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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL

SAFETY AND HEALTH

+ + + + +

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND

WORKER HEALTH

+ + + + +

SUBCOMMITTEE ON DOSE RECONSTRUCTION REVIEW

+ + + + +

MONDAY

AUGUST 6, 2012

+ + + + +

The Work Group convened in the Paris 

Room of the Cincinnati Airport Marriott, 2395 

Progress Drive, Hebron, Kentucky, at 8:30 

a.m., Mark Griffon, Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

MARK GRIFFON, Chairman

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Member

DAVID KOTELCHUCK, Member

JAMES M. MELIUS, Member*

WANDA I. MUNN, Member

JOHN W. POSTON, SR., Member

DAVID B. RICHARDSON, Member*

PAUL L. ZIEMER, Member*
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

KATHY BEHLING, SC&A*

GRADY CALHOUN, DCAS

DOUG FARVER, SC&A

STUART HINNEFELD, ORAU Team

JOHN MAURO, SC&A*

MICHAEL RAFKY, HHS*

BETH ROLFES, DCAS

MUTTY SHARFI, ORAU Team*

SCOTT SIEBERT, ORAU Team

JOHN STIVER, SC&A*

*Participating via telephone
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Welcome and Roll-Call . . . . . . . . . . . .4

Discussion

Update on DCAS blind dose

reconstruction quality control 

reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Overview of ORAU quality management 

system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Costs and benefits of possible changes

in dose reconstruction efficiency

processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129

DCAS report on plans for 

evaluating claimant-favorability . . 149

DCAS goals/priorities for 

timely completion of dose

reconstructions . . . . . . . . . . .169

Lunch

Revisiting Board's dose 

reconstruction case review process . 184

Continuation of issue resolution for

sets 8 - 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . N/A

Accelerating DR issue resolution

process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .N/A

Pre-selection of DR case set 16 for

Board consideration . . . . . . . . 266

Issue resolution for Savannah River

cases, sets 10 - 13 . . . . . . . . 296

Plans for second Board report to 

the Secretary on dose reconstruction

reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . N/A
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

2 8:35 a.m.

3 MR. KATZ: This is NIOSH; this is 

4 the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker 

5 Health, Dose Reconstruction Review 

6 Subcommittee. We will begin with roll call. 

7 And since this is the Subcommittee, we need to 

8 talk about conflict of interest as well, for 

9 the Board Members only. So as you register, 

10 one main component of this meeting, we're 

11 talking about Savannah River Site cases. If 

12 you have a conflict with Savannah River Site, 

13 please note that and that you will be recused 

14 from that discussion. We're talking about 

15 other cases, as well. So any of your major 

16 sites where you have conflicts, please note 

17 those as we go through the roll call. 

18 So let's get started with Board 

19 Members in the room. 

20 (Roll call.)

21 MR. KATZ: Okay then. The agenda 

22 for the meeting is posted on the website, as 
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1 is -- well, there may be some materials 

2 associated with this meeting. Most of the 

3 materials are Privacy Act-protected. 

4 And let me just note for Board 

5 Members and staff, I circulated a document 

6 that Mark had forwarded me last night to all 

7 the staff, or most of the staff at least, and 

8 all the Board Members just this morning. So I 

9 sent them to your CDC account and your 

10 personal account in most cases. Brad, I may 

11 have missed you, so I'll forward it right now. 

12 It's your agenda.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And that 

14 document that Ted sent out is for the 1 p.m. 

15 We have one thing that's sort of time-specific 

16 on the agenda today, which is the revisiting 

17 the Board's dose reconstruction case review 

18 process. And what Ted sent out was like sort 

19 of the original draft that we came up with, 

20 original procedure we came up with of sort of 

21 how to look at it. I think we have basic 

22 reviews, advanced reviews, blind reviews, it 
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1 outlines what we were thinking of back then, 

2 which, you know, it might have migrated a 

3 little from that, but at least it will give 

4 you a sense of where we started from. And 

5 that's time-sensitive, because Jim Melius and 

6 Paul Ziemer are going to phone in at 1:00 to 

7 join that discussion. So we're going to sort 

8 of keep that there.

9 Otherwise, Ted was helpful enough 

10 to help me put together the agenda. Actually, 

11 I think he did it. I don't even remember. 

12 But, you know, it's similar topics that we had 

13 on the last meeting's agenda and I think we 

14 can go right down these. I think one of the 

15 big topics this morning we're going to cover 

16 is probably Scott's presentation of the ORAU 

17 QA/QC program. But we can do these first two 

18 items first. Stu, is that okay, this order? I 

19 think they're both your sort of actions. 

20 We've asked you to report back to us on these.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, yes. Ray 

22 will be doing most of the -- he'll be doing --
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, okay, yes. 

2 Sorry. So, update on DCAS blind dose 

3 reconstruction quality control review. David,

4 I'm assuming, by the way, you have these 

5 materials. David Richardson?

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, I'm 

7 pulling them up now.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, okay. So 

9 we're working from that agenda that was sent 

10 out?

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, I have 

12 that.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. So, 

14 blind dose reconstruction quality control 

15 reviews. 

16 MR. CALHOUN: Okay. Basically, 

17 it's just really a numbers update. As we 

18 talked about last time, we go through and pick 

19 a few each week, dose reconstructions to 

20 review. These are cases that have not been 

21 completed by ORAU yet, and we assign those to 

22 one of our guys. Once they come over from 
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1 ORAU, a third party reviews them and looks at 

2 what we've done versus what ORAU has done. 

3 Very few, if any, of these have gone through 

4 final adjudication yet through Department of 

5 Labor. So, basically, what I have here is 

6 we've got 57 that have been selected to this 

7 point. Twenty-one of those have been 

8 completed, ten are assigned to health 

9 physicists in DCAS, and twenty-six have not 

10 yet been assigned to our guys for review. 

11 Some of the things that we 

12 continue to need to work on that we haven't 

13 done a whole lot on yet is, based on our last 

14 assessment, we believe that we could do a 

15 better job in determining, at least 

16 documenting why we made decision A versus 

17 decision B. So we need to get that out. We 

18 haven't done much on that yet. And that's 

19 basically where we are on the blind DRs.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So when you say 

21 better job documenting decision-making 

22 process, or I'm paraphrasing, that's sort of 
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1 one of your preliminary findings from your --

2 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, we documented 

3 that in recommendations for improvement of 

4 program. So that's just something that we 

5 need to do.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

7 MR. CALHOUN: And what that's 

8 really going to involve is just talking to the 

9 folks doing the reviews and saying, hey, you 

10 know, when we come back and look at this two 

11 weeks later, we really don't know why you 

12 chose A or B --

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Write down your 

14 work, show your work kind of thing that --

15 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, yes.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- we've said. 

17 Yes. 

18 MEMBER CLAWSON: Well, I just want 

19 to clarify on this. That's the same thing 

20 that we've been saying. When you're talking 

21 about this, you're talking about why you use 

22 this process versus the other one, just 
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1 documenting better. 

2 MR. CALHOUN: Right, right, right. 

3 And these aren't like a full-blown dose 

4 reconstruction. We showed these, at least a 

5 couple examples of these, I think it was at 

6 the last meeting. And, basically, our guys 

7 will go through and do a dose reconstruction, 

8 and, well, they don't write the report, but 

9 they'll come up with the numbers. And they 

10 just free-form write into an area what they 

11 did, and it could be clearer as to why they 

12 did it. 

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: Right. And 

14 that's something that we have seen quite a bit 

15 of is: how did we get to that?

16 MR. KATZ: It just needs some 

17 clarification, though. I think you're talking 

18 about when you do the blind dose, because the 

19 people that you have doing the blind dose 

20 reconstruction are not showing their work --

21 MR. CALHOUN: Correct, correct.

22 MR. KATZ: It's not a criticism of 
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1 the ORAU original dose reconstruction that 

2 you're reviewing --

3 (Simultaneous speakers.)

4 MR. KATZ: -- your own review 

5 process. You were thinking the other. 

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: So was I.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And going back 

8 to the numbers then, you said that, the last 

9 time we talked, we talked about you were 

10 putting this stuff in a database of some sort 

11 and that we, the Board, could get access to 

12 that. Did you set that up or --

13 MR. CALHOUN: Right now I don't 

14 know that we can, because they're pre15 decisional, they haven't gone through the 

16 final adjudication. And that's usually what 

17 we do when we do dose reconstructions that are 

18 reviewed. I believe when we ran that by our 

19 legal team that's what they said. Now, 

20 there's certainly a way that we can get you 

21 the, I guess the data sheets that we have. We 

22 haven't done that yet. 
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: What are the 

2 data sheets? What do you mean? 

3 MR. CALHOUN: Those are our actual 

4 reviews. 

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, okay.

6 MR. CALHOUN: There's a form, of 

7 course, that we fill out for every one of them 

8 that goes through and says, you know, there's 

9 something on internal, there's something on 

10 external. That's the comparison of the two 

11 dose reconstructions, the ones completed by 

12 ORAU versus the ones completed in-house, 

13 because we have a third person that will look 

14 to compare the two after they're done. 

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I guess I'm 

16 curious because we talked last time about 

17 being able to see at least the information in 

18 aggregate form. We didn't want to re-review 

19 each case, of course, you know, because we're 

20 selecting separately, but just to see this in 

21 aggregate form I think would be useful, like 

22 what have you found in terms of QA as you go 
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1 through, you know.

2 MR. CALHOUN: That would be easy to 

3 do.

4 MR. KATZ: Well, that's your 

5 reports, right?

6 MR. CALHOUN: Yes.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, that's the 

8 reports? That's not the data --

9 MR. CALHOUN: No, those are one-by10 one. What would happen, what I would 

11 recommend is that every so often we just do 

12 another assessment, because that threw 

13 together all of them for you that were done to 

14 that point. And so we need to do that anyway 

15 to look at how our program is going, so maybe 

16 every whatever, ten cases, after the tenth 

17 case is complete we do an assessment of all 

18 those and then you can see --

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I was just 

20 under the impression that this was, you know, 

21 that you were putting it into some sort of 

22 database as you were going along.
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1 MR. CALHOUN: It's not a data 

2 base. It's sheet by sheet.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Sheet by 

4 sheet, yes, yes. 

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Remind me, 

6 what number are you on now? 

7 MR. CALHOUN: One. 

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, no, no --

9 MR. KATZ: How many cases have you 

10 --

11 MR. CALHOUN: Fifty-seven 

12 selected. Twenty-one completed, ten assigned, 

13 twenty-six selected for review but not yet 

14 assigned to a DCAS health physicist.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And when you 

16 say 21 completed, that's by ORAU? 

17 MR. CALHOUN: No, that is we have 

18 looked at it in our review. The third party 

19 has compared both of them, so it's done.

20 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So could we 

21 expect a report at 20, at 25? What number --

22 MR. CALHOUN: I'll make sure that 
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1 you get one for the next show, for the next 

2 meeting, okay? 

3 MR. KATZ: Yes, I think ten would 

4 be good because that will be almost every 

5 meeting we'd have an update, right? That 

6 would be good, sort of periodicity. 

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: And then, just to be 

9 clear, those checklists or whatever it is that 

10 summarize, you'll make those become available 

11 somehow? 

12 MR. CALHOUN: I think. Stu, do 

13 you remember what the discussion was on that? 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: I don't recall 

15 exactly. 

16 MR. CALHOUN: We looked into that, 

17 and I don't know -- I know that from a -- you 

18 can't access it through NOCTS, I don't 

19 believe. I don't know if you have rights to 

20 do that. We can't. I don't know if they can 

21 or not. 

22 MR. HINNEFELD: See what? What 
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1 I'm looking at?

2 MR. CALHOUN: Yes.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: They don't have 

4 it. 

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think that's 

6 what --

7 MR. KATZ: I mean, anything can be 

8 made available if it's okay with OGC.

9 MR. CALHOUN: Right. If it's okay 

10 with them. We'll check on that. 

11 MR. KATZ: You'll pursue that? 

12 MR. CALHOUN: Yes.

13 MR. KATZ: Okay. 

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright, I 

15 don't think there's much more to say on that. 

16 How about the second topic, items related to 

17 the NIOSH 10-year review? And does that 

18 include -- there was a cost assessment thing 

19 sent around, right? Is that one of the --

20 MR. KATZ: Yes, that's one of 

21 them. 

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 
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1 MR. KATZ: And I've re-circulated 

2 that or somehow reminded everybody where we 

3 got that. We got that from Stu back in the 

4 spring.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. 

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I'm sorry. 

7 I'm thinking a little bit about the blind dose 

8 reconstruction still.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. 

10 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Maybe there's 

11 no opportunity right now to do more, but if we 

12 could take a little bit of time after seeing 

13 the report at the next meeting to think about, 

14 you know, how that report is structured and 

15 how we might be able to give some useful 

16 feedback for other things that would be, you

17 know, that would fit in with all those 

18 discussions we had leading up to doing these 

19 blind dose reconstructions about, you know, 

20 quality assurance/quality control and trying 

21 to give some feedback to NIOSH about how best 

22 to use these. Because right now, you know, 
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1 one-by-one I think is a very kind of detail2 focused, kind of granular approach to looking 

3 at those data, but there might be other ways 

4 of doing exploratory analysis to understand 

5 bigger, kind of the larger topography of the 

6 main issues. 

7 So just to put that out there, 

8 because it sounds like it's moving ahead now; 

9 and, yet, we don't want it simply for the 

10 process, we want it for the results. And it's 

11 not quite clear how those results are going to 

12 be presented and analyzed and understood yet. 

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Yes, 

14 that sounds good, David. I mean, I'll put 

15 that on here. And I think, yes, you know, we 

16 can't really speak to that much until we see 

17 at least the first cut. But I'll put it on 

18 that the Subcommittee can discuss that first 

19 report and whether we have comments on what it 

20 includes, how it can be used, et cetera. 

21 Okay. 

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: It's great. 
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1 Again, it's great that NIOSH is doing this.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

3 MR. STIVER: This is John Stiver. 

4 I just got on the line.

5 MR. KATZ: Oh, welcome John. 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Why weren't you 

7 here, John? 

8 (Laughter.)

9 MR. STIVER: There's a long story 

10 there, involving about a five-hour wait and 

11 then a cancellation and -- you don't want to 

12 know. 

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No excuses.

14 MR. STIVER: Yes, I know. I 

15 thought about taking a train or a bus --

16 MR. KATZ: Greyhound's always --

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Bicycle. Okay. 

18 So I think we're on to our next item. The 

19 second item is the items related to NIOSH 10-

20 year review. And if I'm reading this right, 

21 are the four things under that, are they sub22 bullets? 
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1 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. It's a 

3 little confusing here. So we've got the four 

4 bullets under there, including the ORAU 

5 quality management system and the cost 

6 assessment, which we've got two separate 

7 deliverable products on. Before this meeting, 

8 everybody should have got those, right? 

9 MR. KATZ: Two? 

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, we've got 

11 something on the quality management system.

12 MR. KATZ: Oh, yes, all right. 

13 Two separate. Quality is one and cost is 

14 another document, right?

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. So I 

16 guess we can go with the QA management system 

17 first. And Scott Siebert has joined us and is 

18 going to present something on this.

19 MR. SIEBERT: I am. Now I'm 

20 waiting for my projector to warm up here real 

21 quick. Have I sufficiently impressed people? 

22 Can I take my jacket off?
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1 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. Thank you for 

2 the show.

3 MEMBER POSTON: You forgot to turn 

4 around. 

5 (Laughter.)

6 MR. SIEBERT: Oh, look at that. 

7 It's working. 

8 MEMBER MUNN: Excellent. 

9 MR. SIEBERT: Alright. These 

10 slides are just based upon the document that 

11 we sent out about a week or two ago that was 

12 actually outlining our QMS system. So there 

13 should be nothing new in here if you've had a 

14 chance to read over that document. 

15 So as said, I am Scott Siebert, 

16 still senior health physicist with ORAU team. 

17 We're going to handle our quality management 

18 system, QMS. We based our QMS system on the 

19 ISO 9000 document, which is talking about the 

20 requirements. I'm going to break down the 

21 five requirements that are all right here: our 

22 documentation requirements; our competence, 
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1 awareness, and training; product realization; 

2 monitoring and measurement of product; 

3 analysis of data and information; and we're 

4 going to look at each piece of these 

5 separately.

6 Okay. So for our documentation 

7 requirements, we do control all our documents. 

8 We have a document control system. 

9 Everything is prepared, reviewed, approved, 

10 issued, used, and revised following our 

11 prescripted processes. We have documentation 

12 in place that describes that process, and 

13 that's actually tracked through that same 

14 process, which is interesting. So we actually 

15 have just hundreds and hundreds of documents 

16 that are through this system, and they all 

17 follow this specific requirement. 

18 We also control our records. We 

19 show our results from our records from the 

20 definition from ISO 9001. Results that were 

21 achieved or evidence of activities performed 

22 and, obviously, legible, readily-identifiable, 
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1 and retrievable, unlike many of the records 

2 that we get to decipher from other parts of 

3 this project. Everything that we do ends up 

4 being electronic, so it's obviously easily 

5 tracked and retrievable or at least at the 

6 moment it's retrievable. Now, anybody who's 

7 tried to open up a Bernoulli drive recently or 

8 anything paper tape, we'll see what happens. 

9 Competence, awareness, and 

10 training is the next section. And if I go 

11 through here too quick and you guys have any 

12 questions, by all means, just jump in. We 

13 have qualified personnel by our contract. 

14 It's a minimum of a bachelor's degree in a 

15 science that is related to dose reconstruction 

16 -- internal, external health physics, whatever 

17 -- or two years of professional experience. 

18 When somebody just meets the minimum, we have 

19 then what's called a dose reconstructor in 

20 training, and their work is reviewed by a 

21 senior qualified health physicist. Our 

22 contract just requires a health physicist, but 
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1 we actually make sure it's the senior people. 

2 And this is not, we don't consider the peer 

3 review acceptable to be this level of review. 

4 This is then in addition to the peer review 

5 process, so a senior health physicist reviews 

6 their work first and then it goes into peer 

7 review. So it's an additional step. 

8 Training. The objective three, 

9 dose reconstruction, manager identifies all of 

10 our training in dose reconstruction. It 

11 includes all the NIOSH directives and over 125 

12 other documents: OTIBs, TIBs, TBDs, Site 

13 Profiles, various procedures. As they also 

14 are updated, the training also has us re15 review them and train on the latest version of 

16 them and to document all that, as well. It 

17 also includes a three- or four-day initial 

18 dose reconstructor training. We've squished 

19 it into three days before and found that 

20 that's really hard to do, so we've done it in 

21 four days generally. 

22 In addition, as things come up, we 
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1 have, obviously, periodic staff meetings where 

2 we give out information. And as additional 

3 issues come up, if it's warranted, we'll have 

4 additional training sessions. A good example 

5 is when Super S plutonium, we finally got that 

6 up and running, that's a relatively complex 

7 issue, so a couple of us went around to all 

8 the area offices and we had a training session 

9 on Super S plutonium.

10 MEMBER MUNN: Scott, with respect 

11 to your enumerating the number of documents 

12 there that you've dealt with, we've had some 

13 problems in the other Subcommittee with 

14 respect to how documents are enumerated, what 

15 the headings, the numerical headings are that 

16 you put on them. Has ORAU been, have we 

17 discussed that with ORAU, and are we 

18 attempting to work out any glitches that we 

19 have with respect to whether this is an ORAUT 

20 or an ORAU or an OTIB? You know, we've had 

21 some problems with the numbering system --

22 MR. SIEBERT: Well, normally, I 
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1 guess the main problem that we've run into 

2 before, I believe, is OTIBs and TIBs. That's 

3 the main one --

4 MEMBER MUNN: That's one of it. 

5 And the other is the number of digits that we 

6 have in a numerical document.

7 MR. SIEBERT: Oh, whether it's 

8 0001 or 001? 

9 MEMBER MUNN: Whether it's 00 or 

10 000, yes.

11 MR. SIEBERT: We haven't 

12 specifically discussed that issue that I'm 

13 aware of. The differences are the ORAU Team, 

14 we use four digits, and DCAS historically 

15 started with three digits. That's where the 

16 inconsistency between the digits came from. 

17 Also, the differences between OTIBs and TIBs, 

18 when you had an OCAS TIB and an ORAU TIB, we 

19 couldn't call them both OTIBs, we couldn't 

20 call them both TIBs. That's slowly being 

21 changed over as OCAS has been renamed to DCAS. 

22 If you'll notice, they're now becoming DTIBs, 
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1 because now they're DCAS Technical Information 

2 Bulletins.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: We should fix that 

4 and just go back to TIB.

5 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, you know, this 

6 is why I brought it up because, understanding 

7 it's not this Subcommittee's grief but it's 

8 one of the things that are a glitch we're 

9 going to have to work out, and it sounds to me 

10 as though ORAU itself doesn't have any problem 

11 with it. It's the combination of the --

12 MR. SIEBERT: It's the 

13 inconsistency between us, and we can work on 

14 that.

15 MEMBER MUNN: All right. We'll 

16 address that in the other Subcommittee. Sorry 

17 to insert that, but thank you. 

18 MR. SIEBERT: That's fine. 

19 Anything you say is on topic, Wanda.

20 MR. FARVER: Scott, one question. 

21 How are the DR guides controlled? 

22 MR. SIEBERT: The DR guides are 
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1 not part of our document control system, 

2 because we didn't want them to -- it's a 

3 rather inflexible system. As you know, it 

4 takes months oftentimes to get a document 

5 through our tracking system because it has all 

6 the various steps. In order to be a little 

7 more nimble with things of dose 

8 reconstruction, as we find things out and we 

9 determine we have guidance that needs to be 

10 issued, we'll use the guidance documents. 

11 They're kept on the server, so there's version 

12 control on the server. And the official 

13 version is the copy that always goes with the 

14 dose reconstruction report that's submitted 

15 along with it. So although it's not tracked 

16 as part of the document control system, a copy 

17 of it always goes with the dose reconstruction 

18 that it may modify, even if the guidance 

19 document wasn't used for that specific dose 

20 reconstruction. So that version will always 

21 be linked with that dose reconstruction for 

22 submittal purposes. And then as, say, the 
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1 Technical Basis Document, once that gets 

2 updated and includes that information, we'll 

3 remove that information from the guidance 

4 document.

5 MR. FARVER: But the dose 

6 reconstruction does not reference the DR 

7 guide? 

8 MR. SIEBERT: Correct. 

9 MR. FARVER: So there's no way of 

10 knowing what information was used in the dose 

11 reconstruction if there were modifications to 

12 the technical basis guidance? In other words, 

13 you could use a DR guide that has all sorts of 

14 changes in the Technical Basis Document, and 

15 the person reviewing your dose reconstruction 

16 would be unaware because --

17 MR. SIEBERT: Well, they'll 

18 specifically know where it's coming from. 

19 That's true because it's not a controlled, a 

20 document-controlled process so we can't 

21 reference it.

22 MR. FARVER: They would look at 
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1 the Technical Basis Documents and say this is 

2 what should be done according to the Technical 

3 Basis Document, and the DR would be done 

4 differently and --

5 MR. SIEBERT: In which case, then 

6 you'd look at the guidance document and say, 

7 oh, well, that's where that came from.

8 MR. FARVER: But they wouldn't 

9 know which document to look at because it's 

10 not referenced in the DR. In other words --

11 MR. SIEBERT: It would be the only 

12 guidance document that's submitted with the 

13 dose reconstruction. 

14 MR. FARVER: That's true.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And that's a 

16 recent change, by the way, right? I mean, 

17 it's in the last three or four years.

18 MR. SIEBERT: Well, yes.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, yes. 

20 Recent. Relative recent, yes. 

21 MR. FARVER: Because if you're 

22 controlling the versions, and you would have a 
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1 title, you know, version number, it could be 

2 very easy to go back and look and see what 

3 information was used.

4 MR. SIEBERT: At present, we do 

5 not do that. Anything else? 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And the 

7 decision was just that the system was too 

8 inflexible. It wouldn't allow --

9 MR. SIEBERT: To move things 

10 quickly through the system --

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- that 

12 modification.

13 MR. SIEBERT: Right. To avoid 

14 additional PERs over time.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

16 MR. SIEBERT: Or stopping 

17 production to get something into the document 

18 for, you know, a few months. We'd rather get 

19 the answers to the claimants in a timely 

20 manner. All right? 

21 Product realization. That breaks 

22 into data entry, which I know -- and a lot of 
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1 this I know is repetitive from what we did 

2 last year. Last year was very much a hands3 on, here's what we're doing and here's the 

4 processes. And I believe those of you who 

5 came to this last year saw the data process, 

6 data entry process actually being performed, 

7 which was good. 

8 Our data entry, it's entered and 

9 supplied by the sites. We do internal and 

10 external and separate spreadsheets just 

11 because they're so very different. We have 

12 different groups in data entry actually doing 

13 those specific data entry functions. And all 

14 the data that we have that's entered is 100 

15 percent audited. There was an additional, 

16 basically, peer review that does a line-by17 line comparison for quality purposes. And 

18 once it passes that, that's when it gets 

19 posted for the dose reconstructors to use.

20 Any questions on that, the data 

21 entry portion? Okay.

22 Data and information. This is 
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1 everything else. All our known sources of 

2 data, the claimant exposure data, work data, 

3 Technical Basis Documents, procedures, 

4 telephone interviews, approved and validated 

5 electronic tools, all that information also is 

6 things that we produce in this project under 

7 the auspices of the 9001 process. 

8 We also have ready access to more 

9 experienced dose reconstructors. And we're 

10 very collegial on our side of the fence. If 

11 somebody doesn't know something, we take it to 

12 somebody else and talk to the other dose 

13 reconstructors, especially the senior dose 

14 reconstructors, as well as the principal 

15 internal, external, medical, and AWE 

16 dosimetrists. They are all also available for 

17 questions. And if we have something that's a 

18 higher level that we need to, obviously, we 

19 work with our DCAS counterparts to get 

20 questions answered as well.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, I have 

22 some broader questions, but just to go back on 
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1 the data entry. I'm looking at my little 

2 notes I made. I highlighted this sentence 

3 that says, "Mistakes are corrected as they are 

4 found, and no record of the errors is 

5 currently maintained." And I guess when I'm 

6 thinking about, you know, ISO 9001, continuous 

7 improvement, you know, how do you judge 

8 improvement if you're not tracking errors? 

9 MR. SIEBERT: Well, you're right. 

10 It's not specifically tracked as such on a 

11 one-by-one basis. But that's where the rest 

12 of the sentence that goes along with it is: 

13 peer reviewers are instructed to alert 

14 supervision when they've seen consistent kinds 

15 of errors, and then the supervisor will take 

16 care of any issues up to and including, you 

17 know, training, re-training the individual, 

18 getting them online with what they're doing if 

19 they're making too many mistakes or obviously 

20 taking them off the project. 

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Fix the worker. 

22 I've got my other hat on now for my other 
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1 job, but that sounds a lot like fix the worker 

2 instead of fixing the system. If you were 

3 tracking this and finding a lot of data entry 

4 errors, maybe it would be not necessarily one 

5 individual or --

6 MR. SIEBERT: Correct.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- not a 

8 disciplinary matter. It's more of a matter 

9 of, wait a second, we need to rethink how 

10 we're entering the data.

11 MR. SIEBERT: Right. Which, once 

12 again, would come under the supervisor. I 

13 guess you're right. I only said a portion of 

14 it. That's a good point. The supervisor, 

15 since there is a supervisor over data entry, 

16 they're aware of what's going on with all the 

17 portions of it and they would be aware if 

18 you're seeing consistent error across 

19 different data entry folks, as opposed to just 

20 one single one. Good point.

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: But would the 

22 supervisor, would the supervisor know if an 
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1 individual had made an error if the individual 

2 did not report it? I'm worried about a person 

3 who is a data entry person who knows they're 

4 klutzy and they make mistakes, but they want 

5 to keep their job and they don't want to be 

6 disciplined, so they just don't report.

7 MR. SIEBERT: Well, there's a peer 

8 review who's reviewing their information. 

9 It's the peer reviewer who reports them to the 

10 supervisor to say, hey, we've got consistent 

11 errors.

12 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay. You 

13 have a peer reviewer.

14 MR. SIEBERT: Yes, there's an 

15 additional level of review.

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay.

17 MR. SIEBERT: Correct. That would 

18 go to the supervisor, and that's when they'd 

19 look for something that's a little more 

20 systemic.

21 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay. 

22 MEMBER MUNN: Now, a truly 
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1 systemic error would be fairly obvious over a 

2 relatively short period of time.

3 MR. SIEBERT: Right.

4 MEMBER MUNN: If you're getting 

5 the same kind of error over and over again, 

6 certainly the same individual overseeing it 

7 would be well aware that this is a recurrent 

8 event.

9 MR. SIEBERT: An example we have 

10 run into in the past is we'd be having people 

11 enter, say, whole body count records and a new 

12 version of a form pops up into the records 

13 that we hadn't seen before, and people start -

14 - maybe somebody tried to enter that data into 

15 the old form, as opposed to saying, hey, we've 

16 got a problem. We've seen that problem 

17 before, and we've come back to it and say, oh, 

18 well, we need to update the template to 

19 reflect there's an additional form that we 

20 need to do. So we have done that as such. 

21 MEMBER CLAWSON: But this comes 

22 back to what I was talking about a little bit 
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1 earlier. We see at the tail-end of our 

2 reviews that we do, problems that arise, and 

3 then when we bring them forth they say, well, 

4 yes, we took care of that earlier, we saw this 

5 in the process and we've done something with 

6 that. But there's no trackable way back. And 

7 coming from the QA program, it's important to 

8 be able to see that if you're improving or if 

9 you're having more problems. There's got to 

10 be somewhat of a tracking system to track any 

11 of these issues that they're having over and 

12 over again. And I'm just wondering -- and I 

13 know your system is cumbersome and so forth, 

14 but to be able to actually see any kind of 

15 improvement or unimprovement, you've got to 

16 track it somehow. This is one of the things 

17 that I have problems with is when these come 

18 in and I hear, well, yes, we saw that problem, 

19 we think that we've got it pretty well taken 

20 care of. Myself, I'd like to be able to see 

21 how much of a problem it really is and if 

22 there's something different that needs to be 
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1 done or even the process that was done to 

2 correct it. That's kind of what I was hoping 

3 we would see a little bit of because it's hard 

4 to be able to measure anything if you don't 

5 have any data. 

6 MR. SIEBERT: Right. And I see 

7 what you're saying. And I've made a couple of 

8 notes for the data entry manager to discuss 

9 that with them and see. 

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: And I don't think 

11 it's just data entry. I think it's in all 

12 processes of your Quality Assurance Program. 

13 There should be some way to be able to look at 

14 all levels of problems that you have had to be 

15 able to see, you know, we've improved with 

16 this because it would really be better to be 

17 able to come to this group and be able to say, 

18 yes, we have seen this from this time period 

19 to this time period and we saw that. We 

20 implemented this program to correct it, and 

21 now it's down to this amount. That's kind of 

22 what I was looking at. 
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1 MR. SIEBERT: And you'll see some 

2 of that further on as we get into peer review, 

3 once we get into returns from DCAS, and things 

4 like that. 

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. 

6 MR. SIEBERT: So are we really 

7 done with data entry this time? 

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think so. 

9 MR. SIEBERT: Alright. 

10 Additionally, the control of dose 

11 reconstruction templates. These are the Word 

12 templates that we have that are actually the 

13 dose reconstruction reports that all the data 

14 is imported from the tools into these reports. 

15 And it just provides a consistent quality 

16 product. These are all kept on the server. 

17 The most recent version of them is on the 

18 server. And I'm just looking from a note 

19 point of view. Okay, I didn't put it on the 

20 screen. 

21 If you read over this, I did put 

22 an example in here. As I said, we have 
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1 periodic staff meetings. One of my group 

2 meetings, actually frequently in my group 

3 meetings, I will make the statement, "Always 

4 go up to the tools folder and get the latest 

5 tool and DR draft template. Always, any 

6 claims submitted without data tool or template 

7 will be returned by the peer reviewer," which, 

8 you know, we just keep reminding dose 

9 reconstructors to use the latest tool, use the

10 latest template. And now that we're tracking, 

11 as you will see in a few minutes, now that 

12 we're tracking peer reviewer comments more 

13 closely, if that's an issue that we see 

14 consistently because people are not using the 

15 more recent one, that actually will come up 

16 and we'll start to see that. 

17 MR. FARVER: And those templates, 

18 you import the individual's data into the 

19 template, and the templates will populate the 

20 table that talks about the energy fractions, 

21 correct? That all is populated by the macro 

22 or the template? 
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1 MR. SIEBERT: Correct. Right.

2 MR. FARVER: Okay. So the dose 

3 reconstructor doesn't have to enter that data?

4 MR. SIEBERT: Correct. They have 

5 to verify that it's what they actually use, 

6 but they don't have to keep going in and 

7 entering it over and over and over. And 

8 that's getting to the next one, the same thing 

9 with software tools. It actually hits the 

10 last point there, but I'll hit them all. 

11 Well, I'll hit independently and verified and 

12 validated in a second, but I wanted to point 

13 out, you're right, it ensures consistency with 

14 our methodologies because the dose 

15 reconstructors aren't rewriting it every time 

16 and also efficiency because they're not 

17 entering the same data over and over and over. 

18 And even early on, when we did do 

19 those kind of entries, people have a cut-and20 paste that they would normally use for 

21 themselves, and they would consistently use 

22 that. It may differ between dose 
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1 reconstructors, and now I'm talking about, you 

2 know, eight years ago before we had these 

3 templates. Now it's all pulled in 

4 automatically. When we have a wording update, 

5 which we don't have that frequently anymore, 

6 but when we were first starting out the 

7 templates, if we had wording that was being 

8 misinterpreted by claimants or was really 

9 annoying them, when we wrote it one way and 

10 they were taking it another way, that would 

11 easily get a consistency that we get that 

12 wording changed across the whole process. 

13 MR. FARVER: But, for example, say 

14 neutron energies. Now, that comes right from 

15 the tool.

16 MR. SIEBERT: Correct.

17 MR. FARVER: Okay. So whatever 

18 was used for the calculation should be the one 

19 that populates the table in the DR report?

20 MR. SIEBERT: Right. Which, more 

21 recently, that's what you'll see. When you 

22 guys do older dose reconstruction reviews, you 
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1 know, you've seen inconsistencies.

2 MR. FARVER: I mean, what time 

3 frame are we looking at?

4 MR. SIEBERT: I mean the last 

5 three, four, five years probably --

6 MR. FARVER: Okay.

7 MR. SIEBERT: -- would be my 

8 guess. And then the additional point that's 

9 under software tools, the first one actually, 

10 independently verified and validated. We 

11 follow our ORAU plan 26 for our verification 

12 of our software development, as well as 

13 Procedure 94, which is actually our tool 

14 verification program that's creating the test 

15 plans, doing the tests and validation of all 

16 the tools. So those are the two things that 

17 if you want to look at the QA/QC and 

18 development process for our electronic tools, 

19 plan 26 and Procedure 94. 

20 MR. FARVER: Okay. Do you 

21 actually run test cases through?

22 MR. SIEBERT: Yes. That's part of 
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1 --

2 MR. FARVER: And you do hand 

3 verifications to make sure those are correct?

4 MR. SIEBERT: Yes, it's all done 

5 through the test plan under 94.

6 MR. FARVER: And is that 

7 available? I mean, is it somewhere I can get 

8 to to read, or is that something you would 

9 have to put out?

10 MR. SIEBERT: I can't tell you 

11 that off the top of my head.

12 MR. FARVER: Okay.

13 MR. SIEBERT: But I'll put a note 

14 down.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: So you're 

16 interested in the test plan for the 

17 verification of the tool; is that what you're 

18 asking? 

19 MR. FARVER: Yes, if that's where 

20 all that information is contained. Especially 

21 how they do the test calculation. 

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Or you want to 
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1 see the actual tests that were run, right?

2 MR. FARVER: Well, I guess we'll 

3 start with seeing what their plan is.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

5 MR. FARVER: And then maybe later 

6 on, because this is going to come up in the 

7 Savannah River issues about what are the tools 

8 that, some issues with -- you know, we might 

9 want to pull that calculation for that version 

10 of that tool.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. 

12 MR. SIEBERT: Okay. Yes, I've got 

13 a note for that. And now we're to monitoring 

14 and measurement of the product itself, as 

15 opposed to the product realization. This is 

16 once the dose reconstructor has completed the 

17 dose reconstruction. It's submitted to the 

18 initial quality control review, and these are 

19 things that you saw last year, as well, the 

20 action forms that we used, Form 59 for the 

21 IQC. It's all out of Procedure 98. They just 

22 have a checklist that they walk right through 
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1 to the initial QC and do the comparisons out 

2 of that, and that's all kept under our records 

3 program.

4 Then the peer review includes the 

5 peer review feedback form, which this is 

6 something that we put in place about two years 

7 ago to test it out to see if it would be 

8 helpful to have a more consistent feedback 

9 form, which we obviously did find that useful. 

10 We started tracking it in a database about a 

11 year ago, so we have that information now and 

12 we're working with that. And that's been 

13 somewhat helpful for the dose reconstructor 

14 managers to see what types of errors are 

15 coming out of peer review. 

16 We've got the comments grouped 

17 into 14 technical issues categories. That's 

18 going to be changing. One of the things I'll 

19 mention right now is we are updating our 

20 categorization for peer review for DCAS 

21 returns and for SC&A comments. We're changing 

22 the categorization so it's more consistent 
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1 across all of them, so we'll be comparing 

2 apples to apples across all three levels of 

3 review. That's something we're working on 

4 right now and get it in place in the next 

5 couple of months because we found, oftentimes, 

6 when you have a scientist create a review 

7 form, there's suddenly 214 categories that you 

8 can categorize, and it's hard to get them 

9 consistent. So we're trying to cull that 

10 down. Obviously, we don't have that many, but 

11 even with 14 it tends to get a little 

12 unwieldy. So we're culling that down and 

13 making it consistent across, so I think that's 

14 going to be very helpful to us. And the dose 

15 reconstruction group managers review these and 

16 looked for any consistent issues that we 

17 issue. 

