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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL 

SAFETY AND HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

ADVISORY BOARD ON RADIATION AND 

WORKER HEALTH 

+ + + + + 

WORK GROUP ON LINDE CERAMICS 

+ + + + + 

MONDAY 

DECEMBER 14, 2009 

+ + + + + 

 The Work Group meeting convened in 

the Zurich Room of the Cincinnati Airport 

Marriott Hotel, 2395 Progress Drive, Hebron, 

Kentucky, at 9:30 a.m., Genevieve Roessler, 

Chair, presiding. 

PRESENT: 

GENEVIEVE S. ROESSLER, Chair 

JOSIE BEACH* 

MICHAEL H. GIBSON* 

JAMES E. LOCKEY 
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IDENTIFIED PARTICIPANTS: 

TED KATZ, Acting Designated Federal Official 

ANTOINETTE BONSIGNORE, Petitioner 

CHRISTOPHER CRAWFORD, NIOSH 

MONICA HARRISON-MAPLES, ORAU 

EMILY HOWELL, HHS 

KAREN JESSEN, ORAU 

LAURA KROLCZYK, Office of Senator Gillibrand* 

JOHN MAURO, SC&A 

JAMES NETON, NIOSH 

STEVE OSTROW, SC&A 

MUTTY SHARFI, ORAU* 

*Present via telephone 
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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

PAGE

Roll Call 4 

Agenda Discussion 7 

Steve Ostrow: SC&A comments on NIOSH 

 Response 9 

Chris Crawford: NIOSH Combined Response 

 to SC&A Report, Review of the Linde 

 Ceramics Plant Special Exposure 

 Cohort (SEC) Petition 00-107 and the 

 NIOSH SEC Petition Evaluation Report, 

 dated June 18, 2009 and Work Group, 

 NIOSH, and SC&A discussion 27 

Adjourn 204 
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P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

(9:30 a.m.) 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. We're ready to 

get started. We'll begin roll call before we 

turn the on button on. So beginning within 

the room, Board members, and please speak to 

conflict, as well, everybody. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I'll start. I'm 

Gen Roessler, Advisory Board, Chair of the 

Linde Work Group. No conflict. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Jim Lockey, member 

of the Advisory Board. No conflict. 

 MR. KATZ: And on the line? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Mike Gibson, 

Advisory Board. No conflict. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Josie Beach, 

Advisory Board. No conflict. 

 MR. KATZ: Hi, Josie. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Good morning. 

 MR. KATZ: Glad you -- sorry about 

your travel troubles. 
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 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, that's okay. 

 MR. KATZ: But at least you're not 

waylaid here for a day in between meetings. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Exactly. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. And now the NIOSH 

ORAU team in the room. 

 DR. NETON: Jim Neton, NIOSH, no 

conflict at Linde. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Chris Crawford, no 

conflict at Linde, NIOSH. 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: Monica 

Harrison-Maples, ORAU, no conflict. 

 MS. JESSEN: And Karen Jessen, ORAU 

team, no conflict. 

 MR. KATZ: And NIOSH ORAU team on 

the phone? 

 MR. SHARFI: Mutty Sharfi, ORAU 

team, no conflicts with Linde. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. SC&A in the room? 

 DR. OSTROW: Steve Ostrow, no 

conflict. 

 DR. MAURO: John Mauro, SC&A, no 
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conflict. 

 MR. KATZ: SC&A on the line? 

Anybody? 

 DR. MAURO: No. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. And HHS employees 

or other government employees or government 

contractors, beginning in the room. 

 MS. HOWELL: Emily Howell, HHS. 

 MR. KATZ: And on the line? 

 (No audible response.) 

 MR. KATZ: Any feds or contractors 

to the feds? 

 (No audible response.) 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. And then members 

-- members of the public or staff to 

congressional offices on the line? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Antoinette 

Bonsignore, Linde Ceramics Petitioner. 

 MR. KATZ: Welcome. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Hello, Antoinette. 

 MR. KATZ: Welcome, Antoinette. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Hello. 
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 MR. KATZ: Okay, then. That's roll 

call. 

 Let me just remind everyone on the 

phone to please mute your phone except when 

you are addressing the group. *6 will work if 

you don't have a mute button. And then hit *6 

again to take it off mute. 

 Please do not put the call on hold 

at any point, but hang up and dial back in if 

you need to leave. And that's it. It's all 

yours, Gen. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Thank you, Ted. 

 Our last Work Group meeting was 

September 2nd. And at that time, it was 

actually our first meeting to look at the SEC 

Petition Evaluation. 

 And at that meeting, Chris Crawford 

made a report, a Microsoft Word -- or 

Microsoft PowerPoint report. And if you have 

that, I have that on my computer, if we need 

to refer to it. But basically his bottom line 

was that NIOSH OCAS recommends that for the 
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period at Linde from January 1st, 1954 to July 

31st, 2006, radiation dose estimates can be 

constructed for compensation purposes. So 

that's our bottom line, really, today, is to 

look at that. 

 I sent out an agenda which is 

online. It only had three items on it, but I 

would like to add one item to that and 

actually start with that item. 

 And that was the SC&A Report 

following through on our last meeting, sent 

out on time by Steve Ostrow. And because it 

was on time, it was -- I filed it and I forgot 

about it. He sent it out, I think, on 

September 21st. So if you have that with you, 

it's called Review of Linde Ceramics Plant 

Special Exposure Cohort Petition 00-107 and 

the NIOSH SEC Petition Evaluation Report. And 

it has addendum in a little box on it. So if 

you are looking for that, that's what it looks 

like. 

 And I've asked Steve to make a very 
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brief summary of his report to get us started. 

 DR. OSTROW: Okay. At the 

September 2nd Work Group meeting that Gen 

mentioned, a question came up whether SC&A 

addressed all the petitioner's concerns that 

were in the Petition 00-107. 

 We had put out a big report on June 

18th where we evaluated -- we looked at what 

NIOSH had done and the question is, did we 

address all the petitioner issues. 

 We had originally in our June 18th, 

2009 report -- there were 11 findings that we 

had, and we went ahead and identified from the 

petition, we found the petitioners had nine 

distinct issues. The reason I say distinct 

issues that we looked at that there were a lot 

of different issues. There was a lot of 

repetition, overlap. But we came up with nine 

petitioner issues. 

 So we had reported all of that. We 

had 11 findings, nine petitioner issues. So 

the question is was everything covered. And 
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this report that Gen had mentioned that we put 

out on September 21st, the addendum, basically 

didn't supply any new information. It just 

produced, basically, a table that correlates 

the -- our 11 findings to the nine petitioner 

issues, and we concluded that our big June 

18th report addressed all the petitioner 

issues that we could identify. 

 And the table that is attached to 

our addendum basically just makes a 

correlation between the issues and the 

findings. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. Ted, I 

should ask your advice. Since Antoinette's on 

the phone, we'll probably want to give her a 

chance to talk. At what point should we put 

that on the agenda? 

 MR. KATZ: I mean, I think it would 

be most advantageous for her -- I mean, 

Antoinette, you can speak up if you have a 

preference. But I would think she would like 

to hear all the presentations first before she 
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would address us. 

 Antoinette, do you have a different 

wish? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: No, that's -- I 

would like to just sort of make a general 

statement before we get started if that would 

be all right. 

 MR. KATZ: Oh, that's quite all 

right. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. I received 

a copy of Mr. Crawford's report via email last 

week. And I would -- after reviewing the 

report, a recurring issue keeps coming up for 

myself and for the workers that I represent. 

And that is, what specific steps will OCAS 

take at this point to provide the Linde 

petitioners with a clear and easily understood 

translation of these documents that they are 

providing, either from the Evaluation Report 

or in response to SC&A's review of the 

Evaluation Report? 

 That's an issue that is a serious 
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problem for not only myself, but for my 

ability to answer questions for the people 

that I represent. And they are very concerned 

that all of these documents that are going 

between OCAS and the Working Group and OCAS 

and SC&A are not provided in a manner that 

they can understand. 

 And I think that -- it is my belief 

that OCAS has a responsibility here to provide 

a translation of these documents for the 

petitioners so they can understand that 

because they feel that they are being 

marginalized in the technical aspect of the 

evaluation process. And it's really the 

technical review of this evaluation process 

that, in the end, will be dispositive of the 

outcome of this petition. 

 And I'd like to hear at some point 

during the meeting a response from OCAS and a 

response from the Board members on the Working 

Group as to what steps can be taken at this 

point to provide this kind of information to 
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the Linde petitioners. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I will make a 

comment on that, Antoinette. 

 Thank you. I understand what 

you're saying. I guess you have to understand 

the documents are prepared for the Board and 

for SC&A as far as to discuss this on a 

scientific level. So they are a little long 

and probably not intended for a typical 

petitioner. 

 But I will commit at the end of 

this meeting to work with SC&A and NIOSH to 

put something, a statement together to try and 

summarize it as I think you've asked. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'm sorry. Who's 

speaking? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: This is Gen. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. The -- you 

know, and just one other point that I would 

like to make and I've made this point before 

in a number of Board meetings and to Mike in 

an email a few days ago, regarding ORAU's 
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contractual obligation to provide this type of 

technical assistance, and what that 

contractual obligation is and whether ORAU is 

fulfilling that obligation. 

 MR. KATZ: Can I just add -- and 

don't know, Jim, if you want to add anything 

from OCAS's perspective but -- 

 DR. NETON: I really don't have 

much else to add. I mean we certainly would 

work with Gen if she wants to prepare a more 

laypersons-understandable version of what 

we're talking about although in relation to 

ORAU's contractual responsibility, I think 

there were some responsibilities in relation 

to specific communications with claimants and 

petitioners. But I guess this sort of 

technical exchange at the Working Group level 

kind of falls through the cracks, I guess. 

 I think you're right. It's not 

really been identified as something that they 

contractually need to do. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Just one more 
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point I'd like to make about that specific 

contractual obligation in ORAU's contract with 

NIOSH is that directly in the contract it says 

that ORAU is responsible to provide a 

narrative for their decisions about the 

feasibility of dose reconstruction in language 

that is understandable to persons with a high 

school education. 

 Now I understand that that specific 

part of the contract relates specifically to 

the dose reconstruction reports in individual 

claimant's evaluations. 

 DR. NETON: Right. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: But since the 

evaluation process in the SEC petition 

involves decisions about the feasibility of 

being able to provide dose reconstruction for 

the class of petitioners, I think this is a 

serious problem, and I think it needs to be 

addressed. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Ted, this is Mike. 

 MR. KATZ: Hi, Mike. 
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 MEMBER GIBSON: I totally support 

what Antoinette is saying. I think this falls 

squarely in the bounds of the Worker Outreach 

Work Group. And I would like to just, you 

know, go on record that we need, as a Work 

Group, my Work Group, to take this up and look 

into that. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. And I would say, 

Mike, that it is really covered, in a sense, 

under the objectives of the framework that the 

Work Group has put together so far. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Right, right. I 

agree with that. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: I just, you know, 

that is an item that will be on our agenda. 

 MR. KATZ: The only other thing 

that I would note, Antoinette, which has its 

limitations, to be sure, but there -- I mean 

OCAS does employ a group of public health 

advisors that are -- their jobs are to work 

with claimants and then an SEC advisor, Laurie 
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Breyer, to work with petitioners, to help with 

this translation. 

 And Denise Brock, who is employed 

independently of OCAS as the ombudsman, also 

does a lot of work to try to accomplish this 

kind of translation as well as to guide people 

through procedures. And she certainly, in 

both groups, whether it is the OCAS stable of 

public health advisors, or Denise Brock, I 

mean they have provided a lot of help to an 

awful lot of people under this program right 

along the lines that you are discussing. 

 And I'll be the first to admit that 

they are all limited. I mean they all have 

their limitations in terms of the technical 

information they can bring to bear. But, for 

example, the OCAS group, I mean when they need 

to, they bring a health physicist to the table 

to discuss matters when they are not 

understood. 

 How well that's done is an 

independent question. But there are some 
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resources that have been at work throughout 

this program to try to help with this 

translational issue that you're talking about. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'm sorry. Who 

was just speaking? 

 MR. KATZ: I'm sorry. This is Ted 

speaking, Ted Katz. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Sorry, Ted. 

 It's just difficult for me to discern who is 

talking. 

 MR. KATZ: No, I'm sorry. I didn't 

identify myself. I apologize. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: That's okay. I 

understand that there are certain people who 

are assigned to deal with some of these 

issues. But, again, the help that I've been 

able to get in terms of, you know, this -- in 

particular this report that Mr. Crawford just 

provided, quite frankly, it might as well be 

written in a foreign language for the workers 

that I represent. 

 They don't understand it. They 
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don't understand what's in this document. 

It's difficult for me to help them understand 

what's in this document. And in the end, it's 

their rights here that are at issue. 

 And, you know, I understand that 

the work here that's going on is, you know, 

the work is between SC&A and OCAS, and the 

reports that go back and forth, but you need 

to keep in mind that your audience is also the 

petitioners. And they have a right to 

understand what's in this document. 

 MR. KATZ: I agree with that. And 

I just -- as Jim noted, I mean there are 

limitations in what you can do in these 

scientific reports to simplify them in a way 

that will both serve the scientific and 

technical staff that have to grapple with 

those issues and the public that would like to 

understand, you know, the issues at play. I 

mean there are some just basic limitations to 

that. 

 And that's why I just -- again, I 
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encourage you to make use of the health 

physicists on staff at OCAS, for example, who 

work with these public health advisors to get 

that sort of one-on-one sort of guidance as to 

what does this mean, what does that mean, 

because some of it, I think, probably cannot 

be done in written documents in a sort of 

fulfilling, thorough way. But, you know, 

someone could help guide you through some of 

those issues if you, you know, avail yourself 

of them. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Antoinette -- 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, I have 

availed myself of assistance from Denise Brock 

but she, quite frankly, has quite a bit of 

work to do. And, again, you know, I hate to 

sound like a broken record here, but I have to 

point to ORAU's contractual obligation here. 

And, you know, the language clearly states 

understandable to persons with a high school 

education. 

 Now that's in the contract. So, 
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you know, there has to be some resolution of 

what the contract says and what is being 

provided here, and the two do not meet. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Antoinette, this 

is Gen. In a minute here, we're going to have 

Chris's report. And as we are going through 

it, I will be thinking in terms of what you 

just brought up. 

 And what I typically do is once we 

finish a Work Group meeting is put together a 

very short report that I will be giving at the 

Board meeting in February. I think that will 

probably be at least a start to answering your 

question. 

 I will try to summarize, you know, 

very briefly, succinctly what Chris presented, 

whether we have any outstanding issues and so 

on. So let's try that as a first approach and 

see if that will help. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Thank you, 

Gen. 

 DR. MAURO: Antoinette and Mike, 
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this is John Mauro. Can you guys hear me 

okay? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes. 

 DR. MAURO: I'd just like to point 

out, coincidentally, we, SC&A, have been 

directed by Mike's Work Group on Outreach to 

review what's called PR-12. It is an outreach 

procedure that is currently being used. And 

we're looking at various aspects of it. 

 But I do not believe part of the 

scope was to look into matters such as the one 

you are describing right now. I believe, if 

we're so directed to at least say something 

about that, we could certainly raise it as an 

issue that could be brought before the Work 

Group as perhaps this is a subject area that 

should be included in Outreach. 

 I'm watching folks shaking their 

heads around the table. 

 MS. HOWELL: I don't know that it 

is SC&A's role to try and evaluate ORAU's 

contract and whether it is being legally 
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fulfilled. 

 DR. MAURO: Oh, no, I wasn't saying 

that. I was just simply saying we're looking 

at it from -- our mission under PR-12 as 

Outreach's, it really comes down to the 

effectiveness -- bringing to the table, to the 

Work Group meeting some observations regarding 

the effectiveness of NIOSH in communicating to 

and receiving information from the interested 

parties. 

 And now it seems to me that this 

might fall within the first category 

interpreted in its broadest sense. It's 

really -- but anyway, certainly I would say 

this is certainly a fair subject for the 

Outreach Work Group to entertain. 

 DR. NETON: Yes, this is Jim Neton. 

 I totally agree with John on that. But I 

think we need to look at the context under 

which these Working Group discussions occur. 

They are very detailed, technical exchanges, 

evaluations of what was in our Evaluation 
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Report, which is really our communication 

vehicle to the petitioners. 

 And at the end of the day, what 

would happen after these discussions are done 

is we would revise, as appropriate, the 

Evaluation Report, at which point that would 

be, hopefully, in more understandable language 

to a layperson. And at that time, the 

Advisory Board would take up the Evaluation 

Report again in a full public discussion where 

the petitioners would be afforded their 

opportunities to comment. 

 So, you know, in some ways these 

technical discussions almost have to be that 

way to get to the end of the line on the 

technical issues. But I understand completely 

what you're saying. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, this is 

Antoinette again. The Evaluation Report is in 

the same vein as this current document that 

we're about to discuss. It, again, is not in 

a form that is easily understood by workers or 
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 DR. NETON: Okay. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: So, you know, I 

think, again, we're dealing with the very same 

problem. The Evaluation Report is not in a 

form that is easily understood. None of these 

documents are in a form that is easily 

understood, and that is a problem. 

 DR. NETON: Well, and I think that 

would be a big issue if the Evaluation Report 

is not understandable. We would certainly 

need to take efforts to make that a more 

reasonably understandable document because 

that essentially is a report that the 

petitioners would rely on for their source of 

information. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: And I think it is 

important that that kind of information be 

provided in advance of a full presentation to 

the entire Board because, you know, it is all 

well and good for the Board -- for the full 

Board to discuss what is in an Evaluation 
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Report. But if the petitioners have not been 

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that Evaluation Report, we cannot be full 

participants in that discussion. And we 

deserve to be full participants in that 

discussion. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Antoinette, this 

is Gen. I suggest that we delve into Chris's 

report at this point and then after -- and I'm 

sure that he's going to clarify things not 

only for you but for the Work Group. That's 

the whole purpose of the meeting today. So I 

suggest we get started with it. And we'll 

work this through as we go. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Thank you. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Thanks, 

Antoinette. 

