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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

+ + + + +

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

+ + + + +

92nd MEETING

+ + + + +

WEDNESDAY

JULY 17, 2013

+ + + + +

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

Mountain Daylight Time, in the Shilo Inn, 780 

Lindsay Boulevard, Idaho Falls, Idaho, James 

M. Melius, Chairman, presiding.
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PRESENT:

JAMES M. MELIUS, Chairman

HENRY ANDERSON, Member

JOSIE BEACH, Member

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

R. WILLIAM FIELD, Member

MARK GRIFFON, Member

DAVID KOTELCHUCK, Member

JAMES E. LOCKEY, Member

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

JOHN W. POSTON, SR., Member

DAVID B. RICHARDSON, Member*

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member

LORETTA R. VALERIO, Member

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member*

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

ADAMS, NANCY, NIOSH Contractor

BALDRIDGE, SANDRA*

BARRIE, TERRIE

BUCHANAN, RON, SC&A*

BURGOS, ZAIDA, NIOSH

CRAWFORD, FRANK (CHRIS), DOL

FITZGERALD, JOE, SC&A

HINNEFELD, STU, DCAS

LEWIS, GREG, DOE

LIN, JENNY, HHS

KINMAN, JOSH, DCAS Contractor

MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A

MAURO, JOHN, SC&A*

MARSCHKE, STEVE, SC&A*

NETON, JIM, DCAS

RAY, SARAH*

RUTHERFORD, LAVON, DCAS

STIVER, JOHN, SC&A

THURBER, BILL, SC&A*
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A-G-E-N-D-A

Welcome.................................... 5

Baker Brothers (SEC Petition) (Toledo, OH; 

1945-1996)(PV)

Dr. Paul Ziemer, TBD 6000 WG Chair ... 7

Procedure Reviews: TIB-10 "Best Estimate of 

External Dose Reconstruction for Glove Box 

Workers" and OTIB-23 "Assignment of Missed 

Neutron Doses Based on Dosimetry Records". 25

Ms. Wanda Munn, Procedures Review Subcommittee 

Chair

Pantex SEC Petition (1951-1957; 1984-1990 -

uranium and thorium; 1991 - thorium)(PV).. 53

Mr. Joe Fitzgerald, SC&A

Brookhaven National Laboratory Site

Profile Review (PV).................... .121

Ms. Josie Beach, WG Chair

Feeds Materials Production Center SEC Petition 

(Fernald, OH; 1951-1983 - subcontractors; 

1953-1967 - thorium)(PV)................. 138

Mr. John Stiver, SC&A 

Mr. Brad Clawson, WG Chair

Petitioners: Sandra Baldridge
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

2 8:32 a.m.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good morning, 

4 everybody. Welcome and let me turn it over to 

5 Ted for the initial formalities.

6 MR. KATZ: Thank you. Good 

7 morning and welcome to Day Two. No public 

8 comment session today, but we have a number of 

9 SEC sessions. 

10 The materials for today are posted 

11 on the NIOSH website under the Board section, 

12 under Meetings, today's date. So if you want, 

13 people in the public on the line, you can 

14 follow along by going to the website and 

15 pulling up those presentations there. Or you 

16 can also follow along by Live Meeting. And 

17 the agenda of the meeting is also posted there 

18 on their website. On the agenda is the 

19 information for joining the Live Meeting and 

20 that will allow you to see the presentations 

21 as they're delivered throughout the day today.

22 Let me go to roll call for Board 
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1 Members. And there's only really one item 

2 with any conflicts, so I will only speak to 

3 conflict where it occurs. 

4 (Roll call.)

5 MR. KATZ: And then, so, for 

6 conflicts, the only conflict is Dr. Lockey has 

7 a conflict for Fernald. So he will be recused 

8 during that session. 

9 MEMBER VALERIO: Excuse me, Ted?

10 I'm conflicted out of Pantex.

11 MR. KATZ: Oh, I'm sorry. Pantex, 

12 I forgot. Sorry, right. Pantex. Thank you, 

13 Loretta, for noting that. So she'll recuse 

14 herself from that session. And I think that 

15 takes care of it. That does take care of it, 

16 right?

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. We've 

18 asked Dr. Lockey to leave town for his 

19 recusal. For Fernald.

20 (Laughter.)

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Our first item 

22 of business today is Baker Brothers. And I 
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1 believe Paul Ziemer is going to make a 

2 presentation. And I think, Stu, are you 

3 working the slides? Or is this happening? 

4 Somebody, please.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: I can certainly do 

6 that.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. 

8 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, well, I have 

9 my own slides here, so I'll assume -- are you 

10 all seeing them there in the room?

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

12 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay, so I'll go 

13 ahead and start then.

14 So, I do want to thank SC&A for 

15 actually preparing the slides for me, and 

16 particularly Bill Thurber. And Bill sent me 

17 an early version of these and I did approve 

18 them. 

19 And yesterday I discovered -- is 

20 Bill on the line, by the way?

21 MR. KATZ: Yes.

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, okay. Bill, 
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1 I discovered a single flaw in the slides 

2 yesterday. And that fatal flaw is on Slide 1. 

3 And that is the spelling of my name. So, 

4 anyway, those of you who have it on your flash 

5 drives you can correct that spelling. It's 

6 always I before E, especially after Z, is the 

7 rule.

8 (Laughter.)

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: So let's go on and 

10 get into the technical content here.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We will note 

12 that in our review of the contractor.

13 (Laughter.)

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right. There's a 

15 brief summary of the petition history. I 

16 don't need to go through all the dates here. 

17 You have them before you. But it does begin 

18 with the receipt of the petition. 

19 It's an 83.13 petition that was 

20 received in June of 2012 and then qualified in 

21 July. The Evaluation Report was approved in 

22 November 2012. And the Class, NIOSH proposed 
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1 the SEC Class for the operating period which 

2 was `43 and `44. That was proposed in 

3 December of 2012. And the Board recommended 

4 that SEC Class in the January meeting, January 

5 31, 2013. That was for the operational 

6 period.

7 Action wasn't taken on the 

8 residual period at that time, and the TBD 6000 

9 Work Group was asked to review the residual 

10 period and make a recommendation. So 

11 following the January action, the Work Group 

12 did do that work. We actually completed that 

13 work in March but we were awaiting this 

14 meeting to make the formal recommendation.

15 The next slide shows a little bit 

16 of the background, just to remind you of Baker 

17 Brothers, located in Toledo, Ohio. They are 

18 an AWE, Atomic Weapons Employer. Again, the 

19 operational period is `43 and `44. The 

20 residual radiation period, `45 through `94, 

21 and 1996. There was remediation done by the 

22 Department of Energy in 1995.
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1 Also, just to remind you of the 

2 operational actions there in `43 and `44, 

3 DuPont and the University of Chicago had 

4 subcontracted Baker Brothers to do machine 

5 rods and slugs, uranium rods and slugs for use 

6 in the reactors at Oak Ridge and at Hanford.

7 The approach that was proposed by 

8 NIOSH for the residual period was similar to 

9 what's done in other facilities, and that is 

10 to take the value of the residual, I'll call 

11 it the residual radiation, basically based on 

12 airborne and surface contamination at the 

13 beginning of the residual period. The 

14 starting airborne concentration that was 

15 proposed is the value you see here. It's the 

16 geometric mean. It's based on the maximum 

17 daily weighted air concentrations for 

18 operators at the facility of 5,480 

19 disintegrations per minute. And that's per 

20 cubic meter. My particular slide says M3. It 

21 should be M exponent 3 and meters cubed. And 

22 then assuming 30 days deposition and a 
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1 settling velocity of 7.5 times 10 to the minus 

2 fourth meters per second. 

3 So if you take that air 

4 concentration and you multiply it by the 

5 settling velocity, which is the 7.5 times 10 

6 to the minus fourth meters per second and the 

7 number of seconds in 30 days, you end up with 

8 a surface concentration of -- well, they don't 

9 give it as an exponent here. It's 10,653,120 

10 dpm per square meter of surface. And then one 

11 assumes exponential decay following the OTIB12 70 recommendation during the residual period.

13 And following this approach NIOSH, 

14 concluded the doses could be reconstructed. 

15 And this was what the Work Group is looking at 

16 with the assistance of SC&A. 

17 One of the issues that was of 

18 concern was the fact that there had been 

19 uranium fires during the operational period. 

20 You notice on the next slide, or on the same 

21 slide here, the possibility that uranium fires 

22 could cause elevated surface concentrations so 
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1 that the TBD 6000 approach might have been 

2 inappropriate, particularly if no cleanup 

3 occurred at the end of the operational period.

4 And there was some concern that 

5 the value that NIOSH was using might have been 

6 inappropriate if the fires had somehow 

7 impacted adversely on that value.

8 So what SC&A did in evaluating 

9 this was to consider some data that's 

10 available in the publication by Adley and 

11 others that shows that -- it actually gives 

12 values for uranium machining fires. And I 

13 think some of that Adley data, I think, was 

14 distributed to the Board. I'm not certain if 

15 those SC&A White Paper memos of -- there was a 

16 memo of April 2013 and another in February. 

17 I'm not sure if those were distributed to the 

18 Board. 

19 But basically what it showed was 

20 that the air concentrations that derived from 

21 those fires were actually lower than that 

22 5,480 dpm per cubic meter that had been used 
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1 by NIOSH. So the NIOSH value was conservative 

2 even considering the possibility of uranium 

3 fires.

4 So, the bottom line of all this 

5 was that uranium fires, although they did 

6 cause elevated values, that they were within 

7 the envelope of the 5,480. And the actual 

8 values are shown in this next slide from the 

9 Adley report. They ranged, for the uranium 

10 fires, from 182 to 2,340 dpm per cubic meter.

11 So the bottom line was that the 

12 doses during the residual period could be 

13 reconstructed with sufficient accuracy as 

14 proposed by NIOSH. And SC&A recommended that 

15 no change to the SEC was required, that the 

16 residual period could be reconstructed.

17 The Work Group agreed with that 

18 and voted to recommend to the full Board that 

19 an SEC Class not be extended through the 

20 residual period for Baker Brothers. So that 

21 is the recommendation out of the Work Group.

22 I think, if there are questions I 
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1 can certainly try to answer them. Bill 

2 Thurber is available. Is Tom Jones available 

3 also from NIOSH, who did the work on this for 

4 NIOSH? 

5 MR. HINNEFELD: I don't think Tom 

6 is going to be on the phone, but Jim, I think, 

7 is prepared to address anything that we might 

8 have.

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay. So Mr. 

10 Chairman, that is our recommendation.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Do I hear 

12 any questions for Paul? Or Bill or Jim on 

13 this? I think it's pretty straightforward. 

14 Yes, Jim Lockey.

15 MEMBER LOCKEY: Paul, this is just 

16 for my edification. What's the physics behind 

17 a lower exposure level during a fire, during a 

18 machining process? Just so I understand it. 

19 It doesn't make sense to me but it's probably 

20 because of my lack of knowledge.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, I don't know 

22 if I can say that there's -- what the physics 
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1 are. I think we just have empirical 

2 information. We have values from uranium 

3 fires and we have values from the machining 

4 processes. I don't know if Bill or Tom can 

5 answer that in a more definitive way. It's 

6 just what information we have. Basically 

7 empirical.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Anybody else 

9 want to comment on that?

10 DR. MAURO: Bill, are you on the 

11 line? This is John Mauro. I was sort of 

12 partnering up with Bill to help out with this. 

13 If Bill is there, you probably best could take 

14 a shot at this. Otherwise I think I can help 

15 a little. Can everyone hear me okay?

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, John.

17 DR. MAURO: I'll be brief.

18 (Laughter.)

19 DR. MAURO: That 5,000 number is 

20 based on what's called centerless grinding. So 

21 when you look at all of the data that's out 

22 there from AWE facilities, NIOSH picked the 
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1 geometric mean for probably the worst type of 

2 machining operation you could pick.

3 And the reality is it's a very 

4 high number, especially as applied to Baker 

5 Brothers where they were not doing centerless 

6 grinding, they were doing other types of 

7 machining operations.

8 In any event, the nature of that 

9 number, which is an empirical number measured 

10 for centerless grinding, when you then go into 

11 the literature and say, okay, let's look at 

12 all the data that's out there that we could 

13 capture at these various facilities where 

14 there were some types of fires, briquette 

15 burning, different kinds of activities to see 

16 what the data looks like there.

17 When we look at that data we find 

18 out none of the concentrations measured as 

19 reported in Adley and Harris and Kingsley, 

20 where there was known some burning going on, 

21 that none of those measured values were as 

22 high as that 5,000 number that was measured 
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1 for centerless grinding. 

2 So, I mean, that's the information 

3 we have. And as you pointed out, Paul, that 

4 is purely an empirical comparison that seems 

5 to support that 5,000 number as a pretty good 

6 number, even under these conditions where 

7 there might have been some fires.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Does that help, 

9 Jim? 

10 MEMBER LOCKEY: That helps very 

11 much, thank you. 

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Any other 

13 questions? Yes, Brad.

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: How much data do 

15 they -- do they have air sampling data for 

16 this? Or just nothing? It seems like to me 

17 that they're using everybody else's 

18 information. 

19 DR. NETON: This is Jim Neton. 

20 Yes, it's surrogate data based on TBD 6000, 

21 which has been pretty thoroughly vetted 

22 through the Working Group that these values 
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1 are a compendium of values that have been 

2 observed in somewhat controlled situations.

3 We're very confident that these 

4 are representative of the operations. As John 

5 Mauro pointed out, we picked the highest of 

6 those grinding-type operations to use as a 

7 bounding value.

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: And I understand 

9 TBD 6000. I was just wondering if they had 

10 any data at all from Baker Brothers, any air 

11 sampling data at all that --

12 DR. NETON: Oh, yes, there's 

13 production. Production values. 

14 MEMBER CLAWSON: Production.

15 DR. NETON: That's an SEC already 

16 though. We've added it.

17 MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. It's 

18 years after that.

19 DR. NETON: Right.

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: I was trying to 

21 clarify that. Thank you.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 
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1 questions or comments? My understanding is 

2 this is a formal recommendation from the Work 

3 Group that we, you know, accept the NIOSH 

4 conclusion that this should not be added, this 

5 residual period should not be added to the 

6 SEC. So if there are no further questions I 

7 think we should have our vote. 

8 MR. KATZ: Dr. Anderson?

9 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

10 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach?

11 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

12 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson?

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

14 MR. KATZ: Dr. Field?

15 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

16 MR. KATZ: Mr. Griffon?

17 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes.

18 MR. KATZ: Dr. Kotelchuck?

19 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

20 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lemen wasn't 

21 present. Dr. Lemen, are you with us now? 

22 (No response.)
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1 Okay, I'll collect his vote after 

2 the meeting. Dr. Lockey?

3 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes.

4 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius?

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

6 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn?

7 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston?

9 MEMBER POSTON: Yes.

10 MR. KATZ: Dr. Richardson?

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

12 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler?

13 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

14 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield?

15 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

16 MR. KATZ: Ms. Valerio?

17 MEMBER VALERIO: Yes.

18 MR. KATZ: And Dr. Ziemer.

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

20 MR. KATZ: Okay. And it's 

21 unanimous, one vote to collect, and the motion 

22 passes. 
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1 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And we just 

2 happen to have a letter ready. I've been 

3 typing here very quickly while you were 

4 voting. So I will read this into the record 

5 and so forth.

6 The Advisory Board on Radiation 

7 Worker Health, the Board, has completed its 

8 evaluation of Special Exposure Cohort Petition 

9 00204 concerning workers at the Baker Brothers 

10 site in Toledo, Ohio, under the statutory 

11 requirements established by the Energy 

12 Employees Occupational Illness Compensation 

13 Program Act of 2000 incorporated into 42 CFR 

14 83.13.

15 The National Institute for 

16 Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH, has 

17 recommended that individual dose 

18 reconstructions are feasible for all Atomic 

19 Weapons Employees and DOE employees, 

20 contractors and subcontractors who worked at 

21 the Baker Brothers site in Toledo, Ohio during 

22 the applicable covered residual radiation 
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1 remediation period from January 1, 1945 

2 through December 31, 1996.

3 NIOSH found that it has access to 

4 adequate exposure monitoring and other 

5 information necessary to do individual dose 

6 reconstructions with sufficient accuracy for 

7 members of this group and therefore a Class 

8 covering this group should not be added to the 

9 SEC. The Board concurs with this 

10 determination. 

11 Based on these considerations and 

12 discussion at the July 16th and 17th, 2013 

13 Board meeting held in Idaho Falls, Idaho, the 

14 Board recommends that this Class not be added 

15 to the SEC. Enclosed is the documentation 

16 from the Board meetings where this SEC Class 

17 was discussed. The documentation includes 

18 copies of the petition, the NIOSH review 

19 thereof, and related materials. If any of 

20 these items are unavailable at this time they 

21 will follow shortly.

22 There's one typo in the third, 
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1 essentially fourth paragraph. It should be 

2 "dose," not "does." 

3 I don't know if you got your 

4 email, Paul. I did email the letters, 

5 actually all three letters for today, to you, 

6 to your home email.

7 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I did get it.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So, any 

9 comments? Corrections? If not, we should be 

10 set. Okay.

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: Did you get Jenny 

12 Lin's corrections on that one?

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Which?

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: I know counsel had 

15 a couple of corrections. I don't recall if it 

16 was on this.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes. There were 

18 some corrections that were already made and I 

19 think that you may be opening up the old one 

20 with the corrections added to them.

21 MEMBER ZIEMER: Okay.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: The track 
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1 changes. I said I didn't want to be 

2 embarrassed by my corrections on my draft 

3 letter so I had Zaida print it out without the 

4 track changes. But if you have any other 

5 changes, Paul, just either --

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: No, I'm good. I'm 

7 good.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

9 you. Okay, thanks, everybody. 

10 Wanda? 

11 MR. KATZ: While Wanda's traveling 

12 to the mic let me just check and see on the 

13 line. Do we have Steve Marschke on the line?

14 MR. MARSCHKE: Yes, I'm here.

15 MR. KATZ: Oh, great. Hi, Steve.

16 MR. MARSCHKE: Hi, Ted.

17 MEMBER MUNN: Good morning. We've 

18 put together slides for you for information 

19 concerning a couple of the longstanding TBDs -

20 - I mean TIBs that we've had working inside 

21 the Subcommittee for a number of years.

22 The first of those is Technical 
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1 Information Bulletin 10. This has been a very 

2 interesting and I think extremely pertinent 

3 TIB for all concerned. It is relative to 

4 exposure geometry. 

5 Understandably, there has been a 

6 concern, many of which have been discussed 

7 here on the Board itself, with regard to 

8 positioning of source terms as opposed to 

9 positioning of dosimeter equipment, so that 

10 there was very much concern about the 

11 underestimation of dose that could be a result 

12 of having objects interfere with or be at 

13 unexpected angles to the material that was 

14 actually being handled.

15 This was particularly of 

16 importance with claimants who were glove box 

17 operators. And with the dosimeters being worn 

18 on the lapel quite often it was assumed that, 

19 as you can see from the drawing here, the 

20 triangular distribution of photon would be of 

21 concern for any dose estimator.

22 This particular TIB provides the 
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1 correction factors that were necessary for the 

2 reconstructors who were doing best estimate 

3 work for organs that are in the lower torso.

4 The approach was an interesting 

5 one to most of us. They calculated the gamma 

6 flux at 30 points on the chest and at 30 

7 points on the abdomen and determined the ratio 

8 of each of those, of the abdominal flux to the 

9 chest flux. Using the mean ratio of those 

10 calculations was selected as a correction 

11 factor for lower torso organs.

12 As you can see, this was an early 

13 TIB. We have looked at various aspects of 

14 this and it's been worked pretty thoroughly 

15 throughout the years. We've made a concerted 

16 effort in the last two years to try to close 

17 the outstanding questions that remain and get 

18 the revisions that were necessary on the 

19 street. NIOSH has done a good in helping us 

20 get that done.

21 We had nine findings that were 

22 brought to us originally by SC&A. And our 
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1 Board Review System which, for the benefit of 

2 those in the public who are not Board Members, 

3 is a closed, internal document that is used by 

4 the Board to keep track, in digital form, of 

5 the status of these various reports. So you 

6 won't be able to reach the Board's Review 

7 System by the use of the URL that is shown on 

8 the slide that we're looking at here.

9 Any information that is contained 

10 -- these are mere summaries in this slide. And 

11 anything that would have been contained in the 

12 BRS is already covered verbatim by the 

13 transcripts of the individual Board meetings. 

14 So our Procedures transcripts will give you 

15 any of the additional conversations that went 

16 on and the logic that was eventually developed 

17 during our Board meetings.

18 Six of those findings are now 

19 closed. Three of them are in abeyance. And 

20 we'll take a look at some of that history so 

21 that you can get a better feel for some of the 

22 details.
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1 The first one was concerns by the 

2 contractor that the bulletin didn't have the 

3 transparency that they'd like to see, the 

4 radioactive sources were not specifically 

5 identified, and the dimensions and locations, 

6 thickness of the walls, some of the details 

7 that they wanted to see in order to be 

8 reassured about the development of the 

9 correction factors weren't apparent to them in 

10 reading the original bulletin. NIOSH provided 

11 an Appendix to list the details that would 

12 satisfy this need and we closed that item in 

13 2011.

14 There was also a concern indicated 

15 by finding number 2 that the lower torso 

16 organs hadn't been specified. So there was an 

17 addition made, a phrase reading, "other 

18 cancers that appear in the region of those 

19 organs" -- that was the phrase -- to cover the 

20 specifics of stomach, liver, bladder, the 

21 other items below in the lower torso that were 

22 not specified in the original document. And 
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1 that was added to Section 2 of the document to 

2 make sure that cancers like sarcomas and 

3 lymphomas that might occur anywhere in the 

4 body were covered.

5 SC&A also questioned the design of 

6 the analysis that compared particle flux over 

7 various locations on the torso rather than 

8 actually modeling the variation of the 

9 dosimeter response from the location. And 

10 they also questioned the assumptions that were 

11 made about the glove box model. 

12 So the Subcommittee debated these 

13 questions at considerable length and came to 

14 the conclusion that the use of the 95th 

15 percentile instead of the mean for the 

16 correction factor was going to be adequate, 

17 and we have changed that item to in abeyance.

18 Instead of the 30 by 30 array, it 

19 was felt that it would be better to compare 

20 the gamma flux to the individual organ that 

21 was being considered by the claimant. And to 

22 indicate what the -- compare that to the lapel 
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1 monitor.

2 But it was agreed instead that we 

3 would, as I said, use the 95th percentile from 

4 the 30 by 30 array as the correction factor. 

5 And that's now going to be incorporated.

6 SC&A questioned the use of the 

7 illustration calculations rather than the use 

8 of anthropomorphic phantom. And we talked 

9 about that, but in view of the fact that 

10 SC&A's calculated correction factor was 

11 essentially the same as the calculation using 

12 the anatomical illustration, the additional 

13 work didn't seem to be merited. So we closed 

14 the item in 2008. That's a fairly older 

15 closure.

16 This is one of those places where 

17 we talked about the Attila software at 

18 considerable length, and again it was the 

19 agreement of all that the use of the 95th 

20 percentile instead of the mean for the 

21 correction factor would suffice to be 

22 claimant-favorable in all respects.
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1 The ninth item was concern that 

2 the use of Rocky Flats to validate the model 

3 was questionable since the Rocky Flats data 

4 was for glove box and non-glove box workers, 

5 and the information that was necessary for the 

6 contractor's view of what was required for 

7 radiation sources wasn't included in the 

8 original document. 

9 But we, on discussion, understood 

10 that the Rocky Flats data was only used as 

11 proof of principle, that it really was not a 

12 part of the justification for the glove box 

13 factor. And that reference had been removed 

14 from the TIB and we closed that item.

15 Anyone have any questions with 

16 respect to what we've done with TIB-10? Yes, 

17 John.

18 MEMBER POSTON: It's easier to ask 

19 questions since I don't remember. When this 

20 model was used in evaluation are there 

21 specific designs of glove boxes that were 

22 used? 
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1 The reason I'm asking is, for 

2 example, at Savannah River they added 

3 additional shielding to their glove boxes. 

4 Sometimes it was quite thick. And so the only 

5 source that would be penetrating out of the 

6 glove box except through the glass were 

7 through the glove openings themselves. So 

8 that would change the model significantly, and 

9 the dose factors that a person would be 

10 exposed to. And that may be something you --

11 one of these guys has to answer.

12 MEMBER MUNN: Well, yes. Stu?

13 MR. HINNEFELD: There was some 

14 discussion about variability of glove box 

15 design, because there was a myriad of glove 

16 box designs.