18 MR. FARVER: And the peer review 

19 feedback form, is that part of PROC-59?

20 MR. SIEBERT: No. As it stands 

21 right now, it is a non-proceduralized issue 

22 because we started using it just to test it 
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1 out, and we're using it as just to test work 

2 product. I have to discuss with Ed what we're 

3 planning on doing from a documentation point 

4 of view as to using it. As I said, we're 

5 making changes to it consistently at the 

6 moment.

7 MR. FARVER: So where does the 

8 Attachment A to PROC-59 fit in, the peer 

9 review checklist?

10 MR. SIEBERT: That's a checklist 

11 that's used by the dose reconstructor or the

12 peer reviewer as they're doing their peer 

13 review. And then the Form 92 is -- Attachment 

14 A is Form 91. Form 92 is the sign-off saying 

15 that they completed the peer review, as well. 

16 MR. FARVER: So that's the peer 

17 review feedback form?

18 MR. SIEBERT: No, that's the --

19 I'll look for the actual specific name. Peer 

20 review declaration, which is that's the 

21 declaration --

22 MR. FARVER: Okay, I see it. 
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1 Attachment B.

2 MR. SIEBERT: Yes.

3 MR. FARVER: Okay. So those two 

4 forms are still being used?

5 MR. SIEBERT: Correct.

6 MR. FARVER: And then there's the 

7 feedback form, which is separate?

8 MR. SIEBERT: Which is to give the 

9 feedback information to the dose reconstructor 

10 themselves and track what comments the peer 

11 reviewers may have.

12 MR. FARVER: Okay. 

13 MEMBER MUNN: And this sounds, 

14 from your description, like the kind of 

15 tracking system that Brad and David were 

16 asking about earlier.

17 MR. SIEBERT: Yes. And that's the 

18 kind of thing we're working toward, to develop 

19 that more consistently.

20 MEMBER MUNN: Good. Thank you. 

21 MR. SIEBERT: Sure.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And the peer 
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1 review feedback form, as compared to the --

2 I'm looking at the table where you show your 

3 trend in error rates.

4 MR. SIEBERT: That is not this.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So the peer 

6 review feedback form is not broken into the 14 

7 areas, or is it?

8 MR. SIEBERT: Yes, it is broken 

9 into the 14 areas. What you're thinking of is 

10 the DCAS returns --

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

12 MR. SIEBERT: -- that the 

13 technical and other comments that we get back 

14 from DCAS that we've been tracking for a much 

15 longer time period.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

17 MR. SIEBERT: And as I said, we're 

18 working to get all these categorizations 

19 consistent, so then we can compare the 

20 different portions and, you would hope, see, 

21 as things move through the system, your error 

22 rate would be reduced. Obviously, zero is 
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1 your goal, but you would consistently be able 

2 to hopefully catch things at the lower system 

3 that you wouldn't see at the higher levels. 

4 So we're really working on that right now. 

5 We're pretty excited about that.

6 The next step after peer review is 

7 technical editing and final QC review. Both 

8 of those are also out of Procedure 98, and 

9 there's forms that go along with those, check10 off forms that are kept as records. 

11 Then, finally, we get to transmit 

12 the draft dose reconstruction report over to 

13 NIOSH, and they get to review the reports and 

14 sign off on it and basically turn it back over 

15 to us for the close-out interview or, if they 

16 have comments, they will kick that back to us 

17 on a Form 35. And that's the information 

18 that's coming out of Procedure 77, how we deal 

19 with this information if we get a return from 

20 DCAS.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Can you go back 

22 to that table then, that graph, which is the 
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1 DCAS returns, right? 

2 MR. SIEBERT: Yes.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Is there, 

4 within the data, I mean, I know this is a 

5 summary graph, do you have the breakout for 

6 these? It's different categories, I 

7 understand that.

8 MR. SIEBERT: Right.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But do you have 

10 category breakouts? For example, if there was 

11 consistent errors in internal dose, you know, 

12 internal dose method used or whatever?

13 MR. SIEBERT: Yes, we have these 

14 broken out. I didn't bring any of that, but 

15 there's so much, various things. What we 

16 found over time and more recently, especially, 

17 as I said, with these other things that we're 

18 now tracking, categorization was not always 

19 consistent. And when you're not consistent 

20 with your categorization, the data that's 

21 coming out of it isn't always as helpful. 

22 So these are the overall error 
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1 rate itself. Once we -- it's been helpful, 

2 but we're finding that it's probably going to 

3 be even more helpful once we have those 

4 categories consistent across these three. 

5 And an additional step that we're 

6 doing right now is we would have a specific 

7 person who got these returns from DCAS, and 

8 they would enter them into our error rate data 

9 base, our comment data base, and make a 

10 characterization. They weren't always being 

11 as consistent as they could be because there 

12 was, once again, a lot of different 

13 categorizations. So we're reducing that and, 

14 as well, there will be two of us who are doing 

15 the categorization. Joel Arana and I will be 

16 taking care of that so that we have more 

17 consistent characterization. And then the 

18 data will be a little bit more useful to us 

19 for developing exactly where the issues are. 

20 So evolving process.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And within that 

22 process, is there a breakout of the type of 
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1 claim? Like full internal dose, full external

2 dose?

3 MR. SIEBERT: We don't pull that 

4 information in right now.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Because I know 

6 that was a discussion --

7 MR. SIEBERT: We could do --

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- in previous 

9 meetings that the level of review may depend 

10 on -- I mean, I think you were looking at 

11 that, right? You were saying that, if you 

12 have the cases that were likely to require a 

13 full dose reconstruction, then you may want 

14 more rigor in your review process, as opposed 

15 to an overestimating case. You might not need 

16 as much rigor in that review process.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Typically, it just 

18 seems that if the case comes down over 45 

19 percent it gets a pretty careful review in 

20 that process. You want to make sure that 

21 you've done the right thing in that process, 

22 as opposed to, you know, I would think people 
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1 would look at that more thoroughly than they 

2 would if it was 10 percent or something for 

3 one that was non-compensable. You look at 

4 compensable and make sure they didn't make 

5 some gross mistake.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. It seems 

7 like it would be human nature, but you're not 

8 really tracking that.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: I don't really 

10 know. Right.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. Okay. 

12 MR. SIEBERT: Now, as I said, it's 

13 Procedure 77 on our side where we actually 

14 deal with the error tracking and reporting. 

15 All the comments are categorized into 

16 categories, which makes sense, and it's put in 

17 our comment management utility database, and 

18 that's where we pull the technical errors. 

19 And, actually, everything goes into that 

20 database, not just technical errors. Any 

21 return that we get from DCAS, it may be a 

22 wording issue, it may be professional judgment 
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1 differences, it may be a miscommunication. 

2 Perhaps our dose reconstruction report wasn't 

3 as clear to explain to the DCAS reviewer what 

4 we were doing, and they may want a wording 

5 change, things like that. Those are all 

6 rolled into our return database, not just the 

7 technical errors themselves. We also have 

8 monthly and quarterly tracking and trending 

9 status reports that go to the objective three 

10 manager and the group managers, Joel and 

11 myself, to review that, which also includes 

12 the information all the way down to who the 

13 dose reconstructor and who the peer reviewers 

14 were so that we can see if there's some sort 

15 of consistency and if we see a peer reviewer 

16 that's consistently missing things or a dose 

17 reconstructor who has this type of error that 

18 they're making. We're watching that type of 

19 information, as well. 

20 And then any time you throw a 

21 graph on, you expect everybody's eyes to go 

22 directly to it. So there it is, the technical 
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1 error rate that we've been tracking since 

2 early 2005. As you can see, it's obviously 

3 trending down. This does include, as I said, 

4 all comments back, and this is the Form 35s 

5 from DCAS to ORAU. This includes all 

6 comments, not just technical comments. 

7 For example, if we had a wording 

8 change because an SEC just came out, and we've 

9 turned in some claims to DCAS before the SEC 

10 wording came out and now we need to re-work 

11 the wording to be consistent with the SEC, 

12 they will return those to us and we'll make 

13 those wording changes. There's no technical 

14 error, but we make a wording change. Those 

15 are all included here, as well. That's why 

16 sometimes you'll see blips upwards. Usually, 

17 it's something like an SEC just came out where 

18 we had some sort of issue that changed that we 

19 may need to change the reports and then maybe 

20 a chunk of them that come back for us to 

21 address that and then get them back out. 

22 And, as I believe, we put one in 
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1 the slide right before it. The average 

2 technical errors right now, in the six months, 

3 right around one to one and a half-percent. 

4 Now, that would be the technical errors that 

5 DCAS caught something that we needed to change 

6 and fix the error and turn it back in.

7 Overall, as you can see, going 

8 down, which is just like you say, Brad, when 

9 you're tracking it and you can look at it, 

10 that's very helpful. 

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. It's also 

12 helpful for us to go back and see where we've, 

13 how it's been approved, too. 

14 MR. SIEBERT: Right. And that is 

15 the end of the slides. As I said, that's 

16 pretty much just a short overview of the 

17 document that we sent out to you, to all of 

18 you. So any additional questions? That was 

19 relatively quick.

20 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I have a 

21 question. This is David Richardson. Can you 

22 hear me? 
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: One question 

3 is so you've got February 12th in the graph --

4 February 2012.

5 MR. SIEBERT: Correct.

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And so it made 

7 me, I guess a starting question is: the 

8 document is not dated. When was this document 

9 written? 

10 MR. SIEBERT: Oh, the original 

11 document? When did --

12 MEMBER RICHARDSON: The document 

13 here that you've provided us.

14 MR. SIEBERT: What? Two weeks 

15 ago?

16 MEMBER MUNN: This month.

17 MR. SIEBERT: He's talking about 

18 the document that was sent out, the 

19 explanation as to what this is all based upon.

20 MEMBER RICHARDSON: The ORAU Team 

21 dose reconstruction quality assurance/quality 

22 control program document.
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1 MR. SIEBERT: Correct. What's the 

2 date that that was --

3 MR. CALHOUN: I'm trying to find 

4 out when MJ sent --

5 MR. SIEBERT: Sent over. 

6 MR. CALHOUN: It was between the 

7 last meeting and this one. 

8 MR. SIEBERT: We can approximate 

9 about a month.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So it was just 

11 between the last two meetings or between --

12 yes.

13 MR. SIEBERT: Correct.

14 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So we had 

15 been, we've been asking for quite a long time 

16 now. As you said, I mean, we had a site visit 

17 that was over a year ago where we had posed 

18 the same sort of questions and asked for the 

19 description of the process: what was your in20 house documentation for quality assurance? 

21 And a lot of it fell under the category of 

22 what you're calling monitoring and measurement 
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1 of the product, and it was motivated by the 

2 independent evaluations that were done through 

3 the Board where we were observing errors that 

4 seemed to have passed through whatever 

5 internal quality control was going on with 

6 your organization and also, in many cases, 

7 passing through NIOSH's. 

8 And then when we were looking at 

9 it, we were finding things like data entry 

10 problems at a rate of -- if we were to take 

11 our data, which we weren't doing large 

12 numbers, but at a rate that was perhaps in the 

13 double digits for percentages. And so we had 

14 wanted to understand what was the etiology of 

15 those errors, and we went and visited you and 

16 we were given an overview, kind of in broad 

17 strokes, but we had asked for documentation. 

18 We received some documentation related to 

19 positions for people who had different 

20 responsibilities, managerial positions, but 

21 not a description of an auditing process. 

22 We had asked again at the last 
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1 meeting, and we were told that we would be 

2 provided with a description of what documents 

3 you were currently using for the auditing 

4 process. And what we've received, it would 

5 appear to me, is an undated document which 

6 says here's what we can say today, but I 

7 wanted to know what was the process in place 

8 that was the etiology for all those errors 

9 that we saw? What was in place as the Quality 

10 Assurance Program? How were you monitoring 

11 and measuring the product? 

12 So what you've described to me 

13 seems to be you're working towards getting 

14 into place something which will allow you to 

15 track certain classes of errors. But, as you 

16 said, the type of graph that you provided is 

17 not interpretable at this point because it 

18 conflates a number of things: tracking, 

19 transitions in SECs. It's so crude as to be 

20 very un-interpretable, and it certainly 

21 doesn't conform to an internal evaluation of 

22 your own quality assurance. It's what NIOSH 
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1 catches with their limited resources in terms 

2 of errors and returns to you. And when we do 

3 it again independently, we catch other errors. 

4 But it's still not clear to me what's the 

5 process?

6 So if you're saying you're ISO 

7 compliant, I would expect there to be some 

8 sort of document that says: this is what we 

9 say what we do and then some sort of process 

10 for saying we're performing to our level of 

11 documentation and we're auditing and tracking 

12 that. And I've gotten kind of a sense of a 

13 number of informal things that you are saying, 

14 but I've written in this document there's lots 

15 of those things. What's the process for the 

16 supervisor recognizing an error in the broad 

17 terms? What's the process for them 

18 recognizing the performance of an individual 

19 who's doing this work? And we've asked now 

20 for a very long time for what do you have in 

21 place for that, and this was written very 

22 recently. But how is this working? You've 
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1 been doing this for ten years. 

2 MR. HINNEFELD: David, I think 

3 maybe, despite your explanation, maybe we 

4 don't quite understand what's being asked for. 

5 You've said, at one point you said there was 

6 a request for -- we find these errors and we 

7 want to know the etiology of these errors, 

8 meaning why did these errors occur. Now, we 

9 got an assignment on that. We're partway 

10 along that. That was the most recent, you 

11 know, that table of most recent. I don't know 

12 where that is now. 

13 We looked back at like the five 

14 most recently completed cases that we had 

15 SC&A's review on at that time. We identified 

16 the errors and made an interpretation of 

17 those. I don't know. Have those been brought 

18 back to the Subcommittee? 

19 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I'm sorry. Is 

20 this Stu who's answering? 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu. I'm 

22 sorry. Yes.
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1 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes. But I 

2 guess I'm asking, I'm asking something prior 

3 to that, right? ORAU sent those to you, and 

4 you recognize them. What's happening 

5 internally? That's the place that I -- how 

6 are they recognizing when there's a problem? 

7 I guess it's as fundamental as that. If you 

8 were manufacturing -- I keep going back to 

9 kind of the, you know, quality assurance in 

10 manufacturing. If you're manufacturing a 

11 product and sending it out, how do you make 

12 sure that the soles are not falling off your 

13 shoes? And there's, you know, there are 

14 procedures in place for tracking the quality 

15 and the performance of a process.

16 And, you know, I feel like 

17 somewhere, starting on page four of this 

18 document, there's the monitoring and the 

19 measurement of a product. Okay. That's the 

20 heading that I was interested in here. I mean 

21 me, particularly. I mean, I know other people 

22 are interested in kind of tracking of 
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1 documents and other things, but as a basic 

2 question, kind of an empirical question, how 

3 do they know, what sort of review is 

4 happening? And I see, you know, there are 

5 these checklists, but there's not, there 

6 doesn't seem to be a process described here 

7 for keeping track, for showing us that this 

8 year something is better than last year. I 

9 mean, there's this technical error rate, but I 

10 find that kind of, you know, as you said, 

11 there are lots of issues that make that very, 

12 very difficult and not very useful for our 

13 purposes.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: So, in other 

15 words, besides the peer review feedback where 

16 the peer reviewer looks at the product which 

17 the dose reconstructor thinks is fine and the 

18 peer reviewer makes comments and those 

19 comments are then categorized and -- are you 

20 interested in what --

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So what I 

22 understood was, on this graph, from January 
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1 '05 until two years prior to today, that was 

2 not instituted. There was something else in 

3 place. One year ago those peer reviewer 

4 comments began to be logged, but they're not 

5 categorized in a consistent way yet. And so 

6 that's the, what we're saying is we're 

7 beginning to be able to have not a blind 

8 assessment; but there is, within there, a peer 

9 review, not of a sample but of the products 

10 going through and some categories that they'll 

11 begin to track. That's the quality program. 

12 Is that what you're pointing to? 

13 MR. HINNEFELD: No, I'm trying to 

14 understand the questions you're asking. That 

15 was what I was talking about, but there is, 

16 essentially, a product inspection with 

17 comments noted and categorized and presumably 

18 something is done with those. There's an 

19 analysis of those to look for commonalities 

20 and some common cause sort of thing, so things 

21 you can fix or whatever you can fix. But 

22 you're looking for common cause and --
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1 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay. So when 

2 we went a year ago and we asked, there was no 

3 tracking. That's been instituted, but there's 

4 not yet a procedure in place now for what 

5 they're going to do with that yet? Because, I 

6 mean, what we were just presented today is 

7 saying that this is a new thing, there's not 

8 agreement yet on how those categories will be 

9 formed, and there's no kind of data that they 

10 can show us right now about how that's 

11 working. 

12 I mean the question -- I'm sorry 

13 if I'm not being clear about it. But I'm 

14 thinking, you know, about the way that I would 

15 track or manage people who do data entry and 

16 other complicated tasks for me.

17 MEMBER MUNN: May I try this, even 

18 though I'm the last person in the world to try 

19 to explain what David means. But I think what 

20 he means is he would like to know what happens 

21 and when you check it. He would like to know 

22 what originally we started with. When you got 
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1 a claim and you knew what you were supposed to 

2 do with it, who did what and who checked what 

3 and who recorded what? I think he wants to 

4 know what was done, who did it, and how it was 

5 checked throughout the entire process, I 

6 think, in the past and what has been done in 

7 the interim to improve that and make it more 

8 precise. Am I close, David? 

9 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Right, yes. 

10 And there have been a number of comments along 

11 the way that were very much the same. 

12 Mistakes are corrected as they are found, and 

13 no record is currently maintained. Well, so I 

14 would like to know, you know -- I mean, to me, 

15 that's surprising in a sense of: how do you 

16 know you're doing better? 

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, if I can 

18 offer one thing, as a general sense, I think 

19 the key here is to identify where the 

20 recording and analysis will be the most 

21 beneficial and to perhaps recognize, well, 

22 absolutely recognize that every process that 
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1 you install for recording and analyzing and 

2 evaluating is a cost. And so that cost then 

3 subtracts from the number of dose 

4 reconstructions we can do, the amount of work 

5 we can spend on SECs and Site Profile reviews. 

6 But the idea here is to be able to accomplish 

7 what we need to do, do what is appropriate and 

8 worthwhile here, and I'm not arguing that we 

9 shouldn't do it or we shouldn't do more. I 

10 think what we've done and what you've 

11 described is largely in response to comments 

12 from this Subcommittee about it.

13 MEMBER RICHARDSON: But, but, Stu, 

14 can I ask you a question? Because you're 

15 speaking with a "we," which would sound to be 

16 what "we" can do as being encompassing both 

17 NIOSH and ORAU.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: I tend to, sure.

19 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And I was 

20 working under the model that you were the 

21 employer and that they were a subcontractor.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, and I have a 
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1 fixed amount of money to give them. And I have 

2 a certain amount of work to accomplish. I 

3 have more work to accomplish than I can 

4 accomplish in a timely fashion.

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Can I ask you, 

6 do you, do they work on a per-hour basis or do 

7 they have or do you have a contract in which 

8 there is some expectation of deliverables?

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, they are not 

10 paid for deliverables. There is an 

11 expectation of deliverables. It's conveyed to 

12 them in their award fee for their contract, 

13 but they are not paid for deliverables. They 

14 are a cost-reimbursable contract.

15 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So right now 

16 the way their contract is written, there's 

17 not, they're not expected to take some of the 

18 money that you give them and be doing some of 

19 this tracking of mistakes?

20 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, they are, and 

21 they are doing some. Are they doing --

22 (Simultaneous speakers.)
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1 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- are 

2 corrected as they are found, and no record is 

3 maintained.

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Whether they're 

5 doing as much as they should or not is an open 

6 question, and we will accept, you know, we are 

7 certainly interested in the Board's advice on 

8 that. The fact of the matter, though, is that 

9 we have worked -- "we," meaning we at ORAU, 

10 have worked at improving this process, in, you 

11 know, quite a large part, because of advice of 

12 this Subcommittee. And we're continuing to do 

13 that, so Scott is describing an evolutionary 

14 process that doesn't necessarily move as fast 

15 as any of us would like.

16 MEMBER MUNN: And the operative 

17 word and what Stu said earlier is probably 

18 appropriate. The word "appropriate" really 

19 comes into play because one has to meet some 

20 medium ground between laboratory statistics 

21 and industrial production. You have to hit in 

22 there somewhere. As he pointed out, cost is a 
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1 factor, and there's nothing that we can do to 

2 get around that. But by the same token, we're 

3 under extreme pressure from all sources to 

4 improve not only the rate of completion but 

5 also the quality of what's turned out. So you 

6 have to find an appropriate measure, and I 

7 suspect that every Member of not only the 

8 Subcommittee but the individuals who touch 

9 these claims probably have a different 

10 assessment of what is appropriate, depending 

11 upon your philosophy regarding outcome.

12 DR. MAURO: This is John.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Hold on, John.

14 DR. MAURO: Okay.

15 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: If you want to 

16 do what Dave Richardson is suggesting, that is 

17 to keep a total record of all mistakes that 

18 have been found and corrected, is it possible 

19 for you to say how much of a fiscal and 

20 resource burden that would be? Implicitly, it 

21 must be large, or I assume you would have done 

22 it. 
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1 MR. SIEBERT: That's not something 

2 I specifically can address.

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay. 

4 MR. SIEBERT: But you're right. 

5 It's not insignificant. 

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes. I 

7 wondered whatever suggestions have been made 

8 in the past have been made and have been acted 

9 upon as best as you could do it, balancing 

10 these. Probably you're not able to afford, in 

11 different senses of that, doing a total system 

12 change, but I was impressed that in the data 

13 entry you said, well, of course, most folks do 

14 double data entry and then compare them. But 

15 that's resource-intensive. That's enormously 

16 resource-intensive. But I wondered if you 

17 could experiment by beginning to do X percent, 

18 X being a number less than two digits, to do 

19 double data entry and compare. And, 

20 internally, you could keep a very good record 

21 of that, and that would provide something 

22 better than the current system but not 
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1 changing the entire system at this point and 

2 perhaps could identify things that would help 

3 move you in a direction toward keeping more 

4 records. I wondered if that's something that 

5 might be feasible. It's a thought, and I 

6 obviously am new, so I don't know that much 

7 about it. 

8 MR. SIEBERT: No, a fresh 

9 perspective is always good. We are always 

10 willing and happy to do whatever DCAS asks us 

11 to do. 

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, this is Stu. 

13 ORAU will do what we ask them to do. Should 

14 I take it as the Board's advice or the 

15 Subcommittee's advice that we investigate -- I 

16 mean, there are some things we could do. I 

17 think, for the purposes of the discussion and 

18 the Subcommittee's interest, it behooves us to 

19 work with our contractor management, and Scott 

20 is not really the contractor management I need 

21 to work with, to see what can we do to provide 

22 some feedback, you know, to make some 
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1 judgments about what would we be talking about 

2 in that context or in some of these other 

3 contexts, sort of a broad scale error 

4 tracking. 

5 You know, I go back to the old 

6 days when people would flow-chart a work 

7 process, and at certain points in the work 

8 process there are things you can do to check 

9 and see if things are done right at that 

10 point, maybe at every step of the process but 

11 certainly at some of them. And you can do 

12 that and you can say, okay, here are the 

13 potential things we could do to measure and 

14 record and keep track of and analyze progress 

15 at these steps. You know, that effort in 

16 itself is going to take some time and some 

17 money for our contractor to do that. So I 

18 suspect that we will not get what I'm thinking 

19 of but maybe some other pieces because there 

20 are people who are far more familiar with the 

21 process than I, you know, the people who do 

22 it. Scott, who is far more familiar with the 
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1 process than I am, could say, well, here's 

2 some places where it might make sense and we 

3 could do something like that, or we could ask 

4 them to do something like that, and say where 

5 are the places where it would make sense to 

6 have a system like this? And, also, what do 

7 you see as the work burden for doing these 

8 systems at these places for record, you know, 

9 measure, record, feedback, and analyze on a 

10 regular basis how things are going? What do 

11 you see as the work burden to do that? We can 

12 come up with that. We've asked them to do 

13 cost analyses before for other purposes, so I 

14 think they would give us their best shot. All 

15 these things, of course, are a little fuzzy 

16 because different things, people don't 

17 necessarily do things at the same rate you 

18 think they're going to, and the cost here is 

19 going to be time, you know, manpower. But we 

20 can give it a shot. We'll ask our contractor 

21 to -

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Wanda. And 
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1 then John on the phone, I know you've got a 

2 question.

3 MEMBER MUNN: I have a yes-but 

4 here, and my yes-but is: how low, how complete 

5 do you think you're going to get this 

6 information? It's never going to be fully 

7 complete. And as Scott said, you can always 

8 improve, but is that necessary to be our 

9 primary goal when we're looking at these as 

10 overseers? I can tell you from personal 

11 experience, even though the graph that we're 

12 looking at here is only a snapshot of a part 

13 of the cases that were involved, nevertheless, 

14 I can tell you that, from an industrial 

15 standpoint, most manufacturers would be 

16 extremely happy with the level of technical 

17 error rate that's being seen there.

18 Now, I don't know yet, sitting 

19 here, whether this low level of error rate is 

20 being seen across the board with the other 

21 types of claims that we haven't covered by 

22 this graph. But if the other error rate is 
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1 anywhere near approaching this, then it 

2 becomes a real question of not just fiscal but 

3 also a people power issue and whether the 

4 effort, the time that is necessary -- it's all 

5 about time -- whether the time that is 

6 necessary to reduce the error rate below the 

7 one to one and a half percent, if that is, in 

8 fact, the error rate that we're seeing. Is 

9 that really where we want to devote our time 

10 and our interest? 

11 You know, it's desirable if we can 

12 achieve 100 percent but not necessarily 

13 reasonable to do so. And we, I think, need to 

14 be concerned not only with what we're, by 

15 extension, asking ORAU to do but what we're 

16 also asking the folks at DCAS to even look at 

17 to pursue. 

18 So the question that I would lay 

19 before us is are we not at a point where it 

20 would be judicious of us to suggest that we, 

21 at our next meeting, have an opportunity to 

22 see what data ORAU has available with respect 
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1 to the error rate on the other types of claims 

2 that we have not seen here? They're just 

3 setting up now to do that with their new 

4 system of parsing 14 --

5 MR. SIEBERT: Wanda, can I ask you 

6 a question? 

7 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

8 MR. SIEBERT: When you say the 

9 other types of claims, are you talking about 

10 the other levels of the process --

11 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

12 MR. SIEBERT: -- the peer review 

13 and --

14 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, I am.

15 MR. SIEBERT: Okay. 

16 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, sir, I am.

17 MR. SIEBERT: I just wanted to 

18 make sure I understood.

19 MEMBER MUNN: If we see that error 

20 rate, that low error rate, and the drop in 

21 error rate -- of course, we're not asking to 

22 go back and look at the drop, are we? But if 
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1 we're seeing this error rate consistent across 

2 the types of claims that they're going to be 

3 looking at, do we not want to wait to see what 

4 that -- if that's a similar low rate before we 

5 ask folks to go out and start --

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So, Wanda, I 

7 appreciate these comments because the way that 

8 you're thinking about this is, objectively, we 

9 are presented with data and we can feel 

10 reassured because there's been a logical 

11 collection of information, a clear 

12 presentation of it, and that gives us the 

13 basis for feeling like the resources have been 

14 put into the right places with regards to 

15 quality control and quality assurance. And 

16 that was, that's the whole background of this 

17 was --

18 MEMBER MUNN: Are we going --

19 MEMBER RICHARDSON: -- how was 

20 that information being collected, and we went 

21 there and we asked for it, and now we've been 

22 presented with a chart which shows us 
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1 something. And I guess my only question is: 

2 are they collecting the information that we 

3 need to feel like we understand the kind of 

4 level of errors? Because, when we walked into 

5 that meeting a year ago, I said right now the 

6 only basis I have for understanding the error 

7 rate is that we had done, the DR Subcommittee 

8 had gone through, what, a hundred, two hundred 

9 dose reconstructions and found errors on the 

10 range of, I don't know, seven percent, ten 

11 percent, where there were kind of data entry 

12 problems. At least that was my impression at 

13 the time, and I said if my impression based on 

14 that small sample is correct, then the error 

15 rate is relatively high. It's not one 

16 percent. So right now I'm trying to reconcile 

17 two conflicting pieces of information in my 

18 head, one that comes from a historical 

19 evaluation and another one which comes from a 

20 histogram with a smoothed line fitted over it. 

21 But, you know, the more 

22 fundamental question is: it can't just be up 
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1 to this small Subcommittee to be doing this 

2 audit process on all those different steps 

3 that happen within ORAU. I was imagining, 

4 expecting that they had a procedure in place 

5 for the collection and ongoing monitoring of 

6 that information that they looked at in-house, 

7 as well. And this memo is describing, I 

8 think, that, in some detail. It's not kind of 

9 the way I would do it, I guess. 

10 Perhaps NIOSH is satisfied with 

11 how that's being done. It's surprising to me, 

12 from a managerial perspective, that there's 

13 not more kind of ongoing surveillance or 

14 auditing of different places where problems 

15 may arise and when they impose an 

16 intervention, like a new spreadsheet, tracking 

17 errors to see whether that's propagated some 

18 sort of unexpected problem. 

19 But, yes, I agree with you. If 

20 this histogram, if we take it at face value 

21 and we believe the smooth line is one percent 

22 and it's not the bars over the prior three 
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1 months, which have an error of more like four 

2 percent, and we think that one out of 20 dose 

3 reconstructions, it's acceptable that they 

4 have technical errors and we don't think that 

5 any further effort should be put, then that's 

6 all good news.

7 MR. SIEBERT: But just a 

8 clarification that these are not technical 

9 errors. These are all the returns from DCAS 

10 to us, no matter the type of return it was.

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I'm just 

12 repeating the title of the graph.

13 MR. SIEBERT: Okay.

14 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And I agree 

15 there's lots of problems with the histogram, 

16 which make it very difficult to interpret. I 

17 guess it was a hypothetical. If we believed 

18 that these bars represented the true error 

19 rate in the process, then maybe we would just 

20 want to not discuss this any further. But I'm 

21 skeptical of that.

22 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, I guess the 
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1 question that raises in my mind is the 

2 question of how can we present this 

3 information so that it is more meaningful to 

4 us, David. That's the question that raises 

5 for me, and the only one really. 

6 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes. Well, 

7 the first thing, I mean, for me, the first 

8 thing was, we asked the question: is there 

9 documentation on the QA/QC process and the 

10 auditing? And I was under the impression that 

11 there was an auditing process in place and 

12 that the documents that we would get would 

13 have historical dates assigned to them, that 

14 here was the auditing process which was in 

15 place and maybe, you know, with appendices 

16 that showed how auditing processes had 

17 changed. What we have is a, you know, is a de 

18 novo memo describing here's the various ways 

19 in which we are looking at quality. But it's 

20 still not, to me, doesn't fall within what I 

21 would expect as a procedure which was put in 

22 place for managing a very, very large, 
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1 complicated, you know, effort, where there's 

2 lots of places where errors could occur and 

3 this is how we're tracking and monitoring them 

4 because we're, you know, involved in something 

5 important and expensive.

6 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. I'm back to 

7 what I think your original question was: what, 

8 specifically, steps did you do in your 

9 process, where was it checked, and what's the 

10 result? 

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes. 

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: John Mauro?

13 DR. MAURO: Yes.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You had a 

15 question or comment.

16 DR. MAURO: I do have a comment, 

17 and it's a complement, I would say, to what 

18 was being discussed. The discussion we're 

19 having right now is sort of a ISO 9000/9001 

20 process to build bureaucracy layers of checks 

21 and scorecard, as if we're in a manufacturing 

22 process. I'm going to say, certainly, there's 
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1 great value to doing that and applying that 

2 way of checks and what is it that you will 

3 check and track and what metrics will be kept 

4 to see trends. There's value to that. But I 

5 think we've got a root cause situation 

6 regarding errors where, in fact, such a 

7 process may exacerbate that. 

8 We have just reviewed a case. I 

9 have the number. It's a Hanford case. I have 

10 the author. And it is, by far, the best 

11 documented DR case that -- well, I'd look at 

12 all them but many of them. What I'm getting 

13 at is every step in the process was the 

14 rationale was disclosed by the author, the 

15 starting point. When I think of getting to 

16 the root cause, it starts with the person 

17 responsible for the DR. If that person takes 

18 personal responsibility and ownership, not a 

19 filing a procedure but certainly looking at 

20 the procedure and then making judgments, the 

21 degree to which what aspect of the procedure, 

22 because that person is always given 
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1 discretion, and that person must always be 

2 given discretion, just the way in which you 

3 would not want to take away discretion away 

4 from a surgeon. That person should always 

5 have discretion, and the procedures, the Site 

6 Profiles, et cetera, should never be so 

7 prescriptive that you take away that 

8 discretion from the dose reconstructor.

9 The only thing I would recommend 

10 is that every dose reconstruction that's done 

11 by your folks be done and documented the way 

12 this young lady -- I'm not going to name names 

13 on the phone. I certainly will be glad to 

14 tell you the name and the number of the case. 

15 If you were to take a look at that and see 

16 exactly how that person documented every 

17 decision that was made in marching through 

18 this complex process, along with the rationale 

19 for picking what she picked, I think that 

20 would go a long way to improving quality and 

21 not only improving quality, because it would 

22 be a self-assessment of the person. The 
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1 person will always be asking himself, I'm 

2 picking this number and here's why. When you 

3 do that, you catch your own errors. And when 

4 you do that, you may decide not to follow the 

5 protocol and you have a reason for it.

6 What's going to happen then is 

7 you're going to get a better dose 

8 reconstruction that will have fewer errors, 

9 you know, quality errors. Not only that, 

10 you're going to allow that person to continue 

11 having discretion. And then when the QA 

12 audits begin, it's all going to be there in 

13 front of the auditor. And by the way, and the 

14 reason I'm saying this, we're the last step in 

15 that process when we get the DR to review. I 

16 can tell you this: this one stood out because 

17 it gave us everything we needed to quickly 

18 determine whether prudent decisions were made 

19 and whether or not this was a quality product, 

20 and we were able to do it quickly and there 

21 was no ambiguity because everything was 

22 explained.
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1 I say that certainly build your 

2 process for metrics, for tracking quality, 

3 like an ISO 9000 would. But I would say, more 

4 importantly, if you could ask everyone to 

5 prepare the DR analysis in accordance with 

6 this one particular case that I have in front 

7 of me, it will go a long way to solving 

8 quality problems. 

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And, John, just 

10 to weigh into this conversation, if I can take 

11 a step with yours, the personal responsibility 

12 angle, if I'm doing a dose reconstruction and 

13 I document, you know, you don't follow the 

14 protocol, as you described it. But as long as 

15 you document it, it's okay. So if that 

16 happens on 1,000 cases out of 5,000, as long 

17 as I'm documenting it it's okay. And we're 

18 not tracking it, so nobody ever switches the 

19 protocol. You just have everybody going 

20 around the protocol. Is that what you see 

21 happening here?

22 DR. MAURO: No, I'm saying that --
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Is that the 

2 best way forward? I don't know.

3 DR. MAURO: I'm saying that I 

4 don't want to be -- I think the protocol is a 

5 starting point for ensuring consistency and 

6 quality. But, meanwhile, we're not talking 

7 about people on an assembly line. We're 

8 talking about people with Ph.D.s who have been 

9 asked to look at some very difficult 

10 questions, each one are unique, and a degree 

11 to which -- just like the American Medical 

12 Association puts out protocols. But in the 

13 end, these professionals, I think they follow 

14 the protocol, they should follow the protocol, 

15 unless they feel otherwise. And, by the way, 

16 the protocol is not all that prescriptive 

17 either, not always. I mean, room has to be 

18 given for discretion. And within the protocol 

19 itself, there is discretion, choose this 

20 versus this under these circumstances and 

21 these circumstances. So there's always 

22 judgments on the part of the DR performer as 
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1 to what are the circumstances that apply to 

2 this situation so, as a result of that, I'm 

3 picking this and I'm not picking that. And 

4 that --

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, yes. We 

6 may be talking past each other a little bit, I 

7 mean, if it's a flexible protocol, then you 

8 wouldn't really be documenting something that 

9 you're violating the protocol. Right, right. 

10 You're following your personal judgment.

11 DR. MAURO: Right, yes. But I'm 

12 saying that you're in within your protocol and 

13 you make a choice and you justify it. So 

14 that's why I say what I had to say is really a 

15 complement. I'm saying that there are aspects 

16 to quality that we're not talking about right 

17 now. We're talking about ways, after the 

18 fact, to catch mistakes, track them. I guess 

19 all I'm really adding is, certainly, that 

20 needs to be done, but I think it's -- the 

21 reason I bring it up is only because we ran 

22 across this one case that was a knockout. And 
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1 it's sort of like, oh, my goodness, we've been 

2 waiting for this for eight years.

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes. Well, I 

4 appreciate that, but, you know, you started 

5 off by saying are there clearly-defined 

6 metrics and are they, you know, and are those 

7 metrics that are going to define certain 

8 aspects of quality being tracked and are they 

9 trackable? And I agree. At some point, 

10 there's going to be a lot of nuance to this, 

11 but, you know, Dave's question was if there's 

12 not, for example, line double entry of the raw 

13 information, is there a possibility of some 

14 random entry of a sub-sample? And that's how 

15 I've been thinking about it, also. And what 

16 the one piece of information that we had that 

17 sort of looked like that were these dose 

18 reconstructions, but they're not a random 

19 sample. They're over-sampled on a number of 

20 different attributes, but they were suggesting 

21 that there was some problem of data entry as 

22 being a fundamental issue.
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1 Now, NIOSH has recently instituted 

2 a very small blind dose reconstruction, but 

3 that's going to be -- you'll have to remind 

4 me. Is it one percent? Two percent? 

