NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 

1716 14TH ST. NW, STE. 200 

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 http://www.nealrgross.com 

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

143rd Meeting

Wednesday, December 8, 2021 

The Meeting Convened via Video Teleconference at 

1:00 p.m. EST, Henry A. Anderson, Chair, Presiding.
2 

Members Present: 

Henry A. Anderson, Chair

Josie Beach, Member

Bradley P. Clawson, Member

R. William Field, Member

David Kotelchuck, Member

James E. Lockey, Member

Genevieve S. Roessler, Member

Phillip Schofield, Member

Loretta R. Valerio, Member

Paul L. Ziemer, Member

Registered and/or Public Comment Participants: 

Roberts, Rashaun, Designated Federal Officer

Adams, Nancy, NIOSH Contractor

Barrie, Terrie, ANWAG

Barton, Bob, SC&A

Beal, Daisy

Behling, Kathleen, SC&A

Blaze, D'lanie, CORE Advocacy

Calhoun, Grady, DCAS

Cardarelli, John, DCAS

Cook, Madeline, DCAS

Crawford, Frank, DOL

Degarmo, Denise, Petitioner

Ehlers, Cathy

Ehlers, Del, Petitioner

Gogliotti, Rose, SC&A

Hand, Donna

Hughes, Lara, DCAS

Jackson, Jamie

Lewis, Greg, DOE

Lobaugh, Megan, DCAS

McGolerick, Robert, HHS OGC

Rafky, Michael, HHS OGC

Rutherford, Lavon, DCAS

Scott, Elton

Taulbee, Tim, DCAS

Thornton, Shirley
3 

Contents

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 143rd Meeting 

Wednesday, December 8, 2021 1

Roll Call/Welcome 4

Roll Call 5

NIOSH Program Update 6

DOL Program Update 13

DOE Program Update 19

SEC-256 Pinellas Plant Evaluation Report 24

Adjourn 98
4 

Proceedings

(1:15 p.m.) 

Roll Call/Welcome

Dr. Roberts: Good afternoon and welcome 

everybody. I'm Rashaun Roberts and I'm the 

Designated Federal Officer for the Advisory Board 

on Radiation and Worker Health. I'd like to welcome 

you to this meeting. It's board meeting 143.

Just a few preliminaries for the meeting. Today is 

the first half of this virtual board meeting and 

tomorrow will be the second and final half day. Like 

today, tomorrow's session is scheduled to start at 

1:00 p.m. and hopefully we'll be able to do that and 

we will have resolved some of the technical 

difficulties that we had today.

All of the materials for both days, the meeting 

agenda, presentations and other documents are 

posted on the NIOSH website for the program under 

the Schedule of Public Meetings, December 2021 

tab. If you'll be participating both days by telephone 

only, you can go to the website to access all the 

materials and you can follow along with the 

presentations. All of the materials were provided to 

Board Members and to staff prior to this meeting. 

On the website, there's a Zoom link which should 

enable you to hear and watch the presentations 

through Zoom. If you've chosen to receive audio 

through Zoom, you should be able to speak to the 

group and hear the presentations on the Zoom 

platform. If you're not speaking, be sure to select 

and stay on mute, by muting the microphone in the 

lower left hand corner of your screen. If you've 

dialed in, you will only be able to speak and hear 

the presentations through your telephone line. 

Please make sure that your phone stays muted 

unless, of course, you need to speak. If you don't 

have a mute button, press star six to mute. If you 

need to take yourself off, press star six again. Also, 

if you're only participating by telephone and we're 

unable to see you, please identify yourself before 
5 

taking yourself off mute and providing your 

comments or questions.

Let me also mention that we have a public 

comments session and that comes at the end of the 

day today. It will be between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. 

Eastern Time. So I would encourage people to be 

ready at 5:00 p.m. Eastern for public comments 

because at that time, we will go right into the 

comments and if we run through all of the 

comments at that time, we will conclude. We will 

not conclude before 5:00, but we could conclude at 

any point after that once everyone in the public who 

would like to comment has done so. Please be sure 

to join us at the beginning of the comments session 

so that you're assured your opportunity there. So 

that you are aware, comments during the public 

comments sessions are limited to about five 

minutes.

With all that said, let me go ahead and move into 

roll call and conflict of interests now. As Board 

Members and staff register attendance, please 

acknowledge any sites where you might have 

conflict of interest, if any. We're going to go ahead 

and start with the Board Members in alphabetical 

order.

Roll Call

(Roll call.)

Member Clawson: Rashaun? 

Dr. Roberts: Yes.

Member Clawson: Rashaun, Bill Fields is trying to 

get in too and he says he can't get in.

Dr. Roberts: Okay and I just got a message from 

Dr. Kotelchuck that he was still struggling to get in 

as well. So, again, Zaida and Nancy, if you could 

reach out and try to help them get connected that 

would be great.
6 

Okay, so now that we have wrapped that up, let's 

go ahead and move further into the agenda. Again, 

please periodically do check Zoom or your phone to 

ensure that you're consistently on mute if you're not 

speaking. Again, on Zoom, the mute button is 

located on the lower left hand corner of your screen. 

If you're participating by telephone, press star six to 

mute. If you need to take yourself off, press star six 

again if you don't have a mute button. So with that, 

without any further delay, let me go ahead and turn 

the floor over to our Chair, Dr. Henry Anderson. 

Andy?

Chair Anderson: Thank you, hopefully we've got a 

quorum on the phone and some apparently have 

been able to get in. Right from the start here, let's 

move on to the NIOSH Program Update. Grady, are 

you on?

Mr. Calhoun: Yes, I am on. Let me --

Chair Anderson: Okay.

Mr. Calhoun: -- share my screen. 

Chair Anderson: Okay. Fortunately, these were all 

sent in advance so I have them on my computer so 

I can just follow along.

Mr. Calhoun: Can you all see my slide? 

Dr. Roberts: Yes.

NIOSH Program Update

Mr. Calhoun: Okay, excellent. Well that was a little 

bit of an adventure, but I'm glad most of us are on. 

Good seeing and hearing some of you here, so good 

luck to the rest of you to get on. We'll get started 

here.

Basically we don't have a whole lot going on as far 

as contracts and staffing go. We are in the process 

of hiring one health physicist due to the retirement 

of Tom Tomes, but we haven't even posted so that's 

still in process. 
7

IT update, that's the one everybody is most 

concerned about. As of two weeks ago, we can 

process all cases manually. We were in a place 

where we couldn't process the amended site cases, 

but we can now do that. It's still very slow, but we 

can do it and we are doing it. Our goal is to return 

to steady-state processing by the end of this year. 

What we mean by steady-state processing is that 

for the 12 months preceding this pause, we had an 

average of 775 cases in our system in various states 

of dose reconstruction. The number of cases 

referred to as from the Department of Labor was 

equal to roughly the number of draft dose 

reconstructions we were sending out to claimants. 

So we'll be able to claim victory kind of sort of once 

we get the steady-state number of 775. It'll get us 

back to where we were. It'll still be, you know, 

manual, but at least we won't be holding up cases, 

so we're getting there and it is working. It takes a 

little bit --

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Member Clawson: Hey Grady, this is Brad.

Mr. Calhoun: Yes, sir. 

Member Clawson: What does manual mean? 

Mr. Calhoun: Well, have you played around with 

NOCTS, right?

Member Clawson: Oh my god, that's, yeah.

Mr. Calhoun: Okay, it's gone. NOCTS is gone and so 

what manually means is that there's literally a 

folder established for each case with multiple 

subfolders underneath that and all the pertinent 

files are within those subfolders. With NOCTS we 

were able to actually just get a single look and see 

all of the files, the status, for the most part, on one 

screen. But now, we have to go through each of 

those folders as we review and approve them to 

verify that the information is correct. The other 

thing about manual, and probably even more time 
8

consuming, is that the transfer of cases between 

DCAS and ORAU, it goes back and forth several 

times. That's also a manual process now and that 

used to be automatic.

Member Clawson: So Grady, is this going to change 

down the--because we're, you know, we've been 

getting these links that we can find it in this and 

this. I spend a half a day just trying to find it. It's 

not working like what it used to. Is this an interim 

thing or is this what we're going to have to deal 

with?

Mr. Calhoun: Gosh, I hope not. Yes, it is an interim 

thing and, you know, this what we've got put 

together for now and I'm told that, you know, long 

term it's going to have all the functionality that it 

used to have, but I feel for you because we're in the 

same boat exactly as you guys. We don't have a 

Site Research Database that we can search like we 

used to be able to and we have to rely on contacting 

ORAU to have them put folders or files into a 

different folder for us. So this is temporary, now 

your next question is going to be when.

Member Clawson: Yes.

Mr. Calhoun: And I can't answer that. It's going to 

be months, not weeks, before that is established 

again. So, I do, I feel your pain there, Brad, and I'm 

feeling it with you.

Member Clawson: No, I understand. I'm just trying 

to figure out because it takes us more time to be 

able to get through this system than actually 

reading the documents and trying to find it. I'm 

afraid, you know, I've already spent hours trying to 

find files and it's really cumbersome so I understand 

you're going through the same thing and we'll just 

work through it, but my god.

Mr. Calhoun: Well, Brad, if you actually know the 

SRDB number of the folder you want, just let me 

know and I'll try to get it to you quicker somehow, 

you know.
9

Member Clawson: Well, actually what it came down 

is I was trying to go back and I was trying to 

research some of the Savannah River stuff and I 

was having to go through each one of them because 

I didn't remember where it was at and that's where 

with the SRDB, we could, you know, it showed us 

everything we had and the dates and it kind of 

helped me from that aspect. This one, it really is 

cumbersome.

Member Beach: So I have a question and I hesitate 

to wait until the end of your spiel because this is 

your only IT slide. Do you mind if I ask a couple of 

things now?

Mr. Calhoun: No, go ahead.

Member Beach: So you said we can ask you for the 

SRDB files if we know the number. Are you the right 

person or is Lori or is it whoever is in charge of that 

side?

Mr. Calhoun: No, I would prefer that you go through 

Lori, but I would make sure that, you know, that got 

to her, but yes. Thanks, Josie. I really was --

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Member Beach: Or like Megan if it's her site, would 

she be able to help us or would --

Mr. Calhoun: Yes, yes, she would.

Member Beach: Okay, so we --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Beach: -- so we can ask.

Mr. Calhoun: LaVon is always a good resource, too. 

Member Beach: Okay and then kind of piggy 

backing on Brad's question, this was supposed to be 

two to four or six months and now you're saying 

that you don't have a time line. There must be 

something that you guys are seeing in some kind of 
10

a time line.

Mr. Calhoun: It's getting put together as we need it 

right now. We've kind of broken it into what we are 

calling phase one and phase two and phase one was 

established and we knew it was going to be a 

manual process for everything basically. Phase two, 

we're meeting on weekly and that's a process that, 

you know, we're looking at all of the functionality 

that we used to have and the IT team is right now 

in the process of recording what we need, what 

functionality we need and the next step will be 

trying to develop the programs that meet our 

needs. 

Member Beach: Okay. 

Mr. Calhoun: But it's going to be a slow process. 

Member Beach: So some of the needs of SC&A or 

the board, those fall under, I'm sure, NIOSH's 

needs, but --

Mr. Calhoun: Absolutely, absolutely I mean --

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Member Beach: So like the BRS system --

Mr. Calhoun: -- Absolutely.

Member Beach: That's something --

Mr. Calhoun: We've discussed that one probably 

three weeks ago, but we'll discuss each of these 

functionalities, functional areas that we have and 

then the IT team will go back and look at a plan to 

develop how that's going to fit into our system, 

what programs are going to be used and what not. 

Present that to us and make sure that it meets our 

needs and, you know, our needs and your needs are 

basically the same. You need to have as quick of 

access to these things as we do. So, you know, our 

goal is going to be to make it as easy as it was 

before and --
11

Member Beach: So million dollar question, is this a 

one-year, five-year, 10-year process? What do you 

think? 

Mr. Calhoun: I don't know. I'd say six months 

minimum.

Member Beach: Okay. 

Mr. Calhoun: I'd say more likely a year, but it 

changes as we go. We just need to find out what 

kind of progress they can make and what kind of 

applications are available. This is happening to all of 

NIOSH, too. It's not just --

Member Beach: I know. 

Mr. Calhoun: It's not just us.

Member Beach: Right. 

Mr. Calhoun: And --

Member Beach: And I understand the importance of 

it. It's just frustrating. I'm sure for everybody. 

Mr. Calhoun: Oh it is. 

Member Beach: Thank you, Grady. Thank you. 

Mr. Calhoun: Okay. Anybody else on that one? 

Okay and, as always, you know, you can always 

shoot me an e-mail or give me a call after the 

meeting, you know, whatever and I'll try to get you 

whatever you need or answer questions. 

Okay workshops, town halls and outreach, we 

haven't had any in-person events since 2020. We 

have the support of DOL on some of their virtual 

webinars in 2021. As of the writing of this, we didn't 

have any new events that have been finalized for 

2022.

Record requests, we have 374 outstanding record 

requests, only 13 of those have been more than 60 

days so they're not very late, that's managed to just 
12

stay up, even during this pause. 

This part is where it gets a little sketchy for us. It's 

hard for us to get all of these answers because we 

don't have a database that is easy to query as we 

used to have. That, too, is manual so we're pretty 

sure that as of November 30th, that these numbers 

are correct. We received had 53,850 cases from 

Labor, 51,938 were returned. We had 999 of NIOSH 

for dose reconstruction, 913 had been adminclosed; 46,556 submitted to DOL with the dose 

reconstruction, 1,710 pulled by DOL and that can be 

for a variety of reasons; 3,672 pulled for Special 

Exposure Cohort inclusion. 

Probability of causation, 46,556 DRs. This is one 

where we're unable to readily query statistics, the 

number of cases above and below 50 percent. We 

really have no reason to believe that the 

compensation rate would have changed significantly 

in the last six or seven months. So typically 25 to

30 percent have been 50 percent or greater with 

the remainder less than 50 percent. Of the 999 

cases, 363 are in the DR process, 215 were being 

held by claimants, not being held, but being 

reviewed. We sent the dose reconstructions to 

them. Four hundred twenty one were being 

prepared for dose reconstruction and that means 

making the request to DOE for data, processing the 

data, completing the computer-assisted telephone 

interview and then getting ready for dose 

reconstruction support. 

And that is all I have.

Chair Anderson: Any more questions? 

Thanks so much, Grady. Let's move on, is Mr. 

Crawford on the line for DOL update? 

Mr. Crawford: This is Chris Crawford. Can you hear 

me now? 

Chair Anderson: I can, yes.
13

Mr. Crawford: Great. My phone mute button does 

not work, star six still does.

Chair Anderson: Okay.

DOL Program Update

Mr. Crawford: Grady will be helping me with slides 

as always, thanks in advance for that. And let me 

know--

Mr. Calhoun: Hold on a second.

Mr. Crawford: Sure, let me know when --

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Mr. Calhoun: Yes, let me stop and then I'll start 

over here. I'm not getting exactly the look I like on 

this so we'll try that again. Let's see, page view, 

single page view is not working for me. Maybe if I 

increase the size. How about that? Can everybody 

see that?

Mr. Crawford: Yes.

Dr. Roberts: I can, yes. 

Mr. Calhoun: Okay, Chris, can you see that? I'm at 

the first, I'll just go to the first slide that's not just a 

title slide.

Mr. Crawford: Great, because I'm not on Zoomgov.

Mr. Calhoun: Okay. There you go. Compensation 

paid.

Mr. Crawford: Thanks, Grady. These numbers 

change slowly, but as of November 28th, here they 

are, for Part B compensation 7.4 billion dollars has 

been paid. For Part E compensation, 5.7 billion 

dollars has been paid. Medical bills 7.4 billion 

dollars. The total is 20.5 billion dollars 

compensation plus medical bills paid. There were 

221,774 cases filed. Questions anyone? 

Great. The NIOSH dose reconstruction cases 1.69 
14

billion dollars and 15,880 payees. There were 178 

million dollars of approvals for the combination of 

both an SEC payment and a POC greater than 50 

percent on a DR, that was only 1,363 payees. Next 

slide. 

Mr. Calhoun: Okay. 

Mr. Crawford: Now our numbers always differ, but 

right now we believe we've referred 54,885 cases to 

NIOSH for dose reconstruction, of which 53,011 

cases have been returned to DOL from NIOSH; 

46,370 at DOL with the dose reconstruction right 

now; and, 6,641 were withdrawn from NIOSH with 

no dose reconstruction for a variety of reasons. Our 

count shows 874 cases currently at NIOSH. Next 

slide. 

As Grady was just saying, these don't change very 

much over time, but the numbers do, but the 

percentages do not. These are Part B cases with a 

dose reconstruction and a final decision. We have 

34 percent final approvals, 66 percent final denials 

out of a total base of 36,923 cases. Approvals were 

12,652 and denials were 24,271. Next slide. 

Mr. Calhoun: We're there. 

Mr. Crawford: In this much bigger view, we see that 

we're going to start with the NIOSH cases, which is 

to say the Part B NIOSH cases that we sent to 

NIOSH, I believe, and that's 30 percent of the total. 

Moving down to the other category, which is the 

beryllium and silicosis area of Part B, 38 percent of 

the cases were there. The RECA or uranium mining 

cases, come out to seven percent. Then we have 13 

percent of the cases were SEC cases that were 

never sent to NIOSH and another 12 percent were 

SEC cases that were referred to NIOSH. Next slide. 

Mr. Calhoun: I'm there. 

Mr. Crawford: Okay, with all Part B cases with a 

final decision, this would include SEC cases we see 

that we're 53 percent approvals and 47 percent 
15

denials, that's based on a total number of 108,975. 