17 MEMBER POSTON: Yes.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: The situation you 

19 describe, and most situations that we 

20 considered non-standard, would introduce that, 

21 they would introduce shielding to lower body 

22 above what was at the torso or base plate. 
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1 And which would cause our estimate of 

2 adjustment factor to be too high.

3 MEMBER POSTON: Right.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: In other words, we 

5 would adjust these doses more than they needed 

6 so we had a bounding response. And for that 

7 we decided that because of the myriad designs 

8 even at a given facility -- you know, not 

9 every design at every facility was uniform; 

10 they changed over time and so on -- we felt 

11 like it was better to stay with not making 

12 adjustments based on design and rely strictly 

13 on a geometric consideration without the 

14 consideration for the other shielding.

15 MEMBER POSTON: Thank you.

16 DR. MAURO: This is John Mauro, 

17 just to add from SC&A's perspective. This 

18 question was raised during the process and 

19 when we ran these MCNP calculations we looked 

20 at a number of different design glove boxes. 

21 Not the specific issue you just mentioned, but 

22 we did look at a variety of designs to see if 
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1 the different glove boxes that were used could 

2 change this correction factor, which I believe 

3 ended up being around a factor of 2. And we 

4 found that really the different glove boxes 

5 assumed really didn't change that. That was 

6 not a critical factor in affecting the 

7 correction factor. 

8 But the particular question you 

9 asked, I guess I'm not quite sure of the 

10 degree to which that was part of our 

11 consideration. 

12 MEMBER MUNN: Stu and John 

13 articulated that far better than I could.

14 MEMBER POSTON: Well, it's a 

15 complex situation.

16 MEMBER MUNN: It is.

17 MEMBER POSTON: And you simplified 

18 it. And I understand what you did, but it's 

19 much more complicated than what's done. In 

20 some areas, for example, again at Savannah 

21 River, the glove boxes are arranged in a U. So 

22 a person that's working in the middle glove 
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1 box is actually being irradiated by streaming 

2 through the glove ports on the two from either 

3 side. So it's a very complex geometry 

4 associated with these kinds of exposures.

5 MEMBER MUNN: As you may recall, 

6 we tried to take all that into consideration. 

7 We gave a great deal of attention to this 

8 particular item and it's one of the reasons 

9 why it was on the books for so long. It was 

10 complex for all concerned.

11 Anyone else? Yes, Brad.

12 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, I guess 

13 I've got to come at it from a little bit 

14 different standpoint than John, but I agree 

15 with him on this. I guess my issue is what we 

16 found out at Hanford and PFP where they put 

17 shielding on the front of the glove box but 

18 nothing underneath, had very thin shielding 

19 which then the person is backed up against 

20 another. You're getting scatter radiation 

21 from underneath of it. And this is where 

22 their lower torso was actually receiving more 
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1 than what their upper was because glove box 

2 design was to shield them, their body, but 

3 nothing underneath it. 

4 I saw item number 6, which was 

5 this, and it's in abeyance I guess like that. 

6 I was just wondering, I agree with John, this 

7 is pretty complex. I know you guys drew it up 

8 pretty right, but as we found out in Hanford, 

9 the shielding of it was completely -- they had 

10 to reevaluate that.

11 MEMBER MUNN: Jim?

12 DR. NETON: TIB-10 is really a 

13 generic calculation to address the situation 

14 and it's bounding for -- as it's been 

15 described. There are a myriad of facility16 specific conditions that come up when you're 

17 doing dose reconstructions and those would 

18 need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis. 

19 You can't have a document like this cover all 

20 possible combinations. 

21 For example, I remember neutron 

22 glove boxes at Mound, they had sort of this 
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1 galley-type operation. That was considered 

2 specifically in that instance. So I think 

3 TIB-10, as it is, is adequately -- the math is 

4 adequate to describe the variance in the two 

5 measurements. But if there's other special 

6 situations they would need to be incorporated 

7 outside of the realm of TIB-10.

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: So, Jim, if I'm 

9 understanding you, what you're doing is you're 

10 taking a generic glove box and just the basis 

11 for that. So each one of these would have to 

12 be on a case-by-case scenario.

13 I guess I get into a worry when I 

14 start hearing, well, we put shielding up on 

15 this one so we're going to -- because most of 

16 these glove boxes were torn out 20 years ago.

17 DR. NETON: I really don't think 

18 in TIB-10 the shielding actually comes into 

19 play. It's a geometric correction factor. 

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay.

21 DR. NETON: Assuming that the 

22 shielding is equal for both sides. If you 
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1 start putting shielding down lower, as Dr. 

2 Poston points out, it's going to be an over3 correction. You're going to overestimate the 

4 person's dose to the lower torso.

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: So this whole one 

6 was just set up for the geometric.

7 DR. NETON: Only a geometric 

8 correction, ignoring any additional shielding 

9 or lack thereof. It's just you're physically, 

10 you know, the badge is physically further away 

11 from the source than your lower organs.

12 MEMBER POSTON: I think the 

13 important thing that you just said was it's an 

14 over-correction. So you're getting a higher 

15 estimate of dose.

16 DR. NETON: Yes.

17 MEMBER POSTON: So that's 

18 favorable.

19 DR. NETON: Yes.

20 MEMBER MUNN: We're using the 95th 

21 percentile. 

22 Yes, Henry?
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1 MEMBER ANDERSON: With the 

2 geometric issue like that, height becomes an 

3 issue. So in your 30 by 30 grid, what was the 

4 standard height of the individual that you --

5 I mean, if you had somebody who was 6'8" 

6 versus somebody who was 5'2", your badge is 

7 going to be considerably closer to your 

8 abdomen if you're short. I mean, so it's more 

9 just what was the -- did you take into account 

10 height at all in the model or not?

11 DR. NETON: Yes, it was discussed. 

12 I believe this was a reference man-type 

13 height, whatever that is these days. A little 

14 taller than reference man? 

15 But if you think about what we've 

16 done, we've taken the 95th percentile. And 

17 so, in reality, it's taking the ratio of what 

18 the badge would read to probably the lowest 

19 organ. You know what I'm saying? It's 

20 further away than -- there's a distribution of 

21 the locations of the organs. Since we've 

22 taken the 95th percentile, that kind of 
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1 stretches out the range, if you will. But 

2 it's pretty impossible to adjust these things 

3 on a case-by-case basis. 

4 MEMBER ANDERSON: No, I was just -

5 -

6 DR. NETON: You raise a good 

7 point.

8 MEMBER ANDERSON: It is what it 

9 is, but I was just curious as to what a U is. 

10 Because also the taller you are, then when 

11 you're actually using the reading that's 

12 coming from their badge they could be 

13 considerably further away so the badge reading 

14 is going to be lower and you move their 

15 abdomen up. So it's a challenge.

16 DR. NETON: Well, I'm not so sure 

17 that height has as much to do with the 

18 separation between the lapel and the GI tract. 

19 You can be 7 feet tall or 4 feet tall and the 

20 delta between those two locations is not as 

21 great as the delta in the height. You know 

22 what I'm saying? If it's a geometric 
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1 correction it's not as variable as the height 

2 might imply. It was discussed. I don't 

3 recall all the --

4 MR. MARSCHKE: This is Steve 

5 Marschke. I agree with Jim. Basically, we 

6 did discuss using different heights. And I 

7 think what we -- again, what we ended on is 

8 because there's 30 points covering the chest, 

9 the gamma flux was calculated at 30 points 

10 covering the chest. That could kind of be 

11 interpreted as being at different heights on 

12 the chest, or individuals with different 

13 heights. 

14 And we felt that by going --

15 again, as Jim said, going with the 95th 

16 percentile, you're selecting a difference 

17 between the chest dose flux point and the 

18 abdomen flux point which is relatively close 

19 together. 

20 But the model that was calculated 

21 -- because there are 900 combinations there, 

22 it includes also individuals who have greater 
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1 distance between the chest and the abdomen.

2 MEMBER ANDERSON: Again, it 

3 appears to me that you use the mean of the 

4 differences between the 30 points, not the 

5 maximum point and the lower point to maximize 

6 it.

7 MR. MARSCHKE: That's what they 

8 started out using, the mean of the ratio. But 

9 then we decided on the 95th percentile. 

10 MEMBER ANDERSON: Ninety-fifth 

11 percentile of what though?

12 MEMBER MUNN: Of the distribution.

13 MR. MARSCHKE: Basically you take 

14 all the --

15 MEMBER ANDERSON: The distribution 

16 of the ratio.

17 MR. MARSCHKE: -- points, the dose 

18 ratios, and you find out the 95th percentile 

19 of those ratios. 

20 MEMBER MUNN: Okay. Any other 

21 questions? Yes, Phil.

22 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: In this model, 
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1 what if the workers say that, you know, they 

2 quite often wore lead aprons? How are you 

3 going to adjust for that?

4 MEMBER MUNN: Do you want to 

5 address the lead apron issue for him?

6 MR. HINNEFELD: The lead apron 

7 wouldn't be a question for the glove box 

8 adjustment. It would be a question, I guess, 

9 for the interpretation of the badge and was 

10 the badge worn under the apron or over the 

11 apron. So, it's essentially -- the use of a 

12 lead apron is a different question than the 

13 adjustment for a glove box.

14 MEMBER MUNN: Remember this is 

15 just a geometric correction factor. And that 

16 would be a question the individual dose 

17 reconstructor would be addressing in a best 

18 estimate. 

19 Yes, Brad?

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: I guess I just 

21 wanted to make sure what this actually was 

22 being used for. And I think, and correct me 
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1 if I'm wrong, this is just to correct the 

2 geometric means of the dose. It plays nothing 

3 else into the shielding, the manufacturing, or 

4 anything else like this. And this is used in 

5 a best estimate?

6 MEMBER MUNN: It's used for best 

7 estimates to organs located in the lower 

8 torso. A geometric correction factor only.

9 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay.

10 MEMBER MUNN: Alright? Very good. 

11 If we are finished with TIB-10, we'll talk 

12 about TIB-23.

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Don't we want 

14 to vote on each one separately?

15 MEMBER MUNN: I'm sorry?

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Do we want to 

17 vote on each one separately?

18 MEMBER MUNN: We're not voting. 

19 We're just reporting to you what we have done 

20 in the Subcommittee and what the status of 

21 these is now. 

22 Actually, from the viewpoint of 
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1 the Subcommittee, both of these are now 

2 officially closed because when we put 

3 something in abeyance that means we have 

4 decided -- we've come to a resolution on the 

5 technical issue and what is left is an 

6 administrative activity to incorporate that 

7 decision into the documentation. So we have 

8 finished with our deliberations when something 

9 goes into abeyance.

10 We've had nine of the findings 

11 from TIB-10, six of which are closed and three 

12 of which are in abeyance. That is to say 

13 they're closed for us, but they're now in the 

14 hands of NIOSH to incorporate into the 

15 documents. Okay?

16 TIB-23 was in some ways more 

17 straightforward than TIB-10. In other ways it 

18 was a little problematical. The purpose of 

19 the TIB was to give dose reconstructors some 

20 guidance as to when to determine if it was 

21 appropriate to assign missed neutron doses 

22 where the site used the lower detection limits 
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1 over 2 method as an alternative method.

2 Use of the alternative method, as 

3 the TIB indicates, needs to be applied when 

4 the missed neutron central estimate exceeds 75 

5 percent of the assigned photon dose. That is, 

6 if the recorded dosimeter dose plus the missed 

7 dose is exceeded by 75 percent then the 

8 alternative method should be used.

9 As you can see, as I mentioned 

10 earlier, these are very old Technical 

11 Information Bulletins. We've worked on them, 

12 on this one, for about 3 years. And we have 

13 now most of the documents that are necessary 

14 to be issued have been done and the findings 

15 are incorporated.

16 We had eight findings from SC&A. 

17 All eight of them have been closed for quite 

18 some time. The summaries are fairly 

19 straightforward. Most are in section 6 of the 

20 OTIB, consideration 1. 

21 SC&A felt that the instructions 

22 were inconsistent with similar kinds of 
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1 instructions that appeared in the overall 

2 guidance document of IG-001. IG-001 indicated 

3 when the neutron missed dose central estimate 

4 exceeded 75 percent of the photon dose the 

5 neutron exposure should be evaluated to 

6 determine if it should be considered to be an 

7 unmonitored exposure. 

8 So the question here is whether or 

9 not the formula that was being used routinely, 

10 that is LOD/2, was applicable if that estimate 

11 gave you a number that was more than 75 

12 percent of what had been evaluated. 

13 And in 23, Section 6 said missed 

14 neutron doses do not need to be assigned if 

15 the LOD/2 would exceed 75 percent of photon 

16 dose.

17 The first finding from SC&A had to 

18 do with the clarity of the definitions that 

19 were included in the procedure. And the OTIB 

20 Rev 1 was issued to accommodate that finding. 

21 We closed the item in 2008.

22 For the alternative method, 
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1 detailed information is required that will not 

2 be readily available to the dose 

3 reconstructor, was the second finding from 

4 SC&A. Condition 1 was eliminated in the first 

5 revision and that resolved finding 2, which 

6 has been, again, closed for years now.

7 Finding 3 referenced IG-001 as our 

8 basic guidance. But the guidance in OTIB-23, 

9 as I said earlier, was believed to be 

10 inconsistent. The review objective stated is 

11 the procedure consistent with all other 

12 procedures that are a part of the hierarchy. 

13 And Rev 1 corrected the inconsistencies that 

14 had been identified. Was closed.

15 Finding 4 questioned whether dose 

16 reconstructors were in a position or whether 

17 they even had all of the information necessary 

18 to make the subjective decisions that were 

19 potential. Section 6 Condition 1 was 

20 eliminated by the Revision 1 and that resolved 

21 that finding for us.

22 Finding 5 referred to finding 
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1 OTIB-23-03 for the review objective. And the 

2 second review objective, 4.2, is does the 

3 procedure adhere to the hierarchical process, 

4 which is very similar to the preceding 

5 finding, as you can see. 

6 We indicated that the issue was 

7 closed on OTIB 3 because it referred to the --

8 it referred back to an earlier finding, as you 

9 can see, Finding 3, which was closed. 

10 Therefore the one closed the other.

11 And Item 6, the reconstruction of 

12 missed neutron doses from numerous neutron 

13 measurements and accurate time information is 

14 unrealistic. 

15 Item 7, the regulatory 

16 recommendation for striking a balance between 

17 precision and efficiency has, they said, been 

18 ignored, they felt. 

19 Finding 8 was the generic 

20 assumption of a neutron to photon ratio of 

21 0.75 to 1 as a limiting value for the limit of 

22 detection over 2 isn't technically defensible 
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1 or claimant-favorable. 

2 As we've indicated in previous 

3 findings, Section 6 Condition 1 was eliminated 

4 by the first revision. That rendered these 

5 particular findings moot because it no longer 

6 existed as an instruction. It's been closed.

7 Do we have any questions? I think 

8 that one was more straightforward by a long 

9 shot than OTIB-10. But -- and it has been 

10 closed for quite some time. 

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any comments or 

12 questions? 

13 MEMBER MUNN: If not, thank you 

14 very much.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. We 

16 actually have an hour. Our next items involve 

17 the petitioners. So we need to stay on 

18 schedule for those. I didn't think we'd 

19 finish so quickly. So I think we take a break 

20 until 10:30. Is there any other unfinished 

21 Board work/business? I think we -- yes.

22 MEMBER BEACH: Are there 
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1 petitioners on for Pantex -- or, I'm sorry, 

2 Brookhaven? Could we do that early?

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, the only 

4 thing if we do that early then we're talking 

5 about -- it's no petitioners issue but then 

6 we've got to break. I mean, Fernald, do you 

7 want a 3-hour lunch? It doesn't really help 

8 given the scheduling and so forth. And we 

9 already did LaVon. Hey, LaVon, you want to do 

10 your presentation again? 

11 (Laughter.)

12 We can do repeats. We can't 

13 really do the petition letters if we haven't 

14 reviewed the petitions already. So I think 

15 we'll be back here at 10:30. 

16 For those of you on the phone 

17 we're taking a break and we will reconvene at 

18 10:30.

19 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

20 matter went off the record at 9:31 a.m. and 

21 resumed at 10:32 a.m.)

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, if we can 
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1 get ready to reconvene here. The Advisory 

2 Board is reconvening and the initial item on 

3 our agenda is an update on the Pantex SEC 

4 Petition. And I believe Joe Fitzgerald is 

5 going to do the presentation.

6 MR. FITZGERALD: Good morning.

7 MR. KATZ: Let me just check on 

8 the line and see if I have our Board Members 

9 on the line. Dr. Ziemer, Richardson?

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Ziemer here.

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Richardson 

12 here.

13 MR. KATZ: Great. And how about 

14 Dr. Lemen? 

15 (No response.)

16 Okay, no Lemen. Thank you.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Go ahead, Joe.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, good 

19 morning. Joe Fitzgerald, SC&A. Brad Clawson, 

20 who's the Chair of the Pantex Work Group, 

21 asked me to go ahead and give the 

22 presentation. And he has promised, along with 
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1 the other Work Group Members, to chime in when 

2 they need to.

3 Okay, just a quick overview. The 

4 petition was qualified in 2007. The 

5 Evaluation Report issued in 2008. And October 

6 20th, 2011, following a Board discussion that 

7 was in August, the Board went ahead and voted 

8 an SEC for 1958-1983. 

9 And this was based on the 

10 inability to dose reconstruct internal 

11 exposures to uranium. And if you recall that 

12 discussion, that was focused on a particular 

13 system, the W28, which was known as one of the 

14 so-called dirtier depleted uranium systems at 

15 Pantex. And in disassembly it tended to pose 

16 a lot of contamination to the workers handling 

17 that. So, anyway, that was the basis.

18 NIOSH believed that it in fact 

19 could use the W28 system and the bioassay data 

20 from 1990. There was a major event, if you 

21 recall, in 1989 where a number of workers were 

22 in fact contaminated with depleted uranium 
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1 from the W28 and were subsequently bioassayed. 

2 And that bioassay set is the basis for the 

3 NIOSH proposal to dose reconstruct using that 

4 data, and use it for 1984-89.

5 And I'll get into this a little 

6 later, but you know, the notion was it was 

7 difficult to normalize across 30 years of W28 

8 handling. But one, perhaps, could focus in on 

9 that last 4 or 5 years where you tended to 

10 have more standard practice in taking these 

11 weapons apart and you wouldn't have as much of 

12 that difficulty in assuming normalized 

13 practice. So that was certainly the basis or 

14 hypothesis for going forward using the 1990 

15 data.

16 And in January 2012, right after 

17 the Board vote, there was a White Paper, Bihl 

18 and LaBone, which provided the dose 

19 reconstruction method for `84-`89. 

20 And essentially the Work Group 

21 sort of put a lot of that on hold for almost a 

22 year. NIOSH wanted to go back and work with 
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1 Pantex to see if they could get additional 

2 information on the start dates for these 

3 workers in that time period to get a somewhat 

4 more accurate representation of what those 

5 exposures might have been and what the 

6 bioassays represented. So that was pretty 

7 much most of 2012.

8 In that process we looked at the 

9 White Paper. We did have a technical call 

10 early this year. And we did go on a site data 

11 capture back in February to Pantex to in fact 

12 look at this. And we had a Work Group meeting 

13 on June 18.

14 Okay, essentially these are the 

15 remaining SEC time periods that are subject to 

16 review and what the Work Group focused on. We 

17 had -- we call it the bookend years. We had 

18 `51 through `57, which were the earlier years 

19 where -- the SEC started in `58 -- the 

20 earliest years where there were any 

21 radionuclide source-terms that were handled at 

22 Pantex. In fact, you began seeing fresh 
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1 depleted uranium forms arrive at Pantex in 

2 `51, the very earliest point where the plant 

3 was open. 

4 There wasn't any assembly going 

5 on. There wasn't really any high degree of 

6 activity. But these forms were arriving from 

7 Y-12 at Pantex. And as you'll hear in a bit, 

8 what was going on was they were mating the 

9 depleted uranium with high explosives. No 

10 assembly. And then those components were 

11 being transferred to places like Burlington 

12 where in fact systems were being put together. 

13 So at that point in time there wasn't any 

14 active assembly/disassembly of systems, but 

15 there was handling.

16 The `84 to `89, this is following 

17 the SEC period that the Board voted on, was 

18 this question of whether or not you could use 

19 those 1990 bioassays collected in `89 to in 

20 fact retrospectively apply for that `84 to `89 

21 period. 

22 We separated out `90 to `91. This 
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1 period of time, this couple of years, fell 

2 right after the big contamination event of 

3 `89. And this is where Pantex management sort 

4 of awoke to the exposure potential and the 

5 implications of handling these systems and the 

6 depleted uranium, and in fact put in a fairly 

7 robust uranium bioassay program. 

8 That's where you started seeing 

9 numbers of actual bioassay results, starting 

10 in `90 through `92. By `92, the 

11 characterization of the workplace progressed 

12 to the point where they actually stopped doing 

13 routine bioassays and did more event-based 

14 bioassays for uranium. 

15 So there was this time period of 

16 `90 to `91, which is the last 2 years of the 

17 petition, where we felt that certainly was 

18 different than the years before that. And in 

19 the ER, NIOSH was very clear that they felt 

20 they had enough data from these bioassays to 

21 dose reconstruct.

22 Thorium was another question that 
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1 the Work Group focused on for quite a while. 

2 This was a little bit of a different issue. 

3 There were some systems that did in fact have 

4 thorium associated with them. You had a very 

5 similar issue when you dismantled these 

6 systems in terms of potential thorium 

7 contamination. 

8 The proposed approach that NIOSH 

9 had included in the ER and subsequently 

10 amended in some of these papers, this was the 

11 Ruhter paper, was to use a mass ratio based on 

12 some measurements that were taken on another 

13 system. This is the W55, another system where 

14 in fact uranium and thorium figured. And to 

15 base the potential intake of thorium to the 

16 availability of uranium. So use a mass ratio 

17 between uranium and thorium. 

18 So as the Work Group went through 

19 this we focused on uranium and if there were 

20 any implications for thorium. In a lot of 

21 cases, we found that they were subsumed by the 

22 uranium issue since the thorium method was 
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1 based on the uranium method. So even though 

2 there was thorium systems being handled before 

3 `84, of course the SEC on uranium pretty much 

4 subsumed the thorium within that. So that's 

5 why thorium is not being addressed before `84.

6 Okay, `51 to `57. Our focus in 

7 that time period was frankly to see whether 

8 there were any other weapons systems that 

9 predated the W28. The W28 issue in terms of 

10 potential contamination from disassembly and 

11 surveillance activities -- and really it's the 

12 surveillance activities that bring you back to 

13 that early time period. A lot of the actual 

14 dismantlements didn't take place until the 

15 sixties, the seventies, into the eighties.

16 In the early days they did 

17 dismantle a certain set of systems for 

18 surveillance and maintenance upgrades. There 

19 was a fairly active cycle of systems going 

20 back to Pantex. Even if they weren't being 

21 retired they were being taken apart to upgrade 

22 and to examine, what have you, surveillance. 
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1 So you always had that going on.

2 So before `57 the focus was, was 

3 there any systems other than the 28 that would 

4 figure in that potential source of 

5 contamination? And we focused in on three 

6 systems that had depleted uranium, depleted 

7 uranium that was not alloyed, so it was 

8 certainly subject to contamination. And that

9 was the Mark 6, the Mark 7 and the Mark 18.

10 Of those three systems, only the 

11 Mark 6 actually had any commentary. And you 

12 realize going back to the fifties, a lot of 

13 your evidence comes from workers who actually 

14 handled these systems. We actually had 

15 interview notes that indicated the Mark 6 had 

16 contamination associated with it. You know, 

17 in terms of disassembly you would see that 

18 contamination. It wasn't unequivocal but we 

19 did have that evidence.

20 So a lot of what we were looking 

21 for in `51 to `57: were these earlier systems 

22 taken apart? In other words, just as the 28 
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1 was taken apart for surveillance and what have 

2 you, did you have the same situation with the 

3 Mark 6?

4 And what we established was, no, 

5 actually, at Pantex there was no disassembly 

6 even for surveillance until they had the 

7 gravel gerties constructed. Gravel gerties 

8 were a ruggedized -- I'm trying to think of --

9 it's like a domed igloo where they handled the 

10 system. So if you ever had an inadvertent 

11 explosion of high explosives with the

12 radioactive materials present it would be 

13 contained and would collapse inwards. 

14 And it was very clear that they 

15 weren't going to have any systems dismantled 

16 for even surveillance until those gravel 

17 gerties were in fact constructed and opened. 