5 MEMBER MUNN: I thought we said 

6 two originally but --

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Just a couple a 

8 week. 

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, a couple a 

10 week. 

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: A couple of 

12 week. So, again, we have external 

13 organizations which are doing, you know, 

14 samples. One of them is quasi-random and one 

15 of them not random at all but on the order of, 

16 you know, looking at one percent samples or 

17 very, very small samples. So that's the one 

18 kind of set of data points that we have, and I 

19 was wondering if there are internal metrics 

20 for quality and whether those are being

21 tracked and how they're being derived. And 

22 that's, you know, I mean, these are --
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. And I 

2 guess that --

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I mean, I'm 

4 just struggling with what are the metrics for 

5 quality.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And I think --

7 let me just one second. I think Scott alluded 

8 to, I mean, you talked about this DR tracking 

9 database, tracking and reporting. So you have 

10 an internal under PROC-77, right? 

11 MR. SIEBERT: Right. 

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Error tracking. 

13 And there may be this question of the 

14 categorization being different at different 

15 levels. I mean, I don't know if you've been 

16 doing this all along, but maybe now you're 

17 doing more of the analysis. Okay, this comes 

18 from there, but the sub-level of this is what 

19 I'm interested in because I agree this doesn't 

20 tell me much. But if you got some more 

21 granularity and found out that -- I mean, I 

22 think there's several levels in this. I mean, 
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1 one is are you weighting the errors, you know, 

2 are there significant errors versus minor 

3 errors? I think that might be important. Are 

4 you finding a large degree of errors are 

5 falling in one category, in one of your 

6 categories? I think that's the kind of stuff 

7 that might come out of this that then you --

8 because I think one thing that I'm not sure is 

9 happening. I mean, I think you're making some 

10 efforts, but a lot of it is sort of just the 

11 feeling of where you think, well, we can 

12 improve by doing this. I don't know that 

13 you're necessarily using these metrics to 

14 guide your feedback loop to say, geez, well, 

15 we can't track everything, as Wanda would say, 

16 right? 

17 MEMBER MUNN: We can't. 

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: However, we're 

19 finding that we're getting a lot of errors in 

20 this one category, and maybe we need to pay 

21 attention to that in the original DR process 

22 and in our review process. Maybe we need to 
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1 tighten up something there. So then you're 

2 being cost-effective in the way you're using 

3 your money, but you're finding it from the 

4 data. 

5 And with this general trend, I 

6 don't think you really know where to, you 

7 know, how do we get there, how do we improve? 

8 I think you've made some changes that you 

9 knew, just from maybe staff feedback or 

10 whatever, that if we had, you know, template 

11 workbooks all the time and made sure people 

12 were using the one from the server all the 

13 time, it's intuitively obvious that you're 

14 going to narrow down some of those mistakes. 

15 But I don't think -- have you used this 

16 performance, these metrics in any way to guide 

17 some of those decisions? I don't think you've 

18 gotten there yet, not necessarily. 

19 MR. SIEBERT: Probably not to that 

20 granularity at the moment.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I mean, that's 

22 where I'm saying it might be useful to see 
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1 that sub-level, what comes out of the database 

2 on those categories. That might be helpful in 

3 guiding you guys internally but also in giving 

4 us a sense of what you're really looking at. 

5 David, I cut you off --

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: No, you didn't 

7 cut me off. What I had an impression was that 

8 this suggestion about the double key entry was 

9 that some of that is being done by NIOSH now, 

10 right? You're getting feedback, and then 

11 you're having trouble because they have 

12 different categories than you have, right? 

13 The categories don't overlap. And it seemed 

14 to me if you were to do that double key

15 internally, some of it, particularly on that 

16 entry, that that would relieve them of a 

17 burden, on one hand; and on the other hand, 

18 you wouldn't have any problems with internal 

19 categorization because you have your 

20 categories, for better or worse, whether 

21 they're identical or not. And I do think it 

22 could lead you to seeing where, as Stu said, 
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1 to lead you to suggest where you might put 

2 some things in place. 

3 So I do think it might be helpful 

4 as a way to move forward or to think about 

5 what you might be able to do in that respect. 

6 That would help you move forward without 

7 doing double key entry for everything, which 

8 you can't do. 

9 MR. SIEBERT: And I believe that's 

10 what Stu was saying. 

11 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes. But I'm 

12 saying that this will help relieve, eventually 

13 help relieve NIOSH. NIOSH people are probably 

14 checking your data entry, right? I assume. 

15 That's not your --

16 MR. CALHOUN: We don't double key. 

17 We don't double key or key in anything from 

18 raw. When our DRs -- or our health physicists 

19 review a DR, all of the documents are 

20 available to us and we can look and see what, 

21 for example, what dose was reported by the 

22 Savannah River Site and what was used in the 
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1 dose reconstruction.

2 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: On your blind 

4 reviews are you re-keying data? No. Even 

5 then you're not. I mean, this, to me, is a 

6 good example because, okay, double entry data, 

7 maybe that's a good idea. And I brought up 

8 earlier the error tracking. I know we've had, 

9 and David is probably right, seven, ten 

10 percent QA/QC errors through our first hundred 

11 or two hundred cases. I don't know that we've 

12 had ten percent data entry errors. I mean, I 

13 think it was all kind of QA/QC --

14 MR. FARVER: I only remember maybe 

15 a couple.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: At any rate, if 

17 there was just a couple, so here we're talking 

18 about maybe doing some double key entry and 

19 seeing if that improves things. I'm saying I 

20 wish we had a baseline. And then if you were 

21 tracking these errors all along, you can come 

22 back to this committee and say, here's our 
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1 data and we've shown, you know, 0.1 percent, 

2 because we do 100 percent auditing of our data 

3 entry, and we're finding very few errors in 

4 that process. But you don't really have those 

5 numbers, so now you're kind of guessing, well, 

6 maybe we should do some -- and I don't know 

7 that there's an objective basis to do that. I 

8 mean, I wish I knew. I wish I could say. I 

9 don't think we've found -- we've had a couple 

10 of the data entry errors. 

11 MR. FARVER: And I think even 

12 maybe one or so of those have been kind of 

13 trying to interpret numbers from hands-on 

14 records.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. And 

16 some even surprised us that it went through 

17 the multiple peer reviews without being 

18 caught. That was more of that process. But, 

19 you know, to go to a double key entry, I think 

20 I would want to know what's our track record 

21 with this? We're doing 100 percent audit on 

22 all the keying in, and if you had a program 
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1 that showed, geez, we're catching very few 

2 errors, it's in the less than one percent, you 

3 know. Then there's no need to do a double4 key.

5 MR. FARVER: Exactly.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. But I 

7 guess that gets back to the -- and then going 

8 back to those other 14 categories the same 

9 way, you know. There's no need to try to 

10 improve something if the error rates are so 

11 low in these areas. Something may flush out 

12 as being worth more investment. That's my 

13 point, I guess. 

14 MR. FARVER: One of the errors we 

15 do see, and I'm not even going to say how 

16 often but I'm sure you remember this, is where 

17 a dose per year is omitted, okay? And we've 

18 talked about this in the past, and sometimes 

19 it's when they combine the IREP files with the 

20 internal and external. It's been a cut-and21 paste error in the past. But, anyway, there 

22 comes a time when a certain year is omitted.
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1 Now, I think they already have a 

2 mechanism in place that should catch that, and 

3 it's been in place in their procedure since 

4 2005. It's the peer review checklist. I'm 

5 looking at the first item, and it says proton 

6 dose. IREP value matches DR report. Now, if 

7 you would check that, you would say there's a 

8 difference, and then you would go on and find 

9 the difference. So I don't know why we keep 

10 finding that error or that type of error. 

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And then, 

12 internally, I would think if that was being 

13 tracked and it kept coming up on internally 

14 with ORAU, the supervisors would come back and 

15 say: why is this continuing to happen? 

16 MR. FARVER: I mean, if that's 

17 done on one of the cases we reviewed, then we 

18 wouldn't find an error.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

20 MR. FARVER: So I don't 

21 understand. And there's a whole checklist. I 

22 think it's about 12 pages long, making sure 
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1 they've got -- were all bioassay samples 

2 considered and do you have the right energies 

3 to write those correction factors?

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right.

5 MR. FARVER: And someone is 

6 supposed to go through and check all this. So 

7 I'm not sure why we're finding these things.

8 MR. KATZ: Is the checklist a 

9 database? Is there a database for the 

10 checklist?

11 MR. SIEBERT: No. The checklist 

12 is not a signed and tracked document. It's a 

13 user guide to help the peer reviewers.

14 MR. KATZ: Okay. So they don't 

15 enter what errors --

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: They don't do 

17 it online like --

18 MR. KATZ: Right. They don't do

19 it -- I mean, it would be nice because they'd 

20 have all the data right there for all that.

21 MR. FARVER: But still, I mean, if 

22 we find a case that has an omitted dose, we 
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1 should be able to go back to this peer review 

2 checklist and see if someone actually did what 

3 they said they did. 

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. 

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes. So I'd 

6 consider an omitted dose part of this key 

7 punch error. Are you not? 

8 MR. FARVER: No, this is on the 

9 part of the dose reconstructor and not the key 

10 puncher. The dose reconstructor is just going 

11 to load a file containing the dosimetry 

12 information that's already been key-punched 

13 and load that into a workbook. 

14 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I see. Looking 

15 back through, you know, the reason I think 

16 it's, in my view, justifiable that we're 

17 having this long of a discussion about it is 

18 this was one of the things that we were tasked 

19 with doing out of the 10-year review.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, yes, 

21 definitely.

22 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And there was 
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1 discussion about looking at the more recent 

2 dose reconstructions. At the time, it was 

3 from the 12th set. We took the five most 

4 recent cases. We looked at them for errors, 

5 and there was still QA/QC errors in those. 

6 And the question was what's in place as a 

7 program to catch those types of errors 

8 because, as we're going through these, many of 

9 the early findings were generated from QA/QC 

10 issues. So, I mean, we can go back and talk 

11 about them, but they're not trivial. I mean, 

12 they're still, as you said, I don't think 

13 there's a benchmark for understanding what the 

14 level is and whether it's falling over time or 

15 not. 

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. And maybe 

17 there is, at least in 2005. I'm not sure.

18 Let me make a chair decision here. 

19 Can we take a 15-minute break and then come 

20 back and follow up on this, like what are our 

21 next steps? So this is a working break. 

22 While we're taking the break, think of where 
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1 we can go on this item and clear your head and 

2 maybe visit the little boys' or girls' room, 

3 okay? 15 minutes. Thanks.

4 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

5 matter went off the record at 10:22 a.m. and 

6 resumed at 10:39 a.m.)

7 MR. KATZ: Folks on the phone, 

8 we're re-assembled. 

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. 

10 Who's got the answer?

11 MEMBER MUNN: We were in mid12 thought.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: In mid-thought. 

14 MR. KATZ: Let me check. Do we have 

15 Dave? David, are you back with us? David 

16 Richardson, are you back on the line? 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We're not 

18 muted, are we? 

19 MR. KATZ: No. 

20 MEMBER MUNN: Maybe it was Dave's 

21 thought that we left. 

22 MR. KATZ: John Stiver, you're 
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1 there, right? 

2 MR. STIVER: I'm here. 

3 MR. KATZ: Okay. I just wanted to 

4 make certain.

5 MR. STIVER: I was on mute. 

6 MR. KATZ: Okay. Is that you, 

7 David? Have you rejoined us? 

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It could have 

9 been John going back on --

10 MR. KATZ: John going on mute, 

11 yes. Well, anyway --

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, well, we 

13 can start. I'm sure David will join us soon. 

14 Yes, I guess I was just trying to think of, 

15 you know, next steps, where we can go with 

16 this on the Subcommittee level. And a couple 

17 of questions or thoughts I had was, one was, I 

18 think, and I think this came up earlier, maybe 

19 from a comment David made, but the question of 

20 what's been in place over time. I think it 

21 might be useful to have that laid out. And 

22 maybe it's a very short document, but it would 
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1 be useful for me to see what's been in place 

2 over time. 

3 It seems like, you know, based on 

4 Scott's presentation, a lot has changed and a 

5 lot of it is from feedback from the Board, 

6 from this Subcommittee, whatever. I'm not 

7 saying that that's a bad thing, but it would 

8 be useful to see how that's changed over time 

9 and when. 

10 I'm still a little confused, and 

11 it's more me not understanding all the 

12 different layers than, you know, that it's not 

13 in place. But I'm still a little confused by 

14 what has been started two years ago with these 

15 feedback that you talked about the peer review 

16 feedback form -- I'm forgetting all the names 

17 -- as opposed to the, it looks like this graph 

18 goes back to '05, so you're collecting some 

19 sort of data from '05 --

20 MR. SIEBERT: '05. That's the 

21 Form 35s for all comments coming back from 

22 DCAS. But not inside our house, that were 
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1 coming to our house from --

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. And 

3 then, internally, the database that you were 

4 talking about that you and one other 

5 individual have to go through the categories, 

6 what does that have in it? 

7 MR. SIEBERT: That's the peer 

8 review. Well, first of all, it's the 

9 categorization of the comments that come back 

10 from DCAS. That's one portion of it, so, yes, 

11 that graph. And then another portion of it is 

12 bringing together the peer review feedback 

13 forms, which is internal to us --

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's internal 

15 to ORAU. And where does that data start? 

16 MR. SIEBERT: We started tracking 

17 in the database one year ago.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: One year. 

19 Okay.

20 MR. SIEBERT: We started off 

21 testing out using the feedback forms two years 

22 ago. And once we kind of beat that into 
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1 submission, something that worked, we started

2 tracking it about a year ago. 

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And those 

4 internal forms are documented in what 

5 procedure or --

6 MR. SIEBERT: That process isn't 

7 proceduralized at the moment.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It's not 

9 proceduralized. Okay. Alright. So I guess

10 that's what I'd be -- and then prior to that, 

11 what was in place internally within ORAU prior 

12 to 2010? 

13 MR. HINNEFELD: So we're 

14 interested in hearing a description --

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, just a 

16 description.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: -- for future that 

18 this is what has been in place --

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: -- from this 

21 point, and at this point this was instituted -

22 -
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And here's what 

2 we did in -- yes, yes, yes, just like some 

3 benchmarks. And I think internally and from 

4 NIOSH and DCAS side. I think that would be 

5 useful just for us to get a sense. 

6 MR. SIEBERT: So that be as simple 

7 as each of the processes that are explained in 

8 this overall when each of them came online and 

9 if there's been changes over time to each of 

10 them? 

11 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: No, I think, I 

12 thought the simplest would be to take our 

13 technical error rate, and can you categorize 

14 in some fashion, I mean according to --

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: -- but 

17 categorize in some fashion what they are. 

18 Well, you're saying according to these five, 

19 according to these five categories? 

20 MR. SIEBERT: I think, mostly, 

21 what we've been discussing is the monitoring 

22 and measurement.
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1 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Right.

2 MR. SIEBERT: And if you read 

3 through that section, there are various things 

4 in place: Procedure 98, Form 59, various forms 

5 that we've done for QA, and then the peer 

6 review feedback and so on and so forth. It 

7 seemed to me that you were kind of looking for 

8 when did each of these come into being.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Come into 

10 being, and when were you tracking them, too? 

11 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: But how many, 

12 I mean there were a certain number of errors 

13 in November '05, and the question is what 

14 categories did they fall into? 

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, Dave, 

16 you're getting to my second question, which 

17 the second question is: can we see this 

18 database that you have with all this stuff? 

19 Because I'd be interested in the sub-category. 

20 Or, at the very least, can you break out the 

21 sub-categories for us and can we look at 

22 what's happened from both the DCAS return 
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1 information you have and even your one year of 

2 data from internally, you know, by sub3 category? Is it telling us anything? It 

4 would be nice for us to see just how the 

5 categories, you know, how that breakdown 

6 looks, as opposed to just the overall error 

7 rate. 

8 So I have two questions I was 

9 looking at. One, just from a procedures 

10 standpoint, what's evolved over time? And in 

11 each one of those categories, I think it's 

12 important to note like some of these peer 

13 review forms may have been in place from the 

14 very beginning, but it might be important to 

15 note like I don't know how many revisions 

16 you've done on the peer review forms over 

17 time, and then when, if ever, did those things 

18 start to be tracked? You know what I mean? 

19 Not tracked.

20 MR. KATZ: It's not tracked today. 

21 That's what he explained earlier. 

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Those 
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1 individual lines --

2 MR. KATZ: Right. The form, none 

3 of that is tracked. 

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So how do you 

5 get these categories -- these are just based 

6 on your peer review comments that come back. 

7 You categorize those based on your 14 or so 

8 categories, right? 

9 MR. SIEBERT: We're talking about 

10 two different things here. 

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

12 MR. SIEBERT: What Ted is talking 

13 about is the peer review checklist, which is 

14 Form 91. That is not a tracked document. 

15 It's for guidance for the dose reconstructors 

16 for simplification that goes along with the 

17 peer review procedure.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

19 MR. SIEBERT: What you're talking 

20 about is the peer review feedback forms, which 

21 we started using a couple of years ago, 

22 started tracking a year ago, and that's what 
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1 you're looking for?

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, yes, I 

3 was asking just about all those things, when 

4 they were in place, whether they're tracked, 

5 not tracked, whatever. I think just to sort 

6 it out for, I mean, for those of us who have 

7 been in the program for a while, especially 

8 those that are just coming onto the Board. 

9 MR. SIEBERT: Right.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right. 

11 I think that would be just a useful overview. 

12 And then the second question is more the 

13 specifics in the database that you have.

14 MR. SIEBERT: What we're seeing.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, what the 

16 breakout is. Not just the overall error rate, 

17 but on the sub-level, yes. I think that would 

18 be useful for me for next steps. I don't know 

19 if -- David, are you on the phone? He didn't 

20 get back on yet. 

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I'm on the 

22 phone. I was on mute.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, I'm sorry. 

2 Do you have any -- I mean, I think, have you 

3 been on for a few minutes? I don't know how 

4 long --

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, I've been 

6 on since the start.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So I 

8 don't know if you had anything to add to sort 

9 of steps forward. 

10 MEMBER RICHARDSON: No, I think 

11 that makes sense for us to clarify what's 

12 happened. And then I think we, you know, 

13 aside from that, I think all we can do is move 

14 forward and report on understanding -- you 

15 know, at some point, we need to summarize some 

16 sort of conclusions about what we think the 

17 state of the situation is with regards to the 

18 QA/QC issues that were raised in the 10-year 

19 report. Is that, are we supposed to be 

20 following up on that, or would that be --

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes. Yes, 

22 I don't know exactly what we -- I'm trying to 
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1 think what we found in that report or in the 

2 10-year report what specifically they 

3 recommended that we look at. 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: The recommendation 

5 -- this is Stu Hinnefeld. The recommendation, 

6 essentially, was to continue to work with the 

7 Subcommittee on reviewing QA/QC issues 

8 associated with dose reconstruction. So 

9 there's no specific charge to the 

10 Subcommittee, and the Subcommittee is left to 

11 its own devices and ingenuity on where to go 

12 with it. 

13 MR. KATZ: I think what David is 

14 just raising is occasionally you need to 

15 report back to the full Board on your progress 

16 on this element.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right. 

18 Okay. So I have two actions, unless others 

19 have things to add. One is just to clarify 

20 the QA/QC procedures in place over time, 

21 right, as we just discussed, Scott. And 

22 indicate whether these elements were tracked 
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1 or not tracked in some sort of data base 

2 process. And then, you know, I think that's 

3 sort of the overall picture.

4 And then the second item I have 

5 was, looking at your graph on the technical 

6 error rate, the sort of granularity out of 

7 that, the subcategories, can you provide some 

8 information? Either access to that database 

9 that we can sort of look at it or at least, 

10 you know, report back on, you know, maybe by 

11 subcategory, what your findings were as far as 

12 the error rates from the DCAS return side and 

13 also from your year worth of data that you 

14 have internally. Is that a massive undertaking 

15 or -- there's some hesitation there.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: I don't know. I 

17 would not think so. I think access to 

18 database might be a little problematic. But a 

19 report by category, I don't know what the 

20 issue might be there. I think Scott is 

21 reluctant to commit his organization.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, okay.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: But we'll see what 

2 we can work out on that. We talked about a 

3 couple of other things, too, or at least we 

4 talked about one other thing I know of, which 

5 was some sort of test for double key entry. 

6 In other words, could we take a random 

7 sampling? And I'm trying to understand how 

8 this is going to work. As I understand how 

9 this would work, is we would take a sampling 

10 of cases after we had gone through our process 

11 of data entry and inspection or whatever we do 

12 now, you know, where we go back over it and a 

13 data entry person says, okay, I am gone. You 

14 take then a random sampling of those. You 

15 would have another key entry person then do 

16 the key entry and to determine -- and then, 

17 once you've done that, if there are 

18 differences, you've got to decide which one 

19 was entered incorrectly. And if, in fact, the 

20 current process ends up with errors, then you 

21 would have to make some consideration about: 

22 is it sufficient? You know, is what we're 
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1 doing sufficient? Is the error rate -- this 

2 inspection isn't really working well. 

3 That is a thing that could be 

4 designed and done. I don't know that it could 

5 be done real quickly, but it's something that 

6 could be designed and done. Go ahead.

7 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: No, I'm sorry. 

8 I'm interrupting you. 

9 MR. HINNEFELD: I was going to 

10 move on to something else.

11 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Well, 

12 then I was actually thinking that if we got 

13 the report back basically clarifying the data 

14 that has already been presented, and the graph 

15 that's already been presented, then, having 

16 seen that, I would be ready to think about, 

17 well, how might you do double keying? But I 

18 don't, my feeling is it doesn't need to be 

19 done now. In fact, if we're asking for a 

20 further report, a little more detail, a little 

21 more detail on what we have, then we can help 

22 think through. And I suggest that we propose 
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1 a second time with a little more concreteness. 

2 MR. HINNEFELD: So nothing on that 

3 --

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I was going to 

5 say -- that's why I didn't bring it up. I was 

6 going to say hold off on that, but I wanted to 

7 hear from others.

8 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I agree, I 

9 agree.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But I think 

11 let's see this first and -- yes. 

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. And then 

13 similarly then on what I was talking about, 

14 you know, where you would flowchart the work 

15 process, decide on places where inspection, 

16 you know, inspecting product, interim product, 

17 reporting results, and then analysis, 

18 something like that is premature, as well, 

19 other than maybe some preliminary thinking 

20 about the question. You know, I think we 

21 should go off and think about the question 

22 anyway.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We should think 

2 about it, yes.

3 MR. HINNEFELD: But you're not 

4 really expecting any kind of product now on 

5 that coming out of here today?

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, I wasn't. 

7 No, no.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. All right.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think that's 

10 -- Doug, do you have anything to add on that? 

11 MR. FARVER: No, no, I'm just 

12 going to keep these things in mind as we go 

13 through. We're going to talk about the 

14 findings. When we come across a QA concern or 

15 something, just be thinking about where in the 

16 process, you know, should that have been 

17 caught or should it not have been caught or 

18 how can you fix it?

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

20 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: The one other 

21 thing on the proposal that you made a moment 

22 ago, I wanted to ask Scott, if you're not now 
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1 tracking your own, the peer review document 

2 that you, I don't know if I'm using the right 

3 term, but the one that you instituted a year 

4 ago, you're not now tracking it --

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You just 

6 started tracking it, right? 

7 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I'm sorry. 

8 You are tracking it, but you have not 

9 categorized anything yet in that?

10 MR. SIEBERT: We had initial 

11 categorizations, and what we're doing is we're 

12 updating the categories to be more useful at 

13 the moment.

14 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay. The 

15 question is, Is what we're asking reasonably 

16 doable? What we're asking about the DRR 

17 technical error rate sounds like it is 

18 eminently doable because you basically have 

19 the elements for this graph.

20 The other one for your peer 

21 review, the one you're doing, the peer review 

22 document, is that something that you think 
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1 reasonably could be done now, or if you 

2 haven't actually decided on the categorization 

3 so maybe you want to hold off? 

4 MR. SIEBERT: I think it might be 

5 premature to put that out. But --

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay. I just 

7 wanted to --

8 MR. SIEBERT: Because I think we 

9 are still working through that to make sure 

10 it's more useful to us and obviously to you 

11 guys, as well. 

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And are you 

13 working on the, I mean the categories for 

14 DCAS returns, are you trying to --

15 MR. SIEBERT: Our plan is to make 

16 all those categories the same.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right, 

18 right. Okay.

19 MR. SIEBERT: So that we will be 

20 then consistent, and we can say, in peer 

21 review, in the number of report typo errors 

22 that we saw, we saw this many in the peer 
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1 review feedback, we saw this many from the 

2 DCAS returns, and we saw this many from the 

3 SC&A reviews. So we're trying to line those 

4 three up as much as we can so that we can do 

5 those comparisons at the different levels. 

6 MR. CALHOUN: I got a question. 

7 This is Grady. Just the graph, I thought that 

8 those were just gross numbers. I mean --

9 MR. SIEBERT: Those are very 

10 gross. Yes, those are the --

11 MR. CALHOUN: Okay. So in terms 

12 of going back and looking, for 2005, for 

13 example, to categorize the numbers, that's not 

14 something that database are readily available, 

15 is it? 

16 MR. SIEBERT: I don't believe all 

17 of it probably is. I'd have to go back and 

18 look at how far back I have --

19 MR. CALHOUN: I think those 

20 numbers are based on the fact that we get in 

21 something as simple as DOL had the cancer. 

22 We'll send them back a form that says revise 
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1 the dose reconstruction because DOL has 

2 cancer. It could also be that I don't agree 

3 with their internal dose calculations. But I 

4 didn't think those were categorized. They 

5 certainly aren't from our standpoint when we

6 send them to you.

7 MR. SIEBERT: We've been 

8 categorizing them --

9 MR. CALHOUN: I know you do for 

10 DCAS --

11 MR. SIEBERT: Yes, I'd have to 

12 look at how long the comment --

13 MR. CALHOUN: So I'm just thinking 

14 that may not be something that you can go sort 

15 and --

16 MR. SIEBERT: Right. It may be 

17 more time-intensive.

18 MR. CALHOUN: Right.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Maybe just, at 

20 the very least, an update on that, if it's not 

21 -- right, right. Make some movement on that. 

22 MR. HINNEFELD: I think if there's 
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1 some period of time since 2005 when those 

2 categories are entered in the database or 

3 whatever is entered in terms of categories or 

4 database, I think we just come out with that. 

5 And there may be certain categories that are 

6 sort of un-interpretable because they include 

7 a number of different kinds of returns.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. Yes, so 

9 those two items. Do the best on that second 

10 one. Okay. Anything else on that? We're 

11 through agenda item number two. Ted's only 

12 got 15 on the list for us. 

13 MR. KATZ: We'll be saving them for 

14 tomorrow.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Why don't I just 

16 get back to the agenda? 

17 So we have, oh, the cost and 

18 benefits of possible changes in dose 

19 reconstruction efficiency processes. So this 

20 came out of the 10-year review, also. And the 

21 notion was, just to summarize, one of the 

22 things was that, you know, should you sort of 
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1 do a best estimate for all cases or are we 

2 really gaining that much cost savings in doing 

3 some of these efficiency methods, so that was, 

4 I think, the fundamental question.

5 And we got a response, a verbal 

6 response. I think maybe I pushed for this a 

7 little bit, but, you know, we want sort of in 

8 writing, but it was the justification that it 

9 really, that it wasn't cost-effective to do 

10 best estimates across the board. NIOSH gave 

11 us this document, and I'll let whoever is 

12 going to summarize that --

13 MR. CALHOUN: I think, basically, 

14 what the findings of this were are that doing 

15 a full-blown dose reconstruction is not cost16 beneficial for us. There are some things we 

17 can look at doing, and none of them are free. 

18 All of them will cost us additional resources 

19 and money. And some of the things that we are 

20 looking at doing that may not have a huge 

21 impact are not overestimating, for example, X22 rays, using the actual X-ray records rather 
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1 than using default numbers. That will lower 

2 the dose in most cases. 

3 And another one was missed dose, 

4 using the actual number of zeros recorded 

5 rather than the maximizing periodicity of 

6 badge exchange. Those are the two that would 

7 be most cost-beneficial for us.

8 Obviously, we wouldn't look at 

9 doing a best estimate for an underestimate, 

10 you know, because that's silly. Once we get 

11 the case to 50 percent compensability, I don't 

12 think anybody thinks we should waste anymore 

13 time in trying to add more dose to that.

14 So that was the basic findings of 

15 what ORAU put together. 

16 MEMBER MUNN: That sounded logical 

17 to me. 

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And I guess 

19 there's -- this may be in your response 

20 somewhere. I'm trying to catch up with this 

21 document. I mean, part of the way this came 

22 about was the sort of questions of claimants 
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1 coming to public meetings or probably calling 

2 you and saying, why did my PoC go down when I 

3 got another cancer? 

4 So, I mean, we also kicked around 

5 some things like, you know, did it make sense 

6 for certain cancers, like skin cancers where 

7 you're likely to have multiple cancer 

8 situations, just to bite the bullet and do 

9 best estimate right from the beginning? I 

10 don't know. 

11 MR. CALHOUN: That was in there, 

12 too. Yes, yes.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I'm sure you 

14 addressed that.

15 MR. CALHOUN: That's the bottom, 

16 it's the bottom of page three and the very 

17 last thing there.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright.

19 MR. CALHOUN: That was a 

20 significant cost increase there, because 60 

21 percent of the claims have one or more skin 

22 cancers, 44 percent of those.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: That's a surprising 

2 statistic to me. 

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. I mean, 

4 do others have -- David, do you have any 

5 comments on this while I'm trying to read? 

6 You know, one question to me is this is sort 

7 of like the intangible cost to the program, 

8 you know. I think one thing we're concerned 

9 with is that you maintain credibility. And if 

10 certain people, petitioners or representatives 

11 of petitioners, start to view that this is,

12 you know, a black box and they're playing 

13 games with the numbers, then how do you weigh 

14 the cost of that? I think that's a very, a 

15 very big concern to us and I'm sure to you, 

16 you know.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: It's a legitimate 

18 issue, and it's something that I was really 

19 interested in this analysis when we asked 

20 about it because I face those questions all 

21 the time. And in public comment we hear it at 

22 times, and we hear it more often than public 
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1 comment. But, you know, again, it came down, 

2 when you see the cost analysis and what it 

3 would cost to do away with overestimates, we 

4 try to explain in an overestimating dose 

5 reconstruction, I mean it starts right off 

6 after the legalese, it starts right off saying 

7 that this was an overestimating dose 

8 reconstruction and, if the facts of the case 

9 change, the numbers could very well go down. 

10 It starts right off with that. 

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And I think we 

12 made those comments and you guys listened.

13 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, we changed 

14 that. We did. 

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You changed the 

16 language in the reports. So that was a good -

17 -

18 MR. HINNEFELD: When we rework a 

19 dose reconstruction, we explain what's been 

20 reworked and what has changed and why has it 

21 changed, an overestimate before that was 

22 removed from this one. That's all explained 
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1 in a dose reconstruction. We try to explain 

2 it as much as we can, you know, as a 

3 replacement for the fact that it just seems 

4 too expensive to do best estimates all the 

5 time. I mean, we, just in the past year or 

6 two, we have gotten on top of our backlog of 

7 dose reconstruction, and we now are doing them 

8 pretty much as they come in. 

9 But you all know that we have 

10 multiple SEC discussions that are extending on 

11 and on and Site Profile reviews which are 

12 languishing because all of our time is being

13 spent on dose reconstruction and SEC. So it's 

14 not a matter of we don't want to do this. 

15 It's a matter of balancing the things we need 

16 to accomplish. 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, I 

18 appreciate NIOSH. I mean, the main reason I 

19 pushed for this was that it was brought up in 

20 the 10-year review. And I thought rather than 

21 just have some --

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Instead of my gut 
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1 feel.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, discussion 

3 on the record. I thought, this way, you have 

4 some documentation and, you know, I mean, I'm 

5 pretty persuaded. I'm very persuaded that, 

6 you know, we really can't go to the all best 

7 estimate cases.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: To the extent that 

9 we can accomplish some of the things that 

10 Grady mentioned, the partial things we might 

11 be able to do, I think we shouldn't forget 

12 about those, keep our eye on those and report 

13 back to the Subcommittee when we accomplished 

14 things along that line. 

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: But in terms of a 

17 broad-scale change, we just don't seem to have 

18 time to do that. 

19 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: With the 

20 limited knowledge of attending the Santa Fe 

21 meeting and seeing correspondence that we're 

22 getting from claimants and knowing how much 
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1 people know about radiation, I've been 

2 teaching both to graduate students, not 

3 speaking to general public, I really don't 

4 believe that, no matter how much this is 

5 explained, that people who are claimants or 

6 other people of the general public will 

7 understand this. And I feel very bad about 

8 that, because I just feel like there's so much 

9 technical background to that, both in the 

10 science and statistics, that it does seem like 

11 a loss in terms of convincing a more general 

12 public or claimants that this is fair, but I 

13 do think it is fair and we do our best and you 

14 do your best. But I shrug my shoulders

15 because I feel that this is -- it's difficult. 

16 It's difficult, and I don't know what to do 

17 about it because I realize we can't do all 

18 best estimates.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And, I mean, I 

20 think NIOSH has definitely improved on the 

21 communicating the claimants' sides.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: That's the thing 
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1 we're really trying to do. 

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And that's what 

3 we've asked for as a Board. And I think the 

4 other thing that we can say as a Board is 

5 that, you know, we've continued to look at 

6 this over the years and, basically, you know, 

7 we can also explain that this is, you know, 

8 keep putting it out there that this is how 

9 they're doing it and it's scientifically 

10 valid. It's not that they're playing games 

11 with the numbers. I think that's important to 

12 hear from an independent Board saying it, 

13 also.

14 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Just thinking 

15 if there were some written communication. I 

16 mean, it is clearly written to the claimants, 

17 right? And it's explained, and I hear that. 

18 But if there were, perhaps, a written document 

19 for the public, if you will, so that claimants 

20 would be able to put their hands on this early 

21 on in the process and hopefully take it back 

22 to technical and professional people that they 
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1 know or that they've heard of. Suppose the 

2 claimants from a union, there is a health and 

3 safety officer somewhere at some level in that 

4 union, maybe at the national level, who has 

5 the background to understand that this is a 

6 fair process and explain, if you will, or go 

7 to the local public health school and talk to 

8 somebody who is knowledgeable in the science 

9 and statistics. I don't know if there is 

10 something like that out there, but if there 

11 isn't it might be useful, beyond the 

12 individual explanation in each case, which is 

13 done.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I mean, you 

15 have done your outreach meetings.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I was 

17 thinking of one thing. We send, when a 

18 claimant's case is first referred to this, we 

19 send them a pretty significant package of 

20 information about what to expect, but I don't 

21 know that it's addressed in there. I'd have 

22 to go check. 
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1 So that's one thing. And then the 

2 other logical place, I don't know if people 

3 check our website or look at it, but there's 

4 an FAQ section on our website. We can put it 

5 there. We have written informational documents 

6 on our website, like you can pull one up on 

7 dose reconstruction and pull one up on SECs 

8 and things like that. I don't know if -- the 

9 dose reconstruction gets into overestimating 

10 it. What are the ramifications, which is 

11 really what we're talking about. The

12 ramifications of using an overestimating 

13 approach is that we have this illogical, we 

14 can have this illogical result later on when a 

15 person gets a second cancer and their PoC goes 

16 down. So that's a ramification of using an 

17 overestimate the first time. So I don't know 

18 that we've written anything specifically.

19 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I was 

20 thinking, by writing something specific about 

21 that issue, it's one issue in which people 

22 will feel that we're being unfair when we're 
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1 not or when we're being fair and that putting 

2 out something -- if it's in FAQs, there are a 

3 million questions to ask. And packets, people 

4 don't, of course, not just that they don't 

5 always read packets, but they don't read the 

6 packet when they first submit, which is when 

7 they get the packet. 

8 Once the process moves along, then 

9 they begin to get into it and think about 

10 detailed questions. It might be something 

11 that will bring a specific document, a 

12 specific piece of material for outreach might 

13 bring extra attention to this. It's certainly 

14 the one area that I've seen so far that 

15 claimants think we're being unfair when I 

16 feel, professionally, we are being fair. 

17 It's a thought. Again, I don't 

18 want to mandate it, but maybe we can adapt 

19 what we've done.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

21 MR. SIEBERT: And just to go back 

22 for Stu, I just wanted to let you know I did 
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1 pull up the FAQ, and it's one of the most 

2 significant questions that is on the NIOSH 

3 website FAQ. Why did my previous claim have a 

4 higher dose than my present one with the 

5 rework and additional cancer? So it is an --

6 I hear what you're saying. I just wanted to, 

7 for Stu's sake, to qualify that it is there 

8 and I'm looking at it.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Which heading is 

10 it under? Dose reconstruction?

11 MR. SIEBERT: Dose reconstruction.

12 And then if you scroll down, it's the only 

13 question that's, like, a paragraph long. 

14 MEMBER MUNN: Anybody who's 

15 looking for it can find it. 

16 MR. FARVER: It would be helpful 

17 to have something like that in a brochure form 

18 to have available at Board meetings when the 

19 public is there? 

20 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, that's 

21 kind of what I'm --

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's sort of 
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1 what he --

2 MR. FARVER: Because the 

3 information already exists.

4 MEMBER MUNN: It exists in many 

5 places.

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: It does, it 

7 does. I don't doubt it. 

8 MEMBER MUNN: And putting it in 

9 their packet, it's always questionable how 

10 much of a packet people are supposed to --

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

12 MEMBER MUNN: -- when you get a 

13 stack of material. Perhaps other human beings 

14 are less fragile than I. I have a tendency to 

15 --

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Maybe this is 

17 something to bring to the outreach committee. 

18 This is an outreach issue, isn't it? 

19 MEMBER MUNN: Outreach, yes, very 

20 familiar with it.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I guess this is 

22 another one that, you know, when we think, 
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1 from our last discussion, on metrics, you 

2 know, is this something that NIOSH is getting 

3 as many questions now or questions/concerns as 

4 you were early, before you changed the 

5 language? You know, is it still -- I mean, we 

6 hear that the people that come to the Board 

7 meetings, of course, they're energized. 

