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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 FERNALD

+ + + + +

MONDAY

JULY 1, 2013

+ + + + +

The Work Group convened via 

teleconference at 9:00 a.m., Bradley P. 

Clawson, Chairman, presiding.

PRESENT:

BRADLEY P. CLAWSON, Chairman

MARK GRIFFON, Member

JAMES M. MELIUS, Member

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, Member
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ALSO PRESENT:

TED KATZ, Designated Federal Official

MATT ARNO, ORAU Team

SANDRA BALDRIDGE

ROBERT BARTON, SC&A

KATHY BEHLING, SC&A

ELIZABETH BRACKETT, ORAU Team

HARRY CHMELYNSKI, SC&A

STU HINNEFELD, DCAS

KARIN JESSEN, ORAU Team

JOSH KINMAN, DCAS contractor

JOYCE LIPSZTEIN, SC&A

JOHN MAURO, SC&A

L. MICHAEL RAFKY, HHS

MARK ROLFES, DCAS

JOHN STIVER, SC&A
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A-G-E-N-D-A

1. Intro/Background . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2. SEC Issue #1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

3. SEC Issue 6a

New Pilot Plant Alpha Air Concentration 

Data for 1965 and 1967 vs. Plant 1, 8 

DWE (1965 - 1967) . . . . . . . . . 16

Strategy for Bounding 1955 Plant 9

Intakes Given High Dust Loads . . . 92

4. Thorium-232 Coworker Model Based on

Chest Count Data for 1978 - 1988 . 112

5. Additional SEC or Site Profile 

Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

6. WG Conclusions/Recommendations . . . 146

7. Adjournment . . . . . . . . . . . . .152
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1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

2 9:00 a.m.

3 MR. KATZ: This is the Advisory 

4 Board on Radiation and Worker Health, Fernald 

5 Work Group. Good morning, everyone. I think 

6 I'll have -- judging by my list, we have 

7 enough to get started. Let's get started with 

8 roll call. Let's begin with the Chair. 

9 And everyone Agency related, speak 

10 to conflict of interest, too, since we're 

11 talking about a specific DOE site. Thanks. 

12 (Roll call.)

13 MR. KATZ: All right, good. 

14 That's all that we expect, so I don't think I 

15 need to circle back around here. I have to 

16 apologize. It's really my fault, but the 

17 agenda just came out this morning. It won't 

18 get posted quickly. I've sent it to Josh 

19 Kinman, though, so I think he should be able 

20 to send it to you, Sandra. And the same 

21 notice goes to everyone else in the Work Group 

22 who's getting it so late. So I apologize for 
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1 that, but last week was murder, but I should 

2 have gotten this out.

3 And then there are really, there 

4 are no posted new documents, I don't believe, 

5 for this, although NIOSH has a brief one-pager 

6 that I don't think has been PA cleared to be 

7 posted. That's a response to issues.

8 So, Brad, you may want to just, 

9 for Sandra's sake and anyone else who hasn't 

10 actually seen the agenda, you may want to just 

11 walk them briefly through it before we get 

12 rolling with it. It's your agenda, Brad. 

13 Brad, are you there? 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, I've been 

15 talking to myself for the last few minutes, so 

16 that's not --

17 MR. KATZ: Okay, very good.

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I'd like to 

19 welcome everybody here today. Sorry if my 

20 mute button was kind of reversed there. 

21 First of all, as Ted says, we've 

22 got this agenda that came out a little bit 
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1 late. First thing is I guess we're going to 

2 introduce background and process from, well, 

3 just to introduce the background of the 

4 meeting. We'll go from there. SC&A's issue 

5 number one, start date for the proposed SEC 

6 Class. 

7 First of all, I guess, I think the 

8 first most important thing is I'm going to 

9 turn it over to John and let him do a little 

10 bit of the background work, if that's all 

11 right, John. 

12 MR. STIVER: Yes, that's fine, 

13 Brad. Thank you. This is John Stiver at 

14 SC&A. And the agenda, as you can see, is not 

15 terribly different than last week, or not last 

16 week, two weeks ago. On the 17th of June, we 

17 had our last Work Group meeting in Cincinnati. 

18 There were a few things we needed 

19 to follow up on, however. As you recall, we 

20 decided that SEC was warranted for 

21 subcontractor employees up through the 

22 calendar year 1983 based on the fact that 
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1 there were exposures that were not represented 

2 by the data set that was available for the 

3 coworker model. I did not include 

4 subcontractors prior to 1986. 

5 And if you remember, we had gone 

6 through several examples in comparison using 

7 their coworker bioassay data compared to what 

8 they would have gotten with the coworker 

9 model. In many cases, the intakes, based on 

10 the data, were quite a bit higher than they 

11 would have gotten in the 95th percentile with 

12 the coworker model. 

13 What remains to be decided was the 

14 early start date for the SEC. And I had put 

15 in a placeholder value of 1953 based mainly on 

16 the notion that the buildings were all under 

17 construction. Buildings one through nine were 

18 under construction from 1951 to 1953 and came 

19 on the line in 1953, whereas the Pilot Plant 

20 actually came on line and began processing 

21 uranium in 1951. And the notion being that 

22 construction workers or the subcontractors and 
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1 so forth would be in those other buildings and 

2 be in a relatively pristine radiation 

3 environment compared to what might have been 

4 the case in the Pilot Plant.

5 However, we've been doing a little 

6 extra research on this. And, actually, one of 

7 the documents that Stu posted, if I can pull 

8 that up, it's an air sampling data. This was 

9 SRDB 003081, and this is some air sampling 

10 smear data from Plant 9 in 1953. 

11 And there's some interesting notes 

12 on here. The first one on the very first 

13 page, this is samples that were taken on 

14 February 24, 1953, and there's a note here 

15 that says the construction men were reluctant 

16 to enter the plant because of brown dust. 

17 Reader requested a check of the premises. So 

18 the reason they did this swipe survey was 

19 because the construction workers did not want 

20 to go into the building because there was so 

21 much dust around. And there was also another 

22 annotation to the effect that there was black 
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1 oxide on the snow outside the plant and they 

2 felt probably was the result of chip burning 

3 going on at that time. 

4 So it got us thinking that, well, 

5 you know, it's in `53, in February of `53. We 

6 had these kinds of concerns on the part of the 

7 contractors and subcontractors. At that 

8 point, they would have been the people 

9 building the other plants.

10 We started to take a look at the 

11 earlier reports and see what we could find, 

12 and Bob Barton came up yesterday afternoon, 

13 actually, with a quote from one of the, this 

14 is SRDB 3230 and this is a collection report 

15 from the 1952 to 1954 time period. And 

16 there's a quote here, and I'll just go ahead 

17 and read it to you. "Dr. Quigley has a 

18 difficult problem with getting management and 

19 supervisors educated in the field of good 

20 housekeeping practices, general health and 

21 safety supervision, and enforcement 

22 procedures, which will ensure proper control 
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1 of uranium contamination, with hundreds of 

2 contractor and subcontractor personnel running 

3 around `loose," in quotes, "in the work areas. 

4 However, the sooner National Lead of Ohio 

5 management and the top management of the 

6 construction contractor know the AEC 

7 requirements for health and safety in the 

8 plant, the sooner bad practices will be 

9 curtailed."

10 And so this was in August 7th of 

11 1952. And so this got us thinking, well, you 

12 know, if you have this, basically, 

13 uncontrolled contractors moving around with 

14 potential for uranium exposure, then this 

15 notion of working in a relatively pristine 

16 environment is really not warranted. 

17 And so, because it really -- we 

18 don't see any way that you could put a 

19 plausible start date anywhere beyond what 

20 would have been the SEC start date in the 

21 first place, which would have been January 1st 

22 of 1951. So we believe that since uranium was 
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1 being handled and we have this kind of 

2 situation where we've got the subs, you know, 

3 basically going wherever they want in the work 

4 areas, that that start date is warranted, as 

5 opposed to some later date.

6 And that's basically what I had to

7 say about that, if anybody else wants to 

8 comment.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: This is, this is 

10 Stu. I will say that what Bob identified does 

11 seem to indicate there was some co-location of 

12 contractor and subcontractor people and they 

13 weren't delineated. He describes an event in 

14 1952, and I don't know that, you know, I don't 

15 think there's any evidence to say definitively 

16 that they are, there was this claim separation 

17 between contractors and subcontractors.

18 When I first saw Bob's, you know, 

19 the reference that Bob highlighted, it sounded 

20 to me like this is a 1952 issue. And I 

21 believe there may have been some radiological 

22 operations moving into the production plants 
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1 in 1952. I'm not sure about that. Maybe they 

2 moved in `53. But it does sound like a `52 

3 issue to me, and it might be important to have 

4 a time line of when, you know, when did these 

5 radiological operations really move into the 

6 production building because I think they kind 

7 of phased in over a period of time. I just 

8 don't remember right now what it is, if I've 

9 ever seen it.

10 On the other hand, getting back to 

11 my earlier point, I don't know that there's 

12 any particular evidence that there was a clear 

13 separation that, you know, for instance, once 

14 a building, for lack of a better term, went 

15 hot, I don't know that there's any particular 

16 evidence to say that construction workers were 

17 excluded from that building from that time 

18 forward. And so I guess I don't have a 

19 particularly strong opinion on the start date.

20 MR. STIVER: This is John. 

21 Actually, I did some research on when the 

22 different buildings came into production, and 
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1 Plant 6, the machine shop, was actually, 

2 materials were being sent in there to be 

3 worked on in 1952. The others, as best I can 

4 tell, came online sometime in 1953. 

5 So we have this period of time 

6 over two years where you've got all this 

7 construction going on. As you said, there 

8 really is no clear delineation or separation 

9 of the subcontractors or construction workers 

10 from the NLO employees. And you have a source 

11 of exposure, potential, the uranium being 

12 handled and processed. In the pilot plants 

13 and the specialty machine shop, we have 

14 evidence from the SRDBs.

15 I believe the January 1st, 1951 is 

16 probably the most reasonable and claimant17 favorable start date. 

18 MR. BARTON: This is Bob Barton of 

19 SC&A. I agree with you there, John. I mean, 

20 I just, I don't know that we're ever going to 

21 have the sort of precision in the available 

22 documents to, you know, come up with a more 
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1 precise date to kind of start this thing at. 

2 So, you know, in my mind, the reference that 

3 you quoted earlier actually is kind of useful. 

4 I mean, most of the documents are from 1952, 

5 but you see that Catalytic Construction, which 

6 was the main construction contractor, I guess, 

7 at the time, they were intimately involved in 

8 a lot of these meetings about health and 

9 safety and about, you know, developing 

10 additional ventilation for some of these, you 

11 know, runs that they were doing.

12 So it's going to be very difficult 

13 and, as Stu said, there's really no evidence 

14 to say that they were, you know, 

15 subcontractors were excluded from these areas. 

16 So, in my mind, it's tough to say, to kind of 

17 cut the SEC short if, you know, if there was 

18 radioactive material on the site. There 

19 really doesn't appear to be any control to say 

20 subcontractors were not exposed to that, so, 

21 in my mind, it's going to be very difficult 

22 to, I guess, bring that suggested SEC start 
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1 date any further in the future, besides, you 

2 know, January of 1951. I mean, I don't think 

3 that documentation is ever going to give us 

4 that clear answer as to a different start 

5 date.

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: This is Brad. 

7 I agree with you, and I think we ought to err, 

8 if we do err, is in the claimant-favorable 

9 realm. So with your suggestion, then I'd say 

10 1951 would be the start date for that. Phil 

11 or Mark, do you have any questions on this? 

12 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: I totally agree 

13 on that one, I mean, just given the lack of 

14 other records. 

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. 

16 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, and I agree, 

17 Brad. It seems to me, I mean, trying to 

18 decide this one year, six months difference, I 

19 think, is not going to be worthwhile. So we 

20 should be claimant-favorable.

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. I 

22 appreciate that. Okay. Well, John, with that 
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1 taken care of, this is what we'll propose to 

2 the Board when we bring it up in July. I 

3 haven't seen any meeting place yet. I guess 

4 my backyard is open, I hear. 

5 But, anyway, we'll proceed on to 

6 item two or, I guess, item three. 

7 MR. STIVER: Yes, this issue has 

8 been alive for quite some time. It was, I 

9 guess we could say it was dormant for about a 

10 three-year period, about November of 2010 

11 until February of 2013. 

12 This relates to the coworker model 

13 for thorium-232 in the pre-1968 environment, 

14 particularly from 1953 up to 1967, when the 

15 model was really based on these Daily Weighted 

16 Exposure studies that were conducted by the 

17 Health and Safety Laboratory. And we've been 

18 through a lot of discussions about the DWEs 

19 and the uncertainties associated with them and 

20 some of the limitations and so forth. And 

21 then Revision 5 of the model, the most recent 

22 one, SC&A is in general agreement that this 
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1 approach can be used to bound the thorium 

2 intakes for the workers during those periods 

3 of time. 

4 And I'll just kind of give little 

5 recaps. I don't know if Mark has been 

6 involved or been listening to some of these 

7 meetings. He's been really busy. But the 

8 main difference between Revision 3 and 

9 Revision 5 is that Revision 3 was kind of 

10 predicated on this notion that you could, 

11 there was enough information in the workers' 

12 files to where they could be placed in certain 

13 buildings in certain years. 

14 And so we were kind of tentatively 

15 in agreement with their approach and theory 

16 but with a caveat that they needed to 

17 demonstrate the ability to actually place 

18 workers at that level of precision. And Bob 

19 Barton did a study last fall, I believe the 

20 issue date was November 2012, that 

21 demonstrated that, indeed, that was not 

22 possible to place workers at that level of 
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1 precision. 

2 And so Revision 4 came out. We 

3 had problems with Revision 4 because it was a 

4 lot of the same issues that we had with the 

5 very first model they had. We wrote a big, 

6 pretty comprehensive, lengthy report in 2009 

7 highlighting the problems we had with that 

8 model.

9 And so Revision 5, basically, went 

10 back to the Revision 3 approach with a couple 

11 of differences, one being that, rather than 

12 trying to place workers at a particular 

13 facility in a particular building in a 

14 particular year, what they did was they took 

15 the entire set of DWEs for a given year and 

16 then take the highest of those DWEs for 

17 throughout the entire complex for a given year 

18 and then assign that to everybody with a GSD 

19 of five.

20 And in looking through the data, 

21 it looked like things were okay from `54 up 

22 through about 1964. Remember, in 1964 there's 
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1 the DWE study that had the Stokes Furnace 

2 operations. This was a period where casting 

3 and re-melting was going on, which is one of 

4 the dirtier jobs, actually one of the dirtiest 

5 jobs in the entire facility. I know there's a 

6 good representation of data for all the 

7 different types of tasks, and I believe it 

8 comes in at about 5 or 6 MAC for that 

9 particular, if you scale it back to the 

10 earlier time period of 70 dpm per cubic meter 

11 for MAC.

12 And so we were okay with that, but 

13 that still left us with this three-year 

14 period, `65 through `67. And the problem here 

15 is you've got data, you have three different 

16 plants that are processing thorium, but you 

17 only have DWEs for two of them. And that was 

18 Plant 1 and then Plant 8 in 1966. But you had 

19 work going on in Pilot Plant during that 

20 period, and there's no DWE data. And so we 

21 have a problem. Okay. Well, how are we going 

22 to ever possibly put a plausible bound on 
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1 these exposures when you're missing data from 

2 one of the plants where some of the most 

3 thorium-related activities were going on? 

4 And this is, NIOSH was then tasked 

5 to go look at data. Mark and Stu indicated 

6 there actually were air-sampling data for 

7 those years. And, actually, they came out and 

8 they posted some spreadsheets that contained

9 breathing zone samples and general air samples 

10 for the years 1965 and 1967. 

11 And I asked Bob to look at this 

12 data over the weekend, which he did, in usual 

13 form. And he put together a little document 

14 called "A Preliminary Look at 1964 to 1967 

15 NIOSH Data." So, Bob, if you'd like to tell 

16 everybody a little bit about the statistics 

17 you did and some of the findings and concerns.