18 And that didn't happen till `58. That 

19 included the Mark 6.

20 Now, what confused the situation, 

21 as the Work Group found out, you did have 

22 these systems onsite. The Mark 6 and other 
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1 systems were at Pantex, but they were there 

2 not for any degree of handling, they were just 

3 being stored and what have you. 

4 So it took awhile to actually walk 

5 that through. And I think we walked it 

6 through with some confidence that, no, we 

7 didn't have the same situation with these 

8 other systems.

9 Now, you have burn pits, you have 

10 hydroshots. They all figured in that late 

11 fifties into the sixties. But there you did 

12 have a lot of air sampling data. And as NIOSH 

13 points out in its Evaluation Report, 

14 sufficient data that you could come up with a 

15 model bounding what the exposure of the

16 individuals were. 

17 And these were even measurements 

18 that were taken inside of bunkers where the 

19 operators were actually placed, in addition to 

20 actually in the open air. So it was a fairly, 

21 for the time, a fairly extensive set of air 

22 samples. We did have some issues, as you'll 
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1 hear, on the Site Profile side but they 

2 weren't SEC. 

3 So for this one here we did not 

4 find a source term that clearly had any 

5 exposure potential. That's not to say -- you 

6 know, you have fresh uranium forms. Fresh 

7 uranium forms that are not alloyed will 

8 oxidize. So just by definition you do have 

9 some oxidized depleted uranium present. But 

10 we found no evidence that there was an 

11 exposure pathway of any non-negligible -- is 

12 that the right word -- non-negligible level 

13 that would have led to exposure. 

14 We didn't see anything from the 

15 interviews. Basically the interviews painted 

16 a picture of these were clean components that 

17 were put together, mated with explosives. 

18 There wasn't any degree of contamination. And 

19 that's where the Work Group came out on that. 

20 Any questions on that, `51 to `57?

21 (No response.)

22 Okay, `84 to `89, we focused on 
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1 the White Paper 2012. Anyway, we focused on 

2 the Bihl and LaBone White Paper which was 

3 published in January 2012, issued in 2012. And 

4 that paper presented a set of assumed intakes 

5 derived from excretion values, sort of a 

6 family of curves that looked at the different 

7 solubility classes, presented a family of 

8 curves which provided a bounding dose for 

9 workers in that time period that worked on the

10 W28. 

11 All these again based on a log12 normal analysis of the 1990, again going back 

13 to that single bioassay set. And that is the 

14 one set of data which is plentiful enough and 

15 reliable enough to use for this purpose. So 

16 that's why we keep going back to it.

17 There were five different intake 

18 timing assumptions used. We went through this 

19 in the "sufficiently accurate" discussion 

20 yesterday. Our concern on this one is not so 

21 much with the method but whether or not you 

22 get to a point where the assumptions aggregate 
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1 to a degree where the uncertainties start 

2 becoming a problem. 

3 And that was the problem that I 

4 think we had with the application of this 

5 method for that period of time, was you did 

6 have to make a number of assumptions regarding 

7 the classes of uranium sources available for 

8 exposure, the intake time frames. And all 

9 these led to what we thought was a relatively 

10 high level of uncertainty. And that was our 

11 major, I think, one of our major concerns with 

12 the method. 

13 And it's laid out in the paper, 

14 but it basically comes down to that, that when 

15 you get into I think that kind of analysis the 

16 large number becomes an issue.

17 The other issue we had was -- and 

18 I don't know if Joyce Lipsztein is on the 

19 phone, but Joyce spent a great deal of time 

20 looking at the 1990 bioassay set. And based 

21 on looking at the uranium-234, the uranium22 234/-238 ratio, the presence of 235, we raised 
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1 some questions about the fact that it looked 

2 like you had a residual contamination level of 

3 high enriched uranium that was present in 

4 these bioassays. 

5 And it wasn't explained by 

6 anything we had seen in terms of documentation 

7 and wasn't explained in the ER but it was 

8 pretty evident in the bioassay results 

9 themselves. 

10 We went down to Pantex on the site 

11 trip and we looked at more contemporary 

12 results, bioassay results, and we found the 

13 same thing, that there was a residual level of 

14 high enriched uranium present in even those 

15 bioassays. I'm talking 2009.

16 We sat down and talked this over 

17 with the health physicist who happened, and 

18 this was very convenient, time frame-wise they 

19 were present at Pantex back 30 years ago as 

20 well as they were still there now. And so we 

21 kind of posed that question to him. I said, 

22 you know, can you explain this.
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1 And, frankly, no. They speculated

2 on a couple of possibilities but clearly there 

3 was no obvious explanation for what seemed to 

4 be a residual level of high enriched uranium 

5 that was present.

6 And it wasn't clear from what 

7 source. I mean, again, we kind of speculated 

8 where it might have come from. And I think 

9 they posed some possibilities it might have 

10 come in with the uranium from Y-12 because Y11 12 handled both high enriched and depleted. It 

12 could have been a residual level that built up 

13 over time at Pantex. But, you know, again, 

14 just wasn't any real good idea about it. So 

15 that's kind of where it left. 

16 But it certainly posed this sort 

17 of question of, you know, can this single data 

18 set, with the uncertainties involved, be 

19 applied for even these 4 or 5 years when you 

20 have in fact these residual levels of high 

21 enriched uranium that might have come from 

22 either other systems or been present in the 
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1 workplace? So those were kind of the issues 

2 that we raised in the Work Group and the Work 

3 Group looked at.

4 And essentially based on that 

5 concern, that that single bioassay set could 

6 not be sufficiently adequate to address the 

7 potential source of other uranium isotopes, 

8 other systems that might have played into what 

9 was being found in the urinalyses, that led 

10 the Work Group to recommend that, yes, for 

11 those 4 or 5 years you couldn't apply it that 

12 way.

13 Okay, 1990 to `91. You had a 

14 routine bioassay program in `91-`92 with 431 

15 and 239 workers. A lot of workers, a lot of 

16 bioassays. No real issue for those two years.

17 We identified `90 as a transition 

18 year where you did have those bioassays that 

19 were taken in `89. They were still cranking 

20 up the routine program, so essentially it was 

21 a ramp-up year at Pantex for bioassay.

22 And we validated that certainly 
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1 there was adequate bioassay data to be used, 

2 that you could use in fact to apply backwards 

3 into 1990. But I think the Work Group felt 

4 that with the fact that it was a transition 

5 year it warranted a recommendation that 1990 

6 there still was insufficient uranium bioassay 

7 data to support dose reconstruction. 

8 So that's essentially what 

9 happened for 1990, whereas there was 

10 sufficient data for 1991. Any questions on 

11 that? Yes, Wanda?

12 MEMBER MUNN: Joe, I'm puzzled. Do 

13 we have no bioassays at all on the workers who 

14 were being studied following the 1989 incident 

15 prior to that incident? We don't have any 

16 prior assays from those individuals? 

17 MR. FITZGERALD: No. You 

18 essentially had about 305 bioassay data sets 

19 were done in `89. It was late `89. And the 

20 results were available in early `90 for those 

21 workers that were on the W28 line. That's 

22 when the incident was recognized and responded 
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1 to.

2 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, but my question 

3 is you did not have any prior bioassay on 

4 those individuals.

5 MR. FITZGERALD: That's right.

6 MEMBER MUNN: That's interesting. 

7 Was the bioassay program intact prior to 1989?

8 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, it was 

9 focused on tritium. Certainly there was a 

10 tritium issue at Pantex. But depleted 

11 uranium, if you go back into the eighties --

12 it wasn't just Pantex -- it wasn't really seen 

13 as a major source of exposure, particularly if 

14 you were handling plutonium components, 

15 enriched uranium components and you had a lot 

16 of tritium. So depleted uranium wasn't seen 

17 as really a significant radiological issue.

18 That recognition didn't really 

19 come to the fore until `89, particularly with 

20 this event where you had a lot of workers that 

21 were contaminated. And that coincided I think 

22 with a recognition in about that same time 
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1 frame that from a radiological standpoint the 

2 programs needed to be a lot tighter on 

3 contamination control. ALARA and -- and 

4 that's the same time frame the Tiger Teams 

5 were making their visits. 

6 So if you look at `89-`90 from the 

7 management perspective, where the recognition 

8 was growing that the programs had to be 

9 managed differently than they were in the 

10 past, and the fact that before that the site 

11 didn't see depleted uranium as something that 

12 posed a large radiological risk.

13 MEMBER MUNN: Knowing the status 

14 of radiological protection along about that 

15 time it's surprising to me that there was no 

16 uranium bioassay prior to the incident. But, 

17 I guess -- yes, I can see why they'd be 

18 focused on tritium. But that's really odd, 

19 isn't it? That's too bad. From our 

20 perspective, that's too bad. Thanks.

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: Joe, if I could -

22 - something that was interesting to understand 
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1 about in Pantex too was Pantex was kind of a 

2 different breed of cat. You understand what 

3 they played with so they kind of fell outside 

4 of the realms of things. You had other sites 

5 that were involved with them. 

6 And one of the things that we see 

7 is the 1989 to `90 was when Pantex was 

8 actually shut down because they could not 

9 comply to the 8415, the program for 

10 standardized radioactive handling, they had 

11 two RadCon personnel that were covering the 

12 entire site. 

13 From that time frame, 1989 to 

14 1991, they went from two RadCon to over 70. 

15 They had, their air sampling, major, major 

16 overhauls. It was interesting from the 

17 standpoint of they did not fall -- they were 

18 DoD/DOE mix, don't mess with this. 

19 And, finally, and I give great 

20 credit to the HP that basically shut the whole 

21 plant down because they could not comply with 

22 what they were doing.
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1 And this is when you see this 

2 change in the 1990 is after that happened and 

3 a Tiger Team actually came in. And it's like 

4 495 pages. And one of the worst was there was 

5 no documentation of contamination levels, the 

6 air samples. The process was flawed. They 

7 did not have sufficient manpower. So this is 

8 why, pinnacle-y, 1990 is a change period for 

9 this site. But they had no bioassay. It was 

10 an event-driven, and that was even 

11 questionable in some of it of how they even 

12 picked who they did.

13 MR. FITZGERALD: And you're going 

14 to hear I think more about Fernald later. 

15 Fernald essentially was a depleted uranium 

16 operation and did not really control for 

17 contamination in any meaningful way until the 

18 mid-eighties. So it was an evolution that 

19 took place between the mid-eighties and late 

20 eighties, recognizing one needed to manage 

21 depleted uranium differently than certainly 

22 DoD had done in the past.
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1 In terms of thorium, `84 to `91, 

2 again thorium was sort of a parallel issue 

3 that the Work Group looked at but did not, 

4 frankly, close out until uranium I think had 

5 been investigated thoroughly.

6 And the White Paper, Ruhter 2011, 

7 assumed a chronic intake of thorium pegged at 

8 two percent of the DU intake, again based on 

9 W55. And there were some assumptions that 

10 went into that analysis that I think we want 

11 to investigate further this year in order to 

12 close this particular issue out.

13 And a lot of it was founded on 

14 using the air sampling data from 1996 and 

15 using that data to bound exposures backwards 

16 before `91. And to do that the assumptions 

17 were that the operations were largely 

18 unchanged and that the oxidation and 

19 engineering safeguards were essentially the 

20 same. 

21 And I think the major finding that 

22 we made was they installed a glove box 
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1 downdraft table. Now, they didn't do it 

2 necessarily for thorium alone. It was, you 

3 know, W55 which the downdraft table was 

4 installed for in late `91 was as much for the 

5 depleted uranium contamination that was coming 

6 off the W55, which wasn't quite as bad as the 

7 28 but was pretty bad.

8 So essentially the conditions by 

9 which the W55 was handled drastically changed 

10 after late `91. It was essentially the 

11 measured contamination outside the glove box 

12 dropped to almost nil. 

13 And that kind of poses some 

14 obvious issues if you're using the 1996 air 

15 sampling data to come up with these mass 

16 ratios. And that's kind of what the Work 

17 Group had focused on as to whether one could 

18 apply that method in a representative way if 

19 in fact you had that major change in 

20 conditions in `91. I think the conclusion was 

21 you really couldn't.

22 Now, what makes this a little 
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1 different is that the Work Group is only using 

2 a thorium basis alone for recommending `91, 

3 but it clearly overlaps from `84 through `91. 

4 But since it depends on the uranium for the 

5 ratio, the uranium recommendation basically 

6 subsumes thorium through `91. 

7 But it definitely parallels the 

8 same time frame -- would parallel the same 

9 time frame. Any questions on thorium? 

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: Another thing, 

11 too. One of the questions that came up was 

12 how come this downdraft table, how come was it 

13 only used on the 55? The 55 was smaller than 

14 the 28. The 28 was so large of a system that 

15 to build a downdraft table for it was almost 

16 bigger than the room that they could work in. 

17 And so this is why they built it for the 55 

18 and not the 28. 

19 The 28, after 1990, they 

20 implemented some safety regulations to be able 

21 to help the people with a depleted uranium 

22 problem, vacuum systems, respiratory systems. 
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1 Many of these things were put into place 

2 because they could not build anything large 

3 enough to be able to take care of this. This 

4 is for -- the 55 was almost half its size and 

5 they were able to implement the standard 

6 requirements.

7 Because what it was was a 

8 glorified glove box with a substantial amount 

9 of air flow through it, through HEPA filters, 

10 and they actually worked through a glove box 

11 to be able to do that.

12 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, that's 

13 pretty much the -- I'm sorry, Wanda?

14 MEMBER MUNN: I'm speaking from 

15 memory here but when I read the White Paper 

16 about this my memory was that the actual 

17 amount of thorium that was measured from the 

18 downdraft glove boxes was actually quite 

19 small. 

20 I didn't do any calculations in my 

21 head even to try to determine whether a 

22 teaspoon or half a cup of thorium would 
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1 constitute a source term of any major 

2 significance. I guess that question remained 

3 in my mind.

4 Is that quantity of thorium really 

5 of such significance to the dose 

6 reconstruction process? 

7 MR. FITZGERALD: Actually, I was 

8 curious about that. I did do that 

9 calculation. It comes out to two percent, 

10 which is what NIOSH actually recommended as 

11 the mass ratio. So, I think it was a cupful. 

12 No, it was a teaspoon, you're right. It was a 

13 teaspoon compared with a cup.

14 What we looked at relative to that 

15 though was the fact that -- the before and 

16 after on the glove box. Before the glove box, 

17 the workers regularly manipulated during 

18 disassembly the 55. And we talked to workers 

19 that actually did so.

20 And unlike the depleted uranium 

21 for the 28, which when you took the cylinder 

22 apart the uranium was -- essentially just fell 
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1 out. I mean, it was already fairly free and 

2 just basically came out.

3 With the thorium you really had to 

4 manipulate the parts in order to get any 

5 contamination. This was to a large degree why 

6 you have such a disparity in concentration. 

7 But to answer your question, 

8 before the glove box operation was put in 

9 place they did have practices that were 

10 discontinued where workers regularly 

11 manipulated these parts and actually promoted 

12 some of this contamination. And they got 

13 smarter on it, and certainly what the workers 

14 told us, the supervisors really said, you 

15 know, cease that kind of activity in terms of 

16 how you're actually taking these parts, using 

17 screwdrivers --

18 MEMBER MUNN: Screwdrivers not 

19 permitted.

20 MR. FITZGERALD: Right, right. 

21 And, you know, that coupled with the fact that 

22 they recognized that they could in fact put 
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1 this whole unit in the glove box and not have 

2 to deal with all this.

3 But the other issue, of course, is 

4 specific activity of thorium compared to 

5 depleted uranium is significantly different. 

6 So even though you have a smaller amount of 

7 thorium in terms of the radiological 

8 significance, certainly the thorium couldn't 

9 be considered negligible or considered not 

10 something to be concerned about. So that I 

11 think was the major issue.

12 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. It just didn't 

13 seem to me that, given the quantity and the 

14 use of the two percent assumptions, I couldn't 

15 really understand why the thorium itself was 

16 going to be a major factor in the assigned 

17 dose.

18 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, again, I 

19 think the parameters that were being relied 

20 upon, the two percent, the amount that might 

21 have been available for exposure, those all 

22 postdated the tightening of the practices, the 
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1 engineering safeguards and everything that 

2 happened in `91. 

3 So what we're saying is that if 

4 you use the air sampling data for `96 and 

5 apply a mass ratio based on that, and try to 

6 apply it for before `91, the conditions have 

7 changed dramatically enough that it wouldn't 

8 hold, the method wouldn't hold. I think the 

9 Work Group agreed on that.

10 MEMBER MUNN: Okay. I can see it 

11 really doesn't give you a window on how much 

12 thorium you would have gotten from the prior 

13 practices. 

14 MR. FITZGERALD: No, there wasn't 

15 any real monitoring of breathing zones and the 

16 kind of sampling that they did in the 

17 nineties. They did some fairly decent 

18 sampling in the nineties. That's why the data 

19 I think was the basis for the method, because 

20 that's where you actually have usable data. 

21 Before that time period you did 

22 have some measurements but they weren't 
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1 measurements. They were swipes of thorium. 

2 But, again, that couldn't translate into some 

3 kind of air sample that would be reliable 

4 enough to do a dose estimate on. So before 

5 `91 you really didn't have usable data that 

6 could be a basis for dose reconstruction. And 

7 I think that's where the Work Group came out.

8 MEMBER MUNN: Okay.

9 MEMBER CLAWSON: Wanda, also, too, 

10 after 1991, when they really started to find 

11 out that thorium really was an issue. One of 

12 the things I found interesting in discussing 

13 this was when they were telling the practices 

14 that they did it was after this more attention 

15 to detail. The workers didn't even know that 

16 these were thorium components. All they have 

17 is a number goes here and this and that.

18 And this is when this right to 

19 know what you were dealing with came out. The 

20 samples, and a lot of the samples you saw of 

21 thorium were actually outside of the glove 

22 box, that they wanted to make sure that they 
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1 were capturing this. Because now also even 

2 Pantex looked at what items do I have in here.

3 I just want to give you a rough 

4 idea of why you can't generalize it. From 

5 1984 to 1999, fifteen different systems came 

6 through Pantex, different ones. High enriched 

7 uranium, thorium, barium, so forth, different 

8 people, different processes. All torn apart. 

9 And there was no generality in, okay, we're 

10 only going to do these. They had many systems 

11 coming through all the time.

12 And as time evolved also the 

13 components changed, which brought in different 

14 hazards that weren't known. And, you know, we 

15 discussed earlier the AG issue and how they 

16 couldn't really put a factor to it because 

17 these were sealed pits. 

18 But it was also mentioned of these 

19 15 systems that went through from `84 to `89, 

20 four of them were H, high enriched uranium 

21 systems. And this is where the question they 

22 don't know, but in talking with the workers 
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1 they say we can't, you know, we have to do 

2 certain things to them which possibly could 

3 have released it. And this is where it could 

4 come.

5 To this day they really don't know 

6 where some of it is coming from. And we asked 

7 them. And we see it in today's bioassay 

8 samples too, that they're still showing 

9 certain traces.

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Okay, but to sum 

11 it up, and this is on the last page. But 

12 before we get into the Site Profile issues, 

13 `51-`57, the first bookend to what the Board 

14 has already acted on. Either we found, as 

15 with the firing pits and the hydroshot 

16 activities, that in fact NIOSH had enough data 

17 to dose reconstruct, or we did not find an 

18 exposure potential that was sufficient to 

19 identify as being an issue for dose 

20 reconstruction. So from `51 to `57, I think 

21 the Work Group felt there were no SEC issues 

22 to report.
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1 For `84 to 1990, I think the Work 

2 Group again found that the method being 

3 proposed for depleted uranium was not 

4 sufficient given the uncertainties as well as 

5 the presence of uranium isotopes and other 

6 sources of uranium that could not be explained 

7 and could not be located in terms of the site 

8 time frame-wise as well as location-wise. 1990 

9 again was a transition year and that was 

10 included in that group. 

11 And of course overlaying the whole 

12 time period from `84 to `91 was the thorium 

13 issue we just discussed. So there were two 

14 sources of SEC consideration, the uranium as 

15 well as the thorium. The only time they don't 

16 overlap is `91.

17 With that, there's no questions on 

18 I think where the Work Group came out on the 

19 SEC issues. I can walk you through on the 

20 Site Profile status. There's quite a history 

21 of this. 

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Bill?
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1 MR. FITZGERALD: Go ahead.

2 MEMBER FIELD: I just had a quick 

3 question. I think I probably know the answer 

4 but, Brad, it was a unanimous vote to 

5 recommend these Classes, is that correct?

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, it is. From 

7 `84 to `91. I had some people asking 

8 questions of why the `90 to `91? The thorium 

9 actually was overlapped by the uranium. It's 

10 only `90 to `91 is thorium alone. And it was 

11 unanimous by the Work Group to bring this 

12 before the Board for their consideration.

13 MEMBER FIELD: And does NIOSH have 

14 anything to offer contrary opinions for these 

15 two proposed periods?

16 MR. HINNEFELD: No, NIOSH doesn't 

17 have a contrary opinion about the proposal. I 

18 could make a few comments that I think would 

19 make me feel more comfortable about the 

20 explanation.

21 With respect to the W28 work in 

22 the essentially `84 to `90 period, the uranium 
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1 work we're talking about there, our approach 

2 was predicated all along on W28 population 

3 being the highest exposed people. And I think 

4 in the course of the investigation there was 

5 sufficient evidence raised that that may not 

6 necessarily have been the case. 

7 There were other weapons systems 

8 that were similarly dirty. W28 was the one 

9 that got the attention. You know, you go to 

10 these interviews and they said there were a 

11 lot of dirty weapons systems. W28 got the 

12 attention. It got the attention because of 

13 persistent complaints from the people working 

14 on the W28. 

15 And so the follow-up was on people 

16 who worked on W28 and that constitutes the 

17 bioassay set. As we investigated following 

18 up, it didn't really seem all that clear that 

19 W28 people were necessarily the highest 

20 exposed. 

21 So from our standpoint, that is 

22 the issue here, is we're not sure the highest 
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1 exposed people are included in our monitored 

2 set. 

3 And I think we have a disagreement 

4 in terms of recent bioassay. We didn't sit 

5 and compare recent bioassay when we were down 

6 there. We were down there at the same time.

7 The recent bioassay data I saw had 

8 some positive U-235 results but they were 

9 associated with higher U-234 and U-238 

10 results. And the bioassay manager said that 

11 appears to be natural uranium from their 

12 drinking water source. So that was my 

13 understanding of the recent U-235 results. It 

14 wasn't really an enriched uranium intake, it 

15 was a U-235 result that was detectable but 

16 that same sample had U-234 and U-238 in it, in 

17 the proportions that roughly you would expect.

18 At the kind of levels you're 

19 talking about there's so much uncertainty in 

20 the counting result that it may -- you know, 

21 you can't draw too firm a conclusion from 

22 those ratios. But that seemed to be what was 
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1 going on recently. From what I saw. 

2 But like I said, we didn't sit 

3 side by side and compare this bioassay sample 

4 and what do you make of that. We didn't do 

5 that. So there may have been other things 

6 that I didn't see.

7 MEMBER MUNN: We love a mystery, 

8 you know, but that's a circumstance you can 

9 think about for a long time. Isn't it? 

10 MR. FITZGERALD: Yes, I thought we 

11 would get a clean -- like he said, I think he 

12 thought it might be environmentally related. 

13 He also thought it might be maybe fugitive 

14 additions to the Y-12 inventory that came 

15 over. But given the levels that were there, I 

16 thought, again, I think he wasn't sure. And 

17 we didn't have time to nail it down.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: This wasn't what 

19 we were down there for. We weren't trying to 

20 wrap this up. It was the RadCon manager who 

21 said maybe it came from Y-12. Maybe there was 

22 residual that came from Y-12. That was the 
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1 RadCon manager.

2 The dosimetry guy said it looks 

3 like natural uranium from the drinking water 

4 source. It was two different people. 

5 MR. FITZGERALD: So we didn't 

6 settle it out, but again that wasn't the 

7 central question so much as it was an issue 

8 that we were trying to resolve and couldn't 

9 resolve it at the time.

10 Are there any other questions on 

11 the SEC part of this? Okay. Let me just back 

12 this up a little bit. 

13 Okay, in terms of Site Profile 

14 issues. And I'm going to go through this 

15 relatively quick. Number 1 and 2 deal with 

16 the internal dose models for uranium. 

17 Obviously that was the thrust of the SEC 

18 inquiry. So those issues were closed as we 

19 closed out, the Work Group closed out, the SEC 

20 questions on uranium. 