8 They're angry or, you know, they take the time 

9 to do that. But from your volume of calls or 

10 whatever --

11 MR. CALHOUN: Just based on my 

12 experience, I can't say that it's gone down 

13 any. And I go to a lot of the meetings. 

14 MR. SIEBERT: From a meeting point 

15 of view, I believe that's true. From a 

16 claimant communication --

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's what I'm 

18 asking about.

19 MR. SIEBERT: -- point of view, on 

20 closeout interviews. I've asked Pat Kraps, our 

21 claimant interviewer manager, before and it 

22 did drop significantly once we started putting 
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1 that information in. And we actually rarely 

2 get that question anymore in closeout 

3 interviews.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's a good 

5 sign. That's my point is maybe you're 

6 offering fixes that are already fixed, so it 

7 would be good to know if there was a trend, 

8 and if it's only happening a few times -- 

9 MR. CALHOUN: Well, that's one 

10 thing to remember. I didn't even think about 

11 the close-out interviews, but every time a 

12 dose reconstruction is completed we speak with 

13 the claimants and talk to them about it. Do 

14 you have any concerns with how this was done? 

15 So I forgot all about that. That's 

16 important. CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's 

17 good. That's good to know.

18 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Much of what 

19 I'm reporting is thinking of the Board meeting 

20 the last spring, but you've been to many.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And we're going 

22 to always get those at the Board meeting but--
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1 MEMBER MUNN: But very much fewer, 

2 very much fewer.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It's hard for 

4 us to sort of look at trends from our public 

5 meetings. 

6 MEMBER MUNN: They've clearly gone 

7 down.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But from the 

9 phone calls, they're going down, that's a good 

10 thing.

11 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. 

12 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay, good.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. So I 

14 think, otherwise, you know, are there any 

15 other comments on the cost analysis itself? I 

16 think people think we're kind of in the 

17 position that the Subcommittee is accepting 

18 that you can't do best estimates across the 

19 board. That's what I'm hearing. 

20 MEMBER MUNN: Absolutely.

21 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Can I ask one 

22 question? 
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Sure.

2 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Stu had 

3 suggested, and I definitely agree with that. 

4 But, nonetheless, coming out of the 10-year 

5 review, rather than the suggestion being to do 

6 them across the board, there was a suggestion 

7 for ways of stepping towards doing fewer of 

8 them, with perhaps the idea that the goal is -

9 - you know, you would still have that as an 

10 objective. If possible, you would like to 

11 avoid the situation of complicating 

12 communication with the claimants. And there 

13 was some thought about ways of perhaps doing 

14 this, using the overestimating approach less. 

15 Is that still kind of just being thought 

16 about, or are there steps being taken for 

17 implementing that for certain types of claims? 

18 MR. CALHOUN: This is Grady. We 

19 actually are getting ready to implement that 

20 for X-rays and missed dose. We just, I'm in 

21 the process of finding out now what the actual 

22 impacts are. Right now, there will be an 
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1 impact, but I need to know, other than just a 

2 percent, what kind of real impacts I might see 

3 on SECs, TBDs, everything in dose 

4 reconstruction. But these two seemed the most

5 doable, the least impactful. So we'll 

6 definitely have something for you by the next 

7 meeting, and I'm hoping we can implement at 

8 least one of those before that, at least start 

9 down that road. 

10 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Okay, great. 

11 Yes, I mean, I guess I like the thought that 

12 even trying to whittle away that.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. No, good 

14 point. Good one. Good point, David. And I 

15 guess we'll just continue, you know, you can 

16 just give us updates on progress on that 

17 front. Overall, I think this document is 

18 responsive, and the committee agrees with it.

19 MR. KATZ: So they could report 

20 out to the Board on this item?

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Okay. 

22 Next item. Geez, we're moving at lightning 
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1 speed today. Oh, yes, DCAS report on plans 

2 for evaluating claimant-favorability. We're 

3 still on the 10-year --

4 MR. CALHOUN: Well, basically, 

5 what Jim told me is it's kind of ongoing, so 

6 that's part of his 10-year review. That's 

7 what he reported to me. 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, this is Stu. 

9 The recommendation out of, this came out of 

10 the quality of science section of the 10-year 

11 review, and it was saying, well, look, you 

12 make all these statements about how you're 

13 claimant-favorable and stuff, but you just 

14 kind of say it's claimant-favorable. Have you 

15 ever tried to really quantify in some method, 

16 you know, how favorable are you talking about? 

17 Jim's view, his plan on this, and 

18 I didn't have a better plan, was to pick up 

19 the Health Physics journal that we published a 

20 few years ago. It was a special journal in 

21 Health Physics about our program, a special 

22 issue. And there were a series of articles 
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1 in there that describe aspects, the claimant2 favorability aspect of dose reconstruction and 

3 essentially use that as a framework to start, 

4 you know, looking at, without a favorable 

5 approach, you know, what would you do if you 

6 were doing a central estimate or some other 

7 central estimate or what are the other 

8 possibilities that you would choose besides 

9 this approach?

10 So I think that's where he intends 

11 to go. Now, having a plan and a structure is 

12 a long way from being done. So this may not 

13 be something we'll have done in the near 

14 future, but that is what he's arrived at.

15 If there are other suggestions, 

16 because I know Jim was casting about a little 

17 bit before, you know, doing this. If there 

18 are other suggestions, we'd certainly 

19 entertain those, or, perhaps, a better time is 

20 when you've seen something out of that. It 

21 might be a better time to have suggestions. 

22 That's where we came from on our response to 
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1 that recommendation.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think that's 

3 where we were at the last meeting was, you 

4 know, we'd like to see something and then 

5 maybe react to it. But I don't know. Are 

6 there comments right now or --

7 MEMBER MUNN: No, it's one of 

8 these things that I find incredibly difficult, 

9 almost impossible to actually quantify. I 

10 don't know how you could quantify it, other 

11 than taking a claim that has been completed 

12 and doing it in a more meticulous, more 

13 careful way than was done to show that if 

14 other guidelines other than those used in this 

15 particular program were used, that this person 

16 would not have received favorable numbers. I 

17 don't know any other way to do that, and that 

18 doesn't seem feasible at all. So it seems to 

19 me that Jim's plan is as good as any. It can 

20 at least address the question.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

22 MEMBER MUNN: Addressing the 
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1 question in a very thorough manner would be 

2 almost impossible to quantify. I don't know 

3 how you'd do that, since the whole idea is one 

4 of personal judgment anyway.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, if you're 

6 going to quantify the degree of favorability, 

7 then you have to have some sort of standard of 

8 what is correct.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, right.

10 MR. HINNEFELD: You know, not 

11 favorable but just correct, you know. So then 

12 you'd have to have some standard to go by and, 

13 as far as I know, there isn't one.

14 MEMBER MUNN: No, the only thing 

15 you can say is, is this going to give you a 

16 larger number in the outcome? And that really 

17 is about the only standard we have.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So I guess --

19 David, do you have anything on that front? 

20 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I assume, 

21 based on that, that the focus is on the dose 

22 reconstruction aspects of favorability and not 
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1 the risk model issues of favorability.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu, and 

3 that was our thought, yes. 

4 MEMBER RICHARDSON: That might be 

5 made clear.

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. I'll have 

7 to go back to look at the quality of science 

8 to see what it says. Sure, yes, we can --

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Or did this 

10 question go to two different Subcommittees? 

11 MR. HINNEFELD: No, it only came 

12 here.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, it only 

14 came here.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: It only came here. 

16 And so we interpreted it for the dose 

17 reconstruction favorability.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: And I know the 

20 Science Working Group is, I think, taking up 

21 the risk model part of it, I believe. 

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, that's 
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1 why I asked if the question was also posed to 

2 that group. Anyway, okay --

3 MR. HINNEFELD: I think they took 

4 that up. That was what they were doing anyway.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right, yes. 

6 MR. FARVER: I think there's some 

7 general methods that are less claimant8 favorable than others, such as Monte Carlo 

9 calculations. I think those tend to be less 

10 claimant-favorable.

11 MEMBER MUNN: But they are more 

12 science-based. 

13 MR. FARVER: I'm just saying they 

14 are less claimant-favorable than if you just 

15 go with the dose conversion factors that are 

16 used sometimes where you just go straight 

17 calculation. I'm not saying one is right or 

18 wrong. I'm just saying that is an example of 

19 a method that is less claimant-favorable.

20 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Why is that? 

21 MR. FARVER: Why is that? It has 

22 to do with the distribution of the dose 
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1 conversion factors. They use a triangular 

2 distribution, and when you do the Monte Carlo 

3 calculation it will pick, it usually winds up 

4 with a lower number than your mean number.

5 MR. SIEBERT: Well, this is Scott. 

6 In that case, what you're talking about dose 

7 -- DCF, it's not which is claimant-favorable. 

8 It's which is claimant-favorable and which is 

9 overestimating because you can pick the top 

10 end of the range and just apply that as a 

11 constant, and that's overestimated because we 

12 know the range is in this distribution.

13 MR. FARVER: I understand. But --

14 MR. SIEBERT: Whereas, the best 

15 estimate that we can use may still be 

16 claimant-favorable. Sometimes, I think we 

17 misuse the word "claimant-favorable," along 

18 with "overestimating." Claimant-favorable, in 

19 our program, is if we have two pieces of 

20 information that are as likely, we will pick 

21 the one that is more favorable to the 

22 claimant, such as solubility type. If we 
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1 don't know if it's Type M or Type S plutonium, 

2 whichever gives the larger dose to the organ 

3 of interest we will select. Now, if we have 

4 the specific information as to the material 

5 that was used, we will use the actual 

6 solubility for the material used, which would 

7 not be a claimant-favorable assumption.

8 MR. FARVER: Well, I guess I'm 

9 just going back to where I'm reviewing the 

10 dose reconstruction. I remember seeing the 

11 ones that were, that did not have the Monte 

12 Carlo calculation. They used the mean value 

13 of the dose conversion factor, and it was a 

14 very straightforward calculation. Didn't use 

15 the maximum, used the mean value. It was not 

16 called an overestimate because it was the mean 

17 value taken out of IG-001. 

18 Then there were the ones that used 

19 the Monte Carlo calculations, and those tend 

20 to be less than the mean value for the dose 

21 conversion factor. I mean, do you agree with 

22 that? I mean, they would tend to be on the 
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1 lower end in many cases. 

2 MR. SIEBERT: I would agree. The 

3 issue is, though, if you use the mean, it's an 

4 overestimate.

5 MR. FARVER: Okay. But from what 

6 I've seen on the dose reconstructions, an 

7 overestimate would be the mean is 0.8, but 

8 we're going to overestimate it and call the 

9 dose conversion factor of one.

10 MR. SIEBERT: That is an 

11 overestimate. However, using 0.8 would also 

12 be an overestimate --

13 MR. FARVER: Over the years in 

14 the dose reconstruction, if you're using the 

15 mean value, it's not normally classified as an 

16 overestimate in the write-ups. The one would 

17 be. You would say this is an overestimate. 

18 And so I'm not talking about correctness. I'm 

19 just saying this is the way it can be looked 

20 at by people. You're saying one is claimant21 favorable, one is an overestimate, and then 

22 one is less than the other. I'm not saying 
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1 one is more right than the other. I'm saying 

2 that is an example of, right there is there 

3 different methods that give you three 

4 different results. 

5 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes, so this 

6 is interesting because it frames the problem 

7 much more narrowly that I was originally 

8 interpreting it, and I think some of our 

9 discussion was turning around of you would 

10 have to know the truth and then claimant11 favorability means any Probability of 

12 Causation value or distributions of values 

13 which is greater than the true. But, here, 

14 the other argument was that claimant15 favorability only pertains to situations in 

16 which there are two well-specified options, 

17 the choice between them is unknown, and the 

18 claimant-favorable method is going to be to 

19 select the one which is going to lead to a 

20 higher Probability of Causation. 

21 So then if that's your task, kind 

22 of specified within dose reconstruction within 
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1 those places where you have decision points to 

2 be made and there's two well-specified 

3 options, that's probably a narrower list than 

4 the journal issue of, well, we used the upper 

5 99th percent bound, all those different things 

6 which one might view as claimant-favorable in 

7 some general sense but which are not these 

8 situations that you're making a distinction 

9 between overestimating or something else. 

10 Claimant-favorability, you're saying, is one 

11 sort of decision-making advice.

12 MR. KATZ: Right. But, David, I 

13 think the point of the review was this, I 

14 think, Scott's distinction, because the point 

15 of the review was how claimant-favorable, in a 

16 sense how much of an overestimate is being 

17 accorded in general for these dose 

18 reconstructions, and we just talked about why 

19 it's hard to quantify that or impossible to 

20 quantify that. It wasn't really -- the 

21 question from the review was not this more 

22 narrow distinction of when they make these 
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1 choices between two alternatives. I think the 

2 review was intending to try to get at how much 

3 sort of generosity is there in the dose 

4 accorded to cases compared to what it would 

5 have been if it had been estimated in the most 

6 scientifically precise way it could have been. 

7 MEMBER RICHARDSON: So there 

8 Doug's point is a good one, because I assume

9 what the argument was saying is that the Monte 

10 Carlo approach is the more scientifically 

11 valid one. It's the default choice, but it's 

12 not more claimant-favorable than choosing the 

13 mean of the distribution. And if I'm 

14 understanding that, that's because the 

15 distribution is not symmetrical. 

16 MR. HINNEFELD: That's correct. 

17 MR. KATZ: Sure. And that sort of 

18 points up what you're going to have. I think 

19 different sites you have different tools, so 

20 on one site you're using Monte Carlo because 

21 you have the tool, et cetera, set up to do 

22 that. And another site maybe you're using the 
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1 mean because that's sort of the level of data, 

2 et cetera, you have and the work you have to 

3 support dose reconstruction. So you're going 

4 to get a different answer to the question of: 

5 how claimant-favorable is the dose 

6 reconstruction? What degree of overestimate 

7 is every precise dose reconstruction? You'll 

8 have a different answer to that question at 

9 different sites. 

10 MR. FARVER: I don't think it's 

11 site-specific, is it? 

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I think Ted 

13 was talking in general. 

14 MR. KATZ: Yes, I'm talking in 

15 general. To answer that general question, the 

16 answer is different depending on which site 

17 this dose reconstruction was done for.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: I think the 

19 specific case of external dose conversion 

20 factors, though, those are published in IG-001 

21 and they are the same everywhere.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I mean, I 
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1 was also trying to think of the, you know, 

2 just in terms of if you get down to the method 

3 or the choice, you know, there's some other 

4 more qualitative ones, which is like placing 

5 the worker which comes up again and again and 

6 that question of the degree of favorability. 

7 I mean, we've had many cases where we dispute 

8 why it wasn't neutron-dose-assigned and it 

9 gets down a lot of times into the CATI 

10 interview versus their site records and were 

11 they really in a building or whatever. So I 

12 guess that's also part of how much, you know, 

13 favorability did you give in that situation --

14 MR. FARVER: There's many 

15 decisions along the way. 

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, many 

17 decisions along the way.

18 MR. FARVER: It could go either 

19 way. 

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. I guess 

21 we could, I'm not sure how to give input. You 

22 know, Jim is working on this. I'm not sure we 
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1 can really, you know -- but I would argue that 

2 some of these, you know, I think it's 

3 important to look at the degree of 

4 favorability of the methods, not just the 

5 final outcome. I think you were arguing 

6 different than that, though. But I think it 

7 is important. Some of these methods are used 

8 in a lot of different places, so if you look 

9 at them and you say, overall, it looks like 

10 almost all our methods -- I know the one 

11 example Scott gave is a good one because we 

12 always, well, I wouldn't say always, but we 

13 always see the solubility based on, if you're 

14 not sure, you select the one that is most 

15 favorable, and we've seen that again and 

16 again. So I think that's a good example where 

17 they are trying to do that. Then there's this 

18 one, which is a question mark maybe. So I 

19 think there's -- some of those things maybe 

20 can be considered. 

21 MR. KATZ: I wasn't arguing --

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, okay.
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1 MR. KATZ: My just broader point 

2 was just that it's all about how much does it 

3 push the dose above what would be the perfect 

4 answer if you could get to a perfect --

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, okay.

6 MR. KATZ: That's all I was 

7 saying. So I think looking at different 

8 methods is fine.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Because 

10 I was thinking we can't just throw up our 

11 hands and say, well, we can never know the 

12 truth, so we can't answer this question.

13 MR. KATZ: But it sounds like Jim 

14 Neton's approach is to go at it at the most 

15 broad level with some major tools that are 

16 applied across the board that were addressed 

17 in the HP journal. That sort of sets a very 

18 large format evaluation for it. And then you 

19 may dig into, you know, more details, more 

20 particular tools, et cetera, as you go. 

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. 

22 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Is the DCAS 
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1 plan on the website, or can we get a hold of 

2 it? As a new committee Member, can I see it?

3 MR. KATZ: He hasn't developed it 

4 yet. 

5 MR. HINNEFELD: He's not written 

6 it in detail yet.

7 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Whatever he 

8 has.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: He has an action 

10 plan somewhere, but I don't know how specific 

11 it is.

12 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I just, you 

13 know, can't participate in the discussion --

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Soon, on our 

15 website, will be, in addition to the reports, 

16 which are there now, the five area reports and 

17 then there is a summary of what were called 

18 the priority recommendation, those are there 

19 now. In addition to that, it will have what 

20 we've identified as our action plan and then a 

21 status update, and then there will be 

22 subsequent status updates. Now, sometimes, a 
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1 status update will say, well, you know, what 

2 we originally described as our approach as 

3 evolved a little bit, so the actions that are 

4 written in our initial action plan should not 

5 be considered, you know, carved in granite. 

6 There could very well be some adjustment as 

7 things go on, and we sort of recognize what's 

8 doable and also what's going to be valuable. 

9 But, yes, that will be there soon. I can't 

10 tell you when, but we are working on that 

11 page.

12 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay. I'll 

13 keep my eyes open for it.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Along those 

15 lines, is it fair to ask -- I think we sort of 

16 asked this last time and it's just not ready 

17 yet. But when it's ready, can you bring Jim's 

18 plan, NIOSH's plan how on you're going to set 

19 this to the Subcommittee? And then maybe we 

20 can have a more concrete discussion.

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, we'll bring 

22 Jim, too. 
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Bring Jim and 

2 the plan. 

3 MR. FARVER: Is there some element 

4 you would like SC&A to look at and evaluate? 

5 We could have a report for you for the next 

6 meeting on the element --

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think it's 

8 better to wait until we see what they've got 

9 and then maybe have your reaction.

10 MR. FARVER: I just didn't know 

11 when they'd have something available.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

13 MR. FARVER: Okay.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You want to keep 

15 the ball moving. I appreciate that. I think 

16 it's better for us to wait. 

17 MR. FARVER: Okay.

18 MR. KATZ: Do we have an extra HP 

19 journal that we could send David one? 

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, what issue 

21 is that in? 

22 MR. SIEBERT: It's a special 
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1 Summer 2008.

2 MR. KATZ: We'll get you a copy of 

3 that, and then you can see where we're coming 

4 from, maybe. 

5 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: That would be 

6 great. I appreciate it. 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: I think we got a 

8 stack. Anybody else want one? 

9 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I'll be over 

10 there later today. 

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I may be in 

12 a different building. See if Chris can find 

13 one and put it on my desk, and you can swing 

14 by my office. 

15 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I'd appreciate 

16 it.

17 MR. SIEBERT: Can we get 

18 autographed copies since DCAS people will be 

19 in the building? 

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: Oh, come on. 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: That's right, Chris 

22 is on vacation. Not sure if you'll be able to 
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1 get one today, but we'll see. I'll let you 

2 know.

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Fine, fine.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. Next 

5 item. And I will remind, as I was starting to 

6 do it myself, that we should each talk one at 

7 a time, for the sake of our transcript. Next 

8 item, the last item I think before lunch, 

9 probably, is DCAS goals/priorities for timely 

10 completion of dose reconstruction.

11 MR. CALHOUN: Okay, I got this. 

12 This is Grady. Over time, we have gotten 

13 better and better -- basically, we, as you 

14 know, at the beginning of the program we were 

15 somewhat overwhelmed with the number of dose 

16 reconstructions we had to get completed. And 

17 some of them languished for years, and that 

18 was not good. We didn't like it, the 

19 claimants didn't like it, nobody liked it. 

20 Over time, what we have done is we have 

21 incentivized our contractor to do better and 

22 better as far as the completion of both dose 
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1 reconstructions that are initially received 

2 from the Department of Labor, as well as those 

3 that are rework dose reconstructions.

4 So over time, for a while back, 

5 I'll say two or three years ago, we had a goal 

6 of a year that we wanted them to get them done 

7 in. And that has steadily gone down. A 

8 couple CPAF periods ago, and that's cost plus 

9 award fee, our goal or their goal was to --

10 when I say incentivize them, you give them 

11 money to do it. And so, basically, the goal 

12 was we wanted them to complete 90 percent or 

13 more of the dose reconstructions within nine 

14 months of them being received by us.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: And I would just 

16 mention a CPAF period is six months long.

17 MR. CALHOUN: It's six months, 

18 yes. So we can adjust that or we can change 

19 their goals and our goals every six months. 

20 We also have gotten to the point where we are 

21 really not the hold up, but we are really 

22 relying heavily on the timely receipt of 
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1 information from the Department of Energy 

2 because I believe they have 90 days to give us 

3 information that they receive that we need for 

4 as far as dose reconstruction, dosimetry 

5 records, X-ray records, whatnot. 

6 So we came up a little while ago 

7 with a hybrid, and it said we want 90 percent 

8 of the dose reconstructions completed within 

9 nine months of receipt here at OCAS and we 

10 want them to provide 50 percent of the dose 

11 reconstructions within six months of the date 

12 that we received that last piece of 

13 information. So what happened was, we're 

14 starting to get dependent on when the last 

15 piece of information is received, and then we 

16 can start dose reconstruction.

17 So the overall goal of nine months 

18 has gone away, and the current goal is that 

19 they complete 90 percent or more of the dose 

20 reconstructions within six months of the date 

21 that the last piece of information was 

22 received. And they are meeting that goal. So 
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1 right now we are completing more than 90 

2 percent of all the dose reconstructions we get 

3 within six months of that last piece of 

4 information that we received from the 

5 Department of Energy.

6 Also, as far as reworks go, 

7 reworks typically do not require, typically do 

8 not require additional dosimetry information. 

9 Most of our reworks are a result of 

10 additional cancers being identified, okay? So 

11 we also have a goal that we complete 90 

12 percent of our rework cases in 60 days or 

13 less. And the last several CPAF periods, ORAU 

14 has been meeting that goal.

15 Now, if we have to request 

16 additional information, sure, the dates are 

17 going to go out and that will be noted when we 

18 do our evaluation. But right now the goal is 

19 90 percent of them within six months or less 

20 of receiving that last piece of information 

21 and 90 percent of rework cases within 60 

22 calendar days or less of getting that back 
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1 from Department of Labor. 

2 So that's where we're at. I'm not 

3 sure that we're going to be able to get a 

4 whole lot better than that because, you know, 

5 right now that's pretty fast. 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I'm curious, 

7 you know, from my other life, we're often 

8 looking at these contracts and the incentives 

9 they have and almost always it's on production 

10 and safety. So in that light, have you 

11 considered incentivizing based on error rates? 

12 In other words --

13 MR. CALHOUN: We have that in 

14 there, too. We have that in there, too, and 

15 that's always been in there. I don't have 

16 that one right in front of me. I think it's 

17 90 or 95 percent have to be provided to us 

18 with no errors, no comments. 

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes, yes, 

20 okay.

21 MR. CALHOUN: I can find that, but 

22 I don't have that off the top of my head.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's good. 

2 Yes.

3 MR. CALHOUN: That's always been 

4 in there, too, yes. 

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. 

6 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: You mean the 

7 DRR reports? 

8 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, dose 

9 reconstruction reports. 

10 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Because you 

11 were above five percent in the beginning of 

12 this graph that ORAU sent.

13 MR. CALHOUN: Right, right. But 

14 what you've got to see, these are technical 

15 errors, and that's all errors. 

16 MR. HINNEFELD: That's all 

17 comments.

18 MR. CALHOUN: That's right. And so 

19 what happens is, there may be a little, yes, 

20 there may be a little back and forth. 

21 Sometimes there is, if this is a technical 

22 error or not. And, certainly, when Labor 
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1 sends us an additional cancer, we can't count 

2 that against the contractor. 

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Okay. Thanks 

4 for the clarification.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. That's 

6 interesting. 

7 MR. FARVER: But I didn't think 

8 you were tracking technical errors, I thought 

9 you were just tracking total errors, or are 

10 you tracking both? 

11 MR. CALHOUN: That was that graph. 

12 Every six months, ORAU will put together the 

13 errors that we believe are errors, technical 

14 errors, and, to get their award fee, they have 

15 to be below X percent. 

16 MR. FARVER: Okay. So you're 

17 tracking the errors you find.

18 MR. CALHOUN: We send them to 

19 them.

20 MR. FARVER: But don't you keep 

21 track of what you send them?

22 MR. CALHOUN: No, I don't have a 
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1 database. I've got a document for every one 

2 that's been issued. I don't database it.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, right. 

4 Going back to our former discussion, I was 

5 thinking the same thing. Are we, I mean, have 

6 they successfully met that award benchmark 

7 each time? 

8 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, yes.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So far, they've 

10 been under --

11 MR. CALHOUN: Yes.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: They've got the 

13 award every year, every six months?

14 MR. CALHOUN: Well, no, I won't 

15 say every year, every time. I'll say within 

16 the last few years, for sure.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

18 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, I can't say off 

19 the top of my head for ten years. 

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, okay. 

21 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, we beat them up 

22 pretty hard in the beginning.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, alright. 

2 Any comments on that? 

3 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: No, that's the 

4 way it is with any contracts, right? You say 

5 you got a grant, I'm going to do this. At the 

6 end of the year, you've done 85 percent of 

7 this. What do you do, right? What does the 

8 granting agency do? The answer is they put 

9 pressure and say, well --

10 MR. CALHOUN: And if you meet the 

11 goal, we're going to make it a little harder 

12 next time. 

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, that's 

14 the continuous improvement angle. 

15 MR. CALHOUN: Right now it's 95 

16 percent. 

17 MR. SIEBERT: Which is exactly 

18 what has happened with the timeliness issue. 

19 It has slowly moved downward. 

20 MR. KATZ: The figure is 95 

21 percent? Is that what you just said? 

22 MR. CALHOUN: Yes. 
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: For error 

2 rates. 

3 MR. KATZ: For errors? 

4 MR. CALHOUN: Without a technical 

5 comment, yes. 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Any input? I 

7 mean, it seems like a reasonable path forward. 

8 David, any comments on this? 

9 MR. CALHOUN: Dave, if you're 

10 commenting, we can't hear you. 

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: No, no. 

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The only other -

13 - you may have this in there, also, but you 

14 said 90 percent within nine months. Is there 

15 something like 100 percent within two years, 

16 or is there any --

17 MR. HINNEFELD: You mean for 100 

18 percent?

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

20 MR. HINNEFELD: We've actually 

21 kind of avoided 100 percent because you've got 

22 one oddball or some weird one.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Is there 

2 anything like 95 -- I know that sometimes --

3 MR. CALHOUN: No, we go below 

4 that. We go below that. To get the most 

5 reward, it's 90 percent or more within six 

6 months of the last piece of information being 

7 received. If they get less than 90 percent in 

8 six months, then they get a lesser amount of 

9 fee. 

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right, 

11 right. Do you graduate it the other way, 

12 through 95 --

13 MR. CALHOUN: We have not. Ninety 

14 is the high right now. And we just went --

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I was just 

16 curious.

17 MR. CALHOUN: That's okay. And 

18 we're moving towards it, and we just got to 

19 the point where we went from nine months to 

20 six months.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Because if you 

22 look at your other report, too, I'm looking at 
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1 the cost, and if you look at these numbers, I 

2 mean, 2010, it looks like 90 percent are the 

3 efficiency cases, you know. So to really 

4 creep down there and get these harder cases. 

5 I mean, I remember in the first five years 

6 those are the ones that kind of hung on. And 

7 I can see your point. You don't want to go 

8 maybe to 100 percent but --

9 MEMBER MUNN: You won't get to 100 

10 percent, so it is --

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. That's 

12 what I'm saying.

13 MEMBER MUNN: -- it's

14 counterproductive to establish unreasonable 

15 goals for any organization or individual when 

16 you know you can't meet it. 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I hear a lot of 

18 people say zero --

19 (Simultaneous speakers.)

20 MR. CALHOUN: You've got to say 

21 that. 

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, so you 
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1 graduate your award, you know.

2 MR. CALHOUN: Right, right.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I don't know 

4 what the --

5 MR. CALHOUN: And we do. And we 

6 do.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Anyway, my 

8 point being that 90 percent, you know, maybe 

9 since the more difficult cases tend to be the 

10 best estimate cases, you know, you're not even 

11 getting at those in this equation necessarily, 

12 you know. That's a crude, crude analysis.

13 MR. CALHOUN: I hear you. 

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

15 MR. CALHOUN: And that's something 

16 that we could look at, but I'm real happy with 

17 six months.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, yes. 

19 Overall, I like the way you've done it, and I 

20 like that you got the error part in there, 

21 too. 

22 MR. CALHOUN: I can tell you, just 
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1 from a meeting standpoint, I couldn't really 

2 say much as far as "my dose went down." I can 

3 tell you for sure that I got a lot less 

4 comments of: "why did you have my dose 

5 reconstruction for three years?" That's gone 

6 way down.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Absolutely. 

8 That's good. 

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. And the 

10 phone contact to our PHAs is dramatically 

11 lower, dramatically lower than it was a few 

12 years ago.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Good. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Because most 

15 people were calling about status of their 

16 case, and we just don't have their case 

17 anymore.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: These are good 

19 indicators to be tracking. Good, good. 

20 Alright. Well, I think I'm satisfied with 

21 that. I think we can report back on that one, 

22 as well, to the full Board. Alright. Is there 
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1 anything else on that topic? 

2 MEMBER MUNN: You promised --

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, Wanda wants 

4 a chocolate break. 

5 MEMBER MUNN: You're right.

6 (Laughter.)

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. I don't 

8 think we should open up the next item with ten 

9 minutes before 12.

10 MR. KATZ: We want to be on time 

11 getting back.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, let's take 

13 lunch until one, but let's try to be back at 

14 one because we've got Jim and Paul joining us. 

15 MR. FARVER: And we're going to go 

16 back to the next item after 1:00?

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, the 1:00 

18 item. Right. Which is the --

19 MR. KATZ: Looking at revisiting 

20 the whole dose reconstruction review process. 

21 We're not doing the Savannah River until 

22 after.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Let's 

2 break until 1 p.m.

3 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

4 matter went off the record at 11:52 a.m. and 

5 resumed at 1:01 p.m.)

6 MR. KATZ: We're reconvening after 

7 lunch break. This is the Advisory Board on 

8 Radiation and Worker Health, Subcommittee on 

9 Dose Reconstruction Review. Recheck on the 

10 line and see which Board Members we have. We 

11 should have Dr. Richardson returning, and 

12 we're also expecting Drs. Melius and Ziemer. 

13 Do we have any Board Members on the line? 

14 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, it's Jim 

15 Melius. I'm on the line. 

16 MR. KATZ: Oh, great. Welcome. 

17 How about Dr. Ziemer and Dr. Richardson? 

18 MEMBER MUNN: Well, good 

19 afternoon, Jim. Jim made it anyway. 

20 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, hi. 

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We're happy to 

22 report that we worked up a dose reconstruction 
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1 review process. 

2 MEMBER MUNN: It's all done now. 

3 MEMBER MELIUS: Good. How about 

4 the rest of your work? 

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Did you forward 

6 this to Jim, by the way?

7 MR. KATZ: I did.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, great.

9 MR. KATZ: Jim, did you receive, I 

10 forwarded, I hope I did, I forwarded to you 

11 and Paul, as well as the Members, a document 

12 that Mark had sent to me. It was a piece of 

13 the contract with SC&A, the original contract.

14 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. 

15 MR. KATZ: Okay. You got it. 

16 Great.

17 MEMBER MELIUS: I got it, yes.

18 MR. KATZ: Good. 

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It should look 

20 familiar with the basic review, advanced 

21 review, et cetera. 

22 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. No, that's 
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1 from a long time ago. I'm not sure I could 

2 have rewritten it myself without looking but 

3 --

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I know.

5 MEMBER MUNN: Oh, you remember it, 

6 Jim. 

7 MR. KATZ: So, Paul, have you 

8 joined us? Or David on the line? Jim, have 

9 you spoken recently to Paul about this? 

10 MEMBER MELIUS: No. I emailed 

11 him, and then I can't recall if I heard back 

12 or not. So if I did, I would have erased the 

13 email but --

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, let's 

15 wait two more minutes at least for David. 

16 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: By the way, 

17 there are two Davids here, so David R. or K. 

18 would be helpful. Whenever you say David, I--

19 MEMBER MUNN: He jumps. 

20 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I wouldn't say 

21 I jump, but I lean forward. 

22 MEMBER MUNN: I like jump better. 
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1 MEMBER POSTON: So it's David R. 

2 and David Eileen. 

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

4 MEMBER RICHARDSON: This is David 

5 Richardson. Hi. I was going to blame those 

6 long French lunches for the delay, but I guess 

7 we can't.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. 

9 MEMBER RICHARDSON: By the way, 

10 that would have been a legitimate excuse. 

11 Just an extra hour, right? 

12 MEMBER MUNN: Well, no, it's 

13 August. He isn't supposed to be here at all.

14 MEMBER RICHARDSON: That's true, 

15 yes. 

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So we're 

17 going to, we saved this item for Jim and Paul. 

18 I don't know if Paul is on the line? Anyway, 

19 I think we'll start, and, hopefully, Paul can 

20 join us. We saved this item. This has been 

21 something we've talked about for a few 

22 meetings that we need to maybe reassess the 
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1 methodology that we're using for doing our 

2 reviews, doing our work on this Subcommittee. 

3 Also, I think we've raised this before, as 

4 well, the selection process, whether we, you 

5 know -- so I think maybe both those issues. 

6 And just to help trigger the 

7 conversation, I meant to send this earlier but 

8 this morning we got the document that sort of 

9 outlines where we started with the method 

10 anyway. And it lays out the construct of the 

11 basic review, advanced review, blind reviews. 

12 And I guess I'll open it up. Jim, do you 

13 have, you know, some things you wanted to 

14 weigh in on? Maybe we can hear from SC&A, 

15 too, on what they think, how it's worked, how 

16 it hasn't, you know, why it hasn't worked? 

17 MEMBER MELIUS: I guess the two 

18 things I have is -- one is a question. So 

19 where exactly do we stand with the blind 

20 reviews? 

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's a good 

22 question. We've done three or two? 
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1 MR. FARVER: Two.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Two. We've 

3 done two. We promised to bring it on the 

4 agenda today. I'm not sure if it is on the 

5 agenda today, but we did say we would bring 

6 it.

7 MR. FARVER: You mean to discuss 

8 those reviews? 

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

10 MR. FARVER: Okay, yes. Now, they 

11 were submitted to the Subcommittee what? Two 

12 years ago? 

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes.

14 MR. FARVER: A long time ago.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And we took an 

16 initial look at them. I can't --

17 MR. FARVER: Yes, and I don't 

18 remember what was said or --

19 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay. 

20 MR. FARVER: I mean, that's 

21 because of the time lapse.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right, 
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1 right, right. But we might -- yes. That 

2 might be one thing that we need to re-look at 

3 because we've done so few of them and --

4 MR. FARVER: Yes. Like I said, 

5 we've done two.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

7 MR. FARVER: And you might want to 

8 look and see if you like the process, if you 

9 want to change it and maybe try some more 

10 blind reviews. 

11 MEMBER MELIUS: I guess my 

12 perspective on it is I think there's a number 

13 of things we're trying to achieve. One is can 

14 we make the process more efficient and more 

15 timely in terms of doing the reviews. On the 

16 other hand, at least for me and I think for 

17 other Board Members that participate, the 

18 basic dose reconstruction reviews are often 

19 very frustrating because we're often reviewing 

20 -- the way they go about it, they really don't 

21 take into account whether or not a particular 

22 dose reconstruction method is under review or 
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1 under revision or has been found to be, you 

2 know, not adequate, you know. An SEC has been 

3 awarded based on that particular exposure or 

4 inability to reconstruct that particular 

5 exposure. And I think that, while they're 

6 technically correct, they can give a 

7 misleading perception of the overall dose 

8 reconstruction process, and I think that what 

9 Congress was asking us to weigh in on was not 

10 just was NIOSH following the right -- you 

11 know, their own methods appropriately, but 

12 were the overall methods appropriate and 

13 scientifically sound? And I think, in fact, 

14 when we originally set up this process was why 

15 we included both what we called the advanced 

16 but also the blind reviews.

17 We set up this process at a time 

18 while NIOSH was still in the process of 

19 establishing how they were going to approach 

20 dose reconstructions in this program and 

21 around that time sort of made a change. The 

22 Site Profiles became much more living 
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1 documents, rather than, you know, sort of 

2 documents that were going to guide, you know, 

3 where those particular, the initial versions 

4 were going to guide the program for a 

5 significant period of time. Now, I think that 

6 was a good decision on NIOSH's part, but it 

7 sort of makes it much harder for the dose 

8 reconstruction reviews to be done and to at 

9 least have complete validity in terms of an 

10 evaluation of the overall program. 

11 So I guess some of this discussion 

12 started recently when we were looking at sort 

13 of, How do we improve the efficiency of the 

14 dose reconstruction review? But I think, at 

15 the same time, we need to step back and think 

16 is there an overall approach that would be 

17 better and, you know, provide a more -- I keep 

18 hesitating. I don't dare use "scientifically 

19 robust", because --

20 MEMBER MUNN: Please don't.

21 MEMBER MELIUS: -- even at this 

22 distance on the phone from Wanda, I'll get in 
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1 trouble.