Part B approvals 58,196, Part B denials 50,779 and 

apparently this does not include SEC cases, I was 

mistaken there. Next slide. 

Mr. Calhoun: Next slide, I'm there.

Mr. Crawford: This does include SEC, sorry, the 

increased approvals to 53 percent can only have 

been as a result of the SEC, it just isn't mentioned 

on the slide. Yes, next slide, now for the top four 

work sites. 

Mr. Calhoun: Go ahead. 

Mr. Crawford: These don't change that much either. 

The top four work sites generating new Part B cases 

are Nevada Test Site, Savannah River Site, Hanford 

and K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Next slide. 

Today, we're discussing the Evaluation Report for 

the Pinellas Plant and here's some of the case 

statistics on it. Cases filed are 1,595, both Parts B 

and E. Cases already returned by NIOSH with a 

dose reconstruction 484. Final decisions Part B 706 

cases. Next slide. This isn't too --

Mr. Calhoun: Next, I'm there.

Mr. Crawford: Okay, Part B approvals 175 cases. 

Part E approvals 270 cases. Total compensation and 

medical bills paid through the end of November 

89,707,526 dollars. Next slide. 

Mr. Calhoun: Go ahead. 

Mr. Crawford: You're looking at previous outreach 

events on this slide. The October outreach was on 

the role of the industrial hygienist and the nurse 

consultant, had 104 attendees. September outreach 

event was Part One, the role of the health physicist 

and toxicologist, that had 97 attendees. Then in 

August, we had the Office of Ombudsman with 161 

attendees. Next slide. 

Mr. Calhoun: Go ahead.
16

Mr. Crawford: We do have an upcoming outreach 

event and the topic is to be decided apparently so 

more on that at our next meeting. That's the end of 

the presentation part. The slide deck does contain 

other interesting slides about mainly interesting to 

claimants and eligibility requirements. Any 

questions? 

Chair Anderson: I don't have any. Anyone else? 

Member Clawson: Yes, Andy, this is Brad. I was just 

wondering, are these virtual like do you have a link 

down there at the bottom? Can we join those and 

listen? 

Mr. Crawford: That's an interesting question. On the 

outreach slide where we did have such a link on my 

screen, but I'm looking at it directly in PowerPoint 

application. It does look like a clickable link. 

Whether you could do it from your computer, I think 

if you brought up the slide deck from the NIOSH 

site, I suspect that would be a live link. 

Member Clawson: Okay, I was just wondering if 

we're permitted, as Board Members and so forth, I 

think to be able to -- I'd just like to listen in and be 

able to see what's being said.

Mr. Crawford: Oh, to the individual outreach 

events? 

Member Clawson: Correct. 

Mr. Crawford: I'm sure they would encourage your 

participation so yes, I don't think that'll be a 

problem. 

Member Clawson: Great. So, we can go to that 

website and use that registration to go in there and 

get into the link?

Mr. Crawford: I believe so. If you have a problem, 

just get in touch with Dr. Roberts and she and I can 

work it out.

Member Clawson: Okay, that'd be the best way to 
17

do it. Appreciate it, thank you.

Member Beach: Hey, this is Josie, I have a quick 

question too on that same slide. You said the next 

webinar meeting is going to be held in January of 

2022, is that correct? Or you're going to --

Mr. Crawford: That's correct. And again, we don't 

have a title. I'm not sure what is being presented. 

Member Beach: Yes. How do you guys decide the 

titles or do you ask for input of what people are 

interested in or do you guys just decide on your 

own? That was my actual question.

Mr. Crawford: Right. There is a combination there. 

We are looking -- we do ask the participants what 

they would like to hear from us basically and we 

collect information on that and try to provide it as 

soon as we can get it all together.

Member Beach: And you just ask that on your 

website?

Mr. Crawford: Or at the actual meetings. 

Member Beach: Okay. 

Mr. Crawford: They often ask attendees what they 

would like to hear beyond what they've already 

heard that day. 

Member Beach: Okay. All right, sounds great, thank 

you. 

Chair Anderson: Other questions? 

Member Beach: Andy, if there's no more questions 

for Chris, I forgot to ask Grady a question on the 

NIOSH topic.

Chair Anderson: Go ahead. Go ahead.

Member Beach: Grady, just a quick question. Are 

you guys accepting SEC petitions right now? 

Mr. Calhoun: Of course, yes. SEC petitions have 
18

never stopped and the processing of them has 

never stopped. 

Member Beach: Okay, perfect. That's what I was 

wondering. Thank you.

Member Ziemer: This is Ziemer, can you hear me? 

Hello?

Member Beach: Yes.

Mr. Crawford: Yes, I can hear you, Paul.

(Audio interference.)

Member Ziemer: When I clicked that link -- I'm 

getting a lot of background noise. All you have to do 

is put your name and organization in and hit the 

register button. It looks like a simple way to 

register.

Member Beach: Yes, I tried that too, Paul, and it 

worked for me as well. 

Member Ziemer: Yes. 

Chair Anderson: Maybe Rashaun, you could send 

out some directions like that? Since a lot of these 

things are changing and we need to know that when 

you start clicking on things like that and then it asks 

you for something else, what do we need to do.

Dr. Roberts: Yes, I can talk with Beth, she's the 

person that generates the meeting links and all of 

that. Perhaps that is something that we do need to 

do. Let me just check in quickly and see if some of 

the folks who were not on initially have made it on. 

Has Dave Kotelchuck made it on? 

What about Bill Field? Or David Richardson? Okay, 

thank you.

Mr. Calhoun: Can everybody see the Department of 

Energy slide's up? 

Chair Anderson: Yes. 
19

Dr. Roberts: Yes.

Mr. Calhoun: Okay, Greg, whenever you're ready. 

Mr. Lewis: All right and I think that's my cue. Can 

everyone hear me? 

Chair Anderson: Yes. 

Dr. Roberts: Yes.

DOE Program Update

Mr. Lewis: Oh good. Well, and I know we started a 

little bit late, but I think I may be able to catch us 

up here this morning. So, Grady, I have one piece 

of news if you go to the second slide there. Not all 

of you know, but I think most of you know, back in 

January of last year, Pat Worthington had retired 

after a long federal career, so there was an acting 

director of the Office of Health and Safety from 

January through about the end of August, but at the 

end of August, a new director was hired for the 

Office of Health and Safety and it's Mr. Kevin 

Dressman. Previously, he was the director of the 

DOE Office of Enforcement, which is an office that 

implements the department's regulatory 

enforcement program. That was within the Office of 

Enterprise Assessments, so at one point it was 

under Glenn Podonsky, who many of you know, 

although he had been there a few years. 

Kevin is getting involved and, you know, has been 

meeting with a lot of the sites and talking with our 

EEOICPA folks out in the field. He's very well versed 

in DOE. He's very well versed in health and safety 

and has essentially spent almost his entire career 

working to protect the health and safety of the DOE 

workforce, so in his role now with AU and the Office 

of Health and Safety, it's an excellent fit and he's 

starting to get involved in the programs that I work 

on that deal primarily with the former workers, but 

again, he's a good fit. He understands the DOE 

world. He understand the importance of keeping the 

current workers safe and is getting very involved in 
20

all of the work that my office does for the former 

workers and, of course, current workers in some 

cases. 

He was unable to participate today. He was looking 

forward to participating in this meeting, but he 

actually had a meeting out at Livermore so he's 

traveling out on the west coast today and just 

wasn't able to call in due to his schedule, but he is 

planning on participating on the next meeting and 

calling into these meetings as the schedule allows, 

much like Dr. Worthington did.

The rest of the presentation is sort of our standard 

presentation. I think I can skip past the slides three 

and four. I think most everyone on the call knows 

DOE's role and even five, too. I'll just note on slide 

six we've still been working with NIOSH. I know 

they've been, as Grady addressed, having some 

issues on the IT side that have impacted just the 

regular claims, but as far as Site Profile updates and 

the SEC research and things like that, that's all still 

moving forward and DOE has been assisting there. I 

just went back through the last few weeks to see 

what we've been working on recently and there's 

been requests for Y-12, Fernald and Idaho National 

Lab, although I know NIOSH is working on others as 

well and there's more requests than just those sites, 

but we continue to support the large scale research 

requests.

Slide seven, if you can move it forward, Grady. We 

are continuing to do the document reviews. We 

were able to support that all the way through the 

pandemic and that was a particular challenge 

because those folks do have to be in the building 

and so we were rotating folks in and out to keep the 

numbers low. Some of the classification reviewers 

that were over 60 or met certain thresholds were 

stay at home versus coming in, so it was a bit of a 

challenge to keep those reviews going during the 

pandemic, but at this point, those folks are back in 

the office and are continuing to support those 

document reviews. I believe we've returned 
21

everything within our time limits in our working with 

NIOSH to make sure we're helping them hit their 

deadlines. Let's see, next slide. 

Slide eight, we've been working on a few covered 

facility list issues and we're actually hoping to have 

a Federal Register notice out shortly. I won't speak 

anymore on that until the Federal Registered notice 

comes out, but there have been a few facilities that 

we've been working on updating and we work those 

as they come to our attention, whether it's from the 

public or from NIOSH.

Grady, if you can move to slide nine. The only 

update I have with the Former Worker Program just 

want to let folks know, of course, during the height 

of the pandemic those programs were not screening 

due to the health and safety of the participants. 

They had started and stopped kind of as the 

numbers went up and down since the spring of last 

year, but largely now, as of this fall, they are all 

fully open, fully operational and screening sort of 

their capacity numbers. A lot of them do have a 

backlog of folks that were due for screening or 

signed up for a screening shortly before or during 

the pandemic, so we're working those numbers 

down and are starting up outreach again, so that 

program is pretty much back to normal. So if there 

are folks out there that you interact with or you talk 

to, let them know that if they're looking for 

screening, we are ready to go. There's no need to 

hold off and please reach out to us and sign up for 

that screening. 

Let's see, I've got the link for the Former Worker 

Program there on slide 10 and then slide 11 is 

questions and that's really it. I'm doing my part to 

get you guys back on schedule. 

Member Beach: Thanks. Hey, Greg, this is Josie. I 

have a question, is that okay, Andy?

Mr. Lewis: Sure.

Chair Anderson: Yes, go ahead. 
22

Member Beach: In reviewing, and I don't know, 

Greg, if you can answer this, but if not, I'll move on. 

In reviewing some of the letters from the Pinellas 

workers, there's some frustration in them being able 

to get some of the records that they've requested 

back to 2018. Do you know if there's any path 

forward for those documents? They're doing it 

through FOIA, so is that something that you can 

talk to or talk about? 

Mr. Lewis: Not directly, I mean the FOIA office is 

different than my office. I have no direct work with 

the FOIA office, although I'm fully aware that 

there's quite a few FOIAs that are a result of this 

program and sometimes the FOIA office works with 

me to figure out where those records are. What I 

can do, I'd be happy if you can give me some 

specifics of who has requested what when, I can try 

to check with the FOIA office and see what's going 

on with those. I believe --

Member Beach: Okay, yes.

Mr. Lewis: Most of the Pinellas records are with the 

Office of Legacy Management and I have a great 

relationship with them. I'd be happy to try to look 

into it, but I don't have any information for you 

today off hand --

Member Beach: Okay. 

Mr. Lewis: On what's going on with specific FOIA. 

Member Beach: Perfect. I think the first one I was 

talking about was the 2018. It may have been such 

a large document that that might have been part of 

the hold up. I believe Pinellas' work group will take 

this up and there are places there we can probably 

ask, but let me get you a list and maybe you can 

see what's happening there. That would be 

awesome. 

Mr. Lewis: Sure, I'd be happy to look into it.

Member Beach: Thanks. 
23

Member Ziemer: This is Ziemer. Those requests 

from Pinellas folks will be in the public record for us 

also and probably can be provided directly to Greg, 

I would think.

Member Beach: Potentially yes. I think the first one 

was for all of General Electric's documents, which is 

huge I'm sure, but then the rest of them are just 

simply SRDBs that are associated with the 

Evaluation Report. I was just reading that this 

morning and thought I would ask Greg, so, thanks. 

Mr. Lewis: Sure, like I said, I'll look into it. I'm not 

familiar with the specifics, but if you can get me 

some info, I'd be happy to find out what I can and 

get back to you.

Member Beach: Great, thank you. I will do that.

Chair Anderson: Any other questions? 

Member Kotelchuck: Henry? Henry?

Chair Anderson: Go ahead.

Member Kotelchuck: Dave. I'm in the meeting now. 

I had some trouble getting in, but I'm in now. Sorry 

about that. 

Chair Anderson: You weren't alone. Glad you're in.

Member Kotelchuck: Okay. All is well. I'm in. 

Chair Anderson: Okay, Rashaun, should we move 

on to the SEC-256 Pinellas Plant Evaluation Report?

Dr. Roberts: Yes, I believe we can go ahead and 

move into that and we're right on schedule pretty 

much.

Chair Anderson: Close enough at this time. 

Dr. Roberts: Yep. 

Chair Anderson: And with that note, I just was able 

to get in on my computer, into the Zoom meeting. 
24

Dr. Roberts: Great and, Andy, you have an echo.

Chair Anderson: Yes, I've got to turn my phone off. 

Dr. Roberts: Okay, great. Thank you.

Dr. Lobaugh: This is Megan. Can everyone hear me?

Dr. Roberts: Yes.

SEC-256 Pinellas Plant Evaluation Report

Dr. Lobaugh: Okay and I'll turn on my video too, so 

you guys can see me, those of you on Skype. 

My name is Megan Lobaugh and I am the HP in 

DCAS that was the lead for the SEC-256 Pinellas 

Plant ER. I also want to thank my DCAS 

counterparts Lara Hughes, Maddie Cook and 

Angelica Gheen for their help with this Evaluation 

Report at different stages throughout the SEC. I 

also want to thank the ORAU Team health physicist 

and staff who worked on this Evaluation Report, 

including Monica Harrison-Maples, Joe Guido, Tosh 

Ushino, and Roger Halsey. With that, let's get 

started. 

I'm going to start with an overview of the plant. 

According to the Department of Energy Covered 

Facilities Database, the plant is located in 

Clearwater, Florida. It's an almost 100-acre site 

situated midway between Largo and Pinellas Park, 

Florida. The mission was to produce high technology 

nuclear weapons related components.

Next, I have a time line here of three different 

phases of the plant's operations, D&D and 

remediation. Operations took place from 1957 to 

September 1994 and then at that time their mission 

changed to D&D and preparation for reuse. So this 

site is the nation's first successful conversion of a 

former DOE defense manufacturing facility to a 

commercial high tech center. According to the DOE 

Covered Facilities Database, that remediation period 

in 1999 and 2008 to 2009, was remediation of 
25

organic compounds in the groundwater and soil 

from buried waste and no radioactive material was 

found. 

On the right hand side here of this slide, you can 

see an aerial picture of the plant. A little bit more 

information, at its peak the plant employed about 

2000 people. For that first 10 years, the 

manufacturing was really of neutron generators 

only. DOE expanded in the mission to include other 

components after those first 10 years so that those 

components were specialty capacitors, thermal 

batteries, lithium-ambient batteries, 

electromagnetic devices, vacuum switch tubes and 

radioisotope-powered thermoelectric generators for 

some examples. 

In the picture to the right, you'll see a map of the 

Pinellas plant. Building 100 is this large building in 

the picture and that's the main neutron generator 

production area. There were over 625,000 square 

feet that included manufacturing, areas for 

engineering and administrative support. 

Now I'll move on to talk more specifics about the 

SEC petition. We received an 83.13 petition on 

December 16, 2019. This was actually the eighth 

petition that we received for Pinellas, but the first to 

qualify. We had an initial consult call with the 

petitioners on January 21, 2020, and following the 

consult call, there was revision to the petition that 

was received on May 20, 2020. After receiving that 

revised petition, we had a second consult call on 

June 17, 2020. 

One point of discussion in both of these consult calls 

was the temporary plant in St. Petersburg. The 

initial petition included the time period prior to 1957 

which was when this temporary plant was in use 

and that temporary plant is not considered covered 

under EEOICPA. The Pinellas plant covered time 

period starts in 1957, so that was one of the main 

discussion points in some of the revisions to the 

petition. The consult calls also confirmed the 
26

petitioners' intention to petition based on the F.1 

and F.2 Bases. The final petitioner requested class 

was received in the petition received on August 17, 

2020, and that was for all employees who worked in 

any area of the Pinellas plant in Largo, Florida from 

January 1957 through December 1997. 

All of these petitions included extensive supporting 

documentation which took us some time to review 

along with the past petitions that we received to 

determine the new information that was provided 

here compared to past petitions. 

October 20, 2020 is when we qualified the petition. 

Due to this long qualification period, we requested 

an extension on the 180-day time line shortly after 

that qualification as I'm sure everyone is aware. The 

petition qualified under the F.4 Basis, which is a 

scientific or technical report issued by a government 

agency or published in a peer review journal that 

identifies dosimetry information or related 

information that is unavailable. 

In this case, the specific documentation that 

reported this basis was the Tiger Team Assessment 

of the Pinellas Plant that was issued in 1990. In 

general, this document provided information on 

bioassay compliance which suggests that samples 

may not have been submitted and, therefore, are 

unavailable. The samples would be unavailable to 

us. I'll speak more specifically about that later in the 

presentation.

The Tiger Team report, as I said, was issued in 

1990 and it covers an assessment that occurred in 

1988, 1989 or an assessment of the activities that 

were going on at that time. The finding specific to 

bioassay samples again covered that 1988 to 1989 

time frame and stated that bioassay samples were 

not submitted in accordance with procedures. Given 

this time frame of the assessment, it isn't directly 

applicable to the time period that followed so post 

1989. 

