ: Yes, Tina. If you have 

11 anything you want to send to me, I can get it 

12 distributed.

13 MS. JOHNSON: Okay. This is Karen.

14 MR. KATZ: Oh, Karen. I'm sorry. 

15 I'm sorry.

16 MS. JOHNSON: That's okay.

17 We'll go ahead and do that. Would 

18 it be best to email it to you if we can --

19 MR. KATZ: Yes, email is great.

20 MS. JOHNSON: Okay.

21 MR. KATZ: And let me just give you 
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1 my email right now.

2 MS. JOHNSON: Okay.

3 MR. KATZ: Or you have my email, 

4 actually. I think we've corresponded, haven't 

5 we?

6 MS. JOHNSON: Yes, I do have it.

7 MR. KATZ: Okay. So, just email 

8 me, and I'll get whatever you send, to all of 

9 the Board.

10 MS. JOHNSON: Okay. All right. 

11 Thank you.

12 MR. KATZ: As well as the status. 

13 Thank you.

14 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Anything else 

15 from any of the other petitioners or 

16 claimants?

17 If not, I guess we're at the place 

18 about report and recommendations to the Board. 

19 We still have an issue that is the data 

20 representative.

21 I don't know that -- I guess my 
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1 opinion is I don't know that I'm -- I would be 

2 ready -- I won't be at the meeting, but I 

3 hope, Dr. Lemen, I hope you can make a 

4 presentation for us, but I don't know that I'm 

5 in a place where I would recommend accepting 

6 NIOSH's position.

7 Dr. Lemen, how do you feel?

8 MEMBER LEMEN: I'm not either. I 

9 concur with you. I think we need to talk 

10 about it between us a little bit more, Mike.

11 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Yes, okay. So, I 

12 guess, just for the record, I think that we 

13 will probably say at this point we can't 

14 concur with NIOSH's position to deny the SEC.

15 MEMBER LEMEN: I agree.

16 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: And then Dick and 

17 I can talk at another time off line and --

18 MR. KATZ: Actually, we need to do 

19 this on line. This discussion is really part 

20 of the deliberation of the Work Group. It 

21 should not be off line.
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1 But, I mean, if you're not 

2 prepared to make a recommendation -- I'm not 

3 clear whether you're saying you're 

4 recommending to add a Class and what that 

5 basis might be, or you're not prepared to make 

6 a recommendation, period, to the Board, but I 

7 think you need to sort of decide what your 

8 course will be for next week and make that 

9 clear so that then -- and we can have Ron help 

10 Dick put together a presentation on it.

11 But I guess that much needs to be 

12 made clear, because that's really what comes 

13 from the Work Group is your recommendations 

14 and your basis.

15 But, I mean, I think Ron assuming 

16 he's available to do this, can put together 

17 the technical material so that you can present 

18 the whole story to the Board as it is.

19 And as it is, it sounds to me like 

20 it's unfinished on the blunders question that 

21 the representative data for the blunders 
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1 matter. So, that's something you're tasking 

2 SC&A to look further into, and they'll do 

3 that.

4 So, that's part of your story, but 

5 anyway --

6 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: I mean, yes, 

7 that's where I'm at. My recommendation is at 

8 this point, we don't concur with NIOSH.

9 MEMBER LEMEN: I guess at this 

10 point -- this is Dick Lemen -- that we can 

11 just say that at the Board meeting, Ted, and 

12 make that our presentation.

13 MR. KATZ: Okay. Then let's talk 

14 about what you would like for Ron to prepare. 

15 I think the Board has not heard about Weldon 

16 Spring, I believe, since they got the DCAS 

17 presentation; is that correct?

18 MR. ROLFES: Ted, this is Mark.

19 MR. KATZ: Yes.

20 MR. ROLFES: Dr. Lemen did provide 

21 an update to the full Advisory Board in St. 
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1 Louis.

2 MEMBER LEMEN: That's correct.

3 MR. KATZ: Okay.

4 MR. ROLFES: You may have been a 

5 little distracted because of the tornado.

6 MR. KATZ: Well, that's fine. No, 

7 that's good and thank you for reminding me. 

8 But as far as -- I think this should be sort 

9 of quite a full update so that they can --

10 again, that was a while ago anyway even if 

11 they've done that, if we've done that.

12 So, I think it should be a fairly 

13 full presentation of what the issues were, how 

14 the issues that have been closed have been 

15 closed, about this issue that remains open 

16 related to blunders and whether the data is 

17 representative --

18 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: That's what Ron 

19 should put together.

20 MR. KATZ: Yes, and the radon 

21 question as well is one that you can present 
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1 clearly. There's not more to do there, but 

2 it's an issue that, as you said, the Board 

3 would be interested in. So, that can be 

4 presented.

5 If that sounds good to you, then 

6 that's what, you know, Ron can put that 

7 together in a PowerPoint that, Dick, you can 

8 present.

9 MEMBER LEMEN: Yes, I think that 

10 that would be fine. And I think what we 

11 discussed today and came to closure on, Ron is 

12 aware of that. So, include all of that in the 

13 presentation.

14 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Well, and then I 

15 think it should be mentioned that the 

16 petitioners were not -- they were put in a 

17 position where they couldn't address their 

18 concerns because of recently getting the 

19 material they had requested.

20 So, we need to give them time to 

21 hear them out. I mean, I know they'll have 
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1 the right during comments, but I think it 

2 should be known that, you know, they were on 

3 our agenda here for this meeting, but they 

4 were not in a position to bring their concerns 

5 to us because of the lack of timeliness or 

6 whatever reason for the --

7 MR. KATZ: Yes, I think that's a 

8 bit unfair. I mean, it's a FOIA request and I 

9 don't know when it was submitted.

10 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: I don't either. 

11 Okay.

12 MR. KATZ: I think simply enough 

13 Karen has the opportunity to provide me with 

14 information, but she certainly is welcome as 

15 well to say if she needs more time for more of 

16 the FOIA to be addressed if it has not been 

17 addressed, or if she needs more time the 

18 documents she has, that's most certainly 

19 something that the Board would be interested 

20 in as well.

21 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: I didn't mean to 
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1 offend anyone by saying the lack of time 

2 limits. I just meant they were not prepared 

3 to bring -- they didn't have the chance to get 

4 prepared to bring their concerns to us. And I 

5 want to hear those.

6 MR. KATZ: Right. Absolutely.

7 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Okay. Anything 

8 else?

9 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. Do you want 

10 me to prepare this slide presentation with Dr. 

11 Lemen, or with you, Mike? Is he going to give 

12 it?

13 If so, I'll work with him or --

14 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: Yes, you can work 

15 with him. I'll be on the phone as much as I 

16 can.

17 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

18 CHAIRMAN GIBSON: I won't be able 

19 to make the meeting. I've got some 

20 commitments here I've got to do.

21 Okay. Well, anything else?
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1 If not, I guess we're ready to 

2 adjourn. I'd like to thank everyone for 

3 taking the time to have this meeting and I 

4 guess I'll be talking to you via phone when 

5 you're in Tampa.

6 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Mike.

7 (Whereupon, the meeting was 

8 concluded at 11:06 a.m.)

9 

10 

11