2 MEMBER MUNN: You know you'll get 

3 feedback.

4 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. But I think 

5 we need to look again at the process and is 

6 there a better way of accomplishing it, given 

7 the needs of the program? On the other hand, 

8 I think that we've gone through a lot of SECs. 

9 There's been a lot of Site Profiles that have 

10 been updated. We've done a lot of the 

11 procedure reviews that have, I think, led to 

12 some, are leading to some changes in the 

13 program. So in some way, you know, maybe 

14 going forward, the dose reconstruction, sort 

15 of the background methodology that NIOSH is 

16 using may be much more stable than it has been 

17 over the last, you know, several years. But 

18 at the same time, I still think we need to 

19 figure out is there a way of doing it better?

20 Again, I think I said this at the 

21 Board meetings, this is a really a critical 

22 function for the Board to be doing, and I 
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1 think we need to be sure that we're providing 

2 adequate resources to it. And I think that if 

3 a change means additional resources going to 

4 this activity, then I think we need to, you 

5 know, do that.

6 MEMBER MUNN: So let me make sure 

7 I understand. You're addressing our process 

8 here in the Subcommittee overall? You're not 

9 just addressing what Doug had to say about our 

10 blind reviews, right? 

11 MEMBER MELIUS: Correct, yes.

12 MEMBER MUNN: Okay, fine. Because 

13 I was thinking in terms of blind reviews when 

14 you started talking.

15 MEMBER MELIUS: No, I apologize. 

16 I should have clarified. I think one 

17 possibility is increasing the number of blind 

18 reviews, but what I was trying to get at is, 

19 well, what have we found in the blind reviews? 

20 Are they worth doing? Because those are a 

21 significant amount of resources go into those. 

22 They may provide a better, more comprehensive 
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1 review of an individual dose reconstruction, 

2 but they are very, you know, can be very labor 

3 intense. Obviously, we can't do as many of 

4 those as we could do of the current reviews.

5 MEMBER MUNN: No, but those 

6 impinge on our conversations that we had here 

7 earlier this morning.

8 MEMBER MELIUS: Okay.

9 MEMBER MUNN: We were discussing 

10 at considerable length how do you know that 

11 you've improved if you don't have really 

12 reliable data from previous activities, and 

13 those two blind reviews we have will give us 

14 at least a small baseline to start. But 

15 that's beside the point. The point is 

16 improving our process here.

17 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. Well, and I 

18 think that's also important. Maybe I didn't 

19 say it, but what you were just saying, Wanda, 

20 is that, you know, we want to be improving the 

21 process and we want to be conducting our 

22 reviews in a way that we, you know, help NIOSH 
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1 improve the process. We're not just doing an 

2 outside scorecard and, you know, reporting to 

3 Congress what that scorecard says but rather 

4 that do it in a way that can contribute to 

5 helping NIOSH to improve the program.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think, I 

7 mean, looking back at the original language, 

8 you know, which I should point out is probably 

9 version nine or so that we went through on 

10 this language, but, I mean, one thing that it 

11 says and that I'm reading here is that the 

12 contractor shall evaluate and recommend 

13 whether or not assumptions, individual case 

14 assumptions, and assumptions applicable to 

15 multiple cases made for dose reconstruction 

16 are appropriate and defensible for purposes of 

17 this program.

18 I'm not sure that a lot of our --

19 here's the dilemma I see is that a lot of the 

20 reviews we do right now, in my opinion, end up 

21 being the basic review. Occasionally, we will 

22 get the more in-depth review where we're 
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1 drilling down to the assumptions. But even if 

2 we have a finding around the assumptions, it 

3 ends up going back to a Site Profile committee 

4 often. We don't really resolve it. So we 

5 have this thing. It's broader than the DR 

6 Subcommittee, I think, because we end up with 

7 these open Site Profile documents that are 

8 sort of waiting to be revised until those 

9 individual Work Groups, you know, resolve all 

10 the findings. And we have these drilled down 

11 findings from our committee that says, well, 

12 we want the Site Profile Work Group to address 

13 this, so we're, you know, we're spinning our 

14 wheels a bit on that capacity. Where we've 

15 tended to focus is on the basic reviews, and 

16 we're identifying a lot of the more quality 

17 control type of findings.

18 Anyway, that's just an observation 

19 from my standpoint. 

20 MEMBER MELIUS: I don't recall the 

21 details or exactly how we came about this, but 

22 at one point we sort of did away with the 
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1 basic and the advanced --

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

3 MEMBER MELIUS: -- and we combined 

4 the two, and I think we were well intentioned. 

5 There were some good reasons for doing it, 

6 but I think some of it was there was so much 

7 activity going on with the Site Profiles and 

8 changes and so forth that it made some of the 

9 advanced reviews difficult. But I don't think 

10 we ever went back and looked at that. And 

11 maybe that's another approach that would be 

12 helpful because we're aware of some of the 

13 issues of just, you know, limitations of just 

14 doing the basic reviews. And we really want 

15 to get, you know, the reviews going and be 

16 able to report back to NIOSH and to the 

17 Secretary what was, you know, yes, that they 

18 were doing an appropriate job of conducting 

19 these in terms of sort of basic quality, I 

20 guess you would call it, of the program. But 

21 I think that, I think, as we go by, what was 

22 contained -- the intent of both the advanced 
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1 and the blind reviews are, you know, sort of 

2 got lost in the effort to do all the basic 

3 reviews. 

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I'm 

5 looking at, like, some of the bullets, Jim, 

6 and, you know, in the advanced review. You 

7 know, you start talking about looking at the 

8 Technical Basis Documents and looking at the 

9 approach for unmonitored dose. Well, the 

10 technical basis ends up being -- so one thing 

11 we're finding here is that we have certain 

12 findings and then we're actually referring 

13 them to the Site Profile committees that are 

14 working on that. And then, because of all of 

15 our focus on the Work Groups, the other Work 

16 Groups of looking at SEC issues, we're not 

17 getting to these, you know, so we're not 

18 getting any resolution there. Right.

19 And the other thing on the 

20 unmonitored worker, that's coworker models for 

21 the same thing. It's outstanding finding on 

22 the Los Alamos Work Groups, so we just sort of 
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1 defer it to the Los Alamos Work Group. 

2 MR. KATZ: I'm just wondering, 

3 because, I mean, I haven't been here for the 

4 long haul, but in recent years I can't 

5 remember referring anything even to a Work 

6 Group.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, but then 

8 that goes back to my --

9 MR. KATZ: To the Subcommittee.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, then that 

11 goes back to my other thing, which is a lot of 

12 them tend to be more basic reviews. So either 

13 we're not doing this drill-down --

14 MR. FARVER: Well, the basic 

15 reviews are what we've been doing for DOE 

16 sites. 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, I thought 

18 those were advanced -- those are --

19 MR. FARVER: No, I'll call those 

20 basic reviews.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

22 MR. FARVER: Now, advanced reviews 
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1 where we actually go in and look at the 

2 Technical Basis Documents and say do we like 

3 the Technical Basis Document, that's more of 

4 what we do for AWEs.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, AWEs. 

6 Sorry. Right.

7 MR. FARVER: And that's simply 

8 because we may look at an AWE site because 

9 that might be the only case we look at for 

10 that site.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. I 

12 agree. That's how --

13 MR. FARVER: And that's how it's 

14 been set up.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And that's how 

16 it's evolved kind of is the --

17 MR. FARVER: Well, the basic 

18 review, we are going to, say, Savannah River. 

19 Over the course, we're going to look at a 

20 hundred cases. I don't need to do a hundred 

21 profile reviews or review it every time I do a 

22 dose review. So what we've done is we went 
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1 and reviewed the Site Profile and identified 

2 issues in the Site Profile. That way, we 

3 don't have to do it for every dose 

4 reconstruction review. And the lapse has 

5 been, the findings that we identify with the 

6 Site Profile are just kind of hanging out 

7 there.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, that's 

9 kind of what I just said. Yes.

10 MR. FARVER: And what would be 

11 useful is, and I'll use Savannah River as an 

12 example, it was last revised in 2005, I 

13 believe, the Technical Basis, okay? Since

14 then, they're doing many things differently, 

15 according to their DR guide. So there's 

16 changes that are going on. Well, that's 

17 probably a bad example because that one hasn't 

18 been revised. 

19 Okay. Let's pick another one, 

20 like INEL. Now, that's been revised. What we 

21 did with INEL is, a couple of years after we 

22 did our first Site Profile review, we went 
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1 back and looked at it with the changes made 

2 and wrote a revised Site Profile review that 

3 identified, okay, these issues have been 

4 closed, these issues are still open. And what 

5 might be helpful is if we go back and look at 

6 the Site Profiles that have been revised since 

7 we reviewed them and do an update and say, 

8 okay, these are the issues identified in the 

9 original profile review, these are the changes 

10 they made, and that will take care and they'll 

11 close out these items and these items still 

12 remain open. But we have never done an 

13 update, and there's been, you know, in some 

14 cases, five years lapsing between the time we 

15 did the Site Profile and a couple of revisions 

16 later we have a new Site Profile. 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Wanda and I --

18 MEMBER MUNN: I can see where this 

19 is going. It doesn't have to be a rocket 

20 scientist to figure out that this is going 

21 back to, well, why isn't NIOSH updating those 

22 TBDs? And we all know why NIOSH isn't 
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1 updating those TBDs. We have a choice here, 

2 and we have to help make it in this 

3 Subcommittee on behalf of the Board because 

4 there is not enough time to spread around for 

5 everybody to do everything that we want done. 

6 So if we want some of the TBDs to get 

7 updated, we have to be willing to accept what 

8 that means in terms of schedule for the other 

9 things that we have on the cooker. 

10 So if we're going to do that, I 

11 would strongly suggest that we begin to 

12 discuss what sites we would like to focus on 

13 so that we can see the Site Profile updated to 

14 the point we feel that we can now use cases 

15 that are being done under that Site Profile. 

16 If that's where we're going, I just want to 

17 point out that this is what we're talking 

18 about here.

19 MR. FARVER: I started off with a 

20 bad example, I mean, because I know there are 

21 other issues at Savannah River and that was a 

22 bad example. But there are Site Profiles that 
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1 we reviewed, we'll say five years ago, that 

2 now have gone through re-revisions and, like, 

3 we're issuing them in 2010 revised. But we 

4 haven't looked at them since the time we 

5 initially looked at them to see, you know, 

6 were our recommendations, any changes made.

7 MEMBER MUNN: Well, solely 

8 individually I would like to say, if we're 

9 going to have you look at some more, I would 

10 like to have you look at something that's 

11 current.

12 MR. FARVER: Oh, yes, yes, yes.

13 MEMBER MUNN: I would not like to 

14 have you look at some interim revision and 

15 still have outstanding issues that are going 

16 to affect our --

17 MR. FARVER: No, no --

18 MEMBER MUNN: -- decision here 

19 with respect to cases.

20 MR. FARVER: No, I agree. I mean, 

21 ones that have been revised and are out there 

22 currently that have a considerable lapse since 
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1 our original review so that we just can get 

2 updated on what changes were made because, you 

3 know, we have this section in our reports, you 

4 know, Section 1.3, where we identify Site 

5 Profile issues. But some of those are pretty 

6 old, and some of those probably have been 

7 fixed.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Have been 

9 resolved. Right, right.

10 MR. FARVER: But I didn't realize 

11 there was that big a lapse until I started 

12 looking and seeing when our review was and 

13 what's the current revision of the document 

14 out there today. And there's some cases, 

15 it's, you know, seven years. So that would be 

16 helpful if we could go back and look at those 

17 and say these things have been changed, and we 

18 don't have to address them anymore. 

19 MEMBER MUNN: And this is our 

20 brand new set of priorities we would like to 

21 bring to the Board for how we're going to look 

22 at these. 
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. I mean, 

2 it's complicated. Those are the issues; I 

3 agree. I mean, I'm thinking also that, you 

4 know, that number one priority probably is for 

5 us, we're auditing as the program goes on, so 

6 number one is to, I guess, continually 

7 improve. On the other hand, you know, just 

8 because everything's, you know, you can look 

9 maybe at Idaho now and say, oh, the Site 

10 Profile looks great and they resolved all our 

11 issues from six years ago, so you have no 

12 findings. Just say that's the case, right? 

13 What happens to all the cases that were 

14 processed in that interim under the old Site 

15 Profile? I mean, we still may need to examine 

16 those. They may not have been --

17 MR. FARVER: That would be like a 

18 separate issue. That's still looking back at 

19 the dose reconstruction.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, okay.

21 MR. FARVER: Instead of looking at 

22 the Site Profile changes.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

2 MR. FARVER: I try to keep them 

3 separate. 

4 MEMBER MUNN: And we can't because 

5 it all muddies together.

6 MR. FARVER: I know, it does. 

7 It's muddy. 

8 MR. KATZ: It's complicated, too, 

9 because in those cases, where you've made 

10 changes, you have a PER, and you have a PER 

11 review process --

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's what I 

13 was going to say, yes.

14 MR. KATZ: -- but that's the next 

15 step on those --

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: If it was a 

17 change that NIOSH deemed wasn't -- a PER 

18 wasn't necessary for and, yet, we find, you 

19 know, the Committee could find something 

20 differently, you know --

21 MEMBER MELIUS: I don't think we 

22 have a process that identifies a situation 
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1 where NIOSH inappropriately, you know, decides 

2 that they're not going to do a PER change. 

3 But if they decide it's not, they shouldn't do 

4 it, that we would only review them when they 

5 decide to do them. 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

7 MEMBER MELIUS: And, again, I'm 

8 not sure there are instances where they've 

9 been wrong, but I think we're essentially 

10 operating, I think we're operating our dose 

11 reconstruction review process on the 

12 assumption that we rely on basic reviews, and 

13 so implicitly assume that all other parts of 

14 the program are working fine: the Site Profile 

15 reviews, the SEC reviews, that everything 

16 else, all the changes that take place in those 

17 documents, necessary changes and procedures 

18 and so forth are taking place in, that we 

19 don't have to worry about the quality of any 

20 of those when we're doing our dose 

21 reconstructions. 

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I mean, I'm not 
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1 sure that's been our assumption in the past, 

2 but if you use the basic review model, that 

3 would be.

4 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. I mean, 

5 that, operationally, is where we --

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's kind of 

7 where we are, except for the AWE, which are 

8 the mini-Site Profiles, as I call them. 

9 MR. FARVER: As I said, how we've 

10 been operating on reviewing the DOE dose 

11 reconstructions, we would review the documents 

12 that are referenced in the dose 

13 reconstruction, that's for version number, and 

14 see if they followed those documents.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

16 MEMBER MELIUS: We really don't 

17 even have a way of, an ongoing process to link 

18 up and identify those or follow up on what's 

19 happened.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But, see my 

21 concern, Jim, is on the flip side, that we're 

22 not answering the fundamental question that
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1 you laid out at the beginning.

2 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. 

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Which is, you 

4 know, are these scientifically -- we're not 

5 looking at that side of it, the science side 

6 of it as much. We're looking at the quality 

7 side of it, I think, more, the basic reviews.

8 MR. FARVER: With the basic 

9 reviews.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. And we're 

11 counting on the fact that the Site Profile 

12 groups, Work Groups, et cetera, are picking up 

13 the scientific quality side of it.

14 MEMBER MELIUS: Correct. Yes, 

15 that was what I was trying --

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I mean, and I'm 

17 not criticizing any of them. We're all on 

18 these Work Groups, you know, and we've all 

19 been focusing on SECs.

20 MEMBER MELIUS: Right.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So it's a 

22 prioritization. 
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1 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So, I mean, 

3 from that standpoint, do you see any need to -

4 - I mean, if we assume that works correctly, 

5 I'm not sure there is much need to change the 

6 focus, if this Subcommittee remains focused 

7 mainly on basic reviews, looking at quality 

8 control issues, along with these AWE sites 

9 where there are no Site Profiles really. 

10 There's, you know, there's sort of very small 

11 sites. We do more in-depth reviews on those. 

12 You know, do we need to alter anything, I 

13 guess is the question.

14 MEMBER MELIUS: Well, my question 

15 then would be are we doing what we're charged 

16 in the legislation to do? And I don't think 

17 we are. We're certainly not communicating 

18 that in our letters to the Secretary or what's 

19 implicit and what we're doing. So --

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, I hear what 

21 you're saying.

22 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, I think that 
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1 --

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I don't know if 

3 we have to fold back in the Site Profile 

4 information. Yes, yes.

5 MEMBER MELIUS: And I'm not saying 

6 we do away with basic reviews. I mean, 

7 whatever. I mean, I don't think it would 

8 necessarily require, you know, drastic 

9 changes. But I think we need to evaluate how 

10 good a job are we doing and is there a better 

11 approach. Part of that evaluation, you know, 

12 I think would come from the blind reviews. 

13 Obviously, we don't have anywhere near enough 

14 to, you know, evaluate the overall program 

15 from those. But I think, over time, they 

16 could, we could build up, you know, I think 

17 some good information from them. So do we 

18 consider increasing the number of blind 

19 reviews? Because we certainly have not done 

20 anywhere near what we originally intended to 

21 do.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. No, I 
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1 agree.

2 MEMBER MELIUS: So that's one. 

3 And then, secondly, is there some --

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The concern --

5 MEMBER MELIUS: -- a little bit 

6 about this at the last meeting. I'm not sure 

7 if it was during the meeting or offline or 

8 whatever. Is there some tasking that you 

9 could do to or the Board can do to SC&A to 

10 have them sort of follow up on some of the 

11 past dose reconstruction reviews? Maybe it's 

12 focused on a few sites just to see what's 

13 happened there?

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You mean --

15 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, what ranges 

16 have taken place in the Site Profiles, all the 

17 other technical documents related, that would 

18 raise it, you know, do those changes raise 

19 questions about, essentially, how good was our 

20 original evaluation?

21 How many of those findings, you 

22 know, how many of those dose reconstructions 
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1 did we find that the dose reconstruction 

2 couldn't be done with sufficient accuracy, 

3 where that exposure was a major part of a 

4 person's site exposure? Where have the, you 

5 know, what changes have taken place in the 

6 message -- I mean, I think NIOSH has to be 

7 concerned, also, what about the changes from 

8 the 10-year review, the issues that were 

9 raised there?

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I'm trying 

11 to --

12 MEMBER MELIUS: And so doing that 

13 --

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- follow you a 

15 little bit on that one element --

16 MEMBER MELIUS: -- on a sample, 

17 and I don't know whether it's on a site or 

18 whatever particular site would be, I think, 

19 could be potentially helpful. And, again, I'm 

20 mindful of what Wanda was saying that, yes, 

21 we've got limited resources and we're not, we 

22 don't want to be having the dose 
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1 reconstruction reviews being repetitious of 

2 doing what we're already doing under Site 

3 Profile reviews or procedure reviews or SEC 

4 reviews. 

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. Well, 

6 let me just, you said a lot there and I want 

7 to maybe try to understand some of it. On the 

8 blind reviews, my one concern, I mean, I think 

9 it might be useful to do more of those. My 

10 one concern would be that if I fast-forward 

11 this a bit, I can see this situation where the 

12 resolution out of the blind reviews, I mean, 

13 if you're getting into a Savannah River blind 

14 review case, then if you start to drill down 

15 on that you're going to be addressing similar 

16 questions that were raised in the Site 

17 Profile, I'm guessing anyway, similar 

18 questions that have already been raised in the 

19 Site Profile matrix for Savannah River. 

20 Possibly. Maybe not completely overlapping, 

21 but I would bet some of them would overlap 

22 with the issues of the -- do you get what I'm 
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1 saying, Jim? 

2 MEMBER MELIUS: Absolutely. And I 

3 guess I was thinking two things. One is just 

4 doing the blind reviews would be almost not as 

5 sort of a basic way of looking at dose 

6 reconstruction but as a way of evaluating 

7 where we are now. You know, if you told me 

8 that the two blind reviews you did, you know, 

9 required or will require so much resources 

10 that you weren't able to do what we originally 

11 intended with the blind reviews because it 

12 would have been repetitious of what had 

13 already been done by, you know, SEC 

14 evaluations, whatever, Site Profile reviews 

15 and so forth, then I think that, you know, one 

16 says something about what approach should we 

17 use for the blind reviews but also says 

18 something about sort of the state of the 

19 program.

20 It actually would indicate maybe, 

21 you know, maybe this combined approach of, you 

22 know, Site Profile reviews, procedure reviews, 
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1 et cetera, and basic reviews was working so 

2 you weren't finding anything new or different.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

4 MEMBER MELIUS: You see what I'm 

5 saying? 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. Right. 

7 So then it would justify --

8 MEMBER MELIUS: The nice thing 

9 about the blind reviews is that it does sort 

10 of validate the overall program of sort of, 

11 you know, scientific and technical reviews --

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, it might 

13 sort of -- I can see your point. Let me try 

14 to paraphrase, I think, what you said. Like 

15 if we do a blind review of a Savannah River 

16 case and we end up having a few quality 

17 findings and a few findings that were already 

18 on the Savannah River Site Profile matrix, 

19 then, basically, we've said, okay, we end up 

20 covering these in the one Work Group or in 

21 this Committee; and, therefore, this Committee 

22 can stay focused on the basic reviews and the 
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1 Work Groups doing the Site Profile reviews can 

2 stay focused on that. Is that what you're --

3 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, okay.

5 MEMBER MELIUS: Now, maybe it 

6 picks up a couple of things that weren't on 

7 the target --

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. And if 

9 it picks up a lot, then that tells us 

10 something about what we've missed in the past.

11 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. Now, 

12 obviously --

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

14 MEMBER MELIUS: -- how important 

15 those were and all that has to be taken into 

16 account. They may be important for some cases, 

17 not others, et cetera. So it's a --

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. No, I 

19 think it --

20 MEMBER MELIUS: It's almost an 

21 evaluation tool rather than a basic part of 

22 our dose reconstruction reviews.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think we can 

2 certainly consider that, consider doing more 

3 blind reviews. To your second point that you 

4 were making about asking -- I was a little 

5 confused. You were asking SC&A to go back and 

6 follow up on the DRs to see, I think you were 

7 saying to see, since we had these findings and 

8 resolved these findings, what changes have 

9 been made? Is that what you were saying? I 

10 wasn't sure --

11 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, what 

12 happened, how good were the basic reviews at 

13 picking up what turned out to be problems with 

14 a site.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, so if NIOSH 

16 made changes that we never, that never hit our 

17 radar --

18 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- then we 

20 didn't pick up those problems. Is that what 

21 you're saying?

22 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. Or, like, in 
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1 some cases they're under active review. I 

2 mean, it's a dynamic here that may be hard to 

3 capture, but you go back and look at, I mean, 

4 how many findings became SECs? How many times 

5 in a dose reconstruction was an important part 

6 of the dose deemed to be technically 

7 acceptable, say, the dose reconstruction 

8 methods? And it turns out it was, you know, 

9 sort of technically acceptable but 

10 scientifically unacceptable.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, okay. It 

12 ended up being the basis for an SEC --

13 MEMBER MELIUS: For an SEC.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- later on. I 

15 see. I see what you mean.

16 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, and we're 

17 reporting out that --

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That the case 

19 was okay.

20 MEMBER MELIUS: That the case was 

21 okay.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. That's 
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1 better, more clear the way you said it that 

2 time.

3 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. Now, again, 

4 I'm not faulting, you know --

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, no.

6 MEMBER MELIUS: -- what you're 

7 doing, but it is something we need to 

8 consider.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It's a good way 

10 for us to measure. I mean, we've been talking 

11 about NIOSH instituting different quality 

12 metrics. I mean, this is a good thing for our 

13 Subcommittee to do, too.

14 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: To see where 

16 we're at, kind of.

17 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I have no 

19 problem relaying this to David Richardson.

20 MEMBER MELIUS: I thought, in the 

21 discussion at some point, I can't remember 

22 where we -- either John Mauro or John Stiver 
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1 was suggesting something like that.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, no. Now, 

3 you just took -- no, I'm just kidding.

4 MEMBER MUNN: All the fun out --

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Here we were 

6 giving you credit for a good idea. No.

7 MEMBER MELIUS: No, no, no. It 

8 probably just turned into a bad idea.

9 MR. STIVER: Hey, now.

10 (Laughter.)

11 MEMBER MELIUS: Oh, they are on 

12 there. Well, that's nice about a phone call. 

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think 

14 definitely those two points could be useful 

15 for our group to consider. And the one, well, 

16 both would involve tasking SC&A, additional 

17 tasking of SC&A, but, I mean, anybody else on 

18 the Subcommittee want to weigh in? I felt 

19 like I was kind of talking to Jim there for a 

20 while.

21 MEMBER MUNN: Well, you were. 

22 You're supposed to.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But, Wanda, 

2 please, we want to hear from Wanda. Come on.

3 MEMBER MUNN: No, that's quite 

4 alright. The discussion is quite robust 

5 enough. 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: She wishes you 

7 were here, Jim.

8 MEMBER MELIUS: I'm sure I'll hear 

9 about this in Denver. 

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: I was trying to 

11 follow along there because it seems like what 

12 you're saying is we kind of divide up the 

13 findings because, as a Subcommittee for the 

14 dose reconstruction reviewing this, if it's a 

15 quality assurance issue, then it would still 

16 fall under the Subcommittee. But if it's a 

17 Site Profile issue, then it would go to the 

18 Work Group that's over that Site Profile? Is 

19 that, basically, what I was hearing or --

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, yes, I 

21 think he was saying let's stop for -- not stop 

22 but do these blind reviews and possibly just 
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1 look back to see. I mean, if we do the blind 

2 reviews and it turns out that, you know, most 

3 of the scientific issues, as I would call them 

4 the more drill-down issues are being captured 

5 in the Site Profile Work Groups, then, 

6 overall, as a Board, we've got it covered. We 

7 don't have to, you know, we don't have to 

8 expand our scope on this Subcommittee. We can 

9 stick with the basic reviews for the DOE. I'm 

10 talking the DOE side now, the basic reviews.

11 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, I think we're 

12 assuming that these are all working 

13 appropriately. 

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: In our current 

15 scheme.

16 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, current 

17 approach. And I'm not saying they're not, and 

18 I think they're working, generally, well. 

19 But, I think we, our charge isn't, you know, 

20 what really is the overall quality of the dose 

21 reconstructions. And I think we need to have 

22 a better way ourselves of evaluating whether 
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1 this overall approach is doing, you know, a 

2 good job of doing that because we're supposed 

3 to report back to the Secretary and to 

4 Congress on how well it's doing overall, not 

5 how well are the basic, you know, dose reviews 

6 going.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I agree with 

8 you, Jim.

9 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. And I think 

10 it's been long enough that we need to sort of 

11 step back and evaluate are we doing an 

12 adequate job?

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And the second 

14 point, Brad, I think that Jim was making, and 

15 the second time he explained it to me it made 

16 a lot more sense, was to look at, sort of in 

17 aggregate, the DR reviews that we've completed 

18 and have SC&A -- I mean, I'll add some to your 

19 idea, Jim -- to break it out by site and to 

20 look back and see what's happened at each one 

21 of those sites, be it a PER review or an SEC 

22 or modifications in the way dose 
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1 reconstructions are done. And I would say we 

2 can probably pick off, you know, at least 

3 focus on the bigger, we have a lot of 

4 Hanford’s, Savannah River, you know, the 

5 bigger sites. And then just do this sort of 

6 follow up to see if, in fact, you know, if we 

7 did our reviews and said that, you know, it 

8 was an adequate dose reconstruction and then 

9 later it ends up being added to an SEC for not 

10 able to reconstruct the dose with sufficient 

11 accuracy, it's getting at that scientific 

12 question that we might have missed in our 

13 basic review. So is that --

14 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. 

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes. 

16 MR. FARVER: But we're going to 

17 miss those in our basic review?

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right, 

19 right. So we're just saying it would be a 

20 good, it would be good for us to point that 

21 out and then make sure it's at least captured 

22 in the Site Profile committees that are 
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1 established or wherever. But we also don't 

2 want to give the wrong impression that, I 

3 guess looking at the numbers, right, Jim, that 

4 all these were adequate? 

5 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes, and I think 

6 we're not accurately reporting back on what 

7 the overall --

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Charge.

9 MEMBER MELIUS: -- charge that we 

10 have.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's a little 

12 trickier.

13 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. And, again, 

14 I don't think it's, you know --

15 Ms. BEHLING: Mark, this is Kathy 

16 Behling. Can I make a comment? 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Certainly, 

18 Kathy. Good to hear from you. 

19 Ms. BEHLING: Okay. Just a few 

20 things to consider and to maybe give some 

21 guidance to SC&A. First of all, the one thing 

22 I would ask, because of the process that is 
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1 currently in place, we have to assess is there 

2 anything that's falling through the cracks? 

3 And at least based on where we are today and 

4 as we've been discussing, the dose 

5 reconstruction process has been identifying 

6 that if there are SEC or Site Profile issues 

7 out there that are not going to be addressed 

8 in the dose reconstruction report but they 

9 are, hopefully, being handled by the Work 

10 Group and the TBD review group. 

11 So I guess I don't, at this point, 

12 see anything that's really falling through the 

13 cracks based on the overall process we're 

14 working on right now. But if we are going to 

15 look more closely or have SC&A do more of the 

16 blinds, I'm questioning how that's going to 

17 really maybe identify some of the things that 

18 Dr. Melius is pointing out because, currently, 

19 what we have done with the blind reviews is 

20 we're using, we've actually did it using two 

21 different approaches, but our primary approach 

22 is to use the same procedures, the same 
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1 guidance documents, as NIOSH is using and 

2 reconstruct just as they would, using their 

3 procedures and technical documents. We also 

4 decided to put a second approach in there, 

5 which is a more what John Mauro would call a 

6 health physics practical approach to a dose 

7 reconstruction, and we've made a comparison.

8 So I'm just wondering if the 

9 process that we're using for the blinds that 

10 we've established to date is still going to be 

11 appropriate to capture what Dr. Melius is 

12 suggesting. 

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, and I 

14 think -- good point, Kathy. I mean, I 

15 remember John describing the two different 

16 approaches in his back of the envelope 

17 approach versus the, you know, which is based 

18 on basic fundamental health physics 

19 principles, right? Yes. And, you know, it 

20 seems like the first one you described where 

21 you're using all the same procedures and 

22 everything is more of a quality control blind 
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1 review than -- you know, it doesn't get at the 

2 other issues. 

3 MR. FARVER: Something that might 

4 be useful, and Kathy has worked on a couple of 

5 these, is where we go back and look at cases 

6 that we evaluated once and then has been 

7 through the resolution process and NIOSH had 

8 made changes, and it's been updated. And we 

9 go back and look at updated dose 

10 reconstruction and then report on what the 

11 changes were. Now, that might be useful 

12 because a lot of times we'll see that, yes, 

13 they added in those dose and took away this 

14 dose or the total dose went down or went up 

15 but just never really clear exactly where it 

16 came from. That's one of the things we'd 

17 evaluate and say, okay, side by side, this is 

18 what the original was, this is what the 

19 changes were, and then we describe exactly 

20 what those changes were. 

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And whether the 

22 changes were scientifically defensible? Is 
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1 that --

2 MR. FARVER: It goes back -- if 

3 they were changed, why were they changed? In 

4 other words, was it a technical basis change? 

5 You know, what led to that? Was it a change 

6 in the neutron/photon ratio numbers or 

7 something like that?

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But it doesn't 

9 get into the underlying assumptions 

10 necessarily, like was that change --

11 MR. FARVER: If you -- that's 

12 correct. Because that would be --

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Under the Site 

14 Profile.

15 MR. FARVER: -- a Site Profile 

16 issue.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, yes.

18 Ms. BEHLING: That's a good point 

19 that Doug makes, and I have looked at some of 

20 the re-works. I've actually, I think from the 

21 eighth set I went back and provided two 

22 reports on two different tabs, and we actually 
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1 looked at the re-work and determined if all of 

2 our findings were taken into consideration 

3 during that re-work. And I know that has been 

4 an issue that we've questioned.

5 Once we have these dose 

6 reconstruction reviews, what happens to those 

7 findings? Are they put into the case file so 

8 that if there is a re-work those are taken 

9 into consideration during that re-work? And 

10 so I do think that that is, would also be an 

11 interesting and maybe enlightening task for us 

12 to do. 

13 And the other question that I 

14 would ask of NIOSH, and especially since I'm 

15 close to this, we just have been following up 

16 on PER issues, and one of the questions I 

17 guess I would ask is: when does NIOSH, for 

18 these TBD changes, decide that they're going 

19 to put out a PER? And I'm asking that, I 

20 guess, in light of changes that have happened 

21 for, say, example the Hanford Technical Basis 

22 Document, and there have been some significant 
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1 changes in that Technical Basis Document, 

2 neutron to photon ratio issues. At what point 

3 does NIOSH say now we're going to issue a PER, 

4 or, in the case of Hanford, are you waiting 

5 because of SEC issues? I guess I'm not clear 

6 on that. 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, this is Stu. 

8 And I don't know that I can speak 

9 specifically here, but I think this would 

10 apply to Hanford. As nearly as I can recall, 

11 since Hanford has been reviewed, there have 

12 been technical issues on the table that have 

13 not been resolved and are still in resolution. 

14 I believe that's still the case today that 

15 there's an SEC that will alter, you know, dose 

16 reconstruction approach, and I believe there 

17 still may be some remaining findings that go 

18 past 83. 

19 And so our intent is to do the PER 

20 once. And so while we may have made some 

21 changes in neutron to photon already that 

22 would perhaps warrant PER, knowing that we 
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1 have these other findings on the board and we 

2 will be making, in all likelihood, additional 

3 changes, which would then prompt an additional 

4 PER if we did one now, we generally hold on to 

5 that.

6 So our idea is to do a PER once. 

7 And there may be some interim changes on the 

8 way to a final change that don't get one. 

9 Ms. BEHLING: I understand, and 

10 that makes sense. Thank you for that 

11 clarification. 

12 MR. KATZ: Can I raise a question 

13 about that? Jim, this relates to your sort of 

14 second plank, the first being the blind dose 

15 reconstruction, the second plank being how 

16 dose reconstruction reviews relate to quality 

17 of science or whatever versus what the Site 

18 Profile review has generated. It seems to me 

19 what we might need for the Board, I would 

20 think, Jim, you're concerned with the Board 

21 sort of accurately accounting for that 

22 question of how the science was and is 
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1 developing, I mean, it seems like then what we 

2 really need is for the Work Group responsible 

3 for a Site Profile review to be feeding in an 

4 account, in effect, related to when we have 

5 reports for the Secretary but an account for 

6 that particular site of that site resolution 

7 process and what quality of science matters 

8 were addressed.

9 I mean, in the end, they're always 

10 remedied one way or the other, but that's sort 

11 of the other part of the story. And if the 

12 blind reviews don't indicate that that system 

13 is completely broken, then, you know, 

14 reporting on that story is sort of the other 

15 piece, as to how good the science was.

16 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. I mean, I 

17 think what I'm trying to get at is there some 

18 way of one sort of making sure that all this, 

19 that we're connecting these different, you 

20 know, scientific and technical review 

21 functions in a way that assures that we're 

22 reporting on it correctly but, more 
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1 importantly, that we're giving the appropriate 

2 feedback to NIOSH on what they should be doing 

3 and so forth. I think we've broken it up so 

4 much that we really have no way of keeping 

5 track of all that's going on, and I think we 

6 have all these different sort of review 

7 processes that don't communicate with each 

8 other very well. 

9 MR. KATZ: Yes. But, in a 

10 qualitative sense at least, I think we all 

11 probably have a pretty good sense that there's 

12 a lot of change that gets done to TBDs as a 

13 result of the SEC process of the Board's and 

14 the Site Profile review. SEC process being 

15 much more energetic just because those are 

16 always a priority, to address the SECs. But 

17 we have a general sense that there's a lot of 

18 PERs, and a lot of TBD revisions are generated 

19 out of those processes.

20 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. And I think 

21 we start out under the assumption that the 

22 dose reconstruction review process by the 
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1 Board would be the way that those would all 

2 be, you know, would reflect all of that, and, 

3 currently, it doesn't. You know, in fact, it 

4 doesn't reflect most of the changes that take 

5 place. The changes that have been engendered 

6 by the dose reconstruction review are, I want 

7 to say minor, but they're certainly less than 

8 what's happened from Site Profile and SEC 

9 reviews. Now, I think that's expected in a 

10 program as technically and scientifically 

11 complicated as this, so it's not something 

12 where NIOSH has failed or the Board has 

13 failed. But I think we need to, if we think 

14 we've made all these improvements, we need to 

15 have some way of evaluating that and that we 

16 make sure we're not missing important issues 

17 and that we're reporting on it correctly. And 

18 we got to be able to do that with, you know, 

19 without having to start all over again and, 

20 secondly, without a huge amount of resources 

21 going into that.

22 MEMBER MUNN: Well, we can 
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1 certainly do that by identifying what we're 

2 going to use as a sampling process to sort of 

3 keep score, which is probably as good a forum 

4 as any for the decision-making on what we 

5 might use for a sampling process. I 

6 personally would suggest that we use no more 

7 than five sites, and that may even be too 

8 large, depending upon which sites you're going 

9 to choose. If you choose the big five, then 

10 you're cutting off another five years of 

11 activity and you don't want to do that. So 

12 probably two of the large sites and two of the 

13 smaller sites would be, in my mind, a 

14 reasonable place to start to look at these 

15 things. It's just a question of choosing 

16 which ones where the most activity might have 

17 taken place so that you could say that these 

18 are not the most active site groupings that we 

19 have, at least. They are among the most 

20 active site groupings. That way, you can, in 

21 some small degree, bound the other activities 

22 by the Board that have been very active. 
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I guess I 

2 missed that completely. I'm not sure why 

3 we're sampling five sites.