During the qualification phase, however, we 
27

reviewed the available documentation regarding 

Pinellas Plant follow up to the assessment and 

specific follow up to those findings that were 

identified and looked at other HP reports and ALARA 

reports to determine if this compliance issue that 

was identified in the Tiger Team report continued 

post the 1990 time frame.

In response to the findings, Pinellas Plant began 

tracking individual compliance with bioassay 

sampling and reporting this compliance in all 

physicist reports, ALARA reports and we see they 

had success in improving compliance. Given this 

information, this data that we have, we consider 

1990 a transition year to a more vigorous program 

and that's how we came up with that cut off period 

of December 31, 1990, which you'll see in the class 

that NIOSH defined for further evaluation, which is 

all employees of Department of Energy, its 

predecessor agencies and their contractors and 

subcontractors who worked at the Pinellas Plant in 

Clearwater, Florida, for the period from January 1, 

1957 through December 31, 1990. 

Before getting into more specific information about 

exposure sources, I want to go over the number of 

claims. So you'll see my data is as of May 3, 2020. 

At that time, we had a total number of 503 claims 

for Pinellas Plant, so that's for employment during 

any of the covered period. Of those 503 claims, 496 

of them were for employees who worked during the 

period under evaluation, so that January 1957 to 

December 1990 time frame. Of those dose 

reconstructions for employees who worked during 

the evaluation period, 456 have been completed. 

The remaining 40 include claims that were pooled 

by DOL or administratively closed for not receiving 

an OCAS-1 form or that were eligible for SEC 

inclusion in the currently active claims that we have. 

The last two rows are information about the 

dosimetry records we have. Of the completed dose 

reconstruction claims that we have, 279 of them 

have internal dose records and 277 of them have 
28

external dose records.

Next, I'm going to do a quick overview of the 

exposure sources, the internal exposure sources, as 

well as monitoring data and then external sources 

and the external monitoring data. 

The primary internal radiological exposure source at 

Pinellas was tritium and this was in the form of 

tritium gas or tritiated water, HTO. Not all workers 

had potential for internal exposure from their hands 

on work, only some of the workers on site had 

exposure potential. The processes used tritium gas 

in various production and development stages and 

testing that was done at the site, associated with 

the neutron generators specifically. 

While tritium was really only used in a gas or a solid 

form, HTO is considered one of the primary sources 

because tritiated water is created when gas or when 

the gaseous tritium interacts with the air due to 

water vapor in the air, so that's why HTO is listed 

there as primary.

Some other forms of tritium on site include 

organically bound tritium and metal tritides. 

Exposure to these types of tritium was always 

concomitant with the triated water or tritium gas 

exposures. So, organically bound tritium exposures 

occurred from hands on work with pump oils, 

organic solvents during maintenance or change out 

of those oils or solvents. The metal tritides were 

created in production processes when tritium was 

made to react with metal surfaces, coatings or 

powders. These tritides were typically of a form 

titanium, scandium or erbium tritides, and like I 

said before, exposure to these types of tritium were 

always concomitant with the tritiated water or gas 

exposures.

On the right hand side, you will see several 

radionuclides or elements that are listed that were 

considered not an internal dose concern. For 

example, kryton-85, which is a noble gas. 

Plutonium, which was encapsulated in the RTG 
29

sources that were brought on site. Uranium, which 

was contained in the tritium storage and borosilicate

glass and C14, which only negligible quantities were 

used in labeling processes. Again, the nickel-63 was 

similar to the uranium and plutonium in that it was 

contained in vacuum tubes and then there were 

examples of other sealed sources, like cesium-137, 

that were used on site. 

In terms of monitoring data that we have available, 

in the ER, we have a Table 63 that discusses 

examples of the forms and records that are 

available to NIOSH that include internal dose 

information as well as the years that they were 

used, and information that's provided in them. So, 

that's some place to look for some examples of the 

type of information we have available.

Since tritium was a primary internal exposure 

source at the site, tritium urine bioassay is the 

preferred method of monitoring for that. We see 

that Pinellas Plant had routine monitoring. The 

schedule frequencies that were based on the 

exposure potential, so daily are on each 

performance. Weekly for the workers with the 

higher exposure potential to monthly schedule 

frequencies for the work processes that had lower 

exposure potential.

We have detailed dose, internal dose data for all 

years under evaluation. In addition to the routine 

bioassay monitoring that was done, there was also 

incident-driven monitoring for the site. 

Some other types of internal monitoring data that 

we have available are plutonium urine bioassay for 

the RTG areas so workers that worked on the RTG 

project submitted samples annually for plutonium. 

We also have area air monitoring for tritium areas

as well as plutonium area, the RTG area. We have 

access to routine smear survey monitoring for the 

tritium areas and again the plutonium and RTG 

area.

This is Table 62 in the Evaluation Report and it's an 
30

example of the number of people monitored as well 

as some dose statistics for this set of years, 1986 to 

1995. We have data available for the time period 

prior to '86, but it's not readily retrievable or 

calculable to provide these dose statistics. We are 

not able to readily calculate the total dose in 

person-millirem for those years or readily provide 

the highest individual dose for those years prior to 

1986. These numbers are available to us through 

HP reports and ALARA reports from Pinellas and 

they were easily compiled for this table as well as 

for the ER.

Note, just because the data aren't compiled here or 

provided to you as an example here, doesn't mean 

that we can't use those prior year data for individual 

dose reconstruction claims nor are they missed in 

argues for the current unmonitored dose approach, 

so have data available for the prior years, this is 

just the easiest example to provide. 

I would also point for information about data in 

general, it includes both internal and external data. 

I would point you to the external Technical Basis 

Document for Pinellas, Table B1. There's kind of a 

good summary of the doses that we see on site, the 

types of doses.

Next, I'm going to move on to external exposure 

sources. We divide external radiation exposure 

sources into three -- photon, beta and neutron. At 

Pinellas, the photon exposure sources were typically 

from testing neutron tubes, neutron generators, 

RTG work, any work with the ion accelerator and 

the krypton-85 component leak testing. You'll see 

very similar things listed here for the others as well, 

so beta, again, the krypton-85 leak testing incidents 

could lead to beta exposures. Again, incidents with 

the x-ray diffraction or e-beam devices on site could 

lead to beta dose. While tritium is the primary 

internal dose hazard, it's not an external dose 

hazard due to the low energy of that beta particle 

that's emitted during decay.
31

As I said, with the internal exposure review, C-14 

was used on site, but again, the quantities are 

considered negligible, so would not be considered 

for beta dose here. Neutrons, the neutron 

generators testing could lead to neutron exposures 

as well as work with RTG and ion accelerators. As 

with internal exposure, not all workers have 

potential for exposure due to hands on work and 

one thing I'll point out here is due to the exposure 

sources we're listing in external. Some workers may 

have had external exposure, but not internal 

exposure and vice versa depending on the kind of 

work they were doing.

Monitoring data that we have available for external 

exposure, Pinellas monitored workers with potential 

for radiological exposure and who routinely entered 

radiation areas. We have individual monitoring data 

available for the entire evaluation period and from 

what we see the percent of workers that wore 

external dosimetry, especially during the time 

period of 1960 and 1973, were about 27 percent of 

workers wearing external dosimetry during that 

time. The typical exchange frequency was monthly 

until January 1990 when it switched to quarterly. 

Table 65 in the ER, lists the radiological forms and 

example records that are available to NIOSH with 

the types of information on each of them, that's 

similar to what I said for internal. We have an 

external table in the ER that lists that information as 

well.

We have area monitoring available to us. In terms 

of the types of area monitoring data available to us 

is direct radiation surveys, area film monitoring and 

work support service. That's in addition to the 

individual dosimetry data we have. This is a similar 

table to what I provided before for the external side. 

Similar years here, 1985 to 1995, but the same 

thing applies. We have data available for the entire 

evaluation period. These are the most easily 

retrievable and the years with these reported 

statistics, a total dose and highest individual dose 

that we could provide in this table. This is table 64 
32

in the ER. 

Next, I'm going to speak specifically to the 

qualifying petition basis. As I mentioned before, the 

petition qualified under the F.4 Basis with the Tiger 

Team Assessment of the Pinellas Plant. During this 

time period, for the late '80s early '90s, the 

Secretary of the Department of Energy, Secretary 

Watkins, led an initiative to strengthen the ES&H 

programs within the DOE complex. Part of that 

initiative was the Tiger Team Assessment. They 

occurred at several different sites in the complex. 

The Pinellas Plant assessment, as I said, was 

published in 1990. 

These two findings that are the bullets listed here 

are given under the Radiation Protection section of 

the assessment. The assessment looked at several 

different areas. The RP.7, Radiation Protection.7, 

focused on internal radiation dosimetry and these 

are two findings that were listed in there. There are 

no references or additional supporting information 

as to how the statistics or specifically these percents 

were determined and we were not able to locate 

any additional supporting documentation for the 

report during our data captures or from requests of 

DOE for any notes related to this report. We had to 

work with what we had in the findings as well as 

what we what in our SRDB and what we received 

from data captures and interviews.

I'm going to step through each of these findings 

individually now. The first one we'll talk about is 

specific to the termination bioassays. This finding 

stated that GE Nuclear Devices estimated that 20 

percent of the personnel that terminated in 1988 

did not provide a termination bioassay. The PDF 

page number that we list here may be one page off 

from what other people may have, if they pulled this 

report from online. This PDF page number equates 

to our SRDB page number, but you should be able 

to find it right around that location.

Pinellas Plant responded to this finding that the 
33

termination bioassay requirement was only for 

those who worked with radioactive materials and in 

response to this finding or as an action item to 

follow up, they implemented a new termination 

checklist. In terms of dose reconstruction, 

termination bioassay data are available to NIOSH 

and the responses from DOE for individual claims as 

well as available to us from previous data captures 

that we have done and holdings that we have in our 

Site Research Database. 

One thing to note is due to the short biological halflife tritium, termination bioassay samples really only 

provided an indication of exposure just preceding 

the sample, so they can't provide us information 

from exposures years prior. If as Pinellas Plant 

suggested maybe people were providing termination 

bioassays and not having been monitored while they 

were working there, that termination bioassay 

sample can really only provide us a short window of 

exposure information. Despite this finding, NIOSH 

actually finds dose reconstruction is feasible 

because we do have the termination bioassay data 

available and if it would be missing on an individual 

claim basis, we have approaches where we can 

calculate those to cover that time period. 

The next finding, you'll see that I'm going to speak 

much more, I have three more slides involved on 

this finding, so we'll go through this kind of slowly 

and I'll try to be very detailed about our discussion 

here.

This one is specific to routine samples. The findings 

state that 70 percent of the required monthly 

samples and 35 percent of the required weekly 

samples were not submitted. As I said before, we 

didn't have any references for this finding in the 

report itself and we were not able to locate any 

additional supporting documentation for the report 

itself, so we had to do some research to kind of 

figure this one out a little bit more. 

The first thing we did was interviews. We initially 
34

reviewed past outreach documents that included 

information on former workers, some of whom were 

previously interviewed for TBD purposes or other 

reasons. We identified 11 individuals from that 

mechanism. Of those 11 individuals, we were able 

to interview four people. The rest either rejected our 

request to be interviewed, could not be located 

based on the identifying information we had, or 

were confirmed deceased. We followed other leads 

to come up with interviewees, such as reviewing 

roster information from the site, suggestions that 

our other interviewees brought up, so we had 

several interviewees suggest other people to 

interview, and the petitioner actually provided us 

some names of people to interview as well. So from 

these additional leads, we reached out and tried to 

locate 18 additional individuals. Of those 18, we 

were able to interview 12. They included two DOE 

oversight personnel, two former HPs and other 

workers, like senior manufacturing engineering 

staff, chemists who worked in the bioassay analysis 

and other workers on site.

Most of the questions we asked were around the 

bioassay program and information these workers 

had about the bioassay program during the time 

that they worked there. Kind of an underlying 

theme of all the interviews was that Pinellas Plant 

employees are generally compliant so if they're 

asked to do something they'll do it. No one knew of 

a specific reason why workers would not be 

submitting samples as requested and there was no 

specific reason that they could provide us, so we 

asked for ideas of the interviewees why monitoring 

compliance was maybe not at the desired levels. 

Two responses we got kind of several times were 

about leave, maybe workers were on leave when 

the sample was due or employees that had nonroutine work in tritium areas were actually added to 

the routine monitoring and should have been more 

on a case by case basis. 

In addition to the interviews, we also reviewed 

NOCTS claims and information that we had in the 
35

NOCTS claims. The review of NOCTS claims showed 

us the job titles, so the reason we use NOCTS is 

because it's the easiest way for us to tie job titles, 

other exposure information like from the CATIs to 

actual monitoring data. And so looking at the 

NOCTS claims and using job titles, those with job 

titles that we, NIOSH, expected to have potential for 

internal tritium monitoring, they did have 

monitoring. 

And a specific group that we looked at during this 

evaluation was the maintenance workers. We looked 

at these maintenance workers because of past 

discussions in the Work Group and a TBD finding 

that is now closed that discussed the potential for 

maintenance workers to not have been monitored. 

We confirmed in general that the Pinellas Plant 

monitored maintenance workers and the results are 

available. So what we found from the NOCTS claim 

was that bioassay data are available. 

As I mentioned earlier, after the Tiger Team 

assessment, the Pinellas Plant initiated efforts to 

improve participation in the bioassay sampling 

program. So the Pinellas Plant ALARA reports and 

other HP reports document success in increasing the 

participation rate. The increase in the bioassay 

sample compliance achieved by the Pinellas Plant in 

response to this finding did not lead to an increase 

in either the Pinellas Plant's total measured internal 

dose or the average individual internal dose as we 

would have expected would be the case if the 

bioassay program had missed identifying significant 

exposures due to the identified compliance issue. 

So, we found no increase in the site wide or 

individual average internal dose after this increase 

in compliance, telling us that there was no 

significant internal dose that went unmonitored.

From the Pinellas Plant policies and our own review 

of the NOCTS claim information, we see that the 

Pinellas Plant monitored those workers with the 

highest internal exposure potential the most often. 

So they were monitored daily or weekly. This group 
36

of workers was the more compliant group, according 

to the finding itself. So according to the finding, we 

see that 65 percent of these weekly monitored 

workers or 65 percent of the weekly samples were 

turned in. I kind of said that in two different ways 

there. We're not sure exactly which way this percent 

was calculated by the site, like I said, because we 

don't have that specific information, but what we do 

know is that the most highly exposed workers, 

those on the weekly monitoring, were more 

compliant. What this tells us is that the data set 

available to NIOSH that we can use, for example, 

determining unmonitored dose would likely be 

biased high. 

The third point here, doses for the monitored 

workers are low. In the attachment B of the Pinellas 

Plant's Occupational External Dose Technical Basis 

Document, it is demonstrated that 80 percent of the 

monitored workers received an annual whole-body 

dose less than or equal to 20 millirem on average 

and 95 percent received an annual whole-body dose 

less than or equal to 100 millirem for any given 

year. These whole-body doses include external dose 

as well as the tritium internal dose, so given those 

numbers, we find that we can bound the tritium 

internal dose for unmonitored workers as well as 

monitored workers. 

Some additional things I'd like to talk about are the 

unmonitored dose approach that is currently used in 

the TBD. One thing that we did find in this 

evaluation is that we need to update the internal 

dose TBD to reflect past Pinellas Plant Work Group 

discussions regarding this unmonitored dose 

approach. The unmonitored dose approach is 

discussed in the external TBD that I mentioned 

before and it assigns this 100 millirem dose based 

on the 95th percentile of that data. As I said before, 

this is based on whole-body dose data from 

monitored workers so the whole-body dose is 

defined as external whole-body as well as tritium 

internal. The past Pinellas Plant Work Group 

discussions agreed that this was an appropriate 
37

approach and so that information needs to make it 

into the internal TBD as well. 

One other thing that this finding discusses is the 

fact that there could be gaps in monitoring for those 

workers who were monitored. We can more clearly 

explain the approaches that we use for assigning 

dose to workers with gaps in monitoring, that's 

something else that I think can be done with our 

TBD updates that will come out of this Evaluation 

Report.

So all of this information together, the interview 

information that provided us some information 

about workers on-site and their view of the bioassay 

program, the claims and data review that we did as 

part of the evaluation and our review of the finding 

itself, as I discussed on the previous slide, we find 

that dose reconstruction is feasible. 

Here's a summary table. NIOSH, we found dose 

reconstruction feasible for tritium, which is the 

primary internal exposure at Pinellas, as well as all 

sources of the external exposure at Pinellas. With 

that, I will take any questions.

Dr. Roberts: Hi, I'm sorry for the interruption, but 

before we get into preliminary questions and 

discussion, I know that there have been a couple of 

Board Members that have joined while this meeting 

has been in progress. So I just want to circle around 

and ask about conflicts of interest from those 

Members. So, Dave Kotelchuck, are you still on? 

Dave? You have to unmute. 

Member Kotelchuck: Pardon me. I'm unmuted. I'm 

here and I have no conflicts. 

Dr. Roberts: Okay, perfect. And then Bill Field, are 

you on? 

Member Field: Yes, I'm on and no conflicts. 

Dr. Roberts: Great, and did David Richardson join? 

Okay, I haven't heard him. All right, sorry for the 
38

interruption. 

Chair Anderson: Okay, so we will have a -- follow 

this with a presentation by the petitioners, but first, 

Board Members have any questions? 

Member Beach: I have a question. I don't know if 

Megan can answer it. Megan, there were like eight 

petitions filed before this one qualified. Can you give 

us any idea why the other eight didn't or was there 

something different about this one? 