21 The dose estimate approach for 

22 plutonium was a question of conservatism. A 
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1 40 DAC hour was proposed. I think there were 

2 some concerns about whether that, you know, 

3 that equated to about 100 millirem, whether 

4 that was in fact sufficient. And we 

5 ultimately had some exchanges on that in the 

6 Work Group and closed that out, primarily 

7 because plutonium, again, as far as 

8 contamination sources, just did not exist 

9 except in some very isolated incidents at 

10 Pantex to begin with. And so you just didn't 

11 have the exposure pathway.

12 Thorium, as we just discussed, was 

13 closed out this very last Work Group meeting 

14 along with the SEC. Metal tritides, that was 

15 more of a question of it was certainly handled 

16 as a component at Pantex. Did we have any 

17 idea or did NIOSH have any idea of what was 

18 handled in terms of the particular tritide and 

19 was there any information on it. And there 

20 was a number of exchanges, but what it came 

21 down to, it was a variety of tritides handled 

22 but there was no evidence at all that there 
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1 was any exposure. These were all sealed 

2 sources at Pantex. Unlike other locations, 

3 like Mound, these were sealed sources being 

4 assembled. So you didn't have that exposure 

5 pathway.

6 Number 6, external dosimetry data. 

7 There's a footnote there. We did have a White 

8 Paper that was generated and there was an 

9 exchange about the same time that this whole 

10 SEC inquiry that Stu was referring to in terms 

11 of the W28 workers, we put that data 

12 completeness issue somewhat on the back burner 

13 as we tried to resolve the SEC question of the 

14 W28 workers. 

15 And there are some loose ends. 

16 This is one of them. And it really gets down 

17 to what adjustment factors ought to be used in 

18 terms of the actual dosimetry calculations. 

19 Nothing that would be of SEC consequence, but 

20 certainly issues that need to, from a Site 

21 Profile, standpoint be resolved in the Work 

22 Group at some point. So again that's what 
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1 that footnote means in number 6.

2 On number 7, neutron to photon 

3 ratio not bounding. That has a history that 

4 was actually married up to Mound to some 

5 extent. We had concerns over neutron/photon 

6 ratios. And the NIOSH position evolved from 

7 reliance on this ratio as an approach to MCNP 

8 and some other more advanced techniques. 

9 And that I think has evolved even 

10 further, which from a neutron dosimetry 

11 standpoint we're still trying to clarify as an 

12 end game as to what approach might be used. 

13 And, again, from a Site Profile standpoint be 

14 used to estimate neutron doses in concert with 

15 other sites as well as at Pantex. But there 

16 really isn't an issue other than trying to get 

17 that closed out as far as what method is the 

18 final method that would be applied at Pantex. 

19 And there's a series of questions that we've 

20 exchanged. So that's another issue that would 

21 be resolved in Work Group.

22 Completeness of exposure sources. 
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1 In the Site Profile, not so much the SEC, 

2 some questions were raised about how you're 

3 going to handle offsite exposures, people that 

4 went to NTS, Nevada Test Site. There were 

5 some questions on the burn sites and also the 

6 ability to actually obtain information on the 

7 early exposures in the fifties. 

8 And again that was all included in 

9 this data adequacy and completeness piece 

10 White Paper that was submitted. And that's 

11 still I think something the Work Group is 

12 going to resolve now that the SEC issues have 

13 been vetted.

14 Number 9 is incidents. This is a 

15 common, I think, finding in a lot of Site 

16 Profile reviews where I think the opinion is 

17 that more complete treatment of incidents, 

18 events, whatnot, ought to be included in some 

19 of these Site Profiles. Pantex was an early 

20 Site Profile and had some treatment but from 

21 our standpoint not as complete a treatment as 

22 could be done.
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1 And, again, I think we ended up 

2 including that in the analysis in the White 

3 Paper. And there was some acknowledgment that 

4 certainly the TBD could be expanded. It 

5 hasn't been yet but that's certainly an issue.

6 Okay, consideration given to the 

7 firing sites. We already covered that in this 

8 last phase of the SEC. We went back and did 

9 more review and certainly recommended that 

10 that be closed at the last Work Group meeting 

11 on number 10.

12 Number 11, we closed that out --

13 the Work Group closed that out some time ago 

14 based on a White Paper that presented in terms 

15 of this question of the most exposed worker 

16 being batched from the external dosimetry 

17 standpoint. 

18 The rest of these issues are 

19 petitioner issues. We've included these in 

20 the Site Profile reviews in the past. Number 

21 12, in terms of accuracy of plant exposure 

22 data, was based on a 1980 Tiger Team finding. 
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1 And we resolved that in the Work Group from 

2 the standpoint of information being presented 

3 that in fact the most exposed individuals were 

4 captured in terms of the exposure. Now, 

5 that's not the internal side, but certainly 

6 outside the internal dose standpoint it was.

7 The same thing for too few 

8 monitors -- too few workers monitored. We 

9 included that in the White Paper. But that

10 again focused on the early years as to whether 

11 the numbers of workers were sufficient for 

12 analysis. 

13 Okay, number 14, and this is the 

14 end of the list, whether the records were 

15 sufficiently complete for subcontractors, 

16 temporary employees and short-term employees. 

17 Anyway, that was closed out based on a 

18 response by NIOSH to the Work Group that in 

19 fact all these Classes of workers were 

20 adequately covered. So the Work Group was 

21 satisfied that the subcontractors and temps 

22 and those workers did in fact have complete 
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1 records.

2 The petitioners in the petition 

3 raised questions on tritium leaks. And we did 

4 address that in the White Paper on data 

5 completeness and recognizes a lot of tritium 

6 data. So it was more what kinds of -- what 

7 was the approach to estimating some of the 

8 earlier tritium doses when you didn't have as 

9 many workers being monitored. And did you 

10 have the ability, given the lower number of 

11 workers being monitored, to in fact do an 

12 adequate dose reconstruction? Those were the 

13 kind of questions. But it wasn't SEC quality, 

14 more of what kind of factors are you using to 

15 make those estimates?

16 Number 16, badge placement. This 

17 is -- I think Wanda was talking about glove 

18 boxes. What we're talking about here is 

19 workers that had pits in their laps. And sort 

20 of this geometry was sort of a unique geometry 

21 for Pantex. And so I think, the review that 

22 we had, we presented that question as OTIB-10 
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1 wouldn't necessarily apply although we were 

2 open to hearing more about it. 

3 I think the Work Group wanted to 

4 have more substantiation on how you would deal 

5 with a geometry where in the early days a lot 

6 of the workers actually handled these pits 

7 that closely and how -- whether or not the 

8 dosimetry would have from an external 

9 standpoint read properly or not. So I think 

10 it's sort of a takeoff from the discussion 

11 from this morning.

12 MEMBER MUNN: It is but there's 

13 certainly an enormous difference between 

14 handling something out of a glove box and 

15 handling it in the glove box.

16 MR. FITZGERALD: Right.

17 MEMBER MUNN: It's quite a 

18 different thing.

19 MR. FITZGERALD: That's why it's 

20 an open issue. Because again we felt OTIB-10 

21 -- this is going back a couple of years ago --

22 would not necessarily apply unless it were 
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1 revised. So, anyway, that's an open issue.

2 And, finally, number 17 was sort 

3 of a bit of a catch-all. A lot of 

4 programmatic questions were raised in the Site 

5 Profile review, some of it from the Tiger Team 

6 reports about how bioassay programs were 

7 managed and those kinds of questions. 

8 But they were all subsumed in 

9 earlier technical issues, addressed in earlier 

10 technical issues, whether it was internal or 

11 external. So, essentially, 17 was one of the 

12 very first ones the Work Group closed out as 

13 being sort of subsumed elsewhere in the list 

14 of Site Profile issues. That's just included 

15 to be complete.

16 And, again, in terms of a summary, 

17 maybe Brad could take this one. But the Work 

18 Group recommends full review by the Board on 

19 uranium and thorium from `84 through `90, and 

20 thorium for `91. And, again, acceptance of 

21 NIOSH's ability to dose reconstruct for `51 

22 through `57. 
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1 And that would essentially close 

2 out all the time periods under SEC 

3 consideration, leaving us with Site Profile 

4 issues to tie up, essentially, for Pantex. And 

5 after five years I'm sort of satisfied to be 

6 able to say that finally. 

7 Any questions on anything?

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, I have a 

9 question. It's in some ways more 

10 administrative but it relates here. 

11 Essentially, you're recommending to close out 

12 the SEC petition entirely. I mean, 

13 recommending moving forward an SEC on some and 

14 not on the `51-`57 period. And I'm a little 

15 puzzled trying to understand that when you've 

16 got a number of petitioner issues still open 

17 and a number of Site Profile issues open. And 

18 make sure that everyone is confident that 

19 those can be addressed.

20 For example, the statement here on 

21 `51-`57 is, well, you have enough air samples. 

22 Well, have you actually done -- has someone 
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1 demonstrated that those are actually adequate? 

2 Because essentially we are closing out this 

3 petition. 

4 And, again, not that there's not 

5 ways of addressing that. But I'm just 

6 hesitating. And I hesitated when I wrote up 

7 the letter to really do that unless we were 

8 really certain that the Site Profile issues, 

9 or remaining petitioner issues, weren't going 

10 to affect that period and affect the SEC.

11 MR. FITZGERALD: Well, I certainly 

12 agree there's a couple of issues. I think 

13 tritium is one where there's a lot of data. 

14 But there's implications for smaller numbers 

15 of workers going back in time. But they don't 

16 go quite that far back because they didn't do 

17 any assembly or disassembly after `57.

18 We kind of looked at what 

19 operations were happening in `51 through `57 

20 and essentially there was no 

21 assembly/disassembly. There was essentially 

22 depleted uranium being mated with high 
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1 explosives. 

2 So the source term that we could 

3 identify was depleted uranium, essentially, in 

4 that time frame. And the question was, was 

5 there an exposure potential from the depleted 

6 uranium? We could not document one nor could 

7 we get any feedback from any of the workers 

8 that worked in that time period that there was 

9 in fact any real concern or any evidence that 

10 you were getting contamination.

11 Now, what -- you know, we 

12 certainly knew and understood that if you have 

13 unclad depleted uranium you by definition have 

14 oxidation that starts relatively soon. So the 

15 tough question was at what point would you 

16 have enough oxidation before the mating of the 

17 parts that you would be concerned about it? 

18 And, frankly, talking to the 

19 workers that handled it, they did not pick up 

20 any contamination that they could measure. So 

21 it was kind of hard to hypothesize did you 

22 have enough that was beyond negligible? We 
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1 didn't establish that at all.

2 But the other source term 

3 questions you're raising, we couldn't 

4 establish those source terms figuring in the 

5 pre-assembly/pre-disassembly time period. 

6 That's why we focused on was there any reason 

7 you would have a radiological source term that 

8 posed an exposure potential, other than the 

9 burn pits and the hydroshots? And we could 

10 not establish any. And we did talk to workers 

11 that actually started at the plant from `51 

12 forward. So is there any possibility? I 

13 don't -- there might be a possibility. But we 

14 didn't find any documentation on that.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. I just 

16 couldn't tell from all the documentation. I 

17 just wanted to make sure.

18 Any other Board Member questions? 

19 If not, I would like to give the petitioners -

20 - well, first of all, Board Members on the 

21 phone, Paul or David Richardson?

22 MEMBER ZIEMER: This is Ziemer. 
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1 My questions have all been answered. Thank 

2 you.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Paul. 

4 David?

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: It's been a 

6 really good conversation. I don't have any 

7 questions. Thank you.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thanks. And 

9 then are any of the petitioners on the phone 

10 and wish to speak?

11 MS. RAY: This is Sarah and I'm on 

12 the phone.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Hi. Okay, go 

14 ahead.

15 MS. RAY: But I really don't have 

16 anything to say. I just hope that it will be 

17 approved for our workers. Thank you for your 

18 effort.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, thank you, 

20 Sarah. And any of the other petitioners on 

21 the phone? 

22 (No response.) 
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1 Okay, thank you. So we have, 

2 essentially, a motion from the Work Group. 

3 MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. And I'd 

4 like to give the opportunity to any other Work 

5 Group Members if they wanted to say anything 

6 on this. We're good?

7 What the Work Group has 

8 recommended is that January 1, 1984 to 1991, 

9 December 31, that Pantex be granted an SEC 

10 based on the depleted uranium and thorium and 

11 the inability to reconstruct dose. And this 

12 was a unanimous decision by the entire Work 

13 Group.

14 That's what's before the Board. I 

15 hope you understand the 1951 to 1957, that's 

16 being -- I'm looking at that's being left open 

17 because as you -- they still need to determine 

18 the ability to be able to -- if the source 

19 terms and so forth. That's not in -- this is 

20 not in the -- it's just open.

21 MS. RAY: And this would include 

22 all workers?
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

2 MS. RAY: Am I correct?

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, it is all 

4 workers. 

5 Okay, my concerns I think have 

6 been addressed by Joe. And so if the Work 

7 Group is recommending the `51 -- so I suggest 

8 we do it in separate motions just to make it 

9 less confusing --

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: Correct.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: -- to people. 

12 But if everyone is satisfied in SC&A, the Work 

13 Group -- again, I didn't -- I was not -- I 

14 haven't read the transcripts. I wasn't part 

15 of the Work Group meeting so I can't say. 

16 Let's do the first motion first, 

17 which is to add for those years all employees. 

18 And, Ted, do you want to?

19 MR. KATZ: Sure. Dr. Anderson?

20 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

21 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach?

22 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.
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1 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson?

2 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

3 MR. KATZ: Dr. Field?

4 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

5 MR. KATZ: Mr. Griffon?

6 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes.

7 MR. KATZ: Dr. Kotelchuck?

8 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

9 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lemen is absent, I 

10 believe, still. I'll collect his vote after. 

11 Dr. Lockey?

12 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes.

13 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius?

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

15 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn?

16 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

17 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston?

18 MEMBER POSTON: Yes.

19 MR. KATZ: Dr. Richardson? David?

20 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

21 MR. KATZ: Thank you. Dr. 

22 Roessler?
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1 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

2 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield?

3 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

4 MR. KATZ: Dr. Ziemer?

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

6 MR. KATZ: And Ms. Valerio is 

7 recused from this session. So it's unanimous 

8 with one vote to collect from Dr. Lemen. The 

9 motion passes.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you. Okay, 

11 now let's go back to the `51 to `57 time 

12 period. And my recollection was that -- the 

13 question I asked was did any of the sort of 

14 outstanding Site Profile or outstanding SEC 

15 petition issues that Joe included in his list, 

16 did any of those apply to or would affect the 

17 `51-`57 period? And I thought the answer was 

18 that they did not. So if that -- and if the 

19 Work Group is comfortable in making that 

20 recommendation now -- I mean, I'm comfortable 

21 with it personally.

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes. Joe did a 
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1 great job at it. But what I want the Board to 

2 understand is that there wasn't -- nothing 

3 ever happened until 1958. And that was the 

4 issue. But, you know, there's the question of 

5 the depleted uranium. But this was clean 

6 depleted uranium coming in and anybody that 

7 we've talked to, we couldn't see anything. So 

8 if you need a motion for the 1951 to 1957 or -

9 -

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We already have 

11 one from the Work Group. 

12 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Jenny, do you 

14 have a --

15 MS. LIN: No, just to confirm that 

16 there is actually a motion from the Work 

17 Group. 

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, yes. Okay. 

19 So we have a motion. Let's do the vote.

20 MR. KATZ: To not add a Class. 

21 Okay. Dr. Anderson?

22 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.
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1 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach?

2 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

3 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson?

4 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

5 MR. KATZ: Dr. Field? Dr. Field?

6 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

7 MR. KATZ: Mr. Griffon?

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes.

9 MR. KATZ: Dr. Kotelchuck?

10 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

11 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lemen, I'll have to 

12 collect his vote. Dr. Lockey?

13 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes.

14 MR. KATZ: Dr. Melius?

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

16 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn?

17 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

18 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston?

19 MEMBER POSTON: Yes.

20 MR. KATZ: Dr. Richardson?

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

22 MR. KATZ: Dr. Roessler?
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1 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

2 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield?

3 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

4 MR. KATZ: And Valerio is recused. 

5 Dr. Ziemer?

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

7 MR. KATZ: And it's unanimous. The 

8 motion passes. 

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. So I have 

10 a letter ready for the addition but not for 

11 the `51-`57 period. I will do a separate 

12 letter. I'll circulate it to the Board before 

13 sending it forward. It will be pretty 

14 straightforward.

15 But for the `84-`91 period I'll 

16 read the letter as follows. The Advisory 

17 Board on Radiation Worker Health, the Board, 

18 has evaluated a Special Exposure Cohort 

19 Petition 0068 concerning workers at the Pantex 

20 Plant in Amarillo, Texas, under the statutory 

21 requirements established by the Energy 

22 Employees Occupational Illness Compensation 
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1 Program Act of 2000 incorporated in 42 CFR 

2 Section 83.13.

3 The Board respectfully recommends 

4 that SEC status be accorded to all employees 

5 of the Department of Energy, its predecessor 

6 agencies and their contractors and 

7 subcontractors who worked at the Pantex Plant 

8 in Amarillo, Texas, from January 1st, 1984 

9 through December 31st, 1991 for a number of 

10 work days aggregating at least 250 work days 

11 occurring either solely under this employment 

12 or in combination with work days within the 

13 parameters established for one or more other 

14 Classes of employees included in the Special 

15 Exposure Cohort.

16 This recommendation is based on 

17 the following factors. Workers at this 

18 facility during the time period in question 

19 were involved in operations related to nuclear 

20 weapons production. The Board's review of 

21 available monitoring as well as available 

22 process and source term information for this 
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1 facility found that NIOSH lacks the sufficient 

2 information allowing to estimate with 

3 sufficient accuracy the internal doses from 

4 potential exposure and uranium related to the 

5 disassembly of weapons systems during the time 

6 period from 1984 through 1990, and to thorium 

7 in 1991, which employees working at this 

8 facility may have been subjected.

9 The Board also determined that 

10 health may have been endangered for these 

11 Pantex Plant employees during the time period 

12 in question.

13 Based on these considerations and 

14 discussion at the July 16th and 17th, 2013 

15 Board meeting in Idaho Falls, Idaho, the Board 

16 recommends that this Class be added to the 

17 SEC. Enclosed is the documentation from the 

18 Board meeting where this SEC Class was 

19 discussed. The documentation includes copies 

20 of the petition, the NIOSH review thereof and 

21 related materials. If any of these items are 

22 unavailable at this time they will follow 
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1 shortly.

2 Any comments? Questions? So that 

3 will go forward. And as I said, I will 

4 circulate the other letter.

5 And I would like to thank Brad and 

6 the Work Group for all their hard work on 

7 this. I'd also like to thank NIOSH for their 

8 efforts. And also, I don't know if Greg is 

9 still here, but the Department of Energy for 

10 all their assistance. This has not been an 

11 easy site to evaluate. I also really thank 

12 the people at the facility. We got a lot of 

13 cooperation, a lot of assistance there over 

14 time. And frankly I personally was skeptical 

15 we'd get this far as well as we have in here.

16 I'd also like to thank the 

17 petitioners, both for all their efforts in 

18 putting this forward and also for the patience 

19 with the time it took to get here. But they 

20 did continue to advocate, continue to work 

21 hard for this, and hopefully this will benefit 

22 many of the workers at that facility who 
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1 worked for many years and as a result have 

2 developed cancer. But I'm glad that we were 

3 able to get through this and do it as well and 

4 as clearly as we could. So, thank you.

5 But, Brad, you've been patient.

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: Jim, I wanted to 

7 second everything you said. I'd personally 

8 really like to thank the DOE, NIOSH. This was 

9 a very, very complicated site. And we got a 

10 tour so that we could better understand that, 

11 that was very well put together and it really 

12 helped us understand how the process was.

13 But it was also an honor to be 

14 able to meet a lot of these people that all of 

15 this work that we're doing, all these other 

16 sites, this is where it all came together at 

17 the very end. And what a wonderful group of 

18 people. And Sarah Ray, we couldn't have done 

19 it without you. We're very thankful.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And I just 

21 recognized, I forgot to recognize Joe 

22 Fitzgerald who also did a lot of effort here. 
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1 So, thank you, Joe, and SC&A. 

2 So, anyway, thank you. That 

3 completes our work here for the morning. 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: I think that was 

5 Sarah wanting to say something.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oh, okay, I'm 

7 sorry. I didn't hear you.

8 MS. RAY: I was just going to 

9 second what you said, or third it or whatever. 

10 But thank you so much for your efforts and for 

11 continuing on with this and looking at the 

12 broad picture. We so appreciate it. And it 

13 will mean so much to so many workers. Thank 

14 you so much.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, thank you.

16 So, we're early. We can break for 

17 lunch. We will break. I believe we're 

18 scheduled to come back at 1:30. We'll take up 

19 Brookhaven. 

20 I believe, I don't know if it's 

21 actually -- it's not a petition issue but 

22 there may be people on the line. But I don't 
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1 think it makes sense to try to come back any 

2 earlier. So plan on 1:30 here.

3 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter 

4 went off the record at 11:41 a.m. and went 

5 back on the record at 1:33 p.m.)

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22
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1 A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N

2 1:33 p.m.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay, it's 1:30. 

4 We are reconvening the meeting of the Advisory 

5 Board on Radiation Worker Health. And do we 

6 have any announcements?

7 MR. KATZ: Just to check and see, 

8 Dr. Ziemer, Dr. Richardson, are you on the 

9 line?

10 MEMBER ZIEMER: Paul Ziemer on the 

11 line.

12 MR. KATZ: Good to hear you. 

13 MEMBER RICHARDSON: David 

14 Richardson on the line.

15 MR. KATZ: Super. Thank you. And 

16 Dr. Lemen, are you on the line?

17 (No response.)

18 MR. KATZ: Okay.

19 MEMBER BEACH: Is Ron Buchanan on 

20 the line?

21 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes, this is Ron 

22 Buchanan, SC&A.
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1 MEMBER BEACH: Oh, hi, Ron. Thank 

2 you. 

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. We'll 

4 start with Josie Beach, Chair of the 

5 Brookhaven National Laboratory Work Group. And 

6 we're going to do Site Profile issues.

7 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. This should 

8 be fairly brief. As you know, in March we 

9 finished up Brookhaven SEC issues. The first 

10 slide just indicates again who the Work Group 

11 Members are.

12 So, just a bit of background. We 

13 do have an SEC for January 1, 1947 through --

14 all the way through 1993. It was based on 

15 lack of adequate internal dose records.

16 There was 13 issues for the SEC 

17 and we also had 13 Site Profile issues. 

18 Remember last month in March we voted out --

19 we finished the SEC based on the sampling that 

20 NIOSH was able to show the Work Group that 

21 they could accomplish the sampling on those 

22 five sample cases that SC&A came up with. 
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1 So, the remaining items. After 

2 the meeting in March SC&A completed the matrix 

3 for the SEC, which was sent to you. That came 

4 out just after the meeting, so you have that 

5 to show the work that was done and just to 

6 readdress all those issues.

7 The other one for the Site Profile 

8 issues came out in May. I'm sure you have 

9 that available also. And Ron is on the line. 

10 He is going to go through all those Site 

11 Profile issues for you.

12 One thing I do want to point out 

13 before I turn it over to Ron is on page 4 of 

14 your handout, under item 13, if you look at 

15 the last sentence -- and I guess I can go 

16 forward here -- there is a couple of 

17 corrections.

18 Item 1 should be -- or items 2 and 

19 3, it should actually read items 1 and 2. And 

20 then the closure should be item 3. So instead 

21 of 2, 3 and 1, it should be 1, 2 and then 3. 

22 Just a quick adjustment so Ron doesn't have to 
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1 deal with that.

2 And with that, is there any 

3 questions on the SEC and where we finished up 

4 there? This really wasn't about the SEC but I 

5 wanted to just give you a quick brief 

6 overview.

7 Alright, Ron, if you're ready I've 

8 got your slide presentation up. Thank you, 

9 Brad. And we're ready to go with number 1.

10 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay. This is Ron 

11 Buchanan, SC&A.

12 Now, I'm on the -- I joined the 

13 meeting but all I have is the summary slide 

14 from Pantex. 

15 MEMBER BEACH: Just a second.

16 MEMBER RICHARDSON: It's the same 

17 for me. This is David Richardson.

18 MEMBER ZIEMER: This is Ziemer. 

19 I'm seeing the same thing. I'm still seeing 

20 Pantex.

21 (Pause.)

22 MEMBER BEACH: Okay, so my 
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1 apologies. As I was getting prepared I 

2 neglected to hook up to Live Meeting.