4 MEMBER MUNN: We had spoken 

5 earlier, and we didn't decide to do this, but 

6 we talked about the possibility, you know, if 

7 you take a look at these things and if we look 

8 at one of the sites, we look at some of the 

9 cases, look at some of the sites, and we 

10 identify where --

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

12 MEMBER MUNN: -- the findings have 

13 been identified, and have these findings 

14 resulted in changes in the Site Profile, 

15 changes in the procedures, where did the 

16 changes occur? If you do it by site, then you 

17 have a handle on how you're doing it. As a 

18 matter of fact, I don't know how you would do 

19 it if you didn't do it by site. How would you 

20 develop any kind of statistic at all if you 

21 didn't do it by site?

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. No, I 
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1 thought you were suggesting to limit it to 

2 just a few sites, to look at it that way. I 

3 didn't know Doug was suggesting that. 

4 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. I'm saying 

5 that if we're going to report in the 10-year 

6 review that our process has worked in this 

7 regard or in this regard or whatever regard we 

8 want to choose, whatever way we want to look 

9 at it, if we've chosen to look at it in terms 

10 of we've taken a look at what changes our 

11 program has instituted in each of these cases 

12 and we consider those to be emblematic of the 

13 entire program because they are either typical 

14 sites or larger sites. I'm just looking at how 

15 we're going to get to making some judgment. 

16 If you are going to make some 

17 statements for the Secretary and for the world 

18 to see, in terms of our view of what we've 

19 done in the program, then we have to have 

20 something to point to. We have to have some 

21 kind of data that we have to put together. We 

22 have agreed that we do not currently have a 
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1 mode for tracking the data. If we're going to 

2 build such a look, if we're going to have SC&A 

3 go out and take such a look, we need to tell 

4 them what to look at. That's, essentially, 

5 what I'm saying.

6 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes. But what I 

7 would say, I mean, I understand what you're 

8 getting at, Wanda --

9 MEMBER MUNN: I'm glad you do.

10 MEMBER MELIUS: -- but I would 

11 step back or sort of a different road. I'd 

12 rather design or modify what we're doing so 

13 that in the future, as we go forward, we can 

14 sort of, our reporting can better reflect the 

15 technical and scientific, our evaluation of 

16 the technical and scientific qualities of 

17 program. I think where at least I was talking 

18 and Mark, I thought, was talking about sort of 

19 the sampling of different sites was let's at 

20 least take a look at a few sites, maybe even 

21 one to start with, where there's been 

22 significant Site Profile SEC review whatever 
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1 and a significant number of dose 

2 reconstruction, individual dose reconstruction 

3 reviews, and sort of look back at that 

4 universe of dose reconstruction reviews and 

5 then see how that interacts with what's 

6 happened with the Site Profile procedure, et 

7 cetera, reviews that have taken place.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I was sort of 

9 proposing maybe your second idea, not your 

10 blind reviews but take your second idea, Jim, 

11 and try it at one or two sites --

12 MEMBER MELIUS: Yes.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- and see what 

14 we're -- yes, yes.

15 MEMBER MELIUS: See what's -

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Not necessarily 

17 to --

18 MEMBER MELIUS: Maybe it's not 

19 going to be worthwhile. I don't know. 

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. And I 

21 wasn't necessarily proposing that that could 

22 be extrapolated then to the whole complex.
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1 MEMBER MELIUS: No, no, but it 

2 might tell us how we could improve the 

3 process. And I think some of the improvement 

4 of the process is maybe a way of trying to 

5 link back to provide some better linkage 

6 between or communication between what's 

7 happening with the Site Profile and the 

8 individual dose reconstruction reviews, the 

9 procedure reviews, et cetera. Because we need 

10 some way of bringing that together. Is that 

11 the Site Profile Committee, is that the Dose 

12 Reconstruction? I don't know. Or is it some 

13 other Super Committee, Super Subcommittee or 

14 something? I don't know. But I think we need 

15 to develop something and start looking at it.

16 MR. KATZ: So I was just saying 

17 what I thought Doug was saying earlier is the 

18 one thing that comes to mind when you do that, 

19 say you do it for Savannah River Site, is that 

20 all the dose reconstruction reviews that were 

21 done were basic dose reconstruction reviews, 

22 right? And so they will have implicitly 
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1 assumed that the methods were okay and tested, 

2 so they're not going to pick up the same kind 

3 of issues that Site Profiles would have --

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

5 MEMBER MELIUS: Are the 

6 conclusions of those, if there were huge 

7 changes in the Site Profiles and SEC, et 

8 cetera, then they're giving a false 

9 impression. 

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, that's --

11 MR. KATZ: I understand that.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- in terms of 

13 the way we --

14 (Simultaneous speakers.)

15 MEMBER MELIUS: There's a dynamic 

16 to this that, again, it's a good dynamic. 

17 NIOSH, with some help from us, is trying to 

18 improve the process. So, yes, the changes are 

19 good, but we need to think of a better, an 

20 evaluation needs to reflect all that goes on 

21 in the program, not just the basic dose 

22 reviews.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. I think 

2 both those notions, the blind reviews and this 

3 look-back, or whatever a better term there 

4 might be, are useful ideas. I think Kathy 

5 raises some things we might have to think 

6 through on the blind reviews. I think the 

7 first step might be to resurrect the couple 

8 cases that we have done and then have a 

9 discussion around here of what, you know, if 

10 we're going to select more, what's the model 

11 we should use, you know, what's the best 

12 model.

13 MR. FARVER: Part of what I'm 

14 seeing is, when we do a DR review, we're 

15 looking at something that was done maybe a 

16 year ago. We're looking at a particular time 

17 frame and giving you a snapshot of what was 

18 done. And I think what's being asked for is, 

19 okay, I want to know how things have evolved: 

20 how have changes been made, what changes have 

21 been made, how would that have affected this 

22 case if you looked at that happened a year 
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1 ago? And even if there's TBD changes and even 

2 if there's SEC issues that have resulted in 

3 changes, there may not be a PER issue because 

4 they're waiting for additional changes. So 

5 it's a moving target, and, you know, all we 

6 can do is provide you a look at it at a 

7 certain time frame. I don't see how we can 

8 incorporate all the changes that could be made 

9 when they haven't been made.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. But I 

11 think, you know, the look-back idea is to also 

12 get at the question from our Board standpoint 

13 of what we're reporting on in the overall 

14 scientific validity of the cases. We don't 

15 want to have amongst those, say we end up with 

16 500 cases and say 100 of those eventually 

17 ended up in an SEC, I would say we eliminate 

18 those from our statistics, you know. We look 

19 at the -- so I think that's what Jim is 

20 getting at when he's saying the look-back. 

21 It's mainly to see what happened later.

22 MR. FARVER: Okay.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And then if 

2 those issues were captured, you know, are they 

3 still on the table in the Site Profile review 

4 or did they get folded into an SEC? I 

5 understand there's going to be some gray area 

6 in the middle sometimes, you know. That's why 

7 I was saying maybe we try one site and ask 

8 SC&A to do this, and then we can, you know, 

9 the devil is in the details, I guess. We can 

10 see, you know --

11 MR. FARVER: So we look back at 

12 past cases that we've already looked at or 

13 look back at new dose reconstructions?

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Look back at, 

15 you know, like a group of, say, Hanford cases 

16 --

17 MR. FARVER: That we've already 

18 looked at once?

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. And then 

20 say, okay, you know, just by the basics of the 

21 cases, you can identify whether they would now 

22 be in, or they got added to an SEC or 
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1 something like that or, you know --

2 MR. FARVER: You could determine 

3 if they would be added to an SEC?

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

5 MR. FARVER: But they may have 

6 used different assumptions under a previous 

7 TBD.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. 

9 MEMBER MELIUS: That may be, but 

10 we need to be able to note that somehow.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

12 MR. FARVER: You may not know --

13 MEMBER MELIUS: We may not know a 

14 lot, but we know it's something more now and 

15 it wasn't -- and the approach we were using 

16 for the basic reviews is missing that, and we 

17 need to see how significant that is.

18 MR. FARVER: I'm just trying to --

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Make sure --

20 yes, I know. Make sure, as Kathy said, it 

21 doesn't fall through the cracks completely. 

22 If it's captured in other facets of the 
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1 program, it's not a problem. I mean, it's not 

2 like --

3 MEMBER MELIUS: Well, it is when 

4 we're not reporting on it.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right, 

6 right. Yes. That's right. That's right. 

7 But I meant it wasn't a problem in terms of, I 

8 feel like, you know, I don't think everybody 

9 accepts that what you guys have been doing are 

10 basic reviews that are looking mainly at the 

11 quality. It's not like we're going to go back 

12 and say, well, SC&A missed the boat completely 

13 on these reviews. You know, that's not the 

14 thrust of this. But we want to make sure that 

15 we're not misleading in our reporting out on 

16 the overall --

17 MR. FARVER: So, I mean, I can 

18 understand. We go back and look at cases and 

19 we could tell you what changed from one point 

20 to what changed to another point if there have 

21 been changes. But if it was, let's say, a 

22 Hanford case that was previously done under a 
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1 TBD that's two revisions behind, and now 

2 there's a new TBD out that would impact this 

3 case and may even have a PER issued at some 

4 point, we're not going to necessarily know 

5 what's going to affect that case because 

6 nothing has changed yet.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, it hasn't 

8 had a PER issued yet.

9 MR. FARVER: Right.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So I think 

11 those are the ones you'd put, you know, a gray 

12 area or whatever. You characterize them that 

13 way because you're not sure. And I would 

14 argue that a lot of those, you know, you're 

15 going to have to use some judgment. But, you 

16 know, if they're between 45 and 49 percent and 

17 they had significant changes and no PER has 

18 been issued yet but seems like there might be, 

19 then you say this is in limbo state.

20 MR. FARVER: So we would be 

21 looking at older cases, well, two years old, 

22 well, anyway, an older case and comparing it 
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1 to current documentation?

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes. And 

3 maybe we don't start with a Hanford. Maybe 

4 there's too many cases. 

5 MR. FARVER: Whatever.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But, you know, 

7 I'm not sure --

8 MR. FARVER: It could change 

9 because we've been comparing it to whatever 

10 they used and referenced in their dose 

11 reconstruction.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, yes, I 

13 know, I know.

14 MR. FARVER: So now we may be 

15 comparing it to a complete set of different 

16 documents. I'm just trying to figure out --

17 MR. KATZ: You are comparing, I 

18 think you are comparing like the current 

19 documentation, the TBD --

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, you're 

21 not doing a new review or anything.

22 MR. KATZ: -- documentation would 
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1 encompass SEC changes and so on --

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

3 MR. KATZ: -- if that's already 

4 been incorporated. But you'd try to choose 

5 those, right? 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

7 MR. FARVER: I'm just saying, 

8 well, we'd be looking at new technical basis, 

9 probably. There's new procedure revisions, 

10 new OTIB revisions. So we've got a whole, 

11 like I said, a whole set of different 

12 documents we'd be looking at.

13 MEMBER MUNN: And how would you 

14 not have to do it again? 

15 MR. FARVER: You would.

16 MEMBER MUNN: You would have to do 

17 it again.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Why would you 

19 have to review the case again? 

20 MEMBER MUNN: Because you wouldn't 

21 know how severely those changes would have 

22 affected this calculation. 
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1 MR. FARVER: Right. You'd have to 

2 go back and look at each document and compare 

3 it to each calculation.

4 MR. KATZ: But that's only if you 

5 want to do quantitative analysis of the case. 

6 If you just want to address, qualitatively, 

7 whether there were science matters that 

8 changed that impacted that case, then you 

9 wouldn't have to do that. You would just have 

10 to identify --

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think the 

12 first step is to put them in a bin sort of, 

13 yes. Don't do the quantitative.

14 MR. KATZ: And you're just 

15 identifying cases for which the science 

16 changed from the last cases.

17 MR. FARVER: So any kind of 

18 document has been rev'd, there was probably a 

19 scientific change, which means it probably 

20 affected that case.

21 MEMBER MUNN: Maybe, maybe not. 

22 It may not have entered into the case at all.
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1 MR. FARVER: It may not. But if 

2 there was a scientific change to it, and that, 

3 say, OTIB is referenced in the dose 

4 reconstruction, then it's likely that change 

5 affected that dose reconstruction. 

6 MEMBER MUNN: An awful lot of 

7 those changes are just a change in building 

8 usage, for example, which I suppose you could 

9 identify it by stretching it by saying that's 

10 a technical change if people were in that 

11 building. But a wording change and the size 

12 of the area involved, you know, it's --

13 MR. FARVER: It would depend on 

14 why it was changed.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, exactly. 

16 MR. FARVER: Okay.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, yes. I 

18 mean, I think that's why we would definitely 

19 pick like one site first and try this. But I 

20 think the idea is to try to bin these things 

21 and say, okay, it appears we've got ten cases 

22 that were between 45 and 50 percentile and had 
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1 a significant technical change since the time 

2 we reviewed it and no apparent PER. You know, 

3 we've got ten cases that had a PER, you know, 

4 a PER for this issue and were re-run that were 

5 between 45 and 50. You know, we have 20 cases 

6 that clearly fit into the SEC definition that 

7 came later after we reviewed them. So you get 

8 a sense of what's happened with all, you know, 

9 40 cases from Hanford since we've reviewed 

10 them in the first hundred or so. I think 

11 that's what Jim is trying to get at. I think 

12 you stop short of the quantitative, you know, 

13 and you can come back to us and say, to really 

14 give you an answer on this it would take a lot 

15 -- I mean, maybe that's what you're going to 

16 conclude, to really give an answer on this 

17 would take a lot of work and maybe spinning 

18 our wheels here.

19 MEMBER MUNN: Is this really what 

20 we want to find out, or is what we want to 

21 find out whether the program overall is 

22 working and the appropriate changes that need 
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1 to be made are being made in the program? Is 

2 that what we're trying to determine? 

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I guess this is 

4 to test our own process, you know. Jim is 

5 challenging to say, if we're only looking at 

6 QA issues, somewhere it has to be picking up 

7 the scientific validity of the dose 

8 reconstruction process. That's our charter.

9 MEMBER MUNN: I understand that. 

10 But do you understand what I'm saying when I 

11 say is the answer that this process we're 

12 talking about the answer that we really -- are 

13 we asking the right question? Is that the 

14 question we want answered? 

15 MEMBER MELIUS: Well, Wanda, I 

16 think the idea is to look at what information 

17 we have, what we've done, in a way that can 

18 help us decide what the best approach is and 

19 the most efficient approach for doing this. 

20 And I think it can be done fairly readily 

21 through, you know, through this looking back 

22 at our past basic reviews and sort of 
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1 providing an update of what's happened since 

2 then. I think we're going to have to do it on 

3 a trial basis and see if it works, maybe fine4 tune it, and see if some, the idea is to 

5 advise in an ongoing way some better way of 

6 reflecting the overall reviews that go on in 

7 terms of how we're evaluating the program as 

8 charged in the legislation. 

9 MR. FARVER: I'll make a 

10 suggestion. Now, later on, we're going to 

11 look at the Savannah River findings, and I 

12 think there's about 56 of those that we looked 

13 at. Because we're taking this by site and 

14 resolving our old findings, how about if for 

15 the next set, and I don't know what site it 

16 is, it might be Rocky Flats, we go and, along 

17 with those review of the findings, we look at 

18 what technical issues have changed since we 

19 looked at the Site Profile and things and 

20 write a report on that. Plus, we could even 

21 include SEC impacts and include that all in 

22 the report. And this way, we'll get several 
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1 sites as we move along. 

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, I would 

3 just say let's do that for -- it's a good idea 

4 to see how it goes and see, yes. I think 

5 that's what Jim was basically asking for and 

6 leaving it up to us to think about what site 

7 or how to test it, yes. 

8 MR. FARVER: If we don't like 

9 Rocky Flats, we can pick another one.

10 MR. KATZ: Well, I guess I would 

11 just suggest you might want to pick, to start 

12 with, to try to figure out if this method 

13 works and how it works and how it might need 

14 to be refined, if it does, I mean, you might 

15 want to choose a site with not an overwhelming 

16 number of cases. It makes the work manageable 

17 for the pilot effort.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, he was 

19 saying pick a subset of the -- if you were 

20 only going to do the Rocky Flats or the next 

21 one to come up --

22 MR. KATZ: No, no, whatever, any 
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1 site. I'm just saying just choose one with a 

2 manageable number of cases so that you make 

3 this pilot effort --

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, don't need 

5 one with a hundred cases. I agree.

6 MR. FARVER: Well, it would be 

7 less than 57 findings or 56 findings because 

8 it would be the next group down. And if it's 

9 a certain site that we'd rather not do, then 

10 we can pick a different one. I'm just trying 

11 to find -- I don't know what the next site 

12 was. But somewhere along the lines of --

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

14 MR. FARVER: -- the findings that 

15 were in the 10th to 13th set that we're going 

16 to resolve anyway. Let's just go ahead.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu. And 

18 just as a maybe related comment, I don't know 

19 if it matters to this discussion whether the 

20 findings that have been previously identified, 

21 you know, the extent of resolution that has 

22 been attained because at Rocky Flats, today, 
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1 the findings that were raised during the 

2 discussion have been largely resolved in the 

3 documentation and revisions to documentation 

4 have been provided. So that is going to be a 

5 relatively unusual situation. For Savannah 

6 River, for Hanford, for the gaseous diffusion 

7 plants, for most other big sites, there are 

8 outstanding issues in, you know, that are out 

9 there in the process of resolution, and the 

10 ultimate revisions of technical documents, 

11 either Site Profile or OTIBs, has not been 

12 accomplished because the resolutions have not 

13 been accomplished. 

14 But at Rocky Flats, up until the 

15 most recent Evaluation Report which is just 

16 getting going, there were a number of findings 

17 and issues, and there was a large degree of 

18 resolution and a lot of technical document 

19 changes because of that. And those are in 

20 place, so I don't know if that matters or not. 

21 It's just something that sets Rocky Flats 

22 apart from most other sites. 
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Because of the 

2 Work Group Chair? Is that --

3 MR. HINNEFELD: I believe that's 

4 probably it. 

5 (Laughter.) 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I wouldn't have 

7 guessed that, to be honest with you.

8 MEMBER MELIUS: On that note, I 

9 got to run to another meeting. Thank you all.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Thanks for your 

11 input, Paul. How about Paul's turn now?

12 Thanks, Jim. 

13 MEMBER MELIUS: And continue your 

14 robust review activities.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Thank you. Have fun.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We will, we 

17 will. Okay. Now, that we have that on the 

18 table. Well, I don't know that we have to 

19 decide. I think one action which I was 

20 supposed to do for this meeting is to put the 

21 blind reviews back on the table, the ones that 

22 you already submitted to the -- so let's just 
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1 put them on as an agenda item and bring it up 

2 for discussion again because I think we do 

3 have to sort out the issues that Kathy was 

4 raising, which is, if we have the expectation 

5 that Jim had of using those blind reviews to 

6 sort of test our own process, then the one 

7 method versus the other might be important to 

8 decide on.

9 MR. FARVER: And do you also want 

10 to look at our reports on the cases we looked 

11 at a second time, the ones that Kathy wrote up 

12 reports on? 

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, those sort 

14 of re-works. Were they, we tasked you with 

15 that, right?

16 MR. FARVER: Yes.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. I mean, 

18 are they in our regular matrices? Is that 

19 just sort of the ongoing work?

20 MR. FARVER: Yes. There were 

21 several findings for each of the cases. We 

22 reviewed it. There were lots of changes made, 
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1 and it wasn't always clear what changed. So 

2 you tasked us to go look at the new redone 

3 dose reconstruction and compare it to the 

4 original and report back on what was changed.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

6 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu. When 

7 was that, roughly when was that report 

8 submitted by Kathy?

9 Ms. BEHLING: It was submitted --

10 excuse me, this is Kathy. I think March 26th, 

11 2012.

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Thank you.

13 Ms. BEHLING: You're welcome.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. I mean, I 

15 don't know about prioritization. The blind 

16 reviews definitely on the agenda, the reworks, 

17 I'm just not sure because I don't want to 

18 shift, we keep shifting priorities on NIOSH, 

19 too. You know, we're selecting the Savannah 

20 River cases to front-load, you know.

21 MR. FARVER: Well, I mean, there 

22 really wasn't anything for them to do. We 
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1 just looked through the report, because all we 

2 did was look at the two and say, okay, this is 

3 what --

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Well, 

5 they'd have to be at least ready to discuss --

6 MR. FARVER: Sure.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- your 

8 findings, right?

9 MR. FARVER: Sure. And it was 

10 just two cases.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, it was just 

12 two. Okay.

13 MR. FARVER: Yes.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So maybe we can 

15 prioritize those. Let's save that for when we 

16 get to the -- they're in the 8th and 9th 

17 matrix sets, I assume?

18 MR. FARVER: Yes.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. So maybe 

20 we'll bring up the numbers and prioritize 

21 those for discussion next time.

22 MR. FARVER: Sure.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right.

2 MR. KATZ: So those are reworked 

3 cases?

4 MR. FARVER: Yes.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So then the 

6 blind reviews will be in the discussion and 

7 then possibly the reworks on the agenda next 

8 time, and this notion about the DR look-backs, 

9 as I'll refer to them, maybe we should wait 

10 until we talk about Savannah River and maybe 

11 what's coming next. But I like the idea that, 

12 Doug, both you and Ted said, that if we're 

13 going to do it, it's like a trial thing, and 

14 we should select a, maybe not even a site but 

15 a subset of your cases from a site, you know, 

16 that are currently under review, maybe. Maybe 

17 that's the best model. And I think that would 

18 be, you know, a way to go forward in this and 

19 sort of test what hidden things are going to 

20 come up. Alright. So we'll save that for the 

21 agenda in a few minutes.

22 I think our next item is going to 
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1 be selecting cases, right? We wanted to move 

2 that up.

3 MR. KATZ: Yes, that's critical to 

4 get done today.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And can we --

6 Dave, when do you have to leave?

7 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, I'm going 

8 to leave at a quarter of three, unfortunately.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

10 MR. KATZ: It's 2:25 right now.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I want to get 

12 the --

13 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: I could talk 

14 with you later just to get a report on the 

15 last part of the meeting.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes, sure. 

17 I was just going to say, can we take a quick 

18 break and then, hopefully, Dave -- the case 

19 selection process doesn't usually take us that 

20 long. You'll be here for a few minutes to 

21 look --

22 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Yes, although 
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1 let me ask you this: if there's any 

2 consideration about me, why not go ahead until 

3 2:45 and then you take your break?

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. All 

5 right. We can do that.

6 MEMBER MUNN: Fine with me, if you 

7 can do it.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Let's do 

9 that then. Let's pull up -- I just didn't 

10 have the document in front of me.

11 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: Sure. Thanks.

12 MEMBER MUNN: So 10 through 13, is 

13 that what we're doing? 

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, we're 

15 looking at --

16 MR. FARVER: Case selection, I 

17 believe.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- case 

19 selection, yes. Can you -- what is that 

20 document called?

21 MEMBER MUNN: This document might 

22 contain information from --
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1 MR. KATZ: No, he's looking for 

2 the file name.

3 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, I know.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The file name, 

5 yes. She was joking. Well, let me ask it 

6 another way. Who sent it out?

7 MEMBER MUNN: Doug.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It came out 

9 from Doug?

10 MR. FARVER: No, this is case 

11 selection for --

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Case selection. 

13 This is our 16th set.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So did it come 

15 out --

16 MR. KATZ: Stu sent it.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Stu sent it?

18 MR. KATZ: I think Stu sent it 

19 originally, and I think I re-sent it.

20 MR. CALHOUN: Isn't it called DR 

21 sub --

22 MR. KATZ: It's got a long 
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1 complicated name.

2 MR. CALHOUN: Yes. Mine says copy 

3 of, but my guess is it says DR Subcommittee 

4 review, underscore, 16th set --

5 MR. KATZ: Yes, yes.

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: -- space, most 

7 recent --

8 MR. KATZ: All that, yes.

9 MR. FARVER: When did you send 

10 that, Ted?

11 MR. KATZ: Oh, I don't have a --

12 I'm not open to my CDC account, so I can't 

13 tell you.

14 MR. FARVER: Two weeks --

15 MR. KATZ: Well, I resent it 

16 recently, but it was sent at least two weeks 

17 ago by Stu, two to three weeks ago by Stu. 

18 Yes, I sent them to your CSB address.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. I can't 

20 find it. Do you have it handy right now out, 

21 Ted? 

22 MR. KATZ: I'd need a --
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Ten-year 

2 review.

3 MEMBER MUNN: I've got mine out, 

4 but I'm not --

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, that's 

6 going back to --

7 MR. KATZ: Hold on a second.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You think it 

9 was a couple of weeks ago?

10 MR. KATZ: Stu sent it originally 

11 maybe even three weeks ago, and then I 

12 forwarded it to you the next --

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, here it is, 

14 here it is. I've got it. It's way back, 

15 7/23.

16 MR. KATZ: Okay. That's about 

17 three weeks ago.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes, okay. 

19 All right. Okay. So can you give us an 

20 overview, Stu? 

21 MR. KATZ: No, that I can't. I 

22 can only send it to your CDC address.
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1 MEMBER KOTELCHUCK: It's not 

2 familiar to me.

3 MR. KATZ: Although I actually 

4 thought I had Zaida -- Zaida sent to you in a 

5 package. I thought I had Zaida send it to you 

6 in a package, too. 

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So, 

8 anyway, Stu, can you just give us an overview 

9 on this? How many cases are in this?

10 MR. HINNEFELD: There are 70.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Seventy? 

12 MEMBER MUNN: Who sent it out on 

13 the 17th? 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: There are 70 cases 

15 on the list. They represent, I believe, the 

16 most recently completed cases that have been 

17 adjudicated by the Department of Labor. At 

18 least on the date we initiated this process, 

19 which goes back a couple of months probably, 

20 we took the hundred or so or two hundred, 

21 however many it was, most recently completed 

22 cases that we had sent to DOL up to some 
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1 point, we didn't send the ones we sent 

2 yesterday because we knew those weren't 

3 adjudicated, and asked them: which of these 

4 have been finally adjudicated? They answered 

5 us.

6 We took the 70 most recent. We 

7 then sent them to Oak Ridge or ORAU team for 

8 the addition of the final four or five data 

9 fields that have to do with job title, work 

10 location. All of those things all allow even 

11 yet more specific information, so the more 

12 data you put in here the more privacy13 protected it becomes. The original list 

14 didn't have, you know, none of these lists 

15 have the same identification, no names, no 

16 Social Security numbers, no NIOSH tracking 

17 numbers, in order to try to keep them somewhat 

18 anonymous. But they're still, we've still 

19 been advised by OGC that they should be 

20 treated as Privacy-Act-protected.

21 So that is what we've attempted to 

22 do is find the most recent ones possible and 
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1 fill out the data that's there, it's got the 

2 normal selection data, the site, cancer 

3 location, PoC, number of years worked, things 

4 like that.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And it looks 

6 like they're sorted by the date approved 

7 almost. They go back to September 2011, yes. 

8 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. It could be 

9 that we sort them by that. Yes, that could 

10 be. I don't know if -- there's a selection 

11 number on there, which is an artificial 

12 number. If those are not in order, then that 

13 means we sort them --

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, yes, they 

15 are not in order.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: If those are not 

17 in order, that means we sort them by date 

18 selected.

19 MEMBER MUNN: By date --

20 MR. HINNEFELD: By date approved.

21 MEMBER MUNN: Date approved is 

22 what it is.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Then that's the 

2 date that the draft or the date that we 

3 approved the dose reconstruction.

4 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, right.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: It has nothing to 

6 do with the date of the adjudication.

7 MEMBER MUNN: Because they start 

8 with the most recent and go back to 9/22/2011.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Our goal, 

10 again, is to pre-select for the Board, and 

11 then the Board does the tasking. Right, 

12 right.

13 MEMBER MUNN: And what criteria do 

14 we choose to use for the 16th set?

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think we 

16 probably use the same criteria we've been 

17 using all along, yes, yes. But, again -- yes.

18 MR. FARVER: I'll bring this up at 

19 -- sometimes, during our one-on-one dose 

20 reconstruction conversations with the Board 

21 Members, there's been some concerns between 

22 the time we get the case to look at and 
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1 sometimes there's an SEC issued in the interim 

2 and sometimes there's questions, well, should 

3 we even have looked at this? So I don't know 

4 if you may want to take that into 

5 consideration when selecting the sites. If 

6 you know that there's SEC issues out there 

7 that could have a large impact, maybe we don't 

8 want to look at that site in this set.

9 MEMBER MUNN: That covers a lot of 

10 folks, Doug.

11 MR. FARVER: I'm just bringing it 

12 up.

13 MEMBER MUNN: Just saying.

14 MR. KATZ: It's always been sort 

15 of a mixed -- we've never applied a bright 

16 line like that --

17 MR. FARVER: We have not.

18 MR. KATZ: -- for good reason, 

19 because you still do dose reconstruction per 

20 site.

21 MR. FARVER: I was just bringing 

22 the concern up. 
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1 MR. KATZ: Right. 

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. So 

3 these are -- yes, go ahead.

4 MEMBER CLAWSON: Just to make sure 

5 that I'm on the right one, the first one is 

6 2012-06?

7 MEMBER MUNN: 636, yes.

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. I just 

9 wanted to make --

10 MEMBER MUNN: 636 is the first 

11 one.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I'll just 

13 refer to the last three numbers because they 

14 sorted them by date of approval. 

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. And the 

16 selection ID, the 2012-06, just means that we 

17 pulled this case in June of 2012, we pulled 

18 this whole population. The last three digits 

19 are actually the identifying number.

20 MEMBER CLAWSON: And I just 

21 noticed a lot of this and didn't want to give 

22 away any other stuff.
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, there's 

2 nothing Privacy-Act-protected about the 

3 selection ID. That's completely artificial. 

4 It was assigned through this process. Nothing 

5 protected about selection ID.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So going 

7 down these --

8 MR. KATZ: Your goal is to select 

9 a number, I think. So you have 70 cases, and 

10 your goal is to recommend a set of about 25, I 

11 think, is the normal set size. 

12 MR. FARVER: And we've had all 

13 sorts of, everything from 20 up to 40.

14 MR. KATZ: That was one unusual 

15 case where we doubled the set, but I think the 

16 normal set size has been about 25, right?

17 MEMBER MUNN: I think that's 

18 close.

19 MR. FARVER: Yes, 20 to 40. A lot 

20 of it depends on what assigned sets you have 

21 to pick from. I know, like, sort of times 

22 we've had smaller sets, and we've picked 
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1 smaller numbers.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: I forgot that 

3 there's also a PoC selection in here. These 

4 are like 40 to 52 percent.

5 MEMBER MUNN: That's what we see.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Ted, do you want 

7 to keep the scorecard on these?

8 MR. KATZ: Sure. Yes.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. I mean, 

10 the first one I see, 192.

11 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, that's a 

12 familiar one in all respects.

13 MR. KATZ: What site is it?

14 MEMBER MUNN: Seed materials 

15 production.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Although 

17 very low years worked, but yes.

18 MEMBER MUNN: Just in case you 

19 didn't know that.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

21 MEMBER MUNN: I saw 453.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You going on 
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1 down then?

2 MR. KATZ: You might want to, I 

3 mean, I think something that the Board 

4 sometimes asks you is why did you choose the 

5 one you chose, so you may want to make a 

6 record of why it is you're specifying the ones 

7 you do. 

8 MEMBER MUNN: There are --

9 (Simultaneous speakers.)

10 MR. KATZ: -- starting with 

11 Fernald.

12 MEMBER MUNN: -- more recent. One 

13 of them is the site location.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

15 MEMBER MUNN: One of them is the 

16 type of cancer. One of them is the PoC.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I think we 

18 can -- yes.

19 MEMBER MUNN: And one of them is 

20 the work decade, the number of years worked.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Actually, 

22 before 453, 673, which is a Hanford lung 
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1 cancer.

2 MEMBER MUNN: Well, I can't speak 

3 to that.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I know that's 

5 not something that we haven't done before, but 

6 it's 45 years of work, fireman, carpenter, you 

7 know. Yes. The next one, also, I think is 

8 interesting.

9 MEMBER CLAWSON: What number was 

10 that, Mark?

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 673.

12 MR. KATZ: So I have 192, 673.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, the next 

14 one is -- of course, it's skin.

15 MEMBER MUNN: You don't want to do 

16 675?

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I don't know. 

18 It could be just a multiple, but, you know --

19 MEMBER MUNN: There's a bunch of 

20 those.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. I think 

22 I'm down to your 453 then.
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1 MR. KATZ: What site again?

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It's gaseous 

3 diffusion? It doesn't say. 

4 MEMBER MUNN: K-25 --

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, okay, I cut 

6 it off when I shrunk this all down. Let's 

7 see. 

8 MEMBER MUNN: How about --

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We've got 680. 

10 MEMBER MUNN: 680 is not bad.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 680 is Rocky 

12 Flats.

13 MEMBER MUNN: Let's do that one. 

14 And then I marked 618.

15 MR. FARVER: 618. 

16 MR. KATZ: What's that site?

17 MEMBER MUNN: On multiples.

18 MR. FARVER: Multiple sites.

19 MEMBER MUNN: No, it says Fermi. 

20 MR. KATZ: Fermi. 

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 618, yes. 

22 MR. KATZ: And for folks who 
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1 aren't, Board Members who aren't speaking up, 

2 if you have one in between these that you 

3 think, speak up, by all means. 

4 MEMBER MUNN: I'd say 647. 

5 MR. KATZ: And that's what type?

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I'm just 

7 looking at --

8 MEMBER MUNN: Oak Ridge.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 666. What's 

10 this site here?

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: Wang Chung?

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Wah Chang.

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: Wang Chung 

14 tonight, that's all I remembered. 

15 MR. KATZ: Is that affirmative?

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Have we ever 

17 done that? I don't think --

18 MR. FARVER: I don't think we --

19 MEMBER MUNN: We actually have. 

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, we did?

21 MEMBER MUNN: We've done one. I 

22 only remember one.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I don't 

2 remember. Kathy, do you know if we selected 

3 this site? Kathy is good at this.

4 DR. BEHLING: I'm sorry. I didn't 

5 hear the site again.

6 MR. KATZ: Wah Chang.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Wah Chang. Wah 

8 Chang. W-A-H C-H-A-N-G.

9 MEMBER MUNN: It means the Great 

10 Leap Forward, in case you don't know.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I don't 

12 remember. 

13 DR. BEHLING: I don't see that.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think we 

15 added that one. Kathy says she doesn't see it 

16 on her list.

17 MR. KATZ: Okay.

18 MEMBER MUNN: Alright. It's on 

19 now, the devil's number.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Where is that 

21 site anyway?

22 MEMBER MUNN: It's in Albany, 
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1 Oregon. Right on I-5.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Never 

3 heard of it.

4 MEMBER MUNN: What about 647? The 

5 next one?

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Are they 

7 respiratory? Yes.

8 MR. KATZ: 647. That's what?

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It looks okay 

10 to me.

11 MEMBER MUNN: Oak Ridge.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oak Ridge, yes.

13 MR. FARVER: And then there's 644.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, what about 

15 227? 

16 MR. KATZ: Wait. Are we saying 

17 644 or --

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, that was 

19 ahead of mine.

20 MR. FARVER: 644, the Hanford, 

21 Rocky Flats, Savannah River.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, that one 
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1 is good, 644.

2 MR. KATZ: So 644 is on.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Just to go 

4 back, 647 I was saying -- no, it's 227.

5 MEMBER MUNN: Got it.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And it's Oak 

7 Ridge, gaseous diffusion, but it's also Y-12 

8 also. Alright. 

9 MEMBER MUNN: Alright. 214. 

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 214. Have we 

11 done this DeSoto complex, before we get to 214 

12 one? 

13 MEMBER MUNN: No, I'm not familiar 

14 with that if we have.

15 MR. HINNEFELD: DeSoto is one of 

16 the Santa Susana. It's an associate facility 

17 of Santa Susana.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, okay, okay. 

19 Alright, alright. Then we'll skip that. And 

20 I'm looking for 214 now. Yes, okay, 214.

21 MR. KATZ: What's that?

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Fernald. 
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: Feed material.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And the years, 

3 yes. It's the 80s. 

4 MEMBER MUNN: Right. 

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. 

6 MEMBER MUNN: The next one I see 

7 is 604, site and time frame.

8 MR. KATZ: What site? Sorry.

9 MEMBER MUNN: Albuquerque. 

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

11 MR. FARVER: Did you say 604, 

12 Wanda?

13 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, I did.

14 MR. HINNEFELD: And it also has 

15 Los Alamos, Nevada Test Site, Sandia.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Alright. 

17 Wah Chang again, huh? 

18 MEMBER MUNN: Not the same.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: They must have 

20 done all the cases from this site all at once 

21 because there's three or four of them. 

22 Alright. 
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1 MEMBER MUNN: Probably just 

2 working the site.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. I mean, 

4 we're really going to do a mini Site Profile 

5 review on that anyway so --

6 MR. KATZ: Let's go to you and 

7 Dave.

8 MR. HINNEFELD: It's going to take 

9 me a while to get started here.

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: Can I suggest 

11 one, but I'm conflicted, or --

12 MR. KATZ: No, you can't.

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: No, I can't?

14 MR. KATZ: You cannot.

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: Okay. Can Mark?

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I'll look for 

17 it, Brad. 

18 MEMBER MUNN: 628? 

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, 628 I 

20 think is a good one.

21 MR. KATZ: What site?

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It's Idaho. 
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1 We're almost to the end, I think, here. How 

2 about 653?

3 MEMBER MUNN: 5-3? Oh, yes, 

4 that's interesting. 

5 MR. KATZ: What site?

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Fernald.

7 MEMBER MUNN: Fernald and Mound.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And Mound, yes. 

9 MEMBER MUNN: If we want to do a 

10 Mound site, it can be 698.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 648 is 

12 Bethlehem Steel? 

13 MEMBER MUNN: High PoC.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, it's skin 

15 cancer, so this is sort of looking at the non16 listed --

17 MEMBER MUNN: Long-term 

18 employment.