Dr. Lobaugh: I can't speak to any of the specifics on 

the previous petitions, but what I can say is that 

this one provided the qualifying documentation to 

support that qualifying basis of the F.4 Basis, that 

dosimetry data is unavailable.

Member Beach: Okay. 

Mr. Rutherford: This is LaVon Rutherford. I'd like to 

add something to that, too. Josie, if you know --

and Megan answered that correctly, I was just going 

to throw additional specifics in there. 

You know we're dealing with this exact same issue 

at LANL, or almost exact same issue at LANL, and 

we were dealing with at SRS so it really became to 

where it's highlighted more or less, but again the 

petitioner did a great job of laying out the 

information. A little easier for us to read.

Member Beach: Okay, got you. And then another 

one for Megan. On slide two and I know this is 

outside of the covered period, but I was just curious 

about the remediation time frame. It's 1999 and 

then it goes into 2008 and 2009, was there 

something that happened in there where they 

remediated again or?

Dr. Lobaugh: So my understanding is that this had 

to do with how the facility was turned over. It was 

turned over with the caveat or idea that it would be 

remediated at a later period. So this was a certain 

part of (audio interference). 
39

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Dr. Lobaugh: -- remediated during that time frame. 

Member Beach: Megan, you broke up, and we 

missed that.

Dr. Lobaugh: Okay. 

Member Beach: Your phone broke up.

Dr. Lobaugh: So I'll repeat what I said again. 

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Beach: Yes. You're unfroze now. You keep 

freezing up. 

Dr. Lobaugh: That's okay. Okay. Was I freezing up 

during the presentation as well? 

Member Beach: No, nope.

Dr. Lobaugh: Okay. Good. So as I understand it, the 

site was turned over for reuse with the 

understanding that this part of the site would be 

remediated at a later period. So it was a certain 

section of the site where the waste was buried that 

DOE came back to clean up.

Member Beach: Okay and then I'm going to quit 

hogging the thing, but I've got one more question 

on nine, for the internal monitoring. You said the 

doses -- the internal monitoring prior to '86 are 

available and you are planning on using those? 

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, we do use them. They're just not 

presented here because this table had the total dose 

in person-millirem as well as the highest individual 

dose. And that data, because we don't have a 

compiled database for Pinellas, we weren't able to 

calculate that for this Evaluation Report, but we do 

use that data prior to this date and it is used in the 

current unmonitored worker approach. 
40

Member Beach: Okay. Thanks. 

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Chair Anderson: Just quick to follow up on that. And 

in the cases you reported that had already been 

reviewed, was that all done by full dose 

reconstruction and using that earlier data for the 

cases that have already been reviewed?

Dr. Lobaugh: So you mean the dose reconstruction 

claims that have been completed? 

Chair Anderson: Yes. How were those completed? 

Was it a full dose reconstruction or was it on a --

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, it would have been a full dose 

reconstruction because there's not an SEC for the 

site and so that's considered a full dose 

reconstruction. Dose reconstructions that we 

received under this current TBD, this TBD was I 

think approved in the 2016 time frame. That's the 

approaches that we'd be using, what's discussed in 

that TBD, which includes an unmonitored worker 

approach that includes all data -- a review of all of 

the data that was available from 1957 through 

1997. And that, I think, you can see the summary 

information about that in the external Technical 

Basis Document, attachment B.

Chair Anderson: Okay. 

Dr. Lobaugh: Does that answer your question? 

Chair Anderson: Yes, and do you know were any of 

those awarded? 

Dr. Lobaugh: You mean in terms of compensation? 

Chair Anderson: Yes. 

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes. From the data that I asked 

recently, it looks like about 16 percent of the claims 

have been comped or would fall --

(Simultaneous speaking.)
41

Dr. Lobaugh: -- you know, would be greater than 50 

percent according to the dose reconstruction. 

Member Beach: And I think that was on DOL's 

report also. Was it DOL's or NIOSH's? One of the 

two gave the numbers for Pinellas today, this 

morning.

Chair Anderson: I didn't have that, so yes, thanks, 

Megan. I was just curious because when you say 

the doses are all very low, one would not think they 

would get compensated, so I was just interested in 

that. There must be some cases there that either 

worked elsewhere or whatever. That -- you got to 

50 percent takes a significant dose. Other 

questions? 

Member Schofield: Megan, can you hear me?

Chair Anderson: Go ahead.

Member Schofield: This is Phil Schofield. We did 

some interviews a number of years back, I don't 

remember the year right off. One of the questions 

that we asked and that came up was about the 

RTGs. Our understanding from the interviews was 

that all the RTGs that are used were small ones. 

There was none of the larger RTGs used. Have you 

found anything to show a difference in that?

Dr. Lobaugh: No, I think that's my understanding as 

well and one thing with the RTGs that I know was 

discussed with the Work Group heavily during the 

last TBD revisions and review is this RTG work and 

the fact that the sources were being brought on site 

so they were encapsulated when they arrived on 

site and they would be surveyed and cleaned prior 

to being put into the RTG itself. So those sources 

would be sent back if they were contaminated at all. 

So that is why, I think, I'm just kind of expanding a 

little bit on why the plutonium was listed as not an 

internal dose exposure concern. 

Member Roessler: Yes, Megan --
42

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Member Roessler: Can I follow up on that? This is 

Gen Roessler. Yes, I had a question, it seems 

there's a disagreement between your slide seven, 

where you say the plutonium was not an internal 

dose concern, and yet on slide eight, they did the 

plutonium urine bioassay. It seems like there's a 

conflict there.

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes. So, the site did monitoring for 

plutonium because of the work with the plutonium, 

but what we see in our reviews of the data and 

everything is that there was never any release of 

plutonium and that the sources themselves were 

never sent back due to contamination concerns. If 

the sources themselves were contaminated on 

arrival, that would be the mechanism for internal 

exposure for the workers of the Pinellas site and 

since that never happened that's how those 

discussions went with the Work Group and the 

determination that a general plutonium bioassay 

dose reconstruction approach isn't needed in the 

TBD.

Member Roessler: Okay, so on slide seven that's 

more of a conclusion after you had looked at the 

data, not a preconceived determination that they 

didn't have to do monitoring?

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, exactly.

Member Roessler: Yeah. 

Dr. Lobaugh: So slide seven is the decision or 

review after review of all of the information. 

Member Roessler: Okay and since I have the floor, 

then I'll ask another background question and I 

think it might have been answered. When I read 

your report before the meeting, I was trying to 

visually picture the plant and I thought that our 

Work Group had held a meeting there or visited 

there once, but I think what you said and confirmed 

is that this plant was completely converted certainly 
43

in 1999 or around 2000, well before the Board was 

formed. So I don't think we ever did see it as it 

existed as the Pinellas Plant.

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, if you guys would have had a 

meeting there it would have been while it's already 

this, I think it's called the Young-Rainey STAR 

Center, so that's the high technology center that 

currently exists at the site. 

Member Roessler: Okay, okay. Thank you.

Member Ziemer: Megan, is Ziemer. I have a couple 

of quick questions. Can you hear me okay? 

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes. 

Member Ziemer: Yes, just to clarify, on slide six and 

this has to do with the claims that have been 

processed. Now the slide says as of May 2021, I 

think verbally you mentioned it was May 2020 if I 

understood it correctly, and I just wanted to clarify 

is the 2021 the correct date on that slide --

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, 2021 is the correct date. Sorry 

about that.

Member Ziemer: Okay. 

Dr. Lobaugh: I did that in my practice round 

yesterday too, and my husband was like that's not 

the right date. 

Member Ziemer: Okay. The other question I had 

and I don't know if this is one you can answer. I 

know in the early '90s, there was (audio 

interference) to include or to build a childcare center 

on this site for Pinellas and I wondered if that ever 

occurred and if so, if the on-site staff were included 

as Pinellas workers. Do you know if that child care 

center was ever completed? 

Dr. Lobaugh: So as far as I understand it, the child 

care center was proposed and going to start, but I 

don't believe that it ever began.
44

Member Ziemer: Okay, that answers it, that was the 

question. Because if it had, I was wondering how we 

would handle those, both the children and the 

adults in that center. Okay, so it didn't really ever 

exist then?

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, as far as I understand, that's 

correct. 

Member Ziemer: Okay, thank you.

Chair Anderson: Any other questions people have? 

Member Beach: Andy, this may be a question for 

Phil about tasking because this would need to be 

tasked to SC&A, I believe, to review the ER. 

Chair Anderson: Yes.

Member Beach: I don't know if that's something we 

can do or not.

Chair Anderson: Rashaun? I think that's kind of 

next. I mean it's unusual here because we had an 

earlier committee that was then inactivated and 

now we've got a new review, so I think we would 

task this to SC&A and we have reconstituted the 

committee. So once that gets done, we'll have to 

have that review.

Dr. Roberts: I think it's already done. If you look at 

the work, it's been reestablished. I think Phil's still -

-

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Chair Anderson: Yes, oh yes. We've reestablished 

the committee, but it hasn't met.

Dr. Roberts: No, normally it wouldn't meet --

Chair Anderson: Right. 

Dr. Roberts: -- until after the review is completed. 

Chair Anderson: Right.
45

Dr. Roberts: Yes, okay. And --

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Beach: Pardon me, Phil? 

Member Schofield: Josie, could you repeat that 

question, please? 

Member Beach: Oh, I was just asking about tasking 

SC&A to review the new Pinellas Evaluation Report 

and I was asking it to you as the Chair, I would 

assume you'd make that recommendation, but 

Rashaun was just --

Member Schofield: Yes. 

Member Beach: Talking about it also.

Dr. Roberts: Yes, I was --

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Member Schofield: -- Rashaun's --

Dr. Roberts: Yes, I was having some difficulty 

coming off mute, but yes, that would be appropriate 

for the Board to task SC&A with review. 

Mr. Barton: This is Bob. The only thing is, and this 

happened back in August at our meeting, too, with 

the uncertainty around the SRDB, I'm just hesitant 

to commit to a date of delivery. Given the fact that 

when we do these SEC reviews, we want to have 

access to absolutely everything that NIOSH has. 

Now if there's a way that we can get all of the 

Pinellas-related documents that have been collected 

onto the new NIOSH computing Edge platform, 

which is sort of a new way and those of you who 

have used it, it's very similar to Sitco (phonetic). 

But without that, I mean we'd really be performing 

a blind review only on those references that we can 

request that are already out there in the public 

domain, either in the Evaluation Report or in other 

documents and based on past discussions, so I'm a 
46

little bit hesitant there knowing that we wouldn't 

have access to the wealth of information that went 

into this Evaluation Report simply because the Site 

Research Database is currently not functional. 

I know we talk about the searchable form, but even 

in a form where we can just see all the documents 

and maybe just go on document title or date, 

something like that, but without that we're sort of 

operating blind if we embark on this review without 

access to all the information that should be 

available and normally is. 

Member Beach: So it seems like if Megan had 

access to it, then she could provide that for SC&A. 

Is that not correct? 

Dr. Lobaugh: What I will say is all of the references 

from the Evaluation Report are in the Board's 

volume, but I agree with Bob's concern about the 

other documents from Pinellas that would have 

been in the SRDB that we did not reference in the 

ER. I think Tim maybe was going to say something. 

I saw him turn on his video.

Dr. Taulbee: Yes, thanks, Megan. Getting all of 

those documents over into an area for SC&A to look 

at, I'm going to hesitantly say is possible, but you're 

not going to be able to search them from that 

standpoint. So, you're going to have a few thousand 

documents that are just there, in a sense. I'm not 

sure how much benefit that would be. If you want 

us to try and pursue it to see if we can do that, we 

can certainly try and get back to you on that 

standpoint, but that's up to you all. You know 

recognizing, as Megan pointed out, the SRDB 

doesn't exist for us. We can't do a search on it from 

that standpoint. 

ORAU is doing this Evaluation Report and does have 

an SRBD available, so they are able to do some of 

that searching and we were able to make inquiries 

of them and try and get some of that, but they 

would send us the SRBD numbers and then we 

would try and pull them so that we could look at 
47

them. There's no way to communicate or pass that 

information back and forth right now.

Member Beach: So I have a question.

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Member Beach: Yes, it does. Is it possible to get 

started and to not just say oh, well we can't do it so 

we're just going to wait six months or a year to 

even get started. I guess, Bob, I personally would 

like you to get started with no end date because of 

the situation, but that's just my thoughts. I just 

hate to postpone it longer. The petitioners end up 

waiting a very long time as it is so that's just my 

thought.

Mr. Calhoun: This is Grady. You guys, like Megan 

said, you should have the access to the documents 

that were referenced, but I'll check into what the 

possibility is of doing a dump just searching on the 

word Pinellas and see if that can be done.

Chair Anderson: Yes, I would think we should be 

able to do a charge and get you started with the 

understanding that, you know, you'll do what you 

can and then as more becomes available, just keep 

moving it. I don't think you'd have to redo anything 

on what you could get access to. We wouldn't ask 

for a final document. 

Mr. Calhoun: I certainly wouldn't object to that. I 

mean if we can make some progress absolutely, 

let's do what we can under the circumstances. I 

guess trying not to ask for too much, but, you 

know, the Y-12 SEC addendum was presented back 

in August. I mean if we could get the same sort of 

situation where it's not searchable in any 

meaningful form, I mean you can see PDF titles, but 

it would at least give us access to a lot of the 

material that we need, even if it's slower in us being 

able to evaluate it. But I certainly agree that, 

especially with the uncertainty on when we'll get 

some of these modules back, like the SRDB, I mean 

I'd really like to get my team rolling again, at least 
48

in some meaningful capacity if we can. 

Member Clawson: Bob, this is Brad. I'd really like 

you to start on it so that you can start giving input 

as this program or this system is being evaluated so 

that we will be able to help search this a little bit 

better because right now, my personal opinion is 

that it's not that user-friendly. I'd really like to see 

you start this just also from the standpoint of being 

able to help develop the system to where we can do 

it properly.

Mr. Calhoun: Yes, I agree with that, too. I think, 

you know, ultimately it handicaps the Board if SC&A 

can't get an appropriate review and also I know the 

petitioners want to get input to the Board as well 

and we need to help them with their issues. In any 

event, we need to move ahead in whatever we're 

able to do at the present time and then we get the 

full access, we can finish it up. But there's no point 

in sitting, waiting. We've got to get it underway I 

think. And that will help the Board ultimately. 

Chair Anderson: Okay, so I think there seems to be 

a consensus that we ought to move forward with a 

charge and Rashaun, I don't know exactly how the 

terminology needs to be, but certainly I think asking 

SC&A to begin and develop a work plan would be 

the way to go, so let's plan to do that. Other 

questions? 

Member Beach: Yes, I have question. Can you 

remind me or anybody, did we assign SC&A to Y-12 

or did we leave that on hold last meeting? Does 

anybody remember? Bob, did we --

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Mr. Barton: Josie, I can probably help with that. We 

were going to look into see what we could do within 

the restrictions at the time in August and it really 

just, when we looked at it, we felt that we were 

handcuffed and we couldn't really do it. We didn't 

even have the Edge computing platform that 

allowed us to have the dose reconstruction meeting 
49

at the end of September. Now that we have that, 

and there's an actual mechanism to get some of 

these files to where we can look at them, even if it's 

not convenient to search from, I think that will get 

us a lot farther along the line. So at this time 

though, we have not done anything with the Y-12 

addendum because we don't really have access to 

the numerous documents and I think in Y-12 I mean 

there's thousands and thousands of documents that 

were in the SRDB that we couldn't look it.

Member Beach: So, it sounds like we're in the same 

boat and it never got assigned. I think, Andy, 

maybe we should go ahead and assign it and with 

the same caveat as this Pinellas. 

Chair Anderson: I thought that's basically open 

ended what we did and then, Bob, you folks began 

to look at it, as you said.

Member Beach: Okay. 

Chair Anderson: I guess we don't want you 

spending a lot of time if it's futile and simply then --

but we do need to get it charged to you so you can 

keep your eye on it and not us having to check well, 

what's the status. We'll rely on you to check on the 

status of the available documents for Y-12 and with 

Pinellas. Rashaun, is that okay? Do you need more?

Dr. Roberts: No, I think that's okay.

Chair Anderson: Other questions on Megan's 

presentation? 

Member Beach: No, other than she did a great job. 

Thank you, Megan.

Member Schofield: I actually do, Andy. Megan --

Chair Anderson: Go ahead. 

Member Schofield: I was wondering, so at Pinellas I 

know that in the 1990s and on further, it actually 

came down to the contractor to determine under the 

100-millirem caveat of who would be bioassayed 
50

and who would be not, also with monitoring. Was 

that going on in this time period that we are 

discussing?

Dr. Lobaugh: So throughout the Pinellas Plant 

operation time frame the site would have been 

making the determination as to whether the 

workers needed to be monitored or not. Is that the 

question you're asking? 

Member Schofield: So they made the distinguishing 

comment that these people are because they have 

the higher probability.

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes. 

Member Schofield: So, this is the same thing that 

we found at other sites so they take a certain little 

group and monitor them and they forget about the 

rest of the group that's walking around inside of it. I 

just wanted to clarify that. Thank you. 

Dr. Lobaugh: Yes, so the Pinellas Plant safety staff 

as well as managers would have been reviewing the 

work of all the employees to determine whether 

they needed to be on external dosimetry or internal 

dosimetry and they would have been making that 

assignment. 

Member Schofield: Okay, thank you, Megan. Good 

job.

Chair Anderson: Okay, anyone --

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Member Valerio: Megan, this is Loretta I have --

Chair Anderson: Go ahead.

Member Valerio: I went back to the ER report and I 

was trying to find it and I just don't know where I 

missed it, but can you tell me how early Pinellas 

Plant actually had plutonium on site?