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Hey, John, this 

19 is Brad. Now, my understanding is on this 

20 Live Meeting and so forth, we're supposed to 

21 be able to see some of these documents. Have 

22 these been posted up? Because I'm not seeing 
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1 anything popping up. Are they on there or --

2 MR. STIVER: You know, I didn't 

3 get a Live Meeting notification, so I assumed 

4 we weren't --

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Oh, well, okay. 

6 I guess I'll shut that off then. Okay. 

7 Thank you. 

8 MR. STIVER: That information, all 

9 those spreadsheets and --

10 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu. I 

11 think I can pull up and share what's on, if I 

12 can remember how to do this. You're looking 

13 at the -- which are you looking at now? The 

14 preliminary look at `64 - `67, the sheets, the 

15 Word file that Bob posted over the weekend? 

16 MR. STIVER: Yes. 

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Do the 

18 people on Live Meeting see this now? 

19 MR. KATZ: Yes. Yes, it's up, 

20 Stu. 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. It's Table 

22 1, log-normal Fit of NIOSH Data, `64 to `67, 
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1 right?

2 MR. BARTON: Yes, Stu, this is Bob 

3 Barton. I think that's what we're trying to 

4 look at right now. As John said, we kind of 

5 took a preliminary look at the spreadsheets 

6 that you had posted and, you know, we fit 

7 these data points to a log-normal 

8 distribution, you know, calculated the 95th 

9 percentile, just to really get an idea of, you 

10 know, the kind of magnitudes we're talking 

11 about here and how that kind of compares to 

12 the other thorium plants during that `64 to 

13 `67 period. 

14 So as you can see here, all the 

15 way to the right there, we have, essentially, 

16 the intake rates that would be derived from 

17 these breathing zone samples, as you had laid 

18 out in sort of the Word document commentary 

19 that NIOSH had sent out. You know, we're only 

20 going to consider the breathing zone samples, 

21 not the general air, and only those that were 

22 specifically delineated as thorium.
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1 So these values are kind of here 

2 for comparison. And if we're looking at, you 

3 know, `65 and `67, which is really what we're 

4 talking about here, at that 95th percentile, 

5 the intake rates, as you can see, in `65, it's 

6 about 1.5 nanocurie per day. In `67, it's 

7 3.2. 

8 These are actually bounded by 

9 Plant 1 in the currently-proposed methodology. 

10 And, really, what the whole issue here was, 

11 we didn't have this data to really look at 

12 last time, so we're kind of asking ourselves 

13 the question, you know, could the exposure 

14 potential be decidedly different in the Pilot 

15 Plant to where, you know, we can't bound the 

16 doses from thorium during those years?

17 What this table really 

18 demonstrates, in my mind, is that we're really 

19 in the same ballpark. In fact, as I just 

20 said, at the 95th percentile, the Plant 1 

21 derived intakes will bound what we're seeing 

22 from this data set from the Pilot Plant. 
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1 So, in my mind, we have this sort 

2 of benchmark of comparison to say, okay, well, 

3 you know, we do have these samples in the 

4 Pilot Plant, you know, we're only going to 

5 look at the breathing zone, so those are going 

6 to be, in general, a dirtier sample. And, you 

7 know, we pick up the 95th percentile and clear 

8 that to the 95th percentile at the other 

9 plants, specifically Plant 1. And, you know, 

10 we're in the same ballpark here.

11 So we have that benchmark of 

12 comparison now to say that, no, it doesn't 

13 look like, to us, that the intake potential in 

14 the Pilot Plant was decidedly different than 

15 the other thorium operations going on. So, in 

16 my mind, that sort of takes care of the SEC 

17 angle. And then now we're kind of wading into 

18 Site Profile territory, at least that's my 

19 opinion on it. I don't know if anyone has any 

20 comments on that. 

21 MS. BALDRIDGE: This is Sandra. I 

22 have a question. It was mentioned that the 
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1 Revision 5 was using the DWEs assigned to 

2 everybody from 1954 through 1964 for thorium; 

3 is that correct?

4 MR. BARTON: Sandra, this is Bob 

5 Barton. Actually, we're looking at using 

6 Daily Weighted Exposures in the air-sampling 

7 data to assign thorium doses from 1953 up 

8 through 1967, and that would be for everybody.

9 MS. BALDRIDGE: Okay. 

10 MR. BARTON: That could be 

11 potentially exposed.

12 MS. BALDRIDGE: Okay. Does that 

13 include Plant 6?

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, this is Stu 

15 Hinnefeld. Our expectation is that we would 

16 assign the highest DWE for a given year to 

17 everybody who's potentially exposed because 

18 people could move about the plant and, you 

19 know, from individual dose reconstruction, we 

20 can't necessarily put people in a specific, 

21 with reliability that they were here, you 

22 know, an entire year. You know, we know their 
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1 main assignment may have been some place, but 

2 our expectation is that we will assign the 

3 highest DWE for a given year to everybody 

4 that's potentially exposed in that year. 

5 MS. BALDRIDGE: But my question is 

6 were the DWEs available for Plant 6? 

7 MR. HINNEFELD: I believe --

8 MS. BALDRIDGE: For thorium.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: I believe there 

10 were some years when -- well, for the years, I 

11 believe, when the Plant 6 worked on thorium, I 

12 believe they are available.

13 MS. BALDRIDGE: Okay, thank you. 

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Bob, this is 

15 Brad. So what you're telling me is that we 

16 don't have an SEC issue for the early `64 to 

17 `67 time period then, according to what SC&A 

18 is proposing? 

19 MR. BARTON: Yes, Brad, this is 

20 Bob Barton. That is certainly my opinion. 

21 Like I said, at the last meeting, really the 

22 question was we have no way to compare what 
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1 the intake potential might have been in the 

2 Pilot Plant because we didn't have Daily 

3 Weighted Exposures for that year. We only 

4 had, you know, we had breathing zone samples 

5 and we had general air samples, but they 

6 weren't really delineated by the time spent on 

7 individual tasks, so we really didn't have 

8 that benchmark.

9 Now, what NIOSH has done is 

10 they've gone and compiled what available data 

11 there is, breathing zone and air sampling. So 

12 we have this sort of basis to actually compare 

13 the intake potential. And then, in my mind, 

14 it really becomes just a question of, you 

15 know, how do we take that data and implement 

16 it to make sure that it's claimant-favorable? 

17 But I think that the data exists that we can 

18 be reasonably sure that we can bound the 

19 intake potential in that Pilot Plant. And, 

20 obviously, we have some Daily Weighted 

21 Exposures for the other plants during that 

22 time frame.
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1 So we have this method to 

2 reasonably say to ourselves, you know, we 

3 don't have some, you know, strange occurrences 

4 happening in the Pilot Plant that might not be 

5 reflective of the rest of the plant. You 

6 know, there wasn't, based on these air 

7 sampling data that we see, there's not some 

8 crazy exposure potential going on there that 

9 was not reflective of the Daily Weighted 

10 Exposures that we do have.

11 So given that we have this method 

12 of comparison now, in my mind, we can sort of 

13 bound the problem. 

14 MR. STIVER: This is John Stiver. 

15 I would say one more thing about that. Bob, 

16 I'm just going to expand. You know, the data 

17 for the Pilot Plant in `65 and `67 are 

18 unweighted air samples. So if everything else 

19 was equal, if you were to take a DWE with the 

20 same data where you actually had weighting by 

21 the different tasks, you would expect it to be 

22 a bit lower than what you would get from the 
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1 unweighted data. And earlier we're comparing 

2 the numbers that Bob has told you, 1.52 

3 nanocuries per day for 1965 for the Pilot 

4 Plant compares with 1.9 nanocuries per day for 

5 Plant 1, and they're both at the 95th 

6 percentile, the DWE being a GSD of five. So 

7 that would be the 95th generated from that.

8 So it's pretty, pretty good weight 

9 of evidence argument that the Plant 1 data,

10 which is really more representative of actual 

11 worker exposures to begin with, is not only 

12 preferable but it's certainly bounding in this 

13 case. And that leaves the year of 1966 for 

14 the Pilot Plant. 

15 The fact that, based on the 

16 thorium time line that's been developed, that 

17 there were no big differences in activities 

18 taking place in the Pilot Plant between `65 

19 and `67, you would not expect a big spike, the 

20 potential for something like that happening. 

21 It would be pretty low, unless there was a big 

22 accident of some type, which would probably be 
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1 documented. So we're pretty confident that --

2 and we also have the data for Plant 8 in 1966, 

3 which is higher than either by a factor of 

4 seven, than either Plant 1 or the surrounding 

5 data or the adjacent data for Pilot Plant.

6 So I think all the things combined 

7 gives us a pretty good confidence. We're 

8 feeling pretty confident that we could move 

9 ahead for those years using the data that are 

10 available. 

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, I guess 

12 maybe this is a question for Stu then is how -

13 - or Mark. You said that people could have 

14 possibly been exposed. I guess that brings to 

15 my question of how are you going to separate 

16 these people out? 

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, it's not 

18 clear that we will. I think, I mean, that's a 

19 Site Profile issue, I think, if there are 

20 people to be separated out. It would be, I 

21 think, a fairly rare occurrence to say that 

22 people are not potentially exposed. I mean, 
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1 there could be cooks, for instance, or we 

2 might have enough information to say that 

3 someone worked in the administration building 

4 their entire career. 

5 But if you're talking about 

6 security officers or all the maintenance 

7 people, of course, there are not very many 

8 people that you can have much confidence in 

9 excluding. 

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Well, I 

11 just, I realize this is a Site Profile issue, 

12 but I kind of feel like I have an obligation 

13 to make sure we know kind of how we're going 

14 to be able to do this because it makes it very 

15 difficult if this isn't an SEC issue but we 

16 can't really put it to the people that need to 

17 be able to put it there.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: I think we can 

19 make some assumptions and, you know, I think 

20 we can make some decisions and not miss anyone 

21 inappropriately. I mean, you have to have 

22 some, you have to have a decent level of 
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1 evidence to move them out of the exposed 

2 group.

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Now, in 

4 the -- John, this is probably a question for 

5 you. Now, you're saying that this information 

6 is going to be able to cover all of the plants 

7 and it gives us a good representation of all 

8 of the plants where they have thorium going 

9 on, correct? 

10 MR. STIVER: Yes. The only, I 

11 guess the only issue we had was during that 

12 four-year period or, actually, a three-year 

13 period where there was no DWE data for the 

14 Pilot Plant. And so now we have the air15 sampling data, which you can then compare back 

16 to the other two buildings where we do have 

17 the DWE data. And so that, basically, was the 

18 gist of the discussion.

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. And 

20 we've looked at this sort of validity of --

21 this information has come into us. We've 

22 checked this, where it's came from and this is 
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1 correct? 

2 MR. STIVER: Yes, we got the raw 

3 data back in 2009.

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

5 MR. STIVER: And what we did was 

6 go back and recreate the DWEs from the actual 

7 data and was able to recreate all of them. 

8 MEMBER GRIFFON: Brad, can I ask a 

9 question. This is Mark. 

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, sure. 

11 MEMBER GRIFFON: For John, I'm 

12 just curious, I mean I appreciate the idea of 

13 comparisons. I've promoted that from the 

14 beginning. But I'm wondering would the Pilot 

15 Plant compared to all the other plants where 

16 you had DWE data, what was the -- or maybe 

17 it's a NIOSH question -- but what was the 

18 hypothesis? In other words, were you assuming 

19 that the Pilot Plant would have been the worst 

20 exposures, or were you assuming they'd be 

21 similar, or what was the hypothesis going in, 

22 I guess? 
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, this is Stu, 

2 and I'll see what I can respond here. I think 

3 the hypothesis going in was that the work, in 

4 general, would be controlled across any of the 

5 plants in largely the same way. And so you 

6 would expect some similarity of exposures, 

7 unless there was something unusual going on in 

8 production. So I guess that's, that's what 

9 our opinion would have been going in. 

10 MEMBER GRIFFON: So differences of 

11 scale wouldn't have contributed to any 

12 expected differences anyway in exposure you 

13 don't think. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I mean, if 

15 you talk about scale, meaning that a Pilot 

16 Plant would have a lower production number 

17 than a larger plant, when you're interested in 

18 exposure and you're dealing with the highest 

19 exposure, you know, if the guy is busy, it 

20 doesn't matter if the Pilot Plant makes a 

21 fifth of what a production plant makes or a 

22 tenth of what the production plant works 
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1 because if the workers in the Pilot Plant are 

2 engaged regularly with the production, 

3 operation, whatever it happens to be, their 

4 exposure will be similar probably to somebody 

5 engaged in that same activity in one of the 

6 production plants. 

7 I think the scale issue might have 

8 to do more with how much time did the Pilot 

9 Plant spend on a particular operation because, 

10 as a Pilot Plant, things tended to start and 

11 stop. But without complete information about 

12 that, we're just going with the assumption 

13 that it was a year-long operation. 

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: And then maybe 

15 just a question. I haven't stayed up with all 

16 the revisions, I must admit, so I apologize. 

17 But can someone just refresh my memory on the 

18 actual DWE data itself? I mean, for a given 

19 year, for a given building, what kind of 

20 sampling period are you talking about? I'm 

21 trying to remember, you know, did they sample 

22 every month and compile all this data, or how 
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1 did they, how was it done for a given year for 

2 a given building? 

3 MR. HINNEFELD: I wonder if 

4 someone else is more familiar with the 

5 sampling regime. I know there were periodic 

6 DWE reports written during many of the years 

7 of Fernald's operation, and I don't recall 

8 right now the sampling regime, if anybody 

9 remembers that or not. 

10 The expectation, though, I think 

11 the application, you know, we're relying in 

12 our approach somewhat on the Davis and Strom 

13 paper that talked about when you have these 

14 DWEs, if you could apply a GSD of five, you 

15 should have a bounding result. And I think a 

16 part of that is the recognition that DWEs were 

17 not collected constantly, and you're going to 

18 have variations, so you place this pretty big 

19 GSD on your results in order to have some 

20 confidence and bounding.

21 I'm thinking, I'm trying to

22 remember a good place to look and see those 
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1 values that were seen. Is that what you're 

2 interested, in what the values were, the DWE 

3 values for the various buildings over the 

4 years? 

5 MEMBER GRIFFON: I'm wondering if 

6 it was, like did they do one data sampling 

7 that represented the whole year, or I'm trying 

8 to remember. You know, and I can certainly 

9 see if the plant was hit with the IH crew one 

10 day where work practices might, you know, vary 

11 when they see all these IH's show up to do 

12 sampling for a day, and you wonder if that's 

13 representative. Now, if it was done a lot 

14 over the course of a year or -- that's what 

15 I'm wondering is how much sampling per task.

16 One recollection I have is that 

17 there was some large variability in the test 

18 sampling. In fact, I remember values of like, 

19 I forget what the units were but, you know, 

20 activity units in the thousands and then the 

21 same task getting valued in the tens and then 

22 the average being, you know, like, say, 4,000 
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1 and zero, the average is 2,000. You know, 

2 that doesn't give you a lot of reassurance in 

3 the truth for that task.

4 So I'm just wondering how much 

5 sampling, again, how often it was sampled per 

6 building per year, and do we have confidence 

7 in that? I think SC&A has examined this, but 

8 I'm refreshing my memory more than anything.

9 MR. STIVER: Yes, this is John. 

10 I'm trying to refresh my memory. I did this 

11 about five years ago. I know what you mean. 

12 There are, just looking at some of the data 

13 for 1955 right now in Plant 9, and there are 

14 large variations. Some of the samples, like, 

15 say, there's three samples here. The high is 

16 about a factor of three over the low, and 

17 there's another 15-minute time period for 

18 eight samples and the variation is 125,000 

19 versus the low of 5,000.

20 And so there is that concern. 

21 That was one of the reasons that Davis and 

22 Strom did the uncertainty analysis on the six 
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1 facilities in the late `40s to early `50s, and 

2 I believe their analysis showed a GSD range 

3 from about four to six, I believe, if I'm not 

4 mistaken, and so recommended a GSD of five for 

5 both situations, which would be bounding. 