19 MEMBER CLAWSON: I like 621.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It would be a 

21 look at the partial review, right? Yes, okay.

22 MR. KATZ: Bethlehem Steel?
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, 648. I'm 

2 sorry, Brad. What were you saying?

3 MEMBER CLAWSON: 621, just above.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, Fernald 

5 again, right?

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

7 MEMBER MUNN: Didn't we just do 

8 one of those?

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. This one 

10 is in the `90s. We don't have many in that 

11 decade. Let's say 621 for now. The other 

12 thing to remember is that we're going to bring 

13 these back to the full Board so they can cut

14 some off or add some on.

15 MR. KATZ: Yes. You may want to 

16 check with Kathy, I think, who keeps a record 

17 on how many cases we've done --

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: By site, yes.

19 MR. KATZ: -- and how we are in 

20 terms of --

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. We've 

22 never been close. I've checked in on that 
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1 occasionally, but we've never been close. 

2 Yes. 

3 MEMBER MUNN: She's provided us 

4 even --

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Even on ones I 

6 thought we were close, like Savannah River, we 

7 weren't, yes, yes. 

8 MEMBER CLAWSON: What about 199?

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Again, 

10 this would be a non-listed cancer situation. 

11 Mallinckrodt. So 199, you got that one?

12 MR. KATZ: Got 199.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I hear a lot of 

14 -- I'm not sure who's -- okay. And I'm 

15 winding down toward the end here. Look at 

16 640. Anybody interested in that one? 

17 MEMBER CLAWSON: That one -- I 

18 can't comment.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. That one 

20 you can't comment on. 640, yes or no, 

21 anybody? 

22 MEMBER MUNN: Covered.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's covered 

2 you think? Alright. I'm not particularly 

3 wedded to it. The thyroid cancer kind of --

4 anyway --

5 MR. KATZ: We need about double 

6 the number we have.

7 MEMBER MUNN: If you want a really 

8 low PoC.

9 MR. KATZ: Just to let you know 

10 where you are.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Well, 

12 we've got about six left to go through, so 

13 we're not going to get there. 

14 MEMBER MUNN: So we're going to do 

15 649?

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, 649. 

17 MR. KATZ: 649, which is what 

18 site?

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And 584, I 

20 think that's okay, the Pacific Northwest one. 

21 I mean, 552 and 646, both Savannah Rivers, 

22 but, you know, we have a lot of those.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: 552 probably, higher 

2 PoC.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, they're 

4 both in the 50s.

5 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Just --

7 MR. KATZ: 5-5-2?

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Just 552? 

9 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright.

11 MEMBER MUNN: How about 627, site, 

12 long term.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Is that the 

14 last one? 

15 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

17 MR. KATZ: What site?

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: BWXT.

19 MR. KATZ: BWXT. And how many do 

20 we have, Ted? That's everything, that's all 

21 of them. 

22 MEMBER MUNN: Twenty. 
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1 MR. CALHOUN: That's what I got, I 

2 got 20.

3 MR. KATZ: Yes, there's 20.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

5 MR. KATZ: So that's what you got?

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Well, I 

7 don't know that we skipped many borderline 

8 ones. Maybe two or three but --

9 MR. CALHOUN: Can I ask what you 

10 were looking for? I have no clue what your 

11 criteria was.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's good.

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: That, if we told 

14 you, we'd have to shoot you.

15 MR. CALHOUN: Oh, okay. That's all 

16 right. No problem.

17 MEMBER CLAWSON: Basically, the 

18 ones we're interested in or that certain parts 

19 of the site, the years, it's kind of just, 

20 there's no science to it whatsoever. 

21 MR. CALHOUN: That's what I like.

22 (Laughter.)
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It's a random 

2 process. No, I mean, part of the ones we went 

3 by are a lot of the skin cancer ones. I think 

4 they're not as interesting, you know. The 

5 only reason the PoC is so high probably is 

6 that it's multiple skins, and we've seen those 

7 a lot. And tried to look at the, you know, 

8 these are all supposed to have a component of 

9 best estimate in them, but sometimes only part 

10 of it is the best estimate.

11 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

13 MR. KATZ: So, Mark, do you want 

14 me to run through the numbers for you? 

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I've got them 

16 highlighted. I mean, you can --

17 MR. KATZ: No, no.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. So 

19 we'll, if that's okay, this will be the 

20 Subcommittee proposal to the Board at the 

21 upcoming meeting, and, hopefully, we'll get it 

22 tasked out from there. Okay, alright. Now 
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1 can we take our break? 

2 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, now. 

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Let's take ten 

4 minutes or so, and then we'll start looking at 

5 the individual reviews. I think we're going 

6 to start with the Savannah River group. Take 

7 ten.

8 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

9 matter went off the record at 2:51 p.m. and 

10 resumed at 3:07 p.m.)

11 MR. KATZ: And we're back. Do we 

12 have you, David? Dr. Richardson? 

13 MEMBER MUNN: We're now to one 

14 David here.

15 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

16 MEMBER POSTON: When I worked for 

17 the Assistant Secretary, I had the honor of 

18 speaking to the DMSB many times. Can't 

19 remember --

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, the nature 

21 of the job.

22 MR. KATZ: David Richardson, are 
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1 you back on the line with us? Maybe not.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Help me with --

3 the next item on the agenda is the SRS cases 

4 that you identified from the --

5 MR. FARVER: Yes. I sent this out 

6 to everyone about the middle of last week. 

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And what is the 

8 name of it?

9 MR. FARVER: It should be 

10 something like SRS issues, resolutions.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: SC&A responses, 

12 10th through 13th, SRS findings. Okay. 

13 MEMBER CLAWSON: Mark, if you want 

14 a paper one --

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, I got it, I 

16 got it. 

17 MR. FARVER: When you're ready, 

18 let me know. 

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So now 

20 here is the one thing I'm concerned about in 

21 starting this process is that how I dovetail 

22 these back into the original matrix or how we 
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1 track these or keep control of all these 

2 matrices, yes. 

3 MR. FARVER: We don't know, yes.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. 

5 MEMBER MUNN: We don't know now.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Good answer. 

7 Because I don't see the number that would 

8 correspond to the numbers in the regular 

9 matrices, 10 through 13.

10 MR. FARVER: Any number should 

11 still be the same.

12 MEMBER MUNN: 226.1?

13 MR. FARVER: Yes, finding numbers 

14 are still the same. I changed some of the 

15 columns.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Wait. Okay. 

17 Oh, okay, I'm sorry. I was looking at the 

18 introduction piece. I was looking at your 

19 first couple of pages. Yes, so here's the 

20 matrix. Okay.

21 MR. FARVER: Yes. And the reason 

22 I did that was because I thought it provided 
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1 more useful information than some of the other 

2 columns, but we can go through it --

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, okay.

4 MR. FARVER: -- if the format is 

5 not okay. And there were 56 findings from 17 

6 Savannah River cases in the 10th through 13th 

7 sets. We wrote up our findings. NIOSH has 

8 responded to them. And then we have, we came 

9 up with a response to their response, 

10 basically, how we evaluated their response. 

11 And then we kind of suggested action. That 

12 was the basis of this. 

13 And then there's another column 

14 for NIOSH to either say, yes, that's okay, or, 

15 no, that's not okay but we like this idea. So 

16 there will be a case for another response. 

17 Thought process was, with one or two 

18 iterations we could resolve almost all these 

19 findings. 

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

21 MR. FARVER: Okay. And as it 

22 stands now, just after a once through, there 
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1 were, out of 56 findings, we recommended 

2 closing 29 findings, have proposed actions for 

3 18 findings. That leaves 8 findings for the 

4 Board, and, actually, the one that I had down 

5 for subject matter discussion we've already 

6 closed. That was closed when we talked about 

7 the Category A findings. 

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. When 

9 you say you've closed, we've closed, you're 

10 recommending that the -- when you say closed 

11 here, that means --

12 MR. FARVER: That's our 

13 recommendation.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay, alright. 

15 So the Work Group has not closed it?

16 MR. FARVER: They have not. 

17 That's why it's just a suggested action.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. 

19 MR. FARVER: Also in that matrix 

20 is the category that we identified when we 

21 went through the 10 through 13 sets. So as we 

22 took a closer look, there was some of these 
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1 findings that we re-categorized, and those are 

2 listed at the bottom of page three, too. A 

3 few, not too many. 

4 So that's the gist of it. And 

5 even in our recommendations, you'll see a lot 

6 of times it's update the TBD, you know. 

7 They're doing a lot of, making a lot of 

8 assumptions that were not contained in the 

9 TBD, and this is a case where it hasn't been 

10 revised since 2005 for one reason or another. 

11 But the changes they're making, it's not that 

12 we disagree with the changes, it's they're not 

13 documented well and, if you look at the TBD, 

14 they are not what the TBD says. They are 

15 somewhat different. They come from a 

16 different document. So that's the gist of a 

17 lot of suggested actions.

18 MEMBER MUNN: They come from a 

19 different document.

20 MR. FARVER: In other words, they 

21 might pull out a phrase out of IG-001.

22 MEMBER MUNN: Oh, okay.
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1 MR. FARVER: And this comes into -

2 -

3 MEMBER MUNN: Something other than 

4 the technical --

5 MR. FARVER: Technical basis. So 

6 the technical basis will give you one number, 

7 and IG-001 will give you a different number.

8 MEMBER MUNN: A different number. 

9 Probably not too different but different 

10 enough to be different.

11 MR. FARVER: It's different enough 

12 that when you're reviewing it you can't tell 

13 where it came from.

14 MEMBER MUNN: Okay.

15 MR. FARVER: That's okay, but 

16 somewhere it needs to get all combined. Now, 

17 how would you like to proceed? First off, I 

18 mean, is this format okay? Because this is 

19 what I propose using for the closing out of 

20 these backlog of findings because it's 

21 something that's very easy to look at and it 

22 kind of sums up the actions, responses. And 
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1 how it merges into your matrix I'm not sure 

2 yet.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

4 MEMBER MUNN: Well, and that's my 

5 only complaint.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Back to the 

7 database.

8 MEMBER MUNN: It would be nice to 

9 have it in the same format, but it's hard to 

10 try to switch back and forth from the matrix 

11 that we started with to this matrix.

12 MR. FARVER: Well, that was 

13 difficult, too, because it was, those matrices 

14 were broken down by set, 11th, 12th, 13th, and 

15 so forth, and now we're combining things.

16 MEMBER MUNN: You're doing 10 to 

17 13.

18 MR. FARVER: So you'd be jumping 

19 around from matrix to matrix anyway.

20 MEMBER MUNN: It's probably the 

21 only legitimate way to do it. 

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And the only, 
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1 the category differences are what? I mean, 

2 the one thing I noticed is you took out the --

3 there used to be two rankings.

4 MR. FARVER: I did, because it 

5 wasn't always filled in --

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It's not 

7 apropos to what you're doing here, yes. It 

8 was usually, I mean, we didn't fill it in 

9 until the end of the hundred cases really. 

10 MR. FARVER: Correct.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

12 MR. FARVER: Which is why I tried 

13 to whittle it down to columns that were 

14 useful.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Otherwise, I 

16 don't see a problem with the columns 

17 necessarily.

18 Ms. BEHLING: This is Kathy 

19 Behling. Just one suggestion I would make on 

20 this matrix, could we have at the very end of 

21 the matrix the list of categories again, what 

22 A represents and B represents?
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1 MR. FARVER: Okay. That's up in 

2 table one, Kathy.

3 Ms. BEHLING: Okay. Sorry. 

4 MR. FARVER: That's okay. But, 

5 you know, I could put it as something.

6 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, it's good. 

7 It's just every time we change anything, 

8 somebody like me is going to complain just 

9 because you changed it. That's all right. 

10 MR. FARVER: I'll expect that from 

11 you. 

12 MEMBER MUNN: It's in my job 

13 description. Wanda will complain.

14 MR. FARVER: Okay.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. So 

16 why don't we, I think the format is okay.

17 MR. FARVER: And, in general, for 

18 observations, I didn't put any action down 

19 because, normally, they don't have to respond 

20 to observations.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That was one 

22 question I was going to ask is why are we, 
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1 should we even track the observations, or 

2 should they just be in your report?

3 MR. FARVER: Yes.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: If we're not 

5 going to take any action on them, why bother?

6 MR. FARVER: We haven't in the 

7 past.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right.

9 MR. FARVER: So that's why I did 

10 not put an action in there for those.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. 

12 MR. SIEBERT: So what you're 

13 saying, as a person who does a lot of these 

14 responses, is we don't need to --

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, I mean, 

16 by calling them observations, I think SC&A is 

17 suggesting that they don't require a 

18 resolution.

19 MR. FARVER: Right. They're not 

20 to the level of a finding. And this is 

21 another thing we go over when we talk with the 

22 Board Members: is this an observation to you 
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1 or is this a finding, what's your opinion? 

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

3 MR. FARVER: And make changes 

4 accordingly.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So I would say, 

6 if you end up at a place where you're calling 

7 it a finding, include it in the matrix. 

8 Otherwise, just leave it in your base report.

9 MR. FARVER: Okay.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I would say 

11 because --

12 MR. SIEBERT: So they don't go 

13 into the matrix anymore? 

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

15 MR. SIEBERT: Okay.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That doesn't 

17 mean NIOSH can't read --

18 MR. SIEBERT: We will --

19 (Simultaneous speakers.)

20 MR. SIEBERT: -- and consider, I'm 

21 sure.

22 MR. FARVER: And that's all it is. 
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1 It's really a note to them that we came across 

2 something that might be of interest to you. 

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. I think 

4 we have enough to sort through. We don't need 

5 to, you know, clutter our matrices up.

6 MEMBER MUNN: I'm pretty sure.

7 MR. FARVER: Okay.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. So 

9 then I guess we can start --

10 MR. FARVER: Okay. We'll see. 

11 The first finding is 255.1, failure to account 

12 for internal dose from fission products. This 

13 goes back to one of these previously 

14 identified findings about, oh, fission 

15 products, whole body counts, urine, and it's 

16 one we resolved back in eight, I believe, for 

17 Savannah River. It has to do with OTIB --

18 MR. SIEBERT: It's using the 

19 chooser tool for picking the most claimant20 favorable radionuclide for a whole body count 

21 in that method. 

22 MR. FARVER: Yes. And it's also, 
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1 it also applies to urine data or something 

2 that it was still consistent. And I think 

3 that's how the finding, the previous one, was.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. I don't 

5 see a -- NIOSH suggested action.

6 MR. FARVER: So what we came up 

7 with --

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Shouldn't that 

9 last column be "Board suggested action?"

10 MR. FARVER: Well --

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Or 

12 "Subcommittee suggested action?"

13 MR. FARVER: Let's say we go down 

14 farther and we have an SC&A action or 

15 suggested action that says: "provide SC&A with 

16 the neutron dose calculations." You know, 

17 that's our suggested action?

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

19 MR. FARVER: And NIOSH would agree 

20 or disagree, and then they would say, 

21 "calculations provided to SC&A on such a such 

22 date." And then we have all these actions 
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1 tracked, and that gives us the information to 

2 close out that after we review the file. So, 

3 like I say, I dreamed all this up --

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And I think this 

5 was actually in the other matrix is when we 

6 switched the header, because that last column 

7 should be, you know, "Subcommittee action" or 

8 "suggested Subcommittee action" because 

9 sometimes I put in there "SC&A will review", 

10 blah blah blah --

11 MR. FARVER: Yes.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- so it can go 

13 either way. It's an action for --

14 MR. FARVER: It can.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- either one, 

16 yes. That's all I'm saying. So in there, I 

17 was just going to say, you know, the 

18 Subcommittee or --

19 MR. FARVER: Okay.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- you know, to 

21 summarize like I usually do, NIOSH can, you 

22 know, revise --
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1 MR. FARVER: My thinking when I 

2 put the NIOSH suggested action was let's say 

3 we come up with our response that, I don't 

4 know, we come up with something. They don't 

5 quite agree with it, but they're going to say, 

6 "We don't agree with it but how about this?" 

7 So they would suggest something for us to 

8 consider.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

10 MR. FARVER: That was my thinking 

11 about having them have input on that one, not 

12 so much the Subcommittee closing something. 

13 MR. KATZ: We still need a final 

14 column --

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I think 

16 there should be a column of closure, yes. 

17 MR. FARVER: Okay.

18 MR. SIEBERT: And I was going to 

19 say, what we've done in the past is for 

20 additional NIOSH responses or the like, we 

21 just put another heading, another entry under 

22 the NIOSH response dated --
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Dated. Yes, 

2 that works.

3 MR. SIEBERT: I mean, just track 

4 it that way, yes. I don't think we need an 

5 extra column as such.

6 MR. FARVER: And the only reason I 

7 didn't consider that too much was that if 

8 somehow we can get this into a database, then 

9 that's tough to add to a field after the field 

10 has been in there. But we'll have to work 

11 that part out.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I mean, I would 

13 just say "suggested action," we can leave it 

14 there for now, but "suggested action," I 

15 think.

16 MR. FARVER: At the very end?

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, instead 

18 of "NIOSH suggested action," just "suggested 

19 action." 

20 MR. KATZ: Why isn't it just 

21 "Subcommittee decision" or whatever? Because 

22 you're the ones, you decide whether it's 
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1 closed or whether it's in abeyance, whatever. 

2 So just "status whatever," or just "status" 

3 because you close them or you don't close 

4 them. 

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But what we've 

6 always put there in the past is, you know, 

7 "closed, no further action," or "closed, NIOSH 

8 will revise TBD blah blah blah", and then 

9 there's a holder that we do to make sure they 

10 -- you know. Remember how we always do that? 

11 MR. KATZ: So just "Board action" 

12 anyway. "Subcommittee action."

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's what I 

14 just said, didn't I? 

15 MR. KATZ: I don't know what you 

16 said. 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, instead of 

18 "NIOSH action," "Subcommittee action." 

19 MEMBER MUNN: Well, in the past, 

20 we've used "program action." In the past, we 

21 used "program action." Either way, it's fine. 

22 I'm just saying.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Or just 

2 "suggested action." Yes, whatever. I don't 

3 think it's just NIOSH. That's all I was 

4 saying.

5 MEMBER MUNN: No.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

7 MEMBER MUNN: We had a Board 

8 action column and a program action column.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So for 

10 this one anyway, we're going to say "closed, 

11 no further action," right? NIOSH used the --

12 I'm trying to get the term -- the radionuclide 

13 chooser TBD. SC&A accepts this approach. No 

14 further action. 

15 MR. FARVER: What? For your 

16 wording?

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. NIOSH 

18 used the radionuclide chooser TBD. Is there a 

19 number for that? 

20 MR. SIEBERT: Well, the TBD 

21 itself, the Savannah River TBD, has a portion 

22 -- tool is what you were thinking, right? 
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Tool, yes.

2 MR. SIEBERT: It has just a 

3 portion that describes that you can use the 

4 most claimant-favorable radionuclide from the 

5 whole body count, and then there's a chooser 

6 tool to do so.

7 MR. FARVER: I could go back and 

8 look up what finding it was back in Section 8.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's okay. I 

10 just want to be sort of specific. NIOSH uses 

11 the radionuclide chooser tool referenced in 

12 SRS TBD. SC&A agrees with this, no further 

13 action. Right?

14 MR. FARVER: Yes. 

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

16 MR. FARVER: Two observations. 

17 I'm down to 256.1, incomplete accounting of 

18 neutron dose. A single neutron dosimetry 

19 result of zero in 1995. It should have been 

20 caught, which would have allowed them to apply 

21 missed neutron dose, but it was not. So this 

22 falls under a QA issue, but I don't know that 
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1 there's any action we can take, so we would 

2 suggest closing it. Now, if you want to get 

3 into more of, well, how did you miss it, is it 

4 a data entry error or is it some other type of 

5 error, that's different.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No, I think 

7 it's closed, yes.

8 MR. FARVER: Okay.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: NIOSH 

10 acknowledged it, yes. Okay. 

11 MR. FARVER: We've moved down to 

12 page three, and the next one is 257.1, failed 

13 to assign occupational medical doses. This is 

14 where medical doses, at the time the DR was 

15 performed, they did not have the medical 

16 records. After the DR was performed, the 

17 medical records arrived, but changes were not 

18 made. In other words, there was no action 

19 taken that I know of when those records 

20 arrived to start the change process. And as 

21 the timing works out --

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I'm sorry. I'm 
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1 just looking back. I was catching up.

2 MR. FARVER: Sure. Okay. 

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 256, 

4 observation number four. And I know, you 

5 know, we're making this administrative 

6 decision, not to look at --

7 MR. FARVER: Okay.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- actions on 

9 observations, but how is a -- this observation 

10 reflects a previous -- this is what caught my 

11 eye, this observation reflects a previous 

12 finding that has been resolved. It's 

13 observations about a CATI report, right? How 

14 could that have been previously resolved? 

15 MR. SIEBERT: I believe this is, 

16 yes, this is the more generalized issue of 

17 things were stated in the CATI. The SEC 

18 review stated that it could have been 

19 explained more clearly in the dose 

20 reconstruction, so I believe that what Doug 

21 was mentioning was that overall process --

22 MR. FARVER: That overall process.
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1 MR. SIEBERT: -- has been 

2 discussed in the Subcommittee.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right, got 

4 it.

5 MR. FARVER: Which is probably why 

6 it was made an observation and not a finding.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. That's 

8 fine. Okay, sorry. Yes, I agree with that. 

9 Then you were saying --

10 MR. FARVER: This is down to 

11 257.1, the medical records arrived after the 

12 dose reconstruction had been performed but 

13 before DOL issued their final decision letter. 

14 So what do you do? I mean, that's what it 

15 comes down to.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

17 MR. FARVER: And there's no 

18 indication in the records that the medical 

19 records were considered. Now, they have been 

20 considered since then. But the concern is, 

21 once you get records after you've completed a 

22 dose reconstruction, what's the process? 
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1 MR. CALHOUN: Well, now it's that 

2 PAD process.

3 MR. FARVER: Let's say you have a 

4 short time frame like this where the medical 

5 records come in February; DOL is about to 

6 issue a letter. Do you, like, get on the 

7 phone and say, "hey, we just got records in --

8 "

9 MR. CALHOUN: I don't know that we 

10 have a process in place that would catch it 

11 that quick.

12 MR. FARVER: Well, I mean, if you 

13 catch it. I mean, if you say records arrived, 

14 okay, I've got records, what do I do?

15 MR. CALHOUN: If we got records 

16 before the case was sent to Labor, I can't say 

17 for sure we would do it. I would hope that we 

18 would pull the case back, because we can do 

19 that with the push of a button.

20 MR. SIEBERT: Grady, this one, the 

21 medical X-rays came in two months after we 

22 submitted it to Labor. 
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1 MR. FARVER: It came in after 

2 Labor.

3 MR. CALHOUN: Okay. Yes, well, 

4 right now what we've got is every time, every 

5 time we get additional information after the 

6 case has gone final, we review the case. And 

7 I wrote down some stats that we've gotten. We 

8 just started doing this three or four months 

9 ago. We've reviewed 1,070 cases where we've 

10 had additional information that has come in. 

11 Eight of those cases are likely to flip to 

12 comp, and as soon as we get the information 

13 that those cases could flip to comp, we 

14 request a rework from Labor.

15 MR. FARVER: I understand. I mean, 

16 this probably isn't going to flip anything. 

17 It was just a matter of, in general, what is 

18 the process. I know this was a short window -

19 -

20 MR. CALHOUN: Right. We did not 

21 have a process until recently.

22 MR. FARVER: Okay. I mean, is 
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1 there a mechanism just to pick up the call and 

2 say, Labor, we've got records in, we know 

3 you're about to issue a final decision letter, 

4 and you may want to hold off until we can look 

5 at this case again?

6 MR. CALHOUN: If it was between 

7 there, we would. I don't think that -- right 

8 now, our process is, as they come in we're 

9 looking through them, and we've got a big 

10 backlog. So I'm not going to tell you we've 

11 got something right now that we can do it 

12 because I'm not sure it would happen that way.

13 MR. FARVER: But it's not like as 

14 it comes in it would trigger something. It 

15 comes in and goes into review --

16 MR. CALHOUN: Right. And I'll 

17 tell you what, I think I just need -- I don't 

18 know when the trigger happens, if there's a 

19 periodic review of the document or if, as soon 

20 as it's uploaded, there's a flag. I just 

21 don't know right now.

22 MR. FARVER: Okay.
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1 MR. CALHOUN: Do you know, Scott?

2 MR. SIEBERT: At the moment, it's 

3 more of a batch process, 

4 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, that's what I 

5 thought.

6 MR. SIEBERT: The overall batch was 

7 about 1500. And as soon as we're getting that 

8 batch worked out, which is in the next few 

9 months, then we'll start the next -- look at 

10 the next batch like that. So it's more of a 

11 chunk as we get to -- but then again, each 

12 time period it's going to get shorter because 

13 now we have a process in place for doing it 

14 and catching up with it, as opposed to the 

15 backlog.

16 MR. FARVER: And the reason I made 

17 this a Subcommittee issue, because I wasn't 

18 sure that was something that I'm going to 

19 resolve talking to them. I mean, we could 

20 discuss each other's thoughts, but it's more 

21 or less how the Subcommittee wants to handle 

22 that, do nothing or close this or wants more 
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1 information. So in those cases, I just put 

2 down "Subcommittee issue."

3 MEMBER MUNN: It's not clear that 

4 once someone picks up that record and 

5 identifies the case file, it's not clear that 

6 there's an automatic ding telling you this one 

7 has already gone or this one is on the deck 

8 ready to go. Does that exist?

9 MR. CALHOUN: No.

10 MEMBER MUNN: That warning flag?

11 MR. CALHOUN: No.

12 MEMBER MUNN: And is there a way 

13 that we could get it to exist, without really 

14 and truly driving everybody nuts? 

15 MR. CALHOUN: I think we should 

16 look at it. It seems like there should be 

17 something there. What happens is, this whole 

18 process is document-driven, and, once you 

19 upload a document into the NOCTS file for case 

20 number 1234, it seems like there could be --

21 MEMBER MUNN: There ought to be.

22 MR. CALHOUN: -- something that 
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1 says, hey. So we can look at that and see if 

2 we can make that more of a real-time thing.

3 MEMBER MUNN: We just need 

4 something to notify the person who is 

5 inputting into the system the fact that this 

6 information has arrived. There just needs to 

7 be a ding.

8 MR. CALHOUN: Right. I agree. 

9 I'll check into that. It seems like one of 

10 our crack staff could do something like that, 

11 but I'll check.

12 MR. KATZ: Are we closing --

13 MR. FARVER: I think there would 

14 be an action on the NIOSH part of it.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, NIOSH is 

16 going to check into having an automated 

17 notification. Is that sort of how to describe 

18 it? Yes.

19 MR. CALHOUN: Make it closer to 

20 real time. 

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. And 

22 we'll just keep it open, pending, you know, 
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1 what you find out on that. And I think if you 

2 find out, yes, we can do it, it's going to 

3 take our computer guys a little while to 

4 figure it out, and then we can close it.

5 MR. FARVER: Okay.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

7 MR. FARVER: 257, observation one, 

8 just for your information. This was 

9 identified in the Site Profile review, so it 

10 was not made a finding. It was just, you 

11 know, reiterating an observation. So that 

12 just gives you an example of what's a Site 

13 Profile issue.

14 276.1, inappropriate assignment of 

15 73 to 76 neutron energy years and doses.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Wait, wait, 

17 wait. Let's just go back to that. I'm glad 

18 you pointed that out, observation one, given 

19 the discussion with Knolls. Do we know if 

20 this is captured in the current Site Profile 

21 matrix?

22 MR. FARVER: Well, that hasn't 
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1 been revised. Well, it's in the Site Profile 

2 review --

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

4 MR. FARVER: -- from our last 

5 review, which was many years ago.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So it was 

7 looked at as a finding --

8 MR. FARVER: Yes.

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.

10 MR. FARVER: This is one of those 

11 outstanding issues.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. And you 

13 said it was. Yes, I'm sorry. I didn't see 

14 that. Captured in the SC&A -- MR. 

15 FARVER: So when you look at this, would this 

16 impact cases?

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Okay. 

18 MR. FARVER: If we could just get 

19 that Work Group to get going.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

21 MR. KATZ: Which Work Group?

22 MR. FARVER: Savannah River.
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1 MR. KATZ: Yes, that's the 

2 Chairman.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: It has a good 

4 record at Rocky Flats, though. Okay. Go on 

5 to the next one.

6 MR. FARVER: We have 276.1, 

7 inappropriate assignment of neutron energy, 

8 year, and dose. Okay. The doses, the neutron 

9 energies reported in the dose reconstruction 

10 report are not the same ones that are in the 

11 IREP table. And this confuses me because, 

12 based on what Scott presented to us, the 

13 tables in the dose reconstruction report are 

14 generated by the tools. That's nothing the 

15 dose reconstructor would do. It's already 

16 generated, so I don't know why they would be 

17 different. I also don't know why it would not 

18 get caught in a peer review. You know, you 

19 should be looking and see if the energies are 

20 the correct energies. 

21 Also, just as another note, the 

22 files that we had to look at did not have the 
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1 neutron dose calculations. 

2 MR. SIEBERT: I have a question 

3 about that. They're in the tools that are in 

4 the claim.

5 MR. FARVER: The numbers in the 

6 IREP table, the final IREP table, those 

7 numbers are not in any of the tools that are 

8 contained, I could not find them in any of the 

9 workbooks that are contained in the files that 

10 we had. In other words, there might be 

11 several iterations, but whatever the final one 

12 was, it wasn't there. 

13 MR. SIEBERT: Could it be -- are 

14 you saying that a tool didn't spit out exactly 

15 what the IREP sheet had, or the IREP sheet --

16 any single one of those lines you could not 

17 find in the tool?

18 MR. FARVER: The first part.

19 MR. SIEBERT: Okay. There's a 

20 reason for that.

21 MR. FARVER: Okay.

22 MR. SIEBERT: If you look in this 
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1 case, there are two tools, there are two

2 external tools. The reason for that is this 

3 is a breast cancer, and that is back in the 

4 time frame when we were just beginning to 

5 implement the OTIB-17 shallow dose 

6 methodologies. The complex-wide tool that was 

7 used for this, for the best estimate portion 

8 of it, did not have OTIB-17 incorporated in it 

9 yet. So for the shallow portions of it, the 

10 normal Savannah River tool had to be run to 

11 create those portions of the calculation.

12 So at that time, unfortunately, 

13 it's just one tool wouldn't do it all, so we 

14 had to take two tools. And if you look, and 

15 you may want to do this because the neutron 

16 calculations are in there, everything that's 

17 in the final IREP sheet should be from one of 

18 those two tools.

19 MR. FARVER: I agree. And that's 

20 why I said I could not find the neutron 

21 numbers that were in the final IREP sheet in 

22 any of the workbooks that were provided.
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1 MR. SIEBERT: Okay. That wasn't 

2 the question I initially asked, but okay.

3 MR. FARVER: I'm familiar with the 

4 shallow dose problem because we've come across 

5 that before, where the shallow doses are done 

6 with one tool and other doses are done with 

7 another. That's okay. It's when we look 

8 through all of them we still can't find them.

9 MR. SIEBERT: I will look at those 

10 and see what the issue is.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So you have a 

12 SC&A suggested action here. 

13 MR. FARVER: Yes, just so we can 

14 look at the calculations, if you just provide 

15 that workbook. It may have been that it was 

16 in a different workbook, and that workbook 

17 just wasn't part of the files that were sent 

18 to us or were put out there on the drive.

19 MEMBER MUNN: Sounds like the most 

20 likely reason.

21 MR. FARVER: That has happened 

22 before.
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1 MR. SIEBERT: See, the neutron 

2 would not be done separately. It's done in 

3 those specific workbooks. So the two 

4 workbooks that are in there should reflect the 

5 neutron calculations that are in there. So 

6 I'll take a look --

7 MR. FARVER: Okay.

8 MR. SIEBERT: -- and do a 

9 comparison. 

10 MR. FARVER: And then, of course, 

11 the other one is, well, how did that table get 

12 one heading when the IREP table had a 

13 different heading? 

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, the energy 

15 ranges?

16 MR. FARVER: Energy levels.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

18 MR. FARVER: Neutrons.

19 MR. SIEBERT: And that may have to 

20 do with the fact that separate tools were used 

21 and iterative form to create the report, and 

22 then the latest version may not have made it 
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1 into the table for the headings. I'm not 

2 going to say that that's the issue, but I 

3 could see that that would be the issue as to 

4 where that could have come from.

5 MEMBER MUNN: Yes. You'll have to 

6 look at it.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Yes, 

8 NIOSH will review that. Next? 

9 MR. FARVER: 276.2 is the same 

10 thing, only it's for missed neutron dose, I 

11 believe. I believe it's supposed to be for 

12 missed neutron dose.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So NIOSH will 

14 look at that as well.

15 MR. SIEBERT: Same thing, yes. 

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. 

17 MR. FARVER: 276.3 is the 

18 incorrect assignment of '57 and '85 X-ray 

19 doses. The doses for '57 and 1985 were 

20 incorrectly assigned. Based on the actual 

21 records, only one PA chest X-ray examination 

22 should have been assigned in '57 and no chest 
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1 X-ray should have been assigned in '85. 

2 That's another QA concern, you know, what's 

3 going on, but we can't -- suggested action is 

4 we close it. 

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, no further 

6 action. QA item, no further action. Okay. 

7 MR. FARVER: 276.4, incomplete 

8 assignment of fission product doses. Okay. 

9 This is more of a minor one. It has to do 

10 with the start dates, and is this the CADW 

11 one? 

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, one of the 

13 pieces of it.

14 MR. FARVER: One of the pieces. 

15 In other words, the dose reconstruction review 

16 comes up with a date for intakes of, let's 

17 say, from a mid-month to a mid-month or mid18 year to mid-year, but the CADW program 

19 operates from beginning of year numbers, not 

20 specific dates. Dose-wise, it's not 

21 significant. It is more just the fact that 

22 the dates were different between the files and 
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1 the DR review. 

2 So, now that we understand that, 

3 it's really no action.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And it's 

5 identified as a quality assurance item, right?

6 MR. FARVER: Well, yes, they feel 

7 they should have caught that.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes, but 

9 no further action.

10 MR. FARVER: No. And then just a 

11 couple observations. I don't know if you want 

12 to go through them or not. Probably not.

13 And then on the top of page eight, 

14 we have 277.1. And this is: the shallow 

15 photon dose conversion factor in the dose 

16 report is not consistent with IG-001. Okay. 

17 And, in effect, it is consistent with IG-001, 

18 but it is not part of the dose conversion 

19 factors listed in Appendix A, and it is part 

20 of Table 4.1.A, which talks about special dose 

21 conversion factors for plutonium for 20 keV 

22 photons. 
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1 Okay. So now we have a Technical 

2 Basis Document that says less than 30 keV. We 

3 go to look up the dose conversion factor in 

4 IG-001 in Appendix A, and we find the less 

5 than 30 keV dose conversion factor, but it's 

6 not the one in the dose reconstruction. Okay? 

7 So, I mean, that's our process. And that's 

8 because they took it from Table 4.1.A, which I 

9 don't even have a problem with that. But 

10 somehow there needs to be a connection between 

11 the technical basis and, you know, that table 

12 4.1.A. So put something in the technical 

13 basis that says, "for these plutonium 

14 facilities you can use the 20 keV values found 

15 in Table 4.1.A." 

16 MR. SIEBERT: Well, I'm just 

17 thinking the guidance already exists in OCAS 

18 IG-001. And, I mean, you can put the, just 

19 refer to the exact same guidance again in a 

20 TBD, but, in effect, what we need to do is 

21 then any site that used plutonium we need to 

22 specifically call that out in those TBDs when 
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1 the guidance is already in OCAS IG-001.

2 MR. FARVER: Well, the confusion 

3 is, because you are -- and I don't remember 

4 the table that's in the TBD, I think it's two 

5 tables where it lists the energy, different 

6 energies for the different facilities, 

7 different photon energies. It doesn't say 20 

8 keV. It says less than 30 keV. Now, even 

9 though 20 is less than 30, I'm saying it's 

10 confusing because you're expecting a less than 

11 a 30 keV dose conversion factor. But that's 

12 not what you use; you use a 20 keV. I'm not 

13 saying it's correct or incorrect. I'm just 

14 saying there needs to be a connection between 

15 those two somewhere that says it's okay to do 

16 that.

17 MR. CALHOUN: Well, yes, we'll 

18 have to look at that one. What I'm thinking 

19 is we're binning them because of the IREP 

20 inputs. Are we not?

21 MR. SIEBERT: Correct.

22 MR. CALHOUN: That's why we bin 
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1 them, because there's no 20 keV option. It's 

2 less than 30, the option.

3 MR. SIEBERT: Right. We use that 

4 in the less than 30 bin for plutonium 

5 facilities.

6 MR. CALHOUN: Yes. So I'd have to 

7 see if there's actually, I mean, is there a 25 

8 keV or a 30 keV DCF that we're worried about 

9 confusing that with? 

10 MR. FARVER: There are, Appendix 

11 A, you have a --

12 MR. CALHOUN: Of IG-001.

13 MR. FARVER: Of IG-001. You have 

14 the less than 30 keV dose conversion factor.

15 MR. CALHOUN: Correct.

16 MR. FARVER: Correct. Okay. 

17 Those are not the same values as in Table 

18 4.1.A.

19 MR. CALHOUN: In the TBD?

20 MR. SIEBERT: No, that's also 

21 still in IG-001.

22 MR. FARVER: In IG-001.
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1 MR. SIEBERT: It's all in IG-001.

2 MR. CALHOUN: Okay.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: What's in that 

4 table?

5 MR. FARVER: That's the 20 keV.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. Okay. 

7 That's what I thought.

8 MR. FARVER: And then you go to 

9 your Technical Basis Document, which mentions 

10 nothing about 20 keV. It just says less than 

11 30 keV.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

13 MEMBER MUNN: And if your eye is 

14 looking for 20 --

15 MR. CALHOUN: I'll have to look. 

16 I'm not going to just say we're going to 

17 change the TBD to say less than 20. I'd 

18 rather remove the less than 20 or 20 from 

19 someplace else and keep everything less than 

20 30.