Dr. Lobaugh: The RTG program began in 1975, so 
51

that's when they first received, I believe it was 

seven sources to start up that RTG program. 

Member Valerio: Okay. Okay, and then the second 

question I had was in the earlier years, they had 

irregular monitoring? I guess it was air monitoring. 

It said it was informal until the mid-1970s and there 

were no permanent air monitoring stations. Were 

those relocated periodically? Were they in the same 

locations? Do you know? 

Dr. Lobaugh: Are you talking about the occupational 

air monitoring within the work areas? Because that, 

there --

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Dr. Lobaugh: Go ahead.

Member Valerio: Go ahead. No go ahead. 

Dr. Lobaugh: I was going to say so there was an air 

monitoring program within the facility and that 

would have been, you know, for the occupational 

exposures and then there's air monitoring that 

would have been done on the exhaust stacks and 

for environmental purposes.

Member Valerio: So these were for the radioactive 

airborne effluents so that would have been --

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Dr. Lobaugh: -- environmental monitoring, yes. Yes, 

that would've been the exhaust monitoring. So 

those wouldn't necessarily be movable, those would 

be fixed on the stack itself.

Member Valerio: Okay and do you have any idea 

how, you know, as you said that some monitoring 

activities were on an irregular basis, do you have 

any idea if that was annual or how often that may 

have been recorded?

Dr. Lobaugh: For the monitoring data itself, I don't 

know. Are you asking about a specific section in the 
52

ER? Where --

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Member Valerio: It's under Section 6.3.1, the 

Internal Environmental Data and Data Sufficiency, 

under the radioactive airborne effluents. 

Dr. Lobaugh: I don't know more than what's in the 

report in terms of how often that was done. Since 

this was exhaust or environmental monitoring, that 

would affect the environmental doses that we 

calculate and as we state in there, the doses that 

we calculate for environmental are so low that 

they're under our threshold of assigning dose in the 

IREP program. 

Member Valerio: Okay, thank you for that.

Chair Anderson: Okay, with that set of questions, I 

think we're going to charge SC&A to begin looking 

at the documentation and keep us informed as to 

how that goes. So now let's move on to two of the 

Pinellas Plant petitioners have a presentation to 

make. I don't know, Ms. DeGarmo, are you going to 

go first or do you want Mr. Ehlers?

Dr. Degarmo: I was going to ask about, I was 

actually going to throw something out to you to see 

whether you would prefer -- I guess what are our

time constraints, because knowing that will 

determine how we kind of move forward, whether 

you want to hear my total report or do you want me 

to just overview it for you and then go right to Del? 

What's your preference here because I think a lot of 

the questions you're raising about data and stuff are 

explained through the documents that you should 

have received, but I don't want to waste your time 

in going through the whole document since you're 

going to have it and it will be entered into the 

records. So what is your preference? I'm happy to 

do either for you.

Chair Anderson: Well, we have until 3:40 so another 

half hour or so.
53

Dr. Degarmo: Okay. 

Chair Anderson: We could probably go longer than 

that if you need it.

Dr. Degarmo: I don't think we need it. I just wanted 

to be very mindful of the timing. I mean my 

preference would be to walk through my entire 

document. I'm going to turn it over to the second 

petitioner kind of midway and then come back with 

just a couple of summary remarks, if that's okay 

with you all.

Chair Anderson: Let's do that. Let's have you walk 

through it for us. That should be helpful.

Dr. Degarmo: Okay, great. I also wanted to make 

sure, I'm sure they've been delivered, but just kind 

of from my perspective, you should've received a 

letter from Congressman Charlie Crist from the 13th 

District in which Pinellas is part of. I know that was 

submitted early this morning and I apologize for its 

lateness. You also should have a petition with 

workers' signatures, a few letters, and then copies 

of both of the SEC presentations we intend to make 

today. Is that correct? 

Dr. Roberts: Yes, those documents were received 

and they were circulated to the Board today. All of 

the documents you mentioned.

Dr. Degarmo: Oh, thank you so much for that. I 

was worried because we were running a little late 

over here. 

As some of you know, I've been involved in this 

program since 2006 and I really have attempted to 

learn everything that I could about the EEOICPA 

and I went to the National Institute or NIOSH 

Division of Compensation Analysis and Jim Neton 

had the patience to try to teach me about dose 

reconstruction and I've gone through the 

Department of Labor manuals. I've done a lot of 

work in trying to better understand how energy 

plays. 
54

So I still have a lot to learn. I look at all of this as a 

learning experience. But this has been, and I have 

worked with claimants, but I've got to tell you, this 

has been a very difficult and huge challenge in 

writing this petition. And I am the author of the 

petition. I pride myself on being cooperative and 

ethical and reasonable and rational and all those 

things, but wow if this is what it takes to get an SEC 

petition qualified, I'm not sure I can claim it's 

claimant friendly or favorable anymore. I 

understand we're under unusual circumstances, I do 

get that, but we had seven petitions submitted 

beforehand. 

This is the eighth petition and the one that qualified, 

the one that's in front of you. And if nothing else, 

the importance of having this petition qualified 

seems to have kind of relit that spark, I'm calling it, 

of hope amongst our former workers over there, 

who really no longer trust the system. They don't 

believe anybody gives a damn about them. They 

don't think that their voices are being heard. Every 

year goes by and they're really getting a lot worse 

in terms of health. 

There are folks over there we know that aren't 

going to be eligible under the SEC, but there are a 

significant number who potentially could be affected 

by your decision. So we are really here to ask you 

to assign this particular SEC to a Work Group and 

we appreciate that you are moving it over to SC&A 

because we as the petitioners really want to have a 

better opportunity to introduce you to some of the 

data we have, be able to review this and discuss the 

evidence and we are committed to working with you 

as much as you will allow us. We want to be on 

board whenever we can to do whatever you need us 

to do to help in this process. 

So there are several points I wanted to raise with 

you all that kind of underline our request for this to 

go to a Work Group and not so willingly accept the 

idea that NIOSH can adequately reconstruct this 

dose. The first one has been touched on and it 
55

really is lack of access and transparency to critical 

documentation cited and referenced in the 

Evaluation Report and beyond. 

At the end of the day, there are 167 documents 

from the Evaluation Report that are not in the public 

domain. Through my research and work over the 

years, I was able to get quite a few of the 

documents that are referenced, but these 167 seem 

to be the most pivotal, if you will. But even before 

that, when I was trying to figure out whether I even 

wanted to write an SEC for Pinellas, I made a FOIA 

request to the Department of Energy for, and there 

were two separate requests, one for documents 

related to the Heather project and the other FOIA 

was for the General Electric documents related to 

Pinellas and I understand the GE documents related 

to Pinellas is a very, very huge number I'm 

suspecting, I don't really know. 

The original request for both of these was made July 

24, 2018, and it was not until September 24, 2021, 

over three years later, that I was even 

acknowledged. And what I was told in an email was 

that my request for files and the files themselves 

were still in classification review. They also stated 

that we are not certain how long the process will 

take and are you still interested in pursuing this 

request. So, it took them three years to even notify 

me to tell me or to provide a response that it would 

not be available for an indeterminable amount of 

time. 

On November 14, 2021, after we had received the 

Evaluation Report, I submitted a FOIA request to 

both the DOE and CDC with a specific list. I didn't 

ask for everything, I provided the list of documents 

not in the public domain that were cited and 

referenced in the ER. I have yet to receive an 

acknowledgment that my request was received by 

the Department of Energy. I did receive an 

acknowledgment from the CDC though. 

When I asked NIOSH for a copy of the resumes of 
56

the individuals who had worked on the ER to 

prepare for meeting with the health physics team, I 

was told I had to FOIA those resumes. I don't know, 

the world I come from when you go into a meeting, 

you do your background work and you want to 

know what people are trained in, what is the 

appropriate title you should be calling them. This 

just really caught me off guard. I was like you've 

got to be kidding me, another FOIA. Then I was told 

I wasn't likely to receive those resumes until the 

end of December, which really was not useful for 

the purposes I had hoped to get them for.

So we definitely feel like we're at a huge 

disadvantage. I mean when writing the SEC, I only 

had access to what was in the public domain and 

my own research records. Luckily that was enough 

to get the petition qualified, but nonetheless, to be 

able to really launch an adequate defense of our 

position is nearly impossible when we can't look and 

see how the decision was made or what the data 

was that was used. 

So we're sitting in front of you here and we're 

hoping that we can make an intelligent presentation 

when we just don't have any of the information we 

need to actually assess this Evaluation Report. And 

again, how does anybody expect us to launch a 

defense of our position when we just don't have it. 

We have no idea what data was being used. We 

don't know where the data was collected. We don't 

know how it was manipulated. We don't know the 

context in which it was captured. There has been no 

opportunity for us to independently review the 

process or the results. And since most of the 

documents are not classified and held in the SRDB, 

we don't understand why some of those -- I mean 

we don't have to search them like you do, but we 

didn't understand if they're accessible, why could 

they not have been downloaded and at least some 

of them, starting a process of providing them to us 

so at least we have a better sense of how our 

argument should be framed.
57 

And I think that this whole lack of access to 

documents, and believe me, I understand all the 

modernization and security protocol, I get that, but 

it really puts the petitioners and our claimants at 

Pinellas in a distinct disadvantage with respect to 

formulating a comprehensive analysis of the data 

and summary conclusions. And there really has 

been no transparency. The failure to provide that 

transparency really undermines the legitimacy of 

the work that's being done at DCAS and DOL and 

DOE. And it perpetuates the perception that this 

program is not claimant-favorable. And I'm sorry, 

we're not about to surrender and blindly assume 

NIOSH is always correct. 

The second issue has to do with, the data is devoid 

of context. In my very first methodology course in 

my Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, my 

professor, [identifying information redacted], 

and I don't know if any of you know him, but 

anyway he said that data is nothing without context 

because context puts things into perspective. You 

really can't grasp the full implications of your 

findings without knowing the context first. It 

requires an understanding of the circumstances that 

surround each one of your metrics and these 

circumstances shed light on information that would 

otherwise be nothing more than a row of numbers 

in a computer program.

So context would provide additional categories 

through which to better understand the data and 

the dosimetry, and the example I'm thinking of is 

we know that the height of production at Pinellas on 

particular nuclear components were generally done 

between a 7:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. shift based on 

all of the interviews that we have conducted. So it 

would be important to know what kind of exposure 

data and the time period from which it was being 

taken was used in terms of dose reconstruction or 

individual doses. 

And so without a context, it really is impossible to 

determine if the buildings are being accurately 
58

represented, if the facility is accurately represented, 

what were the operations, the processes? We know 

we have a huge issue with appropriate employment 

positions. They are terribly misrepresented. So 

there is no context or there's a lack of context in the 

ER, and again, we don't have any way to kind of 

independently review whether the context in which 

this dosimetry is being used is being used within the 

right context. 

And then we have issue three, which is the potential 

bias. And this really has to do with selection and 

since we have no access and there's no explanation, 

we don't really understand and have no idea how 

certain selection processes were made and how 

selection biases were avoided, if they were. We 

don't know, it's not included. We don't know how 

ORAU chose subjects to participate in their interview 

process, thus raising this concern of selection bias. 

We don't know what the basis of the assumptions 

underpinning ORAU's and DCAS's belief that GE 

provided reliable source data, whether that data be 

dosimetry, stack effluent releases, et cetera. We 

would have appreciated an explanation as to how 

confirmation bias and selection bias were avoided 

and we don't know that.

The fourth issue is we heard and we've read is we 

have lots of data, we have lots of data, don't worry 

about it. We can do this dose reconstruction. The ER 

seems to reference a lot of this unlimited amount of 

data, but we haven't seen it. We've asked for it, we 

haven't seen it. As I said before, we don't know 

what's being used, where it came from, how it was 

manipulated. We don't know the context in which it 

was captured. And without having some tools to 

guide us, we are certainly not convinced the data is 

reliable. 

The ER report states that DCAS has access to 

significant data related to personal exposure 

summary data including tritium doses summary 

data, except for the following years: 1959 through 

1962, 1967 through 1974, 1980, 1982 to 1983, so 
59

that's about 15 years of personal exposure data 

that's missing across the 33 years of plant 

operation, if we were to accept the change in class 

to 1990. And when you look at that missing data, 

what you realize is some of the most heavy 

production periods would have been located within 

those specific years where there's no data.

Again, I appreciate that this is a difficult situation 

and the data is a problem, but we were confused 

and we talked to Megan about this, on page nine of 

the 1986 through 1995 data and on page 12, the 

external monitoring data for '85 through '95, and 

while maybe that earlier data was not easily 

collected and compiled, having some of that 

available to look at would've maybe reassured us 

that that data exists. 

I mean at this point, where I am, as I think my copetitioner is, we're fighting for our claimants to get 

a fair and just evaluation of the process that they 

have to go through. And not seeing that data, and 

given the data that's missing above, although there 

may be two different data points, is concerning to 

us.

Another issue that came up and I did not mention in 

the material that you have in front of you, is that 

there are a couple of references to data for Pinellas 

coming from the 1940s. When we questioned Megan 

about that, she said well it might be from Milwaukee 

GE up there, but shouldn't we know exactly where 

that data is coming from given that Pinellas was 

built in '56, it was operating in '56. We have some 

data from interviews that were conducted that 

people were actually beginning to work on the 

neutron generators in the temporary building, but 

we let that go. But how do you and what is the 

process of making sure the correct data is being 

used in the correct area?

So, Mr. Ehlers is an authorized co-petitioner. He 

also worked decades at the Pinellas Plant. And we 

have been relying on him as our site expert because 
60

he knows as an engineer and in working across that 

facility, he knows what exactly happened in some of 

the hottest spots. So if it's okay with you all, I 

would like to turn this discussion over to Mr. Ehlers 

and then at the end, just do a summary conclusion 

if that's okay. Del, are you online? 

Chair Anderson: That's fine with us. Thank you very 

much. Mr. Ehlers?

Mr. Ehlers: Am I online?

Chair Anderson: You are now, yes.

Mr. Ehlers: Thank you. I am Delmar Ehlers, 

physicist and recently appointed site expert for this 

SEC. I worked at the Pinellas Plant for 34 years 

beginning in 1963 through closing in 1997. I started 

as an x-ray diffractionist in the laboratory and 

followed as a process development engineer. As 

such, I helped develop processes, including tritium 

loading and tube exhaust, development of real time 

x-ray equipment, and was quality engineer for 

krypton-85 leak check and tube test. I am familiar 

with those and other processes and what went on in 

those areas. 

As a recent choice as the site expert, I wish to bring 

up certain dose reconstruction details that are not 

known and ask the following questions.

The first questions refer to Area 108 tube exhaust, 

for example. In tube exhaust did employee 

individual dose reconstructions take into account an 

individual's sporadic missing data for years or even 

in shorter periods in their sample and badge 

records? Was their individual data checked for 

increases against reported tritium releases for 

agreement? Did coworker data appropriately agree 

in quantity and by what standard and what actions 

were taken if it did not? Was any exhaust stack 

available to use for reference, again the relative 

quantities, both during the years of missing data 

and during reported data? 
61

Was the possibility of unreported tritium releases in 

tube exhaust suggested that could release all 

workers estimated exposures, especially for years of 

missing data? For the missing years of data, were 

all tube exhaust employees assigned the same 

doses? If not, how were they differentiated? And for 

those years, how were appropriate data calculated 

and assigned? Was it the same for all employees 

again? Was it a straight line from year to year? In 

addition to tube exhaust, there was also a 

significant tritium exposure in multiple plants, 

laboratory areas involved in the analysis and 

production, destructive testing samples and routine 

measurement of production samples and analyses 

to determine the causes of production failures. Here 

exposure to radioactive parts would have varied 

significantly from person to person and with the 

peak occurrence of certain production problems. 

Was the calculation average for all workers not 

taking into account individual workers who could 

have been at significant variances in exposure? 

Were measures taken into account for the possible 

lack of full time badge and sample data for workers 

who, by their actions, failed to wear badges or do 

bioassays? Thank you. I hand it back. 

Member Beach: Andy, can I ask Mr. Ehlers a 

question? This is Josie.

Chair Anderson: Yes, go ahead. I was on mute. Go 

ahead.

Member Beach: Mr. Ehlers, were you ever 

interviewed by NIOSH? 

Mr. Ehlers: No.

Member Beach: Okay, thank you.

Mr. Ehlers: A good question. No, I was not.

Chair Anderson: Other questions people have before 

we turn it back for the summary that Ms. DeGarmo 

wanted to make?
62

We really appreciate the information you provided 

and I think, as you heard, we have many of the 

same questions as we move forward here. 

Mr. Ehlers: Thank you. 

Chair Anderson: Hopefully we'll be able to get you 

the data and information you need as well. 

Dr. Degarmo: So, I think you know where we're 

heading and the bottom line is that COVID gets 

everybody. It's slowed down and I understand this 

more than you realize because I experienced COVID 

in October of 2019 right when I was preparing to 

submit this SEC. So, I understand that it's a burden, 

but the concern here is even in the most trying of 

situations, this process just puts an unreasonably 

high burden of proof on our petitioners and 

claimants to show that NIOSH can't adequately 

reconstruct doses at their particular facility. 