6 And, you know, they also had indicated that, 

7 if you didn't have DWEs, you could use the 

8 unweighted samples which would typically give 

9 you a much higher value. 

10 I could go back into the source 

11 data and take a look at the sampling frequency 

12 and maybe put together a summary of that, if 

13 that's what you would like to see. 

14 MEMBER GRIFFON: I mean, I think 

15 that might be good for an explanation to the 

16 full Board when we discuss this issue, you 

17 know, just to give the whole background of 

18 this issue. I don't know if that's possible 

19 in a couple of weeks. 

20 MR. STIVER: Well, we didn't look 

21 at any every one of the -- I believe we were 

22 charged to look at about three or four years, 
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1 three different plants, if I'm not mistaken, 

2 and all of them. And we did that as sort of 

3 to build a weight of evidence argument that 

4 the data were, indeed, representative and, you 

5 know, sufficiently abundant that we'd have 

6 some confidence in applying it across the 

7 entire year.

8 Obviously, even within a given 

9 worker, I mean, from one day to the next you 

10 can have really big variability. I mean, just 

11 look at some of the samples we've seen. So 

12 it's definitely a legitimate concern, but we 

13 could certainly go through and pull together 

14 some summary statistics for the full Board 

15 meeting.

16 MEMBER GRIFFON: Yes, I think that 

17 would be -- so, I mean, no one on the call 

18 remembers, like, was it one sampling campaign 

19 per year per building or was it multiple, or 

20 no one can --

21 MR. STIVER: It was not consistent 

22 from one building to the next. 
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1 MR. HINNEFELD: Mark, this is Stu. 

2 I'm pretty sure it wasn't one sampling 

3 campaign a year per building during the years 

4 when they were generating the DWEs. And I'm 

5 trying to recall now whether they -- they 

6 issued, like, these periodic reports. I was 

7 thinking it might be quarterly or, in some 

8 cases, maybe even monthly, but that sounds 

9 pretty frequent. But there were, I think, a 

10 series of samplings done over the course of 

11 the year in order to characterize a particular 

12 plant's, you know, exposure potential that 

13 they considered. There was an exposure study 

14 or exposure assessment. 

15 MR. ROLFES: Stu, this is Mark, 

16 and I'm looking at a spreadsheet titled "DWE 

17 Raw Data." It may contain Privacy Act 

18 information from back in February of 2009, I 

19 believe. And just looking at the first few 

20 results in here, the first year that is listed 

21 here is 1955. There's earlier data in 1953, 

22 but the year column wasn't sorted by year, 
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1 apparently, so it's not --

2 MR. STIVER: Yes, this is John. 

3 I'm looking at the same data set, Mark. I 

4 think what you have to do is go look at the 

5 individual air-sampling reports and see the 

6 frequency, you know, the source of all this 

7 data that was pulled together. 

8 MR. ROLFES: For example, in 1955, 

9 it looks like there's about, I don't know, 

10 almost 100 results from Plant 4. Then we've 

11 got --

12 MR. HINNEFELD: Hey, Mark, while 

13 we're on Plant 5 or Plant 4 in 1955, what kind 

14 of dates go along with those samples? 

15 MR. ROLFES: The dates aren't in 

16 these spreadsheets.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: So they're not in 

18 the spreadsheet. Okay. 

19 MR. BARTON: This is Bob Barton. 

20 I mean, I'm looking at one of the source Daily 

21 Weighted Exposure reports. This is for Plant 

22 9 in 1955, and, actually, in the title it says 
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1 "exposure study of Plant 9 personnel to 

2 airborne radioactive dust, May 17th to October 

3 31st, 1955." Now, how many times a particular 

4 worker at a job site was sampled during that 

5 period, I'm not sure that the reports go into 

6 that kind of detail. But, clearly, based on 

7 that title, the study, you know, was set up 

8 for a number of months. 

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: Okay. That's 

10 helpful. And a summary of statistics maybe 

11 for the Board meeting would be useful, just to 

12 give everyone a background on how this was put 

13 together. Thank you. 

14 MS. BALDRIDGE: This is Sandra. 

15 In the SEC petition, there was a document 

16 which was based, which was used in the court 

17 case where a gentleman was subpoenaed who was 

18 doing the air sampling as far as the 

19 procedures that he was instructed to use and 

20 the corruption in that procedure. Now, the 

21 data, is it being taken as it was reported 

22 without regard of the possibility that the 
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1 corruption that was suggested in court? Has 

2 that been discounted? 

3 You know, when there was a study 

4 done checking the data, what the result was 

5 that the data had been transferred correctly, 

6 but there was no study to determine whether 

7 the data itself was correct, especially with 

8 the air sampling.

9 MR. STIVER: Sandra, this is John 

10 Stiver. I might be able to clarify this a 

11 bit. I believe what you're referring to is 

12 the off-site exposure, and there was some 

13 question about the emissions rates and the 

14 sampling of the stacks and that sort of thing, 

15 whether it was done correctly. That was part 

16 of the lawsuit that was brought against the 

17 facility.

18 But we're looking at a completely 

19 different sampling regiment. The DWE data 

20 were collected by the Health and Safety 

21 Laboratory and used a very consistent approach 

22 over time.
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1 MS. BALDRIDGE: I actually believe 

2 --

3 MR. STIVER: I think it's a 

4 different type of sampling that you're talking 

5 about here, if I --

6 MS. BALDRIDGE: I believe there 

7 was reference to both types. One was based on 

8 zeros that had been entered that apply to the 

9 stack emissions, but there was also a subpoena 

10 regarding the actual proceeding of going into 

11 the plant and how close they had to be to a 

12 given area, the direction that they were 

13 supposed to turn the instrumentation, and 

14 returning with a result. If it was not 

15 acceptable, then the fellow was sent back out 

16 to re-do it until an acceptable result was 

17 received and, thereby, recorded. 

18 So there is a distinction between 

19 the in-plant air measurements and the stack. 

20 And both those documents are in the petition. 

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sandra, this is 

22 Brad. This was given in an affidavit and it's 
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1 --

2 MS. BALDRIDGE: Correct.

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: -- case. Do 

4 you remember what years he was talking there? 

5 Was it in the later years or --

6 MS. BALDRIDGE: Let me see if I 

7 can pull up those papers. I'll go mute and 

8 get back with you. 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Thank you. 

10 DR. MAURO: Brad, this is John 

11 Mauro. I recall this subject coming up many 

12 years ago when I was leading the Fernald 

13 effort, and there was considerable discussion 

14 of the matter. Unfortunately, I don't recall 

15 the full development of it, but there is a 

16 record on this subject from previous meetings 

17 that go well back.

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, if I 

19 remember right, John, though, part of our 

20 thing was we hadn't solved the SEC issue and 

21 that this would kind of become a moot point if 

22 the SEC wasn't in. And I'm looking at the ten 
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1 years that we already put in, and I was 

2 wondering if it was within that time period. 

3 I know that we spent a considerable amount of 

4 time trying to assure that the data that we 

5 did have was representative of what was 

6 actually there. But that is right, this 

7 always brought a question into the back when 

8 we, you know, I believe the term was, well, 

9 it's hard to prove a negative and so forth 

10 without any more data than that. 

11 But I just want to make sure that 

12 we're addressing the issues that were in the 

13 SEC, and this was one of the first questions 

14 that came up with the data and how could we 

15 accept some of this when the person that was 

16 taking it actually was the one that was saying 

17 it was bogus. And I know what you're saying, 

18 John. I'm trying to go through my mind as we 

19 went through there, but I think we kind of put 

20 that a little bit on the back burner because 

21 we wanted to wade in deeper into these issues 

22 and be able to -- and this is where the HIS-20 
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1 database came in, the transferring bit, and 

2 all this. I just want to make sure that we've 

3 addressed this, John. 

4 DR. MAURO: You know, I agree. 

5 And I only bring it up because I think, if we 

6 go back and search the transcripts, we 

7 probably will find where that matter has been 

8 discussed and the degree to which it remained 

9 an area that required further investigation or 

10 whether, for some reason, we felt that it was 

11 adequately addressed. I do not recall the 

12 outcome. 

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I personally, 

14 it was one of these that we could not, we 

15 could prove it per the documentation that this 

16 person put, but there was questions that, you 

17 know, it was just a disgruntled employee or 

18 whatever. But still we have this affidavit 

19 being used in a legal case questioning this 

20 air-sampling data. And I just, you know, 

21 we've knocked it around, I know, for a couple 

22 of years with you, John, but we decided that 
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1 it would proceed forward and we would take the 

2 data as it was and see if we could address the 

3 issue and problem later on. You know, if 

4 something really stood out in question of the 

5 data, abnormalities and so forth, if we could, 

6 you know, prove that all this -- this was 

7 always at Fernald and this was what has made 

8 it one of the problems is that there's too 

9 much conflicting information and we do have so 

10 much information there that it's hard 

11 sometimes to understand it all. 

12 But that was my feeling before we 

13 kind of landed on it. We were going to 

14 proceed with it and try to look at the data 

15 and see if we could prove it or disprove it 

16 one way or another. But there's always been 

17 this lingering question in this affidavit. 

18 This was, I believe, part of the SEC that came 

19 into this. The person that was actually 

20 taking the air-sampling data said that, you 

21 know, what I'd have to do is turn my back into 

22 the wind and, once I got a reading that was 
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1 good, then we were fine.

2 That brings into question a lot of 

3 samples, and this is the problem. I know 

4 that, in so many cases, we'd all like to deal 

5 with the data, but then we go into the 

6 integrity of the data. This one is a hard one 

7 because all the data looked pretty good on it. 

8 And I know that John Stiver has spent hours 

9 and hours trying to prove that, you know, the 

10 integrity of the data and so forth. 

11 But I just want to make sure this 

12 is, in my opinion, Fernald is coming to an 

13 end. I just want to make sure if we walk away 

14 from this that, myself, personally, that we've 

15 given it the best that we can and we've turned 

16 over every rock and everything that we can 

17 that, when we walk away from this, that it's 

18 been a good job that we've done. So that's 

19 the only reason I bring this up. 

20 MR. BARTON: Brad, this is Bob 

21 Barton. And you may remember a few years back 

22 the Work Group had tasked us with coming up 
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1 with strategies to kind of try to get our head 

2 around this issue of potential data 

3 falsification. That wasn't geared, 

4 necessarily, directly at the air-sampling 

5 data. We were really kind of looking at the 

6 uranium urinalysis data to see if that kind of 

7 held up, and we came up with a number of 

8 strategies, one of them which was to compare 

9 urinalysis results for some of these high10 exposed workers in the DWE reports to see if 

11 maybe their bioassay results kind of mirrored 

12 the fact that they were in these high-dust 

13 environments. 

14 And, you know, we did some sort of 

15 legwork to kind of figure the feasibility of 

16 that and really the feasibility of being able 

17 to come to a conclusion on it. And there was 

18 some very fruitful Work Group discussion at 

19 the time about it, and we kind of all came out 

20 on the same page that, you know, any strategy 

21 that we tried to adopt has really, you know, 

22 put the data to the question to see if it held 
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1 up. All strategies were really fraught with 

2 peril and you really, there was no assurance 

3 you'd ever come out with any sort of 

4 reasonable conclusion. I mean, there's just 

5 so much variability in urinalysis and body 

6 burdens and all these sorts of uncertainty 

7 regarding the data set that, you know, like 

8 you said, it's just, it's very hard to sort of 

9 prove the negative and say, well, here's the 

10 smoking gun and, clearly, this data does not 

11 hold up. 

12 But we did, in my mind, perform 

13 some due diligence with regard to data 

14 falsification a couple of years ago. It's 

15 just a very difficult thing to ever prove 

16 analytically. 

17 MR. STIVER: This is John Stiver. 

18 I can weigh in a little bit on that, too. 

19 Yes, I remember there was discussions and, 

20 basically, determined that, you know, you 

21 can't prove a negative. And there are many 

22 sources of variation, but one of the things we 
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1 started looking at was, well, is there some 

2 kind of systematic bias? I mean, do you see 

3 some kind of a suppression of results that 

4 might correlate with some pre-determined 

5 level, like, say, for example, one MAC, 

6 whatever the maximum permissible concentration 

7 was at the time.

8 And so I would just draw 

9 everybody's attention to Plant 9 in 1955, 

10 which was one of the things we're going to 

11 talk about here from kind of a more Site 

12 Profile issue, and here there are, I believe, 

13 the top five DWEs range from about 230 up to 

14 685 MAC. And these also correlate with some 

15 health and safety reports that identified the 

16 fact that there was just, it was kind of a 

17 crash program in 1955 and there was a real 

18 problem with dust loading up to like half a 

19 gram per cubic meter, and those are the kind 

20 of numbers you actually see when you take the 

21 MAC data and back-calculate to a dust load, 

22 assuming thorium at 2.2 ten to the minus seven 
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1 curies per gram. So it's very low specific 

2 activity.

3 And so you come up with a 

4 situation where, even if you were to take that 

5 high MAC and try to apply it to a group of 

6 workers, that corresponds to a dust loading of 

7 about 100 milligrams per cubic meter, which is 

8 right at the tolerance limit for human 

9 physiology. 

10 So that was one of the issues that 

11 we were struggling with last week is, well, 

12 what do you do? I mean, even in the DWE 

13 reports, they say that during the high dust14 loading operations people wore respiratory 

15 protection. And, you know, if you a apply 

16 protection factor of ten or a hundred and so 

17 forth to those high-dust short-duration 

18 exposures, you wind up with an air 

19 concentration that's quite a bit lower than 

20 that.

21 So in my mind, I mean, if there 

22 was some kind of systematic falsification 
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1 going on, you just wouldn't see that kind, 

2 you'd see some kind of a disconnect where you 

3 have a report saying that the dust levels were 

4 impermissibly high and needed to be changed, 

5 yet you come up with these results that were 

6 kind of suspiciously low. And here you have a 

7 situation where the results are pretty much 

8 consistent with the stated contamination 

9 levels that were observed.

10 Once again, I mean, you're never 

11 going to prove whether this is, you know, 

12 there might have been some falsification, you 

13 know. Maybe there was. I don't know how 

14 you'd ever tell. 

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Go ahead, John. 

16 I'm sorry. 

17 MR. STIVER: That's really all I 

18 had to say about that. 

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: All right. And 

20 I understand what you're saying, and I know 

21 that we have spent an awful lot of time on 

22 this. I just want to -- and, you know, now 
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1 that you're jogging my mind and, Bob, I 

2 appreciate your comment because I remember 

3 that we spent some time digging into this, 

4 that we could prove it or not, and we really 

5 never just come up with anything clear.

6 I just want to make sure, you 

7 know, that, as we bring this to the Board, 

8 that we make sure that we've covered 

9 everything we can. And I understand what 

10 you're saying, John. We've seen some 

11 astronomical samples. But like you say, it's 

12 borderline right at the max where people can 

13 even breathe in it anymore. And I understand 

14 that. It just comes back to one of my things 

15 that Fernald was a pretty nasty place.

16 So I just want to be able to make 

17 sure, and Sandra is one of them that has been 

18 battling with this. And I want to make sure 

19 that we make sure that she understands what we 

20 have looked at all of this and that, you know, 

21 this is one of them that's been hard because 

22 we could not really prove it or disprove it 
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1 either. But we have to go off what the data 

2 that we had.

3 MS. BALDRIDGE: This is Sandra. I 

4 found the document. On the online petition, 

5 it's identified as SEC IS 9362, and it's dash 

6 161 is the way it's numbered. It's the trial 

7 affidavit. At the bottom, it is PE 747. The 

8 fellow worked at Fernald from September 14th, 

9 1953 until March 28th, 1971. His 

10 responsibility was to conduct surveys, do 

11 sampling, air dust sampling, toxic gas, 

12 ventilation, measuring the dust collectors. 

13 Just some of the things that I 

14 have noted was I used a homemade sampler. 

15 Paper was not protected on the front. For 

16 example, that it was possible to lose some of 

17 the dust if you were bumped. You could also 

18 lose dust from transferring the filter paper 

19 into an envelope. When I did air dust 

20 surveys, I could get a higher reading if I 

21 stood in the direction that the dust was 

22 blowing from the employee that I was sampling. 
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1 Conversely, I could get a lower reading if I 

2 stood in the opposite direction from the way 

3 the dust was blowing. 