21 MR. FARVER: You don't even have 

22 to say you're going to use less than 20. What 
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1 you could --

2 MR. CALHOUN: Or less than 30.

3 MR. FARVER: Or less than 30. You 

4 could say something in the TBD like a little 

5 asterisk at the bottom saying, "for plutonium 

6 facilities, it's appropriate to use the values 

7 in Table 1.A from IG-001."

8 MR. CALHOUN: Okay. Let me look at 

9 that.

10 MR. FARVER: Just make the link.

11 MR. CALHOUN: Alright.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. So 

13 NIOSH is going to check that.

14 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, we're going to 

15 check on that.

16 MR. FARVER: And it also causes 

17 confusion when you try to look at the table in 

18 the dose reconstruction report, because now 

19 it's going to list less than 30. But even 

20 that is understandable if you make the link in 

21 the Technical Basis Document.

22 MR. SIEBERT: Which also then 
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1 would link to the only bin you have in IREP.

2 MR. FARVER: Yes, that's okay.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

4 MR. FARVER: You can keep your 

5 bins.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. 

7 MR. FARVER: 277.2, the DR failed 

8 to assign missed or unmonitored dose in '72. 

9 Okay.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You gave this 

11 one to us, huh?

12 MR. FARVER: Yes, I threw this one 

13 back at you. The unmonitored dose for 72 

14 could have been assigned. Single year 

15 additional dose would have no impact. It's a 

16 little bit more complicated than that. The 

17 employee worked at Savannah River from '55 

18 through '92. There was no dose assigned for 

19 measured, missed, or unmonitored for '72. I 

20 don't know why none was assigned or why he 

21 wasn't monitored or what, but, I mean, he was 

22 continually employed from '55 to '92. From 
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1 the magnitude of the doses recorded for the 

2 other years the employee was badged, we 

3 thought it might be appropriate to either 

4 assign a coworker dose or an average adjacent 

5 year dose instead of nothing. That's the gist 

6 of it. It was just kind of odd, the one year 

7 standing out.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. And I'm 

9 not sure I understand NIOSH's responses that 

10 you could have. It doesn't say --

11 MR. SIEBERT: When you look at the 

12 record, yes, well, when you look at the 

13 record, it's a professional judgment decision 

14 at this point. When you look at the records, 

15 individual in '69 has 155 millirem, '70 has 

16 10, which, realistically, that's below the 

17 limit of detection, so they didn't have 

18 anything. In '71, there's 75. '72, there's 

19 no entries whatsoever. '73, there's zero. So 

20 when the dose reconstructor looked at that at 

21 the time, they made a professional judgment 

22 that, in '72, perhaps he was not being 
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1 monitored and did not assign any unmonitored 

2 dose during that time frame. 

3 When I look at it personally, I 

4 agree that, you know, it is reasonable to 

5 actually fill that gap with actual exposure 

6 from one of the years on either side of it. I 

7 think it's reasonable.

8 MEMBER MUNN: One of them is zero.

9 MR. SIEBERT: But I wouldn't say 

10 there's specifically anything driving the dose 

11 reconstructor to assign something.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: What happened 

13 after '73? Was it all zero?

14 MR. SIEBERT: '74, there's no --

15 once again, it's like '72, there's no entries. 

16 But when you look at the TIB-7 for Savannah 

17 River, it's written for 1973 through 1988, we 

18 know that they didn't list all the cycle data, 

19 so we make the assumption that there's no 

20 information available during that time frame, 

21 and we fill it with zero.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay.
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1 MR. SIEBERT: Just '72 is outside 

2 that time frame.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Got it. I'm 

4 not sure what action is warranted, you know.

5 MR. FARVER: Well, you know, I 

6 don't know.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I know, I 

8 know.

9 MR. FARVER: I mean, it is 

10 professional judgment. It also goes back to, 

11 you know, claimant-favorability. What do you 

12 do when you don't know? I don't know.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. Right. 

14 So it's a fairly minor thing, but it --

15 MR. FARVER: Yes. It is.

16 MEMBER MUNN: The only thing we 

17 could possibly do as a Subcommittee would be 

18 to suggest to NIOSH that they include some 

19 kind of instruction as to how to proceed in 

20 cases like that, and I'm not at all sure 

21 that's appropriate for us to do.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Do you have 
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1 instruction, though, generally speaking? 

2 MR. SIEBERT: Well, if there's --

3 (Simultaneous speakers.)

4 MEMBER MUNN: If it's used --

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- on either 

6 side.

7 MR. SIEBERT: I mean, at that 

8 point, yes, it's professional judgment for a 

9 single year.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right, right.

11 MEMBER MUNN: It's so easy in 

12 these cases for, when you have no knowledge at 

13 all of where these people actually were 

14 working on the site, to assume that they may 

15 have been -- anything that you do is an 

16 assumption. Anything. 

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I don't 

18 think there's much that we can do as far as an 

19 action.

20 MEMBER MUNN: We can accept the 

21 professional judgment or not.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. Yes.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: It seems appropriate 

2 to me to accept the professional judgment of 

3 the reconstructor in this case. It's a single 

4 case. Since his exposure was not enormous in 

5 either case, unless there was an extreme event 

6 of some sort, which should have been caught in 

7 advance during that year, then the probability 

8 would be very high that his exposure would 

9 have been low in any case, and probably not 

10 significant in terms of dose reconstruction. 

11 That would appear to be the --

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I'm 

13 looking at SC&A's last line there. "Just 

14 because the additional dose does not affect 

15 the compensability decision does not excuse a 

16 missing dose." I mean, it is a judgment 

17 thing; I agree. 

18 MEMBER MUNN: The predominance of 

19 the evidence would say that that exposure is 

20 unlikely to have been significant in the 

21 calculation.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: But that's not 
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1 the point, right?

2 MEMBER MUNN: No. What to do --

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Either way, I 

4 think it's either -- you know, it's not a big 

5 issue, but it's a question of -- it's not 

6 going to impact the overall decision, but --

7 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Do you know 

8 that they --

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: David.

10 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes. Do you 

11 know that they recognized that there wasn't a 

12 value there? I mean, did they justify their 

13 decision to have an assumed value of zero?

14 MR. FARVER: There was nothing 

15 describing it in the dose reconstruction that 

16 I'm aware of.

17 MR. SIEBERT: But ambient dose was 

18 assigned for that year. 

19 MR. FARVER: Okay.

20 MEMBER RICHARDSON: But the 

21 occupational dose wasn't?

22 MR. FARVER: Correct.
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1 MEMBER MUNN: Correct. They got 

2 ambient. 

3 MEMBER RICHARDSON: I mean, it 

4 seems like if you were, if there were no 

5 dosimetry records at all for the person, they 

6 would have justified how they were handling 

7 it, right? I mean, they would have had a 

8 coworker model or something.

9 MR. SIEBERT: You mean if there 

10 were no records for the individual at all?

11 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Yes.

12 MR. SIEBERT: Correct.

13 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And if there 

14 were no records for a period of five years, 

15 would there have been something done to 

16 describe how you were going to handle --

17 MR. FARVER: You probably would 

18 put something in there about if there's a 

19 five-year lapse of something, you would either 

20 do unmonitored or coworker. You may --

21 MR. SIEBERT: Right. It may be a 

22 general statement, such as, time frames when 
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1 the individual was monitored was based on 

2 badging. Other time frames, it was based on 

3 coworker or ambient, whichever was 

4 appropriate.

5 MR. FARVER: Right. This just 

6 happened to be one year.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

8 MEMBER MUNN: I'm in favor of 

9 accepting the dose reconstructor's judgment.

10 MEMBER RICHARDSON: And by 

11 unmonitored, you mean that there is not -- how 

12 do you know that they're unmonitored? Is it 

13 all quarters in that year in a logbook, or is 

14 it -- what was the source data that would --

15 from '72 onwards there's computerized annual 

16 dosimetry records.

17 MR. FARVER: This is where they 

18 just had the annual dose?

19 MR. SIEBERT: There's logbook 

20 entries up to a certain point where we do have 

21 cycle data. There's a time frame where we 

22 have annual summaries alone.
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1 MR. FARVER: I'm trying to think 

2 of '72.

3 MR. SIEBERT: '72, I believe, is 

4 the end of the annual summary time frame. 

5 MR. CALHOUN: I'm trying to look 

6 through the records right now, and I'm not 

7 quick enough. 

8 MEMBER RICHARDSON: Because in 

9 different years they did different things for 

10 indicating, you know, that there were -- they 

11 used a missing value, I guess, as an 

12 indication of below detection. I'm wondering 

13 if that's what was recorded, or if by missing 

14 you mean that they didn't appear in the files.

15 MR. SIEBERT: From '73 through 

16 '88, your first definition is the one that is 

17 true, and we have a TIB on that that they did 

18 not record zeros when there were zeros. They 

19 may have been recorded as a blank, which means 

20 -- and since we do not have that information 

21 per TIB-7, we use, for '73 through '88, we 

22 fill those time frames with dosimeters, zero 
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1 dosimeters, such as if we have an annual value 

2 for a year, we will place that value on a 

3 certain number of dosimeters based on what the 

4 administrative control level was during that 

5 time frame and assume the rest of them are 

6 zeros, even though we don't have, they're 

7 filled in with blanks, we call those zeros. 

8 Prior to '73, that's not the case.

9 MR. CALHOUN: Right. Prior to 

10 '73, it looks like we got annual summaries. 

11 And in this case, '72 was one of the only 

12 years that actually showed nothing. It was a 

13 blank, based on just a quick review of what's 

14 actually here.

15 MR. SIEBERT: Correct. There's no 

16 annual summary dose at all.

17 MR. CALHOUN: Just a blank, right. 

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Is that 

19 something we have to do --

20 (Simultaneous speakers.)

21 MR. CALHOUN: Based on what we 

22 know, it seems like that was the right 
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1 approach.

2 MEMBER MUNN: So if you were the 

3 dose constructor, what would you do? I would 

4 assign ambient dose and go on.

5 MR. CALHOUN: I think I would have 

6 too, based on the documents that we have that 

7 guide us. 

8 MEMBER MUNN: Nothing to indicate 

9 undue exposure during that year.

10 MR. SIEBERT: But we've pointed 

11 out, it's also a reasonable assumption to -- I 

12 could see assuming something else as well. I 

13 mean, I don't think either one is 

14 unreasonable.

15 MEMBER MUNN: Either is 

16 justifiable on a judgment call.

17 MR. SIEBERT: And that's why I 

18 said professional judgment call. 

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Is that a 

20 professional judgment call or a claimant21 favorability call? That's the other part of 

22 it, you know. I don't know that there's any 
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1 way to professionally judge that. You know, 

2 you have a number, a blank, and a zero. How 

3 do I professionally judge what happened in 

4 that year? I have no information. It's just, 

5 it seems to me it's a policy decision more 

6 than a professional judgment. I mean, what's 

7 the judgment?

8 MR. FARVER: Well, if you look at 

9 it and you say, well, it could be a coworker, 

10 could be unmonitored, it could be ambient, and 

11 which one do you choose?

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

13 MR. FARVER: What's your hierarchy 

14 when you don't really know?

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. And, 

16 again, that, to me, I don't know, I would 

17 think that could be maybe more of a policy 

18 call, you know. Like if you don't know in 

19 this kind of circumstance, you always assign 

20 the whatever, the coworker model or the 

21 ambient model --

22 MR. FARVER: Do you go middle of 
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1 the road?

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, right.

3 MR. FARVER: I don't know.

4 MEMBER MUNN: It's a legitimate 

5 choice either way. 

6 MR. CALHOUN: This individual 

7 stated that he worked in the 700 area from '72 

8 to '92 and only wore a dosimeter when he went 

9 out into the field. That's in the CATI. He 

10 said it.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. Well, 

12 that's stronger --

13 MR. CALHOUN: So ambient fits.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

15 MR. FARVER: It's unmonitored.

16 MR. CALHOUN: Ambient. Only wore 

17 a dosimeter when he went out into the field.

18 MR. FARVER: Unmonitored.

19 MR. CALHOUN: Ambient. You only 

20 wear a dosimeter where you need to be 

21 monitored, out in the field. So ambient 

22 works, right?
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1 MEMBER MUNN: Right. 

2 MR. CALHOUN: Every facility that 

3 I've worked at, when you were at your desk you 

4 didn't wear your dosimeter. Unless your desk 

5 was in the controlled area.

6 MEMBER MUNN: I had mine on all 

7 the time, but --

8 MR. CALHOUN: I know. A lot of you 

9 people hid them in your drawers.

10 MEMBER MUNN: You know I didn't. 

11 MR. FARVER: But that's a whole 

12 other can of worms you don't want to get into.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

14 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

15 MR. FARVER: You wore one when you 

16 walked into the gate, and took it home with 

17 you at night.

18 MEMBER MUNN: Yes, I did. I did 

19 that.

20 MEMBER POSTON: I did, too. That's 

21 the way it was at ORNL. 

22 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.
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1 MR. CALHOUN: I just found that in 

2 the CATI.

3 MEMBER POSTON: Your badge got you 

4 in the front gate.

5 MEMBER MUNN: Yes.

6 MEMBER POSTON: You better be 

7 wearing it.

8 MR. CALHOUN: You were on the 

9 wrong team.

10 I don't know. Seems to me like a 

11 reasonable assumption.

12 MR. FARVER: I don't know that 

13 there's anything to fix. It's more of 

14 something to be aware of. You know, if it 

15 would have been a five-year lapse, they 

16 probably would have wrote something in there.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

18 MR. KATZ: So is that closed?

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, I think, I 

20 mean, I think it's closed. Like Doug said, 

21 it's something to be aware of as this comes 

22 up. I'm not so much worried about it for this 
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1 case. Obviously, we're talking about a small 

2 --

3 MR. FARVER: If there were an easy 

4 answer to that, then I would have wrote it in.

5 MR. SIEBERT: That's why I said 

6 we'll talk about it. 

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. I'm 

8 putting "SC&A accepts NIOSH's argument, no 

9 further action." Actually, I'll put "SC&A 

10 accepts NIOSH's approach," rather than 

11 "argument." 

12 MR. FARVER: Combative discussion.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. Okay. 

14 MR. SIEBERT: Sounds like we're 

15 getting along.

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, okay. So 

17 are we on the next one, or do we want a break?

18 MEMBER POSTON: What's the next 

19 one?

20 MR. FARVER: 277.3 would be the 

21 next one.

22 MR. SIEBERT: There's two more in 
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1 this case, .3 and .4. 

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Let's 

3 finish up this case. 

4 MR. FARVER: Okay. This next one 

5 is a tritium issue, and this is one that comes 

6 up several times. And the gist of it is, over 

7 the years, since the TBD was issued back in 

8 2005, things have changed. There's more 

9 information available, and they do things 

10 differently according to the DR guide. Is 

11 that fair to say? 

12 MR. SIEBERT: Reasonable, yes. 

13 MR. FARVER: Okay. Fair, fair. 

14 Okay. And this is one of those cases where 

15 the information contained in the DR guide is 

16 not consistent with what is in the Technical 

17 Basis Document, the current version of the 

18 Technical Basis Document. So when you go in 

19 the TBD and look for the tritium MDAs, you 

20 will come up with one number, but they are 

21 using a different one based on increased 

22 knowledge. And the reason we wrote it as a 
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1 finding was because it was different than the 

2 values in the Technical Basis Document, so we 

3 suggest that you revise your Technical Basis 

4 Document, which you already know. 

5 MR. CALHOUN: I can't disagree 

6 with that. 

7 MR. FARVER: And this is --

8 MR. SIEBERT: We agree 

9 wholeheartedly. 

10 MR. FARVER: This has come up 

11 several times about the tritium issue, so we 

12 can take care of it.

13 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, I agree. 

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So NIOSH and 

15 SC&A agree --

16 MR. CALHOUN: Yes, and it's --

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: -- and are 

18 planning revision.

19 MR. CALHOUN: It's planned. It's 

20 just one of those ones. That SRS TBD is a 

21 challenge.

22 MR. FARVER: Now, I didn't check, 
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1 but I'm hoping this is in your DR guide. 

2 MR. SIEBERT: Correct. 

3 MR. FARVER: Okay. 

4 MR. SIEBERT: And another thing to 

5 point out, especially on this one, actually 

6 for a lot of the other ones, as well, they're 

7 not really MDAs. The detection values that 

8 are listed in the TBD are based on 5 

9 microcuries per liter, and that's when 

10 Savannah River said, oh, here's where we're 

11 going to start calculating doses. They never 

12 said that that's all they could detect. But 

13 in the early version of the TBD, we said, 

14 well, that's a high number, we'll go with that 

15 in the initial version of the TBD until we 

16 have more information. That's what's in the 

17 TBD.

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I see.

19 MR. SIEBERT: When you go back and 

20 in this claim itself, this person has tritium 

21 monitoring, and they are listed as less than 1 

22 microcurie per liter. So it is clear that 
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1 this person had monitoring and the values were 

2 less than 1 microcurie per liter, which is 

3 what is reflected in the doses that we 

4 assigned, as opposed to the 5 mics per liter 

5 from the TBD. I see your point, once again. 

6 But I just want to bring up, even in this 

7 case, with this individual's case, they had 

8 monitoring in their own case that went against 

9 the TBD.

10 MR. FARVER: Okay. But you 

11 understand there's two tables, there's Table 

12 4.5.2-1 that lists doses for certain years.

13 MR. SIEBERT: Which are based on -

14 -

15 MR. FARVER: Okay. And then 

16 there's OTIB-1, which also has similar table -

17 -

18 MR. SIEBERT: It pulled the same 

19 thing and, once again, it's based on those 

20 values.

21 MR. FARVER: Okay. And all we're 

22 saying is it's not consistent. 
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1 MR. SIEBERT: And all we're saying 

2 is I agree wholeheartedly, and the next 

3 version will update that.

4 MR. FARVER: So what are we 

5 arguing about?

6 MR. SIEBERT: I don't know.

7 MR. FARVER: Okay.

8 MR. SIEBERT: We're just trying to 

9 waste time until we can leave.

10 (Laughter.)

11 MR. KATZ: So is this closed? 

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 277.4 is 

13 closed. Well, they agree, NIOSH is planning 

14 on updating the TBD document. 

15 MEMBER CLAWSON: What was the 

16 number?

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: 277.4.

18 MR. FARVER: 277.4, NIOSH failed 

19 to address all incidents reported by the --

20 something. It must be "employed." Based on 

21 the approach used and the internal doses were 

22 applied based on the highest recorded intakes 
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1 at the site, it's unlikely that, basically, 

2 any additional dose or any dose went 

3 unassigned. 

4 About the only thing we can bring 

5 up is that in the CATI the employee expressed 

6 a concern that the dosimeter he was wearing 

7 was not necessarily representative because he 

8 was wearing it on his chest and he was leaning 

9 over and looking into a tank. Okay. So it 

10 wasn't necessarily representative of the 

11 location of his cancer, you know, the brain 

12 area. About the only thing we can say is it 

13 would be nice if he would have mentioned 

14 something like that in the report. You know, 

15 addressed that issue that the employee had, 

16 not necessarily do any doses differently, just 

17 kind of address their concern. But we suggest 

18 closing it. 

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Especially, I 

20 can't imagine his work would require him to be 

21 in that position for extended periods of time.

22 MR. FARVER: And that's all for 
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1 277. 

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: No further --

3 I'm just going to close that.

4 MR. KATZ: Before you take a 

5 break, I want to report on something else 

6 that's in the offing.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Yes, go 

8 ahead, Ted, and then we'll take a break. 

9 MR. KATZ: Okay. So this isn't 

10 related to this whatsoever, but at the last 

11 Subcommittee meeting we had a discussion about 

12 a General Atomics case, which DCAS had raised 

13 questions about it with the Department of 

14 Labor and Department of Labor had said, sorry, 

15 this doesn't fit into the SEC Class, do the 

16 dose reconstruction. And then Brad and John 

17 and Doug were going on with their concerns 

18 about whether that should be followed up, and 

19 we said this is really not for the 

20 Subcommittee to do, nor is it DCAS to go 

21 further to battle, but that I would bring it 

22 to our ombudsman to pursue, which I did. 
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1 Denise.

2 So I asked Denise to look into it. 

3 I gave her details about the situation, and 

4 then I kept in touch with Denise, and we've 

5 been pursuing this. And the good news is that 

6 -- and this person was a draftsman and an 

7 office worker, and so the question was: why 

8 would this person have been in one of the 

9 buildings that was covered by that SEC Class? 

10 So Denise did her usual bang-up 

11 job in rattling all the cages and found, 

12 actually found someone who knew this worker, 

13 knew someone from General Atomics that worked 

14 there and knew that the draftsmen were 

15 actually in one of the buildings that was 

16 covered by the SEC Class. 

17 So the good news is this person 

18 was in a building that is actually covered by 

19 the designation. DOL didn't know that before 

20 Denise found, through very extensive effort, a 

21 worker who knew the site and knew that 

22 situation. And so it hasn't, it's not 
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1 finished, the adjudication process, but it 

2 looks like that person will end up in the 

3 Class because the draftsmen were in a building 

4 that's covered by the SEC site.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, good.

6 MR. KATZ: So I just wanted to let 

7 you know because you had asked me to follow up 

8 on that, and I have, and that's what's come of 

9 it, which is a good result for the individual.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, definitely 

11 important for that individual. Yes. Good. 

12 MR. KATZ: So thank you for 

13 raising it. You all made a difference for 

14 that individual, or it was collaborative in 

15 this case, I guess. 

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And thanks to 

17 Denise for her work.

18 MR. KATZ: Yes, absolutely. 

19 Always. 

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. Let's 

21 say we take a break and then try to go until 

22 five. Is that -- anybody got a flight?
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1 MR. FARVER: I've got a 6:00 

2 flight.

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You got a 6. 

4 Alright. Maybe quarter of five? We'll stop 

5 at quarter of five. I mean, we don't want to 

6 -- I don't know. Security has probably got 

7 five people in there, right? 

8 MR. FARVER: It usually depends on 

9 how much time we have.

10 (Laughter.)

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. There's 

12 usually more -- I don't want to say that. 

13 Okay. Let's take a ten-minute break. 

14 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off 

15 the record at 4:13 p.m. and resumed at 4:26 

16 p.m.)

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Alright. 

18 David? David Richardson or whoever is online, 

19 we're just going to go for about 15 or 20 more 

20 minutes and just a couple of issues to wind 

21 down here. The first thing, well, I think we 

22 should take care of the two administrative 
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1 items first, and they overlap a little bit. 

2 But in terms of, during the break, Scott asked 

3 me, you know, we're focusing on these 10th 

4 through 13th sets by sites, and I think it 

5 seems to be working. I mean, NIOSH and SC&A 

6 seem to think it's a good way to go forward. 

7 It seems, at least so far to the Subcommittee, 

8 to be working.

9 So the question for NIOSH, that 

10 NIOSH is asking is what are the next two in 

11 line so we can be prepared for the next 

12 meeting going forward? So I'll ask Doug on 

13 that.

14 MR. FARVER: Okay. Since for this 

15 next section or next group, we're planning to 

16 go back and do a check on those Site Profile 

17 changes, check on any SEC impacts --

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's the 

19 second part of this question, which is that 

20 look-back, as Jim Melius described it --

21 MR. FARVER: So the next time I'm 

22 here and I'm presenting the findings, we'll 
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1 have this section all in front of the matrix 

2 to look at. So we'll have all the information 

3 together, so that's what we're going to work 

4 on for the next package. So the next site we 

5 pick should be one that it's okay to go back 

6 and look at the Profile and the SEC and, you 

7 know --

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. It's not 

9 sort of --

10 MR. STIVER: Hey, Doug, this is 

11 John Stiver. I think the next one, the next 

12 two in line, just based on the number of cases 

13 and findings, is Los Alamos and Rocky. And 

14 maybe Rocky might be better, if we're planning 

15 on doing this look-back, for some of the 

16 reasons that Stu mentioned earlier today.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, yes. 

18 MR. FARVER: It's up to you.

19 MR. STIVER: In either case, 

20 there's not that many findings. I think 

21 there's like 14 or 15 each.

22 MR. FARVER: If you want to do 
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1 Rocky, that's not, you know, a cause of 

2 controversy or anything, we could do that. We 

3 talked about Los Alamos. I talked with you 

4 about that. You said, you know, that may or 

5 may not be. 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, I think 

7 Rocky and Los Alamos both are in the midst of 

8 some SEC evaluation.

9 MR. FARVER: Now, there's always 

10 Nevada Test Site.

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes.

12 MR. FARVER: There's nine 

13 findings, so that's a small number, something 

14 easily to handle. I don't know. We might 

15 want to do Nevada Test Site, if that's a more 

16 stable type of place.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: How many 

18 findings for the other sites?

19 MR. FARVER: It was like 14 for 

20 Rocky and 15 for Los Alamos.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And, really, 

22 you're more interested in the number of cases, 
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1 not so much the number of findings.

2 MR. FARVER: Yes. Los Alamos is 

3 only three cases or fifteen findings.

4 MR. STIVER: NTS only had nine 

5 findings and four cases.

6 MR. FARVER: And Fernald is ten 

7 findings on five cases.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And Rocky Flats 

9 is how many cases?

10 MR. FARVER: Down to the R's. 

11 Fourteen findings on eight cases.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think that 

13 might be the best. Yes, I think that might be 

14 the better one.

15 MR. FARVER: Okay. 

16 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I don't know 

17 what other people feel, but I think that will 

18 at least give you a better sample and not too 

19 huge that, you know --

20 MR. FARVER: Yes. 

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. So Rocky 

22 Flats, I think, for the look-back part, and 
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1 then what other site for the --

2 MR. FARVER: Well, no, the Rocky 

3 Flats we're going to do the look-back and the 

4 findings.

5 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. But 

6 then what other one just for the findings?

7 MR. FARVER: Oh, I was going to 

8 propose that we do all these the same way 

9 then.

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

11 MR. FARVER: So as the next site 

12 comes up, we would do a look-back and 

13 findings.

14 MR. KATZ: Well, we just want to 

15 do -- we're trying to pilot that, so the look16 back is just for one.

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, just for 

18 the Rocky now. 

19 MR. FARVER: Okay.

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Only because 

21 we're not sure what we're going to get out of 

22 it, you know. Yes, we want to see sort of --
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1 MR. FARVER: It's probably easier 

2 for us to do them both at once. But, I mean, 

3 that's okay. Okay. And then I guess the site 

4 really doesn't matter after that. 

5 MR. KATZ: Well, it's in numbers. 

6 Where are we? Rocky Flats was one. LANL, is 

7 that another one?

8 MR. FARVER: Yes. It's only three 

9 cases, but it's fifteen findings. So it 

10 depends on what numbers --

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Why don't we do 

12 a look-back and findings for Rocky and 

13 findings for LANL?

14 MR. FARVER: Okay.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Just move ahead 

16 that way.

17 MR. KATZ: Is that enough work to 

18 get adequate progress on, those two, or do we 

19 need to add another?

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: What's next in 

21 line?

22 MR. FARVER: Oh, no. I mean, I'm 
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1 not sure we'll -- well --

2 MR. KATZ: To be able to get them 

3 out -- okay.

4 MR. FARVER: Then my concern would 

5 be getting it all done.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, okay. 

7 Those will be our next two in line. Okay. 

8 And we can --

9 MR. SIEBERT: Now, did you say 

10 LANL? The second one?

11 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, LANL.

12 MR. SIEBERT: Now, my question is, 

13 what I was asking for is what are the two next 

14 groupings that we're going to do, such as the 

15 grouping that we'll talk at the next meeting, 

16 and then a heads-up for the grouping that will 

17 be the meeting after that so that we get the 

18 heads-up. Are you talking Rocky and then LANL 

19 or both of them for the next meeting? 

20 MR. KATZ: The next meeting is 

21 Rocky and LANL.

22 MR. SIEBERT: Yes, I'm hearing two 
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1 different things.

2 MR. KATZ: Right?

3 MR. FARVER: I think Rocky would 

4 be enough.

5 MR. KATZ: Oh, really? Okay. 

6 MR. SIEBERT: That's why I'm 

7 asking the question.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. Probably 

9 realistically, look what we got on this one --

10 MR. CALHOUN: And there's got to 

11 be some SRS in that next meeting, too, I would 

12 think.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right. 

14 MR. FARVER: Still Category A.

15 MR. SIEBERT: So we'll do Rocky 

16 for the next meeting and then --

17 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: LANL for the 

18 second.

19 MR. SIEBERT: LANL at least is on 

20 the table for the next one, and we can always 

21 decide at the next one. Okay.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The next 
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1 meeting we can put another one out. Yes, 

2 whatever. 

3 MR. FARVER: The next meeting, if 

4 we decide we like the look-back approach, we 

5 can always add it.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, okay.

7 MR. FARVER: Okay.

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: And do we want 

9 to, while we're doing -- well, it should 

10 probably just be kind of the end of it. Do we 

11 want to put a date for the next -- might want 

12 to let everyone look through here.

13 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: David, are you 

15 online? David? Ted, what would be our, we've 

16 been doing these two months apart?

17 MR. KATZ: Yes, we're trying for 

18 approximately two months apart. 

19 MEMBER MUNN: So we're looking at 

20 October. I'll be out of pocket from the 4th 

21 through the 18th. 

22 MR. KATZ: Okay. So let's look 
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1 after the 18th then. 

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: So you're 

3 looking October? Is that what you're looking 

4 at, Ted?

5 MR. KATZ: Yes, October. And 

6 she's out of pocket until the 18th. 

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Right.

8 MEMBER MUNN: Unless you do it the 

9 1st, 2nd, or 3rd.

10 MR. KATZ: No, we can't because 

11 that's the new fiscal year. It's a problem.

12 MEMBER MUNN: It is.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, the week 

14 of the 22nd through 26th is bad for me. You 

15 said 4th through the 18th is bad for you, 

16 Wanda?

17 MR. KATZ: So what about the last 

18 week?

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The last week I 

20 think --

21 MR. SIEBERT: I don't know how 

22 important I am, but I'm gone at the Bioassay 
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1 Conference the last week. 

2 MR. CALHOUN: You are very 

3 important. 

4 MR. KATZ: According to Grady. 

5 MR. SIEBERT: Wow. 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I'm at a 

7 conference. Yes, I'm away. 

8 MEMBER MUNN: So Scott's --

9 MR. KATZ: Scott, how long are you 

10 gone? That whole week? 

11 MR. SIEBERT: The whole week, yes. 

12 MR. KATZ: Okay. 

13 MEMBER MUNN: October.

14 MR. KATZ: So then that puts us 

15 into --

16 MR. FARVER: November. 

17 MR. KATZ: -- the first full week 

18 of November? That's Election Day week, by the 

19 way. 

20 MEMBER MUNN: We have Procedures 

21 on the 1st. We have Procedures on the 1st. 

22 MR. KATZ: Yes, but that doesn't 
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1 work for Scott, anyway.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I can't do the 

3 1st.

4 MEMBER MUNN: You won't be back by 

5 Friday, huh?

6 MR. KATZ: So what about later in 

7 Election Day week? 

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: We have a Board 

9 call on the Monday, right? So later that week 

10 you're saying?

11 MR. KATZ: Yes. So the 6th is 

12 Election Day, and you probably don't want to -

13 - so you could travel to -- what about the 

14 7th?

15 MEMBER MUNN: I could travel on 

16 the --

17 MEMBER POSTON: I'm not available 

18 the rest of that week.

19 MEMBER MUNN: The 7th would be 

20 fine for me.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You're not 

22 available that week?
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1 MR. KATZ: John. That doesn't 

2 work for John. Okay. So we're up to --

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: How about the 

4 12th?

5 MR. CALHOUN: The 12th is 

6 Veterans' Day. 

7 MR. KATZ: All right.

8 MEMBER MUNN: That week doesn't 

9 work for anybody? 

10 MR. CALHOUN: I don't have a lot 

11 marked on my calendar, but I've got the 

12 important stuff.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The 13th?

14 MR. KATZ: The 13th? 

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The 13th? Do I 

16 hear a second on the 13th? 

17 MR. KATZ: It could be the 13th 

18 because it can't be the 14th, 15th, or 16th. 

19 OGC is not available then. 

20 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, okay. 

21 13th, Wanda?

22 MEMBER MUNN: The 13th is fine for 
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1 me. 

2 MEMBER CLAWSON: I'm conflicted on 

3 that one.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, you are?

5 MEMBER CLAWSON: Yes.

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, gosh. 

7 MEMBER MUNN: You just don't like 

8 Tuesdays, do you?

9 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Did we rule out 

the 9th? Friday the 9th 10 ?

11 MEMBER POSTON: I'm conflicted. I 

12 got a conference, a science teacher conference 

13 from Wednesday through Saturday.

14 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The rest of 

15 that week. Okay.

16 MEMBER POSTON: Yes.

17 MEMBER MUNN: So you can't do 

18 Election Day because --

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: How about the 

20 15th or 16th?

21 MR. KATZ: Those are OGC --

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, OGC.
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1 MR. KATZ: -- is not available.

2 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Geez.

3 MR. KATZ: I mean, I'm not, we 

4 don't usually have OGC activities, but they 

5 asked me not to schedule anything when they're 

6 -- even though.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes.

8 MR. CALHOUN: Well, we could ask 

9 them.

10 MEMBER CLAWSON: What if we went 

11 to the last part of September? 

12 MEMBER POSTON: What's OGC? 

13 MR. KATZ: Office of General 

14 Counsel. Lawyers. 

15 MEMBER POSTON: We don't need 

16 lawyers. Shakespeare took care of them a long 

17 time ago. What did you say, the last week in 

18 September? 

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, what about 

20 backing up to the last week.

21 MEMBER POSTON: I can do that 

22 whole week, the 24th through the 28th.
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1 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: How about the 

2 28th? Yes, that is the end of a fiscal year. 

3 That's what I get concerned about, you know. 

4 The 28th? 

5 MEMBER MUNN: Of September? 

6 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: September. 

7 It's kind of tight. 

8 MR. KATZ: Really tight, yes. I 

9 don't think so. 

10 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, yes. 

11 MEMBER MUNN: Especially right 

12 after Denver.

13 MEMBER POSTON: We need to get the 

14 federal government to go to an academic year. 

15 MR. KATZ: That's coming right 

16 around the corner. Probably next year.

17 (Laughter.)

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. 

19 Well, are we back out in November then? 

20 MEMBER MUNN: Unless we can 

21 rethink that first week in October.

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: What about the 
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1 19th? 

2 MR. KATZ: It doesn't work for 

3 that reason.

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: What about 

5 November 19th? 

6 MEMBER CLAWSON: I was conflicted 

7 on the 20th, so what about the --

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: You can't make 

the 9th 9 ? Oh, yes, travel-wise, you couldn't 

10 make the --

11 MEMBER CLAWSON: What about the 

12 26th?

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, that's 

14 okay with me. 

15 MEMBER POSTON: Does that mean 

16 we'd travel on the 25th, which is the week of 

17 Thanksgiving?

18 MR. KATZ: Oh, that's not good.

19 MEMBER POSTON: The worst time in 

20 the world to travel is that Sunday.

21 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes, that's the 

22 worst travel day.
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1 MR. KATZ: Wait. What day is 

2 Thanksgiving? 

3 MR. CALHOUN: Thursday the 22nd. 

4 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: The 22nd.

5 MR. KATZ: Yes, so the 27th, you'd 

6 have to do the 27th. You couldn't do the 

7 26th. 

8 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. The 

9 27th. 

10 MR. KATZ: Yes, I know you don't 

11 like that.

12 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: That's all 

13 right.

14 MR. KATZ: Okay. November 27th?

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 

16 MR. FARVER: Now, the other option 

17 --

18 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, that only 

19 took 15 minutes.

20 MR. FARVER: -- is we're not going 

21 to get another one in before the end of the 

22 year, so if you just wanted even to stretch it 
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1 out to the beginning of December. It's up to 

2 you, but --

3 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, then we'd 

4 have to add two more sites for you then, Doug.

5 MEMBER MUNN: No, you really don't 

6 want to do that because --

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: I think let's 

8 stick with this date.

9 MEMBER MUNN: -- you've got a big 

10 meeting --

MR. KATZ: November 27th 11 .

12 MR. FARVER: That's fine.

13 MEMBER MUNN: -- coming up on the 

14 10th in Tennessee.

15 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Oh, yes, right.

16 MEMBER MUNN: You don't want to do 

17 that. The 27th?

18 MEMBER POSTON: When is the Board 

19 meeting? 

20 MR. KATZ: It's early December. 

21 MEMBER MUNN: The 27th, right? 

22 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Yes. 
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1 MEMBER CLAWSON: The Board meeting 

2 is the 10th.

3 MEMBER MUNN: It's the 10th 

4 through the 12th.

5 MEMBER POSTON: And we don't know 

6 where it's going to be yet, do we? 

7 MEMBER MUNN: Tennessee. That's 

8 what we said before. 

9 MEMBER POSTON: Tennessee where? 

10 MR. KATZ: Tennessee.

11 MEMBER POSTON: So just pick out 

12 any part of Tennessee you like.

13 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Okay. The last 

14 thing that I --

15 MEMBER MUNN: Are we going to meet 

16 at 8:30 in the morning?

17 MR. KATZ: Oak Ridge is where 

18 we're going to be.

19 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: Well, I'll just 

20 -- that's all right. We don't even have to 

21 discuss this one. We discussed it earlier. I 

22 think we should probably call it quits here 
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1 because Doug has the closest margin here, so 

2 we don't want to -- anything else? I don't 

3 see how opening up a new case at this point. 

4 I think we'll just close it here. Anything 

5 else for the record? No?

6 MEMBER MUNN: Don't believe so.

7 CHAIRMAN GRIFFON: All right. 

8 Meeting is adjourned. 

9 (Whereupon, the above-entitled 

10 matter was adjourned at 4:40 p.m.)

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