One of my folks asked me to put this to you and I 

agreed that I would. She wanted to know should not

the focus be on the Department of Energy to accept 

responsibility for their actions. This ER report was 

supposed to be digestible to the common general 

public and when I asked claimants to look through 

it, because that's how I kind of work with them. I 

want them to be on board with everything that I do 

here and Mr. Ehlers is the same way. They were like 

we don't even have a clue what's being talked 

about. Some of the people who did manage to get 

through it said they're not talking about Pinellas, 

are they? This does not sound like anything that we 

have experienced in all of our years of employment 

and this goes back to the context that I'm talking 

about. So what we're just really asking is we really 

want transparency. We really want access to the 

documents that we need to evaluate and look at the 

situation. It's only then we'll have the ability to 

independently evaluate the work that has been 

done. We want to be able to go to a work group so 

that finally Pinellas Plant and all of the people that 

work there, will have the attention that they 
63

deserve. Lastly, I know you've been in the area, but 

it's been quite a while and we would really like to 

invite you to the Pinellas area, not Tampa, but St. 

Pete, Clearwater, Largo, Pinellas area so that you 

can meet a whole host of people that you haven't 

met before and hear voices from a whole new group 

of people who are coming forward with claims and 

concerns. We would love for you to come down and 

meet with us face to face should you grant our 

request. 

Thank you so much for giving the time for us to 

speak. We really appreciate it and hopefully we'll be 

able to work with you in the future. Thank you.

Chair Anderson: Thank you for taking the time to 

put all your materials together and get them off to 

us. We certainly have had an opportunity to take a 

look at it. Once we get back to having face to face, 

in person meetings, I think we could probably tell 

you that we'll probably be down in that St. 

Petersburg area at some point. Once we get our 

committees up and running and SC&A is doing their 

work and we have something to report that would 

make sense for us to come locally so that folks can 

actually appear in person before the Board. Go 

ahead.

(Simultaneous speaking.)

Member Ziemer: This is Paul. Our plan was to be 

there today, but we couldn't travel.

Chair Anderson: Yes. 

Dr. Degarmo: Understandable. (Simultaneous 

speaking.) 

Chair Anderson: We're going to talk about it in our 

planning meeting. Perhaps the earliest would be 

next April for a face to face.

Dr. Degarmo: Okay. 

Chair Anderson: Because we aren't going to avail or 
64

discuss that right now, about the other options, but 

certainly we appreciate your invitation and hope to 

be able to, well, we will at some point be there. It's 

a matter of when will travel be allowed for the 

Board and planning that needs to be done to 

identify a facility for it, but it certainly would be one 

where it would make sense. We tended to be able to 

do that with the other sites when we are closer to 

making final decisions or even have the data in the 

process to meet in the area.

Dr. Degarmo: Well, thank you for this.

Member Clawson: Andy, could I ask one quick 

question? 

Chair Anderson: Go ahead, yes. 

Member Clawson: Okay, when we did the classified 

interviews out there, one of the gentleman we

talked to, and unfortunately I can't remember his 

name, said there was a group of former Pinellas 

workers, there was a significant number of people 

that belonged to that group. Do they still exist? I 

mean is the organization still together or not? That 

you know of.

Dr. Degarmo: To the best of my knowledge, I think 

the organization is loosely together in that they're 

not formally meeting right now. I do believe they 

have a Facebook group or something to that effect, 

but I think that in some cases they've been just so 

discouraged over the years that a lot of people are 

just -- they're either too sick to care or they're just 

like nobody's going to listen to us anyway. But that 

doesn't mean we can't use our tools to reach out to 

them for them to come to meetings. There are ways 

to do that and I have claimants who are part of 

those groups that would certainly be happy to do 

that for you. I mean we're here to do whatever you 

need us to do, so if you have specific questions or 

specific groups of people you want to talk to, give 

me an e-mail, give me a call and I will do my best 

to help organize it from this end.
65

Member Clawson: Okay, I appreciate that.

Chair Anderson: Thank you very much. Other 

questions or comments? I think we're at a time 

when we can take a break. We can come back, if we 

take 15 minutes or so, get back at 4:00. Josie, 

that'll give you time to go through your procedures 

of review finalizations and then call to order on the 

phone here. We'll hope to begin the public comment 

period at 5:00, so I think we're on schedule to meet 

that.

Member Beach: And Andy, I don't think we're going 

to take a whole hour. The five that we have, Kathy 

may correct me, but the five we have are fairly 

short.

Chair Anderson: Yes. Are you saying you'd like to 

have a little longer break?

Member Beach: No, I'm just suggesting that if 

anybody needs a longer break, 15 minutes is fine 

for me, but.

Chair Anderson: Okay, well let me know if we want 

to. We could say let's come back at 4:10, how's 

that? 

Member Beach: What do you think, Kathy? Do we 

need the full hour? Are you on?

Ms. Behling: I am on. Can you hear me?

Member Beach: Yes.

Ms. Behling: Okay. Well, 4:10 is okay, but we have 

things to talk about.

Member Beach: Okay, I see hesitation. Let's stick 

with the 15 minutes, Andy.

Chair Anderson: Yes. Let's stick with that. Thank 

you.

(Simultaneous speaking.)
66

Member Kotelchuck: Agreed, 4:00.

Dr. Roberts: Let me just say something before we 

break. I just want to remind everybody that we will 

go right into the public comment period right at 

5:00 p.m. and I would encourage those who plan to 

comment to be ready at that point because the 

period will end after everyone has commented. So 

you don't want to miss your opportunity to speak. 

Please join us at the beginning of the public 

comment session at 5:00 so that you're sure to 

have your opportunity. I guess we're reconvening at 

4:00 after the break, and then we'll do the 

procedures review item. 

Chair Anderson: Thank you everybody. 

Dr. Roberts: Thank you.

Chair Anderson: And I'm glad we got the system 

working. I'll have to remember how do I get in.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 3:46 p.m. and resumed at 4:00 p.m.)

Dr. Roberts: Okay, great. Okay, well, then I will 

start attendance in alphabetical order. 

(Roll call.)

Dr. Roberts: If you'd like, Andy, I think you can 

proceed. 

Chair Anderson: Well, why don't we start? Josie, 

would you turn it over to Kathy?

Member Beach: Okay. Yes, we have five documents 

that have been approved by the Subcommittee that 

Kathy is going to report out on today. And then we'll 

ask for a formal closeout of all of them, after 

questions, of course, are asked. 

So, Kathy, with no further ado, it's yours. 

Ms. Behling: Okay, hello. Yes, here today we're 

going to be discussing these five documents that 
67

have been reviewed and approved by the 

Subcommittee. And the first two on this list I've 

already briefly discussed. At the April Board meeting 

when we were discussing this matrix approach for 

the Board to review these documents, I did make 

mention of these first two. So you will perhaps be 

familiar with these.

So, as we have previously done, what I will do after 

we get through with one of the documents, I will 

pause and then have the Board ask questions and 

take any further actions, if they would like. Is that 

okay with everyone? 

Chair Anderson: Sure. 

Member Beach: Yes, I think that's good. 

Ms. Behling: Okay, very good. Alright, our first 

procedure is ORAUT-PROC-22. We begin with this as 

an administrative procedure, and it's supplemental 

requests for DOE information. And the procedure 

provides methods for requesting supplemental 

information about Energy Employees from the DOE. 

The document was initially issued on March 15th, 

2005, and it was revised in August of 2017. 

Now, I'm going to digress just a little bit because I 

want to explain something, because we'll be 

referring to this in some of the other procedures 

that we're reviewing and the findings associated 

with them. 

But, early in the program, back in 2005, when SC&A 

was initially asked to do reviews, they gathered 

together a lot of procedures. In 2005, we actually 

reviewed what we called a set of procedures. And 

our first set contained 33 different guidance 

documents. The second set was issued in August of 

2007, and there were 32 documents in that set. And 

then, in the end of 2007, we had a third set that 

had 45 guidance documents. 

And back when we did those reviews, our protocol 

was such that we had something like a checklist, 
68

similar to what we use in the Dose Reconstruction 

Subcommittee. And I'm going to see if I can pull up 

something that shows you that checklist so that you 

have a better understanding of what I'm talking 

about a little bit later. Let's see if I can find this. 

Here. Can you see that? Am I not sharing that?

Dr. Roberts: No. 

Ms. Behling: No, I'm not? 

Dr. Taulbee: I think, Kathy, you have to stop 

sharing what you're currently sharing and then 

share the next one. 

Ms. Behling: Okay. Is that showing?

Member Beach: Yes. 

Chair Anderson: That will do it. 

Ms. Behling: Okay, very good. This is our initial 

checklist where we had what we described as review 

objectives. And there were a set of five different 

review objectives that I'm going to show you here. 

And it just kept things consistent for us, and it 

directed the auditors, the reviewers, to look at all of 

the different aspects. It was really based on -- when 

we put this together, it was based on the 

regulations. That's pretty much what we tried to 

focus on. 

So I just wanted to give you a little bit of 

background associated with that. So, let's go back 

to our presentation. And are you seeing my 

presentation now?

Dr. Roberts: Yes. 

Ms. Behling: Okay, great. Okay, so this particular 

document, this PROC-22, we actually reviewed that 

under the second set of procedures, which was 

issued in August 17th, 2007. I give you these dates 

so that if you want to go back and look at the whole 

report, it gives you an idea of where to go back to. 
69

We had seven findings -- no, we didn't. We had two 

findings associated with PROC-22. And Finding 1 --

SC&A's review of Rev. 1 identified two findings. And 

the first pointed out that the reference to the 

Privacy Act procedure was incorrect and inconsistent 

in PROC-22. And NIOSH agreed with that, and they 

stated that they would correct this issue in a future 

revision. And the procedure was ultimately revised 

in 2017, and SC&A verified that the references were 

corrected. And so at the November 20th, 2017, 

Subcommittee meeting, the Subcommittee did close 

this finding. 

And Finding 2, the procedure makes reference to 

requesting information from Task 2, 4, and 5. And 

this assumes that the reader is familiar with these 

tasks without providing a description of what that 

task entails. So NIOSH also agreed with this finding 

and again stated that they would correct this in a 

revision. And in 2017, in the revision, they did 

remove the references to these ORAU tasks and 

instead put in wording that added that any NIOSH 

or ORAU Team member could request additional 

information. So, based on these actions, the 

Subcommittee closed this finding, again, on 

November 20th, 2017. 

So that is a summary of what we did under PROC22, and so I'll turn it over to the Board now to have 

any discussions and decide what actions you might 

want to take. 

Member Beach: Thanks, Kathy. Are there any 

questions on PROC-22?

Member Clawson: This is Brad, no. 

Member Beach: Okay. Thanks, Brad. Andy, I think 

we can just do the same thing we did before. This is 

a recommendation from the Subcommittee. If 

there's no question or any disagreement, we can 

just keep moving through and then officially close at 

the end, if that works for you and if it works for the 

rest of the Board. 
70

Chair Anderson: I think that's fine. Ms. Behling: 

Okay, then I'll move on if there's no questions. 

Member Beach: I don't think so. 

Ms. Behling: All right. The next document is a 

Program Evaluation Report, a PER. And it's 

associated with the Hooker Electrochemical 

Corporation. 

Now, PER-81 was issued due to revisions introduced 

into the facility's TBD, actually Revision 3. And 

these changes included updating the uranium 

production rate, which increased external doses 

during the operational period. And this updated 

increased production rate also increased the 

modeled residual contamination levels. And then 

this resulted in the increase in internal and external 

doses during the residual period. 

Now, Revision 3 of the Hooker Electrochemical 

Corporation TBD was reviewed separately, prior to 

the issuance of this PER, PER-81. And we submitted 

that report on November 20th, 2016. 

The process that we go through with PERs, just as 

an update for you -- or not an update, but just a 

reminder -- we review the PER in two stages, and 

we have various subtasks associated with our 

protocols for reviewing PERs. Under Subtask 1, we 

look at the PER and determine if the circumstances 

that necessitated that PER were adequately 

addressed. Our Subtask 2 assesses NIOSH's 

methods for corrective action. Subtask 3 evaluates 

the PER approach for identifying the number of 

claims or the number of cases that require 

reevaluation of the dose. And then under Subtask 4, 

we conduct audits of a sample set of the dose 

reconstructions affected by the PER. 

For this particular PER, the Subtasks 1 through 3 

were not formally done because we had already 

done a thorough evaluation of Rev. 3 of the TBD. 

And, when NIOSH went into doing the corrective 

actions of the PER, they looked at all of the cases 
71

that were less than 50 percent. So it wasn't really 

necessary for this particular PER.

So, this review that we're looking at now is just 

Subtask 4, which is a review of two cases that were 

impacted by changes to the Rev. 3 of the TBD. And 

that report was submitted April 18th, 2018. 

In SC&A's review of these two cases, we identified 

two observations. Observation 1 indicated that 

NIOSH used a lower skin dose correction factor 

value from IG-001 rather than what we typically see 

when they use OTIB-17 and they used a DCF of one 

for skin cancers. 

NIOSH stated that, for Hooker Electrochemical site, 

external doses are based on MCNP. And I have it 

incorrect in this. I apologize for that, but the Monte 

Carlo N particle transport model. And that is how 

they based their external doses; therefore, it was 

appropriate for them to use the Implementation 

Guide 001 DCF. 

If those doses from Hooker would have been based 

on film badges, there would be some uncertainty as 

to it could represent beta dose or doses from lowenergy photons. And then the claimant-favorable 

DCF of one would have been used for those types of 

cases. 

So, based on that explanation, it clarified things for 

SC&A, and the Subcommittee closed this 

observation in February of 2019.

And we'll move onto Observation 2. Internal dose 

for the lymphatic tissue increased as expected; 

however, the skin cancer dose decreased. And 

NIOSH explained that the original dose 

reconstruction used overestimating assumptions, 

which included assigning intakes for lymphatic 

tissue using a type S solubility. And for the skin 

cancers, they used a type M solubility. 

Under this PER, when the rework was done, best 

estimate methods were used, and they applied the 
72

type S for all the cancers. And so that was the 

explanation for why the skin cancer values doses 

did decrease. And the Subcommittee agreed with 

that and closed the finding, again, in February of 

2019. 

And those were the two observations associated 

with PER-81, and so I'll open up discussions for the 

Board, if they have any questions.

Member Beach: Just backtracking a little back, 

Kathy, for Rev. 0, Rev. 1, Rev. 2, those findings 

have all been closed out, correct? Previous to this.

Ms. Behling: Yes. Yes, they have. Everything's been 

closed. 

Member Beach: Any questions, Board Members?

Member Kotelchuck: Dave. I have a question. 

Member Beach: Yeah, go ahead, Dave. 

Member Kotelchuck: I'm not sure why you use, for 

the same person in the same situation, different

type S and type M solubilities for the same person 

with the particular exposure. I don't understand 

why the distinction is made within one person's 

claim. 

Member Beach: And Kathy can explain that better 

than I can, so go for it. 

Ms. Behling: Yeah, and NIOSH can jump in at any 

time, also. But what they were doing is just an 

overestimating technique here. And they were 

trying to generate the highest doses for all of the 

cancers. And so that's why they used type S for the 

lymphatic cancer and they used type M for the skin 

cancer. They were just trying to give very claimantfavorable assumptions and generate the highest 

dose for all of the cancers. 

Member Kotelchuck: Okay.

Ms. Behling: When it was reworked, a more 
73

appropriate and logical approach is to use one 

solubility type for all cancers. And that was what 

was done in the rework. Type S was used. 

Member Kotelchuck: Right, right. Good, good. Okay, 

thank you. 

Ms. Behling: Okay, good. 

Member Beach: Any other questions, comments? All 

right, Kathy, hearing none -- and if you're on mute 

and you have to get off, we can stop. But we'll go 

ahead and move on with the next, OTIB-25. 

Ms. Behling: Okay. These are moving faster than I 

thought. I should have given you an extra ten 

minutes, I guess. 

Okay. We'll move onto OTIB-25. OTIB-25 is 

estimation of radium-226 activity in the body from 

breath radon measurements. This TBD provides the 

technical basis for converting radon breath analysis 

into radium whole body activity. And the OTIB 

converts the radon breath results into radium body 

content using a formula of breathing rate times the 

concentration of radon in the breath sample, and it 

divides by the release fraction for radon times the 

decay constant for the radon. 

SC&A's review of OTIB-25 was, again, submitted 

under our second set of procedures, which dates 

back to August 17th, 2007. And SC&A had one 

finding associated with this review. And that one 

finding indicates that the higher the breathing rate, 

the lower the radon concentration. Therefore, if the 

breathing rate is unknown, the claimant-favorable 

assumption is to assume a lower breathing rate, 

which will translate into a higher radium-226 body 

burden.

And NIOSH stated that they are using the default 

ICRP 66 breathing rate of 20 liters per minute, 

which represents a resting breathing rate -- I think 

ICRP 66 identifies it as a light work breathing rate --

and that that is appropriate for measuring workers 
74

in a laboratory setting when this testing would have 

been done. 

This rate is considered by NIOSH to be claimantfavorable. And based on that, the finding was closed 

by the Subcommittee as the December 2007 

Subcommittee meeting. 

However, there were lengthy discussions, and I did 

include the transcript pages in case anyone wanted 

to go back. There were some lengthy discussion and 

there were some questions by SC&A. We were 

satisfied with it, but the Subcommittee did give 

SC&A another opportunity to go back, look things 

over, and if they had any additional comments, they 

were asked to bring those forward to the 

Subcommittee at the next meeting. 

And it was addressed at the following meeting, and 

SC&A stated that they were satisfied that the 

finding was closed and they had no additional 

comments. So, again, that resolves OTIB-25. Is 

there any questions?

Member Beach: Okay, questions again?

Chair Anderson: This is a question, I guess. I know, 

many of the sites that we've reviewed, we've sort of 

kept things in abeyance waiting for some of these to 

be updated. Do any of these -- are these ones that 

we need to refer to other committees so they can 

close out some of their work? Is somebody looking 

at that? Anyone tracking that?

Member Beach: I don't think these fall into that. I 

was going to address the tracking issue at the end 

of Kathy's presentation, kind of what the 

Subcommittee's going. Kathy, do you have a better 

answer for that?