 So at our last meeting, OCAS was 

given several assignments. The first one was 

to -- and I'm going to read this out of 

Chris's report actually -- provide a table 

consolidating the information currently found 
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in Tables 5-1 and 5-3 of the Linde Ceramics 

SEC Evaluation Report, and he has done this. 

 He provided all of us with a very 

nice color table. It is a matrix of dates on 

the x-axis versus buildings on the y-axis. 

And because it is in color and because it is 

very large, it took us a little effort for us 

all to get it through email. But for those of 

you who have that, you can be looking at that. 

 And then the other objective was to 

really break down the items that SC&A had 

brought up. Basically the bottom line is can 

a plausible upper bound be put on exposures 

during the Linde residual period. And Chris 

has grouped some of these into, I think, three 

 different categories. And we'll turn it over 

to you to review it for us. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Great. This is 

Chris Crawford from NIOSH. And I agree, to 

the layman, this would be a very confused 

report. But I think -- confusing, I should 

say, but I think you have to keep in mind, 
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again, this is experts talking to experts. It 

was never intended to be a document that was 

to be understood by the layperson. So forgive 

us for that. But the eventual result of all 

this should be a document that is, in fact, 

understandable by the layperson. 

 We looked at several issues that 

seemed to be the main issues for the 

Evaluation Report and for SEC-107, a residual 

period SEC. The first of those was the radon 

in the building, and for Antoinette and anyone 

else's benefit who may be listening, radon is 

a radioactive gas that is given off. It is a 

natural substance that is given off from the 

decay of uranium. 

 It is found in many buildings 

throughout the United States. It isn't -- in 

other words, it doesn't only come from atomic 

weapons production or people that handle 

uranium. It's found in the soils, it 

percolates into people's basements and that 

sort of thing. So that's the gas that we're 
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talking about when we say radon. 

 Our position, given the evidence 

that we have, is we only have a single radon 

measurement during the residual period. Well, 

we actually have -- sorry, we discarded one. 

We have some 1976 measurements which we 

discarded because they were low. In other 

words, it was claimant-favorable for us to 

discard these measurements. 

 And we had some 1981/82 

measurements of several buildings on site. 

Those readings were much higher. And those 

are the readings that we are using to estimate 

the radon for the entire residual period. 

 The main question was how can we 

take a single reading -- it's a series of 

readings but a single time in 1982 and say 

that those readings are representative of the 

entire history of the building from 1954 

through to 2006. 

 Well, the answer to that is we 

believe that -- and to review a little bit, 
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the building was decontaminated -- buildings 

were decontaminated in the early `50s. What 

that means is the process equipment that was 

used to handle the uranium ores and oxides was 

removed. The source -- what we call a source 

material, source term, in other words the 

uranium -- either the oxides, the ores, 

whatever, the residues, was all removed also 

at that time. 

 Then the building itself was 

thoroughly -- value term, we won't use that -- 

was decontaminated according to the standards 

of the time. That means it was physically 

chipped and sandblasted, the concrete of the 

building, the walls, and the floors. It was 

washed. It was vacuumed. It was -- I think 

it is called scarfed. It was flame-torched to 

further chip the concrete. All of the 

material that was removed, the chips of 

concrete and the dust and so forth was then 

taken away and buried. 

 So now we're left with a building 
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that was turned over for unrestricted use to -

- the owner at that time was Linde Ceramics -- 

and a question is was there something that 

would produce a public-health hazard left in 

the building as a result of the atomic weapons 

work that was done in the `40s. 

 We concede that there was some 

contamination left in the building. We can 

see that from the reports that were left to us 

from 1950 after the decontamination. There 

were definitely what we call areas of fixed 

contamination in the building where uranium of 

some sort had been physically embedded in the 

concrete of the walls or ceilings. There was 

also some dust in various places. You can't 

get all of that so there is some residual dust 

remaining, as well. 

 Then the question for the SEC 

Petition itself is okay, we have a 

contaminated building, less than when it was 

an operational building but still with some 

contamination. Can we put an upper bound on 
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how contaminated the building is and how much 

dose a worker in that building could possibly 

have received? 

 Our finding is yes in each case. 

We'll start with radon. The reason we think 

that the radon measurements in 82 should be 

bounding is that the building was not used 

after 1950 really for -- I'm talking about 

Building 30, which is considered the most 

contaminated building. There are other 

buildings present as well. We always tend to 

place workers in Building 30, again, as a 

claimant-favorable assumption. So I'll talk 

about Building 30. 

 Since there was no what we call 

source term, no new uranium entered the 

building to our knowledge, certainly it had 

nothing to do with any atomic weapons program, 

there is no reason to think that the radon 

concentration should have changed over time. 

We have some measurements during the process 

period. In the TBD, you'll see that those are 
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ten picocuries per liter as the accepted 

standard during the third step of the 

production period. That would be from late 

`47 through the end of `49. 

 That amounts to -- there's a lot of 

different -- sorry, Antoinette, again, for 

your benefit, there are a lot of different 

ways to speak about exposures, exposure 

levels. For radon we use something called a 

working level-month, which I won't go into in 

any great detail, but ten picocuries per liter 

of radon in the air corresponds to .48 working 

level-months per year for worker exposure, 

just to put that in some perspective. 

 The measurements that were taken in 

1982 show less radon in the building at that 

time than that. In fact, the first part of 

the report that we sent out -- and the author 

is on the line luckily, Mutty Sharfi, shows 

that -- basically I did a little -- he showed 

we had .0168 working levels in the building 

based on those readings. I did a little 
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calculation and with a 2,000-hour year, it 

comes out to about .198 working level-months 

per year, which is a little less than half of 

the last production period. 

 To interpret that, let's look at it 

another way. You would expect the levels to 

be much higher during the production period. 

You had literally tons of uranium on the site. 

 You had the contaminated machinery still on 

the site, and the building had not been 

decontaminated in any way. So it's not 

surprising that the 1982 levels would be less 

than say the 1949 levels. 

 DR. MAURO: Chris, just from when I 

listen to these numbers, any chance when you 

give us your working level-months or working 

level-months per year for my own benefit, 

could you also say what that would translate 

to equivalent to picocuries per liter? Do you 

have that one to one? Or if you don't -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: No, it's about 4.2 

in this case. 
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 DR. MAURO: So you are saying that 

4.2 working level-months -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: No, no, no, 

picocuries per liter is what it translates to. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay, 4.2 picocuries 

per liter corresponds to what? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: To about .198 

working level-months per year. Now these are 

my off-the-cuff calculations. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Mutty may want to 

check these. And I think they should be 

checked. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And that was 

during what period? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Well, we're saying 

for the entire residual period based on the 

1982 measurements. 

 DR. MAURO: But you also mentioned 

some numbers that were in the earlier years 

during operations. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: The ten picocuries 
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per liter? 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, good. Okay. So 

what we're saying is that you were seeing -- 

so it's clean for me -- you were seeing ten 

during operations. Later on -- which is great 

that way, I guess back in the `40s -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: In the late `40s. 

 DR. MAURO: -- the `40s and now in 

 1982, you were seeing half that value. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. Great. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: That's essentially 

right. I also should say again, I think for 

Antoinette's benefit at least, that the 1982 

survey also looked at background levels of 

radon in the Tonawanda are and found that they 

were -- they approached the levels that were 

actually measured in Building 30 and 31. In 

other words, the added radon compared to what, 

say, any warehouse worker any place in the 

Buffalo area would get is small. 

 We're not taking that into account. 
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 We're not subtracting the background level 

from the measured radon level in Buildings 30 

and 31. So that's a claimant-favorable 

assumption also. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So you're saying 

that the background levels that would be 

experienced in buildings that were not 

associated with Linde would be on the order of 

a few picocuries per liter -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: -- during that 

time period. 

 DR. MAURO: It might be helpful -- 

the EPA's recommended standard for natural 

levels of radon in anyone's home, your home, 

is four picocuries per liter. We like to stay 

below that. I know in my house right now, my 

basement, and I work there all the time, is 

two picocuries per liter. So just to get a 

feel, just so you have a, you know -- 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I just have a 

quick question, Chris. Didn't Building 31 
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have the highest radon levels, not Building 

30? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: For radon, you may 

be correct. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I believe I am 

correct, yes. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. I believe that 

the author did take that into account. I'm 

speaking of Building 30 mainly because it is 

the most externally contaminated. But that's 

correct. The difference, however, was not 

great between the buildings. They were very 

similar. 

 And also, just informationally, as 

you'll see on page two of our latest report, 

the background levels were .01 working level. 

 Whereas the calculated radon concentration 

was .0168. So it's not a whole lot more. 

Well, it's nearly twice -- 68 percent more, 

right? 

 DR. MAURO: Sorry, one more 

question. The ten picocurie per liter number 
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that was observed, is that a single value? 

Was that a long-term value that was collected? 

 Multiple values taken at different locations 

because I know -- radon is -- gaseous 

radionuclides that could change substantially 

over place and time. So I'd like to get a 

feel for whether this tends to sort of 

captures the sense of the aerial and time 

variability of radon. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Well, first of all, 

that was taken directly from the TBD. 

 DR. MAURO: Right. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Now the source of 

that data I'm not too clear on. Mutty, have 

you looked into this at all, may I ask? 

 MR. SHARFI: Now I'm trying to 

remember where they're from. I didn't think 

that that -- I thought that was a bounding 

estimate. But let me look at it, and I'll get 

right back with you. 

 DR. NETON: Yes. I think it is in 

the site profile or TBD. In the latter period 
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of production when they weren't processing 

pitchblende ore, the Belgian Congo type ore 

where the lower source concentration of radium 

-- I think the ten picocuries per liter was 

bounding. And I think that was actually 

measured in areas outdoors or something like 

that. 

 Mutty will have to look into that. 

But that was a value that was in the site 

profile that has been reviewed. And we all 

agreed that those values were appropriate for 

dose reconstruction purposes. At least at 

that time they were. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: That would have been 

with respect to the SEC petition. I'm using 

that figure mainly as a contrast. 

 DR. NETON: For a reference like if 

it was ten picocuries per liter during 

production and we're saying it is about half 

that now after they cleaned extensively -- 

since they cleaned up the site -- it appears 

to us to be a fairly reasonable value. 
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 DR. MAURO: And I recall having 

these discussions before. I'm just really 

refreshing my memory. 

 All I know is when I see ten 

picocuries per liter, that's a very low 

number. And, you know, I hear that is 

associated with some operations. Even if it 

is post-operations operations, it is still a 

pretty low number. And I just wanted to get a 

feel for where it comes from. 

 DR. NETON: Right. And I think -- 

did you mention that, Chris, about the 

comparison of the radiological survey data? I 

mean that's sort of one of the points of this 

write-up was that was the amount of 

contamination constant over that entire time 

period. 

 And Table 1 in the report attempts 

to demonstrate that. The radiological survey, 

at least the gamma surveys are very similar in 

1981 and in 1954. So there is no indication 

of some influx of contamination that may have 
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altered the amount of radium available to be 

generating right out of the cask. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Exactly. That was 

another reason that we suspected -- we have 

every reason to believe that the radon 

concentration is reasonably representative 

from 1982. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I would just like 

to know -- I have two questions about the 

radon issue. And I would just like to know 

when would be an appropriate time for me to 

ask them. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: I don't see why you 

shouldn't ask them now. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. My first 

question is you are basing the radon data from 

direct gamma readings in Building 30. And so 

you have two different gamma readings 

beginning in 1978. Is that correct? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Not really, 

Antoinette. What we're basing the radon on is 

specific readings taken in 1982 of radon, not 
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of the gamma in the building. The gamma -- 

external gamma that we're measuring in a 

building, we're just using that information to 

show that it didn't change much between 1950 

and 1982 or later. 

 The reason that's important is it 

is an indirect measure of how much embedded 

uranium and uranium progeny were in the 

building. And that's what produces, in the 

end, the radon. It's just a check on the 

other hand, on our assumption that the radon 

levels were probably stable through the 

history of the building after 1954. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, I guess what 

is confusing me is that if you are basing this 

on the 1982 data, how do you account for the 

fact that you don't have any data between 1954 

and -- you are not relying on any data from 

1954 through 1982, particularly because you 

don't have any information about ventilation 

rates, mainly the number of room changes per 

hour due to ventilation fans and open doors 
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how those parameters would effect the radon 

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 MR. CRAWFORD: You are pointing 

out, which is true and it is what John was 

just saying also, taking radon measurements at 

different times of the day or the year or 

under different ventilation conditions can 

give you quite different results. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Right. Well, 

that's my point. I mean if you were taking -- 

if you were relying on -- you have radon 

measurements during the processing period. 

Now I would assume that during the processing 

period there would have been some significant 

level of ventilation going on in the facility 

at the time, whereas the data that you are 

relying on from 1982 or any data from after 

1954 when there wasn't actually any processing 

going on, the ventilation rate would have been 

much -- would have been not as significant 

because there would have been no -- presumably 
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there would have been no reason to have 

significant ventilation in that building. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: You're making -- 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: How do you account 

for that? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: -- you're making a 

lot of assumptions there. This building was 

an active building. It was a warehouse and it 

was owned by a chemical company basically. 

That's what Linde Air, Linde Ceramics is and 

was. 

 Well, we can't obviously know what 

the ventilation conditions were on a day-byday or even year-by-year basis. There is no 

reason to think they changed either. 

 DR. NETON: But I think this 1981 

measure, was it not taken when the building 

was fairly inactive? I mean it was -- they 

certainly weren't producing uranium or 

anything like that where they would have had a 

need to have a high ventilation rate. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Right. That is my 
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point. There may have been chemical 

processing of some sort going on. But with 

respect to the issue of radon, the 

significance would be uranium processing. And 

that was not going on. 

 DR. NETON: Right. But I mean -- I 

don't know what was actually transpiring in 

this building in 1981. I mean that's sort of 

the question, I guess. I don't really know 

that. 

 MR. SHARFI: This is Mutty Sharfi. 

 The lower ventilation rate would actually 

just result in higher radon levels. 

 DR. NETON: Right. 

 MR. SHARFI: The air turnover rate 

reduces your radon levels, not increases it. 

So the fact that the building would have been 

less -- the ventilation would have been 

reduced would have only increased your radon 

levels. That would only make these numbers 

more maximizing than less conservative. 

 In addition, they do have multiple 
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-- during these various years, they do have 

multiple readings during multiple times in 

multiple areas. And we did take the highest 

of all those readings. We didn't really do a 

statistical average of the area. We took the 

upper bound of those numbers. So we're taking 

the upper bound of a non-turning-over, really, 

room. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I understand that. 

 But my point is that from 1954 through 1981, 

and you're relying on this 1981 data, that 

between those two periods, you don't have 

information on radon. You don't have any 

information on the ventilation rate in that 

building or in Building 31. So this to me 

seems problematic. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Chris, this is Dr. 

Lockey, Chris, in `76, you threw that level 

out, right, because it was low? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: By almost a order of 

magnitude as I recall. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: So in `76, we do 
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have data. It was a low value so perhaps the 

ventilation was higher in `76 which would 

account for the lower value. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: In terms of readings 

in the summer, for instance, the building was 

probably open. If you took them in February 

in Buffalo, I can assure you that all the 

windows and doors would be closed. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: So that could 

account for it right there. We're not sure. 

But we decided to throw out the low values 

because they weren't claimant-favorable 

basically. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Okay, so -- 

 DR. MAURO: Typically, I've been 

looking at radon levels for a long time in 

lots of buildings. Typically between the 

summer and winter, there is an approximately 

three-fold difference. Is that the kind of 

differences you are seeing? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. 
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 MEMBER LOCKEY: That's what I was 

thinking, that the `76 values were low. It 

probably was -- the building was more 

ventilated at that point. And the `82 values 

were higher, and the building was probably 

less ventilated at that point. That's what 

the data source shows. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, it just 

seems like we're making a lot of assumptions 

here about the ventilation rates when you have 

absolutely no data about that. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Well, the 

assumption was made but, I think, based on 

what the data they do have, the assumption was 

to make it most claimant-favorable by taking 

the highest values when assumingly the 

building was less ventilated. So at least of 

the values that were available, they took the 

value that was the highest with the assumption 

that that might have been the lowest 

ventilation rate at that time. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I understand why 
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you're not using the 1976 data. But, again, 

my point is is that particularly in Building 

30 during the 1960s, and this is a point that 

I'll expand on a little bit further when Chris 

gets to this section of the report, but during 

the 1960s, there was a lot of renovation work 

that was going on in Building 30 that I don't 

believe has been accounted for here that I 

provided workers' statements regarding what 

was actually going on on the floor, 

particularly in Building 30, but also in 

Building 14, that I don't believe has been 

accounted for here, including such things as a 

jackhammering of concrete floors when they 

were moving heavy pieces of equipment. 

 And I have a lot of documentation 

from workers' statements that speak to that. 

And that hasn't been taken into account 

either. So my point being that during the 

1960s, the levels of radon could have been 

much higher as a result of that kind of 

renovation work. And the fact that you don't 
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have any data from that time period and you 

don't have any data about the ventilation rate 

during that time period, I think is a serious 

problem here. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: It's not at all 

clear to me, Antoinette, that the renovations 

would have increased the radon level. For 

airborne contaminants like particles of 

uranium and other radioactive particles that 

would be true. And we have allowed for that. 