4 I recorded depending on how dirty 

5 the operation was. I stood on one side, the 

6 reading might be zero, while on the other side 

7 it might be 50 times higher than the maximum 

8 allowable concentration.

9 To sample, the sample should be 

10 taken in the direction that the dust is 

11 blowing if the employee is subjected to the 

12 dust. When I got air dust survey results and 

13 they were above the MAC, I was told by my 

14 supervisors that the results were in error and 

15 I was told to go back and resample. That's 

16 just an example. 

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Thank you, 

18 Sandra. I appreciate that. And, you know, 

19 sitting here listening to this, this has 

20 almost been seven years, I remember going 

21 through this quite a bit because one of the 

22 questions that came up was that, you know, 
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1 nowadays, when we're doing a lot of this 

2 sampling, we've got a rated capacity air flow 

3 that really makes it able to be, you know, 

4 calibrated and also be able to justify a lot 

5 that's going in there. I know, in the earlier 

6 years, a lot of this really wasn't done. I 

7 remember bringing that up.

8 So this information has always 

9 been in question. But we need to make sure 

10 that, as we do bring this before the Board, 

11 that they, I guess, understand the uncertainty 

12 that is in there because, in my opinion, there 

13 is no more data that we can find. There's no 

14 more, you know, the data, in my mind, is 

15 questionable just from the standpoint of how 

16 it was made. But, John, your point is very 

17 well taken that a lot of this data was right 

18 up there in the maximum that's tolerable for 

19 somebody to be able to even work in.

20 MR. STIVER: You know, Brad, I'd 

21 also indicate that most of the DWEs that were 

22 used in the study are significantly over one 
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1 MAC. If there was some kind of systematic 

2 falsification to suppress readings, I don't 

3 think you'd see that. But it's just another 

4 piece of evidence. 

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I'm trying to 

6 think of how I'm going to present this to the 

7 Board to be able to look into this because I 

8 know, and, Sandra, you've been involved in 

9 most of these, that we've overturned every 

10 rock there is that we can on this, as we 

11 proceed forward on this. But I just want to 

12 make sure that we've also addressed some of 

13 the concerns that were in the SEC petition, 

14 too. And, you know, there's going to be an 

15 uncertainty on this, and I guess when the 

16 Board votes we'll have to vote on knowing 

17 that, too. 

18 MR. ROLFES: This is Mark Rolfes. 

19 I just wanted to point out also in the 

20 affidavit that the individual had provided to 

21 us, I remember, now that I see the document 

22 here in front of me, I remember some of the 
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1 discussions that we did have, and this 

2 individual had indicated that he was sampling 

3 the jolter in Plant 5 where ventilation 

4 modification had just been made. And he 

5 basically had sampled, got a high result, and 

6 was told to resample five or six times by his 

7 supervisor. And there's nothing in here that 

8 indicates that the other data would have been 

9 dismissed or deleted or not recorded. 

10 And also, in addition, I remember 

11 this discussion because Plant 5 was not one of 

12 the plants that was producing thorium at 

13 Fernald. So --

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: This was more 

15 uranium data, more uranium samples, Mark?

16 MR. ROLFES: I'm sorry. What was 

17 that, Brad?

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I'm sorry. 

19 This is Brad again. This was more the uranium 

20 samples?

21 MR. ROLFES: Correct. This was 

22 for Plant 5 where this individual had 
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1 indicated that he had to take the sample, 

2 which came back high, and then was 

3 subsequently directed by his supervisor to 

4 resample five or six times. So this occurred 

5 in Plant 5, and it's likely, when he's talking 

6 about the jolters where they're compacting 

7 green salt into one of the reduction bombs 

8 prior to putting it into the furnace. 

9 MS. BALDRIDGE: That information 

10 isn't in the printed affidavit. 

11 MR. ROLFES: What information --

12 MS. BALDRIDGE: That would be 

13 based on whatever discussion he had with you.

14 MR. ROLFES: I'm sorry. What --

15 MS. BALDRIDGE: I said that that 

16 information is not in his sworn affidavit.

17 MR. ROLFES: Okay. I can, I'll 

18 read for the record here what number seven 

19 says. This is from page 170 of 367 pages that 

20 we received as part of Form B. What's your 

21 SEC petition --

22 MS. BALDRIDGE: I see it now.
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1 MR. ROLFES: Okay. I can point 

2 out it basically says, "On several occasions 

3 during the term of my employment, I got air

4 dust survey results that were above the MAC. 

5 I was told by my supervisors that the results 

6 were in error, and I was told to go back and 

7 resample. I remember one specific occasion 

8 when I was sampling the jolter in Plant 5 

9 where ventilation modifications had just been 

10 made, and I was sent out there to sample the 

11 air. The production plant employee was 

12 working over the jolter, and the dust was 

13 coming up into his face. I obtained results 

14 that were above the MAC. I think that my 

15 results were correct the first time that I 

16 sampled because they were similar to the 

17 results that I had obtained before the 

18 modification, and the modifications were not 

19 effective. Nevertheless, my supervisors told 

20 me to go back and resample. When I resampled, 

21 the results were still above the MAC. I was 

22 sent back by my supervisors five or six times. 
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1 Finally, I stood in the opposite direction 

2 from the employee from the way that the dust 

3 was blowing, and I obtained results that were 

4 below the MAC. When I returned the results 

5 that was below the MAC to the health and 

6 safety division, it was an acceptable result."

7 That was all. 

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. I 

9 appreciate that, Mark. Mark or Phil, do you 

10 have any questions? I'm sure that this is 

11 opening up memory lane here because, if I 

12 remember, this was also why, a lot of the 

13 reason why we were using the abundance of the 

14 urinalysis for uranium was part of these 

15 questions in here. Is there anything that, 

16 are there any questions you have, Mark or 

17 Phil? 

18 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: No, I don't. 

19 That still is a gray area to me. 

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I understand. 

21 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: On those 

22 samples.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes. Well, and 

2 I understand and it kind of clears it up, what 

3 Mark was saying. This is, what we're 

4 discussing today is really pertaining towards 

5 the thorium samples. But, you know, it just 

6 brings -- there's a lot of questions in there.

7 Mark, do you have any questions? 

8 Mark Griffon? 

9 MEMBER GRIFFON: Nothing that 

10 hasn't been said, Brad. I mean, nothing that 

11 hasn't been said so far.

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. I 

13 appreciate that. So I guess -- so SC&A is 

14 proposing to the Board that, basically, for 

15 thorium, that they feel -- and, John, I'm just 

16 paraphrasing this, so correct me if I'm wrong 

17 -- that they feel that the DWE data is 

18 correct? Is that what I'm getting, John? 

19 MR. STIVER: Aside from any 

20 questions regarding the integrity of the data, 

21 which is, you know, something that has to be 

22 taken up by the Board, you know, what Mark 
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1 said definitely indicates that, at least on 

2 one occasion and one plant, there were 

3 attempts to get the levels down. But, you 

4 know, if you take the data at its face value 

5 and assume that it's reasonably 

6 representative, which we believe it is, and 

7 we'll go ahead and get the information on the 

8 dates of the studies that were conducted, pull 

9 all that together for the plant, but it 

10 appears that the strategy is claimant11 favorable, not necessarily in the extreme but 

12 it's certainly placing a plausible, you know, 

13 some workers got these really high values in a 

14 given year. And on top of that, you have a 

15 very large uncertainty factor, which is going 

16 to be factored into the means.

17 And so given that and given the 

18 fact that some of the reports for the 

19 situations that there were very dusty 

20 conditions that needed to be controlled better 

21 correlate well with what we're seeing in the 

22 dust studies. To me, that indicates there 
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1 certainly was a lot of situations where there 

2 was no attempt to try to contain levels below 

3 the MAC level definitely. Some are thousands 

4 of times higher than the MAC.

5 So given that weight of evidence, 

6 we believe that there are enough data for the 

7 thorium production facilities for those years 

8 when this activity was taking place and that 

9 we can place bounds on the exposures to the 

10 workers. There's some issues about timing and 

11 what to do about some of the extreme values 

12 that we're going to discuss in more of a Site 

13 Profile context. But, yes, Brad, I think what 

14 you said pretty well sums it up. 

15 MR. BARTON: Yes, John, this is 

16 Bob Barton. Just to kind of expand on what 

17 you just said, I think it's important not to 

18 lose sight of the fact that when we look at 

19 these Daily Weighted Exposure values, I mean, 

20 we're seeing workers who are in the hundreds 

21 of MAC, you know. In my mind, if there was a 

22 concerted systemic effort to artificially keep 
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1 those numbers low, I mean, I would think 

2 they'd be lower than, you know, seeing 200 and 

3 600 MAC.

4 So to me, I guess, part of the 

5 weight of evidence is, you know, the proof is 

6 in the pudding. If they were going to 

7 artificially try to keep these things low and 

8 within the established bounds, then I wouldn't 

9 think you'd see workers who are evaluated at 

10 the levels of, you know, hundreds of MAC for 

11 their Daily Weighted Exposure. 

12 So I think that's important to 

13 keep in mind. I mean, this is a very 

14 difficult issue, obviously. And as I said 

15 earlier, we did make a concerted effort to try 

16 to investigate and analytically see what our 

17 options were as far as trying to sort of vet 

18 this issue out and see if we really did have a 

19 problem. And that really kind of ran its 

20 course and we just couldn't go any farther and 

21 reasonably expect any sort of conclusions on 

22 that. 
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1 So, I mean, we are dealing with 

2 some very high values that, to me, don't 

3 indicate that they would be falsified. And 

4 I'm not sure there's much we can do, from an 

5 analysis standpoint, to take it any further 

6 and actually have a conclusion whether, you 

7 know, we can trust this data or not. 

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Bob, this is 

9 Brad. I look back at, you know, what we went 

10 through on everything there, and I remember 

11 that. But, you know, just there's this real 

12 gray area there that just kind of sits off, 

13 and we've never been able to prove it, nor 

14 have we been able to disprove it. And I just 

15 want to make sure that other Board Members 

16 remember this, as we proceed into it.

17 The other question, I realize, 

18 Stu, that this is going to become a Site 

19 Profile issue. I'm just looking at how this 

20 is going to be dispersed across the plant and 

21 what people are actually going to be covered 

22 by this. But I realize that will be a Site 
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1 Profile issue. I just wondered.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, I guess, 

3 sitting here, I wouldn't be able to say. And 

4 I'm not, it just seems like there are some, a 

5 few cases that it's pretty clear from the 

6 evidence in the file that the person spent 

7 their life in the cafeteria or in the 

8 administration --

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, yes. And 

10 I'm not --

11 MR. HINNEFELD: So I think the 

12 idea is to have that option available if the 

13 case is clear. And if the case isn't clear, 

14 then the person is considered exposed.

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right. And I 

16 guess, I guess what I'm trying to say in a 

17 roundabout way is I always want to keep in the 

18 back of our mind that little gray area, too, 

19 when we're choosing people. But this will 

20 also become a Site Profile issue because, you 

21 know, our contractor has shown us that yes, 

22 it's feasible for them to be able to perform 
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1 this, you know. It goes out of the SEC realm 

2 and goes to the Site Profile. 

3 So is there any more discussion on 

4 this from anyone before we proceed on? If 

5 not, John, I guess we'll proceed on to the 

6 next item.

7 MR. STIVER: Before we go on, just 

8 maybe get this clear, what we are tasked to do 

9 between now and the Board meeting is to go 

10 through and pull the dust reports and get a 

11 better handle on the dates and the period with 

12 which it took place.

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, and what 

14 Mark was saying has been one that has kind of 

15 weighed on me a lot of times. You know, they 

16 can pull an awful lot of samples in one day, 

17 and I would just, myself, I would like to be 

18 able to see kind of the spectrum of what, how 

19 often were these samples pulled to give us a 

20 better idea if they were just hit one or two 

21 times and taken a lot of data because, like 

22 Mark said, health and safety people coming in 
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1 and hitting a lot. And I'll be honest. We 

2 still see it today. You know, it's 

3 interesting that one month we'll have all this 

4 stuff and then won't have anything for another 

5 11 months.

6 So I just want to make sure that, 

7 to be able to make sure that we've got a broad 

8 enough spectrum of air sampling data to assure 

9 that it gives us an overall view of what we're 

10 saying and not just one shot every year. Am I 

11 correct saying that, Mark? This was your 

12 question? 

13 Anyway, that was kind of what I 

14 got from his question on that. So does that 

15 sound feasible to be able to do, John, or --

16 MR. STIVER: We have most of the 

17 air dust reports. We can certainly -- Bob, 

18 this is, I guess, to put you in the hot seat 

19 here, is this something you could do in the

20 next week or so?

21 MR. BARTON: Yes, John, I think 

22 that's certainly feasible. And I think it's 
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1 an important thing to get together for the 

2 full Board to kind of get more information as 

3 to what this data really means and what we're 

4 looking at here. And, you know, I gave the 

5 example earlier where, in 1955, Plant 9, the 

6 study took place between May and probably 

7 through October. I mean, that's nearly six 

8 months, and I imagine that, when we go into 

9 the other source documents, we'll probably see 

10 similar time frames. But, again, we'd have to 

11 pull that together. 

12 MR. STIVER: Yes, we looked at 

13 those five years ago. I know we already have 

14 them all filed away. It's just a matter of 

15 pulling them back out and putting together 

16 some summary statistics. 

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, I think 

18 it would just be important to be able to put 

19 this up before the full Board and help them 

20 understand why the direction that we're going 

21 and how much available data there really is 

22 there. So if you could try to get it cleared 
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1 as fast as we could so that the Board would 

2 have it, I'd appreciate it. 

3 MR. KATZ: Yes, and this is Ted. 

4 John, so if you would, since you're going to 

5 be presenting on Fernald on all these SEC 

6 elements at the Board meeting, if you could 

7 just, I mean, you can just have a slide that 

8 addresses this with a reference. And if you 

9 can make, it seems like, since this is not 

10 going to be, this is going to be aggregate 

11 data, it seems like it's easy to get it PA 

12 cleared and have a simple document, Bob, that 

13 we can also post for anyone from the public to 

14 be able to see to go with it. 

15 MR. STIVER: Yes, I think we could 

16 have a summary table with dates, number of 

17 samples.

18 MR. KATZ: Right, right. 

19 DR. MAURO: This is John. I just 

20 want to offer a perspective. You know, we 

21 recently had a Sufficient Accuracy Work Group 

22 conference call, and it was interesting 
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1 because everyone has been struggling with this 

2 concept. 

3 I only bring this up because we 

4 are actually having a conversation right now 

5 that goes right into the bowels of what is 

6 sufficient accuracy and when do we converge 

7 and agree, yes, this looks pretty good and 

8 when we say, no, this doesn't look so good? 

9 This is exactly what we're talking about.

10 I only bring it up because, 

11 keeping that in mind as we move through 

12 processes like this, it's going to help the 

13 Sufficient Accuracy Work Group come to grips 

14 with a very difficult question. 

15 MR. KATZ: Good point, John. 

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Thank you, 

17 John. I appreciate that. And I bet you've 

18 probably got a model that would help us, 

19 right?

20 DR. MAURO: Not a chance. 

21 MR. KATZ: Yes. Well, I mean, the 

22 sufficient accuracy issue will be on the 
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1 agenda for the Board meeting, so it will all 

2 be discussed, Fernald and that, in the same 

3 two days, which I think will be helpful. 

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: It really will 

5 because this is one that we have, we have 

6 faced, I'd say, probably every site almost 

7 that we've dealt with. 

8 Okay. Is there anything else --

9 MS. BALDRIDGE: This is Sandra. I 

10 just wanted to emphasize that I'm particularly 

11 interested in the DWEs for Plant 6 from 1960 

12 through `63 since the thorium processing in 

13 Plant 6 was the reason the SEC was filed. So 

14 I'm interested and especially since it had 

15 been omitted from the Site Profile before the 

16 dose reconstructions began, you know. What 

17 information had they found? What data did 

18 they get that they didn't have to verify the 

19 DWEs for Plant 6? That's just my personal 

20 concern. 