Ms. Behling: No, I agree. We're trying to track 

these, but the guidance documents that I am trying 

to bring to the Board, I'm trying to bring ones that 

all of the findings have been closed. There shouldn't 

be anything in abeyance. In fact, that's a discussion 
75

that I want to have at the next Subcommittee 

meeting. 

Chair Anderson: Okay. Okay, thank you. I mean, it's 

really nice to be moving through these and don't 

want to subsequently get a letter saying, why is this 

still open? 

Member Beach: Yeah, and don't get too complacent. 

These are the really easy ones. 

Chair Anderson: Yes, I know. I know.

Member Beach: There's a list of 35, so. And I think 

Kathy's really doing a good job on not closing out 

things that need to be transferred -- but we'll kind 

of cover that right at the end here, if that's okay.

Chair Anderson: Yes, thank you. 

Member Beach: I think we're okay on this one. 

Member Ziemer: Yeah, Josie, one other comment. 

This is Paul. I think, a lot of these earlier ones, we 

actually thought we had closed them earlier. And I 

think when Kathy and looked she found a number of 

them that, although we had been operating as if 

this was already closed, I think these are in that 

category. We had to formally to close them, even 

though we thought they --

Member Beach: Correct. The documentation wasn't 

always the best early on, so that is correct, in some 

cases. 

Member Ziemer: Yeah, well, I think in most of them 

they don't affect what's already been done. 

Member Beach: Correct. I agree. Thanks, Paul. 

Anything else? Okay, Kathy. I think you can move 

onto, I think, OTIB-33?

Ms. Behling: Thirty-two. Let me just make another 

comment about that. In I think it was my April 

presentation about going to this matrix approach for 

the full Board approval, I listed some documents, 
76

like OTIB-52, and there is another PER-14, and 

PER-20. 

They're all sort of meshed together. And Lori 

Marion-Moss and I have talked about the fact that 

they were presented to the full Board in the past, 

but when I glanced at the transcript and started 

really digging around, I couldn't find where all of the 

issues were really closed.

I couldn't trace everything out, so those are things 

we're going to have go back in and look at. And I'm 

not sure even when we get access to BRS that we're 

going to find answers to all of those. And so, from 

here on forward, hopefully we can do a better job 

updating the BRS. And, as I go through these, I'm 

hoping when we get access to it again that we can 

supplement and add some information to the BRS 

based on these discussions. 

Member Beach: Yeah, so it will be very clear to the 

reader what was done, when it was done, even if 

it's after the fact and we had to go back and do it 

formally. So I think we are trying to work through 

that. 

Ms. Behling: Yes. Okay, then I'll move onto ORAUTOTIB-32. This is external coworker dosimetry data 

for the Savannah River Site. And it provides 

guidance for assigning external doses to workers at 

the Savannah River Site who have no or limited 

monitoring data. 

These doses are based on co-exposure data. And 

SC&A reviewed OTIB-32 as part of our third set of 

procedures, which was issued on October 29th, 

2007. And this review identified two findings. 

Finding 1, we felt as the OTIB lacked clarity and 

often referred to methods described in other 

documents, such as OTIB-20. And OTIB-20 is use of 

coworker data for external dose assignment. And, 

also, OTIB-52 was mentioned. That's our 

construction trade worker OTIB. Therefore, the 
77

procedure does not meet SC&A's review objective 

1.3. 

And this is why I showed you our initial checklist. 

And our review objective 1.3 says, is the procedure 

complete in terms of the required data? In other 

words, it does not refer to other sources that are 

needed for additional data. That was one of our 

review objectives. 

And so, NIOSH response was that the OTIB was 

written to complement other documents, and OTIB20 and many other OTIBs are referenced just 

because they describe various aspects of the dose 

reconstruction process. And the staff knows that 

there is a hierarchy of documents that they should 

follow to complete dose reconstructions.

And at the June 9th, 2009, Subcommittee meeting, 

this finding again was discussed at length and the 

Subcommittee closed the finding by tasking SC&A to 

review its protocols and perhaps change that review 

objective 1.3.

So, we'll move on, then, to Finding 2. And OTIB-32 

does not specify how to use external coworker data, 

and, therefore, we cannot determine if the guidance 

is claimant-favorable. In addition, we felt that it 

didn't meet SC&A review objective 1.5, which 

states, is the procedure sufficiently prescriptive in 

order to minimum the need for subjective decisions 

and data interpretation? 

And NIOSH responded similar to the Finding 1 and 

said that OTIB-20 would be a prime reference when 

considering the proper application of coworker or 

co-exposure doses. And OCAS-IG-1 and PROC-6 

would also give direction on this topic. 

Again, there were some lengthy discussions on this 

issue at the June 9th meeting, and the 

Subcommittee put this finding into a status of in 

progress and tasked SC&A to reassess their review 

protocols. 
78

So, as a follow-up, SC&A discussed the 

reassessment of their review protocols at the May 

16th, 2016, Subcommittee meeting. At that 

meeting, SC&A stated that the original protocols 

were really outdated at that point and our review 

objectives were no longer being used. SC&A, after 

those first three steps of procedures, we went to 

reviewing individual documents. And we did critical 

reviews of each guidance document that we were 

tasked with.

And when we identified errors or inconsistencies, et 

cetera, we identified it as a finding. And when issues 

such as lack of clarity or questionable assumptions 

are identified, we usually identify those as 

observations. And that's how we moved forward. 

Based on this explanation, the Subcommittee did 

close Finding 2, and Finding 1 had been closed at 

the June 2009 Subcommittee meeting. 

So, that sums up OTIB-32. Do you have any 

questions?

Member Beach: Thank you. Andy, this is one that 

would probably have you thinking if -- the last 

question you asked. A little bit more complex. 

Chair Anderson: Yeah. Just want to keep everybody 

focused on it, that if it does affect something that 

they've been working on, then we need to close out 

the rest of these. 

Ms. Behling: Okay. We'll move onto the last OTIB, if 

there are no other questions.

Okay, and this is OTIB-33. This is application of 

internal doses based on claimant-favorable 

assumptions for processing as best estimates. 

That's the title. 

Now, SC&A reviewed this OTIB under the third set 

of procedures, which was published, as I said, on 

August 17th, 2007. And our review identified one 

finding. 
79

The purpose of this OTIB -- and I'm just quoting --

states: to provide instructions on the application of 

overestimated internal doses for processing as best 

estimates. And this OTIB was written back in 2005. 

What happens with this is OTIB-33 is coupled with 

OTIB-18. OTIB-18 is internal dose overestimates for 

facilities with air sampling programs. And it uses a 

graded approach to assign internal dose. The OTIB 

does this by assessing a worker's exposure potential 

based on things like job title, work location, and 

period of employment. 

An example of this graded approach would be: you 

have an unmonitored worker whose exposure 

potential is considered intermittent and the period 

of exposure is prior to, before 1989. The dose 

reconstructor is -- the guidance states that you'd 

use 50 percent of the OTIB-18 values. That gives 

you an example of this graded approach. 

Although the title and the document's purpose state 

that it is to be used for best estimates, NIOSH 

stated that that's no longer the case, that this is not 

used for compensating, and it's not used as a best 

estimate approach.

So, Finding 1 states that considerable judgment is 

necessary to, first of all, assign workers to a specific 

exposure category, and to determine how to 

appropriately use coworker data and assess missed 

dose. 

And NIOSH agreed, but stated that the OTIB would 

have developed to give guidance on misjudgment

and that the dose reconstructors must document 

their rationale for the selection of the exposure 

categories based on information in the worker's file. 

So, again, this finding was closed at the October 

31st, 2018, meeting because NIOSH also stated it 

no longer used compensation, and at this point in 

the program this OTIB is not extensively used. The 

Subcommittee did request that, if this OTIB were to 

be revised, that the document title and the purpose 
80

of the document be changed in a future revision so 

that it does not indicate that this is being used as a 

best estimate procedure. That's it. 

Member Beach: Okay, any questions? Comments?

So then, Andy, I guess we'll look to you to formally 

take a vote to close these out at the 

recommendation of the Subcommittee Members.

Chair Anderson: Yes. It's been recommended that 

the Board accept the recommendation to close out 

these and adopt the Committee's recommendation. 

Do I have a second? I guess we don't need a 

second. We just need to do a vote. 

Member Beach: Right.

Chair Anderson: So I guess what I'd say is, since we 

have no questions, does anybody object to adopting 

the recommendation to accept?

Member Kotelchuck: Pardon me. Dave. No 

objections. Absolutely no objection. But I think, 

formally, we actually need to, on a Zoom meeting 

like this, we actually need to go down and have 

Rashaun go through the list by name. You can't see 

our pictures. For many, you can't see mine. 

Member Beach: I think we said aye or nay last time. 

But, yeah --

Member Kotelchuck: All right, I'm happy to say aye.

Chair Anderson: We have time now, so why don't 

we go through it? It's not that long a list, so.

Member Kotelchuck: No, it isn't. 

Chair Anderson: It'd take us less than a minute and 

a half. 

Member Beach: Sounds perfect. 

Member Kotelchuck: Okay. 

Dr. Roberts: Just a minute. Let me pull up the 
81

listing. Okay. Anderson?

Chair Anderson: Yes.

Dr. Roberts: Beach?

Member Beach: Yes.

Dr. Roberts: Clawson?

Member Clawson: Yes.

Dr. Roberts: Field?

Member Field: Yes.

Dr. Roberts: Kotelchuck?

Member Kotelchuck: Yes.

Dr. Roberts: Lockey?

Member Lockey: Yes.

Dr. Roberts: Richardson, are you joined? 

Roessler?

Member Roessler: Yes.

Dr. Roberts: Schofield?

Member Schofield: Yes. 

Dr. Roberts: And Valerio?

She's been having some trouble with audio, so I'm 

not hearing a response. 

Let's see if she can fix that. Ziemer?

Member Ziemer: Yes.

Member Valerio: I'm sorry. Can you hear me now?

Dr. Roberts: Yes. 

Member Valerio: Okay. I said yes. 
82

Dr. Roberts: Okay, thank you.

Member Valerio: I had to unmute again. Thank 

you.

Dr. Roberts: Okay, thank you. 

Chair Anderson: Okay. I think that's everybody. So 

the motion has passed for accepting these. 

I have a question for somebody who knows more 

about Zoom. For those that are -- it's always helpful 

to have the names on, instead of email addresses or 

phone numbers. I don't know, is it possible for the 

Board Members who are just dialing in with a phone 

to change that from the phone what their -- to have 

a text name?

Dr. Roberts: From what I know of Zoom, I don't 

know that that's possible for them to do. 

Chair Anderson: Right.

Member Beach: Before we move on, Henry, I 

wanted to do a little more chatting about 

Procedures. Whenever you're ready. 

Chair Anderson: Go ahead.

Member Beach: Just since we're in the Procedures 

and we have time, I thought I would just do a brief 

report out. We have the next meeting set up for 

February 15th, 2022. We have a working agenda 

started. One of the things that we discussed at the 

last Subcommittee meeting, or just after it, actually, 

we sent around email, was to use a matrix format, 

system, you might say, to track what we're doing. 

So, during the Subcommittee meetings, the 

findings, the observations, we discuss them, closed 

them out, or we leave them in abeyance or in 

progress, so we have -- Lori Moss agreed, Kathy is 

going to take on putting all of the tasking or 

findings, resolutions, anything that we've discussed 

into that matrix so that we do not lose track, 

especially in the last three meetings. So she'll have 
83

to go back a couple of meetings. 

And that way, when the BRS is back and we're able 

to access it, we can go back in and update the 

things that we have done so we can continue to 

move forward. 

I believe at the next Subcommittee meeting we'll 

talk about continuing on through this list of 35. 

Kathy said she had some things to discuss on that. I 

don't know if that's something you can bring up 

now, Kathy, or we'll just wait until the February 

meeting. 

(Simultaneous speaking.) 

Member Beach: Go ahead.

Ms. Behling: If you don't mind, we can wait until the 

February meeting. 

Member Beach: Okay. We're going to keep trying to 

tackle the easy ones, and then we'll present a plan 

for doing presentations on the move difficult ones 

and just continue moving through this list of 35 we 

have. 

So, Kathy, I thank you for your hard work in 

keeping track of all this. I know it's not easy. 

Ms. Behling: My pleasure. That's not a problem. I 

think that perhaps I can answer Henry's question 

earlier, because Rose Gogliotto told me what to do.

Member Beach: Oh, perfect.

Ms. Behling: If you go to Participants, there's a little 

arrow there. And then when I found my name, or 

my email address, I just went there and I was able 

to change that. I think, Rose, am I explaining this 

properly? 

Chair Anderson: Yeah, that's right. If you're -- you 

just do it into your -- but I didn't know if you could 

do that with the phone numbers. 
84

Ms. Behling: Oh, and I think that's how you can 

change it from your email address --

Chair Anderson: Yes.

Member Beach: Is that in the video setting or the --

what setting is that in?

Mr. Barton: If you're not actually on your computer 

and you're just calling in with your phone, I don't 

think there's a way to change it. 

Member Beach: I'm talking about on the computer. 

How do you do it on the computer?

Mr. Barton: If you click on the three dots next to --

if you go on the upper right corner --

Member Beach: Oh, I see. 

Mr. Barton: And then all the way at the bottom, it's 

Rename. So I renamed myself Barton. 

Dr. Roberts: I think I actually went into participants 

and was able to go --

Chair Anderson: There you go, Josie, you got it. 

Member Beach: Easy. Thank you. All right. Okay, so 

the Procedures, we're closed out. Thank you for 

your hard work again, Kathy. Ms. Behling: Thank 

you for listening to me all this time and for your 

attention. Thank you. 

Chair Anderson: And I think your format for the 

presentation back to the Board, the way you have 

it, is very helpful. It also reminds us where it was so 

we can go through them pretty quickly. I like that, 

anyway. 

Ms. Behling: Great. And if anybody has anything 

that they would like to me add -- like I said, I did 

try to include the pages from the transcripts. In the 

future, if I feel we need a handout with more 

details, which I did in the previous presentation, I 

will do that. 
85

But because I was able to cover all of the findings in 

this matrix style and then give you some 

background information by going into the 

transcripts, it sounds like (audio interference) if not 

or if anybody has any other suggestions --

Member Beach: No, I meant to mention the 

transcript was helpful and easy to access with the 

page numbers and the date if you had a question. I 

looked up several of them, so thanks. 

Ms. Behling: Great. Okay, thank you. Chair 

Anderson: Okay, I think we can take another break 

here until 5 o'clock. And I'll remind those who would 

like to comment, I think we have a list, some have 

given us their names, but if you didn't send in 

something and are planning to, we'll be going 

through those who have given us their names first, 

and then have it open up if there's others on the call 

who want to make comments. 

Okay? Rashaun, anything else?

Dr. Roberts: Okay, so, how about if folks come 

together at -- be back on the line at five till 5:00, 

just so that I can do the roll calling and we can pick 

up right at 5:00. 

Chair Anderson: Okay.

Dr. Roberts: How does that sound?

Chair Anderson: Sounds good. 

Dr. Roberts: Okay, great. Thank you. 

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 4:44 p.m. and resumed at 5:00 p.m.)

Dr. Roberts: Let's go ahead with roll call. 

(Roll call.)

Dr. Roberts: Okay, great. All right. Well, we are 

right at 5:00, maybe 5:01. And I'll hand it back to 

you, Andy, if you'd like. 
86

Chair Anderson: Okay, so I'd like to open the public 

comment session and remind people to keep their 

presentations as short as possible. We have one, 

two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight people 

signed up. We need to not run too long on talking. 

If we could keep it three to five minutes, it would be 

very helpful. So I'll begin the list. 

Is Cathy Ehlers -- are you on, Cathy?

Ms. Ehlers: I'm on now. Can you hear me?

Chair Anderson: Yes, we can. Thank you.

Ms. Ehlers: All right. Thank you. My first job after 

high school started with GE in 1964 and continued 

into 1970. My first position was in document 

control. One of my duties was to deliver classified 

documents in all areas of the plant, including in 

radiation areas, for document signature. These 

visits often took up extended periods of time that 

was required for proper registration. 

Another duty was to install phones in all areas of 

the plant. This process took considerable amount of 

time, often running into hours. I was never 

monitored for radiation for any of these visits. 

After raising my family, I began a second career. In 

September of 2004, my 80-year-old (audio 

interference) came to live with us. The following 

week, I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer at 

age 58. My treatment plan was to be 25 doses of 

radiation, then six chemo sessions once every three

weeks. After the 15th radiation, they had to stop 

because I had uncontrollable diarrhea and could not 

eat. They were hitting my bowels and stomach. That 

was the week of Thanksgiving. I had to heal before 

finally starting chemo. 

At Christmas, I was so weak my girlfriend had to 

come over and decorate the tree for me as I was 

too weak to do it. I was a nail tech at the time and 

had a good following. I could not work for eight 

months and lost revenue and clients all because of 
87

what I was exposed to at GE. 

I have lingering neuropathy in my feet, and steps 

are very hard for me do. As a result of my exposure 

to radiation in hot areas and lack of monitoring, I 

ask that you take more time to make your 

recommendations. Thank you.

Chair Anderson: Thank you very much. I think most 

of the people who've signed up so far are related to 

Pinellas, but if you have a specific site you're 

commenting on, please mention that in your 

comments as well. 

Next is Shirley Thornton. 

Ms. Thornton: Good afternoon, everyone. Shirley 

Thornton. I worked at the Pinellas Plant from 1978 

to 1997. When I first started at GE, I was in the 

instrumentation lab. I got promoted to the 

computer lab. And then, from there, I went to 

human resources where I was the suggestion plan 

coordinator. 