 For the radon, I don't see any 

mechanism to increase the radon concentration 

just because you're doing a building 

renovation. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, but you're -

- this report is clearly not considering the 

fact that -- you are only considering, I 

believe it said, vacuum cleaning as the 

parameter for the renovation work. That 

wasn't the only thing that was going on during 

that time period. 

 And I provided a lot of statements 
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from workers. And I have actually a lot of 

additional statements from workers testifying 

to that fact. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: The reason we chose 

vacuuming is that -- well, we have to look at 

the difference between the decontamination 

effort and a remodeling effort. The 

decontamination effort deliberately set out to 

disturb the existing contamination. They went 

to where the contamination was greatest and 

they chipped it, burned it, sandblasted it, 

and vacuumed it. Okay? 

 In a renovation, most of that 

building wasn't heavily contaminated as you 

can see from the 1950 survey. It was 

concentrated in areas. And that's where the 

decontamination efforts were concentrated. 

 Contrast that with, say, 

renovations that happened in the `60s where in 

some sort of chance basis, they would dig a 

hole in the concrete to put in a post or 

something. The only document we actually 
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have, by the way, from the `60s, and I don't 

mean to say there weren't other renovations, 

was a Building 30 addition that was added to 

the side of the building. 

 So they weren't trying to loosen up 

every bit of contamination in the building. 

We can expect that their efforts resulted in 

less, much less contamination than the 

original decontamination efforts. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, with all due 

respect to whatever document you are referring 

to about Building 30, I have workers' 

statements, people who were working in that 

building during the time that that renovation 

work was going on during the 1960s, testifying 

to a great deal of work that was being done 

that created huge amounts of dust and huge 

amounts of contamination, people talking about 

dust falling from the rafters, about huge 

pieces of equipment that were moved around 

that building that required jackhammering of 

the floors, continual jackhammering of the 
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floors for years at a time while this 

renovation work was going on. 

 And that has not been accounted 

for. And I've provided workers' statements 

here testifying to that fact. And I have 

additional statements that I have received 

ever since -- because when I read the report 

and I saw that you were only considering the 

vacuum cleaning as a parameter there for the 

renovation work, I felt the need to get some 

additional documentation from workers who were 

actually there. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, I think what 

we're doing here is this is all interrelated. 

 But we have certainly gone into a later part 

of Chris's report when we talk about the 

remodeling. That comes a little bit later on. 

 I wonder if maybe we could hold 

that part and finish the radon. And, again, I 

agree they are interrelated. But I think 

maybe we should finish the radon part of it. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. 
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think we have finished the radon part as far 

as we can go at this point. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Why don't you just 

summarize then. What -- give us -- I guess 

from my point of view in terms of the numbers, 

the upper bounds you are using. And then 

comparing that to some of these other numbers. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Right. We are using 

-- well, as you will see in the report, we're 

using a calculated radon concentration of 

.0168 working levels. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And as John said, 

can you put that into the picocuries per 

liter? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: My calculation -- 

and I want to stress mine -- is 4.2 picocuries 

per liter. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So you are using 

that for the upper bound? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Right. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. 
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thing. The areas that is important, I always 

think in terms of OTIB-0070, which is one of 

my favorites. This is the OTIB that says 

you've got a big time span when a facility was 

operating. And it stopped operations. And 

this happens over and over again. 

 And all of a sudden you have -- we 

have lots of measurements are taken during 

operations, maybe during D&D, at the end of 

operations are confirmed that you cleaned 

everything up pretty good. And this usually 

takes place, let's say, back in the `50s. 

 And then very often, this happens 

over and over again, the next time you revisit 

the site is when the FUSRAP program kicks in 

in the `70s and the `80s. And you very often 

have a 30-year period between these two time 

periods. 

 Now the thing that I always like to 

look at is okay, what were the, in this case, 

radon concentrations in the air at the earlier 
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days, let's say. And what I'm hearing is the 

radon levels that were observed at some time 

in the earlier days under the certain context 

-- I'm not quite sure what -- about ten 

picocuries per liter. 

 Let's, for the sake of discussion, 

assume that that is a pretty good number 

representing the state of affairs of radon 

levels in the late 1940s -- 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: During operations. 

 DR. MAURO: Well, let's say either 

during or immediately after operations. 

Perhaps even after some D&D. Sort of like at 

the beginning of when all this -- at around 

that time. I find ten picocuries per liter to 

be a low number to be associated with 

operations, certainly if they were handling 

ore. But let's -- so let's assume -- but that 

represents a good starting point. 

 And so when I hear that number, I'm 

very assured, and I will explain. If the next 

step is 30 years later, you take a bunch of 
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measurements, you take the high-end 

measurements and they are around 40, which 

means that the facility was relatively clean 

in the early days and it got a little bit 

cleaner later. 

 So we're going from ten down to 

four over a 50-year period. So my -- I guess 

from everything I heard, you know, and I've 

been talking to Steve about this, you know the 

four number certainly looks like a really good 

number for the back end of the process, when 

you get to the 1980s, if not conservative, 

especially since you left background in, which 

could easily account for all of it, you know, 

could actually account for all of it or half 

of it. 

 But the front end, the ten is the 

place where I guess I heard a little softness. 

 I'm not quite sure what that ten is. And if 

I heard a little bit more about what the ten 

is and a sense of assurance that no, that's a 

pretty good representation of what was in the 
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air, you know, just, you know, at the end of 

operations, back in the late `40s, early `50s, 

then my sense is that this does represent -- 

the numbers you selected certainly are 

reasonably bounding. I mean I guess that's -- 

so the ten is the only place right now where 

I'm a little like this about, you know, what 

that number is. 

 DR. NETON: My impression is the 

ten was taken during production prior to any 

decontamination in the building. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: The ten is after 

`47, which -- pre-`47 when the African ore was 

processed, the numbers were higher than ten. 

But the `47 to `54 time period, the back end 

of the African ore processing, the bottom end 

was ten. So they assumed that the -- after 

the production stopped, that the ten 

maintained through the clean up part. 

 DR. MAURO: That was inside 

buildings or outside buildings? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: It was -- I believe 
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the measurements were originally from inside 

but they assumed that that maintained on the 

outside, too. 

 DR. NETON: That's right. That's 

what it was. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So, John, just to 

summarize then, do you agree that the ten is a 

good number to rely on? 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. What I just heard 

is what I was looking for. That ten -- there 

were a number of measurements made. I didn't 

look at all the data, but a number of 

measurements were made at the back end of the 

operations period, not when there was lots of 

ore present when you would expect relatively 

high radon concentrations, but at a time when 

you had relatively little ore. The potential 

for radon was certainly reduced, so it 

represented what you would consider to be the 

beginning of the decontamination process 

perhaps. A time period that represents a good 

start point at when the levels should have 
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been relatively high as compared to the back 

end of the process, you know, when they 

measured it in the 1980s. 

 So what we're really talking about 

are radon concentrations that go from a 

reasonably upper bound in the early days, not 

including ore, at about ten, to a reasonable 

upper bound of 4.8 at the back end of the 

process. 

 Now that all rings very true to me 

as being a line, you know, that goes from ten 

to four. Now a good question could be well, 

maybe you should use OTIB-0070, which says no, 

let's start at ten and go to four over that 

time period of people working, or just go with 

the four. 

 Now to me, you could go flat four. 

 And the argument for going flat four is your 

gamma levels stayed the same the whole time. 

So I mean there is a lot of weight of evidence 

here. 

 And there are alternative 
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strategies. You could go to OTIB-0070 where 

you got to go slow. You can argue that no, 

no, no, that would be too conservative because 

there is good reason to believe you didn't 

have ten. You did all those things you 

described. You cleaned the place up. You 

would expect it to come down. 

 So my sense, we're at a point in 

the process where I think that you've got a 

tractable problem. And there are a number of 

strategies you could adopt that could be 

considered to be reasonable and to varying 

degrees of inherent conservatism. You could 

start at ten and bring it down to four, and 

then build your dose reconstruction around 

that. And I wouldn't argue that it would be 

unreasonable. No, no, no, we're going to go 

with four across the board, especially when we 

know it is inherent in the four. The four was 

picked specifically because it was a bad guy. 

 And not only that, it didn't subtract 

background. 
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 So you collect all this and you 

look at it. And it seems to me that the radon 

problem, in my opinion, is well in hand. 

There might be some fine structured 

disagreement that reasonable people could 

have. But it is well in hand. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So I think what 

you are saying, based on all these numbers and 

all the supporting documentation and 

rationale, that OCAS can reconstruct radon 

doses for that time period, that they are 

properly using an upper bound. 

 DR. MAURO: I would say yes, it is 

within -- what they've decided to pick 

certainly would be within a realm of 

reasonable and perhaps even upper bound. 

There are others that you could drive a little 

more conservative if you really wanted to, 

push it to ten in the beginning. That may be 

a little over conservative given the reasons 

we've heard. 

 So I mean this is the level of 
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resolution I can operate at. I mean I really 

can't get better than that. But what I'm 

getting at is it sounds to me like a tractable 

situation. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think Mike -- 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Gen, this is Mike. 

 Could I ask a question? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Sure. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: These surveys that 

were taken in the `80s, they were done, if I'm 

understanding this right, for like an EPA or a 

FUSRAP-kind of like free-release survey, 

correct? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes, they -- my 

understanding is they were FUSRAP in origin. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: So these readings 

were not related to personnel exposures. It 

was not worker monitoring. It was just -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Definitely not. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: -- an environmental 

free-release criteria. Right? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: They were trying to 
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evaluate whether the buildings, in fact, 

needed further decontamination. They decided 

Building 30 did. And Building 31 did not, by 

the way, just parenthetically. That doesn't 

exactly impact our Evaluation Report. But 

that was the purpose of the measurements. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I'm trying to 

figure out, Mike, what your question is. If 

you have the measurements in terms of the 

units that we're using the 4.2 picocuries per 

liter, that is the measurement that is 

typically used to evaluate exposures to people 

to radon -- to people. I can't think of 

something else that might have been done 

instead. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Well, I guess my 

point is, you know, to me there is a 

difference between surveys in building 

monitoring for free-release criteria as 

opposed to personal employee monitoring for 

radiation exposure. 

 DR. NETON: Yes, Mike, this is Jim. 
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 I think I know where you are going with this, 

but remember, in this particular situation, 

the source term, that is the contamination of 

the building, was fairly spread. It was a 

fixed contamination. 

 It wasn't like there was a pile of 

something that a worker could have had some 

unique operation to where the concentration 

could be elevated. So in that respect, I 

think the measurements taken in the main parts 

of the building are fairly representative of 

what anyone would be exposed to in that 

building. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I have a question. 

 How is air concentration data representative 

of what people are inhaling and ingesting? 

 DR. NETON: Well, because people 

breathe the air. And what is in the air is 

what ultimately they receive for exposure. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: And so air 

concentration data would also be 

representative of what people were ingesting? 
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 DR. NETON: Well, for radon, 

really, it is a noble gas. I mean you don't 

ingest radon gas per se. But if it were a 

particulate, which I think we're going to talk 

about later, you know, airborne particulate, 

then yes, air concentration would be used to 

decide what they were inhaling. And the 

ingestion part we'd have to look at from 

another perspective. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, I was under 

the impression that we would need bioassay 

data and air concentration data to get an 

accurate picture of what people would inhale 

and/or ingest. 

 DR. NETON: Well, not for radon. 

There are no bioassay techniques available for 

determining a radon exposure in a person. 

That just doesn't exist. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: In fact, the air 

concentration is really what you do want, 

which does give you the level of exposure. 

 DR. NETON: Right. 
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 MEMBER LOCKEY: And that's what the 

EPA uses for their guidelines, the air 

concentration. 

 DR. NETON: Radon is somewhat 

unique in that respect. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Thank you. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Can I ask you a 

question about -- are you certain that ten 

picocuries was what the levels were at the 

last part of production? And then the 

building was -- however they decontaminated 

it, is there any type of situation, postcontamination, that that could be higher 

through disruption or building destruction, 

renovation, additional renovation? 

 DR. MAURO: If there is any 

radionuclide that probably wouldn't be 

affected by that it would be radon. Radon is 

going to be ubiquitous -- it's being -- if 

there were pockets, for some reason, wherever 

it might be, along pipe chases or -- 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Beams or something 
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 DR. MAURO: -- yes, beams, it's 

being emitted all the time. And it is 

diffusing. It's a noble gas. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: It's not one of the 

radionuclides that yes, for example, if you 

were renovating a building and you thought you 

cleaned up really well 20 years ago and now 

you are going to come in and you are going to 

rip it up, rip up the floors, rip buildings 

down, and the building contained uranium, 

thorium, radium, okay, and all of a sudden -- 

and you thought you did a good job cleaning it 

up back in 1950, and now you are going to come 

in and you are going to rip it up again, I 

would be the first to say that I would want a 

comprehensive air sampling program, perhaps 

even a bioassay program, for the workers 

involved because there are always surprises 

when you are ripping up a building that 

formerly you thought was decontaminated. 
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 And I would be worried about 

uranium, radium, and thorium. I wouldn't be 

worried about radon because I think radon 

would have revealed itself well before because 

of its noble gas nature, it is going to come 

up. It's going to emit. It's going to emerge 

from wherever it is and show itself. 

 So my answer is I understand the 

concern about the renovation but I never -- 

quite frankly, I never felt that radon was one 

of the radionuclides that are all of a sudden 

going to create these big surprises for you 

when you start to rip a building down. 

 You would have seen it all along. 

The radon -- for example, the radon that is in 

the dirt outside, you know, it is going to 

find its way in this building. You know there 

is just no stopping it. It's a noble gas. 

 And so my answer is, you know, 

there's never an absolute answer to all of 

these things, but as a health physicist, I've 

been looking at radon for a long time. That's 
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not one of the radionuclides I'd be especially 

concerned about during the renovation process. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Thank you. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Steve, do you have 

any comments to add or questions on -- 

 DR. OSTROW: No. John and I 

discussed this before the meeting. This is 

our -- 

 DR. MAURO: I'm sorry -- I'm sorry. 

 DR. OSTROW: No, John -- 

 DR. MAURO: I've got a t-shirt my 

daughter gave me. It says he started talking 

and we can't stop him. 

 (Laughter.) 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Your daughter 

knows you well. 

 I wonder if we -- it seems to me we 

have reached the end of this part of the 

presentation. And my understanding is that 

SC&A agrees with the approach and does feel 

that an upper bound on radon exposures is 

reasonable. 
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 DR. OSTROW: Yes. Our conclusion 

is that NIOSH can reasonably reconstruct the 

radon exposure during the residual period. 

And they make a good case for it in the -- in 

Chris's report. That's our conclusion. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: All right. I 

think that's what we need. So we can move to 

the next part. 

 MR. KATZ: I mean does the Work 

Group want to take action on that? This 

point-by-point resolution? Or are you going 

to wait and do that at the end? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think we could 

take action on this. 

 MR. KATZ: I mean it's up to you 

how you want to do it. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, we have the 

whole Work Group either on the phone or here. 

 So on this one point -- 

 DR. OSTROW: Let me just say this 

covers our -- we had, I think, 11 findings. 

And this covers findings one through three, I 
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think, right? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Right. 

 DR. OSTROW: Yes, one, two, and 

three. So this would resolve our comments one 

through three. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Does anyone on the 

Work Group want to make a motion on this? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Gen, I just want to 

make sure I'm completely -- this is Josie -- 

we are talking about Building 30, 31, 38, 14, 

and 37. Is that correct? On these three 

findings? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Right. 

 MEMBER BEACH: For radon? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Right. All 

buildings. 

 MEMBER BEACH: All the buildings, 

okay. I just wanted to make sure I was clear 

there. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: We'll put that on 

here for all buildings. I'll make a motion. 

I move that the Work Group accept the 
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recommendation that NIOSH can reasonably 

reconstruct radon exposures during the 

residual period for all buildings. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I'll second. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Josie, or Mike, or 

Jim, is there any discussion on this point? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: No discussion but -

- this is Mike -- I disagree with NIOSH and 

SC&A. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Maybe we should 

have a discussion on why. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes. What is your 

main point of disagreement? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Well, again, you 

know, these were basically environmental-type 

surveys taken in the `80s. And they are just 

assuming things couldn't have been different 

during the working days. And I just disagree 

with that premise. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I am going to have 

to say -- this is Josie -- I agree with Mike 

that I do disagree with SC&A and NIOSH on this 
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one also. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Do either of you 

feel there is any additional work or any 

additional work that OCAS or SC&A should do to 

resolve your concerns? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: This is Mike. You 

know, I just feel that there is a lack of 

data. And NIOSH and SC&A are making 

assumptions. And I just don't agree with 

them. And I feel that the weight of the 

evidence should go toward the claimants. 

 DR. NETON: Mike, this is Jim 

Neton. Could I ask a question? Would you 

agree that the concentration of radon in the 

buildings after 1954 could not be plausibly 

higher than during the production period in 

1954 of ten picocuries per liter? This is 

while the source term is still there. They 

have not decontaminated anything. They are 

still actively producing uranium. 

 So do you believe that ten 

picocuries per liter in itself would not be a 
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bounding value? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Well, Jim, you 

know, my background is maintenance and 

represent workers. I don't have the technical 

background. I'm just going on what I believe 

is the intent of the Act. And I think there 

is a lack of data. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I suppose we could 

vote on the motion although I think it is 

quite clear that -- 

 DR. OSTROW: This is Steve. I just 

wanted to comment that I think this echoes 

what John was talking about before. I don't -

- I'm trying to think -- I can't think of a 

physical mechanism that would increase the 

radon concentration during the residual period 

higher than it was during the end of the 

operations period. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: This is Jim Lockey. 

 I think that's the point. There's no -- it 

is not feasible for the level to be greater 

than ten picocuries. It's just not feasible. 
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 That's not in the biological possibility. 