21 MR. BARTON: I was going to say --

22 this is Bob Barton. You had asked 
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1 specifically about if there was Daily Weighted 

2 Exposure data for Plant 6. 

3 MS. BALDRIDGE: Yes.

4 MR. BARTON: And I can tell you 

5 there are reports for Plant 6 from 1959 

6 through 1963; and, in fact, from 1960 to 1963 

7 the Plant 6 values are the limiting case, so

8 that would be the values we would use to apply 

9 to everyone at the plant, it would be the 

10 Plant 6 highest exposure for those years, so 

11 if that kind of helps clarify. I know that 

12 doesn't address the potential falsification 

13 issue, but we do have those Daily Weighted 

14 Exposures for Plant 6; and, in fact, we're 

15 going to be or the proposed methodology is 

16 going to be using the Plant 6 data for those 

17 years.

18 MS. BALDRIDGE: Thank you. 

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, thank you, 

20 Bob. I appreciate you bringing that in 

21 because, Sandra, we wanted you to understand 

22 that out of Plant 6 came some of the highest 
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1 data that they had and that they are going to 

2 be the ones that are used for this whole site. 

3 Thank you, Bob. 

4 Okay, John. Any Board Members 

5 have any questions before we leave this one? 

6 Okay. John, I'll -- 

7 MR. KATZ: Well, wait, Brad. I 

8 mean, so you have the recommendations of SC&A 

9 and you've had your discussion, but do you 

10 need a recommendation for the Board for this 

11 piece? 

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: You're correct. 

13 I was going to try to sum that up at the end 

14 there, but I guess we ought to take care of it 

15 now. So what we're looking, I guess, John, 

16 we've already taken care of this start date 

17 issue, so this is on the DWE era from 1965 to 

18 1967 of being an SEC issue, correct? 

19 MR. STIVER: Actually, there was 

20 one aspect about the start date on the DWEs 

21 that we haven't gotten to yet. 

22 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.
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1 MR. STIVER: And there is some 

2 thorium data in 1953. The original thorium 

3 time line started in 1954, but, as a result of 

4 some of this additional research, NIOSH found 

5 some thorium air samples, some breathing zone 

6 samples for December of 1953. And so the 

7 question then became -- this was in the, I 

8 believe in the -- let me pull this information 

9 out here. Yes, these were a series of samples 

10 that were collected in December.

11 And I guess there's a bit of a 

12 question in my mind. NIOSH, if you go to 

13 their little position paper here, at the 

14 bottom of page one, they're talking about the 

15 thorium exposure in 1953. And it's kind of an 

16 argument put forth here because other air 

17 samples for previous months did not identify 

18 them as being thorium, but this one set is 

19 identified. And the presumption is made then 

20 that there was no more, no thorium handled 

21 earlier in that year. And I'm just not really 

22 comfortable without some kind of 
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1 corroboration, sort of a materials manifest or 

2 receipts or something like that that would 

3 indicate when, in fact, thorium did arrive and 

4 was handled in the plant.

5 The fact that you just have some 

6 samples doesn't preclude the possibility that 

7 there were other samples earlier on or there 

8 was work being done for which sampling was 

9 done or maybe there was not sampling. And so 

10 just to take that one set of data and assume 

11 it's only for one month, we have a bit of a 

12 problem with that.

13 So I guess we'd be looking for 

14 some kind of corroboration, other than just an 

15 assumption, because the reports didn't say it 

16 was thorium. There wasn't a thorium hazard.

17 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay, John. This 

18 is Stu. There were other machining samplings 

19 in October and November, and so what you're 

20 saying is, well, they don't really say what 

21 they were and so it's not, so you're not 

22 comfortable with the conclusion that if it's 
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1 not specified as thorium than it's uranium; is 

2 that what you're saying? 

3 MR. STIVER: Yes, unless there was 

4 some kind of additional evidence that they 

5 didn't have thorium on-site until that time. 

6 I know, I believe it came from Simonds Saw, if 

7 I'm not mistaken. So it might be possible to 

8 identify when that material was shipped or 

9 received. It could possibly have been being 

10 machined for those previous two months, too. 

11 So until we know, I think it's kind of 

12 premature to cap the exposure period to one 

13 month until that's --

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So the 

15 question here is about the duration of the 

16 exposure.

17 MR. STIVER: Correct.

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

19 MR. BARTON: This is Bob Barton, 

20 if I could make a comment here. We had this 

21 conversation earlier, John, and I agree. I 

22 guess I kind of pose the question do we have 
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1 evidence to suggest that thorium was not 

2 handled or processed earlier in the year? 

3 And, in fact, there is one sort of, I guess 

4 it's a letter from early January in 1953, and 

5 it said, you know, we surveyed our available 

6 facilities and we're not ready to start 

7 receiving thorium yet. Again, this is January 

8 1953. But it also says, you know, in eight to 

9 ten weeks, when -- let's see here -- when 

10 Building 3005 is released, then we can start 

11 receiving thorium materials.

12 Now, when those materials might 

13 have actually showed up or when and if they 

14 were handled, I don't have any specific 

15 references to that. But I guess our concern 

16 is that we're kind of just using the fact that 

17 we have some air samples that are specifically 

18 labeled as thorium in December and we're just 

19 going to kind of assume that that reflects the 

20 fact that they didn't handle it until December 

21 when I'm not sure that's really been 

22 corroborated by any of the available 
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1 documentation. 

2 And like I said, there is this 

3 letter from January that says, well, we can't 

4 receive yet but in, you know, two months the 

5 facility will be ready to receive it. So I 

6 think that we need to kind of do a little more 

7 work there to definitely say that it was only 

8 handled in December or, if we can't say that, 

9 we probably need to expand the exposure 

10 period.

11 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So it's a 

12 question of exposure period then, how much of 

13 the year do you apply that 95th percentile air 

14 data to. 

15 MR. STIVER: I think it's kind of 

16 a twofold. Are the other data factored into 

17 the model and should they be; and then should 

18 the period be extended, as well, rather than 

19 just using that one set of data that's purely 

20 identified as thorium and applying it to an 

21 earlier time. 

22 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. That was 
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1 for what year? 

2 MR. HINNEFELD: 1953, 5-3. Well, 

3 with respect to the air-sample sheets that we 

4 have, I don't know we're going to have any 

5 more definitive statement about it. There is 

6 -- I don't know if we're going to find 

7 anything more definitive about the nature of 

8 these other air samples. 

9 And we, I looked at the, I looked 

10 at the monthly reports that I could find from 

11 the period; and, unfortunately, we don't have 

12 a complete set. And a lot of times the safety 

13 and health department reports will describe 

14 things that are going on of interest to them. 

15 Unfortunately, we don't have a complete set, 

16 at least that I didn't find. I found a file 

17 that had quite a lot of them, but it was not 

18 complete. 

19 MR. STIVER: Well, I would just 

20 say -- this is John again -- just from the 

21 standpoint of claimant favorability, if there 

22 is uncertainty, we are kind of unclear about 
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1 what type of material is being machined here, 

2 I'd just make a presumption that it's a 

3 thorium and go ahead and use the whole data 

4 set. I mean --

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, yes.

6 MR. STIVER: -- significantly 

7 higher than the one that you're using, but 

8 there's some up around 15 MAC or so.

9 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes. One thing 

10 that comes to mind, and I only know this 

11 because we've been looking at it for a week, 

12 in another document, I believe it's the DWE 

13 study for Plant 9 in 1955, the one where they 

14 have the really high numbers, the writer of 

15 the DWE report makes some statement about the 

16 technology at the time didn't allow this 

17 material to be machined with coolants. And so 

18 that's contributed to the airborne in a 

19 particular job. 

20 And in some of these samples, the 

21 July 30th samples from Pilot Plant, some of 

22 these, they are machining things with coolant 
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1 sprays on the item being machined, it sounds 

2 like. So, to me, that is evidence that they 

3 were machining uranium above and beyond the 

4 fact that there's no specification of what 

5 they were sampling for. 

6 You know, I guess it's not 

7 definitive. I mean, you're kind of looking at 

8 scraps of information. And I think all we're 

9 going to see is scraps of information. I 

10 think, as you suggested, John, it would be a 

11 fairly simple matter to just say, well, let's 

12 take all these samples that could be thorium 

13 and let's include them in the lot and then 

14 expand the exposure time. I don't know that 

15 it matters all that much. I mean, it will 

16 matter in terms of the dose for that one year. 

17 But the evidence on -- to me, 

18 there's evidence that the uranium was kind of 

19 an unusual, rare thing that they did, and they 

20 noted it when they were sampling for thorium. 

21 But on the other hand, that's sort of a 

22 conclusionary, that's a conclusion I reached, 
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1 and I've certainly discovered, as you go 

2 through this process we've been or I've been 

3 on for ten years, is things that you would 

4 like to be true tend to look true to you. And 

5 I don't just mean me, I mean all of us. 

6 So I guess I think we're in the 

7 vicinity of this being a Site Profile issue, 

8 and I think maybe there's some things -- so I 

9 think we can finish up after the Board 

10 meeting, but I think you make a valid point 

11 that it was a pretty firm conclusion to reach 

12 that they only did them in December because 

13 that's the only time you have samples from. 

14 That's a pretty, that's a pretty gutsy 

15 conclusion to reach. 

16 MR. STIVER: Well, yes, I think, 

17 given Bob's note that he found, they're 

18 possibly going to receive it fairly early in 

19 that year. But just because we are uncertain 

20 and, you know, err on the side of claimant 

21 favorability, there's certainly no indication 

22 -- you know, you did mention the cooling 
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1 issue, but there's no other indication that 

2 that other data set may not be thorium.

3 It comes down to, like you said, I 

4 mean, you tend to find the evidence that 

5 you're looking for without necessarily 

6 consciously doing that. But I think we're all

7 guilty of it to some extent. It's kind of 

8 hard to stay at the objective level we need to 

9 be. 

10 MS. JESSEN: Well, this is Karin 

11 Jessen from the ORAU team. What was the SRDB 

12 number that you provided for that memo in 

13 January of `53? 

14 MR. STIVER: Yes, one second. Let 

15 me get that number for you. Okay. I'm 

16 showing it as SRDB 28884. 

17 MS. JESSEN: Thank you. 

18 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: This is Brad. 

19 So, John, I guess my question to you is I'm 

20 understanding that this is a Site Profile 

21 issue or --

22 MR. STIVER: Yes, Brad. I think 
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1 that the data that they have is a reasonable 

2 data set. It's just a matter of determining 

3 the period of exposure. There's a potential 

4 for exposures earlier than just the month of 

5 December of 1953. 

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. That 

7 could be handled as a Site Profile issue. So 

8 this brings me back to the question for the 

9 Board Members on here of you have the data of 

10 1965 to 1967 that were in question, correct, 

11 John, as an SEC issue for thorium?

12 MR. STIVER: Yes. Remember, there 

13 was the issue of no data for the Pilot Plant, 

14 no DWE data for the Pilot Plant. And so that, 

15 I think we have resolved that one, as well, 

16 based on the fact that the data for Plant 1, 

17 the 95th percentile of the available DWEs is 

18 higher than the 95th percentile of the 

19 unweighted air samples that were provided for 

20 the Pilot Plant.

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And the 

22 recommendation from SC&A to the Board is? 
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1 MR. STIVER: Our position is that 

2 the doses can be reconstructed with sufficient 

3 accuracy. We believe they can for the period 

4 1953 through 1967. 

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. So I 

6 guess this is for the Board Members. I guess 

7 I'm asking for a vote to be able to take this 

8 to the Board that we accept SC&A's conclusion 

9 that it can be reconstructed for these dates. 

10 Phil? 

11 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: It sounds like, 

12 to me, they've got it covered, so if they feel 

13 they can --

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That's correct.

15 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Okay.

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So that's a 

17 yes, Phil?

18 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: That's a yes. 

19 Convoluted, but it's a yes.

20 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That's a yes to 

21 be able to accept NIOSH's ability to 

22 reconstruct dose. Mark Griffon, are you still 
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1 with us? So it comes down to me. I've got to 

2 go with the information that we've got, and I 

3 vote yes on this. We'll proceed to take this 

4 to the Board. 

5 MR. KATZ: Okay. But, Brad, if we 

6 don't have -- Mark, are you on the line? 

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Oh, we don't 

8 have a quorum? 

9 MR. KATZ: If Mark is not on the 

10 line, you basically only have half your Work 

11 Group. So what you need to do here is you 

12 will not actually formally have a Work Group 

13 recommendation.

14 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

15 MR. KATZ: But what you'll do is 

16 just raise it, just give them the background 

17 that there were two Members, you two, present. 

18 You concurred with the SC&A finding, but 

19 there's not a Work Group recommendation. And 

20 then at the Board meeting, the other Work 

21 Group Members can, you know, make a motion and 

22 so on and carry it forward that way. 
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Well, I 

2 thought we still had everyone that we could 

3 here, so I guess that's why I proceeded on 

4 that way. So we'll bring this up at the Board 

5 meeting then. 

6 So, John, I guess I'll turn it 

7 back to you. 

8 MR. STIVER: Okay. Thank you, 

9 Brad. The last thing related to the DWE data 

10 was this idea of the infeasibility of 

11 assigning the highest MAC in Plant in 1955. 

12 Remember, Plant 9 in the year was the site of 

13 thorium metal production, a very high14 intensity program. There was a lot of 

15 problems with air-dust loading. It's 

16 indicated in the health and safety reports. 

17 And there's also evidence to the high DWEs for 

18 that particular year. The top one to top five 

19 ranged from 215 up to 686 MAC. 

20 I believe we talked about this a 

21 bit last week, but the dust loading associated 

22 with 686 MAC is at the physiological tolerance 
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1 level for humans. It's about 100 milligrams 

2 per cubic meter. 

3 And so we're faced with this 

4 conundrum you can't really plausibly assign 

5 that kind of a dust load to somebody, 

6 certainly not with a high GSD. And that is, 

7 after all, a daily weighted average. There is 

8 a lot of uncertainty in that value.

9 The problem we're dealing with 

10 here, though, is that the actual reports 

11 specify that respiratory protection was worn 

12 for what they call the high dust-loading jobs. 

13 Of course, now, we don't know what the cutoff 

14 is for a high dust-load job, so we could 

15 certainly take a look at the data set and see 

16 that, yes, there are a couple of different 

17 tasks within that sampling procedure that 

18 yielded very high transient dust collections. 

19 For the highest, the 686, it was a secondary 

20 welder helper. There was one, a 75-minute 

21 test that was close to, like, 900,000. The 

22 highest value was 900,000 dpm per cubic meter.
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1 And so you're faced with this 

2 problem then. Well, what do you do? You 

3 can't really give them the standard process 

4 coworker model of assigning a high GSD to that 

5 number, and it's probably not even feasible to 

6 give that number itself an upper bound, given 

7 the fact that, not because you're trying to 

8 constrain intake of radionuclides, per se, but 

9 it's just impossible to inhale that much dust. 

10 You just couldn't get people to do the job. 

11 They would refuse to do it. And if they 

12 tried, they could be in a lot of trouble.

13 And so this idea of, well, what do 

14 you do? Are we going to go ahead and consider 

15 the possibility of respiratory protection or 

16 what NIOSH had proposed originally, which was 

17 to generate a set of kind of theoretical air 

18 samples based on a log-normal fit of the 

19 available data by using repeated samplings and 

20 a whole series of air samples and then pick 

21 off a 95th percentile of that. 

22 And when they did that, I think 
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1 they came in at about 75 to around 100 MAC for 

2 that data set. But we thought, well, you 

3 know, do we really want to take good data that 

4 we know is representative of the most highly5 exposed group of workers and just not use it 

6 because we think it's too high and instead 

7 replace it with a modeled value. 

8 On the other hand, traditionally, 

9 NIOSH has not used respiratory protection for 

10 claimant favorability purposes. And so we 

11 were kind of trying to balance out these two 

12 problems here.