3 Ron, can you see it now?

4 DR. BUCHANAN: Yes. Slide number 

5 2 is coming up, yes.

6 MEMBER BEACH: And I just moved it 

7 to slide number 2, which is the start of your 

8 presentation.

9 DR. BUCHANAN: Right, slide number 

10 3 is on now.

11 MEMBER BEACH: Okay, so we'll turn 

12 it over to you at this point, Ron.

13 DR. BUCHANAN: Okay, thank you. A 

14 little background here. We did the Site 

15 Profile issues first and there was 13 of 

16 those. And by coincidence then we got into 

17 the SEC and there was 13 of those. And so 

18 it's a little confusing but that's the way it 

19 was.

20 And so we addressed the SEC 

21 issues, and the Site Profile issues kind of 

22 sat on the back burner. And so once we got 
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1 the SEC issues addressed then we came back to 

2 the Site Profile issues.

3 And some of the same issues or 

4 parts of the issues were the same. And so 

5 some of these I'll refer to the SEC issues. 

6 And so we'll start out with the Site Profile 

7 issues number 1 and 2 because they're related. 

8 Can you go back one? There you go. Okay, 

9 that's right. Slide 3 is correct.

10 We have 1 and 2 there. And this 

11 was concerned with bioassay monitoring and 

12 records. And Brookhaven did not have a good 

13 centralized system to begin with, and so we 

14 questioned that. And then the SEC was granted 

15 through 1993 which took care of most of that. 

16 But then we were still concerned about `94, 

17 `95 and `96, in that area. 

18 And so we worked with NIOSH, went 

19 back and looked at some of these bioassay 

20 records and also exposures and cases. And we 

21 closed that out under the SEC issues and found 

22 out there was sufficient data after 1993. So 
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1 that Site Profile issue 1 and 2 was 

2 satisfactorily addressed.

3 If there's any questions as I go 

4 through these, you can stop me. If not I'll 

5 just go onto the next one.

6 Site Profile issue number 3 there 

7 was the minimum detectable activity and 

8 uncertainties. We looked at that and we found 

9 that in the revised TBD -- there were several 

10 revisions to the Brookhaven National Lab TBD. 

11 And our latest one we looked at after the 

12 findings were posted.

13 We found that they did address the 

14 major radionuclides, expanded the time of 

15 coverage and included some other 

16 radionuclides. And we felt that item number 3 

17 has been satisfactorily addressed by the 

18 revised TBD.

19 Number 4 was the characteristics 

20 of the radionuclides. And now the revised TBD 

21 did not give additional information on that. 

22 However, they did revise the TBD to instruct 
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1 the dose reconstructor to use the most 

2 claimant-favorable solubility, particle size, 

3 et cetera, that would create the largest dose 

4 to the organ of interest. And this is 

5 standard protocol for dose reconstruction, so 

6 we agree with that solution to that issue.

7 Number 5, to begin with, we 

8 noticed there was no internal coworker dose 

9 assigned. And this was also addressed in SEC 

10 issue number 12. And this goes back to our 

11 investigating the internal dose records. And 

12 we analyzed some cases to see if there was 

13 available data. And there was. And so we, at 

14 this time, found that there was no need for 

15 internal coworker data for BNL. And we feel 

16 that this issue has been satisfactorily 

17 resolved.

18 Now, number 6 is the only open 

19 issue at this time and that was the NTA film 

20 badge. As you know, NTA film has a cutoff at

21 about half to 1 MeV. And so if you're working 

22 around moderated neutrons of lower energy then 
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1 it doesn't register it, or only registers part 

2 of the dose. 

3 And so we brought this issue up. 

4 And as of April 30, NIOSH is to address this 

5 issue. And we will then review their 

6 recommendations when they're made available.

7 Number 7 is along the same lines 

8 as NTA track fading. And NTA film sets, the 

9 neutron detection film sets, it will lose its 

10 images. And so you have to do some 

11 compensation for that depending on how long it 

12 sets and what the energy of the neutrons are 

13 and such. 

14 And so we found that this was SEC 

15 issue number 1 that had been resolved. This 

16 is where in the revised TBD they did recommend 

17 a fading factor of 1.8 before 1985. And going 

18 back over the literature for fading and some 

19 of the published information we find that this 

20 is a claimant-favorable factor and we agree 

21 with that.

22 After 1985 and forward, when they 
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1 used NTA film through `95 at BNL, we found 

2 that the Landauer records did show that they 

3 calibrated the film at the beginning of the 

4 exchange cycle and then read it at the end. 

5 And so this would compensate for any fading, 

6 and in fact it would be claimant-favorable and 

7 it was if the whole dose was assigned -- was 

8 acquired on the first day of exposure. And 

9 then it was read on the last day of when it 

10 was turned in. And so this would be claimant11 favorable and we agree with that on issue 

12 number 7.

13 Issue number 8 was at BNL they had 

14 a number of neutron dosimetry systems. And 

15 they sometimes had them intermixed. Sometimes 

16 they'd use one, two, or three, or four in 

17 combination. And our question to begin with 

18 was -- and also in SEC issue number 3 -- was 

19 how was this dose recorded and which one was 

20 used? 

21 And so what we did was 

22 investigated some of the readings. And we 
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1 found out that if there were several readings 

2 they always recorded the highest, or both of 

3 them, or all three of them sometimes in the 

4 records. And then so this highest reading 

5 could be used to assign a dose during dose 

6 reconstruction. And we had no further issue 

7 with that. That issue was addressed.

8 Number 9 is the potential 

9 exposures at the accelerators. Brookhaven had 

10 a lot of different neutron sources. They had 

11 accelerators of different configurations. And 

12 so this gave you a wide range of neutron 

13 energy. 

14 And the NTA film and the other 

15 neutron detection methods have of course a 

16 certain range that they can detect neutrons 

17 efficiently. And we were concerned about 

18 there might be locations where there would be 

19 higher energy neutrons where the NTA film 

20 responds but would be a less than full 

21 response.

22 And so we looked over the possible 
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1 neutron sources, their energy ranges, and the 

2 percent of time a person would spend at the 

3 different locations such as the beamlines and

4 outside shielding. 

5 We found that BNL always used a 

6 quality factor, a biological conversion 

7 factor, a conservative value of 10. And most 

8 of the measurements around the accelerators 

9 showed a quality factor of about 5. And so 

10 there was generally over an estimate. And so 

11 if the detection system did have lack of 

12 sensitivity at higher energy then it was most 

13 likely compensated for. Plus, you would not 

14 stand in the beamline for a long period of 

15 time. So we felt that there was no additional 

16 need for adjustment factors beyond what was 

17 already being used. And so we considered this 

18 issue closed.

19 Issue number 10 was external 

20 coworker dose data. And at first we wanted to 

21 see if there was a need for external coworker 

22 dose data. And we brought this up to NIOSH. 
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1 And we find in the revised TBD that they did 

2 provide coworker external dose data from 1947 

3 to 2010. 

4 We looked at that data and found 

5 that it was derived in a claimant-favorable 

6 manner. And we evaluated some of the dose 

7 records and found that it was acceptable. And 

8 this provided for resolution of issue number 

9 10.

10 Now, 11, of course, incidents and 

11 events was not thoroughly addressed in the 

12 original TBD. And so we find that in the 

13 revised TBD there was some additional revision 

14 and additional information. 

15 And also we looked at the -- in 

16 evaluating these SEC issues on internal intake 

17 and exposures and neutrons and stuff, we did 

18 look at the potential field of exposure. And 

19 we found that probably the system that they 

20 used for dosimetry, internal and external, 

21 wouldn't satisfactorily address the issues of 

22 possible exposures. So we felt that that item 
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1 could be closed.

2 Now, there was one particular area 

3 that was pointed out in particular, that was 

4 the igloo area. Now, igloo area was kind of a 

5 storage area that they stored unused sources. 

6 It wasn't really a trash area, it was just a 

7 storage area that was made out of concrete 

8 blocks stacked and such.

9 And of course outside this gated 

10 area you could receive a higher dose than the 

11 general environmental area if you were using 

12 Section 4 of the TBD. And so we found -- we 

13 brought this up and NIOSH did address this in 

14 the revised TBD to include the igloo and the 

15 HWMF facility satisfactorily. So we felt that 

16 that issue could be closed.

17 That brings us to the last issue, 

18 number 13, and that had to do with the number 

19 and type of X-rays. And there was three items 

20 to this issue. And this is mainly wording of 

21 the tables so that it was less confusing and 

22 not ambiguous on when they should assign what 
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1 type of X-ray.

2 And so we had item 1 there, which 

3 was from Table 3-1. The wording on when they 

4 should assign certain X-rays if there wasn't 

5 records or if there was records. That was 

6 reworded in the revised TBD and it's clearer 

7 now. So we feel that item number 1 has been 

8 satisfactorily addressed. This is where the 

9 error on the slide is; item 1 is addressed.

10 Item 2 was the type of X-rays, 

11 whether they did the special X-rays as a 

12 condition of employment. So we brought that 

13 up. We looked at twenty cases and we found 

14 that what NIOSH recommended in the revised TBD 

15 agreed with what we found in these twenty 

16 cases. And therefore we considered that item 

17 number 2 could be closed.

18 Item number 3 was the wording and 

19 functionality, like when do you use what part 

20 of the tables. And Table 3-2 and Table 3-3 

21 has been satisfactorily addressed in the 

22 revised TBD so that is clearer. 
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1 But we did find the 2013 revised 

2 TBD still did not contain any information 

3 referring to Table 3-4. 3-4 is a useful 

4 table. I believe it provides the skin, 

5 different organ doses as a function of time 

6 and such. And so it's a useful table but 

7 there was no reference to it, or where it came 

8 from, or when to use it. 

9 And so NIOSH's response of the 

10 30th of April of 2013 said they would -- the 

11 next TBD would add some information to make 

12 that clearer. And so that was item number 3.

13 And so that brings me to the 

14 summary. And so, Josie, do you want to do the 

15 summary slide now?

16 MEMBER BEACH: Sure, I'll take 

17 over. Thank you, Ron. Any questions for Ron 

18 on any of the Site Profile issues?

19 One thing I can point out is that 

20 NIOSH and SC&A are in agreement that the two 

21 issues that are left, once the new TBD is 

22 released, SC&A will take a minute to look at 
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1 them and that should completely close all the 

2 Site Profile issues for Brookhaven National 

3 Labs.

4 So eleven of the thirteen issues 

5 are closed. And I think, in summary, that's 

6 about all I can tell you. Any questions or 

7 comments? 

8 (No response.)

9 I think we were pretty clear last 

10 meeting in March. Okay.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Good. And good 

12 job, LaVon, on the slides.

13 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. This is 

14 possessed, it's changing on its own so I'm 

15 going to leave it.

16 (Laughter.)

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

18 you, Josie. And Ron, thank you also for that.

19 We have about 25 minutes until we 

20 need to start on Fernald. And we should wait 

21 because I believe petitioners may very well be 

22 on the line for this one. And we'll try to 
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1 stay on schedule for that.

2 I'm trying to think of any 

3 updates. Just a couple of sort of 

4 housekeeping items. One is that Ted and I 

5 were talking on Rocky Flats. I think plan on 

6 a 2-day meeting. It may be a day and a half. 

7 We'll try to pin that down. It obviously 

8 depends on what happens with some of the SECs 

9 that are coming. We don't have many in the 

10 way of 83.14s but there are some Work Groups 

11 out there that possibly could come through. 

12 Obviously, Rocky Flats will be a subject for 

13 that meeting. 

14 We're not sure, Savannah River 

15 could also. So that's probably more uncertain 

16 in terms of that. So I think we can plan a 

17 day and a half at least, and possibly two 

18 days. But my guess is a day and a half. But 

19 we will try to pin that down by -- was it 

20 September 5th?

21 MR. KATZ: September 7th.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, whatever. 
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1 We have a Board call so we will try to have a 

2 better idea by that time so people can plan 

3 travel, though I'm not sure we'll have 

4 permission yet on that. But at least in terms 

5 of your schedules and so forth. 

6 On the coworker issue, I've been 

7 talking to NIOSH, SC&A and some others. And 

8 we will probably do some follow-up sort of 

9 Work Group, SEC evaluation Work Group meeting 

10 to try to spend a day in Cincinnati going over 

11 that issue and try and see if we can have some 

12 -- make some progress. I won't say 

13 resolution, but certainly some progress and 

14 then look at some of the applications or 

15 potential applications. 

16 And so we'll probably come back to 

17 the Board at least with an update on that and 

18 the sufficient accuracy overall issue by the 

19 October meeting. And otherwise I think the 

20 main issue in terms of timing is going to be 

21 the issue of the -- where we are with some of 

22 the outstanding SECs. But we've got Pantex, 
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1 so the number of outstanding ones is 

2 dwindling. And if we can -- there's only a 

3 few outstanding ones, relatively speaking, 

4 left. 

5 So why don't we take another short 

6 break and about -- and be back here right at 

7 2:15 and we'll start. You don't even have to 

8 leave, you can stay. 

9 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

10 matter went off the record at 1:56 p.m. and 

11 resumed at 2:19 p.m.)

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We're about to 

13 get started and make sure everybody that 

14 needed to be here is here. We are dealing 

15 with the Fernald site and the SEC petition 

16 there.

17 And first I want to -- Brad, do 

18 you want to say something or just let John go 

19 ahead?

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: John was going to 

21 start out.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Oh, okay.
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: And then we were 

2 going to go.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So, John Stiver, 

4 if you want to?

5 MR. KATZ: Just to note as John is 

6 getting ready that we're down a couple of 

7 Board Members. We're down Mark Griffon and 

8 Jim Lockey. Jim Lockey has recused himself 

9 from this session.

10 MR. STIVER: Good afternoon. I'm 

11 John Stiver with SC&A. And with Brad today 

12 we're going to give the Board a status update 

13 on the Fernald SEC petition review.

14 And we really want to break this 

15 into two components. There really are two 

16 open SEC issues at this point. They're quite 

17 different. 

18 So the first I think we're going 

19 to go ahead and discuss to begin with which is 

20 the uranium coworker model as applied to 

21 subcontract employees prior to 1986. And the 

22 second is the thorium coworker model that uses 
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1 daily weighted exposures for 1954 to 1967. 

2 But before we get too far into 

3 that, it's been quite some time since these, 

4 especially the second issue, was described. 

5 And we have some new Board Members on who 

6 really haven't been privy to a lot of the 

7 Fernald discussions. So for your benefit 

8 we're going to go back through, and just for 

9 the benefit of everybody, just as a review.

10 But this is the Work Group review. 

11 This is probably one of the most longstanding 

12 SEC petitions, if not the longest standing in 

13 the entire program. 

14 April 2006, the SEC petition was 

15 qualified and the Class, the proposed Class, 

16 was all employees who worked in all facilities 

17 at the Feed Materials Production Center in 

18 Fernald from January 1st, 1951, through 

19 December 31st, 1989.

20 In November 2006, the Evaluation 

21 Report was issued and NIOSH found no part of 

22 the Class under evaluation for which it could 
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1 not estimate radiation doses with sufficient 

2 accuracy.

3 November 10th, shortly thereafter, 

4 SC&A released our Site Profile review and in 

5 July of 2007 our SEC Petition Evaluation 

6 Report review.

7 From August 2007 to July 2013, 

8 there have been a total of sixteen Work Group 

9 meetings. That's not a misprint, that is the 

10 real number, sixteen meetings. 

11 And just for those of you 

12 interested in some of the early discussions, 

13 in May of 2011, prior to the meeting in St. 

14 Louis, Missouri, I gave a detailed summary and 

15 posted for review a whole series of documents 

16 related to the SEC issues up to that point. 

17 And the link is there in blue on this slide 

18 for those of you who are interested. 

19 MEMBER MUNN: John?

20 MR. STIVER: Yes.

21 MEMBER MUNN: You might want to 

22 mention for the record that that link is not 
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1 available to the public. That's an internal 

2 link.

3 MR. STIVER: Yes, Wanda, that's a 

4 good point. That is an internal link to the 

5 internal intranet, the CDC intranet.

6 The status of the SEC issues. 

7 There were six original issues from our 2007 

8 report. You'll see those that are indicated 

9 as closed with an asterisk based on Work Group 

10 recommendation. Some have been transferred to 

11 Site Profile discussions.

12 The two that are open, as I said, 

13 this is the first, the coworker model with 

14 uranium internal exposures, and number 6A, the 

15 DWE model for thorium intakes. And you see 

16 there's a note of conditional closure. 

17 We had tentatively agreed in 

18 principle with that model back in 2010 with a 

19 caveat that NIOSH provide demonstration that 

20 their implementation strategy would indeed be 

21 acceptable. 

22 And the chest count data, there is 
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1 an SEC that was granted based on the thorium 

2 chest count data that was reported in 

3 milligrams thorium during the years 1968 to 

4 1978. And this is for all the workers at 

5 Fernald during that period of time.

6 This is open issue number 1. We'll 

7 go through kind of an overview, a history of 

8 it.

9 The concerns here regarded the 

10 completeness and adequacy, as usual, of all 

11 coworker models. And this is for the uranium 

12 bioassay data that was available for dose 

13 reconstruction that supported the internal 

14 dosimetry coworker model. This is OTIB-78. I 

15 believe Revision 2 of that model came out just 

16 this year.

17 The status of the issue. There's 

18 been countless White Papers exchanged, Work 

19 Group discussions from the inception of the 

20 SEC, discussions all the way through July 1 of 

21 this year.

22 At the July 1 meeting, which was a 
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1 teleconference, the Work Group did pass a 

2 motion to recommend to the Board that a Class 

3 of workers comprising subcontractor employees 

4 at Fernald from January 1st, 1951 through 

5 December 31st, 1983 be added to the SEC. And 

6 the next few slides will kind of flesh out the 

7 basis for that determination.

8 The central issues here are 

9 bulleted. We had subcontractors employed at 

10 Fernald from the beginning. In 1951, the 

11 Pilot Plant began, was up and running on kind 

12 of a -- well, it was essentially doing pilot 

13 studies and handling uranium. 

14 From 1951 through `53, the other 

15 nine plants were being constructed. And so 

16 you have subcontractor employees there from 

17 the get-go. And you have uranium being 

18 handled from the start as well.

19 The subcontractors were not 

20 included in routine bioassay until 1986. And 

21 this is the year, kind of a pivotal year, when 

22 Westinghouse came in and took over the M&O 
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1 contract from National Lead of Ohio. And at 

2 that time they instituted a much more robust 

3 and site-wide health and safety program, 

4 including routine bioassay. And part of that 

5 was to include everybody, including the 

6 subcontractors. 

7 Excuse me, my voice is a little 

8 shoddy today.

9 Prior to the March Work Group 

10 meeting -- oh, there was one thing I forgot to 

11 mention. One of the big issues here is the 

12 coworker model, which is very complete. And 

13 actually it was deemed adequate for the prime 

14 contractor employees from the beginning, which 

15 is really kind of unusual. 

16 Most of the sites you find that 

17 they had an inadequate bioassay program in the 

18 early years, which is oftentimes the basis for 

19 an SEC. Well, Fernald is kind of an odd bird 

20 in that sense, in that they had a good 

21 bioassay program from the beginning. The only 

22 problem was it applied to the prime contract 
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1 employees and not the subcontractors up until 

2 1986. 

3 So you have this group of people, 

4 these subcontractors, who were not -- who have 

5 no data that are actually in the coworker 

6 model. And NIOSH was proposing to use that 

7 coworker model at a high percentile, say the 

8 95th percentile, to bound the intakes of that 

9 subset of subcontractors.

10 Prior to the March meeting, DCAS 

11 did a data capture and located approximately 

12 940 hard copy bioassay records. And this was 

13 for about 180 subcontractors collected over a 

14 9-year period going from 1969 to 1985. These 

15 data were extremely limited and there weren't 

16 even enough of them available to make 

17 comparisons on the earlier years.

18 When we looked at that data set we 

19 did notice something kind of peculiar. There 

20 was a set of subcontractors in 1969 who had 

21 very high exposures compared to the prime 

22 contractors, but not only were they high, they 
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1 appeared to be a different type of exposure, 

2 as though they were involved in other 

3 activities that the prime contractors were 

4 not. And they had fairly high excretions 

5 starting in the month of July of 1969 and kind 

6 of tailing off through October, whereas the 

7 primes just had kind of a steady background 

8 level. 

9 And so we thought it was 

10 worthwhile to do a kind of proof of concept 

11 comparison. And granted that these -- a lot 

12 of these workers were not claimants so you 

13 have no information available on their -- on 

14 the work history. All you have is a bioassay 

15 point and you have a date when it was taken. 

16 So the problem becomes how do you guesstimate 

17 a period of employment or a period of intake 

18 and so forth when you don't have any 

19 employment data?

20 So, what we did was kind of a 

21 proof of concept. What would you do if you 

22 had the bioassay data? Make your best 
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1 estimate judgments on what the period of 

2 employment would be. Find whatever kind of 

3 background data you can on that. And then 

4 compare that to what these workers would have 

5 gotten using the 95th percentile of the 

6 coworker model. 

7 And if the 95th percentile bounded 

8 those intakes based on bioassay, that would be 

9 a pretty strong piece of evidence that the 

10 coworker model would be adequate and 

11 acceptable for these subcontractors.

12 In short, a total of I believe it 

13 was fifteen workers, there were nine of these 

14 non-claimants and then -- or excuse me, 

15 thirteen -- and four claimants. And these 

16 four claimants, who were drawn from this 180 

17 workers in the earlier years, did have, in 

18 fact, employment data and they were picked 

19 because they had the highest excretion data of 

20 all the claimants that were available.

21 And so NIOSH went ahead and did a 

22 best estimate study. And there were two 
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1 aspects of this that we kind of questioned 

2 when we saw this study. It appeared that 

3 there was kind of an arbitrary distinction 

4 made about when the employment for the non5 claimants ended. And they were assigned 

6 coworker dose far in excess of the period for 

7 which data were available. 

8 And the same held for the 

9 claimants. In one example there was a 

10 claimant who worked from 1969 to 1974 and he 

11 only had bioassay data for 1971 for August. 

12 And yet he was given five years of coworker 

13 dose -- or intake. We didn't look at dose, we 

14 just looked at intake. 

15 And even so, even with these kind 

16 of conditions and assumptions that favored the 

17 coworker model, it turned out that there were 

18 a good portion of these workers, in the 

19 claimants and non-claimants, for whom the 

20 coworker model was not bounding at the 95th 

21 percentile. 

22 These are two curves or bar charts 
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1 here for type M and type S materials. The 

2 blue bars represent the actual best estimate 

3 based on bioassay and the red is the coworker 

4 assignments. You can see Worker 15 is the one 

5 that had one month of bioassay in five years 

6 of coworker data. So even so, especially when 

7 you get down to type S, you see that the 

8 coworker model is not bounding for most of 

9 those workers.

10 Now, the question then becomes, 

11 okay, since the coworker model is not 

12 bounding, how are we going to define a Class? 

13 This is after we've kind of agreed, as you can 

14 see on this slide, that the uranium coworker 

15 model is not bounding for the subcontractors 

16 prior to the mid-1980s. So we need to really 

17 define a Class period and look at the bookend 

18 years. 

19 And we looked at the later years 

20 first. And NIOSH had done a comparison 

21 looking at all this data, this 939 samples, by 

22 year. And then they also had data from 1986 
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1 which did include the coworkers. I guess not 

2 the coworkers, the subcontractors.

3 And based on the fact that you 

4 have roughly the same number of individuals, 

5 and the number of samples per individual for 

6 `84 and `85 as compared to `86, there's pretty 

7 good evidence that you could construct a 

8 separate coworker model for the subcontractors 

9 for those two years, for `84 and `85. 

10 Now, `83 was kind of an odd year 

11 because you started getting a ramp-up in 

12 subcontractor bioassay I believe the last 3 

13 months of the year. And it coincided with a 

14 historical event. There was a Plant 9 dust 

15 release that made the news. Before that, 

16 Fernald was kind of off the radar scope. It 

17 wasn't really given much mind. But that 

18 really put it on center stage. And I think as 

19 a result of that there was an impetus on the 

20 part of management to really start doing a 

21 better job on doing bioassay and health and 

22 safety in general for their worker population.
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1 So we figured that 1983 was 

2 probably a pretty good cutoff date for the 

3 endpoint. And then the question becomes what 

4 to do about the early years? Initially, we 

5 thought maybe `53 is a good year because 

6 that's the time that all the construction is 

7 done. They start -- all the other plants, 

8 other than the Pilot Plant, start receiving 

9 materials. 