It's not a physical possibility to be higher. 

 So that can't happen. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: My interpretation 

is that the concern is not with the science. 

It seems that at least those of us around the 

table all agree that this scientifically, 

which is what we're supposed to be following 

on this evaluation, that this has to be an 

upper bound. And we're probably at an 

impasse. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I think we're 

supposed to make decisions, be workerfavorable but also based on what the science 

presents us. I think that's our mandate. 

Always be favorable to the worker. But it has 

to be science based. It can't be based on 

something else. 

 And in this case, the science 

indicates it really can't be higher than that 

value. We could say that all right accept ten 

and extrapolating it down to four, which is 
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even more worker-favorable. And that's 

something we can talk about. 

 But I think we have to look at our 

mandate. Our mandate is to be workerfavorable as much as possible as we can, I 

think, which we have in this case. But the 

science is the science. You can't go above 

that value. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Well, Jim, can I 

make a comment? Dr. Lockey, I agree at some 

point with you. But, you know, I think we 

also have to look at the intent of the Act and 

the intent of how the President made up this 

Board. And it was for scientists, doctors, 

and labor representatives, those of us that 

have been in the field. 

 So it can't all be based on 

science. There are some things that happen in 

the field that maybe the scientists just don't 

understand and the science can't account for. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I agree with you, 

Mike. And I think that labor brings an awful 
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lot to the Board. I think everybody on the 

Board, at least from my perspective, is always 

asking the right questions to try to make sure 

that we take into consideration all the 

possibilities that could affect the worker in 

these environments. 

 But, Mike, if we follow your 

rationale, with things that science just does 

not yet understand, that is applicable to 

everything we're doing. And then that would 

go back to whether we can ever, ever reach a 

threshold that would satisfy everybody. 

 And so we have to have some type of 

guideline that we're following. Be cognizant 

of the worker, be as worker-favorable as 

possible. 

 But when the science is clear, I 

think that has to be a threshold at which we 

have to accept. Otherwise, we're then dealing 

in non-science issues. And then all the time 

and effort that we're spending on these types 

of reviews are really for naught. 
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 So, Mike, I'm very appreciative of 

what you're bringing to the table when you are 

concerned and your compassion. And I'm right 

there with you because I've seen a lot of 

workers who have been injured for a lot of 

different things. 

 But I'm also a scientist. And 

there has to be a threshold at which we set 

something. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think I would 

add to that, Mike, I think your concerns are 

very broad. They perhaps apply to a lot of 

different situations. And in my view, on this 

particular issue, I think we've made a 

scientifically sound conclusion, at least I 

think my motion was a scientifically sound 

one. And it has been agreed upon by SC&A. I 

really can't see that we can go any farther on 

this. 

 DR. MAURO: This is John, Mike. I, 

you know, I do a lot of soul searching on 

these things. And think about -- and say to 
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myself, you know, if we were talking about 

radium, thorium, uranium, I would agree with 

you. But we're talking about radon. 

 And I would have two problems with 

these other radionuclides. One, you want 

breathing zone samples when you are dealing 

with particulates that could be generated in a 

localized area. A general air sample, as 

typically is collected for radon, I would be 

troubled by that, relating general air 

measurements to what a person might have 

inhaled when we're dealing with particulates. 

 Second, when there is renovation 

going on, I would be concerned that yes, some 

things could have been broken free, generating 

localized areas of elevated particulates. And 

the only reason why I'm coming down where I'm 

coming down is we're dealing with radon. And 

in general, ambient measurement -- if taking 

sufficient number of ambient measurements are 

taken, radon being a noble gas is going to 

permeate and diffuse throughout an area. 
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 And also if there was residue of 

radium, let's say, somewhere on the rafters, 

the radon that would be generated from that 

residue, let's say it was residual, post-D&D, 

it would have made its way into the air. 

 So because we're talking radon -- 

now the conversation may change a little later 

when we move on to other radionuclides, but 

right now -- again, there is always a weight 

of evidence. And you reach a point with 

yourself and you say well, it is good enough 

for me. 

 I would be the first to admit, 

though, everyone sees the world the way they 

see it. And how much evidence is necessary. 

For me, I have to say -- and SC&A -- and I 

think the weight of the evidence is coming out 

in favor of NIOSH's position on this matter, 

if that helps any. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, what our 

Work Group assignment is is to conduct this 

meeting, come up with our conclusions as a 
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Work Group, and report it to the Board. It is 

the Board who votes. And I'll try to do my 

best to represent what we've done at this 

meeting. And we'll certainly get all Work 

Group input on it. 

 But I think we ought to take an 

official vote since I made the motion. So all 

in favor of my motion, say aye. 

 (Chorus of ayes.) 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And against? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Nay. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Nay. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. And we will 

report that. So I think we should then go on 

to the next item. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: The next item is 

particulates in the air during the residual 

period. We have a similar situation in one 

sense in that we have a measurement done -- 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Oh, somebody says 

it is probably time for a break. 

 MR. KATZ: A ten-minute break for 
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you folks on the phone, too, who also might 

need it. So it will be 11 o'clock about we'll 

start up again. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Sure. Ten 

minutes. 

 MR. KATZ: Is that good? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Sounds good. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you everyone on 

the phone. I'm just going to put the phone on 

mute while we're on break. 

(Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the 

record at 10:47 a.m. and resumed at 

10:55 a.m.) 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. We are back and 

even a couple of minutes early, which is rare 

form for a Work Group. Let me just make 

certain we have everyone back on the 

telephone. Work Group members, are you with 

us? 

 MEMBER BEACH: This is Josie. I'm 

here. 

 MR. KATZ: Mike? Mike, do we have 
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you back yet? 

 (No response.) 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. Well, we told 

them 11:00, and it is a couple of minutes 

early here. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: We'll wait. 

 MR. KATZ: So let's wait for Mike. 

(Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the 

record at 10:56 a.m. and resumed at 

11:00 a.m.) 

 MR. KATZ: This is Ted. I'm just 

checking in again for Mike. Have you rejoined 

us? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes, I'm here, Ted. 

 MR. KATZ: Oh, great. 

 And, Josie, you are still with us? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, I'm still here. 

 MR. KATZ: And, Antoinette, are you 

still with us? 

 (No response.) 

 MR. KATZ: Maybe you are on mute? 

Antoinette, are you -- have you rejoined the 
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meeting? 

 (No response.) 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. Well, it is time 

to get going. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think we should 

continue. 

 MR. KATZ: We're under the gun. 

Let me just note that Dr. Lockey has to leave 

at 1:30 so we really have to press through the 

technical discussion, you know, being the 

first priority so that at least Dr. Lockey can 

participate in the technical dialogue. 

 When Antoinette rejoins us, if she 

has, you know, further discussion she wants to 

give, she can ask for clarification. But if 

she wants further discussion, we'll take care 

of that after so that we can be sure to get 

through the technical matters. 

 MS. KROLCZYK: This is Laura 

Krolczyk from Senator Gillibrand's office. 

Ben Rosenbaum had to drop off so I'm taking 

his place. 
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 MR. KATZ: All right. I'm sorry. 

I couldn't hear. Who is this? 

 MS. KROLCZYK: I'm Laura Krolczyk 

from Senator Gillibrand's office. 

 MR. KATZ: Laura Krolczyk? 

 MS. KROLCZYK: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. Can you spell 

your last name? 

 MS. KROLCZYK: K-R-O-L-C-Z-Y-K. 

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

to make you do this. But can you repeat that 

again? 

 MS. KROLCZYK: I'm on a cell phone. 

 You're probably not going to be able to hear 

me. 

 MR. KATZ: But give it another 

whirl. 

 MS. KROLCZYK: K-R-O-L-C as in catZ as in zebra-Y-K. 

 MR. KATZ: Y-K, great. And that's 

from Senator -- 

 MS. KROLCZYK: Gillibrand. 
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 MR. KATZ: Gillibrand. Okay. 

Thank you very much. Sorry about the tortuous 

repeat. Okay. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So the next part 

then, Chris, will be your resolving Findings 4 

and 6, I think, or is it 4 through 6 on the 

SC&A. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: It's supposed to be 

4 and -- 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: It says 4 and -- 

okay. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: We're now dealing 

with the particulates suspended in the air 

during the residual period. We have a 

somewhat similar situation in that we have a 

1976, `78, whatever it is, I've seen both, 

measurement of the particulates suspended in 

the air at that time. But we don't have 

anything in between that and the 

decontamination period in the early `50s. 

 The way we approached it was to 

take the existing measurement and apply GSD -- 
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I believe -- was it -- I thought it was 2.73, 

but I see a 95th percentile of 2.9 -- assume 

that we'd gotten the 95th percentile level. 

 The other way we came at it is we 

did some calculations. Knowing approximately 

how much uranium and progeny were embedded in 

the walls and floors, we applied a 

resuspension factor and did a calculation as 

to what we might have seen as of 1978. And we 

find out that that under-predicted, that is 

the calculated quantity was actually less than 

the measured quantity at that time. 

 The question then is how to apply 

the knowledge we have. Now the TBD, which I 

-- we have to distinguish whether we are 

working with the evaluation report for the SEC 

-- petition, which is primarily a reasonable 

bounding problem. We also had the TBD to 

consider. 

 Well, the TBD uses a GSD of five on 

the projected air concentrations, that is for 

inhalation and for ingestion. That 
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corresponds to a factor of 14 times the given 

concentration. So we have a very wide range 

in values that we are already taking into 

account because of the uncertainty in the data 

that we have. We feel that is very claimantfavorable because these are actually -- this 

wide range is taken into account by the IREP 

program through its thousands of repetitions. 

 We also -- I'm not going to get 

into it exactly yet, but we also have to 

consider the effect of remodeling or 

restructuring inside the various buildings 

during the `60s, which Antoinette has already 

referred to. But right now I'd like to just 

look at the general case without remodeling. 

 So we are saying basically that we 

can limit the exposure to airborne 

radionuclides and providing a method to do it. 

 And with a high degree of uncertainty, which 

is generally a claimant-favorable assumption. 

 Let me go on with the problem with 

the remodeling. We don't have any data 
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whatsoever for any remodeling done at any 

time, particularly witness statements that 

suggested there was a lot of remodeling done 

in the various buildings, not just one of 

them, during the `60s. The way we handled 

that was to take the decontamination levels 

from the vacuuming operation and say that they 

were reasonably representative of what a 

random reconstruction effort might stir up, 

random in the sense that they weren't seeking 

out radioactive material embedded in the 

walls. They were working to some plan which 

had nothing to do with the residual 

radioactivity. 

 We applied that to all people in 

all buildings at all times during the `60s. 

Now the only exception to that -- Jim, correct 

me if I'm wrong -- but I believe is if we know 

that there was a laboratory worker who was 

confined to Building 14, they will not get 

this particular dose. But for anyone else, we 

really can't tell you which buildings they 
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worked in. But that's not unusual. That's 

pretty standard. 

 So we just apply it to everyone for 

the whole ten-year period. We feel that is 

claimant-favorable for several reasons, one of 

which it applies to everyone. And, of course, 

probably not everyone was always in a 

construction zone the whole ten years; two, it 

is very unlikely, in fact, that there was 

continuous construction for the ten-year 

period. It is almost bound to be 

intermittent. Just from our real-life 

experience, we can see that. 

 We could do another data recovery 

effort. I mean nobody ever thought to do it 

because it was totally irrelevant to any 

radionuclides present. But we could go look 

for building permits if we had to try to put 

some further bounds on this. But what we're 

proposing right now is we just do it for the 

entire period of the `60s. 

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clarify for me, at least, the vacuuming, the 

biweekly vacuuming, is a good surrogate or -- 

I don't want to use that word -- a good 

measure of the exposure? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: I think basically it 

had to do with the difference in the 

operation. One operation is the physical 

removal of the decontaminants working only in 

the parts of the building where the 

decontaminants are -- or the contaminants, I'm 

sorry, are most concentrated and using pretty 

heavy duty methods. 

 Another way to look at this is if 

you have a contaminated area floor, you are 

going to chip or hammer that entire area of 

the decontamination. And for Antoinette's 

benefit if she's with us -- 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I am. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Great. The 

contaminants are contained in a very thin 

layer on top of the concrete of the floor or 

the wall, an eighth to a quarter inch thick at 
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most. So it wouldn't matter if you drilled a 

hole entirely through the floor or through the 

wall, it doesn't really add much. It is that 

top layer that is going to be resuspending the 

contaminants. 

 We think that any -- how can I say 

it -- any chipping or jackhammering, it would 

be a matter of chance whether it was in a 

heavily contaminated area. It could be. But 

it would be a matter of chance. 

 And, therefore, it would be 

unlikely to achieve the levels of contaminants 

in the air during the decontamination period 

when they were only working on such 

contaminated areas. 

 So, Jim, that's basically a way to 

depict it. Now vacuuming is not an innocuous 

 resuspension factor either. But it is a 

fairly healthy dose. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'd just like to 

briefly -- and I know I've been asked to limit 

my comments for Dr. Lockey's schedule -- but I 
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just have to, again, renew my objection here 

to -- and I'm reading directly from Mr. 

Crawford's report -- that breathing zones and 

sandblasting, pneumatic hammering, and flame 

cleaning was eliminated from consideration. I 

fail to understand how you can do that with 

all the documentation that I provided, 

workers' statements. I have additional 

documentation that I plan to submit to the 

Work Group, including testimony from a 

Workers' Compensation Board hearing in 1996 

that detailed what was going on in these 

facilities -- in these buildings, particularly 

Building 30. 

 I fail to understand how you can 

eliminate those activities from consideration 

and still consider this a claimant-favorable 

evaluation of what was going on in the 

building. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Well, some of the 

activities probably didn't happen. 

Sandblasting, for instance, I don't know if 
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you have evidence of that. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I do. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Secondly, breathingzone samples would not be very appropriate for 

ordinary occupants in the building. In other 

words, it is one thing if you are the guy 

doing the jackhammering or the guy doing the 

sandblasting. Quite another if you are a 

worker, a warehouse worker in the building 

while such work is going on. You are not 

exposed at the same level. Your breathing 

zone isn't the breathing zone of the operator 

of the equipment. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: But, again, I have 

to again state you have absolutely no data to 

account for anything that was going on during 

that time period. You have no air data. You 

have no bioassay data for anything that people 

could have been inhaling or ingesting in terms 

of radionuclide particulates. And, again, I 

want to stress this particularly to the Board 

members, I don't believe this is a claimant-
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favorable analysis. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: This, of course, is 

the general case for residual periods, 

especially for AWE sites. This one is a 

little complicated because it was declared a 

DOE site for some reason. And it still has a 

residual period. 

 But at any rate, the point being 

once these sites are released back to the 

private corporation or building owner, there 

was no reason to have any measurement. So 

this is common to all such sites. It is not a 

Linde problem that there were no measurements 

done with personal dosimetry or urinalyses, 

and that sort of thing. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I understand that. 

 But still the fact remains you don't have the 

data. So to say that this is a claimantfavorable analysis and you have an accurate 

depiction of what people were exposed to 

during that time period, particularly in 

Building 30, again, you know, someone help me 
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out here because I don't understand how this 

is possibly in any realm of possibility 

claimant-favorable. 

 DR. NETON: Let me ask a couple of 

questions then maybe -- I think -- this is Jim 

Neton. We have a fair amount of monitoring 

data that occurred during the D&D era. Is 

that not right, Chris? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. 

 DR. NETON: It's fairly good data 

when the facilities were fairly heavily 

contaminated. So I think at an upper bound, 

it would be hard to argue against the fact 

that the exposures in the residual period were 

any higher than that because people are 

actively -- like Chris said -- actively 

focused on eliminating the contamination that 

occurred primarily in the top quarter inch or 

so or less of the contaminated surfaces. 

 So these people were definitely in 

a much higher potential for exposure than 

after it had been cleaned up. So with that as 
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a starting point then, I think there is a 

starting point for an upper bound, to some 

degree. 

 And then the debate then turns into 

how close the people were in the residual 

period to that upper bound. If it should be 

equal to that or if it should be some fraction 

of that. And I think that's sort of the issue 

under consideration right now. 

 So I think there is -- in some way, 

there's very little debate, in my opinion, 

that the upper bound is represented by the D&D 

operation. And then whether it is vacuum 

cleaning or something else, I think is 

probably open for discussion. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I just want to 

make sure that the statements that have been 

provided by workers are actually being 

considered here. And not -- because they feel 

that the statements that they have made -- 

they were the people that were in these 

buildings, they were the eyewitnesses to what 
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was happening. They don't want -- they want 

to know that they are not being ignored and 

that their recollection of what happened 

during that time period is not being 

dismissed. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Perhaps the way to 

go on this particular issue, and it seems that 

maybe -- have you combined two -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: -- different 

parts? You were talking -- we started talking 

about Findings 4 and 6. And then went into 

Findings 7 and 8. Maybe if we resolve or 

discuss 7 and 8, we will have resolved 4 and 

6, also. 

 But I think we should do, at this 

point, since we're discussing the validity of 

this report and since SC&A is looking after -- 

not only to make sure that we have considered 

all the petitioners' comments but looking at 

the science here -- is this an appropriate 

time for SC&A to comment on Chris's report? 
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Are you prepared to do that? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Gen, this is Mike. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes, Mike. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: You know I just 

have to say that, you know, again, you know, I 

have to side with Antoinette. This is just -- 

there seems to be a lack of data. And we're 

relying on what I heard, you know, some people 

say assumptions in their scientific data. And 

I just -- I'm just -- I'm having a hard time 

with that. I just wanted to make that 

comment. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes, I think -- I 

understand, Mike, your concern. I think at 

this point what we need to do is make sure 

that those of us who are looking at the 

scientific evaluation have our concerns 

addressed. And from that point of view 

personally anyway, I would like to have SC&A's 

response to the way that OCAS has decided that 

they can handle this. 