13 And one of the things that NIOSH 

14 did, they went back and looked at the highest 

15 ten DWEs for 1955, and they applied 

16 respiratory protection factors to the highest 

17 tasks within that group. And as expected, the 

18 values were knocked down considerably. Most 

19 of them came down to below, certainly below 50 

20 MAC, just going through the worksheet right 

21 now and looking at the numbers.

22 However, there was one, by virtue 
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1 of a very long 386-minute task at about 18,000 

2 dpm per cubic meter, applying a respiratory 

3 protection factor does not knock the DWE down 

4 very much at all, from 215 or so down to about 

5 200. And so NIOSH proposed to go ahead and 

6 use that value was an upper bound. 

7 Now, it wasn't really clear to us 

8 whether they intended to use it, they said, if 

9 you go to the NIOSH position paper under 

10 thorium exposures for 1955, the very last line 

11 of that paragraph, the value will be used in 

12 the same manner as DWE values for other years. 

13 And so if that means applying a larger GSD to 

14 a 200 MAC value, we're right back up into 

15 that range of implausibility again.

16 And so what we thought might be 

17 another way to look at this is that, because 

18 the respiratory factor, protection factor does 

19 not really impact this value, just don't even 

20 apply it. Just use the value and use it as a 

21 constant, a constant exposure. It would be 

22 about 30 percent or so of the theoretical 
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1 limit.

2 So it's something that's certainly 

3 plausible and certainly bounding. Certainly, 

4 there's a bounding value in terms of thorium 

5 intake.

6 And so it's one way to consider 

7 providing a plausible, feasible upper bound 

8 value. It's claimant-favorable and, yet, 

9 still stays within the realm of the physical 

10 reality. 

11 So that's what I would have to say 

12 regarding Plant 9 in 1955 and certainly 

13 welcome any more discussion about this. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Well, this is Stu. 

15 And I think there's a certain -- yes, I have 

16 no particular objection to what John's 

17 proposing. I think we left the last meeting 

18 with the idea that the respiratory protection 

19 approach was something we could try to see 

20 what would happen, and it turned out we found 

21 the one job that is not particularly 

22 sensitive, the DWE value is not particularly 
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1 sensitive to whether respiratory protection 

2 was used on these short-duration jobs or not 

3 because the DWE is driven by a long-duration 

4 exposure. 

5 And so we thought that provides us 

6 an avenue here to not get into guessing at 

7 protection factors because, you know, today we 

8 could find out airline respirator protection 

9 factors for today, but those protection 

10 factors assume a number of things, like 

11 quantitative fit testing and training and no 

12 particular care of the respiratory equipment 

13 that probably wasn't used in 1955. All those 

14 things probably weren't done in 1955, so we 

15 thought that the protection factor, you know, 

16 deciding what protection factor to use was 

17 going to be problematic anyway. 

18 Now, John, what you're proposing, 

19 as I understand it, is to say, well, we have 

20 this 215 MAC DWE that is not sensitive to 

21 radiation protection factor, and why don't we 

22 use 215 as a bounding value because it seems 
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1 to be plausible because we have a DWE at that 

2 value. But if you just use that as the 

3 bounding, maybe you don't have to get into the 

4 choking atmosphere question. You know, I 

5 think that's something, as well. 

6 We also, you know, we originally 

7 said, well, we could consider that approach 

8 for the 686 number, as well, and just use that 

9 as a bounding value. But that, by itself, 

10 might even be a choking value. I don't 

11 remember how that came out, how those numbers 

12 came out. 

13 MR. STIVER: Yes, this is John. 

14 The 686 would put you right at the upper limit 

15 of what's tolerable.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

17 MR. STIVER: So that has 

18 plausibility issues in and of itself. 

19 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. Because 

20 you're saying the person would be working 

21 there all year long.

22 MR. STIVER: Yes. In theory, 
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1 somebody could be exposed to a choking dust 

2 level for an entire year every day for eight 

3 and a half hours a day. 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. Well, I 

5 think the 215 number has some merit then as a 

6 bounding value.

7 MR. BARTON: This is Bob Barton. 

8 Yes, this is a tough issue. We really kind of 

9 wrestled with it two weeks ago. And in my 

10 mind, really we're kind of looking at two 

11 evils here. And, you know, the first evil is 

12 that we don't want to be throwing out very 

13 good data and a very useful tool in these 

14 Daily Weighted Exposures simply because we 

15 felt that a number was too high because 

16 that's, you know, sort of a Pandora's box 

17 where if the number is too high, well, we'll 

18 kind of model something to replace it.

19 And, on the other hand, you know, 

20 NIOSH has always had the policy not to give 

21 any credit for respiratory protection. So 

22 that has its own sort of slippery slope aspect 
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1 to it. 

2 So NIOSH went and they looked at, 

3 you know, all right, if we do some 

4 calculations here and apply a respiratory 

5 protection factor, what are we really looking 

6 at for a range of reasonable exposures? And 

7 it was very nice work, and, as me and John 

8 were looking at it, you know, we see this one 

9 worker who his Daily Weighted Exposure of 250 

10 MAC was really driven by that six and a half 

11 hours spent in, I believe it was the general 

12 chemical area, you know, doing various tasks 

13 there. He spent most of his day there, and it 

14 was 1800 or 18,000, rather, dpm per meter 

15 cubed, which, you know, you can do the 

16 calculations and that comes out to, you know, 

17 less than half of what we're kind of assuming 

18 is the physiological limit of 100 milligrams 

19 per meter cubed. You know, as you get above 

20 that, I mean, you're just, you're choking. 

21 You can't breathe unless you had some sort of 

22 protection.
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1 So that avenue, I guess we could 

2 call it, to me, almost kind of obviates those 

3 two evils because, one, we're not throwing out 

4 good data because we think it's too high, and 

5 also the underlying data in there is within 

6 the physiological limit, so we're not being 

7 implausible in using that worker's exposure 

8 potential. And also we don't have to get into 

9 sort of the Pandora's box of starting to apply 

10 respiratory protection factors when it's 

11 always been NIOSH's policy never to give 

12 credit for that.

13 So in my mind, I think this 

14 provides an avenue where we don't have to get 

15 into either issue of, yes, well, this guy 

16 would be choking in this job environment 

17 because the 215 MAC is well within the 

18 reasonable physiological limit. So I think 

19 we're still looking at a bounding exposure 

20 scenario where we don't have to get into, 

21 well, now we're going to apply respiratory 

22 protection or get into the slippery slope of 
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1 totaling out data and then modeling a 

2 different number because we thought it was too 

3 high. 

4 So that's, I guess, where I come 

5 out on this. 

6 MR. STIVER: Yes, Bob, as you say, 

7 it's kind of a tradeoff really. Somebody 

8 threw out the question, well, what would 

9 happen if you didn't have a guy that spent six 

10 hours on one task? You'd still be facing this 

11 issue. So it may be kind of fortuitous that 

12 we have this particular what area operator 

13 down to use as a bounding value. Yet, on the 

14 other hand, it is a value that is considered 

15 very high, yet it is an actual value by a 

16 particular worker on a particular day. It has 

17 uncertainty associated with it, but we all 

18 know that the only way these values could ever 

19 have been achieved is if these people were 

20 wearing respiratory protection, given the 

21 uncertainties involved.

22 And so I understand Brad and 
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1 NIOSH's standpoint. We don't want to change a 

2 policy that's very claimant-favorable and 

3 that's been in use for ten years. But, on the 

4 other hand, we don't want to take good data 

5 and replace it with a model simply because 

6 it's uncomfortably high. 

7 And so I think this particular job 

8 type is adequately representative of the DWEs 

9 encountered by most people or the air 

10 concentrations they actually had to breathe 

11 during that one year of thorium metal 

12 production. 

13 MR. BARTON: Yes, John, I agree. 

14 And just to give a little more perspective on 

15 that 686 MAC, we're kind of saying, well, 686 

16 MAC really corresponds to the physiological

17 limit of what a person could reasonably inhale 

18 without choking. But, I mean, really, if you 

19 think about it, that 686 MAC was the daily 

20 average, so, I mean, if you look at what's 

21 really driven by that one 75-minute job you 

22 mentioned and, you know, if you calculate it 
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1 out, that 75-minute job involved dust levels 

2 that were closer to being 700, you know, 

3 milligrams per meter cubed. Now we're getting 

4 into like 600 or 700 times the physiologic 

5 limit. I mean, so that's really in the land 

6 of implausibility there, and that's really 

7 what was the genesis of this whole issue. 

8 MR. STIVER: Thanks for bringing 

9 that up. And that's also beyond the limit of 

10 what's going to be sustained in a cloud of 

11 respirable particles. I believe the upper 

12 limit is about 500 milligrams, and we'd be 

13 looking at applying the 95th percentile to 2 

14 grams, which is just clearly not feasible 

15 either from the physics of cloud formation and 

16 maintenance or respiratory tolerance. 

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, I 

18 remember wrestling with this, and it is kind 

19 of a slippery slope either way that we go. 

20 But if I remember, John and Bob, that when you 

21 guys applied the respiratory to this, didn't 

22 it turn out fairly close to what NIOSH's 
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1 process came out? 

2 MR. BARTON: Yes, Brad, this is 

3 Bob Barton. We were certainly in the same 

4 ballpark when we took that 686 MAC and that 

5 one 75-minute job and we applied a couple of 

6 different protection factors. We were in the 

7 same ballpark.

8 But what we're really talking 

9 about now is we don't even need to go the 

10 route of the implausible 686 MAC without 

11 respiratory protection or the modeled value 

12 that NIOSH came up with. What we're talking 

13 about now is still using real data for a 

14 worker that was in a sustained environment, 

15 you know, six and a half hours out of his day, 

16 that still resulted in that Daily Weighted 

17 Exposure of 215, which is about 100 MAC higher 

18 than the modeled numbers we were talking about 

19 and certainly higher than that bounding 686 

20 with respiratory protection factored in.

21 So we're kind of in a spot where 

22 we don't have to go into the realm of applying 
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1 respiratory protection, which can be, as you 

2 said, a very slippery slope, but also we don't 

3 have to fill out data and use a modeled value 

4 because we can use that worker who was in a 

5 reasonable environment. And so we could still 

6 use the Daily Weighted Exposure and be 

7 reasonably certain that we're going to be 

8 bounding the doses to workers in that year. 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I understand 

10 what you're saying, but this really comes back 

11 to Stu and Mark, doesn't it, what you're 

12 proposing, correct? 

13 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, I guess it 

14 does, Brad. And I think it makes quite a lot 

15 of sense. Like Bob was saying, two avenues 

16 that kind of, that have their own evils 

17 associated with it. One is using a protection 

18 factor when conditions for protection factors 

19 are not all being met, and the second is, you 

20 know, artificially generating distributions 

21 when you have actually measured data in front 

22 of you.
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1 So I think it's certainly a high 

2 number, but all the information that we saw, 

3 the letters that we saw from 1955 in Plant 9 

4 would indicate that high number is warranted.

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So what -- I 

6 don't want to put words into your mouth, Stu.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Oh, the words in 

8 my mouth are that I think that this is a good 

9 thing to do and that we could alter our 

10 proposed approach for 1955 to use, I think 

11 it's 215 MAC as a constant for the exposed 

12 people in that year. 

13 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Phil, do 

14 you have any, any questions on this? Phil? 

15 We don't hear you if you do. That being said, 

16 so, John, now we've come up this is a Site 

17 Profile issue?

18 MR. STIVER: Yes, this is John. 

19 Yes, it was a Site Profile issue to start with 

20 really. It's just a matter of how best to use 

21 the data that were available or, 

22 alternatively, try some modeled numbers. But 
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1 it is definitely in the realm of Site Profile 

2 issues. 

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And NIOSH has 

4 agreed that they're going to use 215 MAC for 

5 this time period? 

6 MR. STIVER: Yes. 

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. So I 

8 guess that concludes that one. So, John, I'll 

9 turn it back to you for -- so we've taken 

10 every, we've taken care of everything in 

11 three. I just want to make sure of this. 

12 Because we don't have other Board Members on 

13 there, we can't give a Work Group 

14 recommendation, but we can bring this up at 

15 the Board meeting for the 1965 to `67 DWE, and 

16 I'll bring that up to the Board, correct? 

17 MR. STIVER: Brad, this is John. I 

18 just want a point of clarification here. I 

19 believe the SEC period at issue here is from 

20 `53 all the way to `67. I think we already 

21 cleared up the issue of --

22 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right.
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1 MR. STIVER: -- `65 through `67.

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: It was 1957 to 

3 -- no, it was 1965 -- oh, yes, we've already 

4 done that. So it was 1953?

5 MR. STIVER: Yes. Remember, 

6 there's the issue of there's some potential 

7 for thorium exposures for partial year in `53.

8 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

9 MR. STIVER: And then there's also 

10 -- which NIOSH is researching. And then 

11 there's, traditionally, it was `54 through 

12 `67.

13 MR. KATZ: So, Brad, so all John 

14 is saying is that, in the presentation about 

15 recommendation about feasibility and the 

16 presentation that John would make on the 

17 technical material, he would cover the whole 

18 period from `53 to `67, even though in the 

19 last few meetings we've been focusing on these 

20 end years.

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: All right.

22 MR. KATZ: Okay.
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. That's 

2 what was throwing me off.

3 MR. KATZ: Yes. No, I was just 

4 saying. I understand. It's just we've 

5 covered the other turf earlier. 

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. I 

7 understand now. I thought -- okay. And then 

8 NIOSH on the strategy for 1955 Plant 9, we're 

9 going to use the, NIOSH has agreed to use the 

10 215 MAC, correct? 

11 MR. STIVER: Yes. 

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. And so 

13 we'll proceed on to item four, John. 

14 MR. STIVER: Brad, if it's all 

15 right with you, could we take about a five16 minute break? 

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, that would 

18 be fine. So if everybody is agreeable, we'll 

19 take a -- how about a ten-minute break? 

20 MR. KATZ: Yes, that's fine. So 

21 we'll get started again at ten past eleven 

22 Eastern time. 
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Thank 

2 you. 

3 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter

4 went off the record at 11:00 a.m.

5 and went back on the record at

6 11:12 a.m.)

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay, John. 

8 Before we went to break, I believe we had 

9 taken care of issues three and were proceeding 

10 on to item four. 

11 MR. STIVER: Right. Joyce, are 

12 you on yet? 

13 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, I am on. 

14 MR. STIVER: Yes, item four. This 

15 is the thorium coworker model for the period 

16 1979 to 1988 where it uses the chest count 

17 data, basically the measurements of actinium18 228 and lead-212 to back-calculate lung burden 

19 or intake rates of Thorium-232 based on some 

20 assumptions regarding equilibrium. 

21 And the issue here is that there 

22 is some values of actinium-228 that are higher 
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1 than expected, given the assumptions that are 

2 made in the model. And so there's some 

3 question as to whether, what could it really 

4 represent, whether it's an intake of 

5 unsupported radium-228 possibly, which would 

6 give rise to higher values, or possibly it 

7 could lead to other issues, like translocation 

8 of radon-220 out of the lung; therefore, you 

9 might have lead-212 values that are lower than 

10 expected.

11 And so Joyce and Tom were having 

12 to do changes of different approaches to 

13 working on this. And, Joyce, if you'd like to 

14 kind of step in at this point, and I think you 

15 could probably discuss it the best of all of 

16 us. 

17 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay. I'm 

18 discussing --

19 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Is this the 

20 report that you sent out, did you send a 

21 report out on this? The one that I see is 

22 activity ratio, and it's got Tom LaBone's name 
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1 on it. Is this what we're talking about or --

2 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, yes, that's 

3 the only thing that was sent out was Tom 

4 LaBone's paper. 

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. That's 

6 what I want to make sure. Thank you. 

7 MR. STIVER: Brad, there is no 

8 SC&A formal response to that paper. 

9 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I was, that's one 

10 of the things that I wanted to say is that we 

11 really didn't see a complete paper from NIOSH 

12 to respond. We just saw one item describing 

13 why some studies, we found a lot of actinium 

14 results that were higher than the lead 

15 results.