10 And one might presume that the 

11 workers in these other building construction 

12 projects would be working in, if not pristine 

13 environments, very low-level environments. And 

14 so we started looking into the SRDB to find 

15 any kind of evidence of that.

16 And what we found was just the 

17 opposite, that you had situations like 

18 described in SRDB 3230, as early as August of 

19 1952, they said right there, the highlighted 

20 part, you had hundreds of contractors and 

21 subcontractor personnel running around loose 

22 in the work areas. And this is coming from 
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1 the health and safety folks themselves. 

2 And so when you have that kind of 

3 a situation, and we have other SRDB evidence 

4 that there were -- there's a set of --

5 actually one of them, I believe it was Plant 9 

6 in -- it was `52 or `53, and subcontractors, 

7 the construction workers, didn't want to go 

8 into the building because there was black 

9 oxide around. And so they had to do a swipe 

10 survey before these guys would go in. 

11 So you had problems from the 

12 beginning. And we decided, the Work Group 

13 decided, that the best -- rather than to try 

14 to get too precise when it wasn't warranted, 

15 to just go ahead and propose the Class from 

16 January 1st of 1951 all the way through 

17 December 31st of 1983.

18 And that is really the end of the 

19 first -- all I have to say about the first 

20 portion of the discussion today.

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: From the Work 

22 Group, what I'd like to -- this came from the 
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1 Work Group. We had this one motion when we 

2 had enough people there for the 

3 subcontractors. And so what's coming from the 

4 Work Group here is, as John said, the Work 

5 Group passed a motion to recommend to the 

6 Board that the Class of workers comprise 

7 subcontractor employees at Fernald from 

8 January 1st, 1951 through December 31st, 1983 

9 be added to the SEC Class. And this was a 

10 recommendation from the Work Group. For 

11 uranium. 

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So why don't we 

13 take questions on this issue now while it's --

14 because the other one is -- the other issue is 

15 a little -- is different. I don't want people 

16 to lose track of questions here. Bill, go 

17 ahead.

18 MEMBER FIELD: I just have a quick 

19 question. Who's in the Work Group?

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: What's that?

21 MEMBER FIELD: Who's in the Work 

22 Group?
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: Who's in the Work 

2 Group?

3 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

4 MEMBER CLAWSON: I'm sorry. Let's 

5 see. We've got Paul Ziemer, Phil Schofield 

6 and Mark. Yes. Those are the ones that are 

7 on the Fernald Work Group.

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And I actually 

9 listened in on at least this part of that Work 

10 Group call. Any questions? I just wanted to 

11 while it's fresh. Then we'll go onto the 

12 other issue, go through, and then we'll come 

13 back and take action. We also have to give 

14 time for the petitioners if they wish to 

15 speak. 

16 MR. STIVER: Okay. Moving onto 

17 the next issue, which is a bit thornier. This 

18 is issue 6A, which is the reconstruction of 

19 internal exposures to thorium using daily 

20 weighted air concentration data. 

21 And this is an issue that's been 

22 alive for about 5 years. And I'm just going 
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1 to give you the broad brush stroke overview 

2 before we start getting into the details.

3 And really this is the use of 

4 breathing zone and general air sampling data 

5 which were weighted by task for a certain set 

6 of workers a certain set of days. And this is 

7 going to -- NIOSH is proposing to use this 

8 data set to reconstruct intakes of thorium-232 

9 to all workers at Fernald for the period 1954 

10 through 1967.

11 The central issues, as always, 

12 revolve around data adequacy and completeness. 

13 Are there sufficient data there to bound the 

14 internal doses? And given that there are 

15 adequate data, is NIOSH's proposed method 

16 sufficiently robust to reconstruct doses 

17 according to the requirements of Part 83 for 

18 sufficient accuracy?

19 And the status, I want to jump 

20 ahead, there is a slide here that was 

21 misplaced. We should be up to 18 here. My 

22 apologies for not catching that earlier.
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1 This is kind of a more detailed 

2 example of the five years of deliberations and 

3 different models that have been proposed and 

4 retired during that period of time. Obviously, 

5 numerous White Papers have been exchanged. 

6 There have been five revisions to the DWE 

7 coworker model during this period of time.

8 In March 2009 when I joined SC&A -

9 - from SAIC, too many A's and C's in those 

10 terms -- I was tasked to look at the coworker 

11 model and the associated data for Revision 2 

12 of the model. 

13 And Revision 2 proposed to use the 

14 DWE data and break it out by job type, by 

15 building and by year. So you basically had 

16 three degrees of freedom. I realize that's 

17 not the proper statistical use of the term but 

18 we'll use it for our purposes.

19 We had about twenty findings in 

20 our review. Okay, does anybody know how to 

21 stop it from doing that? We'll see it that 

22 works. 
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1 (Pause.)

2 Okay. We had twenty findings 

3 regarding Revision 2. They related mainly to 

4 the modeling approach and to the lack of an 

5 uncertainty analysis. We also looked at data, 

6 and which we'll get to in a minute, that we 

7 were tasked to review. It was a small set of 

8 data. The Board felt that, based on the 

9 Revision 2 model and the criteria that were 

10 proposed, that it was not necessary to do a 

11 full-blown review of all the DWE data that 

12 were posted. Instead we were tasked to look 

13 at all the thorium buildings in the year 1955 

14 and 1966, and then Plant 1 in 1960. We'll get 

15 to that shortly.

16 In October of 2010, NIOSH released 

17 Revision 3 of their coworker model. And this 

18 revision drew pretty heavily upon an 

19 uncertainty analysis that Adam Davis and Dan 

20 Strom up at PNL had produced back in 2008. 

21 And it assigned the highest DWE 

22 for a given building in a given year basically 
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1 to all the workers in that building in that 

2 year. And based on the Davis and Strom 

3 recommendations, based on their uncertainty 

4 analysis, they gave the high DWE along with a 

5 GSD of 5.

6 And we agreed that, in principle, 

7 that approach was probably defensible. And 

8 recall this is back in 2010 when one size fits 

9 all models were being used routinely, as 

10 opposed to today where we have a much more 

11 sophisticated approach to coworker modeling 

12 and more of an emphasis on sufficient 

13 accuracy. So this kind of has to be looked at 

14 in the context of the time.

15 Finally, in November 2012, Bob 

16 Barton, one of our best analysts at SC&A, he 

17 did an analysis to just see whether it was 

18 really possible to place workers in given 

19 buildings in given years. And the results of 

20 that study were that, no, it was not possible.

21 So NIOSH went back to the drawing 

22 board and they came out with Revision 4 back 
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1 in February which is kind of a fallback to 

2 Revision 2. We had the same types of 

3 problems. And so at the March meeting we 

4 talked about it. They came back out with 

5 Revision 5. Maybe I'm jumping around too much 

6 up here.

7 Revision 5 was a lot like Revision 

8 3. It was a one size fits all model but it 

9 dropped a degree of freedom. Instead of 

10 assigning the high DWE for each building and 

11 year, they just assigned the highest DWE for 

12 the entire site for a given year to everybody.

13 Okay, so it was assigned the high 

14 DWE for the entire site to all workers for 

15 each year for thorium production with no 

16 attempts to place workers in particular 

17 buildings. 

18 And so let me get back to our 

19 original position. We're going to go through 

20 these in some more detail here. Get back to 

21 slide 11.

22 So let's get back to the actual 
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1 concept, as it applied to Fernald, of the 

2 daily weighted exposure. The Atomic Energy 

3 Commission's Health and Safety Laboratory had 

4 been using this approach since the 1940s. And 

5 they introduced it to Fernald in 1953. They 

6 actually did the first DWE study in 1953. And 

7 then they handed it over to the industrial 

8 hygiene and safety group at Fernald in 1954. 

9 And that group then conducted the DWE studies 

10 from that point on.

11 They did these air dust studies 

12 and produced reports which are summaries of 

13 the data prepared by the IH&S group. And they 

14 had estimates of the average worker exposure 

15 by job type. And they used this mainly to 

16 assess and control dust levels in the plant 

17 really to kind of improve industrial hygiene. 

18 They were not used to assess intakes, although 

19 they were kind of indirectly used to assess 

20 exposure in terms of what they called the 

21 maximum air concentration, the MAC, which at 

22 the time was 70 dpm per cubic meter. It later 
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1 shifted to 100 dpm per cubic meter, I believe, 

2 in 1960.

3 This concept was based on the 

4 gross alpha air activity concentration, or AAC 

5 for short. And it's really not applicable to 

6 just one nuclide. It could be applicable to 

7 recycled uranium, uranium, thorium, uranium 

8 and thorium progeny, basically any alpha 

9 emitters that were present in the workplace 

10 for which they wanted to get a handle on the 

11 potential exposures to workers.

12 What exactly is a DWE? It's a 

13 time-weighted alpha air concentration, job14 and building-specific. There are several 

15 tasks per job. Like say you had a guy whose 

16 job was in metal production and he took the 

17 derbies out of the furnace and broke them open 

18 and cleaned them off and then transferred them 

19 down the line to be remelted. 

20 And so for each task within his 

21 job they would give him a little breathing 

22 zone sampler. They'd follow him around and 
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1 sample in his breathing zone as best they 

2 could for each one of those tasks, for a 

3 certain period of time and take his replicates 

4 of those samples. And they'd do that 

5 throughout the day. 

6 So there's a series of breathing 

7 zone samples that represent the tasks that 

8 typically involve the highest exposure 

9 potential. And then there's the general air 

10 samples, which are typically ambient, like say 

11 going to the cafeteria, or just the floor of 

12 the chemical room, or something along those 

13 lines which you would expect to be much more 

14 uncertain due to the concentration differences 

15 across a room.

16 The time to complete each task was 

17 reported. I should have put in a sample DWE 

18 report. I didn't for the sake of brevity. But 

19 what they would do then is to take -- these 

20 reports would have -- okay, here we go. They 

21 would take the high, the low and the average 

22 and report that for the different samples that 
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1 were taken for each task. They would then 

2 have the time for each task, the number of 

3 samples for the task and the number of workers 

4 who were involved in that job.

5 They would multiply the average 

6 air concentration per task by the time 

7 required to complete that task. They would 

8 sum all of those time-by-concentrations and 

9 then divide by the total time. So basically 

10 it's just a weighted average air 

11 concentration. And it's specific to the job. 

12 It's task-weighted.

13 The important thing is to keep in 

14 mind it really is an average for the workers 

15 who were monitored for the specific days in 

16 which they were monitored. And the time 

17 weighting, I can't emphasize how important 

18 that is because it really is the link between 

19 the air concentration and the exposure 

20 potential at any given time and place in the 

21 facility.

22 So in reality, you don't just have 
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1 one value, you have a whole distribution of 

2 DWEs. You have all the workers who weren't 

3 measured. You have all the variations that 

4 could possibly go into creating uncertainty in 

5 each one of these DWEs. And so obviously you 

6 have spatial and temporal variation.

7 And probably the biggest problem 

8 we had with the DWE reports in our original 

9 review was there was no uncertainty analysis 

10 provided. But as I said, in 2008, Davis and 

11 Strom came along and they reviewed -- they 

12 basically wanted to do some sort of 

13 uncertainty analysis to where these types of 

14 data could be used in dose reconstruction. And 

15 that was really the impetus behind the study. 

16 And before EEOICPA, I might add.

17 And what they did was they went 

18 out and they reviewed six HASL reports 

19 covering five sites. These were visited 

20 between `48 and 1955. They were looking at 

21 uranium, uranium or thorium, and radium and 

22 radon. I'm just going to kind of brush 
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1 through this. This isn't all that important.

2 They had 63 job titles. Each job 

3 title, one to twelve employees, for a total of 

4 165 employees. Each job involved from one to 

5 thirteen operations characterized by one to 27 

6 air samples for a total of 428 air samples. 

7 About 63 percent of these workers were exposed 

8 above the contemporary maximum allowable 

9 concentrations of the time. 

10 They focused on the variability 

11 and the observations as evidenced in the air 

12 sampling data themselves. And they called out 

13 different sources of uncertainty and 

14 variability. Obviously, measurement 

15 uncertainty, mistakes in data processing and 

16 communication. 

17 One thing that is important that 

18 is really not quantifiable in this kind of 

19 study was the representativeness of the air 

20 samples to what the workers actually breathed. 

21 All you have is what the workers were 

22 breathing at the time to the best of your 
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1 ability to measure it.

2 And so obviously there's 

3 variability in particle size, distributions, 

4 process variability, air sampling placement, 

5 changes in ventilation, and also self6 absorption for below specific activity 

7 materials like thorium. If you've got a high 

8 dust load you may end up with a lot of self9 absorption. So you may not be getting a true 

10 reading of what the actual activity was in 

11 that air sample.

12 They then ran Monte Carlo 

13 simulations assuming log-normal distributions 

14 to generate distributions of both discrete 

15 DWEs and log-normal fits. Obviously, the log16 normal fit allows the possibility that the 

17 exposures in our interest would be larger than 

18 those actually observed.

19 The important part here is they 

20 determined the upper 95th percentile to GSD to 

21 be about 4, and the 99th percentile to be 

22 about 6 and 7. And they used that to support 
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1 a GSD of 5 when air concentration measurements 

2 are available, but there's no information on 

3 uncertainty, which is the situation that we 

4 find ourselves in.

5 A couple of other things here. 

6 They did indicate that just using the 

7 distribution of air samples without time 

8 weighting doesn't produce a DWE or a GSD 

9 that's really representative of any worker in 

10 the plant. In fact, you find that the 

11 unweighted samples obviously are going to be a 

12 lot higher than the weighted ones because most 

13 of the high air concentrations were performed 

14 over short periods of time.

15 And, indeed, the site-wide average 

16 concentrations were higher than the DWEs for 

17 all workers in the `60 to `63 cases. And I 

18 guess that's enough talk about Davis and 

19 Strom.

20 Let's start looking at the actual 

21 data availability and the buildings and years 

22 in which thorium was processed at Fernald. And 
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1 this chart was taken from Revision 3 of the 

2 coworker model. It shows thorium being 

3 processed in Plants 1, 4, 6, 8, 9 and the 

4 Pilot Plant over the years `54 through `67. 

5 Each one of those X's in the yellow highlight 

6 is a thorium plant and year.

7 And these are the data. They were 

8 actually requested and posted by DCAS. They 

9 posted 160 of these air dust reports for the 

10 plants that are identified in the previous 

11 slide, basically all those different plants. 

12 And they provided spreadsheets for a limited 

13 set of data that was requested by the Board 

14 which was, as I said, all plants in `55, `66 

15 and Plant 6 in 1960.

16 And this curve here is just a 

17 probability plot of the data for 1955. It's 

18 just an example. This is for Plants 1, 4 and 

19 9 for those years. A total of about 200 

20 workers representing 88 jobs and 412 tasks.

21 Each one of those little blue 

22 diamonds is an individual DWE. So each one of 
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1 those is an average value that has associated 

2 with it some uncertainty. And so while it 

3 kind of resembles a probability plot, say, for 

4 bioassay, where each point would represent a 

5 one-point estimate, these are actually job 

6 averages. 

7 So, if you were to just try to 

8 plot this and then pick off the 95th 

9 percentile and give it to everybody you might 

10 miss these top four job titles. So that 95th 

11 percentile would not even be representative of 

12 the average for those highest jobs. It would 

13 be quite a bit lower.

14 And so you're faced with the 

15 situation, well, how do we actually provide an 

16 upper bound? And the only plausible or 

17 reasonable way to do that is just to pick the 

18 very highest one. If you're going to bound 

19 it, you have to pick the highest DWE and then 

20 provide some uncertainty associated with that.

21 Now, Revision 5 of the coworker 

22 model proposes to use the limiting DWE for 
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1 each year in which thorium was produced. And 

2 this table here provides the high DWEs where 

3 available for each given year in each given 

4 plant. And you can see that DWEs are provided 

5 for all plants and years for which thorium was 

6 produced, with the exception of `54 in Plant 1 

7 I believe -- I can't really even read my own 

8 typing here -- `55. All the years you'll see

9 up to 1965 have DWEs for the plants that 

10 actually processed thorium. 

11 You did not have data for the 

12 Pilot Plant in `65, `66 and `67. However, you 

13 did have it for Plant 8 and for Plant 1. We 

14 were a little concerned about this because the 

15 Pilot Plant was doing a lot of activities 

16 during this time. They were handling a lot of 

17 thorium in various chemical forms and they 

18 were doing remelting which was probably one of 

19 the dirtiest, for lack of a better term, one 

20 of the jobs that had the highest potential for 

21 dust exposure.

22 And in order to address that, 
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1 NIOSH went back and they found some breathing 

2 zone data for the years 1965 -- or actually 

3 `64, `65 and `67. They couldn't find any for 

4 1966. 

5 And so they did kind of a --

6 another proof of concept study where they 

7 looked at the unweighted air concentrations 

8 for the breathing zone samples only and 

9 calculated the geometric mean and standard 

10 deviations, as is usually done, and the 95th 

11 percentile, and then came up with an intake of 

12 nanocuries per day using the methods 

13 prescribed in the Revision 5.

14 And for `65 and `67, these 95th 

15 percentiles are actually lower than the 

16 corresponding DWEs, 95th percentile DWEs, for 

17 Plant 1. And so it kind of provides some 

18 assurance that we're not underestimating the 

19 intakes for those years in `65, `66 and `67. 

20 However, there is that is nagging concern 

21 about the year 1966.

22 I'd like to back up just one more 
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1 minute and talk about this slide here, because 

2 this is important. After listening to the 

3 discussions yesterday about sufficient 

4 accuracy and coworker modeling criteria I 

5 started thinking more about this data here. 

6 And there are really four things that kind of 

7 came out and stuck in my mind about it, about 

8 the modeling approach and about the data 

9 utilization that is kind of related to this 

10 sufficient accuracy. 

11 In fact, you can kind of think of 

12 this as sort of a case study on when do you 

13 have enough sufficient accuracy to go ahead 

14 and use the model? And when is it just --

15 you're kind of right on that cusp of the point 

16 where you can actually say that your data is 

17 accurate enough for dose reconstruction.

18 The first has to do with the fact 

19 that you've got now a model, a one size fits 

20 all model, when you're only looking at one 

21 degree of freedom. You're taking a high DWE, 

22 a high value, and you're going to give it to 
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1 everybody in the plant for an entire year. So, 

2 in my mind, that requires a much more 

3 stringent data quality requirement if you're 

4 going to make that kind of assumption across 

5 the board.

6 The second thing is we've got a 

7 few years here where there's missing data. 

8 Now, you can say, well, you know, the Plant 1 

9 data are probably adequate. But, again, 

10 you're going to apply this to everybody for 

11 the entire plant. And so that's still a 

12 little questionable too. I mean, you've got 

13 weight of evidence that it's probably okay but 

14 you don't have any definitive proof.

15 The other thing that we discussed 

16 the last couple of meetings, as you recall, 

17 we're not using bioassay data or individual 

18 monitoring data, we're using air sampling 

19 data. And so oftentimes you run up against 

20 plausibility. You wind up with intakes that 

21 are so high as to just not be plausible.

22 And we ran into that situation in 
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1 Plant 9 in 1955. And you can see the value 

2 that's assigned there is 215.1 and there's a

3 couple of asterisks next to it. And if you 

4 read that little blurb there, the actual high 

5 value in 1955, all these values, came from 

6 Plant 9. 

7 And this was a period of rapid --

8 of quick throughput metal production. They 

9 had a big order for thorium metal in 1955 and 

10 they were producing it as fast as they could. 

11 There are SRDB references that talk to this 

12 very issue. They report air concentration 

13 dust loads of 50,000 micrograms per cubic 

14 meter, 50 milligrams per cubic meter. And the 

15 DWE data we've looked at show that it's even 

16 considerably higher for some operations.

17 And so you come up to a situation 

18 where we did some research on this in support 

19 of Chapman Valve and a few other things. John 

20 Mauro had delved into it a few years back and 

21 found some good reports on what are the 

22 physiological tolerance limits for dust 
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1 loading. 

2 And most of these reports indicate 

3 that about 100 milligrams per cubic meter is 

4 about the most anybody can stand for any 

5 length of time. And, guess what, it just so 

6 happens that 686 MAC is 98 milligrams per 

7 cubic meter. So you're putting somebody -- if 

8 you were to take that value even as a constant 

9 and assign it to everybody you're choking the 

10 entire population. It just doesn't pass 

11 muster.

12 And so the question became how do 

13 you deal with this? I mean, we've got real 

14 data. It's the real MAC. It's measured. 

15 We've got a dust report that goes with it. And 

16 the dust report said that respiratory 

17 protection, airline respirators, were worn for 

18 the high-dust operations. Of course, they 

19 don't tell you what a high-dust operation is.

20 But we started thinking about 

21 this. Well, I mean, if you were to take these 

22 DWEs, these high ones, you look through, 
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1 there's usually one or two samples, breathing 

2 zone samples, that are driving the train. 

3 They're very high transients typically over a 

4 short period of time.

5 And you know these guys were 

6 wearing respiratory protection during this 

7 time or they couldn't possibly breathe that 

8 atmosphere. And of course these are 

9 integrated over a period of time so you may 

10 have a short-term transient that's captured on 

11 the filter and then it drops down. But you're 

12 not going to get that fine level of 

13 refinement. And so the question becomes what 

14 do you do?

15 Well, NIOSH proposed one method 

16 which would be to take the DWE data and 

17 generate air concentration data from that And 

18 do Monte Carlo sampling and then generate an 

19 air concentration, an unweighted air 

20 concentration, using that. And then just not 

21 use the actual data. And that gives you a 

22 value, I think it was about 70 or 80 MAC. So 
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1 it was a pretty high value. 

2 But we had problems with that. It 

3 was like, well, you're kind of going down the 

4 slippery slope here when you're taking actual 

5 data that's supposedly, or we were pretty 

6 certain is representative of actual exposures 

7 and because it's too high we're not going to 

8 use it; we're going to go to a model instead.

9 We started thinking, well, why 

10 don't you just take the actual DWE data and 

11 apply a respiratory protection factor? And 

12 that has its own problems. NIOSH 

13 traditionally has not used respiratory 

14 protection factors. Only in this case we 

15 argued that, well, you're not doing it to 

16 constrain intake, it's basically just to get 

17 to within a reasonable level which you know 

18 would have been the situation at the time to 

19 control the actual intake of dust alone and 

20 not necessarily to constrain intake or dose.

21 And so NIOSH came back. They went 

22 through and they applied a bunch of 
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1 respiratory protection factors, I think they 

2 used 10 and 100, to these high-dust 

3 operations. And sure enough, you drive the 

4 DWEs down from in the hundreds down to the 

5 tens and twenties.

6 But there was one sample here, 

7 which was the wet area helper I believe. Maybe 

8 I shouldn't talk about the different job 

9 titles. But it was one particular worker that 

10 had a one sample over about a 300-and-some 

11 minute period of time that just was not 

12 sensitive to respiratory protection. And 

13 that's where this 215 comes from.

14 And this kind of, while it might 

15 have been a subjective judgment, it represents 

16 a DWE that's within the realm of a reasonable 

17 intake. It translates to about 30 milligrams 

18 per cubic meter. So it's high but it's 

19 tolerable and it doesn't require the 

20 introduction of a respiratory protection 

21 factor. So that's the example of butting up 

22 against the upper limit of plausibility.
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1 So, we have a situation where --

2 let me just move ahead. At the July meeting 

3 we kind of presented this. We kind of hashed 

4 it out. And I believe it was Mark Griffon who 

5 wanted to get a little more information on 

6 these. He wanted to know how long these dust 

7 studies were done. I mean, were they just one 

8 day? Did they go in there and do this on one 

9 day and then give it to everybody for an 

10 entire year, or was it over a longer period of 

11 time? 

12 We didn't have that information 

13 handy, although it is available in the dust 

14 reports. And so we went through and compiled 

15 some statistics. We looked at the duration of 

16 the limiting plant studies.

17 And for four out of the fourteen 

18 it was indeterminable. You couldn't find any 

19 information on the time span. The others you 

20 see over in the far right column, the duration 

21 and days of the study range from, what, about 

22 28 to a full year. Average about 135. And 
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1 then the center column, I believe the fourth 

2 one over from the left, the number of DWEs for 

3 the limiting plant average about 31, and the 

4 top number of job types evaluated average 

5 about 44. 

6 So this seemed to be -- it's not a 

7 real definitive, conclusory statement, I 

8 guess, for lack of a better term, but it does 

9 show you that these weren't just one-day 

10 things. They were conducted over a period of 

11 time. The number of workers, tasks, DWEs is 

12 pretty well represented for each plant.