 DR. OSTROW: Well, I'd like, if we 
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may, Chris, to go a little bit further before 

we comment on -- you were sort of interrupted 

-- how did you actually determine the levels 

that you used for the residual period? You 

sort of set the background here that you 

looked at the D&D period. 

 Then you looked later when you were 

talking about the residual period, you assumed 

vacuum cleaning operations. So maybe if you 

go a little bit further, you know, what did 

you do with the actual numbers? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Okay. This is 

difficult. We're also, in essence, talking 

about two different things here. One is the 

evaluation report. But we originally started 

this process also talking about the TBD, which 

is why I keep referring to the two things. 

And there are different numbers in both of 

those documents. 

 That's okay because in the 

Evaluation Report, we're trying to say, yes, 

we can bound the dose. And in the TBD, we're 
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trying to provide a method for reconstructing 

the dose. Two quite different objectives. 

 Given that, I'm basically not 

prepared to tell you how the numbers came 

about in the TBD itself. We can see what they 

are, Table 6-2, Steve. 

 DR. OSTROW: Yes. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: And we can see that 

they have a very high GSD, indicating a large 

degree of uncertainty. And they were 

undoubtedly based on measurements during the 

decontamination period, which is what we had 

to go on. There are no measurements after 

that time. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: No. Keep going. 

I'm just watching. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Then in the 

Evaluation Report, we tried to show that the 

reading that we have from the `76/`78 period 

is reasonably related to a calculation based 

on the embedded radionuclides present in the 

building after the cleanup. That is, we tried 
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to, using the resuspension factor, we 

calculate what we might have expected to see 

in the air. And we see that the measured 

amount is actually somewhat higher than that. 

 What happened in between, now this 

is where TIB-0070 may have to come into play 

at some point, but I would say that that is a 

question that is more dose reconstructionrelated for us rather than Evaluation Report 

for SEC-107-related. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: I don't want to 

interrupt you. To me, when I look at these 

questions, we like the fundamental approach 

that TIB-0070 has adopted. It is a strategy 

for coming at a class of problems. The 

strategy is very simple. I mean, you have six 

steps in there, but one of the steps we 

especially like. The other steps we're not so 

happy with, but one of the steps we like, the 

step being this. 

 I'll say it again. You have an 

operations period. You finish operations. 
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You may be doing some D&D, and you're taking 

plenty of air samples. There's always lots of 

data -- usually, not always, usually lots of 

data where you are pulling air samples. You 

may have dpm per cubic meter, gross alpha, you 

may have some alpha-specific information. But 

you've got air sampling data. You may even 

have some breathing zone data. 

 So you've got what I call the 

beginning of the residual period. In other 

words, whatever was going on at the end of 

operations, you could say well, let's assume 

that's the beginning of the residual period. 

Not bad. In other words, I would say that is 

certainly a philosophy that would peg -- place 

an upper bound on what you might expect to see 

at the beginning of a residual period. 

 I realize this site is a little 

more complicated than that. All right. So 

pegging -- now you have a distribution of 

numbers. You pick a number that you believe 

to be reasonable. In my mind, picking the 
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geometric mean and standard deviation, not the 

95th percentile, in the beginning is a 

reasonable place to start. 

 I'm not saying you should be 

picking a 95th percentile at the beginning of 

the period. Again, these are commonsense 

arguments because what we're really asking is 

well, we're not interested in what the 

concentration was during operations. We are 

interested in what it is during the residual 

period. 

 So by picking the geometric mean 

and standard deviation of the airborne dust 

loading at the end of operations and assigning 

that as if it were the conditions at the 

beginning of residual sounds pretty good to 

me. Common sense argument. You're really 

putting it up there. 

 Then the residual period begins. 

And assuming there is nothing new being added, 

that's going to start to come down. Now, we 

do have a problem with your slope. You have a 
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generic one-percent-per-day slope as one of 

the strategies you could use. Okay. How does 

it drop? We don't like that. 

 But you have another approach. I 

said, well, listen, if I know the upper 

numbers here -- and we know 30 years passes, 

okay -- and then you make some more airborne 

measurements when the FUSRAP program starts, 

maybe before you actually start to rip 

anything up. In other words, these are fairly 

quiescent. And you have no data. 

 But you do have data at the back 

end of the process before you started your 

FUSRAP program. It's usually the 

characterization stage. Before you go into a 

FUSRAP program, you first go into a 

characterization phase to find out what do we 

have here before we go in and rip things up 

and start to clean up. 

 So you've pegged the front end, 

we've pegged the back end. And one could say 

that well, this certainly represents the upper 
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end of what the beginning of the residual 

period would look like. And this certainly 

represents some reasonable representation of 

what it was like at the back end of the 

residual period, assuming nothing crazy 

happened in between. 

 So the way your approach or 

philosophy is, well, we'll draw a line. And 

that gives us the concentration in the air. 

Let's say dpm per liter, gross alpha. It 

starts here, goes here. We're going to place 

our people in there and say that's what they 

are breathing, okay? And that basic approach 

makes sense in my mind. 

 Now, so if you started -- and I 

believe thatis what you did -- you know, I 

believe you did, and correct me if I'm wrong, 

you started on the front end in the place 

where we have consistently said that's a good 

place to start, your residual period. Now, 

but there are two problems with the rest of 

the story in my mind. 
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 Problem number one is on the back 

end, you said, well, what's at the back end? 

And you used a resuspension factor approach at 

the back end, which used -- in other words, 

it's not going to add air samples. Let's say 

you had lots and lots of air samples. What 

I'm understanding you did is that you had some 

estimate of what the activity was on surfaces, 

and then you applied a resuspension factor of 

ten to the minus six per meter to what is on 

the surfaces. 

 Now, we are on the record. We do 

not like ten to the minus six resuspension 

factor. It is too low. We think ten to the 

minus five, preferably even ten to the minus 

four is a better resuspension factor. 

 If you are going to start with 

activity on surfaces as how we are going to 

predict what is in the air, and a resuspension 

factor is just an empirical number. It simply 

says if someone went out there and measured, 

they measured how much radioactivity is on the 
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surface and how much radioactivity is in the 

air. It is basically picocuries per liter or 

picocuries per meter squared. 

 So the units -- well, picocurie per 

cubic meter or picocurie per meter squared, it 

is per meter. And the empirical data show ten 

to the minus six, as a measure of what becomes 

airborne, is a good number if the site has 

been thoroughly cleaned up and, you know, you 

don't really have very much -- the NRC 

published widely on this. We have just lots 

and lots of literature. 

 There are times when ten to the 

minus six is a good number. But you have to 

be very careful. The data shows that when you 

have an area that is dusty, contaminated, and 

maybe some residual radioactivity on surfaces, 

people might be walking around, ten to the 

minus five and even ten to the minus four is 

probably a better resuspension factor. 

 So what I'm getting at is if you 

have lots of good air sampling data -- 
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 DR. OSTROW: John, John? 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 DR. OSTROW: Could I just break in? 

 DR. MAURO: Sure, yes. 

 DR. OSTROW: Hold the fort. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

 DR. OSTROW: Just on this 

resuspension factor, just a little bit of 

inconsistency. NIOSH put out a report, a 

short one, on September 2nd that was 

supporting our -- just before we had our last 

Work Group meeting in Cincinnati. You had 

like a really short report, just a couple of 

pages, you know, answering our findings. 

 And in that, unless you had a typo, 

you had a resuspension factor of ten to the 

minus six in that, responding to the same 

question. So I don't know, did you change 

your mind by a factor of ten? Or did you have 

a typo? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Not that I am aware 

of. I thought we had used e to the minus six 
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all the way through. 

 DR. OSTROW: No, you had -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: It's pretty much a 

textbook -- 

 DR. OSTROW: No, no, I know. But -

- 

 DR. NETON: But the fact is that we 

didn't use that value in our calculations 

anyway. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: That's the other 

point. 

 DR. NETON: I mean so it's sort of 

-- not irrelevant, but it -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: We did the 

calculation to see whether it would give us a 

surprise one way or the other. 

 DR. NETON: And it didn't. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: We didn't use it as 

-- 

 DR. OSTROW: I understand. I was 

just a little bit confused whether you 

deliberately changed it or whether it just, 
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you know, sort of came out that way. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Can you explain 

why you didn't use it? You're using it just 

to -- 

 DR. MAURO: Check. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: -- check, yes. 

 DR. NETON: Some sanity check on the 

value. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: In the same way that 

by showing that the fixed gamma was about the 

same in 1950 as it was in the `80s, which is 

why we said probably the radon is related to 

that and is probably fairly stable. We're 

saying well, we know what the fixed gamma was 

in 1950. If we used a resuspension factor and 

calculated what we thought the air 

concentration would be, would we be surprised 

or not compared to the measured value? 

 Well, it came in below the measured 

value. So -- 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So is it just -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: -- to me, it was not 
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conclusive. But we didn't use it. We used 

the measured value. 

 DR. MAURO: The resuspension factor 

approach came in below the measured value. 

 DR. NETON: Well, I don't disagree 

with you. I mean what if it came out higher? 

 Then we would probably use that. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Well, that's why we 

checked. 

 DR. MAURO: Me, I would -- if I 

have real airborne measurement data, a good 

set of data of gross dpm per cubic meter, I 

use it. I forget about these. In fact, 

that's what the rules say. You don't use a 

model when you have data. 

 DR. NETON: I don't disagree with 

you. It's more of a sanity check. 

 DR. MAURO: And that's fine. And, 

by the way, those kinds of things are useful 

for the debate regarding resuspension factors. 

 I would argue that you just made a case why 

the resuspension factor may not be very good 
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because there are other places where you do 

use it. All right? But that's an aside. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So am I clear on 

this? At the beginning of this period you are 

talking about there is real data? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And then John 

talks about a slope or some way of estimating 

what the values would be in between. And at 

the end it appears you have measured data. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: What we're really 

talking about is the extrapolation between 

dates. What is the reasonable value in 

between? Okay. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: We have -- the real 

data in `78 was your document resuspension. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: The `78 data was 

measured data at the site by the FUSRAP 

people. That was airborne measured -- 

 DR. MAURO: Before they started to 

rip up anything -- 
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 MR. CRAWFORD: -- general area. 

 DR. MAURO: -- before they started 

the FUSRAP operations. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: That's correct. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. That's a good 

time to take it. You wouldn't want to take it 

during because during you are going to be 

stirring up radioactivity. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: And, in fact, the 

initial data that we have was basically -- my 

understanding it was during decon. I think 

we'd want to use the, for instance, the 

general air samples as being representative 

even during decon. But general air rather -- 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, the breathing zone 

-- I mean we've been hung up on breathing zone 

for a long time. And there is a very good 

reason for it. When you are in operational 

mode, there is lots of evidence that shows 

that if you are working at a glove box or 

working at a unit where you are grinding metal 

or drilling something, an operation, and 
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that's what generating the aerosol, that 

particular thing you are doing, well, what 

your nose is breathing has no relationship to 

the air sampler that is sitting over there. 

 And we all know that. ICRP 75 

talks about that. You can be off by a factor 

of ten- to 20-fold. 

 But in a D&D operation, it's not 

the same. You know everything is being -- 

it's a dusty place. So I'm not that concerned 

when it comes to -- when we're dealing with a 

setting where the airborne activity is sort of 

ubiquitous. If you have general air samples 

that capture what is in the air in that room 

while these operations are going on, I'm not 

as concerned about breathing -- breathing 

zones always vary. You know just like 

bioassay data always vary. 

 But I'm more concerned when I hear 

there is an operation that was going on and 

you don't have breathing zone. So, again, you 

got front-end data, collection of data, in my 
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opinion, using the geometric mean and the 

standard deviation of a good set of dpm per 

cubic meter alpha activity on the front end, 

and you have a good set of dpm per cubic meter 

gross alpha at the back end before -- or 

during is even better. 

 And I'd like to know how different 

they are, by the way. Did they drop by orders 

of magnitude between the front end and the 

back end? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Oh, yes. 

 DR. MAURO: They dropped by orders 

of magnitude. 

 DR. NETON: Yes, because these were 

actual samples taken during D&D operations. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay, so you really 

pegged it up high on the front end. 

 DR. NETON: Very high. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. And on the back 

end, you've got some other numbers that are 

lower. See, now in my mind, during that -- as 

long as there wasn't anything unusual going on 
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in between, you know, then this is a good way 

to come at this problem. 

 But there was something going on in 

between. And this is a little troubling to 

me. There was this operation where they went 

in and they apparently renovated, which is a 

perturbation. And all of a sudden, that 

perturbates this slope. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Should we then 

take these two separately? Let's -- 

 DR. MAURO: Let's take them 

separately. I think we should take them 

separately. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes, the first 

subject right now are Findings 4 and 6, SC&A's 

Findings 4 and 6, which would be during this 

period under the -- what you call operation, 

where there were no -- 

 DR. MAURO: Nothing special. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: -- nothing 

special. So let's try and deal with that one 

and then go on to the remodeling period. 
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 MEMBER BEACH: And then I have a 

question, too, if I could ask one. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Sure -- 

 MEMBER BEACH: This is Josie. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: -- Josie. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I just -- you're 

talking about data, the front-end data. I 

believe you mentioned the year `78 and then 

back-end data. Can you just describe briefly 

what data you actually have? What samples? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: What data we have? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. You said 

front-end data, samples in `78. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Right. In the 

decontamination period, roughly 1950 -- 

 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: -- that work was 

done. By the way, Building 30 was 

decontaminated in about two weeks during 1950. 

 So we're not talking about years and years of 

this kind of work. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Right. 
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 MR. CRAWFORD: But that's 

parenthetical. We have breathing zone samples 

from breathing zones of the workers who were 

doing the decontamination. That is the 

sandblasters, chippers, torch people, and so 

forth. 

 We also have general air samples 

from -- just general air in the building, not 

right next to the workers who were doing that 

kind of work. 

 MEMBER BEACH: So do you have 

several samples or -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: We have many samples 

-- 

 MEMBER BEACH: Many samples. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: -- during that 

period. And we also have many surface 

samples, in fact, thousands of them for 

external contamination embedded in the 

concrete. We have before and after readings 

in thousands of locations. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. That's -- 
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 MR. CRAWFORD: Just to give you an 

idea, there's a lot of data at that time, 

during that decontamination. After that 

though we don't have any data until 1978 when 

we have an air sample which -- a sample -- I 

think all three of the prime contaminants, as 

I recall, uranium, radium, and thorium, and 

those are the two endpoints we're talking 

about right now. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. So -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: 1951 and 1978. 

 MEMBER BEACH: -- you have one 

sample for that time. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: That's right. It 

was a general air sample. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. I wanted to 

make sure I was clear. That's what I have in 

front of me also. Thank you. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: And if I could 

just ask just a brief question -- so if I'm 

correct in what I'm hearing, there is 

absolutely no bioassay data at the front end 
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or the back end for this in terms of worker 

exposure and then in between the two time 

periods, there is no air data or bioassay 

data. Am I correct? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Basically correct. 

There was bioassay data, but I believe the 

last of it was in 1949 during the last Step 3 

production step. I do not believe urinalyses 

were done -- or at least we don't have the 

data from the decon workers in 1950. There is 

-- 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. And am I 

correct in the idea that in order to have an 

accurate depiction of what people are inhaling 

and/or ingesting during any time period that 

we're talking about, to have a sufficiently 

accurate depiction of that, you need to have 

both air data and bioassay data? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: It would be 

preferable. But I would say no because even 

on an active site, there are people who do not 

get bioassay data taken from them. 
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 MS. BONSIGNORE: You mean during 

the operational period? During the `40s and 

`50s at active sites, sometimes bioassays were 

not conducted? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Even today at active 

sites. If you are a secretary, in other words 

working in the office in, say, Savannah River 

while there are active operations going on, 

you may not be on the bioassay program. 

 I would say that that -- I picked 

secretary, it could be any job title, 

engineer, draftsman. If you're not working in 

the production area, you won't be bioassayed 

typically. And that is the case with these 

workers. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I understand that. 

 But what you are telling me here is you have 

absolutely no bioassay data as a reference 

point for any of this analysis. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: During this period, 

that's true. During the residual period, 

absolutely true. 
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 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. And you 

think that you can perform a claimantfavorable evaluation of this entire time 

period without any bioassay data? Based 

solely on some breathing zone data and air 

sampling data from the `50s and from general 

air sampling from the `80s? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. In fact, if we 

threw out the `78 data and just used the 

decontamination period data, for instance, it 

couldn't possibly be worse than that. That's 

what we're saying. It can't be worse. And 

most people would have gotten much less. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I don't understand 

that. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: What? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I don't understand 

how you can say that when you don't have 

bioassay data. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: We can predict the 

bioassay data. I mean, there are two ways to 

work the data. If we know the air sample 
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data, we can predict the bioassay data. Those 

two things can check each other. It 

essentially can run the other way, too. If 

you have bioassay, you can pretty much tell 

what people were breathing. And that's what 

we're basing this on. That's where the 

scientific basis of this is. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Well, you 

know, I'd like to, again, renew my objection 

here to the fact that there is no bioassay 

data. And I certainly hope that John and 

Steve will take a serious look at this issue. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think what 

they're doing is looking, Antoinette, in this 

case of looking at what could the highest 

possible exposures be, given the data that 

they have. Again, it is an upper bound. It 

can't be higher than a certain number. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes. I understand 

that, Gen. But I think -- I find it troubling 

that all of this analysis is going on with 

very little -- with no bioassay data. I mean 
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I think that was one of the major objections 

that SC&A identified as a deficiency in the 

2006 site profile, if I'm correct. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, let's let 

SC&A respond to that. And I think John 

already had a start on that. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Thank you. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, the preference 

always is to have bioassay data. When you 

don't have bioassay data and you have to 

resort to air sampling data, you have to use 

it cautiously. And make sure that you are 

using it in a way that you feel confident. 