16 SC&A has several points that 

17 should be discussed by NIOSH, and we still 

18 need some answers. One of the things that we, 

19 in our formal answer that was sent in -- let 

20 me see the date. It was on November 26th, 

21 2012. We analyzed several results from `79 to 

22 `88. And we know that, from NIOSH papers, 
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1 that thorium activities at Fernald should have 

2 stopped in `79, but we still see some results 

3 and some people that were monitored for 

4 thorium after `79. And especially we see that 

5 there were positive results, especially in 

6 1980 and some in `81. And then the number of 

7 positive results for actinium and lead, they 

8 go down to just one in 1988.

9 So we don't know exactly what kind 

10 of activities were done in `79 through `88, 

11 why people would have positive results if they 

12 were really, there was some workers that were 

13 exposed to thorium, or if it is reminiscent 

14 from thorium previous exposure. 

15 We saw, for example, that, in `98, 

16 85 percent of the results were below the MDA 

17 and 15 percent were above the MDA. And of 

18 these, we had 13 results that had both 

19 actinium and lead above the MDA and 14 results 

20 of actinium that were above the MDA, while 

21 only actinium results, 14 results, while there 

22 was only one lead result that was above the 
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1 MDA result.

2 Now, I've been monitoring thorium 

3 workers for a long time, and thorium is not an 

4 easy nuclide to deal with, it's very 

5 difficult. It's very difficult, and if some 

6 of you could look at the models for thorium 

7 that's used in `69 and is adopted here, that's 

8 the only one that was published. 

9 But ICRP is going to publish 

10 occupational intake of radionuclides either in 

11 2013 or the beginning of 2014. And this 

12 document is available on the internet if you 

13 go to the ICRP site, ICRP.org, and you see the 

14 documents for consultation. And even if it's 

15 past the consultation times, you can still 

16 download the thorium document, and you see 

17 that there are several considerations about 

18 the problem of in vivo monitoring of thorium.

19 One of the problems is that the 

20 daughter nuclides, they might leave the lung 

21 faster than the thorium itself. But the ICRP 

22 doesn't give any hint on what to do with this 
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1 information. Everybody has, you know, each 

2 person, each laboratory, each health physicist 

3 has to deal with this problem and know that 

4 there's going to be an error when you are 

5 monitoring for results. 

6 And, especially, ICRP says radium 

7 and lead-12 leaves the lung in a faster way 

8 than thorium-228 and thorium-232. So that's 

9 one of the reasons that we might be finding 

10 some lead results that are below the detection 

11 limits, while actinium is above the limit of 

12 detection.

13 So it's, you know, I would like to 

14 see something that is sporadical, like 

15 actinium can be related to thorium-232 with 

16 such and such, you know, we can consider some 

17 errors on it. But, especially, we want to see 

18 if they really worked with thorium after `79 

19 and who were the people that were working with 

20 thorium after `79.

21 We have found seven workers that 

22 had monitoring of thorium in all the years 
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1 after `79. They were monitored in `80, `81, 

2 `82, etcetera. So those people, maybe they 

3 were doing some special work with thorium that 

4 we didn't find what was done.

5 The other people, the majority of 

6 the people had results below the level of 

7 detection. There were a lot of people that 

8 were monitored every year, more than a hundred 

9 people every year. So we don't know if they 

10 were monitored just as routine or because they 

11 were working really with thorium.

12 And as the whole, you know, the 

13 majority of results is below the detection 

14 limit anyway, so what does this mean? It 

15 means that the majority of the workers didn't 

16 have measurable results either of actinium or 

17 lead, so they didn't have measured results of 

18 lead-212, and, if you put some error into 

19 these because of the fact that lead could be 

20 leaving or radium could be leaving the lung 

21 after exposure, we don't know exactly how many 

22 years since they dealt with thorium. So 
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1 that's something that we would like resolved. 

2 MR. HINNEFELD: This is Stu 

3 Hinnefeld. I can offer something here if --

4 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Okay, please.

5 MR. HINNEFELD: -- the monitoring 

6 question. This actually extends into the 

7 period when I worked there. I was in, I 

8 started in the radiation safety department in 

9 1983. And the in vivo monitoring in the `80s 

10 was done for uranium, and the in vivo counter 

11 just spit out a result for the thorium, the 

12 radionuclides, and it was recorded.

13 But the purpose of the monitoring was 

14 because of the potential for uranium exposure 

15 because thorium was in storage, but it wasn't 

16 being used with a possible exception maybe a 

17 redrumming operation on occasion, and, 

18 frequently, that just meant putting a 

19 deteriorating drum in a larger drum. So there 

20 was almost no thorium work going on until 

21 sometime after Westinghouse got there and they 

22 started making a serious effort to get it out 
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1 of there.

2 But the selection for monitoring

3 was not based on working with thorium. It was 

4 based on their potential exposure really to 

5 uranium, which was material that was being 

6 processed. And then the mobile counter just 

7 spit out a sweep of results, and one of those 

8 was the actinium result and one was the lead 

9 result. 

10 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Oh, okay. And do 

11 you know how many people were working with 

12 redrumming or --

13 MR. HINNEFELD: No. It would have 

14 been really intermittent and probably short 

15 term, and I certainly don't recall. You know, 

16 I'm afraid I can't be very helpful. I don't 

17 think it would be very many people at one 

18 time, and I don't suspect at any particular 

19 redrumming operation during that time went on 

20 for very long.

21 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Because I was 

22 thinking that that coworker model with so many 
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1 results below detection limit, I don't know 

2 even how much worthwhile it is to dig into 

3 this question of what results to use. From my 

4 experience, probably you have the same 

5 experience that I do, we always monitor 

6 actinium because we have one less problem 

7 which is radon and we don't have the problem 

8 of lead leaving the lung. We have the problem 

9 of radium leaving the lung but not lead also 

10 leaving the lung. And we wouldn't have the 

11 problem of the number of separations. 

12 And that would account only for I 

13 think 1980 and 1981 when you have more 

14 positive results. The rest of it, it's going 

15 to be mostly below the detection level. I'd, 

16 as you say, because they were not exposed to 

17 thorium anymore. I don't know. 

18 MR. HINNEFELD: I think that's, in 

19 most of their cases, that would have been it. 

20 And like I said, you know, I can't say 

21 definitively, talk definitively about the 

22 redrumming because, A, it was too long ago; 
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1 and, B, I might not have been in on it. I may 

2 not have known about the operations, and if I 

3 did know about them at the time I would have 

4 forgotten them by now.

5 But it just, I just, you know --

6 but I do clearly remember that there was 

7 thorium stored in several places around the 

8 plant, and those areas just, for the most 

9 part, people didn't spend any time to speak 

10 of, except for an occasional inspection now 

11 and then. 

12 DR. LIPSZTEIN: And this wouldn't 

13 be people that were exposed to separated 

14 thorium and nothing like that because we think 

15 ended in `79, from what I understood.

16 MR. HINNEFELD: That's my 

17 understanding, as well. I don't remember any 

18 thorium processing during my tenure there when 

19 they were actually converting, you know, a 

20 thorium compound into some other thorium 

21 compound. I don't remember any of that when I 

22 was there. 
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Stu, this is 

2 Brad. I thought Fernald became the nation's 

3 repository for thorium. 

4 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, that's why it 

5 was stored all over the plant. 

6 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And you're 

7 saying that they didn't, they didn't work with 

8 it at all? I guess, and I've got to go to 

9 Hanford for this one, but, you know, we had 

10 documentation of trainloads coming into 

11 Fernald and being, you know, moved and having 

12 problems with the train cars because they have 

13 to repackage them before they could remove 

14 some of these drums. And I --

15 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. What era, 

16 what era are you talking about there, Brad?

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I'm looking at 

18 the, I thought this was in the, I thought this 

19 was in the `85 time period. I thought this 

20 was after Westinghouse came in that they kind 

21 of become the repository for this.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: No, they were the 
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1 repository before that.

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Before that. 

3 Okay. That's -- so what you're saying is that 

4 -- I guess my question is here they've got 

5 this product there but they're not really 

6 monitoring for it.

7 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, it was in 

8 storage. And like I said, I can't say that no 

9 one ever, I believe that these drums did tend 

10 to deteriorate. I mean, most of the material 

11 was stored in drums, and some of the drums 

12 tended to deteriorate. Not all of them. Some 

13 of the compounds were well suited for storage 

14 in drums, and those drums held up really well. 

15 But some of the materials that were there 

16 were drummed and stored in drums that tended 

17 to deteriorate. And I think there may have 

18 been some redrumming campaigns, although the 

19 worst of the drums were in `64 and `65, and I 

20 think that redrumming didn't occur until after 

21 Westinghouse was there and there were quite a 

22 lot of controls involved in that large 
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1 redrumming. But there may have been some 

2 smaller operations during the `80s that I just 

3 don't, didn't know about or don't remember. 

4 I can't say for sure that no one 

5 was exposed to thorium. But, certainly, it 

6 wasn't the big actor the way uranium was in 

7 the `80s.

8 DR. LIPSZTEIN: And if the in vivo 

9 monitoring was geared to uranium, were these 

10 people that were working in redrumming 

11 monitored for a time? 

12 MR. ROLFES: This is Mark Rolfes, 

13 and I just wanted to point out I do have an 

14 example here from 1985. It's dated March 2nd, 

15 1985. This is from an air sample for thorium 

16 spreadsheet that we assembled, and it lists a 

17 person that was a truck operator and two other 

18 people that were actually doing some of the 

19 redrumming operations. And let's see. It 

20 says that the operations were conducted to the 

21 north of the thorium warehouse. Let's see. 

22 And it's got a building code of 65, so 
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1 Building 65, which would have been one of the 

2 repository buildings. And there's some notes 

3 here for the same three people on March 2nd, 

4 1985. We've got a note that says outdoors, 

5 wind five to ten miles per hour, 380 gallon 

6 cans of thorium being redrummed north of 

7 Building 65. And there's similar notes for 

8 the next -- these are all BZ air samples and 

9 we've got some air concentration data for 

10 these individuals.

11 Let's see. There's approximately 

12 20 entries for this redrumming operation in 

13 1985. But the earlier, the next earlier set 

14 of samples that I have in this spreadsheet, 

15 and this spreadsheet may not be complete. It 

16 was just something that we had compiled, you 

17 know, from the available data that we had at 

18 the time. The next earlier miscellaneous 

19 thorium air sampling was from 1978 it looks 

20 like in this spreadsheet. I don't know if 

21 that helps you at all. 

22 DR. LIPSZTEIN: This `85 
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1 redrumming that you were talking about, do you 

2 know if those people were in vivo monitored? 

3 MR. ROLFES: I haven't checked 

4 their names against the list of people who 

5 were monitored. That might be something of 

6 interest. I can certainly provide those names 

7 and this data to you, if you would like to --

8 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes. 

9 MR. BARTON: Mark, this is Bob 

10 Barton. As I recall, and I do remember the 

11 1985 document, and we did cross-check those 

12 names, and I believe they were involved in the 

13 in vivo monitoring program. It was, I 

14 believe, you know, between six months to 

15 maybe, you know, a couple of years after that 

16 redrumming that they appear to be monitored in 

17 vivo. So they were included but not 

18 necessarily specifically monitored because 

19 they were involved in that redrumming 

20 activity. 

21 So if that helps clear it up. But 

22 I do believe they were included in the 
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1 database that you guys compiled. It just, you 

2 know, it was pretty clear that they weren't 

3 monitored immediately after that activity, but 

4 they were included in the program as, you 

5 know, a highly-exposed worker, which is what 

6 the program was really geared to. Not 

7 necessarily thorium exposures, as Stu 

8 mentioned. But if you had high-exposure 

9 potential, then you were generally targeted 

10 for the in vivo program.

11 And I remember one of the 

12 conclusions of our completeness study on all 

13 this data was that we tried to take a look at, 

14 all right, if these guys had a positive sample 

15 for lead-212 or actinium, you know, how 

16 quickly were they monitored again versus, you 

17 know, the rest of the worker population. And 

18 I believe, depending on what kind of metric 

19 you wanted to look at, you know, average 

20 number of days or geometric mean, you know, 

21 they were monitored between four and five 

22 times faster if they had a positive result. 
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1 So, I mean, that was one of the findings sort 

2 of that was beneficial to the use of this data 

3 to build a coworker model. 

4 MR. STIVER: Yes, Bob. Thanks for 

5 bringing that up. I know that was one of the 

6 problems we had in the early data set with the 

7 milligram thorium data was there was no 

8 correlation with the positive results, whereas 

9 we definitely see that in the post-`79 

10 environment. 

11 DR. LIPSZTEIN: The number of days 

12 between high entries -- oh, yes, because I was 

13 looking, there were about less than three 

14 percent of the workers that were monitored had 

15 a result above the MDA, and the problem is 

16 that if you take the whole population, you 

17 know, those points will be nothing in the 

18 coworker log-normal distribution. And these 

19 were the people that were working in 

20 redrumming, so I don't know if these were the 

21 people that were working in redrumming or not. 

22 Do you know that, Bob? 
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1 MR. BARTON: No, I don't have that 

2 information handy right now, Joyce. 

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So this is 

4 Brad. I'm trying to figure where we're going 

5 here. So what, in my layman's terms, what are 

6 we trying --

7 MR. STIVER: Well, I guess, at 

8 this point -- correct me if I'm wrong, Joyce -

9 - but what we're looking for from NIOSH is 

10 kind of a practical way that they could 

11 utilize the actinium results when they're, you 

12 know, higher than the lead or you've got, you 

13 know, a set of MDA lead value and you've got 

14 positive actinium, just a kind of claimant15 favorable mechanism in the model to use that 

16 data. Isn't that kind of basically what we're 

17 striving for here, Joyce? 

18 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, exactly, 

19 because the years that we had actinium higher 

20 than lead is 1980 where we have 14 results of 

21 actinium higher than the lead result, actually 

22 above the limit of detection. And after `80, 
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1 actually after `82, the number of positive 

2 results is very low.

3 MR. STIVER: This is kind of what 

4 you'd expect from a, you know, from Stu's 

5 account of, basically, Fernald being a storage 

6 facility at that time with some limited 

7 redrumming going on. I guess the question in 

8 my mind is, for those individuals who did the 

9 redrumming, it's a big enough intake to 

10 register. It was 78. But would they possibly 

11 have, would the coworker model be 

12 representative and bounding for these people? 

13 And, you know, it certainly looks like it 

14 would be. 

15 I mean, assuming that the 

16 monitoring was random and that you weren't 

17 missing a sub-population of these workers who 

18 were actually involved in the activity, then 

19 you could say that. I guess that's kind of 

20 what I'm looking for in all this discussion 

21 about who was monitored and when. There's 

22 certainly a lot of data there. And were the 
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1 people that had any exposure potential at all 

2 monitored? Again, this would be a short-term 

3 intake over a few days while they did the 

4 operation, like Mark was describing. 

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, this is Stu. 

6 I think the people that would be involved in 

7 redrumming would be on the in vivo monitoring 

8 schedule in some fashion. You know, the in 

9 vivo monitoring schedule was set by job title, 

10 and certain job titles fell into certain 

11 frequencies. And I think pretty much anybody 

12 who would have been involved in a redrumming 

13 operation would have fit into a job category 

14 that would have been on some in vivo 

15 monitoring frequency. Now --

16 MR. STIVER: That's my sense, too. 

17 It would have been the chemical operators, 

18 for the most part.

19 MR. HINNEFELD: I think you would 

20 have either chemical operators or people who 

21 were called laborers who would move things 

22 around sometimes. And both of those, I 
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1 believe, were on the in vivo schedule. I just 

2 don't know how often. 

3 MR. STIVER: The fact that there's 

4 quick follow-up when there is a positive 

5 result is encouraging. It sounds like, you 

6 know, they were attuned to the possibility for 

7 exposure and when there was a result they 

8 followed up on it. 

9 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, but they 

10 were, you know, like, very few workers had 

11 positive results. And if they were exposed, 

12 then you have one interpretation of results. 

13 But if these are the results from working in 

14 previous years, the `69, the `70, before `79, 

15 then it could be also a reflection of the 

16 buildup of the daughters in the lung. 

17 MR. STIVER: I don't think we're 

18 arguing about the validity of the data at this 

19 point. I think we've been through that.