That position took me throughout the entire plant 

because we had such a backlog of suggestions. In 

order for me to do my job, I had to meet with each 

person who had submitted a suggestion so that I 

would understand completely what their suggestion 

would do to improve the processes at GE. 

In 1997, I was in another position in human 

resources, which was the EEO manager. In that, 

too, I had to do investigations and took me 

throughout the entire plant. I had no idea. One 

morning when we came in, in human resources, our 

walls had turned yellow. I had no idea of what this 

exposure was doing to my body, but I can say that I 

am just so thankful to still be alive. 

I was diagnosed with beryllium disease, and it has 

tremendously impacted my life, as well my 

wellbeing, in that I am not able to do a lot of the 

things that I used to do. I was a singer. And 

because of the beryllium and it affected my lungs, I 
88

cannot stand for more than five or six minutes. If I 

sit for a long time, I'm impacted. And also I just 

have such difficulties and pain with neuropathy. 

It has just impacted my entire life, not only with 

me, but with my family, in that I have to have 

someone to care for me. I can't go on trips with my 

family like I once was able to do. And I'm just 

asking the Board to please, please look into and 

take time to really evaluate all of the speakers and 

what they're saying to you today. 

I'm not making this up, and I know no one else is. 

This has greatly impacted my life. I'm not the same 

Shirley that I once was. I'm grateful to be alive. I'm 

grateful that God has spared my life, and it could 

have been a lot worse. I could be dead and in my 

grave, but I'm so thankful that I'm here today to 

give my testimony as to how all of this has 

impacted my life. And I thank you so very much for 

listening to my testimony. Thank you. 

Chair Anderson: Thank you very much. We 

appreciate you taking the time to call in and listen 

in and participate and give us your information. 

Sorry for the struggles you've had to go through, 

but we really appreciate you commenting and 

supporting our activity. 

Next is Mr. Elton Scott. 

Mr. Scott: Good afternoon.

Chair Anderson: Thank you. We can hear you. 

Mr. Scott: Okay, thank you. My name is Elton Scott. 

I was employed at the Pinellas Plant General Electric 

from November of '76 till September of '97. I came 

to the plant as a machinist. I worked three years as 

a machinist, then I took a job in maintenance where 

I was a maintenance craftsman, which took me 

anywhere and everywhere all over the plant. 

I worked in all the chemical areas. I worked in 

thermal battery. I worked in the RTG. I worked 300, 
89

400, 200, all the buildings, 800. At times, I was in 

the areas where they were testing the devices and 

they'd slam it against the wall to see if it'd hold up. 

They exploded them. I worked in those rooms also. 

In other words, I did a little bit of everything there. 

And I was a part of the decommissioning team that 

were going out, tearing out all the stuff and getting 

it out of there. So I worked in Area 8, which was the 

hot area. Like I said, I worked pretty much 

everywhere in the plant. 

For the longest time, it seemed like the only people 

that were getting paid were the people who had 

died and their family was getting whatever was 

coming out, and I couldn't understand that. But like 

I said, I've been exposed to anything and 

everything there. 

I've been diagnosed with two cancers. The worst 

one was the bone cancer where they replaced my 

shoulder -- well, they didn't replace it. They just 

took it out and put something else in there. So I 

have very limited use of my right arm. 

And I'm being diagnosed now. I got to go through a 

test taken for a third cancer. My thing is, I don't 

know in the world you could ever do a correct dose 

reconstruction without knowing exactly where 

people worked, because most of the people there 

never had the dosimeters on. Even when I worked 

in Area 8, I never had a dosimeter. 

What we used to get is go to EHS, Environmental 

Health and Safety, let them know where we going 

to work. You come back to them, they tell you how 

much you got exposed, without coming on the spot 

where you were working.

Anyway, I don't know. I think it's a bad idea to say 

you can do dose reconstruction when you don't got 

all the information. Other than that, I thank you all 

for listening to me. Hope you all make the right 

decision. Okay, I heard that buzzer. Is my time up? 

I'm good with that.
90

Chair Anderson: Thank you very much for sharing 

your experiences. We're very interested in learning 

about the monitoring and, like you mentioned, how 

it was handled when you were actually the person 

that was there. 

Next, we'll ask Daisy Beal to comment.

Ms. Beal: Yes. Good evening. 

Chair Anderson: We can hear you.

Ms. Beal: You can hear me?

Chair Anderson: Oh, yes. 

Ms. Beal: I was employed with Pinellas Plant from 

September 1968 through September of 1997. 

During my tenure with Pinellas Plant, I held several 

positions that required traveling throughout the 

plant, as well as Building 300. This included 

handling products, as well. 

I was a secretary for most of the positions, first one 

starting out with clerk/typist in Building 100, Area 

174, which was human resources. And then, 12/68 

through 8/74, I worked for the product and 

inventory control manager and the expeditors there. 

Our offices were directly across the hall, which was 

Area 108, that housed tritium and many other 

hazardous materials. They also manufactured 

potassium chromate, which was Area 110, which 

was also adjacent to my area and adjacent to Area 

108. 

I worked for the equipment engineering. And the 

supervisor, the tool room and machine shop, which 

required entering these areas doing secretarial 

duties. In the machine shop and tool room, there 

were beryllium, tritium, and several other 

hazardous materials.

Product engineering, as well. The product engineers 

would sometimes bring product and I would lock it 

in the safe. I also worked in the calibration lab 
91

where they repaired the equipment. 

I was working the technical information center and I 

maintained the documents. And sometimes we 

would have product there. And my seat, my office 

there, within that library, there was a pipe, a red 

pipe that resembled a fire hydrant, but it was larger 

than a fire hydrant, in my office. 

I also worked in purchasing. Outside of purchasing,

there was radioactive material for shipping to 

Savannah River. Hazardous materials, through the 

ventilators in the library, permeated through the air. 

So, because of that, I have pulmonary problems. I 

had a bleeding kidney back in 1994, severe 

bronchitis, allergic rhinitis, granular -- I can't see 

that -- disease and an upper respiratory diseases 

infection. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 

2008 and thyroid disorder later, and neuropathy. 

Neuropathy is really bad. And I thank you for the 

time. I am pleading to the Board to consider what 

has been said. Thank you.

Chair Anderson: Thank you very much. I just want 

to remind all of you that we are recording the 

comments. And just keep in mind, if you're sharing 

any of your personal medical condition, that we 

prefer not to have those kind of comments in the 

recorded record for your -- recognizing your need 

for confidentiality. 

Next would be Jamie Jackson. Does Jamie have a 

call-in here? If not, we can call the --

Ms. Jackson: Hi, there. I'm sorry. Can you hear me?

Chair Anderson: Oh, there you are. Good. Okay. I 

got you. Thanks. I can hear you. Go ahead. 

Ms. Jackson: My name is Jamie Jackson. I'm here 

today on behalf of my immediate family to introduce 

you to my father, James E. Jackson. Jim was the 

strong, independent head of our tribe, known 

around Pinellas County as the Florida Jackson Five. 
92

Dad, mom, one son, and two daughters. 

My father was a Northern California native. He 

graduated UC Berkeley in 1966. Upon graduation, 

he got his first job working as a systems engineer 

for a covered facility at the Department of Energy. 

He relocated his new wife from California to Florida 

so he could work at the Pinellas Plant. 

My father was a happy, witty, charismatic man. He 

started coffee and donut Friday rotation in his 

department with quarter flipping, calling heads or 

tails, and loser had to bring donuts the following 

week. One of his GE colleagues said, if you didn't 

smile when Jim Jackson was in the room, then you 

didn't know him. He was terrific. 

My dad was terrific until the summer of 2019. So, 

my dad's first job became his last job, because he 

spent his entire 31-year career conducting nuclear 

weapon production activities at the Pinellas Plant. 

As a member of the specialty components team, his 

work was confidential, that I'm not privy to, but I 

know that he spent 62,000 hours working across 

numerous buildings at the Pinellas Plant. This 

translates to my father spending seven years of his 

life in unmonitored radiological and chemical 

exposure conditions in those buildings at the plant. 

Fast forward to the fall of 2019, my dad struggled 

with symptoms all summer and October. He was 

diagnosed with multiple myeloma October 2019. His 

oncologist gave him seven to ten years to live. Just 

five days before his scheduled chemotherapy 

treatment, in that October 2019, my dad felt off, 

slightly dizzy, and his walking gait changed. Within 

48 hours, a tumor in his spine caused permanent 

lower body paralysis. He walked into the ER and 

never walked again. 

So, ready or not, everything about life was 

different. Now this man was in diapers, helpless, 

and dependent on others for 98 percent of daily 

living. He was shocked, defeated, helpless, and 

scared. It was jarring dysfunction for every member 
93 

of our family. 

My dad's first job became his last job because he 

spent his entire career there. What's ironic is one of 

my dad cliches he would say to people is health is 

wealth, except he wasn't protected. 

So, on behalf of the many families on the call, those 

who are suffering today and those who have been 

caregivers and survivors, I am requesting that you 

please send a special cohort petition to a Work 

Group for further evaluation because only one in 

one hundred employees were properly monitored at 

Pinellas Plant, and my father was not that one. He 

was one of the 99 that was not properly monitored, 

and he spent years 31 years there. 

He died paralyzed because of his cancer. He only 

lived for ten months. He was given seven to ten 

years and didn't even make it to 12 months. Please 

forward this to a Work Group for further evaluation. 

Thank you. 

Chair Anderson: Thank you very much. I would 

remind the presenters, if you have written 

comments, please send those alone to Rashaun 

Roberts. We want to have those in the record as 

well, but we thank you for your verbal comments.

Next is [identifying information redacted]. 

Dr. Degarmo: This is Denise DeGarmo. And I talked 

to you earlier today. [identifying 

information redacted] is unable to make it this 

evening. And Ms. Shirley, who just talked to you, 

just texted me and asked me to please take a 

minute and tell you that she also has breast cancer. 

So, thank you so much. 

Chair Anderson: Thank you. Then, Donna Hand?

Ms. Hand: Yes, can you hear me now?

Chair Anderson: Yes.
94

Ms. Hand: Okay. I'm going to be really brief, 

because most of the stuff is already been in the 

record that I have been telling you about Pinellas 

Plant. 

But, back in the very beginning, it was 2002 in the 

first Board meeting, James Neton stated that the 

internal doses weren't really documented at any of 

the DOE sites up until 1989. And then you have Ted 

Katz, when the procedure and regulations for the 

Special Exposure Cohort, he went around and he 

was saying, you don't have to prove that we don't 

have definitively not do the dose; you just have to 

prove that the data is not appropriate, that you 

don't enough of the data to do the dose.

Then SC&A, at the 2016 meeting, everything that 

you held here in Tampa as well -- they also 

reminded you that the data that they said they had 

of the monthly report, and they had all these years 

from 1957, and et cetera. Well, when they actually 

looked at the data, they (audio interference). 

In 1957, total number of monthly reports, five. 

Number of complete monthly reports, three. 

Number of smears taken, as indicated by the 

available monthly report, 536. But number of actual 

smear results reported, only three. 

Then they have another one in 1961. Twelve 

monthly reports. Number of complete monthly 

reports, zero. Number of smears, 8,428. Number of 

actual smear results reported, zero. 

So, again, we're going back to the transparency of 

the data. The data isn't sufficient, and this has been 

going on for a long, long time. And even in the 

procedure and the regulations that was established, 

if you don't have the data, then give them the SEC. 

And, again, I'll be entertaining with written 

comments, as well. Thank you. 

Chair Anderson: Thank you very much. Next is 

Terrie Barrie. 
95

Ms. Barrie: Yes, good afternoon. I guess it's still 

afternoon. This is Terrie Barrie, and I'm a founding 

member of the Alliance of Nuclear Worker Advocacy 

Groups. 

And I want to thank the Pinellas petitioner for her 

presentation today, and I want to thank Dr. 

Anderson for allowing her the extra time that 

previous petitioners never had access to. So, I hope 

the extended time when it comes to presentations 

by the petitioner, is extended more than ten

minutes, because it's really tough to get the 

information in. So I thank you for that. 

And I also agree with her that access to the 

documents that NIOSH uses to base their Evaluation 

Report on must be sent to the petitioners. I've been 

a petitioner or a co-petitioner for the Rocky Flats 

Plant, for Y-12, and by the time you file a FOIA 

request, it has to go to DOE for declassification. It's 

too late to make an effective argument, as far as 

I'm concerned. So I think NIOSH should really 

consider sending all the documentation 

automatically to the petitioner with the Evaluation 

Report. 

The other thing about the Pinellas Plant. It was 

mentioned there were seven or eight previous 

petitions that never qualified. And I did file a FOIA 

with that and got a CD full of the reasons why they 

didn't qualify, last year, I guess it was. 

And NIOSH explains, for the Pinellas Plant, the other 

petitions didn't qualify -- well, this one qualified and 

the other ones didn't was because this petition 

identified an issue that was not previously 

addressed by NIOSH. And that was in October of 

2020. In December of 2020, it said the most recent 

petition identified an issue that we are dealing with 

at Los Alamos and the Savannah River Site that 

ultimately qualified that petition and moved it 

forward. 

And today, Mr. Rutherford alluded to that, that 

there was an issue that was not identified 
96

previously, but we still don't have an answer of 

what that issue is. And I think the Board, the 

previous petitioners, the public, and especially the 

claimants, need to know what that issue is. 

And, lastly, I would like to mention that NIOSH had 

put out new Site Profile documents for a couple of 

sites. Rocky Flats, for instance. And the Rocky Flats 

internal document was issued September of 2020. 

And we still don't have either the Work Groups or --

as far as I know, so you can correct me if I'm wrong 

-- the Procedure Review Subcommittee discussing 

it. So, I think that's really important. They're 

reconstructing dose based on these new documents 

and new methodology, but it hasn't been reviewed 

as far as I know. 

So, thank you. Thank you for your work and your 

commitment to the program. And I hope everyone 

has a happy holiday. Thank you. 

Chair Anderson: Thank you very much. And thanks 

to everybody. That's the last person who sent us a 

notification, but if there's any others on the line 

here who'd like to make a comment, please speak 

up. If not, I'll turn it back over to Rashaun. 

I have to say that I was impressed by the 

petitioners, how well they get off of mute and got 

speaking. That is a challenge to operate these 

systems if you haven't done it a lot. And those who 

were on early on, we had a bunch of snafus, which 

is not unusual for getting a group this large onto the 

system. 

So, with that, Rashaun, do you have any other 

comments and give us a little update for tomorrow?

Dr. Roberts: Sure. Thanks, Andy. So it seems like 

the public comment session has ended. We didn't 

hear any further commentary. So that's bringing us 

to a close of today's session. 

We do have the second and final session starting 

tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. And what I'd like to 
97

ask, if possible, if people, Board Members, could try 

to patch in like ten minutes early, just so that we 

don't have as much lag time before we can start. 

And if we can identify any technical problems that 

might be an issue or whatever a little bit earlier, 

that would be a big help. 

As Nancy had noted, both she and Zaida have also 

been on with IT today just trying to figure out what 

has happened with that. And I'm not sure -- Nancy, 

maybe you can speak to this -- if we need to send a 

new link, or if we even know that at this point. 

Ms. Adams: We do not know yet. 

Dr. Roberts: Okay. 

Ms. Adams: We still have been unsuccessful having 

the CDC IT people get back to us.

Dr. Roberts: Yeah. It's difficult to diagnose the 

problem. It seems that some people got on with not 

much of a problem, and other people didn't. But, 

anyway, we'll try to figure out what's going on. But 

it would be helpful if people would get on a little bit 

earlier just so that we cannot have as long as a 

delay as we had today. 

So, that's really all I had. Andy, is there anything 

else that you wanted to raise?

Chair Anderson: I don't. Any other comments?

Member Beach: Well, I was going to say, Andy, you

got on with your personal computer. Maybe there's 

other people that could reach out to you and maybe 

you could, like Gen, and I don't know if Paul has 

access to the CDC computers with their Smart 

Cards. Maybe you can help them. 

Chair Anderson: Yeah, I went in somehow to the 

CDC system, maybe because I've been on it before. 

I have my other roles in federal government. 

Member Beach: That doesn't sound super 

promising.
98 

Chair Anderson: I'll be on early tomorrow and see if 

I remember what I did, but I kind of tried 

everything. If you go with the little down arrows 

when it asks you for something like -- it said, which 

network you want to join? I had no idea, but I went 

to the little arrow and there was only one to choose 

from, so. 

Member Clawson: Andy, I think a lot of that is 

because of your security systems that are set up 

with the university. That's where you're able to get 

on with that one. 

Chair Anderson: Yeah.

Ms. Adams: The other possibility, which I did not try 

today, which is to use VPN on our personal 

computers or ITSO, and then from there try to get 

into Zoom.gov. 

Member Kotelchuck: Dave, I thought, right after we 

finish, I'm going go onto ITSO and just try to get 

them -- maybe things will quiet down later in the 

evening and maybe they'll be able to get me my 

CDC computer working.

It was working perfectly until late last night, and 

then I come home this morning and it was off. So I 

have a feeling -- I just changed my passcode and I 

think things are not synchronized. So I may have a 

chance to get back on by the morning. I hope so. I'll 

give it a try. 

Member Clawson: There's everybody's homework. 

Try to figure out.

Chair Anderson: Exactly. 

Member Clawson: We'll see you all tomorrow. 

Member Kotelchuck: See you all.

Adjourn

Chair Anderson: I call the meeting to adjourn and 

look forward to hopefully everybody again tomorrow 
99 

a little before noon so we can get started. 

(Whereupon, the above-entitled went off the record 

at 5:35 p.m.)