 And, again, this is a judgment call 

made by people with, you know -- and everyone 

may see it a little differently -- but the 

very fact that they would pick air sampling 

data collected during a D&D operation where 

the potential for dust loadings are fairly 

high. And then they are going to assign those 

numbers to a time period during residual 

radioactivity where the dust loadings are 
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expected to be much lower. 

 You have sort of accounted for the 

fact, listen, yes, we'd like to have bioassay 

data, but this is a good way to deal with the 

fact that you don't have bioassay data and 

still have a degree of confidence that you are 

being claimant-favorable. 

 I look at these things. If the 

regulation said you can't do dose 

reconstruction unless you have bioassay data, 

I would agree with you. But I think the 

regulations have taken a position where if you 

don't have bioassay data, you can still get at 

the problem other ways. And certainly air 

sampling data is one of the Tier 2 approaches. 

 But you have to be a little bit 

more cautious that your air sampling data 

represents the upper bound. And by taking the 

approach that they've taken, by using the air 

data that they have, which would be a time 

period which would be an upper bound, now SC&A 

comes down saying that's not bad. 
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 You know you're doing the thing 

that would reasonably place an upper bound. 

It's not perfect. You sure would like to have 

bioassay data. If someone were to ask me what 

do you think, if they actually had some 

bioassay data during the residual period, do 

you think that the bioassay data would confirm 

that the approach taken is conservative, I 

would say yes. That's what my expectation 

would be. 

 Now I could be wrong. But my 

health physics judgment is that that approach 

would place an upper bound. Now, the issue -- 

so, I mean so I'm comfortable with the 

strategy by taking that air sampling data 

during that time period as pegging your upper 

end. 

 Now, you know, you want to go with 

95th percentile, you want to go with full 

distribution, you want to go with geometric 

mean, I would say those were all -- the 95th 

percentile would be extremely conservative. 
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But I would not have a great problem with even 

going with the geometric mean given where and 

when you collected that data. 

 Now, if it turns out because of 

concerns about what happened in between -- now 

I know we want to stay with this, but -- 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes. 

 DR. MAURO: -- if you, I mean in 

theory you could assume it is flat. It's not 

going down. We're going to stay up at that 

level. Now one could argue, well, wait a 

minute, that's not plausible. 

 And we're going to get into lots of 

discussions on plausibility in the future. So 

this is almost like it foretells some of the 

places where we're -- there are ways of coming 

at problems such as this one where we go, 

listen, you know what we'll do, we'll just 

assign that upper bound for the whole time 

period, right up until FUSRAP even though we 

know by the time FUSRAP shows up, it is always 

a magnitude lower. 
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 But, you know, if push comes to 

shove because of certain uncertainties and 

what may have taken place in the in between, 

just peg it right up there right across the 

board. 

 Now someone would say this is not 

plausible. And that's a whole other 

conversation. But I think we, the Work Group 

and the Board as a whole, there are many SECs 

before us right now where strategies are being 

adopted to place an upper bound in a way that 

one could argue it's really not plausible. 

 And I think there is a lot of 

discussion that has to be held here. If 

that's the approach we end up going with -- 

because it sounds like you really haven't 

nailed down the exact approach that you are 

planning on using -- you have a tractable 

problem. 

 If everyone agrees that using that 

upper bound and just make it flat is something 

that could be done and done within the realm 
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of what one would consider to be plausible 

because that would be an upper bound. There's 

no doubt about it. So that's where we come 

out. 

 Now, on the other extreme, the 

approach of using the data that you have preFUSRAP without taking into consideration this 

perturbation that occurred in between where 

they were ripping things up -- now I guess 

we'll get to that -- if there was no 

perturbation, if there was no special activity 

going on in between, SC&A's position is that 

approach works. They are going to be pegging 

it, upper end value, pegging the lower end 

value, drawing the line. 

 We've taken that position on OTIB0070. And that would be the classic 

application of OTIB-0070. The fly in the 

ointment here is what was going on in between 

that could upset that. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Let's deal with 

that next. 
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 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: But let's hear 

from Steve then also on this situation where 

we have nothing special going on in between 

and the approach of using the high levels, 

measured data -- using measured data at the 

beginning and at the end and coming up with an 

extrapolation in between. 

 DR. OSTROW: I echo John's opinion 

here that it is a reasonable approach to take. 

 You have data at the beginning. You have 

data at the end. Nothing happens in between. 

 The data at the beginning is very 

conservative data so you can put a reasonable 

upper bound on the exposures. 

 DR. MAURO: And this is entirely 

consistent with our position on OTIB-0070. 

OTIB-0070 is a very important document. It is 

one way to come at -- it's the OTIB that is 

going to be used universally for all residual 

periods. 

 And if used properly, taking into 
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consideration some of the concerns we have, 

but in this case, it is being used just in the 

way we said it should be used. So, you know, 

our position in this matter is very consistent 

with our position on OTIB-0070. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think we've 

gotten to a point where we have thoroughly 

discussed another section here, this second 

part. And I actually think we should stop 

here and perhaps do again what we did before 

and make a motion, take a vote. And then go 

into the next part which is evaluating 

Findings 7 and 8. What do you think, Jim? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I agree. 

 I have a question, Steve, if taking 

the highest value we had during D&D, right -- 

 MR. KATZ: Can you hold just one 

sec? There is a -- I don't know if these 

people on the phone can hear it -- 

 MEMBER BEACH: I can hear it. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes, I can hear 

it, too. 
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 MR. KATZ: Okay. It went away. 

Okay. So carry on. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: So we take that 

highest value for, say, 1950, the same 

question I asked about radon. Is there any 

demolition -- additional demolition work done 

on an area-by-area basis up to 1978? Putting 

in the machine? Tearing out some flooring? 

Tearing out a wall? Could it exceed? 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. That could upset 

the apple cart. Yes, that's what the next 

step is. This is why my -- in other words -- 

oh, could it exceed the upper end value? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Right, upper end? 

 DR. MAURO: I tell you, I find that 

hard -- I mean, you know -- 

 DR. NETON: Let me interject. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

 DR. NETON: The upper end value in 

the D&D was while the contamination was still 

there, being remediated. And so after that 

point, you have, like, 4,600 contact surface 
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measurements to demonstrate what the 

contamination levels were brought down to. 

 And so in my opinion, there is no 

conceivable way that once you have taken away 

all the contamination and documented that it 

is available for free release under the 

requirements of that time that you could 

generate a higher aerosol than someone, for 

instance, sandblasting an extremely highly 

contaminated surface is my feeling. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, I think, to 

answer your question, even with the 

remodeling, which we are going to discuss, it 

appears that the numbers could not be higher 

than -- 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, I think the 

question you were really asking is is it 

possible that okay, the front ends, 1950, you 

got some measurements during D&D -- okay, is 

it possible that 20 years later, or whatever, 

30 years later, they start to fool around, 

they're digging things up, is it possible it 
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could actually get higher than it was then, 

and it is very unlikely. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: That was the 

question I was asking. 

 DR. MAURO: That was the question, 

okay. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: So the 1950 value 

is sort of a -- take the conservative 

approach, picked the highest value, did the 

standard mean, standard deviation or geometric 

mean, standard deviation. Okay. That was the 

question I was asking. All right. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Mike and Josie, do 

you have any questions on this part? Mike and 

Josie? 

 MEMBER BEACH: This is Josie. I 

don't, but I have to say I disagree with the 

discussion. And the same basis is lack of 

data. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Mike? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: And this is Mike. 

I agree with Josie. 
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 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, then I'll go 

ahead and make -- to move things along -- make 

a motion that on this part, the Work Group's 

conclusion is based primarily on SC&A's 

evaluation of this is that the strategy of 

using air sampling data can put an upper bound 

on this in the way of using OTIB-0070. 

 And so that's my motion, that the 

doses can be reconstructed. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I second. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And then is there 

any further discussion within the Work Group? 

 I think Josie and Mike maybe have 

already -- but go ahead, Mike. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes, this is Mike. 

 You know I'd just like to say that SC&A is 

our contractor to give us evaluations. I just 

want to go on the record to say I disagree 

with them on this issue. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. Well, then 

let's take a vote. All in favor of the 

motion, say aye. 
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 (Chorus of ayes.) 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: All opposed? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Aye, as opposed. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Nay. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Nay. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: All right. Then I 

think we have that on the record, and we'll go 

on to the next step. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: The next step, I 

believe, is the remodeling -- 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: -- period. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: I believe that the 

original proposal was that we use a reduction 

factor of eight. That is, we took the 

supposed embedded contamination levels that 

were measured pre-decon, reduced it by a 

factor of eight, and then used that as a basis 

to say how much might have been resuspended. 

 In -- Joe Guido is the author of 
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this section -- in his latest evaluation, he 

proposes using a reduction factor of only two, 

which is a sizable difference, and apply that 

to what happened during any remodeling effort, 

which we are defining so far as being the 

1960s. 

 So this results in a heightened 

dose compared to the rest of the residual 

period, but not quite as high as the initial 

decontamination period, which we think is a 

reasonable result. 

 DR. OSTROW: Chris, go over it 

again maybe, it wasn't quite clear to me, but 

I've read it a lot of times, what is the 

reduction factor? What are you reducing? You 

know you had eight -- a factor of eight, 

originally. Now you went down to a factor of 

two. What are you reducing to what? 

 (Laughter.) 

 MR. CRAWFORD: It's the embedded 

uranium progeny, basically. 

 DR. NETON: The dose rate. 
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 MR. CRAWFORD: Reduced, that's 

right. And then from that, we assume that it 

has a like effect on the likely air 

concentration. So it's quite a bit heightened 

over the endpoint, the `78 endpoint. But it 

is not as high as the 1950 decon rate. About 

half as high in other words. 

 DR. MAURO: We did have a problem 

with that factor of eight in our original 

report. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. 

 DR. NETON: You see, a factor of 

two seems to be fairly conservative or 

claimant-favorable because if you -- first of 

all, when you -- as Chris mentioned earlier -- 

when you are doing active D&D, you are 

concentrating on the source term itself. You 

are right -- you are identifying the hottest 

areas and trying to remove them. And you are 

going to generate airborne based on that. 

 When you are doing remodeling 

operations, you are not. You are -- you may 
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inadvertently run across these pockets and 

such, but like Chris's example, I liken it to 

if you are drilling a hole in a floor or 

concrete, you are not scabbling the entire 

100-meter square floor. You are drilling a 

half-inch diameter hole through it. 

 So, therefore, the ability to 

release contamination is minimal compared to 

the active D&D. Basically, the relative 

contact dose rates, it seems to be a 

reasonable approximation of how much 

contamination was available to be resuspended, 

yet assuming that they were doing those sort 

of aggressive operations such as scabbling or 

other types of things that they did. 

 DR. OSTROW: Now SC&A originally 

had a problem with the factor of eight. We 

looked at the same data that you guys were 

looking at and thought a factor of eight was 

too large. We couldn't really see that. 

 We saw there was some difference, 

but it didn't look like eight. Now if you 
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went down to a factor of two, that seems to be 

more reasonable. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Weighted average? 

 MR. KATZ: No. I'm sorry -- I 

shouldn't really interject, except just 

sitting here, I'm just missing something. Can 

you explain what the basis is for going from 

eight to two? I mean how did you get to two? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: It's a tricky 

calculation in the sense that of the 4,600 

measurements, the vast majority of those 

measurements, in the beginning, were below the 

level of concern. You might say they were 

zero. They weren't zero, but they were below 

the measurement level they were looking at, 

okay? 

 The contamination level, which is 

highly concentrated in certain areas of the 

building, under a certain machine, or, you 

know, at the loading dock, wherever, so it 

depends on how you look at the zero values -- 

what you are going to say the average is. Jim 
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is referring to the weighted average. 

 Joe's first pass at it, he said it 

looked like they got about seven-eighths of 

the total mass, you might say, of the 

contaminants they were looking for. He went 

back and looked at it again. And he probably 

left out the zero values and said, well, it 

would be more claimant-favorable, we'll say 

they only got half of the contaminants out 

instead of seven-eighths. 

 So basically we were responding to 

SC&A's objection that, well, a factor of eight 

is too high. So we're saying, well, okay, 

let's go for a factor of two. 

 DR. MAURO: I seem to remember, 

and, Steve, remind me if I'm right, that the 

eight -- there were some measurements made 

before D&D at one location where you were 

getting positive hits and then some other 

measurements made at some other location after 

D&D, and there was a factor of eight there. 

 So there were two different 
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locations that there was no reason to believe 

that the ratio between what was observed 

before over here and after over there is any 

good measure of what the overall effectiveness 

of D&D was. So we found that strategy as 

being unconvincing. 

 And I'm not sure whether we -- you 

know, so now, Steve, I have to apologize. I 

didn't look at this part of the analysis on 

how the factor of two, you know, is now being 

adopted and how you came to the factor of two. 

 I think I remember how you came to 

the factor of eight. We had a real problem 

with that. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Right. We do have a 

comparison on -- Steve, this is the -- I 

believe it is the Heatherton document, 1950. 

 DR. OSTROW: Yes. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: I can get the SRDB. 

 On page six of that document, Table 1 -- 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: What -- where are 

you? Are you on your document? 
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 MR. CRAWFORD: No, this is offline 

from that discussion a little bit ago. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Oh, okay. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: I want to give Steve 

and John an idea of where we're taking our 

data from. 

 These are comparable areas. There 

is one place here, for instance, the comp 

room, whatever that is, for some reason they 

don't have certain readings. But you can see 

most of the time they have readings in the 

same area pre- and post. 

 DR. MAURO: Before you worked in 

the more area, if I remember, you went and 

looked at the more area in one place and then 

someplace else in another area. And that's 

where you got the eight. I remember that 

work. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Right. 

 DR. MAURO: Now you're saying -- 

 MR. SHARFI: John? 

 DR. MAURO: Yes? 
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 MR. SHARFI: This is Mutty. The 

factor of eight originally occurred from when 

they took the highest value pre-decon compared 

to the highest value post-decon, which were 

from different areas. 

 DR. MAURO: Okay. 

 MR. SHARFI: The change in the 

highest value was a factor of eight. 

 DR. MAURO: Oh, okay. I see. So 

that was a way to try to get a handle on it. 

I know we were uncomfortable with that because 

-- 

 MR. SHARFI: You know, I think that 

was done by the original contractor when they 

did the work. They claimed there a reduction 

rate of a factor of eight, which is what we 

just used based on what their original 

analysis was. 

 Now when Joe did an analysis of all 

the data, he calculated a weighted average of 

contamination pre- and post-decon. And then 

came up -- based on a weighted average, it was 
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a factor of two. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. Thank you. 

 DR. MAURO: That's a great answer. 

 I appreciate it. And that strategy, coming 

up with a weighted average where you have many 

locations, where you look at each location and 

compare location by location, before and 

after, that's what we were looking for. 

 I can't say that we can say that is 

the right number. But that approach is the 

right one. 

 Steve, did we have anyone, you 

know, go through those numbers and run them? 

 DR. OSTROW: We did, by eye. We 

didn't actually do the calculations. 

 DR. MAURO: We didn't go back to 

the original data and go check and say yes, it 

look like it's -- 

 DR. OSTROW: Well, we did look at 

the original data. 

 DR. MAURO: Oh, you did? 

 DR. OSTROW: Yes, but we didn't 
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actually run through a whole calculation like 

they did. It just looked, you know, a factor 

of two looked sort of reasonable. I mean it's 

-- how much less are you going to make it? 

 DR. NETON: And when you think 

about this, you are applying this factor of 

two to the geometric mean, right, of all the 

values, which were presumably driven by these 

higher -- more highly contaminated areas, 

which were apparently reduced by up to a 

factor of eight. 

 DR. OSTROW: Right. 

 DR. NETON: I mean, your efficacy 

of contamination reduction goes down as you 

get closer and closer to background. And so 

there is some real conservatism built into 

that calculation. 

 DR. MAURO: I mean, you know, 

because I didn't study all the numbers, but 

there is a gratuitous sense you have. Okay, 

they went through -- what you are really 

saying is they went through a decon operation 
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and you are saying, in effect, it was only 

minimally effective in getting activity down. 

 You know, you got a factor of two out of it. 

 In any decon operation, you would 

expect a lot better than that. But they are 

only taking credit for a factor of two. I 

mean that's the extent to which I could 

comment on this at this time. 

 DR. OSTROW: Well, I think the 

point is, and NIOSH brought it up, the 

contamination wasn't uniformly spread out over 

everything. You had certain areas, you know, 

under a particular machine, in this particular 

piece of the floor where somebody had spilled 

something, those were high. And they probably 

did a good job of decontaminating those 

particular areas, you know. 

 But if you average over the whole 

thing, because a lot of it wasn't particularly 

contaminated, if it is not particularly 

contaminated, you can't reduce the 

contamination. So taking the geometric mean 
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over all these thousands of measurements over 

the whole place, there, a factor of two is 

reasonable. 

 DR. MAURO: I mean it sounds like 

I'm really leaning towards NIOSH, but the 

common sense argument is that, you know, you 

go into a decon operation, you are going to go 

find a place that are the screamers, the hot 

areas, we're going to get rid of that. 

 And yes, you might miss a lot of 

the low areas that may be a borderline of even 

detectable. So then you say okay, if I had x 

curies sitting in this building before decon, 

how many -- in fact, you can probably go into 

the literature and there is tons of literature 

on this -- how many curies do you have in the 

building after decon? 