20 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Something that we 

21 didn't see maybe. I don't know if it would be 

22 better for NIOSH to do some description of how 
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1 they are going to interpret this, not only a 

2 pure mathematical because we have all those 

3 sporadical interpreting lead and actinium with 

4 the, you know, the fact that the daughters 

5 leave the lung in a faster way than the 

6 thorium nuclide, and I know it's very, very 

7 difficult to get positive results and also the 

8 fact that lead depends on some assumptions 

9 about the number of separation and number of 

10 years that has passed since separation and 

11 actinium only on the number of years. And 

12 also you have if it was type S or type M 

13 thorium, some description that could be type 

14 M. So I don't know because if those are 

15 results from only redrumming, then separation 

16 took place a long time ago or some time ago 

17 before the measurements. 

18 MR. STIVER: The fact that you 

19 have positives in `80 and `81 kind of --

20 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Exactly.

21 MR. STIVER: -- that hypothesis 

22 that it was due to previous exposures during 
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1 processing.

2 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, maybe. I 

3 don't know. I don't know how many had 

4 processing in, you know, redrumming in `80 or 

5 `81. I don't know.

6 MR. STIVER: In terms of what 

7 you'd like to see from NIOSH, would it just be 

8 an approach to utilizing the actinium data to 

9 generate a thorium result, as opposed to --

10 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Both nuclides. 

11 Why not both nuclides? You know, you get the 

12 feeling from analyzing both nuclides at the 

13 same time. 

14 MR. STIVER: If you have two 

15 results, then you'd use it --

16 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, you'd use the 

17 two, yes. But that's a better approach. And 

18 see which ones, if you have M for, I don't 

19 know, some operation that you know some 

20 workers were involved in, then separate those 

21 workers and see what has to be done with --

22 you know, you have a lot of data but very few 
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1 positive results, so what does it mean?

2 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay. So then, as 

3 I understand our assignment here, it may be 

4 more than just one assignment. The first 

5 assignment is to, rather than ignore the 

6 actinium-228 and rely on lead-212 solely, what 

7 could interpretations be if we used both? If 

8 we considered both the actinium-228 result and 

9 the lead-212 result, what kind of 

10 interpretations could we draw? 

11 And then the second part -- that's 

12 one thing you wanted us to do is what kind of 

13 approach could we come up with? And then the 

14 second thing was, given the fact that if 

15 potential exposures during the time period 

16 were probably limited to these repackaging 

17 operations, is there some other way that this 

18 data set could be utilized than what we would 

19 typically do in a coworker study where the 

20 population is exposed to the stuff and 

21 routinely over the course of your data set? 

22 Something like that? 
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1 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, exactly.

2 MR. STIVER: So, Joyce, if I could 

3 just step in here for a second, during this 

4 period, repackaging period or storage period, 

5 for lack of a better term, what you were 

6 saying was that to kind of move away from the 

7 idea of this triple separation to make a 

8 claimant-favorable intake because it's just 

9 not applicable during that period of time, so 

10 kind of start over with a new model or a new 

11 approach altogether? 

12 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I mean, see what 

13 you can do also with actinium result because 

14 in 1980, when you have most of the positive

15 results, you have 14 actinium results with 

16 lead below the detection limit. But, also, 

17 you have to see what's practical and what 

18 makes a difference in the coworker model. The 

19 1980 probably makes a difference. You go to 

20 `88 where you just have one result, no, two 

21 results above detection limit, it doesn't make 

22 really a difference for the co-worker model. 
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1 MR. STIVER: Well, in those cases, 

2 Stu, this is a question for you. I mean, the 

3 typical approach is to use a chronic exposure 

4 at half the MDA. And so you're still 

5 assigning an intake --

6 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Oh, yes, yes, yes, 

7 but most of the results are below the MDA. 

8 The MDA is the, you know, and now you have to 

9 choose what you want to use, either lead or 

10 actinium. I don't know. Actinium, you just 

11 have to make assumptions about the time after 

12 exposure, while lead you have to make 

13 assumptions about the number of separation and 

14 actinium. I don't know. It's up to NIOSH. 

15 But it will make a difference 

16 maybe for the -- I didn't try it. It might 

17 make a difference for the coworker model. But 

18 the positive result is going to make a 

19 difference in `88 for the coworker model. And 

20 98 percent of the results are below detection 

21 limit.

22 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. Okay. 
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1 Well, I'll see what we can do. I mean, this

2 is probably not going to be me, personally, 

3 who does this, so I'll see what we can do. 

4 You know, as a practical matter, in terms of 

5 executing dose reconstructions going forward, 

6 it's usually fruitful to have a, not 

7 necessarily simple but not to have too complex 

8 a decision tree in a dose reconstruction, to 

9 have a relatively straightforward decision 

10 tree that gives you assurance that your 

11 bounding exposures in some times. 

12 And so, you know, I want to be 

13 careful about drawing too fine a point on -- I 

14 mean, we can do some detailed work and 

15 comparisons to make sure that we're on solid 

16 ground with the approach we choose. But I 

17 would think that, in execution of dose 

18 reconstructions, ultimately, we would want to 

19 have a fairly simple, rather than a complex, 

20 decision tree on how we're going to interpret 

21 these numbers. 

22 DR. LIPSZTEIN: I understand that, 
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1 yes.

2 MR. HINNEFELD: I think we can 

3 take a try at this, and then maybe the 

4 approach will be to have some exchanges of 

5 technical information. We'll provide them to, 

6 when we have something we can provide it to 

7 the Work Group and SC&A, and then maybe some 

8 back and forth and kind of go back and forth. 

9 We won't do anything without, you 

10 know, strictly with SC&A, but we'll give it to 

11 the Work Group and SC&A so that the exchanges 

12 can occur, you know, with the Work Group 

13 engaged in it and see if we can narrow in on 

14 what's desired here because I guess I'm 

15 struggling a little bit on what's desired. We 

16 may need a technical call at some point with 

17 the right people on the phone to sort out 

18 exactly how we want to proceed here.

19 MR. STIVER: Yes, Stu. This is 

20 John. I agree. It's going to have to be kind 

21 of an incremental approach, and we'll work our 

22 way towards, you know, the best solution.
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1 DR. LIPSZTEIN: Yes, because I 

2 think the solution of thinking of radium 

3 unsupported radium exposure is even more 

4 complicated. 

5 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, it might be. 

6 It might be. 

7 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So this is 

8 something that, this is a Site Profile issue, 

9 correct, John? 

10 MR. STIVER: Yes, it is, Brad, a 

11 Site Profile issue. 

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. So I 

13 guess my question is, is that are we going to 

14 capture this into the matrix to make sure that 

15 we don't lose this? I guess, unfortunately, 

16 I'm really kind of focused on the upcoming 

17 Board meeting and the SEC issue, and I just 

18 wanted to make sure that I didn't, I didn't 

19 miss this as being one. 

20 MR. STIVER: Brad, this is John 

21 again. I don't think this is something that's 

22 going to really be crucial for the discussions 
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1 at the Board meeting so much as the earlier 

2 discussions we had. I see it more as just 

3 sort of an update, maybe a slide saying where 

4 we are on this or for the Site Profile level. 

5 You know, there are a lot of other Site 

6 Profile issues, you know, from our original

7 report. Granted, some of those have kind of 

8 changed over time and new approaches have come 

9 up. Sandra had mentioned how the thorium 

10 intakes were calculated in the original Site 

11 Profile, and so it's considerably different 

12 than what we're seeing in this Revision 5 at 

13 the DWE level. 

14 It's a bit of a moving target, and 

15 it's changed over time and evolved. Those are 

16 issues that we're going to want to take up. 

17 Those are things that will be on the plate 

18 after the SEC deliberations.

19 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Could I ask a 

20 question, Brad? 

21 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Sure.

22 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Are we talking 
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1 about widespread throughout the complex there, 

2 or is this kind of like, say, on Plant 9?

3 MR. HINNEFELD: I didn't 

4 understand the question, Phil. 

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Maybe I could 

6 help you, Phil. You're kind of breaking up as 

7 you come in here. One of Phil's questions was 

8 are we looking at just this specific plant for 

9 this, or are we looking at this kind of being 

10 widespread throughout the workforce? To me, 

11 from what I'm understanding, I'm just seeing a 

12 few people involved in this; is that correct, 

13 Stu or John? 

14 MR. STIVER: Well, I think that's 

15 one of the issues we had, remember, before is 

16 the inability to determine who was necessarily 

17 a chemical operator and who had the high 

18 exposure potential. And I recall that was one 

19 of the main reasons why we couldn't carve out 

20 an SEC for a subcategory for the earlier 

21 period of `68 to `78. 

22 So this is the kind of situation 
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1 where there were certain people involved in 

2 the work, but we can't really necessarily 

3 identify them. And so it kind of has to apply 

4 to everybody, to put it in the simplest terms. 

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: So, Phil, does 

6 that answer your question? 

7 MEMBER SCHOFIELD: Yes, it does, 

8 Brad. Thanks. 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Yes, 

10 Phil, when you were coming in, you were kind 

11 of breaking up a little bit there, and it was 

12 kind of hard to hear you is what the issue 

13 was. Okay. So we're going to address this. 

14 NIOSH is going to look into this a little bit 

15 and correspond between SC&A and the Work Group 

16 to kind of figure out an approach forward; is 

17 that correct, Stu? 

18 MR. HINNEFELD: Right. We'll work 

19 on something. And like I said, I think it 

20 might take a technical call to really kind of 

21 get us aligned on where we're going here, or 

22 we may start something and hand that over and 
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1 see is this close to what you're looking for. 

2 MR. STIVER: I would agree that, 

3 you know, before you get too far down the road 

4 that we should have some discussions back and 

5 forth between --

6 MR. HINNEFELD: Okay.

7 MR. STIVER: -- to make sure we'll 

8 all on the same page. 

9 MR. HINNEFELD: All right. 

10 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. Anymore 

11 discussion on item four? If not, the next --

12 well, it goes four to six real quick there. I 

13 didn't miss a five, did I, John? 

14 MR. STIVER: No, that was just my 

15 bad memory there. 

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. I think 

17 probably cut-and-paste. Now, is there any 

18 other additional SEC or Site Profile issues 

19 that we want to --

20 MR. STIVER: There aren't any new 

21 ones. Like I said, there are Site Profile 

22 issues that are kind of in abeyance until the 
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1 SEC is determined, after which we'll have to 

2 kind of re-baseline the matrix and start 

3 looking at the Site Profile side. 

4 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. And then 

5 we've got, you've got the matrix as being 

6 updated with the changes? Because I know the 

7 first matrix to where we are now is quite a 

8 bit different. 

9 MR. STIVER: Yes, we had focused 

10 on SEC issues almost exclusively.

11 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Right. Okay. 

12 MR. STIVER: That's why I'm 

13 saying, you know, take it from 2006 up to the 

14 present.

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That's good. 

16 So I guess, I guess, right now, Work Group 

17 conclusions on some things. Some of them I 

18 can, but some of them I can't because we 

19 didn't have enough people. But I wanted to 

20 run back over your items here and see what, if 

21 I've got a better understanding on this.

22 On item two, we were discussing 
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1 the start date of `53 or `51, and we concluded 

2 that the start date is going to be 1951, is 

3 that correct? 

4 MR. KATZ: That's correct, Brad. 

5 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay. And then 

6 on issue three, this was really broke out into 

7 a couple of different areas in here. And we 

8 can't take this to the Board because we didn't 

9 have enough Board Members here, but there's a, 

10 when we do bring it there it's to accept 

11 NIOSH's ability to be able to reconstruct the 

12 thorium dose for the earlier years of `53, I 

13 believe, to `67; is that correct? 

14 MR. KATZ: That's correct, Brad. 

15 And you can speak for Phil and you, Brad.

16 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Okay.

17 MR. KATZ: And then you can just 

18 call for the other Work Group Members to 

19 either address it or the whole Board can just 

20 simply take it up. But then the only 

21 difference is that they'll need a motion to 

22 actually act on this because they won't be 
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1 getting an automatic motion from the Work 

2 Group. 

3 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And I 

4 understand. I was wondering how I was going 

5 to kind of work that. But we'll proceed on 

6 with that one.

7 And then the next part of this was 

8 the strategy for bounding 1955 Plant 9 intake, 

9 and NIOSH has agreed to use the 215 MAC; is 

10 that --

11 MR. HINNEFELD: That's right.

12 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: -- correct? 

13 Okay. 

14 MR. HINNEFELD: Right.

15 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: And then number 

16 four we just got done discussing, and NIOSH is 

17 going to get together with SC&A and discuss 

18 how to be able to use the data that we have to 

19 be able to make the model. This isn't an SEC 

20 issue, but there's a problem there, correct? 

21 MR. HINNEFELD: Yes, we have to 

22 sort some things out on how best to interpret 
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1 the data that's there.

2 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Well, I'm going 

3 to be honest with you, too. I've got to 

4 figure out really what we were talking about 

5 there because I kind of got a little bit lost. 

6 I understand what Joyce is saying, and I'm 

7 just wondering how -- I'm with NIOSH. I'm 

8 wondering how we're going, what we're going to 

9 do and how it's going to be implemented.

10 So with that, you know, as we've 

11 already said, we've got these recommendations 

12 that are going to come to the full Board in 

13 January and we've got our recommendations that 

14 we'll have. But like I said, because we lost 

15 one person, I can bring it up there.

16 With that being said, is there 

17 anything more that needs to come before the 

18 Work Group at this time that we need to 

19 discuss before January? 

20 MR. KATZ: No, Brad. I just want 

21 to confirm you want to handle this session the 

22 way you wanted to handle the Pantex session, 
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1 which is for John to give a comprehensive 

2 presentation and you can then follow with sort 

3 of summary recommendations from the Work 

4 Group, you know, for the recommendation that 

5 was established, to the recommendations that 

6 are established, and then also, you know, 

7 speak for Phil and you on the remaining one 

8 that the Work Group didn't complete? 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: That is

10 correct. That's how --

11 MR. KATZ: Okay. We'll go forward 

12 that way, John. So you'll be sort of laying 

13 all the groundwork. 

14 MR. STIVER: Okay. Now, are we 

15 talking about a complete covering the 

16 waterfront, or are we just kind of more 

17 focusing on --

18 MR. KATZ: Well, you're going to 

19 cover the waterfront but only the SEC 

20 recommendations that we're addressing, not the 

21 waterfront -

22 MR. STIVER: Okay. Otherwise --
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1 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I feel that, 

2 over the last many Board meetings, that we've 

3 covered the bases and back and that we've got, 

4 we've had these outlying issues there. And, 

5 you know, if you want to give a brief summary 

6 of where we're at, and then these are the 

7 issues and this is what's been represented, 

8 and I can bring up the recommendations --

9 MR. KATZ: Because, for John, let 

10 me just clarify. I mean, you do want to, 

11 since this is sort of closing out SEC matters 

12 for Fernald, you probably do want to just 

13 remind the rest of the Board of where we've 

14 come, you know, what has already been put to 

15 bed and your background before you get into 

16 the details of the remaining issues. Right. 

17 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: What was that, 

18 John? I didn't hear you.

19 MR. STIVER: Like I say, it will 

20 be similar to the presentation I put together 

21 for California last year. 

22 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: Yes, it will 
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1 just be a little bit shorter probably, and 

2 we'll go from there. Okay. With that being 

3 said, is there anything else additional that 

4 needs to come before the Work Group that we 

5 need to discuss? 

6 MS. BALDRIDGE: This is Sandra. 

7 I'd just like to thank everybody for their 

8 efforts and all their hard work. 

9 CHAIRMAN CLAWSON: I appreciate 

10 that, Sandra. This has been a difficult one. 

11 You know, I think I can speak for everybody, 

12 your input has been very critical in this, and 

13 you've brought a lot of things to life that 

14 has helped us proceed forward. And I'd like 

15 to tell you thank you for all the hard work 

16 that you've put in, too. 

17 With that being said, we'll call 

18 this meeting adjourned. 

19 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter

20 was concluded at 11:58 a.m.)

21

22