13 You know, there was one more thing 

14 I wanted to say about this slide right here. 

15 And this has to do with the tasking we had 

16 five years ago in support of Revision 2. And 

17 that was to do a full adequacy and 

18 completeness analysis. 

19 And we did it for 1955 and 1965 --

20 excuse me, 1966. We added one, two, three, 

21 four, five and then Plant 6 in 1960. We had 

22 six of these building-year combinations 
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1 represented in our adequacy and completeness 

2 study. And so that is the fourth example. 

3 So there's 20 others that aren't 

4 accounted for in our original adequacy and 

5 completeness study. And so while we felt 

6 initially that this was probably -- Revision 5 

7 is a reasonable model, given if the Board 

8 accepts the one size fits all model under the 

9 conditions that exist, that it would probably 

10 be adequate for dose reconstruction. 

11 There are those other aspects that 

12 relate to sufficient accuracy, however. But 

13 let's look at the bright side here first. 

14 You've got job types that are well 

15 represented. There appear to be sufficient 

16 DWEs for each year in the limiting plant to do 

17 a bounding analysis. You have a high GSD of 5 

18 to account for uncertainties as based on a 

19 study of several different plants using DWE 

20 data. The air dust duration is available for 

21 a total of 14 years. As I said, it averaged 

22 about 135 days. 
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1 We have the proof of concept 

2 comparing the Pilot Plant air concentrations 

3 to the actual available DWEs, which appear to 

4 indicate that the DWEs are bounding. 

5 And also in the petition there 

6 were some affidavits brought up, possible data 

7 falsification, that there are certain 

8 situations where they're trying to constrain 

9 readings to within the maximum allowable 

10 concentration. 

11 And while there's really no way to 

12 prove or disprove that, we did note that the 

13 available data do appear to coincide with the 

14 known processes and the SRDB historic 

15 references. In fact, many of the DWEs far 

16 exceed the maximum allowable concentration. 

17 And that combined with the fact 

18 that this data was not used to assess intake 

19 kind of leads us to believe that we're 

20 probably adequately represented. I know Bob 

21 Barton had done a study in relation to 

22 bioassay data regarding -- saying the same 
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1 kind of thing, data falsification. 

2 And we went through that, oh gosh, 

3 probably about 3 years ago, again at one of 

4 our meetings. And the conclusion was it was 

5 really inconclusive. There was nothing you 

6 could really do to prove this. And so the 

7 determination was made by the Work Group not 

8 to pursue that any further.

9 So at this point this is kind of 

10 the end game here. Regarding bullet 2, I 

11 would say that at this point I would not be 

12 comfortable recommending model 5 until at 

13 least we have a better handle on those other 

14 twenty building and year DWE combinations. 

15 And of course I think the big 

16 issue here is the policy issue of sufficient 

17 accuracy and the more stringent requirements 

18 for coworker modeling that have evolved and 

19 developed over the last three years.

20 However, as Brad mentioned 

21 earlier, the Work Group does recommend action 

22 regarding reconstructability for subcontractor 
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1 employees for uranium from 1951 to 1983.

2 And the remaining issues, I 

3 haven't gone into the Site Profile issues. 

4 There were originally thirty-three from our 

5 2006 report, some of which have been closed 

6 out in discussions, others which have been 

7 added to through the SEC deliberation process. 

8 And so, before pursuing those, the Site 

9 Profile issues baseline, or matrix would have 

10 to be re-baselined.

11 So at this point I'll answer your 

12 questions as best I can.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Board Members 

14 with questions? Well, I'll -- go ahead, Bill.

15 MEMBER FIELD: Yes, I had a 

16 question. Let me just go back to where that 

17 was. I guess it's page 19. But the double 

18 asterisk where it talks about physiological 

19 tolerance level. Where did you get the 

20 information to come up with what would be 

21 tolerable? Where did that come from?

22 MR. STIVER: There was a paper by 
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1 Wes Van Pelt. And I can get that to you if 

2 you like.

3 MEMBER FIELD: Okay.

4 MR. STIVER: There's also another 

5 statement that John Mauro found. John, are 

6 you on the line by any chance?

7 DR. MAURO: Yes, I am. I'm 

8 listening.

9 MR. STIVER: Do you happen to have 

10 that reference for Bill Field?

11 DR. MAURO: Yes, I have it on my 

12 shelf. I'd have to pull it off. It was a 

13 study done where a statement was made by --

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That's okay, 

15 John. You don't need to fly out here with it.

16 MR. STIVER: You don't need to 

17 FedEx it out here.

18 DR. MAURO: There are three -- I 

19 think there are three pieces of information, 

20 the Thorne work, the Van Pelt work and this 

21 one paper that we cite -- that's cited where 

22 it discusses this issue that led us to sort of 
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1 converge. 

2 They were all independent, by the 

3 way. They sort of converged around this 

4 number of when things get a little difficult 

5 for you to stay in that breathing area for an 

6 extended period of time.

7 MEMBER FIELD: Okay. So it's an 

8 extended period of time and it assumes no 

9 respiratory protection, even a cloth or 

10 something over your face.

11 DR. MAURO: Correct.

12 MEMBER FIELD: Okay.

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Leave it on the 

14 same page because my comment is making sure I 

15 understand this and what is being proposed. 

16 And hopefully everybody else does also.

17 So what this Revision 5 model is 

18 would take the highest value for anybody in 

19 the plant and apply it to people for that 

20 year. Is that correct?

21 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu 

22 Hinnefeld from DCAS and I am obliged to remind 
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1 everyone that I am conflicted at Fernald, in 

2 that it may be perceived that I have an 

3 apparent potential loss of impartiality having 

4 worked at the site for 20 years. However, 

5 I've been authorized for participate in these 

6 discussions by HHS Office of Ethics.

7 So, having said that, the question 

8 again was about the use of the DWE approach. 

9 And there were a number of discussions over a 

10 long time about what's the appropriate value.

11 It's relatively clear that we have 

12 little success, or we can have little 

13 confidence in putting a worker in a specific 

14 plant for his extended work area. So, not 

15 being able to do that, it did not seem 

16 feasible to use a plant-specific DWE for the 

17 people who worked in that plant, just didn't 

18 know where it was.

19 So, since we couldn't do that, the 

20 next bounding step would be to take the 

21 maximum DWE in any given year, because these 

22 are kind of -- yearly you can understand 
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1 variation because of changes in workload. For 

2 a given year take the highest DWE, and these 

3 were measured per job. Like someone might be 

4 called a bottom helper. And take that highest 

5 DWE value and say that is the bounding thorium 

6 exposure for that year.

7 The uncertainty that's associated 

8 with DWEs, because it's not like a film badge 

9 that somebody wears all the time; you go out 

10 periodically and you take these samples. And 

11 there is the Strom -- or the Davis and Strom 

12 paper described the kinds of various 

13 uncertainties and arrived at the conclusion 

14 that a GSD of 5 applied to your DWE value 

15 probably is a suitable distribution. It's 

16 quite a large distribution. So that was the 

17 basis for arriving at where Revision 5 

18 arrived.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And I guess my 

20 question, really more of a concern, is we're 

21 taking this single value for the facility for 

22 a given year and applying it to people 
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1 throughout the facility because we don't have 

2 information to place them for that given year. 

3 So that means it applies to people working, 

4 say, for example in Plant 8 for most of this 

5 time period where there was no thorium 

6 exposure within the plant. And, you know, it 

7 varied. John's presentation showed the 

8 different years and it's quite a wide range 

9 here. So we're having people with no exposure 

10 being given this bounding dose. And while I 

11 may have some questions about the bounding 

12 dose I think that's at least generally 

13 probably in the ballpark. You've done a lot 

14 of work on that. 

15 But is it really plausible to 

16 apply that as a coworker model for everybody 

17 in the facility? And I personally don't think 

18 it is a very plausible approach for this 

19 particular exposure. 

20 And I think, Stu, I think you hit 

21 the main factor in that, which is that we 

22 can't place people within the facility. We 
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1 don't know where they worked. 

2 In addition, I mean, there are 

3 limitations in terms of where sampling was 

4 done. But at least if you could place people 

5 then sampling was generally done within 

6 buildings where thorium is used. But without 

7 that, it's one number, you know, for 

8 everybody. 

9 And even if you look at this 

10 slide, there's some pretty significant 

11 differences between what was the highest value 

12 in two or three different plants. I mean, an 

13 order of magnitude, two orders of magnitude 

14 difference. And so you're going to have 

15 people over a very wide range being given this 

16 one single value. And I don't think that can 

17 be said to be used to support, you know, 

18 accurate dose reconstruction. I think that's 

19 just stretching it over the line.

20 But I also want to make sure I 

21 haven't missed something about the process or 

22 what's gone on here. Henry?
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1 MEMBER ANDERSON: And there's 

2 absolutely no bioassay data at any time in the 

3 facility?

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, not for 

5 thorium. Thorium is a really difficult 

6 bioassay. In vivo monitoring started in `68. 

7 That's the first period and that's been 

8 dispositioned as part of a Class already 

9 because of the interpretation of the milligram 

10 reported data. 

11 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, okay.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Thorium is a very 

13 tough bioassay.

14 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes, I know. At 

15 the other sites we've had this has been the 

16 sticker. So I'm not -- you know, what would 

17 be useful is if you had another facility that 

18 had similar measurements so you could actually 

19 get a sense of that. 

20 I mean, it's almost like you look 

21 at the number and you say, well, that's -- you 

22 know, you have to accept that they actually 
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1 measured it correctly when they did it. And 

2 then you get these where, you know, couldn't 

3 sustain life if the people were breathing the 

4 dust. And then you say, well, we will have to 

5 adjust that, as opposed to, well, how do we 

6 know some of the -- what does the quality of 

7 the count or the measurements? I mean, are 

8 they overwhelming because of all of the total 

9 dust that you really can't use the methodology 

10 of the dust counts.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, are you 

12 talking about the 1955 year?

13 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes. Yes.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, that was --

15 MEMBER ANDERSON: I mean, the 

16 others seem to be, you know, somewhat 

17 comparable so that you have greater confidence 

18 that what they were doing is -- unless, you 

19 know, there was an upset at some time and 

20 therefore somebody went in and that's -- I 

21 mean, if you have any idea about that one --

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, 1955 --
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1 MEMBER ANDERSON: You know, the 

2 686 MAC. I mean --

3 MR. HINNEFELD: -- 1955 is, if you 

4 look at all the DWE data from 1955 it's pretty 

5 extraordinary. I mean, these numbers were 

6 enormous. And one of the SRDB references that 

7 we found was a letter written from an employee 

8 of HASL, Health and Safety Laboratory, to his 

9 boss describing a visit he had just made to 

10 Fernald and it was about thorium exposures at 

11 Fernald. 

12 And the health and safety director 

13 at Fernald was a former colleague of these two 

14 guys' at HASL. He had previously worked at 

15 HASL. And it sounds like the person who wrote 

16 the letter said, hey, Joe, what are they 

17 doing? What the heck's going on with these 

18 thorium exposures?

19 And the health and safety director 

20 at Fernald had explained to him, well, we had 

21 this crash program, et cetera. And so the 

22 HASL writer is writing to his boss what he 
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1 learned in his conversation with the health 

2 and safety director at Fernald.

3 So this was -- I mean, the 

4 exposures at 1955 in Plant 9 really look like 

5 they were extraordinary by all the evidence 

6 we've seen. And it wasn't like there was one 

7 value at 686 and all the rest were down around 

8 20. There were 400, there was 200. You know, 

9 there was -- it must have been something to 

10 see.

11 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I'm going back 

12 to slide 19. I'm less worried about the 215 

13 value for one year than I am for the fact that 

14 for most of the following years we're 

15 assigning a thorium exposure to people who 

16 never worked with thorium. And I accept that 

17 we're trying to see if we can do a dose 

18 reconstruction. 

19 But, you know, for 1958 there was 

20 one measure -- I'm sorry, not one measurement 

21 -- there is one plant for which a daily 

22 weighted exposure was there. And there are so 
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1 many plants, so many parts of the plant where 

2 people were not using thorium. 

3 It just seems to be such a push to 

4 make assignments of something that anybody 

5 working there will say I never worked with the 

6 stuff. 

7 Now, to be sure, this is claimant8 favorable. But I would expect that people 

9 would say, look, let's just be -- workers 

10 would say let's just be fair. Those people 

11 who were exposed, let's do the best estimate 

12 that we can. Those people who weren't 

13 exposed, don't do me a favor. Just get 

14 something, quotes, "right." 

15 And so it's, as I say, I think it 

16 just seems too much of a push to assign one 

17 number to every single person in the entire 

18 facility for each year.

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: This is Ziemer. 

20 Can I make a comment on that?

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, go ahead. I 

22 was going to call on you in a second. And 
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1 then Wanda also wants to make a comment.

2 MEMBER ZIEMER: Well, the 

3 description that we just heard is something we 

4 have over and over again in many different 

5 sites. If we can't place the people in those 

6 plants, for example, a Plant 8 worker, I think 

7 we have to say you can't really place them 

8 strictly in that plant. They may have been in 

9 Plant 1 or Plant 4, Plant 9 as well. 

10 It's not unlike what we've had at 

11 many sites. We've had that at General Steel, 

12 we've had that at GE. I think we had that 

13 over and over again. If you can't place the 

14 people you've got to make the assumption that 

15 they had access to the other locations.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, but then, 

17 Paul, applying a coworker model based on that 

18 and saying that's sufficient is I think where 

19 it's -- that's, in my mind personally it's 

20 stretching it. I just don't think that's what 

21 should be -- that's not sufficient accuracy. 

22 And I think based on the facts that we have.
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1 And but I think you're right. The 

2 key fact here is the inability to place people 

3 within buildings. I think if we could place 

4 them within buildings then we'd be talking 

5 very differently about this approach and so 

6 forth. 

7 Wanda, you've been patient. Or at 

8 least trying to be patient.

9 MEMBER MUNN: That's not an easy 

10 task, especially since I swore I wasn't going 

11 to complain. But now I'm going to complain.

12 I have had a very, very difficult 

13 time hearing some of the presenters and 

14 certainly anyone who's on the phone. There's 

15 a muddy quality to the echo and the tinny 

16 business that makes it very difficult to 

17 concentrate on the quality of what's being 

18 said, the words that are being said. And as a 

19 result I'm fearful that I'm missing a great 

20 many specific words that I need to hear.

21 Stu, can you remind us on this 

22 slide 19 that we're looking at what the units 
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1 are?

2 MR. HINNEFELD: The units on this 

3 slide are in multiples of what was called the 

4 maximum acceptable concentration, which at the 

5 time was -- and I think these have all been 

6 normalized to 70 dpm per --

7 MEMBER MUNN: Per square meter.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: -- per cubic 

9 meter. Cubic meter.

10 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Seventy dpm per 

12 cubic meter. 

13 MEMBER MUNN: Per meter. Alright.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: So, these are 

15 multiples of that value. So 6.1 would be 

16 somewhere around 420 dpm per cubic meter.

17 MEMBER MUNN: Okay. Okay, that --

18 I was trying to remember whether it was a flat 

19 surface but I couldn't see that it would be if 

20 it were going to be air concentration. Cubic 

21 meter.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. No, it's 
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1 cubic meter. It's an air concentration.

2 MEMBER MUNN: Okay, thank you.

3 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Brad?

4 MEMBER CLAWSON: I just wanted to 

5 clarify one thing in one of John's. The Work 

6 Group didn't have a recommendation here. We 

7 did not have a quorum at this time. This is 

8 why this is coming before the Board without a 

9 recommendation from the Work Group because we 

10 did not have a quorum.

11 I want people to understand what 

12 the complexity of this site is. And I'd also 

13 like to thank Stu because he has helped 

14 substantially.

15 One of the things about this plant 

16 is we've got urinalysis running out of our 

17 ears. We don't have anything else. They ran 

18 this as a heavy metals plant. That's it. This 

19 is what they were for. 

20 And we've got a lot of processes 

21 that can go into this, and we've tried to go 

22 to the most claimant-favorable we can. But at 
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1 some point too also, and this is my personal 

2 opinion, we need to look at what the SEC was 

3 there for. 

4 Plausibility falls into this. The 

5 more we look at these models and everything 

6 else the wider it gets. And I personally 

7 think that we should be using the SEC for what 

8 it was for. 

9 That being said, I want to 

10 emphasize that the complexity of this site is 

11 just unbelievable. And it has been a 

12 challenge from all sides to be able to do 

13 this. But this is why we're coming before the 

14 Board with this, is because it comes down to 

15 what are we going to do with this? 

16 And I will say, personally, and 

17 this is only my opinion, not the Work Group's, 

18 that we should be using the SEC for what it 

19 was for. We can put all these values out 

20 there, but to tell you the truth I would have 

21 a hard time justifying it, really.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thanks, Brad. 
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1 Gen?

2 MEMBER ROESSLER: Since Wanda 

3 mentioned it I will also make the comment. 

4 I've heard the comments in the room but the 

5 sound coming in from the phones is really 

6 difficult. And I'm afraid I may have missed 

7 something. 

8 Could someone who heard Paul, 

9 Paul's comments, give us the essence of what 

10 he said? I really would like to know, since 

11 he's a Member of the Work Group and 

12 participated all this time I'd like to get the 

13 essence of what he said.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Maybe we can --

15 Paul, do you want to repeat your comment?

16 MEMBER MUNN: In terms that you 

17 would use for a person for whom English was a 

18 second language.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Wanda, please 

20 don't --

21 (Simultaneous speaking.)

22 MEMBER CLAWSON: What? Paul, we 
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1 couldn't hear you. We're sorry.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Wanda was --

3 MEMBER ZIEMER: How is the sound?

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: It's better 

5 here.

6 MEMBER ZIEMER: I was simply 

7 pointing out, I think it was in response to 

8 David's comment, that we have this situation 

9 frequently where, although, for example, it 

10 appears that people in Plant 8 didn't get 

11 exposed most of the time, if we can't really 

12 place people in that plant, they may have been 

13 at any of the others, then we have the 

14 situation like we have at so many other 

15 facilities. 

16 We have a situation like that at 

17 General Steel where we can't specifically 

18 place people. We have had that situation in 

19 General Electric, in many other plants where 

20 we assign the maximum dose to virtually

21 everybody simply because we can't place them.

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And I would just 
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1 add to that that we've taken different actions 

2 in those different facilities. And some that 

3 are issues of the Class Definition after we've 

4 made a determination one way or the other as 

5 to whether or not there's adequate data.

6 I think the problem here is that 

7 what's being proposed is a coworker study 

8 that's attempting to use, you know, what data 

9 is available but without enough specificity of 

10 available information to place people within 

11 different parts of the facility. So it has 

12 very, very few factors. It's just basically 

13 taking one number and applying it to everybody 

14 when we know that there's a wide range of 

15 exposures here. 

16 I think we had, again, a similar 

17 situation, for example, with the Linde plant 

18 where we had people doing construction work 

19 and fairly good data on that, and people in 

20 other parts of that same facility who would 

21 have had to be -- with no data. And do you 

22 apply essentially people doing renovation to 
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1 people doing other kinds of work.

2 Here, if we were able to do -- we 

3 were taking Plant 1, it appears that for Plant 

4 1 for most years we have adequate data, but we 

5 can't put people in Plant 1. 

6 So I think we have to judge it on 

7 a case-by-case basis. It is something we 

8 commonly run into but I don't think there's 

9 any general rules as to how we've dealt with 

10 it, because it depends on the situation that's 

11 involved.

12 I would -- do you have another 

13 question, Gen? If I turn my mic on we could 

14 all hear. 

15 What I'd like to do is give the 

16 petitioners a chance to comment if they wish 

17 to and then we'll come back.

18 MS. BALDRIDGE: Yes, this is 

19 Sandra.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Hi. We can hear 

21 you, Sandra. Go ahead.

22 MS. BALDRIDGE: Okay. For the 
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1 benefit of the new Board Members, I'd like to 

2 give a brief understanding of why the petition 

3 was filed.

4 There were two primary criteria 

5 that I felt were especially important. And 

6 one was the Plant 6 thorium processes that 

7 were not recognized in the Site Profile. 

8 Secondly was the data integrity 

9 with a focus on the manner in which air 

10 monitoring data was obtained and recorded.

11 Now, for a brief history, very 

12 brief, Fernald was asked to begin stockpiling 

13 thorium in 1956. It became the official 

14 national thorium repository in 1972. So there 

15 was a lot of thorium onsite.

16 Some of it was in storage, and the 

17 documents show the issues that arose there, in 

18 addition to the processes that were going on 

19 in various parts of the facility.

20 Eight years ago I discovered this 

21 discrepancy between a historic documents and 

22 the Site Profile concerning the Plant 6 
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1 thorium processes from 1960 to 1964. To date 

2 not a single worker has had this exposure 

3 added to their dose reconstruction. That's 

4 eight years and they still have not been dosed 

5 for the thorium exposure. And that's the 

6 thorium in processing as well as the thoron 

7 exposure that these workers received. 

8 And I think that's the most 

9 distressing part of this whole process is even 

10 though provision is made in the law, no one 

11 has availed themselves of redoing the dose 

12 reconstructions for the Plant 6 1960 to 1964 

13 workers. 

14 And that's basically all I have to 

15 say. And I thank you for the opportunity.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, 

17 Sandra. So, let's continue our discussions. I 

18 would like for, I think, purposes of maybe 

19 making this a little easier to talk about and 

20 deal with is to have us first deal with the 

21 recommendation from the Work Group. And then 

22 we'll go onto the second issue, the one we 
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1 just talked about, and deal with that 

2 separately. We can figure out how to handle 

3 it as we go along. Yes?

4 MEMBER FIELD: It's my 

5 understanding there wasn't a recommendation. 

6 Is that correct?

7 MEMBER CLAWSON: No, the 

8 construction workers. That was the 

9 recommendation from the Work Group.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: We just again, 

11 all the recent -- so we have a recommendation 

12 which is essentially a motion from the Work 

13 Group to add that Class, which is all 

14 employees of subcontractors who work at the 

15 Feed Materials Production at Fernald from 

16 January 1, 1951 through December 31, 1983. 

17 That's subcontractors.

18 Now, there was discussion that I 

19 overheard, listened in on with the Work Group, 

20 as to could subcontractors be better defined. 

21 And it really I think was decided, as I 

22 understand it, that that was not possible. 
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1 Because there's a variety of different 

2 subcontractors. The vast majority are people 

3 doing construction work there. For purposes 

4 of implementing that, it requires all 

5 subcontractors. Yes, John.

6 MEMBER POSTON: Jim, sorry, I'm an 

7 old man. I'd like to have a complete 

8 statement of what it is we're about to do for 

9 the record so that I can understand what it 

10 is, how I should vote. 

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: That's fine.

12 MEMBER POSTON: Okay?

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. The 

14 motion would be to add to the SEC all 

15 employees of subcontractors who worked at the 

16 Feed Materials Production Center in Fernald, 

17 Ohio, from January 1st, 1951 through December 

18 31st, 1983 for the number of work days 

19 aggregating 250. The normal part of adding. 

20 So we're adding that Class to the SEC. That's 

21 what the motion is.

22 Any further discussion on that 
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1 motion? Or questions? Yes, John.

2 MEMBER POSTON: Was that 

3 recommendation unanimous from the Work Group?

4 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes, it was.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: I believe Dr. 

6 Ziemer was absent from the Work Group meeting. 

7 So it was unanimous among the Members who were 

8 there.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay.

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: That is correct.

11 MEMBER POSTON: May we ask Paul to 

12 --

13 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, that's 

14 fair. Paul, are you on the line?

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I'm on the 

16 line.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And do you have 

18 anything you wish to say about that?

19 MEMBER ZIEMER: No, I actually I 

20 had to be absent. That was the meeting on the 

21 first of July, I believe, when they actually 

22 voted on this. But I do support this addition 
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1 to the SEC.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Thank you, Paul, 

3 for the clarification. Any other questions 

4 from Board Members? If not, Ted, do the roll.

5 MR. KATZ: Dr. Anderson?

6 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

7 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach?

8 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

9 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson?

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

11 MR. KATZ: Dr. Field?

12 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

13 MR. KATZ: Mr. Griffon is absent 

14 so I will collect his vote. Dr. Kotelchuck?

15 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

16 MR. KATZ: Dr. Lemen is absent. I 

17 will collect his vote. Dr. Lockey is recused. 

18 Dr. Melius?

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

20 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn?

21 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

22 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston?
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1 MEMBER POSTON: Yes.

2 MR. KATZ: Dr. Richardson? David 

3 Richardson, are you on the line? Okay, he is 

4 absent. I'll collect his vote. Dr. Roessler?

5 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

6 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield?

7 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: Ms. Valerio?