 Well, I can tell you one thing for 

sure, there is no doubt the number of curies 

at every decon operation did better than a 

factor of two. I'll tell you that right now, 

but you're only taking credit for a factor of 
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two. 

 So I mean, you know, on first 

blush, looking at this and what I'm hearing, 

it certainly sounds reasonable. That's all I 

can say. 

 And, Steve, you looked at it? 

 DR. OSTROW: Yes. It sounds 

reasonable. And the argument is plausible. 

And the question is whether you can calculate 

the exact number. And the answer is no, you 

can't. But can you make a reasonable bounding 

calculation, then yes. 

 DR. MAURO: And, again, what I'm 

hearing is -- if you wanted to really drive 

it, you don't take any credit for any, as if 

decon didn't do anything. Then you're really 

putting an upper bound. Now that would be 

unplausible. 

 So we're stuck between a rock and a 

hard place, you know, so -- 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So would you 

explain now when you talk about taking -- you 
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know, using this factor of two, how that 

applies so that it covers this remodeling 

period or these special things that were going 

on during the period. I think that's what 

we're focusing on. 

 I think you understand what you are 

talking about. But for everybody else who is 

listening, I think we need to know -- to focus 

on how this suggested calculation takes care 

of any questions with regard to the remodeling 

that took place. Isn't that what we're 

dealing with? 

 DR. MAURO: I think it is. And I 

will tell you how I understand it, and you 

tell me if I understand it right, you could 

have just gone flat from the 1950s right 

across. But you decided not to. 

 During the remodeling period, 

rather than going flat, you went down by a 

factor of two. In other words, so it is 

almost like this, there was no modeling during 

that period, it went from here to here, a 
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straight line. And you're okay with that. 

 However, right in here you've got a 

remodeling period. What are you going to do 

there? Because with one straight line, you 

know, you are going to be low over here. But 

no, no, no, we realize that something happened 

over here. And what they did is they raised 

it. But they didn't raise it all the way up. 

 They raised it only half way up. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So during that 

period of time, they raised it half the way 

up. 

 DR. MAURO: Right. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And you feel like 

that is a reasonable upper bound for that 

period of time? 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. 

 MR. KATZ: So that was Antoinette's 

question. What do I say to the person who was 

jackhammering somewhere in that middle period? 

 And John's answering, that person 
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jackhammering would get half the level of a 

person who was actually doing the D&D when all 

the contamination was -- 

 DR. MAURO: Was still there. 

 MR. KATZ: -- there and 

jackhammering. 

 DR. MAURO: Bingo. I mean there is 

your common sense argument. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Not only that but if 

you weren't jackhammering, you also got it. 

 MR. KATZ: No, no, jackhammering is 

just one example that Antoinette threw out of 

many activities that were underway. 

 DR. MAURO: You know I'm the first 

one, you know, to me I look at these things 

pretty simply in the end. I try to get it 

down to the common sense argument. Does it 

make sense? And this makes sense to me. 

 Now if there are aspects to it -- 

for example, the fact that we don't have 

bioassay data, the fact that we don't have a 

lot of air sampling data, you know, yes, I'd 
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like to have that. But in the end, is what's 

being done a reasonable way to come at the 

problem when you lack the data, and really 

this goes to the heart of the philosophy of 

the statute and the regulation. 

 There are so many times when you 

don't have adequate data. The question is, 

are you using the available data in a way that 

there is a level of confidence that you could 

reconstruct the doses with sufficient accuracy 

and plausible and et cetera, et cetera, and 

that's, unfortunately, very much a judgment 

call. 

 In the end, in the end, you know, 

all the number crunching in the world, you 

know, and if your test, if your personal test 

is no, listen, I'm not happy unless I see lots 

of bioassay data, lots of breathing zone data, 

well, then, this doesn't pass that test. 

 DR. NETON: There wouldn't be much 

 of the dose reconstruction either. But it 

wouldn't be required. If you had all the data 
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 DR. MAURO: If you had the data, 

you wouldn't need -- 

 DR. NETON: -- you wouldn't call it 

a dose reconstruction. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes. Then you could do 

the dose reconstruction. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'd just like to 

add a question here. The reduction factor of 

two for the remodeling period that is being 

proposed here from NIOSH, that is only bearing 

in mind vacuum cleaning data? Am I correct? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: I believe that is 

correct. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. So I'm 

going to have to object to that. And I 

understand that SC&A thinks that this is 

reasonable and that NIOSH thinks this is 

reasonable. 

 But I'll tell you straight out the 

workers who are looking at this kind of 

information feel that their testimony, their 
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affidavits, their statements from people who 

were there, who actually saw what was going 

on, is being ignored. 

 DR. NETON: We can revisit this 

document. 

 DR. MAURO: Could you tell us a 

little more about it? Because, you know, I 

guess -- 

 DR. NETON: That's why I asked that 

question earlier. I think after hearing some 

of these other discussions, I think that 

possibly we need to rethink the use of the 

vacuuming data as the middle value for 

distribution of exposures during the 

renovation period. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: And to that point, 

I do have a number of other documents that I 

would like to submit to the Working Group, 

testimony that is -- consistently shows what I 

have been discussing about what was actually 

happening in these buildings during the 

remodeling period. 
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 And, I mean, you know, this is a 

housekeeping detail. But just to let me know 

if I should just send that to everybody in the 

Working Group or how I should handle that 

situation. 

 DR. NETON: I think you should send 

it at least to the Working Group and NIOSH in 

particular. We'd certainly like to be able to 

see -- 

 MR. KATZ: If you send -- if you 

don't want to -- you have this electronically, 

or you have this in hard copy? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I have it 

electronically so it is not a problem to just 

send it to everybody. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. So you are welcome 

to send it to the Work Group as well as to 

OCAS -- to the -- but anyway, wherever you 

send it, it will get distributed to everybody 

involved, including SC&A and OCAS. 

 DR. NETON: This doesn't 

necessarily include Privacy Act information, 
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does it? Protected information? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: There's nothing in 

there that -- it's the workers' names, that's 

pretty much it. But that's the same 

information that would have been -- that I 

have already provided in prior affidavits. 

 MR. KATZ: It's okay, Antoinette. 

I mean you can even just send it to me if you 

don't want to bother with everyone, and I will 

distribute it to all parties. Or you could 

send it to the Work Group and me. Everyone 

just should note in the Work Group that this 

includes Privacy Act information. So they all 

know to take proper precautions with people's 

names and so on with that Privacy Act 

protected information, Antoinette. 

 But go ahead, send it to the Work 

Group. You can send it to me, too. We'll 

make certain that everybody, including the 

contractors, get this information. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Ted, is that you 

speaking? 
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 MR. KATZ: Yes, that's me. I'm 

sorry. It's Ted. It's me, again. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Thank you. 

 DR. NETON: I will say that, you 

know, hearing some of these -- this other 

information about possible sandblasting and 

jackhammering, that sort of activity during 

the remodeling period does give me some pause. 

 Notwithstanding that, though, I 

think that the approach that we just 

discussed, which is applying half the value 

that was experienced during the D&D operation, 

is still a valid approach. We just need to 

maybe fine-tune or reevaluate, you know, what 

we consider to be representative exposure that 

we would apply from the D&D era. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'd just like to 

note that I have provided this kind of 

documentation prior to this date. And NIOSH 

has had access to it. 

 MR. KATZ: So just so I'm clear 

because maybe Antoinette's not clear and she 
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is a layperson like I am. So what you are 

saying is right now the D&D period used 

vacuuming data and you would use potentially 

other activity during the D&D period as that 

top end? 

 DR. NETON: We would reevaluate 

that. 

 MR. KATZ: Possibly, right, 

reevaluate that. Okay. Thank you. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So it appears we 

can't resolve this right now, that we're going 

to wait until we get the data from Antoinette. 

 It goes through NIOSH. They take another 

look at it. How do you think -- 

 MR. KATZ: Well, the data that Jim 

is going to rely on is the data from the D&D 

period. The data that Antoinette is providing 

is just testifying to the types of activities 

that occurred during the residual period. So 

what is critical is what data OCAS has on the 

D&D period. 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: I believe we 
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do have the testimonies that Antoinette is 

responding to. 

 DR. NETON: Yes. I have not been 

as close to this as possibly I should be. 

But, again, it is not clear to me how we ended 

up with the vacuuming being representative. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'd actually like 

an answer to that question because, as I 

stated previously, I have submitted affidavits 

from workers prior to this point attesting to 

the fact that this kind of work was going on. 

 And I'm just wondering if that material was 

considered. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Of course it was 

considered. And we don't deny that other 

kinds of activity -- we're not even saying 

that vacuuming was the only activity or the 

primary activity. 

 What we are trying to do is, 

however, model the situation as realistically 

as possible and in a claimant-favorable way. 

Now if you can tell me that jackhammering was 
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done eight hours a day for ten years, I will 

reconsider this. But instead, we did ten 

years worth of vacuuming as a more reasonable 

estimate. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: You know, I'm 

sorry, I have to object to the expectation 

that I would be able to provide you with 

detailed information that jackhammering was 

going on for eight hours a day for a ten -- I 

mean, I'm sorry. 

 MR. KATZ: Antoinette, I think 

Chris was being rhetorical there. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: He was not asking for 

such -- 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, I understand 

that he was being rhetorical. But we're 

talking about people's lives here. And I 

would appreciate it if there would be some 

regard for that at times here. 

 MR. KATZ: Right. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I don't appreciate 
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it. 

 DR. NETON: I understand. This is 

Jim Neton. And we're going to go back and 

take a look at this in that light from what 

I'm hearing here and see where we end up. 

 We certainly would end up using the 

distribution or some type of a distribution 

from the D&D era. But I would just like to 

get a little closer to it and look and see 

exactly how we analyzed it and help move this 

forward. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So timing-wise, 

what can we expect on this? 

 DR. NETON: It shouldn't be a very 

lengthy review I wouldn't think. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And how do we want 

to handle it then? Would we have something 

where we could have perhaps -- I don't know, a 

phone call or something? 

 MR. KATZ: We need a -- it seems 

like so much of the discussion that has 
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occurred, you know, he's following up on the 

data question, it seems like we could deal 

with it in a teleconference without it being a 

face-to-face meeting. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Before the Board 

meeting. 

 MR. KATZ: Absolutely -- 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Because we have 

plenty of time. 

 MR. KATZ: -- before the Board 

meeting. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Jim, could you tell 

me what you are going to do with the D&D data? 

 What are you going to go back and look at? 

 DR. NETON: Well, actually I'd like 

to sit down with our folks and look at some of 

the more -- some of the documentation that was 

provided in support of the different types of 

activities that occurred during the remodeling 

activities and help to make a determination if 

the vacuuming is really truly representative 

of the potential exposures, you know, in that 
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era. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: You would compare 

that to the D&D period then? Is that -- 

 DR. NETON: Well, it is a matter of 

picking what is the most representative work 

activity from the D&D era to apply to the 

remodeling era. Right now it seems to be a 

little bit fuzzy in my mind as to whether we 

picked the appropriate model. I'm not saying 

it isn't. 

 At the end of the day -- and I 

haven't been as close to it as I should -- but 

I'll look through our analysis and maybe come 

to the same conclusion. But I don't have a 

comfort level in what I'm hearing right now 

that we have completely justified that. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: If you look at the 

activities during D&D and see if some of those 

spilled over into the future -- 

 DR. NETON: Well, what types of 

activities that were occurring during the 

remodeling era, how close they related to what 
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might have occurred during the D&D era. Sort 

of get a feel, a flavor. And then that factor 

of two would be applied that we talked about. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Understand. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. So I think 

we have come to the end of what we can do on 

this particular item unless people have other 

questions or concerns. 

 Then I think we have one left, 

Finding 10, on page 9 in your report. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: And for the purposes 

of SEC-107, beyond the embedded residual 

contamination, there were no raffinates 

present. The raffinates were actually removed 

during the ore-processing period prior to the 

Step 3 production period. 

 In other words, the SEC covers -- 

the existing SECs, granted, cover the period 

when raffinates were present on site. After 

that time, they had been removed to Lake 

Ontario Ordnance Works and/or Ashland Oil. 

They were stored there for a while, too. 
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 But they are not a factor at Linde 

during the residual period. They are 

accounted for in the suspended particulates. 

That is what was embedded in the walls is, 

indeed, accounted for there. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I have a question 

about this issue. Do you have any data with 

respect to the level of contamination in the 

tunnels beneath Building 30 and Building 14 

and the possible spill-over of the effluents 

in those areas? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: The FUSRAP study did 

look at boreholes. They looked at tunnels 

under the site. They looked at the creek 

contamination. Yes, there is data for that. 

We are, however, unaware that anybody worked 

in those locations for any -- 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: They did. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: -- demonstrable 

period of time. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: They certainly 

did. And I can provide you with testimony of 
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that as well. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: One thing is to have 

inspected or worked in the tunnel. Another 

was to have been stationed in the tunnel. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, people 

weren't stationed in tunnels. But people 

certainly did work in tunnels on a continuing 

basis. And I can -- I know of two people -- 

two workers that I have spoken to in the past 

few years who have talked about working in the 

tunnels. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Perhaps we could get 

that information as to what their exposures 

were in the sense of how many hours did they 

spend in the tunnel per year or month. That 

would be useful. And what they did there. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. I can 

arrange that. All this documentation is 

probably going to take me a few days to 

gather. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Is there any other 

question on this section? Steve? Or John, do 
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you have any comments on it? Other than 

getting the information to Chris about the 

tunnels, have we explored everything here? 

 DR. MAURO: The only question -- 

and, you know, I have been following this, but 

it was my understanding that -- so what I'm 

hearing is there were locations on site after 

operations, after D&D, where there still was a 

substantial amount of raffinates, such as the 

tunnels. Is that what I'm hearing? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes, that's 

correct. And, in fact -- 

 DR. MAURO: Well, that is this 

conversation, that assumption. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Well, all I saw were 

radon readings. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, there are 

underground wells that FUSRAP has not even 

touched. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: There were injection 

wells. 

 DR. MAURO: Injection wells. 
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 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes. I mean the 

Army Corps has essentially decided that they 

can't decontaminate those wells. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: How would that 

impact the worker exposures? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, I think that 

would impact the worker exposures in terms of 

the material from those wells being in the 

tunnels. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Anybody have a -- 

I don't picture -- 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, I guess from our 

perspective, if there are locations on site 

where raffinates could have remained or been 

picked up during D&D, and where there is 

evidence that people might have worked in 

those areas, that is important. 

 DR. NETON: Yes. I mean we need to 

see this tunnel -- this tunnel information. 

 DR. MAURO: Yes, because right now 

we've been operating on the premise that it 

wasn't there. If it is there, that does 
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change the picture. And it is important that 

we put that to bed. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Do you remember 

why this was a finding to begin with? Did we 

put this on the list because it was something 

SC&A brought up? 

 DR. MAURO: Because it was -- I 

believe the original -- I'm sorry, Steve, but 

I believe the original report was silent on 

raffinates. 

 DR. OSTROW: That's right. We 

wanted to know basically did NIOSH take a look 

and see if there were any raffinates present. 

 And we heard in the report that as far as 

they know, there weren't any. And now we may 

be having new information. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: I don't know that 

this is new information. That is, I still 

don't know that there were any raffinates in 

the tunnel, for instance. 

 We know that they did take 

effluents, liquid effluents, and put them into 
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injection wells, which should be quite 

separate. They also took all the solid 

residues and took them offsite. That's what 

we know during the main production of the ore 

periods. 

 We have measurements in the FUSRAP 

era of radon measurements in the tunnel area. 

 I don't even know how large they were, by the 

way, or what was in them, or why they were 

there, but showing elevated radon 

concentrations. That could be just uranium 

residues. 

 We don't know what was in the 

tunnels. But as far as I know, they weren't 

used as, you know, main drains for the main 

raffinate effluent. 

 MEMBER BEACH: This is Josie. The 

original finding also talked about renovation 

activities. And to consider if raffinates 

might have been present. And the airborne 

dust needed to be qualified. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: That was done. 
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 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. And then I 

also have a note that FUSRAP data is needed 

for the later years. Is that a possibility? 

Or did that end in `96, I believe? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: As far as I know, 

and, Monica, maybe you can add to this, but as 

far as I know, we have been unable to locate 

any further data after 1982. There was FUSRAP 

activity at the site, Corps of Engineers 

activity. 

 We have written to the Corps of 

Engineers. They say they don't have any data. 

Somewhere it probably exists. But we can't 

get it. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Okay. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: That would primarily 

have been -- well, it would have been 

interesting if we had it. It also probably 

would have a lot of relevance to the people 

who actually did further decon under the 

FUSRAP program. 

 MEMBER BEACH: But why can't we get 
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it, though, if it is available? And it should 

be out there. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Well, we have asked 

for it. And we have asked the right people. 

They say they don't have it. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: They say they 

don't have it because they can't find it or 

because they don't think it exists? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: My understanding is 

they don't think it exists. We're talking 

about data in the `90s and early 2000s here. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Right. So -- 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Why it doesn't 

exist, I don't know. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: -- so I'm just 

trying to get an understanding here because 

I've raised issues about the destruction of 

documents at this facility, that I submitted 

affidavits from two -- actually three workers 

talking about the destruction of documents. 

And I'm wondering if there could be a possible 

relation there. 
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 MR. CRAWFORD: These, by the way, 

would not have been Linde documents or 

Praxair, their successors. They would have 

been documents from the Corps of Engineers. 

Oak Ridge did work for them, for instance. 

 MR. SHARFI: Chris, this is Mutty. 

 We have 1995 data. That was actually even 

used in the gamma analysis for the radon part. 

 MR. CRAWFORD: Oh, okay. 

 MR. SHARFI: We have FUSRAP data for 

Building 31. That was done by, I believe, 

ORNL. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Does anybody know 

what the tunnels were used for? Anybody have 

any idea? 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: My 

understanding is they were primarily utility 

tunnels. 

 MR. KATZ: People can't hear. Can 

you say it louder? 

 MS. HARRISON-MAPLES: I just said 

my understanding is they were primarily 
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utility tunnels. Antoinette may know more 

about it. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes. I believe 

that is correct. But I can get a clearer 

picture from some of the workers over the next 

couple of days about that. 

 MR. KATZ: Thank you, Antoinette. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: You're welcome. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. I see in 

your report, Chris, one more item. On page 

10, I think we've taken care of that. There 

was an additional request. I think maybe it 

was Josie who brought this up, that the two 

tables that you had in your Evaluation Report, 

it would be much more helpful if all that 

information were combined. 

 And you did that in the color 

graphic that you sent us. So I think we've 

finished that part. 

 MEMBER BEACH: One thing I have on 

the addendum that was passed out, I believe. 

It was an NTS. 
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 CHAIR ROESSLER: Is it -- 

Antoinette, is that you? 

 MR. KATZ: No, that's Josie. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: No. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Josie, okay, I 

couldn't hear everything you said. 

 MEMBER BEACH: Oh, I'm looking at 

my notes really quickly here. I'll get back 

to you. I haven't got it right in front of 

me. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think maybe it 

was NTS that you are thinking of because I 

think we've gone through the agenda items I 

had. 

 MEMBER BEACH: No, it was actually 

in the Linde documents. There was a table 

that had NTS as a heading. And it may have 

been NIOSH's document. It was probably -- oh, 

it was on page 11 of the radon findings NIOSH 

report. And it just talked -- NTS Work Group 

Issues. So I am assuming that you just cut 

and pasted a table there. 
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 CHAIR ROESSLER: Point that out 

again. What page are we on? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Page 11 at the top 

of the first column. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Oh, I see. Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Jim Neton just said it 

is a typo. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So that should be 

Linde. 

 MR. KATZ: Right. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Thank you, Josie. 

 DR. NETON: I left that in there. 

 MR. KATZ: None of us saw it. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I didn't see it. 

We'll fix it. 

 It appears then that we have two 

items on -- that we have covered on the agenda 

today that we thoroughly discussed. The Work 

Group has voted, and I have something on that 

I'm going to summarize for the Board meeting. 

 However, we have two items that 

need more information. And what we need to do 
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on those two items is set up a teleconference 

that will occur after NIOSH gets the 

information from Antoinette. 

 And so I think before we wrap up 

here, we need to find out when we can expect 

the information to get to NIOSH, when NIOSH 

will be able to evaluate it, and when we can 

set up the teleconference. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, Gen, I 

expect that I should be able to provide some 

of the documentation actually later today. 

And then the rest of the documentation, 

particularly regarding the tunnels and some 

additional statements from workers regarding 

the remodeling effort, within the next week 

and a half. 

 MR. KATZ: Week and a half, okay. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: You will supply 

that to Ted? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I'll send that to 

everybody. It's pretty easy to do. 

 MR. KATZ: That's great. That's 
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great. Thank you. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So that would be 

next week. And that would be -- you would 

have it to everybody -- let's use this as a 

date -- before Christmas. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Before the 

holidays, I want to be appropriate here. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Right. 

 DR. OSTROW: Hanukkah began 

already. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes, okay, so 

let's say we'd have this by the 25th? Does 

that sound -- 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I will try to give 

everybody a Christmas present before the 25th. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Okay. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. And, Antoinette, 

don't kill yourself for -- 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes, around the 

holidays, that's fine. 

 MR. KATZ: But -- and then OCAS 
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needs to do some evaluation of their own data. 

 DR. NETON: I can't see us having a 

good response until like the second week of 

January at the earliest. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. 

 DR. NETON: Partly because we have 

a Work Group meeting scheduled -- 

 MR. KATZ: Sure. 

 DR. NETON: -- at the beginning of 

January. 

 MR. KATZ: So do people want to 

check their calendars then for the -- if this 

is a reasonable time frame, the week of the -- 

well, there's the week of the 18th and there's 

the week of the 25th. We have some Work 

Groups already during that time span. But we 

have days open. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Let's try and get 

a date picked now. 

 MR. KATZ: So is a teleconference -

- I mean my guess, you all tell me, is that is 

probably not more than an hour or two of 
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discussion. At this point, you've -- 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I would think an 

hour. 

 MR. KATZ: An hour? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: So you don't need a 

whole day free to be able to fit this in. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Let's look at the 

week of the 18th. I would prefer doing it 

that week. There is a health physics meeting 

in Albuquerque starting on the 24th. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. So you want to do 

it ahead of that. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Since it was only 

an hour, I could probably get away, but if we 

could look at the week of the 18th my calendar 

looks open. What about the rest of you? 

 MEMBER BEACH: I need a moment to 

grab my calendar, so I'll be away from the 

phone for about a minute. 

 MR. KATZ: That's okay. Thanks. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I am available the 
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20th and 22nd that week. 

 MR. KATZ: The 20th and the 22nd? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: Yes. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: That's January 

we're talking about. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. The 20th is 

Wednesday. The 22nd is Friday. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: It's probably 

preferable to do -- 

 MR. KATZ: And both of those are 

open for me. So both of those could work. 

 DR. NETON: The 20th is good for me 

in the afternoon. 

 MR. KATZ: The 20th is good. 

 Chris, the 20th, does that work for 

you? 

 MR. CRAWFORD: No problem. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: January 20th, 1:00 

p.m. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Mike? Mike, are 

you on the phone? 

 MR. KATZ: We need to wait for 
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 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Mike, how is January 

20th for a teleconference, probably not more 

than an hour. 

 MEMBER GIBSON: It looks good. 

 MEMBER BEACH: This is Josie. The 

20th doesn't work for me. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. Well, how about 

the 22nd? That's another option. 

 MEMBER BEACH: I'm actually 

traveling the 18th through the 22nd. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And I'm traveling 

on the 22nd also. 

 MR. KATZ: But you're -- okay. But 

-- 

 MEMBER BEACH: It's vacation. I'll 

be out of town. 

 MR. KATZ: Oh, I see, I see. 

You're out. That whole week you are out -- 

 MEMBER BEACH: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: -- that's what you are 
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saying, Josie? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Right. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. And then -- well 

then can you break away, Gen, at any point the 

26th or 27th? Let me just -- the 26th is 

open, January 26th. The 27th is a 

Subcommittee meeting. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I will be -- 

 MR. KATZ: The 25th or the 26th are 

open. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: I have an 

appointment. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: The 25th after 

lunchtime. 

 MR. KATZ: After lunch the 25th? 

Eastern time? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, now that 

would be Albuquerque time. What time is that? 

 That would be after two. 

 MR. KATZ: After two? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: But I mean that's okay. 
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 MEMBER LOCKEY: The 25th is open 

for me. 

 MR. KATZ: The 25th is open for 

you? How about Mike and Josie? The 25th of 

January? 

 MEMBER BEACH: Yes, that works for 

me. 

 MR. KATZ: And Mike? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes, that's good. 

 MR. KATZ: It's a Monday. So we're 

talking about Monday afternoon. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: About two o'clock. 

 MR. KATZ: Two o'clock, 2:00 p.m. 

Eastern time. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And what time is 

that in Albuquerque? One o'clock? Okay. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: So earlier is 

better. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: No, it wouldn't 

be. 

 MR. KATZ: She can't do it until 
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after lunch. 

 (Simultaneous speakers.) 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Wait a minute, 

wait a minute. 

 COURT REPORTER: One conversation 

please. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes, thank you. 

 MR. KATZ: You actually really 

don't need to transcribe that. 

 COURT REPORTER: Well, I'm happy to 

go off the record if you want to. 

 MR. KATZ: No, you don't need to go 

off the record. We'll try to be disciplined 

here. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think I'm not 

available until after noon, Albuquerque time, 

on the 25th. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay, that's 2:00 p.m. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Is that too late 

for you? 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: 2:00 p.m.? 
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 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes. 

 MR. KATZ: Eastern time. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: That's all right. 

I mean I'll have about two hours. 

 MR. KATZ: Oh, that will be plenty. 

 MS. JESSEN: Gen, are you talking 

about 2:00 p.m. Eastern time? 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: 2:00 p.m. Eastern, 

which would be -- 

 MEMBER BEACH: Eleven o'clock. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: And eleven Josie's 

time. 

 MR. KATZ: Right. So that works? 

Mike? Did we hear from Mike? 

 MEMBER GIBSON: Yes. That works. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. And Antoinette? 

Did we hear from her? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. So are we 

on January 25th at 2:00 p.m. Eastern? 

 MR. KATZ: 2:00 p.m. Eastern. So, 

you know, 11:00 a.m. your time, I think. 
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 MS. BONSIGNORE: Right. Yes. 

Okay. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. January 25th, 

2:00 p.m. Eastern time, teleconference at 2:00 

p.m. And I'd appreciate -- I guess, 

everybody, if they set aside two hours, we 

probably don't need two hours but -- 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: We'll say two 

hours. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. Just to -- I'm 

just saying -- your calendars, we won't -- 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: But we'd expect 

within an hour. 

 MR. KATZ: It seems like the 

discussion won't last longer than that. 

 DR. OSTROW: And NIOSH will do 

something written a couple of -- you know, 

beforehand? 

 MR. KATZ: Well, yes. 

 DR. NETON: It will come out a week 

or two before. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, that gives an extra 
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week for that. So that's helpful, too. 

 DR. NETON: Yes, I don't expect 

this to be a lengthy analysis. A couple page 

summary of what we've discussed. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Well, okay. Well, 

I appreciate everybody's attention today. And 

your time. And I think we are finished. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Gen, I just have -

- just two additional questions. 

 I just wanted to know is there any 

possibility in the Work Group's mind that this 

petition will go before the full Board in the 

February Board meeting in California? 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think that is 

our intent is that we would resolve everything 

during the teleconference to the point that we 

could make a Work Group report to the Board. 

And then it is up to the Board. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. I just 

raise that issue because I know that there is 

going to be a Board meeting in May in Buffalo. 

 And I would hope that the Board would 
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consider that factor in the scheduling of this 

because I know that all of the workers who are 

involved in this would like to be present. 

 MR. KATZ: So you are asking for 

this to be delayed by the Board until May? Is 

that what you're saying, Antoinette? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: That would be the 

preference of a lot of the workers, yes. 

 MEMBER LOCKEY: This is Jim Lockey. 

 I think that is a reasonable request. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes. I guess my 

first goal was to take care of it as soon as 

possible because, you know, we don't want to 

delay the workers. But if that is your 

preference, it sounds fine to me. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Thank you. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Thank you, 

Antoinette. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: And one last 

thing, and this is something that I had sent 

to Steve Ostrow, there were a couple of memos 

that I had sent to Steve. I don't know if he 
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is still with us. 

 DR. OSTROW: Yes, I'm still here. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay -- regarding 

some activity at Linde dealing with P-539 

studies. And I was wondering if SC&A and OCAS 

could shed some -- I don't know if OCAS has 

seen those memos, but I was wondering if 

someone could shed some light on what P-539 

is. 

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anything that can kill a dog in a few hours is 

unlikely to be a radiological hazard. It's 

probably an organic poison of some sort 

because that was in the memo that it was 

highly toxic. And they were concerned about -

- it was a catalytic chemical of some sort. 

 From the description, it doesn't 

seem to have any radiological component that 

we could identify. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Because I 

have a safety guidelines document from that 

time period that one of the workers provided 
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to me a few weeks ago that talks about P-539 

and something else called C-33. And they seem 

to be connected in the same type of -- 

delineated in the booklet with respect to how 

workers should be handling those compounds. 

 And I'll scan a copy of the 

guideline -- it's like rules and practices 

safety guidelines for the facility. I would 

just appreciate, if possible, if there could 

be some information as to what P-539 is and 

what C-33 is, particularly if that would 

relate to information that should be added to 

the site exposure matrix. 

 DR. OSTROW: Antoinette, this is 

Steve. This guideline that you have, whatever 

it is that you are going to send us, it 

doesn't say in it what these compounds 

actually are? It just refers to them just by 

the, you know, their code names or whatever? 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes, that's 

correct. That's why I'm raising the issue 

because I don't know what it is and none of 
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the workers know what it is. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Did you get this, 

Steve? 

 DR. OSTROW: I got the original 

one. And the whole Board got it. We 

distributed it. 

 MR. KATZ: And OCAS. 

 DR. OSTROW: But, you know, we 

weren't -- SC&A wasn't directed to actually do 

an investigation. And I don't think OCAS was 

either. I don't think you guys knew what it 

was either. 

 DR. NETON: We looked at it, and we 

are familiar with a lot of code names that 

were used for uranium and ores in that era. 

And none of those ring a bell with any of our 

research that we've done thus far. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Is this an item 

that we could, if we had more information, 

could do something with at our teleconference? 

 MR. KATZ: Yes, that is something 

else to report out on if there is any new 
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information. 

 DR. NETON: I would also suggest 

though, I mean if this is a potential chemical 

exposure that has been unnoted, maybe the 

Department of Labor, you know, maybe 

Antoinette should send those to the Department 

of Labor concerns because that is sort of a 

Part E issue, I think. 

 MR. KATZ: Right. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Right. Well, I 

just want to make sure that whatever these 

codes are that they don't relate to anything 

that was radiological in nature. And if we 

can establish that, then I will certainly 

forward the information to the Department of 

Labor if someone could tell me who at the 

Department of Labor I would do that -- you 

know, send that information to? Would it be 

John Vance? 

 DR. NETON: He would be a good 

person. 

 MR. KATZ: John would work. 
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 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: So it would be -- 

 MR. KATZ: So that's a third point 

to follow up on in the teleconference, if 

there is any new information. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: That she will give 

us the information. Then does OCAS have any 

assignment to -- 

 MR. KATZ: Right. To just follow 

up to the extent that you can pull the thread. 

 But it sounds like they have already 

discussed -- 

 DR. NETON: We talked about it 

internally. And short of going through every 

 document, looking for this code name 

material, I don't know what else we would do 

on it. It's not something we've run across in 

the thousands and thousands of pages of 

documents we've reviewed. 

 MR. KATZ: No, I was actually 

curious and did a Google search and couldn't -

- 
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 DR. OSTROW: Yes, me, too. 

 MR. KATZ: -- couldn't find 

anything either. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Yes, I did a 

Google search as well and didn't come up with 

anything. Came up with 538, 536, no 539. 

 MR. KATZ: So it sounds like 

although we will wrap up the work in January, 

it seems to me -- I don't know, Gen, if this 

is what you'd want, but the report out might 

make more sense to do then. The Work Group -- 

it would make more sense for the Work Group to 

report out in New York than to report out in 

California. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: I think that's 

what -- 

 MR. KATZ: And since the Board is 

going to take up the discussion in New York. 

 CHAIR ROESSLER: Yes, I think 

that's what we agreed to do. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. I just want to be 

clear about what -- 
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 CHAIR ROESSLER: We will not put it 

on the agenda for the February meeting. 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Thank you. 

 DR. NETON: Well, one of my 

concerns, though, is if there was some sort of 

opinion of the Work Group and the Board heard 

it, often times then the full Board would take 

up the issue in some other forum or format for 

review. They could inform -- they could -- 

 MR. KATZ: No, I understand. 

 DR. NETON: -- pass it over to the 

 Board and they could take action. 

 MR. KATZ: So Jim -- what Jim is 

saying, Antoinette, and this is -- I mean I'll 

leave this to your judgment -- if we wait 

until New York for the Work Group to report 

out to the Board, what may happen in New York 

then is the Work Group reports out to the 

Board and then the Board says oh, well, let's 

look into X, Y, and Z now because we are 

uncertain about certain things. 
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 So the only thing I'm saying to 

you, Antoinette, is that the risk is that the 

Board may not act at all in New York other 

than to hear the Work Group and discuss it a 

little. But it then may make more charges for 

research as opposed to coming to a decision in 

New York. You can't tell. 

 So another option would be for the 

Work Group to report out in February to the 

Board and the Board to have some discussion of 

it but not to take action until New York. 

That's just another option. And I'll leave it 

to really what your wishes are, what the 

petitioning class's wishes are. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Well, my main 

focus is that any presentation that I provide 

to the Board, I want that to be in front of 

the people that I represent. That is 

important to me. It is important to them. 

 And so with everyone's indulgence, 

if I would -- can take a couple of days to 

speak to everybody -- 
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 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: -- to the workers 

and get their view on this? 

 MR. KATZ: Absolutely. Just let me 

know what your wishes are. 

 But I just want you to know that 

there is an option that it could be -- the 

Work Group could report out in February but 

the Board not take action until -- or whatever 

-- other than maybe assign research between 

February and May -- 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Right. 

 MR. KATZ: -- the Board would not 

actually take action on the petition in terms 

of disposition until May. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Okay. I 

think that sounds reasonable. 

 MR. KATZ: Yes. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: I just want to 

make sure that I'm respecting the wishes of 

the people that I represent. 

 MR. KATZ: Absolutely. Just let me 
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know. And we'll make decisions accordingly. 

 MS. BONSIGNORE: Okay. Thank you 

very much. 

 DR. MAURO: Ted, before we close, I 

didn't note any action items for SC&A. Is 

that correct? 

 MR. KATZ: That is correct, I 

believe. Right. 

 DR. OSTROW: I didn't hear any. 

 (Laughter.) 

 MR. KATZ: Okay. So are we -- I 

think we're adjourned. And thank you, 

Antoinette, and thank you the other folks on 

the phone that have contributed as well. And 

happy holidays for sure. 

 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter 

was concluded at 12:39 p.m.)