9 MEMBER VALERIO: Yes.

10 MR. KATZ: And Dr. Ziemer? Dr. 

11 Ziemer indicated he was supporting it. Dr. 

12 Ziemer, your vote? Dr. Ziemer? You might 

13 have put yourself on mute. I know he said he 

14 supported it, but this is a formality that you 

15 really shouldn't forgo. Dr. Ziemer? Okay, 

16 that's fine. I'll record him -- if he comes 

17 back I'll get his vote when he comes back. But 

18 I'm going to record him as absent at this 

19 point.

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: Hold on, I think 

21 he just got on.

22 MR. KATZ: Dr. Ziemer?
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I got 

2 dropped.

3 MR. KATZ: Okay. You vote -- did 

4 he say his vote just now?

5 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes. I vote yes.

6 MR. KATZ: He votes yes. Very 

7 good. Okay. I can't count so quickly but 

8 it's unanimous for Members present. We have 

9 more than a quorum and it passes.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Paul, if it had 

11 been a closer vote we would have really 

12 thought somebody would have been up to 

13 something. You're living close to Chicago 

14 there. They have strange ways of voting.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: Right. Vote 

16 often, vote early.

17 (Laughter.)

18 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Right. And 

19 suppressing the vote also. Okay.

20 The second issue we don't have a 

21 motion on. And I guess I would like to start 

22 off discussion. Is there any additional 
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1 clarification or anything that would be 

2 helpful to people in terms of information? 

3 I will add that I talked to Stu 

4 briefly during one of the breaks today. 

5 Correct me if I'm wrong, Stu, but this is 

6 Revision 5. So there's been a lot of effort 

7 up to this point. But it doesn't appear that 

8 there is an alternative approach that would be 

9 available here now. 

10 I told Stu to think about that so 

11 I want to give him the opportunity to say. And 

12 I don't know, John, if you have anything to 

13 add. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, after a 

15 several year process of getting to this point 

16 I didn't think of anything that hasn't been 

17 thought of in those several years in the last 

18 half hour. So I don't have anything else to 

19 propose, no.

20 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And John? 

21 MR. STIVER: I would have to agree 

22 with Stu on this. I think we've come to the 
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1 endpoint on it.

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Do Board Members 

3 have any questions for clarification? I think 

4 John Stiver's presentation sort of laid out 

5 the basic facts. There's certainly been a 

6 number of White Papers, a lot of work done on 

7 this, again, a lot of those being revisions 

8 trying to come up with a better method that 

9 would fit the situation. 

10 Yes, Henry?

11 MEMBER ANDERSON: Just briefly. I 

12 mean, this is a site that's been around for a 

13 while. What is the status from the beginning 

14 of the site to now? I mean, we add it to the 

15 SEC. How much of it is currently in SEC? And 

16 components of it. Are we -- you know, where 

17 does this -- we've got the whole petition but 

18 we've sort of broken it up into parts. Do we 

19 have a good sense of --

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: We have an SEC 

21 from 1968 to 1978.

22 MEMBER ANDERSON: For the whole 
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1 facility?

2 MEMBER CLAWSON: For the whole 

3 facility.

4 MEMBER ANDERSON: Okay, that's 

5 what I wanted to hear. Yes.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other 

7 questions? Yes, John.

8 MEMBER POSTON: I'm thinking as a 

9 technical person here. And I have to say that 

10 I agree with Dr. Kotelchuck's remarks 

11 regarding the situation, which to me is no 

12 different than what my colleague from the 

13 great state of Idaho suggested, and that is we 

14 have an SEC. I don't see the difference 

15 between allowing everyone to be treated 

16 equally and just saying let's just do an SEC. 

17 It will save us a lot of money and a lot of 

18 time if we do it that way. 

19 So I don't understand the 

20 difference between taking the recommendation 

21 that's on the floor and taking the 

22 recommendation that Brad made that we just go 
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1 directly to an SEC. 

2 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Josie?

3 MEMBER BEACH: Well, along those 

4 lines, I guess my question is what work can 

5 continue to resolve this issue other than 

6 what's been discussed as an SEC or NIOSH's 

7 recommendation?

8 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: And I think the 

9 answer we got is that there doesn't appear to 

10 be any new ideas or new approaches. And this 

11 is Revision 5 and a lot of work has gone into 

12 this. Wanda?

13 MEMBER MUNN: One thing that I 

14 should have asked earlier and didn't was 

15 clarification of the difference between blank 

16 spaces and N/A's on this particular chart that 

17 we're dealing with on slide 19.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: I'll take a shot 

19 at that and if I'm wrong John can correct me. 

20 A blank spot or a dash indicates that thorium 

21 was not used in that plant in that year. An 

22 N/A is that thorium was used in that plant in 
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1 that year but there was no DWE value generated 

2 for that plant in that year.

3 MEMBER MUNN: Now, that's helpful 

4 because that tells us that in Plant 8 during 

5 only one year was thorium even present. And 

6 it also tells us that in Plant 9, after this 

7 year in which the extremely high measurement 

8 was actually taken, there was no thorium. 

9 Again, one of the thorniest 

10 problems that faces the question of whether to 

11 promote an SEC or not for any of these sites 

12 has been the gotcha of, yes, you don't know 

13 where everybody's been. And that's certainly 

14 a big gotcha here. We don't know where 

15 everybody has been. 

16 It appears that in most situations 

17 where we would be looking at this kind of 

18 data, I believe that most people would come to 

19 the conclusion that a single year's 

20 information in a place where nothing else was 

21 being done with that particular radionuclide 

22 later was too much of an impact to expect it 
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1 to be included in the general recommendation 

2 that's being made for the entire site.

3 But in our case here in this 

4 Advisory Board, I don't think we have that 

5 option that we could do an academic exercise. 

6 We just don't have that option.

7 The question is well-posed and 

8 what else can you do? Apparently nothing. And 

9 if that's the case then we're at a dead end. 

10 It appears we will have to accept an SEC 

11 regardless of the fact that this outlier seems 

12 to be outrageous and in most cases would 

13 simply be rejected as erroneous in some way, 

14 or not applicable to the rest of the site.

15 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I think the 

16 question is whether they can be bounding and 

17 plausible. And the group's -- all the work 

18 that's been done has been trying to make it 

19 bounding given the situation. But without 

20 being able to place people in the facility it 

21 is not plausible for those.

22 And, again, as I said before, if 
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1 we had people in the facility then and knew 

2 what building they worked in then I think we'd 

3 have an entirely different story. Because 

4 there are some gaps but I think those gaps 

5 probably could have been filled. But without 

6 that we can't do this. And I think the only 

7 feasible method was some kind of a coworker 

8 model, and that's what they've been working 

9 on. And I just don't think that's, at least, 

10 again, personal opinion, that's plausible. So 

11 if we're going to move forward we're going to 

12 need a motion.

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: As the Work Group 

14 Chair, I'd like to say something on this. 

15 Because I don't think that you guys really see 

16 how much work really went into this. Sixteen 

17 meetings and we have gone completely full 

18 circle on all things. 

19 And it's not without a lot of 

20 trying and a lot of digging. And I've said 

21 this earlier, I've got to admit that NIOSH, 

22 we've worked back and forth. But I see no 
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1 other way.

2 And as the Work Group Chair, and 

3 this is why I wanted to make this clear, I am 

4 bringing forth before you at this time, and 

5 what I'd like to present is that we give 

6 Fernald Feed Production Plant an SEC from 1954 

7 to 1967 for the inability to be able to 

8 reconstruct thorium dose.

9 MEMBER BEACH: And I'll second 

10 that.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. We have a 

12 motion and a second. Further discussion? Stu, 

13 were you going to --

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Ziemer has a 

15 question.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Go ahead.

17 MEMBER ZIEMER: I just wanted to 

18 ask NIOSH, and I didn't know if Stu or one of 

19 the others there, it wasn't clear to me if 

20 NIOSH's position is now that in fact they 

21 cannot reconstruct dose? Or does NIOSH still 

22 believe they can? 
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1 Because my understanding of the 

2 high value for `55 was that that was 

3 considered at least plausible in Plant 9. And 

4 if it's plausible for Plant 9 then it is also 

5 plausible for any others who would have 

6 entered Plant 9. Could you clarify where 

7 NIOSH stands on the general issue of both 

8 reconstruction of dose and plausibility?

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I mean, our 

10 position has not changed since we presented 

11 Revision 5 to the Work Group, that this is a 

12 method that provides a bounding dose to the 

13 workers there. 

14 And these AWEs are quite high but 

15 they were plausible for the person that it was 

16 measured for. I mean, these AWEs were 

17 measured for some guy working some task, or 

18 some people working some task, at the time 

19 those measurements were made. It was 

20 plausible for that person. 

21 And so our position is we 

22 presented a plausible bounding dose for the 
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1 people who worked with thorium during these 

2 years. It's not changed since we presented it 

3 to the Work Group.

4 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: But the second 

5 part of Paul's question was I think that it 

6 was -- I thought you were asking if it was 

7 plausible for Plant 9 but -- I just wanted to 

8 make sure I understand this correctly. It's 

9 not possible to place people within Plant 9.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: That's correct.

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: And there's -- if 

13 I can maybe -- I'm going to say this to move 

14 the discussion along. I might be arguing 

15 against interest here but I don't even know 

16 what -- my interest is to be done. So I'm 

17 arguing for my interest. 

18 Paul's point about, you know, this 

19 is a common problem at sites when we use AWEs

20 where we use air sampling data. I think 

21 there's a substantive difference at Fernald 

22 where you have a variety of radiological 
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1 operations going on across the plant. You 

2 know, we have AWEs who do one thing, 

3 machinery, and then you have some data and you 

4 apply that. You don't know who was in the 

5 machining area and so you do that.

6 In this area you have people who 

7 were doing radiological work through all these 

8 plants through all these years. And they were 

9 exposed to things other than thorium. 

10 So to David's point I think -- I'm 

11 speaking to David's point here. And so I'll 

12 make that point in kind of contradistinction 

13 between other situations where we have used 

14 air data for essentially everybody who worked 

15 there.

16 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Any other --

17 Wanda, I'm sorry. Go ahead. And then Bill.

18 MEMBER MUNN: The only alternative 

19 that I have not heard anyone broach at all is 

20 the possibility of limiting the SEC to the 

21 years `54, `55 and `56, which would 

22 incorporate this totally untenable figure that 
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1 no one can deal with but would leave the 

2 latter years with data which would be much 

3 more feasible in terms of establishing an 

4 upper bound. 

5 If you look at the remaining data, 

6 the only thing I see there that -- the highest 

7 number is 25 MAC. And that, although a very 

8 high number, would be much more reasonable in 

9 terms of possibilities and probabilities. 

10 Since --

11 MEMBER ZIEMER: But those high 

12 numbers only apply for that particular year 

13 anyway, don't they?

14 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

15 MEMBER ZIEMER: That's not used 

16 for every year.

17 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, that year is 

18 the only one that shows that. So, my point is 

19 the other years -- I was only incorporating 

20 `54 and `56 simply because it was, as I 

21 understand it, there was thorium there but it 

22 wasn't -- but there's no report.
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1 Am I correct in that assumption, 

2 that there was thorium there but there was no 

3 report on those two years?

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Are you asking 

5 about 1954 and 1956 for Plant 9?

6 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: That means thorium 

8 was used there but there was not a DWE study 

9 done for those years, right.

10 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. So, in view of 

11 the fact that the high number is in that 

12 location and during that time frame, then that 

13 would -- I don't think there's any question in 

14 anyone's mind here with respect to SECs for 

15 those years. 

16 But what I'm saying is an SEC is 

17 not automatically falling into place on the 

18 basis of the fact that the remaining data is 

19 all outside the realm of probability for the 

20 other years that are shown on this chart. Am 

21 I incorrect?

22 MR. STIVER: I just want to 
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1 clarify something about Plant 9 in `54 to `56. 

2 In `54 they were just getting started to ramp 

3 up towards the end of the year for the big 

4 push in 1955. And in 1956 it was all but 

5 complete and they were just cleaning up for 

6 the most part. So there's a very small piece 

7 on either end of 1955 when thorium was being 

8 handled in Plant 9.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

10 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, but I 

11 think, again, you can't place people within 

12 the facilities at the plant, within the 

13 different plants. So you're going to then be, 

14 if I understand the proposed method, is taking 

15 the Plant 4 value of 6.4 and that applies to 

16 everybody across the facility, that if you 

17 move on later you're still having a 1961 

18 twenty-five times the MAC that would apply to 

19 everybody working in the facility. And 9 and 

20 10, I mean, it's for each year.

21 I just -- I find the whole method 

22 to be implausible. I just don't -- I think 
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1 it's hard to sort of pick and choose those 

2 years. I think, again, even say, again, 

3 taking 1961, Plant 6, 25 MAC, the next highest 

4 plant used in Plant 1 and that's less than one 

5 MAC as the highest value. So you've got a 25 

6 times-fold difference there in the value 

7 that's used if we had information on the 

8 facility. And then you have people that 

9 weren't exposed at all in these other 

10 facilities. And I don't think that's a 

11 plausible application here.

12 MEMBER CLAWSON: Jim, something 

13 else comes into this. And this is why I've 

14 tried to get so much information into the full 

15 Board. 

16 Because one of the other things 

17 too, as the petitioner said earlier, that 

18 these gaps in here and stuff, these are our 

19 best available information that thorium was 

20 not there. There's still gaps in all the 

21 information.

22 Another thing that comes into this 
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1 too is they became a thorium storage facility 

2 which we have nothing for at all. But what we 

3 do have the information on the thorium 

4 somewhat are at these plants.

5 There's another little part that 

6 plays into this that is a hard one for us to 

7 be able to deal with, and it's a signed 

8 affidavit in a lawsuit stating that the person 

9 that was taking the air samples, when he came 

10 back too high of samples, was instructed to go 

11 back and get other ones. 

12 This is one that we can't prove. 

13 You can't put anything on it and be able to 

14 prove it, but this is a signed affidavit that 

15 the petitioner has referred to in this of the 

16 sampling. 

17 And so what we have tried to do is 

18 to take the best information that we have and 

19 try to put this into a coworker model that we 

20 can. And as I've said, we're at the end and 

21 I've said this for the last four meetings. We 

22 can't go anyplace further. 
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1 And I come back to my question of 

2 I thought this is what the SECs were for. 

3 We've exhausted all avenues and this is where 

4 we're at.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: David 

6 Kotelchuck?

7 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes. I don't 

8 want to comment on the affidavit because I 

9 don't think we can deal with that, or at least 

10 I think it's another issue. I don't think 

11 that's the central issue we need to decide 

12 now.

13 I agree on `54 through `56, but as

14 I said earlier, the central issue in my 

15 opinion is that we are assigning thorium 

16 exposure to many people who we have to believe 

17 full well had absolutely no exposure, or had -

18 - or I won't say absolutely no exposure 

19 because so many people were exposed -- but 

20 had, let's say, negligible exposure. So -- a 

21 very small exposure. 

22 So I just think that it's just 
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1 pushing the plausibility of the model too far. 

2 And I just would feel more comfortable saying 

3 let's just add an SEC for this period, which 

4 is to say I support the motion.

5 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Bill?

6 MEMBER FIELD: With all the 

7 uncertainty I think I favor an SEC as well. 

8 But I had the same question when I put it up 

9 before Wanda asked, is that for those three 

10 time periods -- I just want to clarify 

11 something. I thought earlier discussion 

12 someone said if it wasn't for the 215 or the 

13 higher value that a coworker model could be 

14 developed. Now, did I just hear that? I 

15 thought someone had said that.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: No, I don't think 

17 so.

18 MEMBER FIELD: Okay, then I 

19 misremembered that. So it wasn't just based 

20 on that one.

21 And is there anything to believe 

22 that that one value in that one year, that 
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1 whatever process that was could have occurred 

2 at the other plants during all monitored 

3 periods that weren't captured?

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Oh, that one --

5 no. I think there was no reason to believe 

6 that. Plant 9 was built to be a thorium 

7 plant. And it contained all the operations 

8 that were spread throughout the rest of the 

9 buildings were available in Plant 9. And 

10 sometimes it was even referred to as a semi11 works because it had all those operations in 

12 it. 

13 It was built to be a thorium plant 

14 at the time when the Department of Energy said 

15 thorium is the next big thing, we're going to 

16 be using this stuff a lot. And then in a 

17 couple of years they decided they weren't. 

18 So Plant 9 stayed and it actually 

19 turned into what was called the Special 

20 Products Plant later on. But it was built for 

21 a thorium plant because they thought they were 

22 going to do a lot. They did a lot in `55 and 
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1 for various reasons, part of which was the 

2 plant was not adequately designed for the work 

3 they were doing, clearly, given the exposures 

4 they were having, it just didn't carry on from 

5 there.

6 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: David, do you 

7 have another question? Kotelchuck. Thank 

8 you. Any further?

9 MEMBER ZIEMER: This is Ziemer. I 

10 have one more question. 

11 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Go ahead, Paul, 

12 and then Loretta.

13 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes, I want to ask 

14 John Stiver could you clarify -- I was trying 

15 to read between the lines but what was SC&A's 

16 final position relative to this issue now?

17 MR. STIVER: This is John. Our 

18 position is that, given the changes in the 

19 criteria for sufficient accuracy and the fact 

20 that there's still a lot of unanswered 

21 questions about the data, that we are not 

22 advocating using the model at this point.
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1 MEMBER ZIEMER: That's another way 

2 of saying you're supporting an SEC Class. Is 

3 that correct?

4 MR. STIVER: I wouldn't say 

5 necessarily supporting an SEC. It's just that 

6 this is kind of out of our hands at this 

7 point. I think we've done all we can with the 

8 data we've got and looking at the different 

9 models. And there's still some very large 

10 uncertainties. And I think it becomes a 

11 policy decision at this point.

12 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: So Loretta first 

13 and then --

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Let me ask it a 

15 different way. You do not believe this is an 

16 adequate coworker model.

17 (Laughter.)

18 MR. STIVER: I think as it stands 

19 it's probably not.

20 MEMBER ZIEMER: Thank you.

21 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I was hoping 

22 we'd have a lawyer jump up and object at that 
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1 point. Go ahead. Loretta then Josie, I 

2 believe.

3 MEMBER VALERIO: My question is, 

4 for the year 1955 in Plant 9, that value was 

5 significantly higher than all the other years 

6 and locations. But after 1957 there's all the 

7 dashes showing that there was no potential 

8 exposure. So my question I guess is what 

9 about residual contamination in that plant?

10 MR. HINNEFELD: I guess, with the 

11 model presented, our expectation would be 

12 exposures from residual contamination that 

13 would be re-suspended from people going into 

14 there would be less than the exposures, the 

15 maximum exposure in the plants where the 

16 thorium work would be going on. 

17 And so the residual dose exposures 

18 from Plant 9 would be less than in 1957, the 

19 2.2 MAC, from Plant 1. And everyone is 

20 getting that value anyway. So, it would be 

21 less than the work -- than the values that 

22 were measured for the active work.
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1 MEMBER BEACH: My question is for 

2 John, so if you want to come back up. I just 

3 wanted a clarification, because you mentioned 

4 it during your presentation, the N/A 

5 highlighted at the end of the Pilot Plant. I 

6 just couldn't quite remember what you said 

7 what the significance of those years were.

8 MR. STIVER: Those are years in 

9 which there's quite a bit of thorium 

10 production going on in the Pilot Plant. They 

11 were doing I believe -- trying to speak 

12 extemporaneously from my memory is never a 

13 good thing. But they were doing some 

14 recasting, remelting of thorium. They were 

15 doing gel production for storing the 

16 materials. Some chemical processing work. 

17 There were about three or four different 

18 things, different tasks that were going on in 

19 the Pilot Plant. 

20 Whereas in Plant 1, it was 

21 basically a sampling plant. They were 

22 receiving ore, they were grinding it up, 
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1 sieving it, packaging it up to go to the 

2 refinery, for the most part. 

3 And so in my mind it was -- there 

4 certainly appears to be a lot of potential for 

5 a thorium exposure in the Pilot Plant compared 

6 to Plant 1. And so we were concerned about 

7 that.

8 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. And we don't 

9 have any data for those three years?

10 MR. STIVER: There's just -- for 

11 `65 and `67 there was some unweighted air 

12 sampling data but that was it.

13 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. Thank you.

14 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Loretta, another 

15 question? Okay. 

16 Ready to move forward? I will try 

17 to clarify and read what I understand the 

18 motion to be. 

19 So it would be all employees of 

20 the Department of Energy, its predecessor 

21 agencies and their contractors and 

22 subcontractors who worked at the Feed 
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1 Materials Production Center in Fernald, Ohio 

2 from January 1st, 1954 through December 31st, 

3 1967, and that that Class be added to the SEC.

4 So if there are no further 

5 questions, Ted, do you want to do the roll 

6 call?

7 MR. KATZ: Sure. I'll stick with 

8 my alphabet here. Dr. Anderson?

9 MEMBER ANDERSON: Yes.

10 MR. KATZ: Ms. Beach?

11 MEMBER BEACH: Yes.

12 MR. KATZ: Mr. Clawson?

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

14 MR. KATZ: Dr. Field?

15 MEMBER FIELD: Yes.

16 MR. KATZ: And I'll collect Mr. 

17 Griffon's vote. Dr. Kotelchuck?

18 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

19 MR. KATZ: I'll collect Dr. 

20 Lemen's vote. Dr. Lockey is recused. Dr. 

21 Melius?

22 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes.
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1 MR. KATZ: Ms. Munn?

2 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

3 MR. KATZ: Dr. Poston?

4 MEMBER POSTON: Yes.

5 MR. KATZ: Dr. Richardson, are you 

6 back with us? I'll collect his vote. Dr. 

7 Roessler?

8 MEMBER ROESSLER: Yes.

9 MR. KATZ: Mr. Schofield?

10 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes.

11 MR. KATZ: Ms. Valerio?

12 MEMBER VALERIO: Yes.

13 MR. KATZ: And Dr. Ziemer.

14 MEMBER ZIEMER: Yes.

15 MR. KATZ: It's unanimous, the 

16 motion passes.

17 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: I do not have a 

18 letter ready on this. I had a partial letter 

19 but we're going to have to revise it so I will 

20 have to -- I actually have to talk to counsel. 

21 It's a little complicated Class to define. But 

22 we'll work it out and I will again circulate 
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1 that.

2 Again, I'd like to thank SC&A and 

3 NIOSH and the Work Group and everybody 

4 involved. There's a lot of effort that's gone 

5 into this. I'm not sure what's left to do on 

6 Site Profile issues. I've forgotten that 

7 slide already from an hour ago, whenever John 

8 put it up there. But, again, it's taken a 

9 long time, it's a lot of effort and I think 

10 the work's been very thorough. 

11 Again, I think all the Board 

12 Members appreciate everything everybody's done 

13 on this. And this was not an easy one to deal 

14 with on a lot of levels. So I again thank 

15 everybody. 

16 I believe that finishes our 

17 business for this meeting. 

18 MS. BALDRIDGE: This is Sandra.

19 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Yes, go ahead, 

20 Sandra.

21 MS. BALDRIDGE: I would like to 

22 thank everyone for all their hard work, and 
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1 the Board for listening so attentively to what 

2 we have worked, it seems, hours and hours and 

3 hours, and I know my participation was just a 

4 small portion of what the Board put in and 

5 SC&A. And I'd like to express my appreciation 

6 to everybody.

7 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Well, we 

8 appreciate your interest, involvement on this 

9 and meetings going back in time. I'm afraid I 

10 can't even remember all the years but it's 

11 very good. 

12 And we appreciate your patience 

13 with this process. I know it's been 

14 frustrating at times. But, again, I think 

15 we've reached a fair conclusion on this. So, 

16 again, thank you.

17 Unless anybody else has something 

18 they want -- oh, Brad.

19 MEMBER CLAWSON: I'd like to thank 

20 Sandra. But I'd also like to bring something 

21 else too. You know, our conflict of interest 

22 is an important thing, but Stu's ability to be 
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1 able to come in there with his knowledge was a 

2 great -- it's what brought many of the things 

3 to the surface. I'd like to thank NIOSH for 

4 being able to do that.

5 I'd also like to thank Ted because 

6 I know it was a lot of work to be able to get 

7 the variance for that but it helped greatly. I 

8 just wanted to go on record of noting that.

9 CHAIRMAN MELIUS: Okay. Thank 

10 you. Anything else? If not we stand 

11 adjourned. Thank everybody and have a good 

12 trip back. And we'll see you -- hear you on 

13 the phone in September and see everybody in 

14 Denver in October.

15 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

16 matter was adjourned at 4:13 p.m.)

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